THE BIG WIND
by
BEATRICE COOGAN


*..  . catches all the horror, injustice and depravity of it and the
blend of romance, action, compassion and cruelty woven around the lives
of hundreds of people makes The Big Wind a towering novel and easily
one of the best to emerge from Ireland in recent years."

PATRICK CAMPBELL IN THE IRISH ECHO.

"A work of major importance."  THE SUNDAY PRESS.

ISBN: 1 871311 27 6

THE BIG WIND

The magnificent sweep of this monumental novel--15 years in the
writing--will hold the reader inescapably.  Unfolded against a
breathtaking, intricate panorama of nineteenth-century events and
personalities, it is a truly remarkable novel and a worthy tribute to
the tumultuous age it brings so vividly to life.

Beatrice Coogan

Anna Livia Press Dublin

JD

First published in 1969 This edition first published in 1992

by Anna Li via Press Ltd.

5 Marine Road

Dun Laoghaire

County Dublin

Ireland

Copyright Beatrice Coogan

ISBN: 1871311 27 6

All rights reserved.  No part of this publication may be reproduced, or
transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior writ consent
of the publishers.

Cover by Bluett

Cover illustration by Madeleine O'Neill Printed by The Guernsey Press

PART ONE

6th January, 1839

CHAPTER

Another crash shook the long row of windows in the drawing room.  This
rime there was a rending and splitting that was unmistakable.  The
young man in the great winged chair by the fire laid down his book.  It
was useless trying to concentrate with that wind howling outside.

Til hold a crown that is one of the oaks near the house."  He drew the
heavy folds of Italian velvet from the window nearest the fireplace and
unlatched the iron bars that held the shutters across the glass.

He peered out.  In the three-quarters of an hour since the shutters had
been barred the configuration of the near landscape had changed.
Something blotted out the lawn.  He had the impression that the lawn
was no longer there.  He rubbed the glass impatiently with his fingers
and strained to pick out the two long rows of black shapes where the
avenue ran between the trees.  Here and there he discerned the tall
outline of a tree, but the familiar form of the colonnade was not
there.  There were

unfamiliar spaces and he knew that every space was a fallen tree.

His eyes travelled back to the centre front.  Then he realised that the
weird hulk that distorted the scene was the base of the giant oak tree
standing up-ended, its torn-out roots in midair, its leafy branches
down in a black cavity that had been a smooth velvet pleasance eight
minutes ago.

As he looked, a great squalling gust of wind came screaming across the
park and hurled itself against the glass.  He was flung backwards
against 3 table.  The heavy silver candelabrum that stood there was
overturned.  At the same time there was a crashing sound of breaking
glass and into the room came showers of leaves, sticks, stones and big
lumps of clay.  The green velvet hangings ballooned inward and tossed
priceless bric-a-brac from tables and mantelpiece.  Lighted candles
were knocked from their sconces.  The great five-foot chandelier of
Waterford cut

glass swung wildly from the ceiling.  Hundreds of its dangling pieces
swirled together, making a musical swan-song before they crashed to
destruction against walls and mirrors and the uncarpeted spaces of the
floor.

When the frightened servants burst open the door the draught created a
whirlwind that sent fresh destruction all through the elegant room. The
green curtains lashed out in fury against the walls and their tasselled
ends reaching to the mantelpiece sent shepherdesses and goddesses
flying to the mosaic hearth tiles in smithereens.  "Tis the end of the
world, Sir Roderick," cried the old butler.  His master, cursing
himself for his folly in opening the shutters, was now trying to close
them.

"Come and help me and stop talking nonsense," he cried.  Another gust
of wind sent the shutters flying into their faces and went roaring and
whistling round the house and down the chimneys.  "You there!"  Sir
Roderick roared at the footman who was aimlessly picking up broken
china and glass.  "Drag in these big chairs from the hall and put them
against these shutters.  And you, young Thomas," he called to the knife
boy who was crouching in terror beside a curio cabinet, 'go and help
him."  When <jhey had succeeded in securing the bars across the
shutters they had to hold their arms against the wood.  Despite the
strength of the iron bars, the wind hurling itself through the
glassless window was straining the shutters inwards until they creaked
aloud.  The footman and the boy came slowly across the room gasping
with the effort of dragging one of -the heavy Flemish choir stalls that
were used as hall chairs.  They placed it against the barred shutters
and went back to the hall for the rest.  Backwards and forwards they
went, helped by the master and the butler, until there was a chair at
every window and two at the one that was broken.

As the men were about to leave the room the door opened and the
six-foot figure of Mrs.  Stacey, the cook, came in followed by a group
of servant girls.  They all held rosary beads.  The butler, leading the
outgoing procession stood transfixed.  Their audacity recalled him to
his dignity as Commander-in-Chief of the staff.  The kitchen had
actually come unbidden to the drawing-room!  It was as unheard-of and
as horrifying as the storm that raged outside.

He looked up at the towering cook.  "Is it mad you are?"  he

hissed.  But Mrs.  Stacey for once ignored him.  With hands still
clasped as though in prayer and the rosary beads entwined about her
fingers she went beseechingly towards her master, addressing her
prayers to him instead of to her Maker.

"Sir Roderick, acquanie, I ask your pardon for makin' so bold.  But
don't ask us to stay down there.  The water is a foot deep on the
kitchen floor '

Water?  Where is it coming from?"

"I don't know where it came from, Sir Roderick.  It just appeared in
the kitchen without sound or warning '

An elderly housemaid pressed forward.  "There was a roar like thunder
and then, God between us and all harm, the door opened by itself and
the water flowed in."

Sir Roderick thrust through the press of jabbering servants.  "Why was
I not told of this before?"  The butler tried to explain to him that it
was to tell him about the flooding in the kitchen that he came up in
the first instance, but Mrs.  Stacey's voice drowned his.  When she
realised thar she was exoected to follow her master downstairs she
became hysterical and screamed at the top of her voice about
tombstones.

"The yard is full of tombstones, your Honour," saidfta maid.  "They are
floatin' about on the water."

Mrs.  Stacey reached out a restraining h?nH.  "Sir Roderick, sure it
wasn't the water I was afraid of, an' I'm not afeared of anything on
two feet, or four neither, but th^ orophecies of Saint Columcille have
come to pass this night.  The graves have opened and the holy
tombstones have travelled across near a hundred acres of land.  The
like was never known.  The corpses that own them tombstones will be
here next."

Sir Roderick had turned from her impatiently and started down the
passage towards the back stairs.  From over his head a voice called to
him quietly.  Mrs.  Mansfield, the housekeeper, was leaning over the
banisters of the main staircase.

"Sir Roderick, will you send for Dr.  Mitchell for her Ladyship?"

"Dr.  Mitchell?"  In the sudden turmoil of the storm he had forgotten
that Margaret had not been feeling too well after dinner.  Her back had
ached from bending over the big embroidery frame and she had gone up to
rest, for a while on the chaise ongue.  "Is there anything amiss .wifh
her Ladyship?"  he cried as e rushed past the housekeeper two steps at
a time.

"It is her, her the prim spinster, for all her housekeeper's title of
Mrs."  stood groping to express herself delicately.

"Speak up, woman!"  he yelled.  She shrank back against the banisters.
"It is her condition, Sir Roderick.  The storm has started her
confinement."

In the bedroom, a tall, beautiful girl was clutching the corner of the
mantelpiece.  She came towards him, her eyes dilated with fear.  "Oh,
Roderick, what is happening outside?  Is the world mad, or is it coming
to an end?"

He put his arms around her and soothed her.  "It is only a storm."
There was a deafening roar outside and the room seemed to shake.  The
girl gave a low moan of pain.  He held her from him and looked into her
face.  She was deathly pale.  "Margaret, is this true what Mrs.
Mansfield says?  Surely it could not be for another month?"  The storm
crashed again around the house and she fell against him.

"Roderick, send for Dr.  Mitchell and have him bring a nurse."  "But
the trained nurse from Dublin will be here on Monday."

"Monday will be too late.  Hurry, Roderick, hurry He kissed her. "Don't
worry, my darling.  Dr.  Mitchell and a nurse will be with you in no
time."  And while he reassured her he thought of the fallen trees and
the floods and doubted in his heart that the elderly doctor would get
through this storm of hell.  I

Downstairs in the servants' regions he found men, women and children
thronging the passages and back stairs and every pantry room that had a
step above ground level.  John Carmody, the gardener, came forward
holding a wailing child in his arms.  He looked like a man who had come
face to face with the supernatural.  His teeth chattered as he
endeavoured to explain the presence of himself and his entire family in
his master's house.

"The roof was lifted off, your Honour, like the lid of a box.  It blew
up in the sky like a loose hand-cock of hay and at the same time the
back wall of the house crashed down an' me self an the wife an two of
the children were th run out of the bed to the ground.  This gossoon
has his little leg crushed."

Others were crowding round with their incredible accounts of havoc.
Some had their roofs blown off.  Others had awakened from exhausted
sleep to find that their beds had turned into

rafts that bore them hither and thither on a strange sea of water that
had appeared like a ghostly visitation from another world.

All of them sought to draw close to the young man who was the mainstay
of their lives, to draw comfort from his presence as well as shelter
from his house.  But their master could spare them no comfort.

"Is John Dermody here?"  he called above the clamour.  But John
Dermody, the coachman, was the only employee who was not present.  He
slept over the coach-house beside the stables in a sheltered corner of
the yard.  The waters had not reached him.  Roderick sent a footman to
fetch him.

No other mission but that of bringing aid to the lady of the house who
was facing her trouble more than a month before her time would have
induced the young footman out of doors to face the tombstones, and
maybe their owners!  As he waded knee deep in water across the yard,
with head down against the murderous blast, a white object with the
outline of a human body floated towards him and he was knocked face
downward in the water.  Shivering with fear and cold he struggled to
his knees and recognised the object that had up-ended him.  It was a
white marble tombstone surmounted by a man's head.

Before he could stand upright another white object, soft and clammy,
floated towards him and knocked him sideways.  He felt the hideous
sensation of its dank hair on his cheeks and muffling his mouth.  Holy
Mother of God, Mrs.  Stacey was right.  The prophecies had come true!
The corpses had come for their tombstones.

Screaming like a madman, he floundered to the coach-house and hammered
in a frenzy at its door.  Big John Dermody was as calm as when he sat
aloft on the driver's seat of the fine carnage in gorgeous livery and
cockaded hat, holding the reins with the dignified when of a Roman
charioteer.

Since the storm began he had moved continuously from box to box,
soothing the frightened horses.  Now he soothed the half crazed footman
who clung to him jabbering about a tombstone that had knocked him flat
on his face.  "And the corp' that

owned it came along next and hit me across the face."  < if Us no
corp', avic, leastways not a human one.  It's only a Poor drowned
sheep.  Look at it and let the fear go out of you."  We forced the lad
to look over his shoulder where even in the Darkness he could discern
the outlines of more sheep tossed

IL

hither and thither in the swirling waters.

"Think of what their loss means to the master I All these fine ewes
that would be lambin' in two months more."

Mention of his master recalled the footman to his errand.  "Oh, Air.
Dermody, the tombstones and the corpses put it out of my head what I
came for.  The Sir bid me tell you yoke the best carriage and go at
once for Dr.  Mitchell.  Ye're to drive like mad.  He's in a terrible
state

Big John held the footman at arms'-length.  Tull yourself together and
give your message.  Is the Sir hurt?  And if so why should the carriage
go for Dr.  Mitchell.  Isn't it on horseback he'd come, or drive his
own Back-to-back?"

"Tis for the convaynence of bringing the midwife and the doctor
getting' a bit ould in himself for the night that's in it."

"Midwife?  What are ye ravin' about?  Amn't I meetin" the Dublin coach
for her on Monday?"

"Monday will be too late for her Ladyship.  The poor Lady cray thur has
come to her confinement with the dint of the storm."  The coachman
waited for no more.  He bade him fetch Mike O'Driscoll, the head groom.
The footman started to expostulate, but for once the coachman abandoned
his calm and gave a roar that sent the footman floundering on his
way.

A moment later Mike O'Driscoll was holding the frightened leaders as
they reared and plunged, his own fear forgotten in his concern for the
horses he loved.  Big John, in the act of leading out two more horses,
spied two people coming round the side of the house towards the back
door.  At the same moment the lanterns suspended from the overhanging
roof of the stables swung wildly in a great roaring blast of wind and
crashed to the floor, leaving them all in complete darkness.  The
horses screamed and plunged wildly.  Other horses trembling in their
stalls heard the screams and their hooves could be heard above the
storm as they lashed them in terror against walls and doors.

