He was becoming confidential and intimate
when, in a lowered voice, he mentioned the Banshee's crag, where the
shrouded messenger of doom never failed to bewail each dying child of
the O'More, and where his own old nurse had actually beheld her
keening for the uncle who was killed among the Caffres. Albinia
began to know how she ought to respect the O'Mores.
They were skirting the side of the hill, with a dip of green
meadow-land below them, rising on the other side into coppices. The
twang of the horn, and the babbling cry of the hounds, reminded Albinia
that the hunting season had begun, and looking over a gate, she
watched the parti-coloured forms of the dogs glancing among the
brushwood opposite, and an occasional red coat gleaming out through
the hedge above. Just then the cry ceased, the dogs became silent,
and scattered hither and thither bewildered. Ulick looked eagerly,
then suddenly vaulted over the gate, went forward a few steps, looked
again, pointed towards some dark object which she could barely
discern, put his finger in his ear, and uttered an unearthly screech,
incomprehensible to her, but well understood by the huntsman, and
through him by the dogs, which at once simultaneously dashed in one
direction, and came pouring into the meadow over towards him, down
went their heads, up went their curved tails, the clatter and rushing
of hoofs, and the apparition of red coats, showed the hunters all
going round the copse, while at the same moment, away with winged
steps bounded her companion, flying headlong like the wind, so as to
meet the hunt.
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