"An' to think, glory be to God (there's me best Camille de Rohan for you), that the Lord's looked down on the master at last (come down here, you conthrary divil; some o' them roses is as unwillin' to be picked as some people is to die), an' sent him home the young master to be the prop an' stay av his ould age (there goes the finest Malmaison in the County Kerry!). Sure, 'tis wonderful! wonderful! Well, the Lord is good to his own. (You've destroyed me prospects at the show entirely.) Click, click; I'd as soon you'd be cuttin' off meself as them tubey roses. Here, take them! Don't have me lookin' at them. 'Tis a holy show you've made o' the greenhouse!"

"Never mind, Crosbie," said I, "you don't grudge them to-day," as I took the heaped-up basket.

"I try not to, I try not to," he said gloomily. "But there's that man at the Towers. He'll be havin' a fine crow over me at Aisther. Yerra! why didn't the masther's son put off comin' till the show was over for another year?"

I left the old man amid his half-comical regrets, and went to the dining-room, which I found resplendent with silver and fine linen. I had made up my mind to slip off as soon as I had arranged the flowers, so as to let the General and his restored son have their first meal together alone.

But just as I was setting the last satiny rose amid its bronze leaves in the last specimen-glass, the General came in search of me.

"Ah, decorating, Hilda!" he said. "My boy is gone upstairs to have a wash. How glad I am that you were here to welcome him, and to give me the good news!"

"And very stupidly I did it. I was expecting him to burst cover every minute of my bungling."

"Oh, no, my dear! it was most kind and considerate. My boy tells me he remembers you quite well, and recognized you at once."

"I haven't changed much," I said carelessly. "But now, General, that I have finished, I am going to make myself scarce. Hawkins will drive me to Brandon."

"You'll do nothing of the sort," said the General, a choleric spark coming into his eye. "You're not going to drop me now Lance has come, I can tell you."

"I don't mean to drop you the least bit in the world. But you will have so much to say to each other this very first evening."

"Nothing that we don't want you to share. Why, little girl"—and a wonderful smile broke over his face—"we have years before us in which to talk, please God, for Lance has promised never to leave me again."

So I consented to stay, feeling rather dissatisfied with my plain frock of navy-blue serge on this day of rejoicing. Still, with a cluster of Crosspatch's Camille de Rohans fastened at the belt, I brightened it up a little for dinner, and hoped I did not look very dingy when I arrived in the dining-room.

CHAPTER XXVI.

THE UGLY DUCKLING.

Captain MacNeill—I felt as if I must always call him Lance in my own mind—came forward when I entered the library after the dinner-bell had rung.

"You'll have to dine with a wild man of the woods, Miss Brandon," he said apologetically. "I have only the clothes I stand up in."

"Never mind, Lance," said his father, "we're glad to have you in any. We'll go over to London next week, and I'll give you a blank cheque for Poole. You've no idea what a dandy he has always been, Hilda!"

"Oh, I remember him!" said I. "Like Solomon in his glory—that is to say, dressed like any other well-dressed young man."

"And I remember you—"

Lance broke off with a quizzical glance.

"Come, my lad, postpone reminiscences till we're over the soup," said the General as he offered me his arm.

We dined at a little round table, which brought us all in close neighbourhood. As Captain MacNeill ate his soup I had time to look at him. He was a good deal changed from the young man I remembered. No doubt rest and good living would bring back much of the youth and brightness, but there were lines in the keen brown face that would never be obliterated. He was thin, and a little haggard: that, of course, was to be expected; but the years of suffering had not changed his eyes, nor his smile, with its quick flash of white teeth; by these I felt I should have known him under any circumstances.

"How good everything here is!" he said, looking up suddenly. "I never knew how beautiful a thing a dinner-table was before. Such flowers in the winter! And how golden the candle-light is! To say nothing at all of this delicious soup!"

"Ah! Mrs. O'Connor has done her best with the cookery. I am glad you still care for your food, my boy. Appetite, rightly considered, is a gift of God."

The young man's eyes twinkled.

"I've the appetite of a school-boy still, and you remember, Dad, that mine was a record, even for Harrow. I've been saving it up all the years of my imprisonment."

"Hilda decorated the table in your honour. How she got the flowers out of old Crosbie I don't know!"

"He's a heart-broken man to-night, General," said I. "Still, to give him his due, he chopped away generously under the excitement of the good news, though to an accompaniment of grumbles."

"Crosbie's a good fellow," said the General. "I think I must take on that lad of his, though there's little enough for him to do."

"There's an epidemic of joy in the household, General. If you begin rewarding, I don't know where you'll stop."

"Hilda thought to reward us, Lance, by running away without her dinner."

"That would have been unkind," said the Captain seriously.

"You don't know what she's been to me, Lance," said the General, looking at me affectionately. "I was such a lonely old man till that day I came into my desolate house, and found her perched on my library steps, a little bit of white and gold, like a daisy."

"I found her in precisely the same position," said the Captain, laughing. "Do you live at such an eminence, Miss Hilda?"

"Pretty well," the General answered for me. "She's an uncanny child, and will read in the most uncomfortable positions."

"Till Mary O'Connor goes in incessant dread of my falling down like a precious china figure, and getting broken," said I, feeling rather embarrassed at being the subject of conversation.

"Hilda has a prescriptive right to the library, Lance," said the General.

"I sha'n't dispute it," said Captain MacNeill. "Is everybody else shut out altogether?"

"When she wills it. She is a successful writer, you know, and when she comes to a crux in the story she, having nerves, can't bear the presence of anyone but Paudeen, who is sympathetic, she says.

"Are you really an author, Miss Hilda?" said Captain MacNeill, with real or simulated astonishment.

"She is, my boy, and a successful one at that," answered the General.