Big John called towards the two figures to come and help with the
horses.  They were the gate lodge-keeper and his wife.  The man held a
whimpering puppy under one arm and a picture under the other.  The
woman held a basket containing a hen and chicks in one hand and in the
other she clutched a big china teapot.  They had come to join the
homeless at the Big House.  Their snug lodge was levelled to the ground
and their tale of havoc chilled Big John's stout heart the hope of
bringing

help to his young mistress ttL

side of the entrance gates L hUge tree that stOoH '

other, across the cnt "f e up x>tcd and lay on^ ?n eithe'

^wSSSasaSHS

He considered the u No

^^-SS^J^Sfi^Ac it **bthe wheels was in Aat n g/ through h to wash VA'
artj'fida' ^e back drive ^5^ ^ * ** * f^ seemed to have burst TV , C
Urse of the fan J ?  n w a kke.

;AsA'r--sia?  5Si fS5r5 '^:* o J s,^E ia^&,i,:s

- ."  stSrFfetSr^s:

^rassf" fW=i2y;-~* iya&tsSrfcKSSSfSS

he ellW U'd ^ is **" ^'"^ "^^^

^SwsRsaagttst..

?js*-"-,.  " ..^r""1"*" ^ssrr--=:

-*^ is5S3S5.S

door As h

'^^"^ZZXSZ* "Have G<*i carry you spf .  , 3nd ma fitted back

<l ?^ W ^/ ^ ^ Roderi^ He rur rf anH had dredged the , nCd to h I

wAs no need rn T CXa]ted by a sr grin^ess ofdfur ha'Ve to die now anif^
new c^rage t,

tRaSSSS^ag

14 n Pur^tory, be cause Purgatory would be done away with after the
Last JudgC ent Of course (here would still be Hell.  But sure he hadn't
a n on his soul.  Or hadn't he?  His mind quailed at the recollection
of the audacious act he had committed about a fortnight ago, only a day
after his foster-mother had brought him here before she left for
America.  He had come upon the Sir's 'necessary built out of sight down
the garden.  He had often heard about the hole in a board that
gentlemen used and the temptation had proved too much.  He had actually
tiptoed inside and--behaved like a gentleman!

The Sir was returning from the back door.  The lad braced himself.  Any
moment now he would stand in the Presence of the Lord of Creation!  For
the first time he raised his voice unbidden to the Lord of the
castle.

"Sir--yer Honour!"  The haughty face looking down at him brought back
servitude to his fear-purged soul.  He backed and gulped.  Pity stirred
his master.  "What is it, lad?"

Thomas gulped again.  Will the judgment be here, yer Honour?  Sure we'd
never get to the Valley of Jostlers tonight?"  'ostlers?  What is the
boy talking about?"  Mrs.  Stacey rose from her knees.  "He means the
Valley of Jehosaphus where we'll all be judged this night, your Honour,
asthore."  His Honour gave a roar that sent Mrs.  Stacey down on her
knees again, and reduced the voices and the wailings to silence; all
but the injured child.  "If I hear another word of that kind of talk
from you, I'll have you locked outside with the tombstones.  Their
owners will direct you to the Valley of Jehosaphus."  Mrs.  Stacey made
the sign of the cross in speechless dread.

"Patrick claimed from the Almighty three favours The voice came to them
on a rush of icy wind.  Struggling through the open door was the wild
figure of an old man, dragging a narp.  His white hair was wet on his
shoulders, his bardic cloak wsned out behind.  "The hard!"  gasped
young Thomas, rushing cross to close the door and help with the harp.
"Aye," said the a man grimly, 'the hard of the O'Carrolls left to drown
alone, gotten."  They had all forgotten the family hard outside in his
in rh SPCCial quarters at the extreme end of the east wing, '--that the
seventh year before the Day of Judgment," continued the Ire laT
regardless of Mrs- Stacey's fresh outcry, 'the land of na would be
engulfed in a mighty tidal wave so that no

man of Ireland might know the terrors of the Last Day '

The assurance brought no comfort to the assembly.  It was showing signs
of hysteria.  Sir Roderick broke in impatiently on the prophetic
utterances, Tor Heaven's sake, Bard, stop talking nonsense and He was
at ai loss what to suggest the old man should do.  He mustn't leave
hiim here; the hard was too sensitive about his position in the
household.  "Come upstairs," he finished.  The hard shook his wet
locks.  "It was ever the duty of the hard to inspire and give aourage.
I will stay with the helpless."  Sir Roderick felt sometlhing like a
smile.  The dignified minstrel was in dread of going; from the company
of the serving staff to sit alone in bardic state;.  "Have no fear,
woman!  * he said to the cook.  "This is not the final floodwater--the
storm that comes in its fury between tine day of the Sun's death--the
twenty-second day of Decemlber--and Twelfth Night; is but the Wild
Huntsman, rushing fry on his eight-footed steed."

His master turned to leave, tthen stopped and raised his voice above
the intoning of the hard's mysticisms.  Xook at that fire!"  he
roared.

Of the eight fires that burne^d in separate heaps of turf along the
great hearth, a pot or kettle: swinging from a crane over each pile,
only two were smoking.  Not a red spark in the great furnace of fires
that had burned night and day, unquenched through the generations. Rain
and sleelt and stones were pouring down the chimney.

He bade them light the fires and hold themselves in readiness for their
mistress's requirementts.  To the butler he gave instructions for food
and drink for the homeless.  As he passed the man who held the
suffering child, hie placed a hand upon his shoulder.  "The doctor will
be here soomi," he said gently.  "He will see to the little one."  The
man looked!  at him with grateful eyes.  "God bless your Honour."

116 |

CHAPTER 2

Mrs.  Mansfield removed Margaret's gown of blue brocade.  Even in this
moment of stress she let her hand linger lovingly over the raised
embroidery of coral and gold bullion fringing.  One by one she removed
the silken petticoats flounced with Brussels lace that the young bride
had brought from her Belgian home.  From in front of the fire, where it
was airing, she took a nightgown of finest silk and the wrapper of
white cashmere, all ruffles and ribbons.

As the girl reached out her arms to place them in the sleeves, the
housekeeper thought how helpless she looked, standing there ill and
lonely, far from her native land.  For a moment she was tempted to take
her in her arms and give her comfort.  But tradition prevailed.

Service in Kilsheelin Castle was not casual or slapdash.  The young
Sir, for all his books and paintings and music-playing, was formal and
exacted a correct disposition from his servants.  And her Ladyship was
very foreign even though her father, an officer in the French army, had
been Irish, and her mother was half Irish.  She had a funny accent and
she did not seem to understand Ireland or the Irish.

As lovingly as a caress Mrs.  Mansfield tied the wrapper loosely round
the girl and made a pretty bow under her chin with the ribbons of the
dainty nightcap.  Then she drew the mounting steps to the bedside. "Let
you go up these now and lie down," she coaxed, 'and your trouble will
be over before it has tome to start."

Just as Margaret put her foot on the first step to make the ascent of
the bed, a thunderous crash shook the castle.  The r*>m vibrated.
Margaret pitched forward, clutching one of the sh P pounds ts' ** moyed
and something came away in her hand.  A nriek escaped her.  She thought
the great bed was crushing don upon her.

n<Ue sconces were thrown on the floor.  Down the chimney

came a deafening noise like a bombardment from Heaven.  Something fell
on the stone hearth with a resounding crash.  A black cloud of smoke
blew across the room.  Candles were blown out and from somewhere near
she heard a low moan.  "Mrs.  Mansfield," she called.  There was no
answer.

She struggled to rise and in the light of one broken candle hanging
loosely in the brass arm of a big walnut sconce lying on the carpet,
its candles quenched, she saw the prostrate body of Mrs.  Mansfield.
The housekeeper's head was in the shadow of the open door of the
wardrobe where she had turned to put away the blue gown.  The girl
could not see the blood.

She rose to her feet, terrified to hold on to anything lest it give way
and bring her down again.  The whole castle was an inferno of roaring
winds.  Every blast was followed by crashes from roof to cellar as if
the wind were carrying out a systematic dismantling of the castle and
all its proud possessions.

She stood there alone in the smoke-darkened room and suddenly her calm
broke.  "Rodereeck," she screamed, "Rod-er-ee eek."  She dragged out
the last syllable in a thin, long-drawn pleading.  But the sound was
not thin enough to pierce the massive door that was voicing its own
groans against the merciless battering.

At last he came.  For a moment he stood aghast.  Like the lawn outside,
the contours of the room had changed since he last saw it.  It had lost
its familiar outline.  The furniture that, for him, had represented
form and symmetry since his earliest recollections, had somehow
vanished.

Heavy objects loomed in disorder from the floor.  The only object that
was upright was the tall fourposter bed, its white canopies and
curtains gleaming ghostly in the darkness.

He moved towards it to his wife.  Then he saw her standing motionless
at the far side.  She had ceased to cry out.  She could feel her throat
torn and a sensation like blood in her mouth.  Some fundamental
instinct caused her to rrarshal her energy and emotion for the ordeal
that was yet to come.

She raised her arms to him.  As he drew her to him the thing she held
fell from her hand.  It was the fluted top of the bedpost with its gay
carvings of acanthus leaves and bunches of grapes.

"Rodereeck, do not ever leave me again," she whispered.

"My poor little love.  I won't leave you, and soon the doctor will be.
here."  Dear God, he seemed to be repeating that as sur

all night.  He pressed his cheek to hers and then he became 8 are that
Mrs.  Mansfield was not in the room,

"Where is Mrs.  Mansfield?  I cautioned her not to leave you."

Margaret turned her head towards the housekeeper's prostrate form.
"She's there," she whispered.

He looked over her shoulder.  The broken candle gave a spurt of flame
and this time Margaret saw the blood.  It had almost covered Mrs.
Mansfield's gentle face.  Margaret fell against Roderick in a dead
faint.

He placed her on the bed and ran to the head of the stairs.  Across the
banisters he saw the servants in the hall below.  A group of them
surged up the stairs.  He was alrhost relieved to see Mrs.  Stacey in
the vanguard.  Was she not his own foster mother?  She had borne
children.  She would sustain Margaret.  As they approached within two
steps of him, a long thin whistle of wind came in an icy blast down the
two open storeys of the hallway.  A huge painting by Reubens--a Madonna
and Quid-swung from the wall and crashed at their feet.

The sound of Mrs.  Stacey's lamentations challenged the rjll wind.
"It's a sign!"  she yelled.  "When a picture falls there'll be a death
in the house.  Oh!  The poor young mistress!"

Roderick suppressed his urge to strangle her.  There was no hope of
help for Margaret from this quarter!  Sternly he ordered the butler to
have the cook battened downstairs and on no account to let her within
sound of her Ladyship for the rest of the night.

In a few moments it seemed as if the omen was fulfilled.  The servants
shivered as Mrs.  Mansfield's lifeless body was borne past.

Hannah, the most responsible of the womenfolk, took over the vigil in
her mistress's room.

Sir Roderick strained his ears towards the windows that he did not dare
to open.  If only he could stand at a window and watch out for the
doctor!  The very motions of watching would e an outlet for this
tension.

He kept on chafing Margaret's wrists while Hannah dabbed c inegar on
her forehead and held smelling-salts to her nose.  Loerc must be
something I can do," he told himself, but his _ used krain offered no
suggestion.  He felt trapped.  The roar- U ,

8 of the wind did not unnerve him, nor the crashes.  But when |j| ]

c*me in long thin screeches down the length of the denuded

park and crashed against the windows with a wild laughing sound like
the mocking of demons, he wanted to run and bury his ears.  f

Hannah had lit fresh candles and now he recognised the ?  bulky mass
that lay on the hearthstone and blocked up the entire fireplace.  It
was a section of the tessellated tower that had blown down the chimney,
crushing the fireplace to rubble.  For the first time he realised that
the castle was in danger!  It had stood up through the centuries
against tai ds and wars and sieges.  It had escaped the ravages of
Cromwell.  Now the elements had hurled themselves against its powerful
battlements.

Roderick pulled desperately at the heavy masonry to free the chimney
opening and clear the room of swirling smoke.  From the bedside a sharp
yelp of pain told him that Margaret had regained consciousness.  He
moved back to her.

"Are you in pain?"  he asked her, and thought immediately what a stupid
question to put to a woman in her condition!

"It is not the pain that disturbs me.  It is the shaking of the bed.  I
fear that I shall be thrown down and the child be killed before it is
born."

