Part 34 (1/2)

She looked at him searchingly, recalling the night when they had seen the campers in the glen.

”You don't want to answer questions?” suggested Elinor.

”Exactly.”

”Then you do know something?” they demanded in whispers.

”What I know I am not ashamed to know. There is nothing wrong in what has been done--”

Billie sat on a stone fallen from the ruined walls and rested her chin in her hand. She was thinking and thinking.

”Feargus,” she said at last, ”we don't want to help you do anything dishonest and wicked--”

Feargus flushed. But the honest light in his blue eyes never wavered.

”I believe that what has been done is right,” he said, ”but I can't say anything more--”

”Come, Billie,” called Miss Campbell's voice from the other side of the wall.

The four friends shook hands with the Irish boy. It was impossible to connect anything criminal and wicked with his honest, good-natured face.

”It's a shame,” whispered Billie to Nancy, as she guided the ”Comet”

through the wild scenery along the third lake, some time later in the day. ”The Duke of Kilkenty is like a wicked magician who turns everything wrong and crooked that could just as easily be straight and right.”

But of course she had no way in the world to know that the Duke of Kilkenty was at that moment engaged in dictating a number of letters to his secretary, which so surprised that young man, that it was with difficulty he grasped his pencil. The police were to give up all search for young O'Connor; detectives were to be withdrawn from the case. The Duke had other means of finding his son. A firm of architects were to send men down to discuss building model cottages; Father O'Toole was to call and see him at once. And still the list was not nearly attended to.

CHAPTER XXII.-HOW A DRIVE IN A JAUNTING CAR ENDED IN A MOTOR TRIP.

It was near a small village toward the west coast of Ireland where Elinor's relatives lived, and the first impression of the straggling, cobble-paved street flanked with wretched hovels was hardly cheerful.

They had left Miss Campbell and Maria at the inn to rest and the four girls had taken a jaunting car and started off, ostensibly for a drive, but really on a search for the Butler cousins.

The jaunting car of Ireland is a vehicle peculiar to that country alone.

It has two wheels like a dog cart, and the seats run sideways so that the pa.s.sengers sit back to back and see only half the landscape as they jolt along. The driver is supposed to sit on a cross-piece in front, right over the horse's tail, but he just as often sits at the side to drive his nag, urging him on with an occasional lazy flick of the whip.

To-day he shared one of the seats with Elinor and Mary.

”Do you know a family named Butler around here, driver?” began Elinor diplomatically.

”Shure an' there be a mony of that name in Oirland,” answered the man, blinking at the sunlight, ”and a good name it is, I'm thinkin'.”

”I'm looking for the family of Thomas Butler,” Elinor ventured.

”An' it's Tom ye're lookin' for, is it?”

”Do you know him?” asked Elinor surprised at his familiarity in the use of her cousin's name.

”Shure an' I ought to know him,” chuckled the man. ”An' if G.o.d and his howly saints are good to me, I'll know him for mony a day to come. He's a good soul, is Tom. He wur-rks all the time, for shure, and nivver rests at all, exceptin' whin the night comes an' he falls on his bed for weariness. He's a good fam'ly man, is Tom.”