"I shall be horribly afraid of you, Miss Hilda. But what precocity! At what age do people begin to write novels nowadays?"

Captain MacNeill seemed determined not to take me seriously. I didn't altogether like his lack of seriousness about my authorship.

"I was twenty-one last May," said I. "It is not so very young."

"Not really twenty-one, Miss Hilda?" said the Captain. "Then why do you go on looking fifteen?"

"Because I'm small, I suppose," I said. "But you must have known I was grown-up, for I was a big girl when you saw me first five years ago."

"So you were," he said. "I remember now that when I lifted you in the donkey-cart I thought you were like a very considerable piece of thistle-down that a fairly robust south wind might blow away."

"Please don't talk about that silly time," said I. "But the General is telling stories about my nerves. If I have any I vent them on Paudeen and the four walls of my little room at home. I have never written a line yet in Rose Hill library."

"Time you should begin, Hilda," said the General. "If you'll set up your study here I'll promise you this fellow and I won't disturb you. Life seems to be so full of things to be done, now he has come home, that I don't know which thing to begin at to-morrow morning."

"Oh, General!" said I, "I must be at home sometimes. Why, I have been spending nearly half my life at Rose Hill this winter."

"And why not?" said the General. "A couple of lonely buffers like us want you more than Brandon can. Do you know that she catalogued and arranged all our library, Lance?"

"Well," said I, half-laughing and half-confused, "I should think you two could find something to talk about this night of nights other than me."

"Why, my dear," said the General mildly, "I like to tell Lance all you have been to me—a bird of good omen in my lonely life. I had had no joy for so long before you came—since this fellow left me, in short,—and then you came into my life, like a—like a dear little daughter. She has been like that to me, Lance."

"I am very glad, sir," said Captain MacNeill gently; but something in his eyes as he looked at me made me turn, all of a sudden, redder than the roses in my belt.

Fortunately the dear old General never looked at me, but I was acutely conscious of the gaze, half-kind, half-quizzical, of the eyes across the table. I did not know why I had blushed, and felt furious with myself.

"Did you know that Hilda recognized your portrait at once, Lance?"

"Dear General," said I, "if you mention my name, or refer to me even indirectly again during dinner, you shall be fined. Do make him talk about his adventures instead."

"Ah! you don't know Lance. He was a laconic fellow from childhood about anything that concerned himself. We'll only get his adventures from him by bits and scraps."

But Captain MacNeill seemed to understand that I was really a little uncomfortable at being talked about so much, and turned the conversation in the deftest and kindest way.

I gave them their coffee in the library before I went home, and after I had gone in and said good-night to them, and they had escorted me to the dog-cart, which Hawkins was to drive, I carried away the happiest impression of the peace and joy I had left behind. The night was cold enough to make me nestle down inside the fleecy rug which Captain MacNeill had wrapped about me, but the picture I carried in my mind was of the father and son sitting, one on each side of a glowing lire, with their cigars between their lips and their eyes fondly regarding each other.

After that evening I did not go to Rose Hill for a day or so, but on the second day came the General himself driving over to fetch me back. In a week or so Captain MacNeill, whose wardrobe had become renovated after a hurried run to Dublin, came and called with his father, and won everybody's heart, from Aline's to the youngest of the twins.

The boys were now in the shy and gawky stage, and required a good deal of coaxing out of their shells, and for a time they were very awkward with this bronzed man of the world, who had had so many adventures, and was so modest and reticent about them. However, before the close of the visit, I saw that the ice was thawing, and guessed that in a very short time they would be calling him MacNeill, and smoking his cigars with all the ease in the world; and I was not mistaken. In fact, that state of things came about sooner than I could have believed possible, and presently a certain difference of opinion arose between the boys and the twins, for the boys were quite certain that it was only MacNeill's decency that made him put up with a pair of stupid little duffers like the twins when there were men to be had; and the twins, on the other hand, believed, and said openly, that they were the real attraction that so often brought Captain MacNeill to Brandon.

Aline, the dear mother of us all, was not without qualms about my visiting at Rose Hill as freely as of old, now that the house contained an additional inhabitant in the shape of an attractive young man; but what could she and I and the conventionalities do against the absolute unconsciousness of the dear old General? If I stayed away he would come or send for me, and it was as impossible for me to repulse his affection as it was for Aline to reveal her scruples to him. At last she consulted Lady O'Brien about it, and that dear woman responded with her usual common-sense:

"Let the child go as before, Aline," she said. "It isn't the world, and there's no one to make invidious remarks; and if there were I'd let them talk till doomsday before I'd come between Hilda and her friends."

So I came and went as of old, and soon lost much of my shyness of Captain MacNeill, whom indeed I only met at meals, or for an odd half-hour occasionally. He and his father seemed to find so much to take them out of the house now. The General had become so keen and alert about things that thirty years might have been suddenly lifted off his life, and as I became aware of how they were being sought by the neighbours—we called everyone within thirty miles neighbours—and being asked here and there, and besought to take up this and that position, I was conscious of an odd kind of jealousy. General MacNeill and Rose Hill had seemed so much to belong to me, that if it was going to be swamped now by the county families, and I driven out, as I surely should be if they came in,—well then, I shouldn't be too well pleased, that was all.

Certainly they had not come yet, and the greater stir in the house caused by its new inhabitant was so far distinctly pleasant. Mary O'Connor felt it as I did.

"'Tis more heartsome like," she said to me one day, "to have the young master to do for. The General is a desperate tidy gentleman, an' if it was only the cigar-ash on the floor, or the clothes flung anyway about the room, or even the bath-water splashed to that unchristian extent that it comes through the dinin'-room ceilin', I'd rather have a young gentleman to look after. Let alone that that Hawkins waits on the ould master like a cat in boots, till the silence and the tidiness grew so lonesome that I often had a mind to take a stravague through the rooms meself an' turn everything upside down. But, glory be! that onnatural temptation is removed from my path to-day."