He reached out as if to steady the shaking of the huge mahogany bed
that held his wife's frail body.  Oh, for the sound of hooves!  But
there was nothing to be heard above the fierce sound of thundering
winds, the crashing of falling timber and a great wailing as though all
the Banshees of the race of the Tuatha de Danaan were outside, keening,
not for one soul but for the souls of all the people in the world.  Was
it the end of an era?  Or was the cook right?  Was it the end of the
world?

The bed rocked and Margaret moaned again.  She thought longingly of the
snug sleeping berths built into the wall, one above the other in the
room she had shared with her sister in the Belgian villa overlooking
the Lake of Nightingales.

In lulls between storm and pain, she thought that Yvette was popping
little hard objects like beads on to her face from the berth above.
Yvette was always tossing things down at her!  Margaret put up her hand
and pushed away the pieces of flowers and fruit that so embellished the
reeds and fluted columns of the bed.  Mr.  Chippendale had never
envisaged a wind that could blow his carvings about like papier mache

A freakish wind blew round the room in all directions.  With a weird
whistling sound it scattered candles and ornaments again

'th a long-drawn scream it loosened the carved crane from Teat
headboard--intended by its designer to be the emblem Trfre and
watchfulness.  It fell straight on Margaret.

It was more than she could bear.  She threw herself into her band's
arms and implored him to take her to some safe place.

He* held her to him and tried to think of some refuge.  Some mace where
she could lie in safety to endure the pain and fear.

He thought of the flooded basement, the wrecked drawing room, the
bedrooms all around her, all shaking and shuddering and clanging.  At
last he thought of something.  Because of the flooding, most of the
household and refugees were now in the front hall, and the passages
behind it.  He called some of the men and had them remove the big
Flanders tick and place it with all its bolsters and pillows on the
floor in a corner of the room furthest from the window and fire.  While
he directed the men he held Margaret in his arms and his heart
contracted as he felt her agony.

Where was Big John?

In the tempest Big John thanked the good God that the master had
allowed him to take the Rajah.  No other horse in the castle stalls
could have stood up to this storm: no other horse in Ireland!

Three times they made the road, only to be driven back to the fields by
the barriers of uprooted trees.  The fields were completely under
water.  Sometimes the seventeen-and-a-half hands horse sank of his
shoulders.  Big John spurred him, but feared to dismount lest he be
sucked under.  It went to his heart to add his weight to the struggle
of the horse as he floundered to lift himself and his rider from the
down-suck of bog.  Once, when the powerful horse could struggle no
longer and it looked as if itself and rider must perish in the morass,
a wind came thundering across the earth like thousands of horsemen.  A
rick of turf stood near ne submerged horse and rider.  In an instant it
was tossed rlh a*f and a s^ower f black sods were scattered around

ofrh f pounds hundreds of y3"18- A sod struck His John on A6 side .
nead and he felt stunned for a moment and dropped the

It'1S' nstantly he fel* the horse lifted bodily out of the swamp, gave
a whinnying cry that chilled his veins.

now meh W *** found firm foot inS and rode forward.  And a faint glow
rose in the darkness and lit the way before

them.  As he drew near he saw that it was Carney's shebeen on fire.  A
group of men and women stood helplessly watching the flames.  As they
saw the horseman approach they ran to him Carney recognised Big John
and asked him to help with the flames.

"The lads were playing Twenty-Five for a leg of mutton and all of a
sudden a great wind blew down the chimney.  There was a fire on the
hearth that would roast an ox an' Felix Downey had just banged the Five
of Hearts on the table when the flames flew around the room and before
we knew where we wor me house was on fire."  Then he said simply, "I've
no house now, Mr.  Dermody."

Big John felt the pathos of the simple statement.  "God knows," he
answered, "I'd like to give a hand but I must go for the doctor.  Her
Ladyship is in a bad way.  The child is coming before its time and it
has taken me an hour to get this far."

John Carney forgot his own trouble in his sympathy for the sweet young
Ladyship.  "Go on your way and God be with you," he said.  "There is
nothing you can do here."  His wife and two other women crowded round
the horse's head, full of concern for her Ladyship.

"God carry you safely," they cried as he urged Rajah forward.

To right and left of him cabins were levelled to the ground or on fire.
Once he passed a group of naked children shivering and crying in front
of the ruins of a group of cabins.  And once, as the horse took a
fallen tree in a jump, he fell from the saddle and his shoulder gave
him fierce pain.  The side of his head was aching, too, where the sod
of turf had struck him.  He did not notice that blood poured over his
ear on to his shoulder.

Templetown was close now but all he could see was a great red glow in
the sky and clouds of smoke.  The wind had shifted from southwest to
sheer west and was blowing louder and wilder.  Showers of stones and
branches blew about him incessantly once a brick hit Rajah on the head
and it reared and plunged panic-stricken.  Big John held on madly, the
force of his hold torturing his injured shoulder.

Dr.  Mitchell lived on the Mall.  Big John never remembered how he got
there.  It hadn't occurred to him that midst this havoc and disaster
others would have need of the doctor.  When a servant told him that the
doctor was not at home, the utter dismay unmanned him.  He suddenly
felt the pain in the side of

22 *

d and for a moment his knees sagged with weakness and

Ins nc-1

eX^Stdoctor had gone to the barracks near the Mall where a

, hox had been lifted from the ground and blown down the sentry c UA "
"* .,

street with the sentry still inside.

When Big John came upon Dr.  Mitchell, he was bending over policeman
who had been helping with the sentry and had got his leg and thigh
broken.  The wind-borne sentry, miraculously unhurt, was helping him. A
group of frightened, wailing children were waiting by the road.

"Is it mad you are," the doctor said, 'to talk of going to a
confinement on a night like this."

"Her Ladyship is bad," urged Big John.  "It's a month before her time
an' the midwife not due from Dublin till Monday.  Night or no night,
the child must be loosed."

The doctor straightened his back.  "I'm not talking about the night,
I'm talking about its victims.  Listen to these children.  Do you know
what's wrong with them?  They're blind The force of the wind had dashed
fiery ash into the eyes of the terrified, homeless children.

Dr.  Mitchell never knew how near he was to being lifted bodily into
Big John's arms and brought off by force.  "For the love of God, Dr.
Mitchell, come with me!  I wouldn't face Sir Roderick.  He's counting
on my word, an I never broke it yet."

"Yourself and your word," shouted the doctor.  "God damn it into hell
and out of hell!  Can't you see I'm wanted worse here?  Anyone can have
a baby."

The sentry chuckled.  He was feeling very happy about being alive.  "I
couldn't," he said.

A military surgeon came on the scene to attend the sentry.  He had
striven through the storm from a card party outside the town.  The
sight of him cheered Dr.  Mitchell.  For the first time ne noticed the
blood on Big John's face, and that he swayed as

J^me up to the house till I look at you," he said more kindly.  we U
tackle the baby afterwards."

CHAPTER 3

Margaret, lying in the comparative security of the floor, at last
became aware of the storm that was rending her body.  Until!  now the
tumult and the swaying had imbued her with an all pervading fear that
dulled her sense of physical pain.  Now pain was in possession.
Although outside the storm was approaching the highest pitch of its
fury, it was in abeyance for her.  As tree by tree was uprooted and the
earth seemed to groan with anguish, the child within her clamoured,
pain by pain, for the gift of life.

She tugged at the pretty bow beneath her chin.  Her husband leaned
over, glad to be of some help.  But the neat bow of Mrs.  Mansfield's
contriving eluded his fingers and he bungled.  In a frenzy of pain
Margaret tore the ribbons from the cap.

His ineptitude upset Roderick beyond all proportion.  He rose from his
crouching position.  The noise began to beat against his brain.  Panic
assailed him.  It must be the end of all creation.  How could a
man-made world survive when all Nature was crashing?  Why then should
this futile anguish be forced upon the being he loved so dearly?  The
child was being born to die!  Still, in birth was hope.  Let the world
crash! Margaret would bring new life and a new world.  She was like Eve
outside her lost Eden expecting, not just her first babe, but the first
babe o( the human race.

For a moment the storm seemed to quiet, lull, then all the winds
converged about the castle and hurled themselves with a murderous
roaring upon walls and roofs and windows.  Roderick staggered backwards
to the door and leaned there, his hands about his ears, until there was
an easing.  Then quietly he slipped from the room to see what fresh
disaster had befallen.

In the front hall servitors and tenants were clinging together for
support and comfort.  Children still wailed but the injured child lay
in a half-fain ting stupor.  He splashed his way to the back door.  He
must see what was happening outside!  He must get a respite from this
prison house of storm!  But the opened

Ided nothing but darkness and rain and icy, screaming d ^ ^Above the
wind he detected a scream more eerie still.  It

Sh<f screaming of horses in terror.  In despair he turned

*2S d only to hear the worst scream of all, the first long-drawn

^ream of abandon echoing down through the spaces from his

W1Ahe reached her door Hannah came to him.  "For God' sakeS your
Honour, Sir, will you send someone for Mag Miney.  "Tis'getting'
terrible an' I'm no use.  "Tis no easy birth."  "Surely you don't mean
that old witch near the front lodge?"  "The same one, your Honour. 
She's a great hand at childbed ding.  Her Ladyship's past carin', Sir
Roderick.  Let you go in

God's name!"

What Hannah said was true.  Margaret was past caring.  And she had
ceased to be his Margaret.  Her face was purple and swollen.  Her fine
nostrils were distended and coarsened.  Her sensitively curved mouth
was a maw from which animal sounds emerged.

Young Thomas begged to be allowed to accompany his master on the ride
to the midwife.  It was a proud moment for the boy when the groom
hoisted him up in front of Roderick and placed a burning turf sod on a
stave in his hand to guide them.

Sir Roderick knew every inch of his estate but Thomas knew it better.
At least until tonight.

Showers of sparks from the smouldering sod made a trail of light for
them.  It gave a thin, flickering light for a few yards.  "The path is
gone," Thomas said, peering forward.  "It was there this evening and I
coming back from Lady Cullen's."

"Were you at Lady Cullen's today?"  Close as they were together he had
to bend his ear to the boy's mouth to hear his reply.

"r 7Was something your own Ladyship was sending her for little
Christmas".  A grand little box from Belgium and a bit of aney m it."
Thomas had thought the handsome box grander an the china ornament it
contained.

Little Christmas!  Of course!  This was the tea st of the Piphany.  Or
had been.  They must be well into the small hours an^n ther day.
Roderick fumbled inside his cloak for his watch

st ret >, " towards * light- Half-past two and the night cned long in
front of them though they had lived through

Eternity.

There was no need to skirt the estate wall.  It was no longe there. The
horse was stumbling over the big stones that had held the privacy of
the estate in their long-knit framework.  Once it baulked and shivered.
 The dancing sparks showed them a dead cow.

"There's her house," said Thomas, and as the lanthorn picked out a
house he crossed himself.  Sir Roderick saw the gesture,

"If you are afraid to go in for her I shall go myself."

"No, indeed, your Honour, it is just a habit I have when 1 pass her
house.  I'm afraid of no human being tonight.  What can anyone do to
you fornint that big wind?"

His master's face relaxed into its first smile for many an hour at the
unconscious irony of the lad's logic.

"It is better that I stay with the horse," he said.  Young Thomas
jumped down and disappeared in the wake of the sparks from the burning
sod.

A moment later an old crone stood beside the horse and peered up at its
rider.  "Is it a thing that the great lady of Kil sheelin Castle has
need of Mag Miney this night He could not see her face but there was
mockery in the cackling voice.

"Is it true that you have skill in childbirth?"  he demanded coldly.

"Aye, 'tis true an' many a one has blessed that skill without any big
wind blowing.  Oh, I..."  he cut her short.

"Come with me at once."

Thomas helped her up behind the Sir.  Her body reeked vilely.  There
was a stench from the basket that she carried that made him want to
retch. She was chuckling away to herself at the idea of riding behind
the Lord of Kilsheelin when suddenly hef chuckling ceased.  The wind
was veering from southeast to southwest.  Suddenly a fierce blast came
from the west and the two winds met in a whirlwind that drove the
breath from hors and riders.  The horse was flung back on its haunches
and brought the old woman to the ground.  The boy was on the ground
helping the maddened horse.  The master dismounted and pulled on the
reins with all his strength.

Then it happened.  A wild whistling filled the air and be for their
eyes the field in front of them rose from the earth allA soared into
the sky.  It paused motionless for an instant, sus pended in the grasp
of the whirlwind, then soared away into *

\

Darkness- acres of unbroken sod and grass floating ii tern
aarKJitoo,

a , The sky like a magic carpet.

