LITTLE Susan had been a dear, demure, delightsome thing when Robin L'Estrange first came to Carrig-naPooka. That was a haunted country. Miles and miles of bog and low dim hills; not a neighboring house of consideration for miles. As he had ridden along the bog roads in the autumn gloaming he had felt the loneliness. The pools of bog water reffected the glimmering sky. High out of sight a flock of wild geese passed, their eerie cries seeming close at his ear. There was not a cottage in sight, though blue smoke rose over the bog, suggesting cabins that cowered close to the earth for shelter.

He had come to a place where the lonesomeness might be felt. The road had been climbing for some time, leaving the bogs behind. On either side of him were bare, wind-swept stretches of coarse grass. He came to a mound on which ragged, forlornlooking cattle grazed. It was there he caught sight of the little white dog.

The creature was very small. When he first saw it, it seemed no more than the white scut of a rabbit. It fled from before his horse's feet on to the mound. There it waited, and he heard it whine. It was a dog, but he had to look twice before he was sure of it.

He was in no great hurry to arrive at Carrig-na-Pooka.

'If I fall,' Hervey Considine had said to him on their last evening together, "you must go to my mother and tell her something to comfort her out of our long talks together.'

He had been devoted to Major Considine, his senior officer, who had made a friend of him - of all the younger men. Both had gone down in the great charge. He, Robin L'Estrange, had come to life again some time later, a mass of intolerable suffering, which was kept from crying aloud only by the stern spirit within the smashed citadel that never for a moment thought of surrender.

Little by little he had crept back to life and cessation of agonizing pain. And almost the first thing he had put on himself to do, when he should be well enough, was to carry to Hervey Considine's mother as much as he remembered of the long talks in which his friend had shown him so much of his heart.

Hervey Considine had been 'missing' now for nearly two years. Very little chance that he would ever be heard of again.

The glimpse of the little white dog in the gray autumn twilight recalled something in a talk between him and his friend. They had talked of banshees and death-warnings. Considine, a splendid specimen of manhood, sixfoot-two in height, fresh-colored, with curling dark hair and the bluest of blue eyes, had amazed Robin L'Estrange, by saying:

'A death in our family is foretold by the appearance of a white hare. It was seen before my father's death; and I give you my word for it, L'Estrange, that as I kept vigil by my father's coffin in the chapel at Carrig-na-Pooka,

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the last night he was above earth, the
door came open slowly, and there
entered a little white animal. It might
be a hare, or a squirrel, not a cat
the movement was not a cat's. There
was only the light of the six candles
burning about the coffin. The thing
appeared and disappeared. It ran
swiftly. When I came to where it had
been, it had vanished.'

L'Estrange had smiled and wondered at the time the story was told. How odd that anyone so splendidly balanced and had reasonable as Hervey Considine should believe such a tale!

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He remembered it as the dog ran in the autumn gloaming and whined in the distance. He tethered his horse and followed among the grazing cattle, till he came to a little wall of stones with a rusty iron gate, which enclosed the upper part of the mound. He crossed the wall easily enough,- it was be quite low, and as he walked across the coarse long grass, his foot stumbled he over something. A gravestone. Why the place was full of them, tiny graveof stones, and each one marked a little mound which could only be the grave of a very small creature.

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The dog eluded him, slipping behind the little headstones, but, at last, he ran it to earth. It was a very small dog, and it shivered excessively when ed he laid hold of it, and then fell to nd licking his hands in eager deprecation.

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He stroked the small head, standing there in the toy graveyard, wondering what he should do with the dog that h whined and snuggled toward him. Evidently a lost dog, he said to himself, as he retraced his way down the mound to where his horse stood patiently awaiting him.

Before him in the distance a light glittered in the darkness of trees. A 2. square tower stood up against a yellowish sky. It must be Carrig-naPooka. He would be there before dark.

A light streamed out from a cottage window suddenly, sending a broad reflection on the dark road before him. He could feel the little dog clinging to him and the rapid beating of its heart. He had thrust it inside his coat, where it lay soft and warm. He could not arrive at Carrig-na-Pooka carrying a stray puppy. He must get someone to take care of it.

He knocked at the cottage door and it was opened to him by a little brown-faced old woman, who stared at him in astonishment.

'I am on my way to Carrig-naPooka,' he said, 'and I have found this stray puppy on the road. Will you take care of him for me till I come back? I will pay you whatever you think reasonable for his keep.'

