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A country parson has no right to expect adventures. When he is sixty years of age he has certainly no right to enjoy adventures when they come. Yet, in spite of some hours of discomfort and some moments of anxiety I got a great deal of pleasure out of the happenings of last summer. I have been for twenty years rector of Carrigahooly, and I rather prided myself on finding the satisfaction of peace in the unbroken monotony of my life. Now, in spite of my sixty years, I know that I was wrong in preferring quietness to excitement. I ask for nothing better now than more adventures. I want to be shaken up out of the placid life into which I am already beginning to settle down again. Alas! my one adventure only lasted, from start to finish, for three days, far too short a time, and I am not at all likely ever to be mixed up again in such an affair.

The story begins on the day of the July fair in Dunally. Dunally is a small town of no particular importance, and fairs are held there once a quarter, on the last Tuesdays of July, October, and so forth. I went there by the early train to buy a cow. I wasted my day. There were very few cows for sale and they fetched prices far beyond my modest means. The business of the day was over so far as I was concerned at ten o'clock in the morning, when a little Kerry cow which I liked was sold to a Dublin dealer for three pounds more than I was prepared to give. After that I had nothing whatever to do till four o'clock in the afternoon. Dunally is ten miles from Carrigahooly, too far for me to walk, and there is only one train each way in the day.

When there is only one train in the day people are careful not to miss it. The Carrigahooly people who had been to the fair began to walk up towards the station at about three o'clock. When I got there at half-past three there was a small crowd on the platform. I live on very good terms with the people of Carrigahooly, though I am a clergyman of the Church of Ireland, and ninety-eight per cent of them are Roman Catholics. I spent the first half-hour of my wait pleasantly enough, chatting to one farmer or another about the price of stock, a matter which interests them--and me--much more than the state of the country or the prospects of establishing an Irish Republic. Indeed, the only person who made any remark about current affairs was Mrs. Maher, the owner and manager of the "Imperial" Hotel in Carrigahooly. She held a copy of the "Irish Independent" in her hand when I greeted her, and she had evidently been slightly impressed by the big letters in which that morning's tragedy was announced.

"It's a pity, now," she said, "to be shooting the police the way they are. But, of course, it's hard to blame the boys that does it with the way things are going on at the present time."

Having expressed that opinion in a detached and slightly bored tone, she went on to discuss with animation and great acuteness the amazing rise in the cost of feeding stuffs for pigs. I keep a pig myself, and Mrs. Maher keeps three, so we got on very well together till four o'clock. Then Patterson came into the station. He is the inspector of police in our district, and he lives in Carrigahooly. He is a young man, and I find him both pleasant and friendly. I left Mrs. Maher and went over to him.

I had time for quite a long chat with him, for the train was half-an-hour late. No one, not even Patterson, though he is an Englishman, was surprised or annoyed at the train's failure to be up to time. We all expected it to be later than it was, and we should not have been surprised if it had not got to Dunally till five o'clock. It comes all the way from Dublin, a matter of 180 miles or so, and it has to stop at seventeen stations before it gets to Dunally, so it cannot possibly be punctual. Patterson and I talked about mackerel fishing.

I own a five-ton boat called the "Aurora," the only pleasure boat in Carrigahooly Bay, and I am always glad to lend her to Patterson, or to take him out with me. Indeed, I think that he uses the boat more than I do myself in the course of the summer. I feel that Patterson has a sort of claim on the "Aurora," for I bought her from his predecessor, who had in his turn bought her from a still earlier district inspector of police. Thus she has been connected with the police for ten or fifteen years, and it was rather hard on Patterson that I should have stepped in and bought her just before he arrived in Carrigahooly. She is a good, seaworthy boat, but some of her gear is old, and prices being what they are nowadays, I am not in a position to replace things. Patterson was explaining to me that the jib sheets were really in a very bad state when the train bumped over the points outside the station and drew up at the platform.

It was then that we caught our first glimpse of Molly Floyd. She was leaning out of the window of a third-class carriage. She wore, I remember, a bright blue cotton blouse and no hat. Her hair was blown about and her face had several large smuts on it. She must, I imagine, have kept her head out of the window a good deal during the nine hours of the journey. But in spite of the smuts and the tousled hair, she looked remarkably pretty.

I suppose that an elderly country parson ought to turn away his eyes from the vanity of pretty faces. I did no such thing. I looked at Molly as the train came in, and I was conscious of a little thrill of pleasure. Pretty girls are common enough in the west of Ireland, and I see three or four every day of my life; but Molly was more than simply pretty. Her eyes sparkled, and there was something about her mouth and the set of her head which suggested that she was full of animation, quite prepared to enjoy whatever life brought her. I did not consciously determine to travel with her, but while the crowd from the fair scrambled for seats elsewhere I found myself with my hand on the door of her compartment. She smiled in the friendliest way when she stood aside to let me get in.