Captain MacNeill was quite a long time at home before he saw Esther. She was not well in those days, and rather shrunk from meeting strangers. I used to wonder how the sight of her would affect him, for though Esther needed happiness to bring out her beauty in full bloom, yet the sorrow that dimmed her colour had given her eyes a more mysterious midnight beauty, so that, to my mind, she was lovelier for anyone who had eyes to see.

I was quite anxious that they should meet, and yet I had a curious shrinking from it. My anxiety was as for something painful that has to be gone through, and the sooner the better.

For I had made up my mind that Captain MacNeill must inevitably fall in love with Esther. I used to sit and look at her silently and try to see her as he would, and I said to myself that it was inevitable. Before Esther's eyes, and Esther's hair, and Esther's lovely colour—

Brown is my Love, but graceful,
        And each renowned whiteness
Matched with that lovely brown loseth its brightness.

—what chance would there be for blue eyes and pale cheeks and pale hair—if such desired to be remembered?

And if he came to love Esther, would she not in time turn to his love and forget her boyish lover? Why, that was inevitable too. The elder, stronger man was, it seemed to me, so much more love-worthy. For in regard to Esther's love of Harry De Lacy I had always a little wonder. Now with me my love should be the stronger one, not I. And yet it seemed that the gentleness, the dependence, the need of Esther's lover was the dearest element in her love for him.

Ah well! there are different ways of loving, and she might yet love differently. Somehow, as I thought these things, I seemed to be the spectator of a drama in which I had no part. What part was cast for me indeed—plain, little, with a limping foot—but to look at happiness through the eyes of others? Yet I was not resigned. On the contrary, my compassion for myself was so poignant that I often melted into tears.

At last the meeting came about. I was at Annagower one afternoon, when, about tea-time, the General and Captain MacNeill were announced. It was nearly twilight, and we were sitting by a leaping fire. Esther was listless enough, but the fire gave a simulated life to her beauty, putting golden deeps into the darkness of her eyes, and bronze lights amid the shadows of her hair. She had a pretty pink frock of nun's veiling, and a handful of bronze leaves pinned in the soft folds at her throat.

I drew back in the shadows to see how Captain MacNeill took his first introduction to her. He looked at her alertly indeed, and when he had sat down in my corner beside me he looked at her again. I did not know whether I was sorry or glad. There was admiration in his look, but it was an admiration entirely impersonal and distant; and after those two glances he looked only at me.

He had been at home now several weeks, and in a day or two he and his father were going to London. There was business to be done, but they had been putting it off week after week, being so delightfully happy with each other at Rose Hill.

The day after their call at Annagower I was in the library at Rose Hill. I had come in by the side door unannounced, and imagined I had the house to myself, pretty well, as usual, till the door opened and Captain MacNeill walked in.

"Why," I said, "are you at home to-day?"

"Yes; don't look so distressed about it. My father is at the Petty Sessions at Raheenduff. This is the first day he takes his seat on the bench. And here am I, like the little boy in the story, who had no one to play with, and appealed to all the insects in turn, but they were all too busy. Miss Hilda, are you too busy, or may I sit down here?"

"You may, if you will tell me first which of the insects I represent?" I said severely.

"It's too hard, Miss Hilda. Let it be a bird or a flower," he said with imploring eyes.

I passed over the suggestion in silence. Then I rushed awkwardly into a subject which had been much in my mind.

"I was glad you met my sister yesterday. I have always wanted you to meet her."

"Thank you. I was very pleased to meet her," he said simply.

"She is my chum of all the family," I said. "I think there is no one like Esther."

"She is a very lovely creature," he answered.

"You remembered her again?" I asked.

"No," he said, looking at me questioningly. "Did I see her before?"

Well, I don't mind confessing that a little wave of joy rushed over my heart. I could hardly keep my voice still as I answered him, for I had told myself so often that his eyes that day long ago must have been for Esther.

"Why, of course," said I. "She was with me that day at Annagassan races."

"I only saw one face there," he said softly.

"Miss Pettigrew's?" I asked mischievously.

"Miss Pettigrew!" he repeated in astonishment.

"Yes, you remember you were walking with her when you first passed close to our shandrydan early in the day?"

"Ah! I remember; I had forgotten her name. Someone, a man in my regiment, had asked me to take her to see the leaping at the stone wall. I never saw her afterwards. But"—with a flash of triumph—"you noticed me then and remembered me?"

"I couldn't help it. You were looking at us when I was capering about because an Irish horse had won."

"I can see you now," he said.

"Don't, please!" I cried out. "I must have looked too silly."

"Shall I tell you how you looked?"

My eyes dropped before his, and I trembled, but I said nothing.

"I will tell you then. I thought you the dearest, sweetest, softest little white-and-gold girl in all the world."

"Oh!" I cried out, and held my fingers tightly across my eyes. "You couldn't. I am Hilda the Ugly Duckling. How could you look at me when Esther was there?"

"Perhaps I like ugly ducklings," he said.

"And I have a lame foot!" I cried.

"Dear little foot! We will cure it."

I removed my fingers from before my eyes and said:

"The Dublin doctor said it would cure itself. I am not nearly as lame as I used to be."

"Ah! that is a good thing," he answered, laughing; "but even if it were not curable, do you think that would come between us?"

I said nothing, not quite knowing what to say.

"Come down here, you white witch," he said next, "or am I to climb your ladder for you?"

"Oh, I will come down," I said, "but why?"

"Because I want the size of your finger. I will bring you the prettiest ring I can find in Bond Street."

"Your father will think it very sudden," I said lamely.

"He will sing his Nunc Dimittis," he answered. "But we will keep him with us as long as we can all the same."

CHAPTER XXVII.