The old woman laughed and put out her hand for the puppy.

'It don't seem as though its keep would cost much,' she said. 'Sure, it's a fairy. I'll keep it an' welcome. You could n't be takin' a white beast to Carrig-na-Pooka.'

'No, I suppose I could nt,' he said. So the story was known outside the Considine family!

'You'd be terrifyin' the Madam. They say It was seen before the bad news came about the Major. Sure the little thing would pass for a hare.'

She stood looking after him as he rode away, the puppy clasped in her arms. The little thing had clung to him frantically as though it had claws, and he had had difficulty in detaching it. Glancing back as he rode away, he said to himself that the puppy would be safe till he claimed it. He was taken with the little beast, which, having eluded capture, had seemed to conceive a violent affection for its captor. He felt oddly flattered by its passion for him.

you came not nearly so much.'

He had often spoken of himself as a homeless man. It was good to be taken into the home life of Carrig-naPooka. There were only two women: Madam Considine and her granddaughter Susan, the child of a younger brother of his friend who, with his wife, had died in India, leaving their only child to be brought up by her grandmother.

Seeing that so much trouble had befallen the house, there was a wonderful brightness about it. Madam Considine had gained an almost unearthly tranquillity. She radiated peace. Robin L'Estrange thought of her in the lines of an old poet:

Oftener upon her knees than on her feet;
Died every day she lived.

Her heavenliness had not made Madam less human. She received L'Estrange like a son. The house was bare enough, but somehow beautiful. Great wood fires roared in the big grates. The sparse furniture was all good and elegant. Madam, wearing the fashions of her youth, seemed to shed light and warmth wherever she moved.

Little Susan was charming. The loneliness of Carrig-na-Pooka did not seem to depress her. She was incessantly busy and merry. As the days passed and grew to weeks, they ceased to talk of their visitor leaving them. When L'Estrange spoke of it, Susan looked up at him with a startled expression.

'Oh, but what would Granny do without you?' she asked. 'She does

He had not realized till he came to Carrig-na-pooka how sick a man he had been. He realized it by the comfort and the kindness. He reminded himself:

'One of these days you will be well enough to go back'; but he was not yet well enough.

He went walking and driving and riding with Susan. The little girl talked to him as frankly as though he had been her brother, revealing to him the sweetness of her heart and the strength of her spirit. She was as sweet as a rose and as gay as a robin. The first time he saw her flush when their hands met he was helping her into the saddle he was dazed. He had not known women with any degree of intimacy. He had a virgin heart to give to this exquisite child. The long fine autumn was idyllic. Madam was happy, watching with shrewd contented eyes the unfolding of the romance. She had sometimes felt a little anxious about Susan's future. She did not want to leave the child alone in the world when the time came for her own call.

There was one drawback to the completeness of life at Carrig-na-Pooka; there were no domestic animals. To a man so fond of animals, especially of dogs, as Robin L'Estrange, it was a real drawback, but he guessed that Madam could not have endured their presence. He spoke of the matter once to Susan.

'Do you never want the companionship of a dog in this lonely country? he asked. 'It would be such company for you, child!'

'Oh, I could n't have a dog,' she said, 'I should love it, but Granny would be frightened-she is frightened of animals because of It.'

'Do you believe in It?' he asked. 'I do not know. Granny, for all her

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'Some day you must know my bulldog, Jane,' he said; 'I wish I was not obliged to be separated from her. Of course, all that about the White Hare is mere superstition.'

'You must not say so to Granny,' she answered.

He had been away for a little while weet attending to his private affairs, and he The came back one dark winter day, just heir before Christmas, joyfully, as a man comes home to all he holds dearest in the world. He had come laden with gifts for Susan. Not much longer was he going to defer his happiness. He knew Susan loved him; he did not doubt that Madam would approve. He had seen her eyes rest on them with the contentment as he and Susan stood ta together. He had been taking the place of her dead son to Madam.

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He had not been a week away, but, what had happened to Susan? She looked frozen. Her eyes were desolate. Her little hand as it lay in his was chill as a winter flower in the sun. She trembled as she looked down, avoiding his glances.