* fthree stood speechless, the little knife boy and the witch j the
Lord of the soil, their eyes straining upwards through ?h7 darkness.
Suddenly a cry burst from the man, "My land, my land \ It is not
possible \'

The boy clutched him, forgetful of rank.  "We're left behind," he
wailed.  "The whole world is going up into heaven and we are left
behind .

Behind them the old woman was keening and mumbling.  "You have angered
them, Sir Roderick O'Carroll.  There was Hungry Grass in that field.
Grass where fairies hold their revels.  They make hungry those who walk
upon it.  You walked on it with your proud feet and you cut down the
ring of hawthorn trees.  Never before have sperrits taken a man's land.
I wish you no harm, but no man can prosper after the sperrits have
taken his land."

"Shut up, you old harpy \' Roderick struggled with the horse that was
pawing for a footing, its hind legs on solid ground, its front lunging
over the brink where the field had disappeared.

At last they reached the stable yard.  When the old woman entered the
kitchen the people there edged away from her contact.  They edged
further still when she placed her basket on the table and drew from it
a mess of unsalted butter, rancid and green.  She had herbs as well and
took them to the pot that hung over one of the fires that smoked
without blazing.

Mrs.  Stacey turned the fan wheel to irake a flame and watched every
movement the old creature made.  When she threw a handful of raspberry
leaves into the water the cook was reassured.  She grew fearful again
when strange leaves with strange smells were added.

si vi?  ^Oderick came m from the stable and stooped short at the g , "*
old woman bending over the fire.  "Why has she not

Sh^neii!3t Once to her LadyshiP?"  he demanded, you'll I need for what
1>m nuking.  I'm ready now if taking Tme ** way" She ^^ed the brew into
a jug and

"She'H fOUl butter mess she followed the Sir.  worM u-PUt a spdl on the
child if ever she brings it to the

The ?T the big cook'

changelin k-eeper>S wife nodded agreement.  "She'll leave a 8 m lts
Place.  It's not the first time she has done it."

^

Mrs.  Stacey drew her chair near her and looked fearfuli towards the
door.

"The Sir can scoff at the prophecies but did he ever think he'd live to
see the day when Mag Miney would bring home the heir of Kilsheelin?"

"Tis the truth you're savin', Mrs.  Stacey.  But did any of us think
we'd live to see a wind like the one that's blowing tonight?"  "Mrs.
Murray, acquanie," the cook bent towards her ani lowered her voice,
'the prophecies are comin back to me.  Then was some I couldn't
remember."  She enumerated on her fingers.  "The graves will open..."
Mrs.  Murray nodded, '... that has happened without a doubt."  The cook
pressed down her index finger.  "The Russians will water their horses
on the shores of Lough Neagh, and ..."  she pressed on her big second
finger until it cracked, 'women will walk the earth in trousers!"

Mrs.  Murray gasped.  "God forgive you, Mary Anne Stacey, Saint
Columcille had something better to do with his time than making that
kind of prophecy.  I can see reason in the graves opening.  It has
happened before an' I've seen the tombstones me self tonight.  The
Russians might come too.  Didn't the Danes come?  And Cromwell?  And
Strongbow?  Maybe the Russians will have a try too.  Much good may it
do them!  But if the world won't end until womankind walks the face of
the earth in--throuscrs!  Then you can take it from me now, Mary Anne
Stacey, the world will never end!"  She shook the water from her feet,
gathered up her basket of chirping chickens and their squawking mother
and went from the kitchen.

In the bedroom Sir Roderick found his wife kneeling on the Flemish
tick, unrecognisable.  The frilly nightcap was gone.  The glossy hair
was bedraggled and dank.  The puffed face shone with the dew of labour.
The old woman held the jug to her lips "Take this, asthore!"  The girl
turned wild eyes towards her "Maman!  * she gasped.  But she saw only a
dirty old woman with a lump of rancid butter and a jug.

Sir Roderick moved down to the drawing-room but turned back at the
sight of its havoc.  He went on to the dining-room- l did not seem so
bad here.  At least in the darkness there w# form and line.  He called
for lights and as the footman 1* candles he felt relief to see the long
table and the familiar chaif* reflecting the light in their dark
surfaces of Domingo ma hog

Pi

He never liked Domingo mahogany.  It was a post-Crom- ** n-n
innovation.  He had intended to replace it with some- W Tehter Then he
remembered his treeless land and the field Sad blown away before his
eyes.  My God!  What a fantasy!  n d it really haPPen?  He would know
tomorrow, if tomorrow r came.  He was too tired to think of tomorrow.
He stretched his6 arms out on the table and laid his head on them.  In
a moment he was asleep.

It was half-past five when the footman called to say that Big John had
arrived with the doctor.  The doctor had gone straight upstairs.
Roderick hurried up and as he knocked at the bedroom door he realised
that it was the first time that night that he had done so.  There was
no wind roaring outside.

Dr.  Mitchell opened the door.  "I'm sorry that I could not be here to
deliver the child but everything seems to be all right.  My God!  What
are you doing?"  There was a roaring now and it was not the wind.  He
strode across the room and knocked from old Mag's hand the butter she
was about to use to heal the lacerated tissue.  He turned back to Sir
Roderick.  "If I was not in time to deliver the child, thank God I've
been in time to save your wife from childbed fever.  Stinking butter!
No wonder wimmen die!  Get out!"  he bawled.

And then from the bed came a sound that gladdened the ears of the man
who had lived through a night of fearsome sounds.  It was the sound of
a new-born baby's cry.  He made a quick move in its direction but the
doctor waved him back.

"Leave us a while.  There is nothing to worry about."

Roderick's step was light as he moved down the stairs.  As he passed
old Mag muttering and groaning with the effort of the accustomed steps
his heart smote him.  It was sorry treatment o give the poor creature
who had brought his child through orm into the world.  He paused to
give her a gold piece, then humed from her blessings; and her smell,
turni came Buckling into the kitchen, Mrs.  Stacey stopped them far
wheel on the fires that now blazed, all eight of

dow^1* any thinK in yet?"  she asked Mag.  Big John put

Mae nl mUf f tea he was sip PinS

^ kitch the bUtter With tender care into her basket while do."  Cn
reeked" To be sure there is.  I done what I came to

"Praises be to God," said the coachman, rising to his feet.  "Is it an
heir or a child?"  
"Tis a child that's in it."

Mrs.  Stacey dropped the wheel handle and straightening up in her
chair.  "Welcome be the holy will of God," she said with pious
disappointment.  "Sure, isn't it better than nothing?"

A bell swung wildly in the row that hung near the door.  Before its
tongue could clatter the Sir himself gave tongue from the library door.
"Hegarty!  The flag!"

The butler came shivering and blinking from his pantry.  He had slept
through the last episode of the drama.  The flag!  Cead mile curses!
The heir was born and he not standing by to hoist the flag!  .f

But there was no getting to hoist it.  The turret stairs was blocked
with part of the turret itself.  None of the men could squeeze past;
not even the gossoons, Mickey-the-turf and Johnny-the-buckets. "Where's
that new gossoon, the knife boy?"  the butler demanded. "Surely he is
small enough to make his way to the turret."

Young Thomas was found stretched across two wooden chairs under a big
cloak.  The Sir, it seems, had noticed him there when he passed with
the doctor and had bidden someone to put a covering over him.  The
old-fashioned man's 'trusty' that had trailed about him the day a few
weeks back when a respectable-looking woman had brought him to Mrs.
Mansfield, trailed from him again as he edged his small body past the
massive piece of turret that jammed the stairway.  Young Thomas raised
the standard of the O'Carrolls and watched it float high above the
broken turret.  He could see the family arms and the picture of the
hawk and although he couldn't read he knew that the words beneath were
"An se abac abu' the rallying cry of the O'Carrolls--The hawk to
victory!

The storm, like the lady of the castle, was spent.  The air was still,
a sigh of a breeze scarcely unfurled the folds of Saint Patrick's blue.
Down in the great yard, workers and homeless^!  tenants gazed up in
awe.  The wonder of it surged through thej; shivering Thomas.  They
were looking up at the flag that none but he could raise!  The newcomer
to the castle!  Its smallest | and youngest member except for that
other newcomer, the girl-ff child whose birth he was proclaiming. He
turned suddenly and edged down again.  From the turret entrance he
could see the

11 door standing open.  There was no one around.  Instead f going down
the servants' stairway he came forward and put a mid bare foot on the
top step of the grand staircase.  Fearfully he craned over each
shoulder, then with a swoop he bunched the old 'trusty' up under his
armpit and skeeted down the stairs.

He walked backwards over the gravel to the lawn, his face straining
upwards intent on viewing his handiwork, oblivious of Roderick who
stood gazing at the flag.  Roderick looked down at the small boy who
appeared suddenly beside him, draped in a garment belonging to the past
century and to God knows whom else.  About three feet of brown frieze
fell in a train behind and left two little skinny legs unhampered and
unsheltered.  "So it's you again!"  said Roderick.

Young Thomas gave a frightened glance sideways and was reassured.  He
resumed his rapt contemplation of his achievement.  This wasn't any of
the staff hierarchy.  It was only the Sir, God-like and remote and
unlikely to threaten a body with a skelp on the lug.  "Yes, your
Honour's Sir, it's me," he said; 'and," he continued, pointing an arm
upward and letting another few yards of the frieze flop to the grass,
'it was me that raised that flag.  Not a one in the whole castle but me
was able to do it.  Only for me the world'd never know that we have a
little colleen-uasail a girl of the nobility inside in the castle."

Sir Roderick looked down at the grotesquerie of brown frieze and muddy
flesh that had travelled with him in some perimeter of space and time
while the world had fought against the heavens for its existence.  A
figment of the night's fantasy!v He handed Thomas a crown piece.

The child looked down at the big coin and, like his master, wondered if
this too were a figment of the night.  Only he didn't think in terms of
figments.  He wondered if his Honour's Nobility had been having a swig
of the bottle on account of the great event.  "You haven't a sup taken,
your Honour's Sir?"

His Honour told him not to be so dem med impertinent or he would take
back the money.

It's not-imperance your Honour's Sir.  Gentlemen throws money in drink;
but not this much.  Look at the size of it!"  It covered the small hand
he held up.  He also held up two fan'mged^eyes so blue that they held
Sir Roderick's gaze.  "I wouldn't like to take to take, an advantage."
The big word as hauled up with a jerk from mud squelched toes.

"Thank you," his master replied.  "But I shouldn't be too
conscientious about--advantages.  Just grab them."

Young Thomas grabbed so rightly that he let his 'trusty' fajj where it
would.  "I will, your Honour's Sir," he breathed, an<j shot off, but
stumbled over the 'trusty'.  Out of its folds a muffled voice insisted,
"Oh then, indeed and indeed I will."

Roderick watched amused as the small object scuttled away cautiously
ahead of its own fanned-out tail, like some little brown thing of the
earth; not a fox, not with those blue and candid eyes; a squirrel
perhaps, or maybe, a leprechaun.

CHAPTER 4

Men worked furiously to make a passage for the Sir as he rode out to
seek a foster-mother for his daughter.  This mission, he thought, was
all of a piece with the mess of unreadiness into which Nature had
plunged all of them.  He chucked his horse to order.  There was no need
for it to take fright at the little doe whose gentle eyes pleaded
timidly from a lifeless body.

Everything had been so neatly planned.  Months ago he had arranged the
novel luxury of a Professed Nurse-Tender trained at Doctor Mosse's
famous lying-in hospital beside Dublin's Rotunda Gardens.  No handy
woman for his lovely Margaret!  Instead, she had been delivered by the
black arts--and hands of an old witch who was even now standing at the
gates of the castle watching the men remove the topmost tree that
blocked the entrance, and boasting of her role in the night's drama.

Roderick cleared the underneath tree and cantered down the carriage
road.  He halted in sudden amazement.  How could I possibly have gone
astray, he wondered!  He had turned into a tiny bore en known as the
Wolf Track.  Long after the last wolf had been exterminated from the
Tipperary hills at the turn of the previous century the Kilsheelin
O'Carrolls had kept alive (f f the rumour of the wolves that had
originally beaten this track.  The scare intimidated all unwarranted
approach to the black density of forests that screened the existence of
the Catholic O'Carrolls hostile powers.  But now Roderick felt
disorientated.  Trees and familiar landmarks had vanished overnight. 
He found himself looking at strange vistas.  He could see the windings
of the four crossroads that met at Kilsheelin Cross.  He could glimpse,
for the first time, the distant turrets of Strague Castle.