THE WEB OF THE SPIDER.

I refused to wait to see the General, but rather made Lance take me home early.

"I won't forbid your telling him," I said, "since you think it will make him so happy, but I don't want it talked about for a few days, till I have grown used to it, and you come back."

So he consented, only saying how unlike we were, for he wanted everyone to know his new importance; and I did not know whether he jested or not.

I made him say good-bye to me on the doorstep of Brandon, and watched him climb into the dog-cart again, grumbling at my tyranny and want of hospitality. I could not trust myself to sit opposite him in the presence of Aline and the others without betraying my secret, over which I felt so exquisitely shy.

Dear Aline suspected nothing, but was quite satisfied with my explanation that Captain MacNeill had not come in because he wanted to be back in time to meet his father.

And now began for me the strangest, goldenest, most exquisite time of dreams. It might have been May in the world instead of January, and the sun shining instead of the rain incessantly falling. That was a terribly wet season—the wettest, said the old people, that the longest memory could recall.

There was distress in Brandon village, and all about the country. Rotting thatch was falling into the poor cabins and on to the reeking mud floors, so that in many cases the wretched fires of half-green twigs were extinguished and the bed whereon the sick or the old or the babies lay went travelling round the bare walls, seeking a sound spot where the rain would not find it. It was at such times of distress that we felt our poverty most keenly, though I think our good people knew as well as we did how great our will was to help them.

Yet even the trouble of others could not damp my joy in those days, or at least it shadowed my life on only one side of it, and the other lay incessantly turned to the sun.

But still I thought a good deal about Esther's trouble, which I seemed to understand better in the light of my own joy. Amid my thanksgivings for my own sweet happiness, I prayed hard for her that her trouble might be removed and her joy given back, if God saw well to do it.

We had not met since the great downpour began, and that was the very day Lance and his father set out for London. It was no weather for being out of doors, and we did not expect the little brown pony-chaise to come rattling up as before. The great sheets of leaden-gray water that fell incessantly would have been enough to sweep the little pony off his feet, and as the days passed we began to hear stories of floods covering the country, and bridges being swept away; and at last the boys ran in one morning with tidings that Brandon River was out, and was bringing down hay-ricks, turf-stacks, uprooted trees, and even little drowned mountain sheep on its tide.

But one morning at last the rain ceased, and we looked out on a watery world indeed, and a gray sky without a rift of blue. Still, the rain had ceased, and for that we were devoutly thankful.

I was meditating a rush out to get some fresh air, for it seemed likely enough that the rain would soon begin again, when my door was opened softly by Bride, the little new maid.

"If you please, Miss," she said mysteriously, "this was to be given into your very own hands. Little Johnny from the Inch Farm has come with it this minute."

I took the bit of paper from the little maid's hand in wonder, and she went out nodding and smiling, apparently well satisfied now her commission was safely executed.

The note was from Esther, and was written in pencil on a leaf evidently torn from a note-book.

Come to me here, Hilda, at the Inch Farm, at once, and say nothing to anybody. I want you more than I ever did in my life before.—Esther.

I put on my frieze cape and a cap, to be equipped against the rain, and went out without meeting anybody.

The Inch Farm belonged to Michael O'Flaherty, the husband of Esther's friend Margaret, Harry De Lacy's foster-mother. I guessed that the urgent message had something to do with Esther's lover, and as I got over the ground as quickly as possible, I was praying silently that there might not be further grief and trouble for my poor sister.

The Inch Farm lies towards the river, into which a portion of the farm-land projects almost like an island. It is, however, connected with the mainland, except when water is very low in the river, by a rough causeway of stones. But fortunately the farmhouse itself lies high and dry where the fields ascend towards Brandon Mountain.

I made my way to the farmhouse by a muddy lane, and through a farm-yard full of quacking ducks and hissing geese, all casting weather-wise eyes to the horizon. At the kitchen door, which was nearer to me than the little green hall door, a donkey stood under his low-backed car. I gave a glance at it as I passed, and noticed with surprise that the cart was filled with rugs and blankets, and apparently a very comfortable featherbed.

As I entered the kitchen Mrs. O'Flaherty's smiling daughter Katie, a rosy-cheeked, black-eyed slip of sixteen, came to meet me.

"They're waiting for you, Miss," she said mysteriously, "'idin' in the parlour."

She opened the door, and I passed into that close-smelling sanctum, sanctorum, of an Irish farmhouse, the best parlour. I did not give a glance at its glories. It was like fifty others I knew—trellised wall-paper, stiff white muslin curtains, flowery carpet and horse-hair furniture, and a curious country smell of damp and closed windows.

As I entered, Esther jumped up from the sofa and ran to meet me. She wore her out-of-door apparel, and was evidently making a vain effort to take some of Mrs. O'Flaherty's seed-cake and sherry. That comfortable woman herself sat (in her bonnet and with a great air of importance) about a yard from the table and her own portion of wine and cake.

"Oh, Hilda darling, I'm so glad you've come!" said Esther, hugging me impulsively. "Now, Maggie, you'll be satisfied," she said, turning to Mrs. O'Flaherty.

"You know I didn't want to cross you," said the latter, "and with one of the family to bear you out I've nothing to say."

"But what is it all about?" I asked.

Mrs. O'Flaherty adjusted her bonnet-strings, and was evidently about to answer me at great length when Esther interposed.

"The long and the short of it is," she said, with an excited little laugh, "is—that we have discovered that Sir Rupert has Harry imprisoned in that horrible place, and we're going to kidnap him. There!" she said, lifting her finger, "you can tell Miss Hilda everything about it as we go along, Maggie. We had better start now while the day is young and the rain holds off."

I heard everything as we trudged along in front of the donkey-cart, while the rear was brought up by Michael O'Flaherty and his big son Larry.