There was far more excuse for Patterson than there was for me. He was scarcely thirty years old, and at that age a man ought to be affected by a pretty face. I have no doubt that he, too, wanted to travel in Molly's company, to sit opposite her and look at her pretty face. But there were difficulties in his way. Patterson had been on duty all day and wore uniform, the uniform of a district inspector of police, which gives a man rank as an officer and a gentleman. There are regulations governing the conduct of men in this position. They must, while they are actually wearing uniform, travel in first-class carriages. I suppose that the King, or whoever makes these rules, thinks that people will respect officers more if they buy unnecessarily expensive railway tickets. Perhaps that does happen in England. Here, in Ireland, we would not respect officers or gentlemen even if they travelled in specially designed trains de luxe.

Patterson, with the return half of a first-class ticket in his pocket, walked with determined strides to a smoking carriage further up the train. But he did not get into it. Inclination triumphed over his sense of duty. He came back to Molly's compartment, and when he got into it pretended that he had come to finish what he was saying to me about the "Aurora's" jib sheets.

Molly was not travelling alone. In the far corner of the compartment was an elderly man whom she addressed as "Father." He seemed to me an inoffensive gentleman, and I should have guessed him to be a professor in some university--a minor kind of professor with a subject which few people want to know anything about. Patterson looked at him with some suspicion. It is the duty of an Irish policeman to look suspiciously at anyone whom he knows nothing about--and, of course, with still more suspicion at most people he knows all about. Patterson, though he had ventured into a third-class carriage, was still conscious of his duty. He looked at Molly a good deal, but I noticed that he eyed the old gentleman in the corner sharply from time to time. A regard for his own personal safety keeps a man alert, and Patterson could not afford to give all his attention to any girl, however pretty, unless he were quite satisfied about her father.

Nowadays, landlords being nearly an extinct species, the police afford almost the only big game shooting in Ireland, and we are a sporting people. It is only natural that men like Patterson become exceedingly wary. Deer on Scottish moors have, I am told, a way of raising their heads and sniffing the air when they are conscious of anything unusual in their neighbourhood. Irish policemen are acquiring a protective instinct of the same sort.

It appeared, when the train reached Carrigahooly, that Patterson and I were not the only people in Dunally who had noticed Molly Floyd leaning out of the window. I suppose, indeed, that everybody noticed her, but Mrs. Maher had looked at her with interest. Mrs. Maher, who is a middle-aged, acute business woman, did not care in the least whether the girl's face were pretty or plain. What attracted her was the fact that Molly and her father were strangers. She saw the father, for she came to the window of the carriage and looked in before the train left Dunally. I have no doubt that she made up her mind then and there that there was a chance of profit for her.

At Carrigahooly the train stops finally. It cannot go any further, for beyond Carrigahooly there is nothing but the Atlantic Ocean, and Inisheeny Island eight miles off the coast. It was, therefore, plain to Mrs. Maher that the Floyds must be going to get out at Carrigahooly, and, since there was no train back to Dublin till the next day, must mean to stay there.

On the platform, when we all got out, Mrs. Maher came up to Molly Floyd.

"I beg your pardon, miss," she said, "but are you thinking of staying in the hotel?"

"Yes, we are," said Molly. "We want to stay there for a night, or perhaps more. Do you know where it is? Can we get a car to drive us there?"

Her father pulled out a note book from his pocket and referred to it. He was evidently one of those men who cannot trust their memories, and have to keep everything written down.

"The 'Imperial' Hotel," he said.

"There's no other hotel in the place only the Imperial,'" said Mrs. Maher; "but you'll not find a more comfortable house in Ireland, wherever you go. His Reverence will tell you that, and so will Mr. Patterson."

She looked round at Patterson and me as she spoke, drawing us into the conversation in the pleasant, friendly way common in the west of Ireland. I was quite prepared to support the first part of her statement. Hers is the only hotel in Carrigahooly. But I was not prepared to say that there is no more comfortable hotel in Ireland. I have never had to stay there, but judging by what I have heard of it there cannot possibly be many less comfortable hotels.

"I expect," I said, "that Mrs. Maher will put you up all right."

That was as much as I could say. Patterson would not even say that. He stayed a fortnight with Mrs. Maher when he first came to Carrigahooly and he knows all about her hotel. He said nothing at all. Considering that he is a very honest man, and therefore fond of blurting out unpleasant truths, it was kind of him to keep silence. I suppose he has been long enough in Ireland to learn that it is never right to speak the truth to a neighbour's injury. And, whatever Mrs. Maher's hotel was like, there was nowhere else for the Floyds to go.

"I've Jimmy outside with the ass-cart," said Mrs. Maher; "for I've two young pigs that I bought in the fair, and he'll be bringing them down for me. So if you've any luggage, Miss----"

"We haven't much," said Molly. "There's a small trunk in the van and a bundle done up in green canvas; and there are two bags in the carriage."

"I'll tell Jimmy to see after them," said Mrs. Maher.

Patterson and I had no reason for lingering in the station. We went on, leaving Mrs. Maher and Jimmy to deal with the Floyds, the small trunk, the bundle, the bags, and the two young pigs.