Strague Castle was one of the survivors of the thirteen castles f the
O'Carrolls.  Its branch had held through the centuries a recurring
record of treachery.  Or was it, Roderick reflected, just Practical
expediency?  When Cromwell rode up to its door the owner had played the
game.  A smiling welcome and, My castle

is at your disposal, Lord Cromwell.  It worked.  When Cromwell rode
out the gate again with his sword and his Bible and his wart and with
his soldiery all refreshed, Calvagh O'Carroll was still in possession
of Strague Castle.

A century later, while another owner was serving in Austria, his
youngest son turned Protestant and claimed thereby the castle.  From a
nearby cabin where the absent owner had spent his early childhood in
the old foster-age custom of the nobility, his peasant foster-brother
set out for Austria to warn him.  O'Carroll hastened home but was
denied admission to his castle by his own son.  He was forced to
shelter in the cabin of his fosterage.  A few months later,
broken-hearted, he died there in the arms of his foster-brother.

Again, just thirty-eight years ago this very month, when the Irish
Parliament was voted out of Ireland by the infamous Act of Union with
the British Parliament, the father of the present * owner voted against
his country.  As a bribe for betraying it into g its present beggary
and decay he had been given the peerage of * Strague, suitably
financed.  \

Yet, Roderick reflected, not all Strague O'Carrolls had been 1
traitorous.  Generations of its occupiers had averted the eyes of I
authority from the castle of the Catholic O'Carrolls living their
hidden lives behind a wooden curtain of almost in penetrable W forests.
Planter statesmen and lawyers, vague about the land they were seizing
and re parcelling looked no further than Strague Castle with its loyal
Protestant inmates.  They remained unaware of the life that teemed
beyond that wooden curtain which each succeeding generation trained to
grow taller and denser and blacker about the hidden castle of
Kilsheelin.  From beneath the leafy folds its sons had slipped out by
night to Europe, fighting on its battlefields, Spain, Austria, France,
Holland; basking in the glitter of its court life; from time to time
they would return, along this very track, bringing with them the gossip
of the countries of their affiliation, their languages and their
culture.

He turned in his saddle.  Like a woman surprised half-dressed,
Kilsheelin Castle was standing partly exposed.  Never before from this
point had one been able to glimpse even a stone of its structure.  Now
the remaining trees hung about it, brown and dishevelled like
inadequate garments.  Like the brown trusty around the urchin who had
raised that blue flag fluttering there

above a broken turret.  My God, what an indignity!  That miniature
ragamuffin!  This storm had certainly acted like a dredger; casting
strange elements up through the coolj proud surface of Roderick's
life.

The flag recalled him to the existence of his premature daughter and
her needs.  These treeless vistas had beguiled him down vistas of time!
The man he had come to see hailed him from the roof he was repairing
and started to climb down.  Black Pat Ryan was Sir Roderick's
foster-brother.  The custom of fosterage had died out before Roderick's
birth but when business had taken the elder Sir to the Continent after
Roderick's birth, he took his fragile wife with him and left the baby
at the house of Black Pat's father to be nursed by his widowed sister,
Mrs.  Stacey.  Mrs.  Stacey had lost her baby as well as her husband,
so that Roderick received the clamouring tide of her love.  He had
grown up with her dark-skinned, black-haired nephew, Pat; together they
raided the castle orchard, poached its streams, and when they
encountered Sir Dominic, the heir would touch his forelock to him as
Black Pat did, not realising that the grand gentleman in the carriage
or on horseback was his own father.  When the time came for Roderick to
return to the castle, Mrs.  Stacey, rather than be parted from her
foster-son, took service there.

"God save you, Sir Roderick," greeted Black Pat.  Tis an ill wind blows
no one good.  I could be almost thankful to last night's big wind for
blowing you my way."

Black Pat wanted to know if there was any truth in the story about the
flying field.  There was an element of fear in his amazement when
Roderick assured him that there was nearly five acres of truth in the
story.  "They say you cut down the ring of hawthorn trees beside the
Hungry Grass."

Roderick smiled amusedly.  "So you still give in to pishoguerie?"  "Not
a whole lot, but," Black Pat shook his head slowly, Td cut down a
forest of oaks before I'd cut a hawthorn tree."

Roderick returned to his mission.  Mrs.  Stacey had told him that Black
Pat's wife had a young baby.  She might make a fj^Ale foster-mother.
"She will need to come at once," he said, ^e child is very tiny.  She
has come six weeks ahead of schedule.  It was the storm."

Black Pat's face closed.  For a fleeting moment it showed

something that eluded Roderick.  His wife, he said promptly, had
weaned their baby.  The impression persisted with Roderick that there
was an element of--reluctance?  An independent devil, Black Pat!  But
this was no time for independence.  Had he some kind of idea that his
wife was above being wet nurse to his landlord's child?  Black Pat was
speaking quickly.  His neighbour's wife--widowed in the storm--was
nursing an infant.  She would be an admirable wet nurse.  All at once
Black Pat could not do enough for his foster-brother.  He would tend to
the woman's livestock while she would be at the castle; would repair
her roof; tend her farm.  This was the Black Pat who had risked his
life for Roderick.  There seemed to be but one point where his loyalty
halted.  As Roderick turned out on to the carriage road he realised
that he had not met his foster-brother's wife.

Roderick could scarcely get passage through his own land.  There were
crowds milling about.  News of the uprooted field seemed to have gone
far and wide.  They gazed with awe at the pit-like wilderness strewn
with rubble and boulders and trees ; and lifeless carcasses.
O'Driscoll, the groom, came to him with T the information that the
field itself had fallen unbroken on a small farm at Poolgower, four
miles off.  O'Driscoll had wagons _ yoked in readiness for the Sir's
instructions to recover his soil.  1

At Poolgower the crowds were greater.  The receiving end of the marvel
held more spectacle.  A field of grassland fallen from the clouds of
heaven!

"My men will remove it now," Sir Roderick said to James Keating, the
owner of the farm.  The man eyed him levelly for a moment.  "By whose
authority?"  he demanded.

Roderick gave an impatient frown.  "By mine, of course," he I gestured
O'Driscoll towards the field.  He had expected to find it ml lying
loose and broken upon the surface, but the might of the blast had
impacted it into the earth as though it had been there always.
O'Driscoll looked at it in bewilderment.  "It is not goin' to be so
easy as we thought, your Honour's Sir," he said.

Keating barred his way.  "I'm glad that you realise it is not going to
be so easy," he said grimly.  "I dare any man of you to put a foot into
that field."  Behind him a tall, lantern-jawed young man, obviously a
son, sauntered forward.  He held a fowling-piece nonchalantly through
the crook of his arm as though he were off for a bang at a rabbit.  By
a strange coincidence a few

EsmijBMfi^i

more young men happened along with casually-cocked fowling oieces as
though they also were off for a few pot-shots.  Roderick sized up the
situation.  The possibility of anyone dreaming of trying to retain the
field had never occurred to him.  He curbed his fury and spoke coldly.
"Do you not realise that this is my property blown here by a freak of
nature?"

"I realise," Keating replied, 'that this is my property."  He indicated
a few poor fields bordering the bog.  "And that," he said, pointing to
the greenest one, 'is something that fell from the heavens; an act of
God.  It is best not to dispute the actions of

God."

Rage swept through Roderick.  A short while back he had mused on how
his ancestors had clung to their land through the centuries in the face
of every menace.  Not a foot had they yielded!  Did this hind presume
to hold a parcel of its acreage that had strayed by freakish chance?
"By God," he cried.  "I'll dispute your action."  He signalled his men
to return home.  There was no hope of achieving anything at this
moment. "I shall return," he said to Keating, 'when the crowd has
dispersed."

On his return he encountered Black Pat again.  He had brought the
foster-mother to the castle.  "Are you off to see the peep show?"  he
asked him.

Black Pat turned blacker still.  "You have no call to say such a thing
to me, Rody O'Carroll."  In the quick hurt of his sensitivity he
addressed his landlord as he had done in those young days of fosterage.
"I wouldn't be wanting to see--or hear--that a dog belonging to you was
sick."

Roderick went to his study.  There was much to be done.  The land would
have to be recovered.  Mrs.  Mansfield's death would have to be
reported.  There would be an inquest.  He was interrupted by the hard
who appeared full of reproach that no formal announcement had been made
to him of the birth of the child.  "I who recorded the genealogy of
your father aye, and your grandfather, for my own father had gone blind
at the ujne."  There was no harp in his apartment fit to play a note in
honour of the great event.  The small harps were flung 'trinacaila',
their frames battered, their strings awry.  The great family harp stood
in two feet of water.  The hard held the piano in scorn and of course
the bagpipes were only for lesser folk.  "And * assume," said the old
gentleman slyly, 'that the wine cellar has fared as badly.  We may not
even drink to the great occasion."

Roderick took the hint.  He led them inward and rang for the butler.
Black Pat hung back, but the hard harangued him upon the ties of
fosterage.  "The little cailinuasail above is your foster second
cousin.  The link," he said, 'extended in fosterage to one hundred
degrees whereas in blood it stopped short at twenty degrees."  They
drank the health of the infant girl and it looked as though the old man
would drink the health of all her preceding generations.  He was aghast
to hear about the field.  Not at the manner of its going, but that Sir
Roderick should be so puerile as to consider falling back upon the
quill of any attorney for its recovery.  "Has the Wild Huntsman
dismantled your gunroom?"  he asked.  "The O'Carroll Ribeach went out
and bade the English quit his land when Queen Elizabeth divided
Tipperary among four men of Cheshire.  And they quit!"

Roderick rose to end the genealogical survey.  "Unfortunately, Bard,"
he smiled, 'it is not Queen Elizabeth this time.  It is the Wild
Huntsman who has chosen to divide my land.  And this Keating man of
Poolgower is proving more formidable than the | four men of
Cheshire."

I

Sir Roderick, gazing bleakly through the window at his wastes lands,
watched scores of men cutting up the great trunks that lay across the
carriage way and piling them along the sides.  \ Away to the left
beyond the park, groups of people were standing round talking and
pointing, and behaving rather like spectators at a hurling match.  Two
horsemen rode past the massive iron gates that lay on the ground. 
Roderick saw that one was a policeman, guessed the other was the
Coroner come about Mrs.  Mansfield.

Mr.  O'Neill-Balfe sipped a glass of Roderick's claret appreciatively,
toasted the birth of the child, and listened to the details of the
housekeeper's death.  "I'll see her," he said.  "And after that I have
just one more storm inquest in this district.  A man called Lucas has
reported that his wife and newly-born infant were washed from their bed
and drowned.  Meantime," he raised his glass, "I drink to the birth
that defied the storm."  Then he remembered the field.  "I take it that
it is some exaggeration of superstitious peasants?"  11

Sir Roderick shrugged.  "I wish it were an exaggeration.  Before my
very eyes I saw a section of my land about five acres scooped out of
the ground and carried through the air.  It travelled across the park
and over the western turret out of sight."

"Astounding!"

"What is more astounding still is that it travelled four miles before
it alighted on the farm of James Keating of Poolgower.  I rode over
there yesterday and saw it; a field of green, fattening grass among a
few little fields no better than bog.  I see little hope of retrieving
it.  It has been planted there with the same force that lifted it from
my territory; and the sightseers are aiding and abetting him; tramping
it deeper into his possession."

The Coroner had the impression that his host was speaking to himself.
Aiding and abetting?  What strange language!  But then the poor young
gentleman had been through a dreadful ordeal; he must have incurred
immense financial loss.  Roderick suddenly recollected himself.  "You
see the people are going there in their hundreds.  I don't suppose
anything like it has ever happened before."

When the Coroner had departed, Roderick seated himself at his desk and
made an entry in a big black book.

"On the night of January the Sixth in the Year of Our Lord, One
Thousand Eight Hundred and Thirty-Nine a great wind blew across
Ireland.  It has caused havoc and disaster and the loss of many lives;
how many it is not yet known.  In the course of this storm five acres
of the land that my forefathers have held through the centuries against
all unwarranted approach, were raised skywards in my presence and borne
out of my sight.  On the Seventh of January, this same year, I rode
forth to the farm of James Keating of Poolgower and there did see my
own land lying unbroken as it had left me.  I pray that this act of
Nature will not affect the lives of those whose heritage has been so
strangely visited."

He closed the book and then almost as an afterthought, reopened it and
wrote, "The stress of the storm brought my wife to labour before her
time.  Our housekeeper, Julia Mansfield, was killed in my wife's
presence while tending her.  Towards morning my wife gave birth to a
daughter."