It seemed that Mrs. O'Flaherty's youngest, Tim, had heard so much of Castle Angry in the days of his mother's sojourn there, that the place had acquired a fatal fascination for him.

"Flyin' kites he'll be," said his mother, "agin' the walls o' that unlucky ould house, an' prospectin' for pinkeens an' dalgalukers (i.e. minnows and newts) in that stinkin' moat, till I'm expectin' him to come home to me in quarters. Shoutin' out at night he does be with the terror of the drames that does be on him, that Sir Rupert has him, or Yalla Gaskin, that's worse, or them brutes o' dogs,—though I wouldn't liken them that can't sin to wicked men. But 'tis the nature of boys that the very fear draws him. He owns up to it himself; 'Often,' he says, 'when I comes to the ould wood I do be diggin' me finger-nails in the threes to hould me, but I goes on all the same.'

"'Yerra, my boy,' says I, 'maybe 'tis your father's belt will be houldin' ye.' But he minds that no more thin Sir Rupert or the dogs, an' 'tis a long time the same belt's promised him, for O'Flaherty's soft-hearted, an' never could bring himself to batin' the childher.

"Well, glory be to Them above for that same parvarsity of the boy, for the day before yesterday him an' the Widdy Byrne's innocent son, that had no more sinse but to follow him, was paddlin' in the moat, enjoyin' themselves all the more because they expected every minit 'ud be their last, when Johnny was struck on the poll by a nate lump of a stone. 'Murder!' says he, 'they're stonin' me!' for he had no more thought but that it was Gaskin's tricks. Then no more stones came, an' when he had felt his poll to make sure there wasn't a crack in it, he seen the stone that had hit him starin' him in the face, an' a bit of paper wrapped around it.

"Johnny's no scholar, for he's always mitchin' from school, but he had the sinse to put the thing in his pocket an' bring it home to me, though I'd promised him a lambastin' he'd never forgit the first time he went near Castle Angry.

"You might have knocked me down with a straw when I saw the bit of a letter was addressed to meself. An' there it was from my beautiful lamb that I'd nursed, saying that he was too ill to get out o' that unlucky ould house by himself, an' had no one to help him but his Maggie. An' if I'd come to-day he'd be able to open the door to us, for Sir Rupert an' Gaskin were to be off on some divilmint. 'Bring a carriage for me,' says he, 'for I'm a-past walking.'"

The good woman paused for breath, and her husband took up the tale with a broad grin.

"I sez to her that it was a case of housebreakin', an' 'ud bring us widin the law. 'If you're afeard, Mike O'Flaherty,' she sez, 'say so, an' I goes alone.' 'Is it me to be afeard of anything, woman,' says I, 'an' I after marryin' you?"

He looked at his partner's comely face with a jovial pride, pleasant to witness.

"Maggie wanted me not to come," said Esther, "but I said I must. I should go wild not knowing what was happening."

"'Twas common prudence, Miss," said Mrs. O'Flaherty. "What 'ud people say if they heard that Miss Brandon was housebreakin' and kidnappin' at Castle Angry?"

"That was very sensible of you, Mrs. O'Flaherty," I said.

"You'll be guided by your own sister now, Miss Essie," said the good woman, nodding severely at Esther.

"I only satisfied Maggie's scruples by promising that you would come to give the sanction of the family, by your presence, to my unconventional act."

I looked at Esther with amazement. Her eyes were shining and her cheeks vividly flushed. Her hair was crisp about her brow, crisper for the damp air, which was deliciously sweet. She walked with a swinging step, so that I had some trouble in keeping up with her. Was this the languid Esther of the last three months, about whom I had often a dark unexpressed fear lest she should be going the way that Pierce went?

"I am glad you let her come, Mrs. O'Flaherty," I said soberly. "It is hard to sit at home doing nothing."

Esther looked at me gratefully, and then put a caressing arm about me.

"All very well, Miss," said Mrs. O'Flaherty gloomily. "But how will it be if Sir Rupert meets us with a blunderbuss?"

"Oh, he won't do that!" said I, laughing, though in my heart I wasn't at all sure. "But if he did, what would you do, Maggie?"

"Stan' her ground," answered her husband for her. "She's a great Trojan, Miss, let alone that the foster-son's more to her than her own flesh and blood."

Our way lay through by-roads and coppices, and we met no one to wonder at our strange little procession. Presently the donkey-cart had to part company from us, and to meet us again after a detour, because the road was under water, and we could only pass by taking to the fields. This left Esther and me together, for Mrs. O'Flaherty trudged the lanes with her husband and her son.

"It's an odd way of doing it, Essie," said I.

"It is, Hilda, but the only way."

"I'd rather have driven up in a carriage in broad daylight and taken him away," said I.

"Supposing Sir Rupert had shut the gates in our faces?"

"There would be ways of making him open them."

"And a pretty bit of scandal for the county, where there is already too much scandal about my Harry's grandfather."

"I wish the General had been here," I said uneasily.

"He could not have helped, Hilda. Don't you see that the thing is best done quietly?"

"Does your godmother know?"

"She knows I am with you this morning. That is all."

"She would approve?"

"Surely. Do you know her and doubt? I only did not tell her because she is helpless and could not be with us. I shall go to her straight and tell her as soon as my Harry is safe under his foster-mother's wing at the Inch Farm."

"He will be safe there?"

"Safer than anywhere in the world,—except with me."

"And afterwards, Esther?"

"I will marry him as soon as ever it can be arranged. My godmother will help me, and I think Mr. Benson would make things smooth for us."

"What if you find your Harry very ill?"

She trembled, and for a moment a shadow fell upon her radiant face. Then it lifted again.

"I look to find him ill. When he is so helpless that he has had to remain in the clutches of those miscreants for very weakness, he must be ill indeed. But there is the more reason for hastening our marriage. Happiness will make him well."