The same inexplicable change lay over Madam. She, too, looked frightened. What had been scaring these two women whom he had come to love in their separate fashions? What was it? He had driven along the lonesome bog roads where the scream of the curlew but accentuated the silence. In an aloof, detached way he had known that Carrig-na-Pooka was eerie for two lonely women and a few old servants, buried deep in the woods as it was, and a great rambling old house. Why, the crying of the wind

as it struck the southeast corner of the house at dead of night was, he had said to himself, appallingly like a ghostly lamentation. His poor little girl! And the dear kind old mother of his dead friend! He would take them away from these lonely solitudes. They must have life and company. Carrigna-Pooka was all very well in spring and early summer. It was haunted when the long winter darkness came.

He was not left in doubt very long. When Susan had gone away listlessly to dress for dinner, Madam lingered and came back to him. She had something to tell.

'My dear,' she said, and laid a soft, ringed hand on his arm, 'you will have noticed the change in our Susan. The poor child has seen It,. or thinks she has seen it. One is never quite sure. She will have it that it is for herself. Sometimes it is seen by the one who is going to die, sometimes by a member of the family. You must get it out of her head that it came for her. If you do not she will die of it. You see the change? Of course it is for me; and I should not grumble if I knew that Susan was in safe keeping. I should be going to my son.'

'It is for neither of you,' he said roughly. 'You are a religious woman, Madam Considine; how do you reconcile your religion with such superstition?'

Madam drew herself up, a little haughtily.

'Oh, but,' she said, 'such things are not superstitions. A family of the quality of ours is bound to have its death-warnings.'

He turned from her almost impatiently.

'I do not believe it,' he said. 'Forgive me, I think such things are evil. What did my poor pretty Susan see?' 'A little animal · the White Hare. She has seen it twice. Once in the

avenue at twilight; again in the long corridor upstairs. It ran, as It always runs. She could not be sure it was there. Just so it was seen before my husband's death, before my son's.' 'Listen,' he said. 'Are you sure it was seen before Hervey's death? Did you see it?'

'No.'

'Did Susan?'

'No. The people about the place saw it. Old Michael Caffrey at the gate-lodge; Bridget, the laundry-maid, and others,

'Did you hear of it before or after?' "They would not have told me before,' she said indignantly. 'It would have been too cruel.'

He had it on his lips to say, "There is no proof that Hervey is dead'; but it would have been too cruel to suggest hopes to her. He said, instead, soberly: 'I do not say that they lied. They are an imaginative people.'

'You have too much English blood to understand us Irish, for all your Irish grandmother.'

It was little use to talk. All during the evening he strove with them. His wooing was done. Fear and the sense of doom had made Susan turn to him as a child, frightened of the dark, turns to a kind breast.

Madam went away to her oratory and left them together. They sat side by side, Susan clinging to him as for comfort and help in some desperate danger. He tried to rally her out of her fears. He painted their future life together, but she only shook her head. There was no laughter in her. She whispered to him how she had seen the thing first. It went 1 ke the wind, springing up under her feet from a drift of dead leaves, gone almost before she had seen it. And again it sidled in the upper corridor against the hangings of Spanish leather, and was gone.

Nothing he could say was of use; she was so drearily sure that she had seen the White Hare and of its meaning for her.

'You must not think, dear Robin,' she said, 'that although I take comfort in your strength I am going to let you stay here. There is no future for you and me. You are to go away and forget me. I shall be the last of the Considines of Carrig-na-Pooka.'

The wind struck the southeast corner of the house, shrieked and wailed, and died away.

"There is your banshee!' he said, bitterly. A rough wind from over the bogs, that finds something, a ventilator probably, in the wall to play its tunes on. Of such things are your ghosts and banshees made.'

And then he was sorry and was gentle with her. Inwardly he gnashed his teeth with despair because he could not move her a thing so soft and gentle, like thistledown.

While he lay awake at night, he tossed and turned on his pillow, saying to himself, that, if he could not persuade her, she would die. Already there were bitter ravages in her soft beauty. He thought of her distended eyes as she clung to him, whispering that she did not want to die, she did not want to die, with an anguish of pity and love for her, and a fear for himself that he must lose her which shook all his courage. He remembered the old church in the grounds and the barred grating of the Considine vault with a shudder. Was it there his pretty one should lie, amid the mouldering remnants of humanity, and not soft and warm in his arms? He uttered a fierce groan that seemed to echo through the room, and he heard the clock in the stableyard strike two. He had been three hours in bed and sleep had not visited his pillow.

The sound he had made had startled