As he re-read what he had just written its significance smote him.  He
was the youngest and only survivor of his parent's five children.  The
doctor doubted the likelihood of Margaret's bear- Jng another child and
so the record of the birth of his daughter, Sterrin, read like another
incident of the storm.  The record of *e birth of a son and heir would
have been a different matter.  ^ storm would have taken precedence over
that event.



CHAPTER 5

The Dublin Mail Coach came clattering down the Market Square,
scattering mud from wheels and hooves in all directions.  A bigger
cheer than usual went up from the crowd of ostlers and hangers-on
outside Mullaly's Coaching Inn.  The coach was three days late and the
whole town was out to greet its arrival.  :

The most imposing of all the waiting vehicles was that driven by Big
John Dermody, of Kilsheelin Castle.  Not, indeed that it was the
grandest, because he merely drove a one horse back-to back.  But he sat
so regally, holding the long whip upright like a spear, that he gave
prestige to any equip page

The "Scout', otherwise John Doyle, the shoemaker from Love Lane, a
temperamental shoemaker and a master pedant, never missed the arrival
or departure of a mail coach.  He checked the identity of each
passenger who descended from the coach, his occupation and mission, as
though it were his paid calling.  The various drivers, guards and
ostlers passed on to him i all the recent news from Dublin, and all
possible information about the passengers.  The drivers of waiting
vehicles yielded, | often unwittingly, all available information about
those for J whom they waited.  But never would Big John divulge an iota
of gossip.

It was obvious to the Scout that it was no member of the family, nor of
the Quality, that Big John awaited, because he was only driving a
back-to-back.  Although, argued the Scout, the Sir was not above using
the back-to-back; but in that event Big John would be wearing his tall
hat, not the Hardy Bastard, which was the colloquial description of the
pot-shaped half Caroline the coachman was wearing.

However, news of the storm in Dublin and en route was of primary
importance just now.  The identity of passengers must wait.  The last
blast of the bugle had scarcely died away when the Scout had his foot
on the step sacred to the driver.  |

"God save ye I We thought you must have blown away alto;ther, or did
yet get e'er a blast of the wind there at all?"  TDon't be talkin',"
said the driver; 'tis a sight for sore eyes to c you.  It does me heart
good to see the faces of friends when ere so many on my route that I'll
never see again after that me wind."  He threw the reins to an ostler
and stood up stiffly.  ir.  Doyle, you have often heard me spake of
Murty Kavaigh?"

"Of Naas?"

"The same.  He's gone."

"Is it kilt you mean?"

"That's what I do mean, and so is his wife kilt, and his two lildren,
and the house they lived in is gone and the town it ood in is gone."

"The town of Naas is it you mean?"

"There is no town of Naas in it now.  Every house in it is celled to
the ground."

"Praises be to the Hand of God '

Before he could pass comment there was a cheer from the rowd bustling
about the coach.  He stepped back and looked wards the alighting
passengers.  A tall man towering above theist was being received with
homage by the owner of the inn.  In ie brief exchange of news the crowd
had swelled and the Scout ad found himself pushed to the 'outside.  A
rich stentorian oice rolled over the craning heads.  The Scout,
flailing right nd left with his elbows, cried out: "There is only one
voice like tiat in all Ireland."

Behind him the driver, his prestige disregarded, and fighting is own
passage through the crowd, gasped into the Scout's *im: "There is only
one Liberator in Ireland."  The Scout tried o answer, but his mouth was
full of the elbow of a buxom lady n a bright red cloak who requested
him not to eat the elbow off ier.

"Madam," said he, you have, no doubt, a tasty elbow, but >aint Thomas
says that a thing which is not in its own place is n abomination.  I'd
be thankful if you'd keep your elbow to rourself."

The lady's face went redder than her cloak.  "How dare you all me an
abomination!"

The Scout made a breast-stroke away from her.  His feet were ff the
ground and he was literally swimming forward in the

throng.  "That," he answered, 'was merely a Thomasian figure of
speech."  He grabbed at the cape of the driver's coat as he jostled
past him.  You are the cause of all this.  Why didn't you inform me
that the great Daniel O'Connell, the Liberator of Ireland, was on your
mail coach instead of talking of trivialities like the big wind?"

"Faith, 'twas the same "triviality" brought him here in my mail coach.
The wheel of his own coach went over a hole in the road.  The linchpin
came out of the wheel, and the whole side of the carriage went over
into the ditch."

They reached the forefront of the crowd and stood looking up in awe of
the world's greatest personality, the uncrowned King of Ireland, Daniel
O'Connell.  There he stood in their own home town, unheralded except by
the trumpeting blasts of the wind that had brought him to their
midst.

As he spoke the aristocrats paused with feet on their carriage steps in
the act of departure.  The voice that no orator ever equalled rolled
across the square and every voice and sound was hushed.  To most of
them he was but a legend: the man who had liberated them from the
savagery of the Penal Code.

He grieved with them over the anguish that had come to them in the wake
of the storm.  A voice in the crowd yelled, "Sure you would have
prevented it yourself if you could, Dan."

"I would, God knows."

His tones fell softer but still all-pervading.  "There is nothing I
would not do to prevent further suffering to my sorely tried
countrymen."

Loud cheering stopped him for nearly five minutes.  He held up his hand
and there was silence.  "When the hand of man is raised against you, I
defend you with every breath of my being."

The Scout could contain himself no longer.  He ran forward and grasped
the Liberator's flowing cloak.  Toii've done that, sir," he panted. "No
man ever did more for his fellowmen."

The pat that the great orator gave to the Scout's shoulder 'went', as
he said to the mail-coach driver, 'to me very soul, and it will vibrate
down through the generations that, plaze God, will follow me."

The Liberator resumed.  "When the Hand of God is raised above us we can
but bow our heads and say, Thy will be done.  In Dublin alone I have
addressed six hundred people made homeless by the storm.  Not a stone
left of the habitations in

which they were born and reared.  I have seen the drowned bodies of
men and women washed forth from the homes along the Liffey quays.  Some
of my fellow members coming from their constituencies in the West and
South have told, in Dublin, tales that are too harrowing for your ears.
In some towns the fires blazed unremittingly from eleven o'clock at
night until six o'clock next morning.  In Loughrea the fire burned all
night, and the aid of every possible member of the male population was
of no avail.  When one half of the town was destroyed and the fire had
been almost extinguished, the wind changed and fanned the flames in the
opposite direction until the other half of the town was consumed."

Then he went on to tell them a tale of an anticlimax to the Penal
System.  The people of one small town had completed, just before
Christmas, the first church that had been built there since the
persecutions of previous centuries had razed its monasteries and
abbeys.  It had been built by the efforts and labour and contributions
of the poorest of people.  "This Christmas Day gone past," he cried,
and now the beautiful voice throbbed with feeling; there were no more
oratorical tricks, no phrase-making, and as always when he was deeply
moved, its melting pathos plucked at the heart strings of his
listeners, 'for the first time in more than a century and a half the
congregation knelt before an altar that was not erected in a cave or a
garret.  There was no curtain hung between the priest and his flock to
enable them to swear with truth, if put to it, that they knew not the
identity of the Mass celebrant."

He caught up a handful of the folds of his great cloak and threw them
across his shoulder.  Not a soul in the outermost edges of the
multitude missed one breath that now came in tremulous tones.  "On the
night of Epiphany, that Feast that celebrates the Coming of the Wise
Kings with their offerings that were the symbols of Faith and Homage
and Self-denial, on that night as you all know too well the big wind
blew."  He dropped his voice almost to a whisper, but not a syllable
was missed.  "That little church was blown to pieces.  The stones that
were hand carved with love and devotion were scattered for miles across
the countryside.  There is nothing left of that great act of faith and
human endeavour."

He raised his voice in sudden thundering.  "Who will rebuild that
church?  Where are the lords of that soil and the rightful

protectors of its people?"

Now the Scout and the enlightened ones knew where he was leading their
thoughts.  He was on his pet theme: the Repeal of the Act of Union that
had deprived Ireland of its native government, and transferred its
legislature to England.

"They have abandoned the country that they have betrayed.  These
landlords are the perpetrators of the Union that has caused misery they
shirk to share.  They do not like to stand in the sphere of their own
infamy.  They have taken shelter in England where there are no hungry
Irish faces to look shame upon them.  They are gone where they can
enjoy in peace the plunder of the betrayal, where they can squander in
luxuries the rack-rents that their agents wring from their impoverished
tenants in Ireland."

From the centre of the crowd came a cat-call.  It was Sealy Ring, a
middleman, notorious for his exploitation of the tenants of his
absentee employer..]

The crowd would have lynched him, but the voice that had held them
spellbound was now wheedling.  O'Connell had pushed the enormous
chimney-pot hat to a rakish angle that displayed the rich dark curls,
powdered with silver.  He dropped into the vernacular brogue.  "Lave
him be, boys," he shouted.  "Sure I can't find a wisp of hay for every
ass that brays!"

As the crowd laughed and cheered he tried to move away, but there
wasn't space in front of him to move a foot.  In vain did the innkeeper
and ostlers and police cry, "Make way for the Liberator!"  Finally he
was lifted up on the shoulders of some men and borne into the hall of
the inn.

The excitement over, Big John sought out Mrs.  Hogan, the nurse from
Dublin who was astonished to learn that the infant O'Carroll had
already arrived at Kilsheelin Castle.

"It will be a gathering of the giants!  How I wish I could come
downstairs for the dinner."  Margaret addressed the remark to her
husband's back.  Mr.  O'Connell and the member for Tipperary Mr.
Richard Lalor Sheil, were coming to dine at Kilsheelin Castle.  She
wished Roderick would not keep looking out of the window at that field.
Every time he came into the room he moved as though drawn from her
bedside to that window.  It was sad to think that the giant oak was
uprooted on which he had carved their entwined hearts and initials. The
lovely tea44



that a woman would admire."

"Do you think that I shall?"

"You shall not.  But it was his voice that I remember most.  It
possessed a cadence that was unforgettable.  I noticed it again the
other evening."

"He seems to have been your hero.  Who was your heroine?"

"My heroine was a brown-haired demoiselle whom I saw one day skating on
a lake in Belgium.  I watched until she came out of the Park of
Nightingales with her mama and her sister and fifteen father introduced
me to Daniel O'Connell.  I thought he i^Hi'iA^^^^^Hfckx '^V

parties they used to have under its branches!  She sighed.  Immediately
he came to her.

"Are you tired, darling?"  He placed his hand on the hair that hung
smooth and glossy again across her shoulders.  She reached up and took
his hand.

"I was just thinking of the day that you carved our names under that
funny twisted branch on the lovely tree that has gone."

Now he sighed.  "There are a great many lovely trees gone."  He had
given her no idea of the extent of the damage.  She did not know there
had been lives lost.  She knew that the turret had been hit because a
piece of it had actually come down the chimney into her room.  She knew
that a number of trees had been blown down; but she did not know that
the number ran into thousands.  She knew, too, that some beasts had
been killed, but she had not been told that a great herd of cattle had
been either drowned or killed by falling trees and flying missiles.

She would have been distressed to know that the herdsman who did the
killing had been hard set to find a sheep to kill for tomorrow's dinner
for such distinguished guests.  The thought of the dinner made her sigh
again, and the sigh made him laugh.  He slipped his arm around her
shoulder.

"What a. dismal duet!  We seem to do nothing but sigh at each other.
Wait until you see Mr.  O'Connell.  He will blow away your sighs.  He
comes into a room like a current of fresh air, and m^m n t o^^mt ~

everything and everyone brightens and quickens."  i^Hl 11 'lA^HN'

She snuggled into him.  You admire him so much that I feel a little
jealous I' IB__H I ll^^BtC "> x "I* "Good!  It is good for my morale to
know that I can make lABS lA^H^k'V> ^ N ^'

beautiful women jealous.  But I remember when I was about
S^Bi&ll^^Bli^Ax1*N*'^1W

was a most superb specimen, powerful shoulders, eyes and lips ^

her fierce old bonne who was carrying their skates.  They all got :|
into a voiture and drove off.  I followed it on foot at a gallop until
it stopped outside a certain villa in the Place de 1'figlise.  She is
still my heroine."  M I

She put up her hand and entwined her fingers in his.  "I was | no
heroine on Sunday night."

He held her to him.  You were magnificent.  I can't bear to think of
what you went through on that night of horror."