"I think you are right, Esther. But how will it be if Lady O'Brien and Aline take the prudent view, and think you should wait till he is stronger?"

"They will not," she said patiently; "but if they did I should still know I was right. If he were stronger I could wait for years."

"You will be poor, Essie."

"Very," she said with a happy smile. "Or at least Harry says that the three hundred a year he has from his mother will mean poverty."

"And Sir Rupert, they say, has untold gold laid up in Castle Angry," I said regretfully.

"Brandon money," said Esther, "the fruits of fraud and treachery. We would not touch a penny of it."

"You won't get the chance, my dear," said I. "But what do you think Sir Rupert meant by keeping Harry hidden away in Castle Angry?"

"God knows," she answered with a little shudder.

"He lied about him when he said he had gone away. Do you think he meant to keep him apart from you as long as he could?"

"Perhaps," she answered.

"Or, Esther, do you think he thought he would die? Why, he might as well have murdered him as kept him wasting away for want of care and treatment. Besides, before he grew so ill they must have detained him by force."

Her hands closed and unclosed themselves spasmodically.

"We will not talk about it," she said. "At least not now. Let God judge him."

We were now at the entrance to the starved and ragged wood which grew on the lower slopes of Angry Mountain.

"Let us wait here," she said, "for Maggie and the cart."

And now that we were approaching the place of evil omen I saw that she had grown pale.

CHAPTER XXVIII.

OUT OF THE WEB.

We were in the wood, and the boggy ground under our feet was giving way at every step. The wood seemed all bog except for the uneven pathway which gave, in dry weather, a solid resting place. On every side, under the tangled boughs, the ground was a brilliant treacherous green. No rabbits scutted from under our feet as in Brandon Woods, no squirrel ran lightly from bough to bough. We did not hear a bird chirp; all the naked boughs of the branches showed here and there a startling white surface, as though the tree had been stripped by lightning. A wind had got up, and the whole wood was creaking and groaning. The trees were many of them very old, and had flung themselves in strange unnatural postures; the knots and gnarls on the old oaks were like the grinning faces in gargoyles. It was easy to see why the country people were afraid of Angry Woods.

Even in the cold light of morning the woods were eerie. In dusk they must look as if peopled by a multitude of mocking manikins, with here and there among them a towering white ghost. From the green and slimy bog, on which if you trod you might find a grave, a thousand gaily-coloured fungi sprang, and from the joints of the trees immense fairy mushrooms had burst out and thriven gigantically.

"Quiet, quiet, Neddy!" I heard Mike O'Flaherty say to the donkey, whose little hoofs he was guiding upon the pathway.

"If there's another downpour," he called out to us, "the path'll be washed back into the bog. We're not a day too soon, maybe, about our business."

We answered him cheerfully over our shoulders; but the wind that had now sprung up was not conducive to conversation, let alone that the noise of the trees was like the shrieking and groaning of wretches under the knout.

"'Twould be as well," I said to Esther, "that the bog should swallow it. This is a horrible place, this wood!" And she nodded for answer.

Presently we were clear of it, and climbing up the safer way through the ravine, and there above us on its plateau was Castle Angry frowning. It looked livid in the watery lights. It was partly stucco and partly ugly yellow brick, and the tracks of the rains on its stuccoed face were like great veins, as you saw it from a distance, or like green and dropping tears.

The ravine had a rocky ridge for its pathway that seemed as if at some time it had been the bed of a river which had scooped the earth out and left only the bones of it. We trod there more dry-foot, despite the little pools on the surface of it, but our wet boots as we walked squished and squirted uncomfortably.

"You'll be having a new cold to-morrow, Esther," I said.

"Not I," she said; "if Harry is safe I shall have no more ills. We will change as soon as ever we get back."

And now we were on the bright-green plateau, where the grass grew coarse and rank, and again the water bubbled about our feet. The face of Castle Angry turned this way was eyeless, and I was glad of it, for I would have imagined evil faces at the windows, if windows there had been.

We all kept closely together as we neared the gate, at least we all did except Esther, for she ran forward lightly and pulled the great iron bell-pull. We heard the bell sound somewhere deep inside the Castle, and then there came a roar from the dogs in the court-yard.

Mike O'Flaherty moved nearer to Esther, as if to protect her, but she did not seem to have heard the dogs. She was listening against the heavy gateway, with the intent expression of one whose heart listens.

Then we heard a voice speak to the dogs, and the baying ceased. There was the rattle of a chain and the drawing of a bolt, and then Harry De Lacy stepped through the postern and was in the midst of us.

I was startled at the change in him. His face had lengthened and grown hollow. There was a sparse growth of beard about his young cheeks, and his eyes had sunk far back into deep spaces. He was huddled in a great-coat, and it was evident that in thus escaping from Castle Angry he was expending all his remaining strength, for he trembled violently as he stood.

Then, with a moan of compassion, Esther put both her arms around him.

"Come, Mike," she said, "he is exhausted."

And indeed the boy's eyes had closed, and he seemed to be swooning.

"Easy now, Miss Essie," said Mike O'Flaherty; "give him to me."

He took the slight figure in his arms and lifted it into the donkey-cart. His wife settled the pillows and tucked in the blankets, with just such an expression as her face must often have worn when Harry De Lacy was a helpless child.

"They've nearly murdered you, acushla," she said, half to herself; "an' to think your Maggie was near, an' not knowing till 'twas too late."

While they were making the invalid easy, I stepped through the open door into the court-yard. Opposite to me frowned the low, prison-like door that led to the Castle itself. I longed to enter it, to see the places about which there were so many legends, but there was no time.

The court-yard itself was like a deep well into which little light entered. Round about it were little staring windows, unprotected by ivy. Not a green thing grew in the place, though the broken pavement was slimy with damp.

At one side the dogs were chained to heavy staples in the wall—great, lumbering, piteous-looking brutes, with their eyes full of blood. I did not feel afraid of them, and they showed no hostility. One, an old yellow dog, with sharp fangs, was, I thought, the one Sir Rupert had called "Venom" that day he had ridden under my tree long ago, but I could not be sure.

The dogs looked beyond me to the postern, through which Harry De Lacy had passed, and their eyes were full of despair. I could well believe that they knew they were losing their one friend.

"Poor brutes!" I said to them. "I wish we could take you too."

But they looked away from my voice still towards the postern-gate.

"Come, Hilda," said Esther, close to me, "we are ready now, and it is time we were gone."

I looked round the place once more, and then stepped back across the threshold and pulled-to the door. As I did so the dogs set up a dismal howling, and as long as we were within earshot of the place the sound followed us.

Larry now went in front, leading the donkey. On either side of the cart Esther and Mrs. O'Flaherty walked, each watching absorbedly the face so dear to both of them, the face of the dead it might be, as it lay helplessly on the pillows, but moving to and fro with the motion of the cart.

Mike O'Flaherty and I walked behind, and the peasant's florid face wore an unusually grave look.

"'Twill be too bad, Miss Hilda," he said, as the cart disappeared from us round the bend of a path, "if we've only got him out to lose him after all."

"It will, Mike," said I; "but, please God, that won't be."

"Amen, Miss Hilda; but he looks mortal bad."

"He is young, Mike, and, God willing, he will recover. Your wife's nursing will do wonders for him."

"Oh, the woman'll do her best! 'Tis wonderful what nature is in women for the childher they've rared. I doubt now if she's as much took up wid her own Johnny."

"Oh, I am sure she is!" said I, fearing a tinge of jealousy in the speech of the good-natured giant; "only, you see, Johnny hasn't the great need of her that her foster-son has just now."

"True for you, Miss Hilda. The woman's love goes where the need is greatest, an' thank God for that same."

"Your Johnny did us a great service, Mike," I said. "I know my sister will never forget it."

"He did so, the young thief o' the world,—an', would you believe it, when it was all done herself threatened the boy with the belt, and left him bawlin' melia murther."

"I suppose Mrs. O'Flaherty thought discipline should be maintained at all costs."

"Indeed she's the wonderful woman entirely," said her spouse admiringly.

"What will you do, Mike," said I, "if Sir Rupert finds out your share in kidnapping his grandson, and makes trouble?"

"Show the ould villain the barrel o' me blunderbuss," said Mike. "Oh, indeed, Miss Hilda, I'm a stout man on me own hearthstone! I wouldn't be half the man to face him up there, though he's ould, an' I could twist Gaskin's neck as easy as a chicken's. But the place sends the cowld to my heart."

"It does to mine too, Mike," said I.

"Ah, see there now! There was a power o' wickedness done in it in ould times. 'Tis the smell of it about the place makes your blood run cowld."

"I suppose there was," I said.

"You may say it. There's a hole under it, I hear, where they used to sling prisoners in the ould times. It went right through into the heart o' the world, maybe as far as the fires, for all I know. There was no end to it anyhow, an' they say you could hear the poor souls slippin' an' screechin' long after they fell. I never seen it meself," added Mike impartially.

We were now come to the wood, where the trees were still creaking and groaning, while now and again a broken branch flapped in our faces.

"'Tis well they may lament," said Mike. "A-many a fine fellow hung on them in ould days wid the feet of him kickin' in air. There's a Curse on the place, that's what there is, Miss Hilda, an' I'd never have come next or nigh it but that herself shamed me to it."

"I hope Mr. De Lacy will escape the Curse, if there is one," said I.

"Och sure, if we can get him well an' marry him to Miss Essie the ould Curse 'll rowl off him like water off a duck's back. Sure he's not like a De Lacy at all. His father before him took the turn against the ould bad ways, an' himself here is the better man. If we can only get him well," he added.

There was a patter of rain in our faces, and the wood trembled before a fresh onslaught of wind.

"Glory be! I hope it's not going to rain again," said Mike. "If it does, there's no knowin' what'll be happenin'. I've never seen the country under such rain before. The year o' the big rain they might be callin' it."

"It's hard on you, Mike," I said sympathetically.

"It is. The seed's nigh washed out of the earth, an' I never knew as hard a season for the lambs. But 'tis worse wid some others. I've a stout roof over me, thank God, an' fine foundations. If the rain comes on again there'll be many a little rickety cabin washed out to sea. The fear's on them already, the crathurs."

"The fear, Mike?"

"Aye, the fear. They're as frightened as sheep of somethin' that's goin' to happen, they don't know what. There's keenin' an' manifestations by night, they say, an' some say the dead rises out o' their graves night after night in the Bawn churchyard an' walks the world."

"Oh dear!" I said, shivering with infectious superstition, "I'd no idea there were such stories about."

"Well, there might be. They say some of the coffins have been washed out of the graves. The Bawn lies on a shelf o' land, as you know, Miss Hilda; an' people comin' on them things by night in the middle o' the road is apt to be onraisonable afraid."

"I should think so, indeed," said I.

"Father Cleary's in an' out among the people constant. All the sick an' aged people is wanting the last sacrament, like as if the world was comin' to an end. He spoke agin the fear that's on the people last Sunday from the altar, an' said it was a delusion of the Powers o' Darkness. But 'tis no use his talkin'. They say the priest has great power over heaven and hell, but there's a world that's nayther, nor yet earth, an' he can't put his comether on that."