They were silent for a moment until with a little shiver she 1 said,
Let us forget it.  Let us talk of the preoarations for tomorrow's
dinner party.  O mon Dieu!  If only Mrs.  Mansfield were better!  Mrs.
Stacey is so gauche.  How is la pauvre Mansfield?"

Sir Roderick went to the window again.  Let us forget it, he thought,
bitterly.  Let us forget it and how is la pauvre Mansfield?  Where
shall I seek forgetfulness?  Out there in the peaceful landscape of my
demesne?  Out among my fallen trees, my cattle!  Out in the arid bed of
my wind-stolen land!  Margaret assessed his graceful outline, tall,
lithe, a fraction under six feet, the dark pallor of his complexion
framed in side-whiskers, the thick, up swept hair, not black, not
brown. She could not see the long blue-grey eyes but she knew that they
did not hold that lazy look of his that women found so fascinating.

"Rodereeck," she called in sudden panic, 'why do you not answer me?"

He turned to her.  What was it you asked me?  Oh yes, Mrs.  Mansfield.
She is getting on all right."

But Rodereeck, you said, and so did the doctor, that she was slightly
stunned, and that she had sprained her shoulder under the big brass
candle-holder, Rodereeck."  She pronounced his name the way she now did
in stress or pleading.  "Are you keeping something from me?"

For a moment he thought of telling her the truth.  Someone of the staff
was sure to let it out.  No one ever spoke of the housekeeper without
saying, "Poor Mrs.  Mansfield, God rest her."  Then he looked at her
dilated pupils, and remembered the strange way she had looked yesterday
when she said she thought the bed was swaying, and had made a gesture
towards the bed | pillar as though to support herself.  He came over to
her with a quick stride.  "Of course I'm not keeping anything back, you
silly girl.  But it is more than a sprain.  Her shoulder appears to be
broken.  She she was too stunned to allow of a closer examination that
first morning.  I had such a job procuring a foster nurse for my
daughter that I did not discover the extent of Mrs.  Mansfield's
injuries until Dr.  Mitchell's visit yesterday."

"Roderick, you look so so tri ste when you look through that window out
at your great inheritance.  I feel that you grieve that it was not a
son oh!"  Tension had quickened the dull pain that had never left her
head since some moment after one of the crashes during that awful
night.  Roderick turned at the sound.  He had indeed been grieving that
the child was not a son.  Inheritance, did she say!  Who was to inherit
what?  He that troubleth his house, said the proverb, shall inherit the
wind.  Heaven knows I have never troubled my house!

He took a silk handkerchief from his pocket and wiped away her tears.
"If I seem strange and preoccupied it is because there should be the
slightest dwindling of that heritage for our child.  Surely you do not
think that I could be disappointed with that solitary little blossom
that dared the elements."

There came a knock at the door and Nurse Hogan came in with the child.
Margaret took it in her arms.  "It is the tiniest baby I have ever
seen."

"Your Ladyship, for a baby that has come nearly six weeks before its
time it is coming on wonderfully."

Sir Roderick touched the tiny cheelt.  "Do you know, Margaret," he
said, "I have a dreadful suspicion that we have a redhaired woman in
the family."

"Don't you like red hair?  Let me see.  Maman and Papa are both brown,
very brown.  Yvette is golden.  Grand'mere du Clos was dark, and I do
not know what colour Grand'mere O'Regan was.  She had died in Ireland
before Papa left there.  But he always said that I resembled her the
most."

"She must have been pretty."

The nurse stood by and marvelled at the way the Quality paid
compliments to each other, an' they married, the same as if they Were
only courting.

"What colour was your father's hair, Roderick?  I know about your
mother's black ringlets.  I love to look at her portrait.  Why is there
no portrait of your father?  He seems to have been such a beau.  All
those brocaded coats and satin breeches in his tfg

Powder closet.  A man like that should have several portraits."  t
"There must be a portrait in Dublin somewhere," he replied, 'if only I
could find it.  There is an entry in his book, sixteen

47 llitl

pounds to the Painter for my Portrait.  I believe he must have sat for
it in Dublin, and it was never claimed.  They both caught the cholera
almost immediately after his return from his last trip to Dublin."

"It is all so sad."  Margaret pressed the baby's, soft cheek against
her own.  "To die so young and not be able to wear all those lovely
clothes.  There is a white satin dress in your ma man chest, and never
have I seen in Belgium upon any grande dame a gown so magnifique.  Such
exquisite Spanish lace!  And a stomacher of real brilliants, and the
train is embroidered in coral and gold."

"You shall wear it when you go to the Castle Drawing-Room."

"Oh la, Roderick, but it is demo dee  It must be unpicked and made all
over again, Rodereeck!"  Her voice went high and thin.  "This bed, it
is not safe!  It sways."  Her face went pale and strained.

"Darling, I should not have let you talk so much."  He beckoned to the
nurse.  "Give her the medicine the doctor prescribed.  It will make her
sleep."

He watched while the nurse administered the soothing draught. Gradually
Margaret became calm and drowsy.

The kitchen was alive with bustle.  The news of the visit of Daniel
O'Connell had lifted its atmosphere from the gloom and the desolation
wrought by the storm and by the death of Mrs.  Mansfield, whose calm
personality had been the support and guidance of the staff.  Michael,
the turf boy, kept coming in and out with baskets of turf which he
built up in neat stacks inside the chimney walls.  They were sopping
wet, and the ovens built into the thickness of the kitchen walls had to
be heated for baking.  The bastibles that hung over the fires on the
hearth had previously been sufficient to bake enough bread for the
household.  But now six of them, and a big griddle as well were going
all day to keep the homeless workers and tenants supplied.

The Liberator's visit was like the coming of royalty.  "O'Connell is
King of Ireland," George the Fourth had wailed when he had signed the
Emancipation Bill.  And King he had been ever since to the prostrate
millions he had raised to human status.  The chat elaine of the castle
was ill; its housekeeper dead; its butler numbed with shock and cold.
The cessations of the hearth fires had jolted the poor man in mind and
body.  Apart from freezing his bones and tubes it had cast him
breathless into

r

void, as a fish is cast from its breathing element of water into the
stifling void of air.  The hearth fire of cabin or castle never dies.
In the Kilsheelin kitchen there had been the sustained warmth of
centuries of fires that had burned winter and summer, day and night.
The butler would never forget the night of the big wind; not for its
havoc but for the icy halt in the historicity of his world.

Mrs.  Stacey was whipping a syllabub and telling the assembly that she
wouldn't take twenty golden guineas to walk in the field that 'they'
had taken.  The dish nearly fell from her hand when she saw the Sir
standing in front of her.  He asked her in Gaelic about tomorrow's
menu.  She enumerated the dishes.  Hare soup, four geese (and the
caraway seeds for stuffing, all washed away out of the cupboard), a
boiled ham and a ham baked in cider, a side and hind quarters of
mutton--and not a beast fit to kill for beef.  "Is naire orm!  There is
shame on me.  "Tis a mean boards your Honour's Sir.  Not a taste of
fish either."

"Ni fear cui ring na cuideas," he soothed her.  Enough is as good as a
feast.

"Enough!"  she exclaimed.  "The Liberator's own cook would not insult a
guest by sending meat to the table without the elegance of a fish
course.  And it isn't one kind of fish that she'd send up but often
twenty."

The Liberator, her master pointed out, had the Atlantic at his back
door; not to mention the streams and rivers that raced against each
other to bring fin down the slopes of his wild mountain territory. "And
the Liberator's cook could not hold a rush dip to the dinner that you
can cook, Mo Banaltra."

The cook's eyes felt a rush of tears.  It was many a year now since her
haughty young master had addressed her as his bal antra  When he had
been a little boy in fosterage under her brother's roof he had called
her nothing else.  That day when Sir Dominic had brought him back here
to the castle, the lonely little boy had called out so poignantly for
his banaltra that she had surrendered the independence of her own home
life to be with him here.  She reached up and touched his hand that
rested so affectionately upon her shoulder.  liHt iul^^^^^^^^^^^^AkA
**rW~

"Have no fear for tomorrow night, Dalta ma croidte.  Foster- IS1II\ 1
mA^^^^^^^^^^^Afc^ "^ ^

son of my heart."

vA

v;>v

CHAPTER 6

The first guest into the drawing-room was old Lady Cullen followed at
an interval of six paces by Lord Cullen.  The old gentleman still
dressed like a Georgian buck.  He gleamed from wig to shoe buckle.  The
only dull thing about him was the socket on each side of his nose where
a roguish eye was sunk too deep to display its twinkle.

"Incredible," he cackled as he minced across the carpet.  "I thought
that we had sustained considerable damage at Crannagh Hall but, egad,
it was only the sigh of a zephyr compared to what I have seen as we
drove up your avenue.  Felicitations."

Roderick didn't feel that the storm's havoc was anything to be
felicitated upon.  But the old dandy proceeded.  "Fancy being presented
with a daughter in the midst of such a tempest!  What a wonderful lady
is your charming wife!  An amazing feat, egad!"

"Shut up, Cullen," said his own wife.  "The girl had no alternative
once it started.  Take me to her, Rody."

On the way up he requested the old lady not to allude to the
housekeeper's death.  "She does not know that Mrs.  Mansfield is
dead."

"What do you take me for?"  Lady Cullen demanded.  "An omadhawn?"  In
the bedroom she noted the distended pupils and the constant tremor of
Margaret's lips.  But she hugged her briskly and closed the baby's
fingers over a gold four-pound piece for luck.

"Have you decided what you are going to call her?"

Margaret admitted that they had not.  "She came before we had
decided."

"Everything is topsy-turvy," Lady Cullen observed.  "In the ordinary
course of etiquette, a lady should not receive until she is at least a
month confined; of course, if I were a proper lady I would not attempt
to pay a call at this stage, but when we heard of the arrival and I
knew that the weather was rather bad that iL

i!!:

nig^t' I insisted on accompanying Cullen when Roderick invited him to
dine with Mr.  O'Connell.  What a man that is!"

Yes.  I feel that I ought to make an effort to rise and give him
fitting welcome."

"Don't think of such a crazy notion."

"Ah, but he is almost like royalty.  In Belgium he was one of the names
they chose when they were seeking a candidate to elect as King."

"He is greater than royalty.  He is the saviour of Ireland.  When I
think of the tribulations we have endured!  I have known relatives of
mine to be disposed and imprisoned because it became known that they
had made wills leaving their own property to their families.  Yes, I
have known a relative of mine to be beaten to death because he carried
a walking stick.  The Penal System regarded a walking stick in the hand
of a Catholic as the bearing of arms."

Margaret began to show signs of restlessness and the nurse glided over
to her.  Lady Cullen took the hint.  "I'd better go down in case Cullen
is putting his foot in it.  Do you know, my dear, I always knew he was
an idiot but latterly he is becoming an eejit."  She stopped and kissed
her young kinswoman.  "Hurry and get well, my dear, before the next
Drawing-Room.  Remember, I'm going to present you."

When she had gone Nurse Hogan took a liberty for the first time.  She
had noticed that strained look come on her patient's face when the old
lady spoke of beatings and cruelties.

"Herself and her Penal talk!"  she exploded.  "Couldn't she talk of
something pleasant and natural like--like the weather?"

Margaret smiled.  "She did talk about the weather.  She said it was
rather bad last Friday night, and it was.  No matter what
divertissement you create!"  She caught the nurse's hand.  "Mrs. 
Hogan, you won't leave me?  I get so frightened and you seem to
understand. Were you frightened that night?"

"I was, my Lady, very frightened."

"Did you have an unpleasant experience?"

The nurse did not answer for a second, then she said quietly, Yes, my
Lady, I had an unpleasant experience."

"What is it?  Tell me please."  The nurse turned towards the Window.
With the trees gone it was possible to see right down to the entrance
and she saw, to her surprise that it was crammed ^th people and beyond
the broken boundary wall the road was

dense with people.  She turned back ... startled.

"Your Ladyship, it is not going to be a very private visit.  The
demesne is thronged with people.  Perhaps Sir Roderick does not know.
The window under this is shuttered because of broken glass.  It will be
terrible for you if they start cheering and shouting."

"Oh, I hope they do cheer.  That kind of noise does not disturb me.  I
hate wailing winds and I fear being trapped in something that sways
back or throws me into some dark, smoky place."

A knock admitted Hannah preceding the footman who nearly staggered
under the weight of a massive silver tray laden with food.

The nurse was glad of the interruption.  It was a relief to tuck a big
napkin under her Ladyship's pretty chin and coax her to try a tiny
taste of all the lovely food that Mrs.  Stacey sent in such
quantities.