Mike had entertained me but gloomily. I knew the superstitions among the people, superstitions that rose as naturally out of the damp earth as the mists and the vapours. Our valleys are hemmed in by immense and lonely mountains, round which the clouds hang like a winding-sheet. Our people are fishers or small farmers, engaged for ever in the struggle to win a bare subsistence against all the forces of nature. A wet summer means death and famine by land. A wild winter the same doom by sea. No wonder that superstition flourishes, that the belief in fairy and ghost and wraith is wrought up so inextricably with the belief in saints and angels, that one could hardly pull up one without the other, the weeds without the golden corn.

It was weather to foster the Celtic melancholy, and if it were going to rain again then it might well be that calamity would follow.

But now we were at the Inch Farm, and presently in the roomy kitchen with its leaping wood fire. Mike and his son lifted the feather-bed bodily out of the donkey-cart and carried it to a bedroom where a fire had been lit. Esther watched all this hungrily as if she would have fain done everything herself.

Mrs. O'Flaherty meanwhile issued her orders like a general. Johnny was despatched for Dr. Rivers, and Esther and I were installed in big chairs before the fire. Our wet shoes and stockings were pulled off quickly and replaced by fleecy stockings of Mrs. O'Flaherty's own knitting.

While she was doing this her daughter Katie was serving up a meal of toasted bacon and eggs on a table at our elbow.

"Now eat, jewels," said our kind hostess, "while I look after my baby. Larry'll rowl yez back to Brandon on the side car as soon as ever Dr. Rivers has gone, an' the sooner yez are back the better, for I'm sore afraid of the weary ould rain beginnin' again."

Then she bustled off to see to her baby, as she still called Harry De Lacy.

I was glad that Esther seemed content to leave him in her charge. Dr. Rivers had come before we were ready to start, having fortunately been at home when Johnny arrived. He was a much more efficient doctor than poor old Dr. Devine, and it was fortunate that when he left the army he had decided to settle down in our neighbourhood.

He came into the parlour to us after he had seen his patient.

"Well, Dr. Rivers, what do you think of him?" Esther said, jumping up as soon as the door opened.

"Oh, Miss Brandon, how do you do?" he said. "I see you have not lost interest in Mr. De Lacy."

He looked at her with his keen, man-of-the-world eyes.

"We are to be married, Dr. Rivers," said Esther, with a pathetic little air of dignity.

The doctor's face changed, and became full of sympathy.

"Oh, indeed!" he said; "no wonder you are anxious. There is nothing really the matter except that his vitality has been greatly reduced. What have they been doing to him since I put him out of my hands at Brandon, well on the way to recovery?"

Esther told him briefly of the young man's detention at Castle Angry, and of our rescue of him. He nodded at intervals during the telling.

"Ah! Miss Brandon," he said when she had finished, "one comes on strange happenings in one's profession, but this is like a tale out of a book, and no sober nineteenth-century business at all. Can you explain Sir Rupert's rancour against his grandson?"

"There is enmity of long standing between Sir Rupert and our family. He probably thought that if he could keep his grandson long enough from his friends the matter of our engagement would fall through."

"He would have slipped through his fingers very soon," said the physician grimly. "The man must be mad. If the lad had died of neglect and semi-starvation it would have been manslaughter at least. As it is," he said hastily, noticing that my sister had turned pale, "I believe you have saved him, Miss Brandon, though there is a lot of building-up required. Still, he is young, and happiness is a wonderful cure. You are leaving him in Mrs. O'Flaherty's care?"

"Till he is a little stronger. She is his foster-mother, and will watch over him with the utmost tenderness."

"And afterwards?"

"We will be married as soon as possible, and I shall take him abroad."

I wondered for the hundredth time at the power and resolution that had come into Esther with her love. Here she was arranging the future for herself and her lover as I should never have dared to do.

"Ah! that will be good," said Dr. Rivers. "Get him away from places that are painful by association, as soon as possible. Above all, keep him from any conflict with his grandfather."

"I don't think he will come into our lives again," said Esther, her face darkening. "If he should, we must protect ourselves at any cost. But at present you understand, Dr. Rivers, we are anxious to avoid publicity and scandal."

"The matter is safe with me, Miss Brandon," said the physician, bowing. "We have to hear so many strange things in the course of our profession that it would never do if we were not men of discretion."

"Thank you, Dr. Rivers," said my sister heartily, as he took leave of us.

Larry drove us home on a jaunting-car that reminded me of our equipage long ago at Annagassan Races. As we drove along, the mountains were gray with rain, and the first fine sweep of it came in our faces.

"How shall I get back to Annagower if it comes on to rain heavily?" said Esther, as we leant close together under an umbrella.

"Don't go back to-night, Essie," said I. "Sleep with me as in the old times. We can send word to Lady O'Brien that the weather has kept you."

"I should like to stay," she said.

"I have such wonderful things to tell you, Essie," I whispered, "about myself."

She looked at me with wonder.

"More literary successes, Hilda?" she asked.

"No, Essie, not literary successes."

"And what, then, Hilda?"

She turned straight round, letting the umbrella drip upon our heads, unnoticed, and looked into my eyes.

"Not that, Hilda?" she said, incredulously.

"And why not that?" I cried. "I suppose you think no one in the world has a lover but yourself."

"You darling!" she said; "and to think I can't hug you because of this umbrella!"

"You might as well, Essie, for the rain has been pouring down my spine in a perfect cascade for the last five minutes."

"Oh, I am sorry, you poor child! But here we are at Brandon. Find me a messenger for my godmother, Hilda, and I shall stay, and we shall have a dearer talk than ever we had in the old days. Oh, to think," she cried, as she furled, much to my relief, that most inefficient umbrella, "that all our dreams should have come true! Oh, how good God is, Hilda, how good God is!"

I looked at her glowing face in wonder. Clearly there was no misgiving for the future in it. Her joy and faith were infectious, and I too felt my heart singing a song, despite the rain and the gloom, and despite my memory of the worn and haggard young face of Esther's lover.