Lady Cullen arrived back in the drawing-room just in time to check her
husband's footwork.  He had been hopping around the room exclaiming and
simpering over every battered shred of priceless bric-a-brac.  Sir
Roderick, wincing as each fresh objet de vertu was held before the
quizzing glass, felt that all that was needed was a hammer to complete
the picture of a little, wizened dealer crying, "Fifteenth-century
Portuguese--er-somewhat damaged," and dropping a priceless heirloom for
some contemptible bid.

Sir Roderick was relieved by the old lady's return.  Behind her the
butler was announcing, "The Messieurs de Guider'.  Two middle-aged
gentlemen, dressed exactly alike in bright-blue frock coats with brass
buttons and wearing dark brown wigs?  came forward with solemn faces.
They greeted Sir Roderick as though they were offering condolences to
the bereaved.

"A terrible sight!"  The elder twin waved his hand towards the window
to indicate the havoc he had seen outside.  When the younger one said
to Sir Roderick, "I'm sorry for your trouble his host half expected him
to add, "I'm a friend of the corpses like one of the tenants at a wake
house

A cheer from the waiting crowd at the gateway announced Mr.  O'ConnelTs
approach.  The old hard moved out of the shadow of the hallway to play
a welcoming air.  The avenue had been sufficiently cleared to make it
possible for a carriage to gfi

through.  But it was not timber but a solid phalanx of human beings
that impeded the carriage bearing the Liberator.

Sir Roderick, standing at the porch with his guests, was perturbed at
the spectacle.  "A gentleman should have some privacy in his own
grounds," said Lord Cullen.

His host, with a sweep towards the half-upright gates and the big gaPs
in the hAh wall that exposed the house to the highway, said ruefully,
"There is not much privacy there and anyway, Mr.  O'Connell is a public
institution.  He belongs to them."  He nodded his head towards the
crowd.

The yard at the back emptied itself of workers.  From across the fields
tenants, men, women and children came streaming.  They finally took the
horses from the shafts and drew the carriage themselves.  Every few
yards men jostled to share the honour of drawing the Liberator. Through
the park rang the incessant cries of "Long live O'Connell! Long live
the Liberator of Ireland!"

Sir Roderick came forward and bowed with a dignity that was almost
reverence.  Lady Cullen curtsied as though to royalty and her husband
made a leg.  The two gentlemen in blue bowed with courtly grace.  '

"This is a proud day for my house, sir," said Roderick, "I only wish
that it were in more fitting shape for your reception, but you have
come in the wake of the storm."  As he stepped back at the drawing-room
door to admit Mr.  O'Connell and his host, Mr.  Richard Lalor Sheil, he
waved his hand with a sweep of display, "We are compelled to receive
you in its track."  The great pile of glass in theA corner caught the
visitor's eyes.  "Ah," cried Mr.  O'Connell, 'that superb chandelier!
There is nothing grander in Dublin Castle.  I remember it in your
father's time.  He was very proud of it."

"Both his grandfather and father were great collectors," said Mr. Lalor
Sheil.  "This is a treasure house of lovely things.  Roderick has the
collecting urge too.  Have you made any add il ons lately, Roderick?"

Lord Cullen pointed his cane handle towards the ceiling and cackled
heartily, "A most valuable specimen."  He kept on cack- ing at his own
joke about the baby until his wife jogged his elbow and sent snuff down
his ruffles.

May I be privileged to view the specimen and its fair pro- ucer?"  said
Mr.  O'Connell.  "It is not customary I know to

III

Hii

intrude so soon but I must leave for London in a few days.  It may be
a long time again before I have the pleasure of meeting your wife and
her baby."

"If you will come this way, sir, my wife will be honoured."

As they ascended the stairs Mr.  O'Connell continued, "Her father and
my brother, Maurice, and myself only narrowly escaped being guillotined
when we were trying to get from Douai College to Calais.  It was the
day Louis the Sixteenth was executed in Paris."

Margaret's pale face flushed to receive such a personage in such a
place and in such an illness.  Mr.  O'Connell kissed the hand she shyly
extended.  He spoke to her in French.  "I crave a thousand pardons for
such an indelicate intrusion.  But I had to see the charming chat
elaine and now that I have seen her I know that my impeachment of
etiquette was worthy of the risk."  He turned to Sir Roderick.  "You
have made a worthy contribution to your forefathers' collection of the
beautiful. Allow me to congratulate you."

He turned back to Margaret.  "You have the same glossy, brown hair as
your grandmother Madame The O'Regan.  Her son, your gallant father, God
rest him, and my brother and myself hid in the same haystack from the
revolutionaries when we were making our escape from the college."

"I have often heard him speak of that day, Monsieur O'Connell," said
Margaret.

O'Connell was delighted.  "Now you don't say!  It makes me glad and
proud to know that he held me in his memory."

"He held you in his memory with great affection," she answered.

"Sir Roderick, it was worth my risking your sweet lady's displeasure to
come to her bower and learn that I had not been forgotten by that brave
soldier and Irishman, Colonel Michael O'Regan.  And now, where is his
grandchild?"  He took the tiny baby in his arms.

"Little flower of the storm," he murmured.  What name have you chosen
for the little treasure?"  he asked.

"We have not decided, sir.  She came impetuously and her coming had to
take second place to the storm," answered the father.

"Poor little mite, she had a trying passage.  I know what I would call
her if she were mine."

Sir Roderick turned eagerly to his wife.  "Darling, shall we ask jvlr.
O'Connell to choose a name?"

Margaret's laugh rang out in all its former exuberance.  "Oh,
Roderick!"  she cried, 'veritably Mr.  O'Connell has more weighty
things to settle than the matter of a baby's name."

"Forgive me for daring to contradict a lady, and one so lovely and
charming, but a baby's name is a very important matter.  I believe that
a name influences the life of its owner for all time, be it long or
short.  I think if I owned this little one I should be tempted to call
in BlawnaSthurrim."

"Sther-een!"  Margaret wrinkled her brows.  "It sounds very long and
difficult.  I could never pronounce such a name."

"Stherrin is the Western pronunciation," said the Liberator.  "Have you
not acquired the Gaelic?  How do you conduct your household?"  I

Mr.  O'Connell had taken it for granted that Margaret, despite her
continental birth would have been familiar with Gaelic.  "The butler
speaks French," she explained, 'and Mrs.  Mansfield speaks English.
What does the name mean?"

"It means," said her husband, "Flower of the Storm."

"And," said Mr.  O'Connell, 'you may take the flower part for granted
and call her just Sthurrim."

"Mr.  O'Connell, do you know I like the meaning of the name.  I should
like to think of her growing up strong and vigorous like her name.  She
is so tiny now."

"She will outgrow that fault, dear lady, and she will have the strength
of the storm and the courage of her forebears and she already shows
signs of the beauty of her mother

"Sther-een," Margaret kept repeating the name, struggling with the
pronunciation.

"I like the way you say it best, darling," Roderick said.  "Sterrin it
shall be."  )

The Liberator took a gallant leave of Margaret and returned to the
company below.  The new name and its owner were toasted in the
dining-room by Richard Lalor Sheil.  "Wait!"  cried Sir Roderick, as
Richard was about to raise his glass.  "We'll drink from the Mether
Cup. It is one of the baubles that he storm has left intact."

He took from the sideboard a big quadrangular-shaped cup "^de of yew
wood.  A silver-mounted handle was fitted on each * the four sides. Mr.
 O'Connell leaned across to examine it.

%*.  --** ^ > w_ ^b .. m ^to

"Did Cromwell have a sup out of that?"  he asked.  "There is some
story, is there not, that your illustrious ancestor Taidgh Ruadh
O'Carroll was inhospitable enough to refuse the poor man a drink when
he paid a courtesy call to the castle?"

"He did not exactly refuse, but when old Boney-face demanded that he
send his servants with refreshments to his men, my little red-headed
ancestor planted his feet across the width of the porch and said:
"There is a great mortality upon my house.  I am the last of my
household that the plague has left standing and I fear I shall not
stand upright much longer."

"Did he fall for the ruse?"  asked Stephen de Guider.

"Like a shot.  Cromwell jumped up on his horse and said that neither he
nor his men would taste anything from a pesty house.  But he promised
to call again."

He filled the Mether Cup with wine.  "He never returned."  He placed
the big square cup in front of his cousin.  "I must confess, Richard,"
he said, and there was a faintly bitter twist to his smile, 'that of
all the uninvited guests who have come with covetousness in their
hearts, the first to succeed in wresting a portion of my land from me
was the one who came last night week--The Big Wind."

Richard Lalor Sheil rose to his feet.  He knew that his cousin regarded
the loss of the few acres as something sinister and supernatural so he
refrained from those picturesque phrases that enchanted his hearers in
the House of Commons.  "May all your misfortune blow away with the
field.  When Nature robbed the cradle of your land, a sweet hostage was
placed in the cradle that held your own body.  We drink to Sterrin!"

He moved the cup towards Lady Cullen.  She placed her hand on one of
the handles and took a sip.  "To Sterrin," she cried.

The cup went round the table.  "To Sterrin, God bless her," cried the
Liberator in ringing tones.

CHAPTER 7

It was the Feast of Epiphany again.  Were it not for the obligation to
hear mass, Sir Roderick would have wished the day to drop unnoticed
into the passing week; no reminiscences; no associations.

For long after last Epiphany Margaret had drooped like a flower crushed
by the storm, and when her body had recovered from the birth of
Sterrin, her mind's vigour had lagged behind.  There had been times
when Roderick had feared that she might carry a permanent scar to
shadow the brightness of her mind.  She had become subject to violent
pains and whirrings in her head.  They gave her the sensation,
amounting almost to hallucination, that she was a small boat,
rudderless and oar less tossing on a wild sea at the mercy of the
winds.

But gradually that quality of winsome serenity that had so intrigued
Roderick began to return.  Margaret had entered gaily into all the
Christmas festivities, but on Christmas night while the hard was
playing to them in the drawing-room a gust of wind rattled the windows
and the old man stopped his music.  He wandered off into a lot of old
'rawmaish' about the Wild Huntsman on his Eight-footed Steed who rides
forth between the date of the sun's death in the middle of December and
the Twelfth Day.  Margaret grew strained again and started to watch for
a recurrence of the terrible storm that she assumed must be a fixture
of the Irish calendar and clime.

Roderick had outraged the hard by ordering the hanger-on musician
Paddy-the-Tat from the kitchen to play his lively jigs and reels.  He
banned all further references to the Big Wind, even references to the
baby's birth.  He kept Margaret on the go so much during those twelve
visiting days of Christmas when every house stood open and everyone
visited everyone else that ^e twelfth and last day came upon her
unawares.  All she realised was that two of the most glittering and
sought-after-hostesses of the garrison society were coming for this
new57

fashioned afternoon tea that she found so delightful.

Roderick had told her he would be late today.  He did not say why, but
Margaret was sure it had something to do with the Whiteboys.  She was
not precisely sure what the Whiteboys were, but Roderick had explained
to her that they were an organisation whose stated purpose was to
protest against unfair landlords, but who now seemed interested in
little else but violence.  They roamed the countryside, their faces
blackened, wearing white shirts over their outer garments.  They seemed
more interested in crime than causes, and left terror and sometimes
death in their wake.  Margaret didn't like to think about them.  She
wondered if she would ever get used to this strange country.  Whether
her love for her handsome, sensitive husband would overcome her fear of
the land and the people he loved so much.  She wished he were with her
now to help her entertain her guests.

In the drawing-room Thomas the knife boy was helping the footman to
light the one hundred and forty-seven candles that was all the
chandelier could now hold.

"It is a poor light compared to what used to be in it before this night
twelvemonths," said the footman, looking up regretfully at the depleted
chandelier.  "Three hundred and fifty candles I used to light on it."
He sighed gustily.

Young Thomas dutifully echoed his superior's sigh with more force than
sadness.  It blew out his taper whose holder was taller than himself.
"It must have been a great blaze," he said.  "Mrs.  Stacey says that it
is unlucky to keep a thing after it is broken.  She says it should be
broken into three more pieces and then thrown out."

The footman said that Mrs.  Stacey said more than her prayers.  "People
couldn't be expected to throw out a thing like that as if it were a
broken mug."

Young Thomas looked up dreamingly at the shapely tree of gleaming glass
and colour that had so many of its branches and blossoms blighted.  "I
suppose," he said, 'that people who are born into owning grandeur like
that have to bide with it when it meets misfortune.  They probably have
to accept whatever bad luck it brings."

The footman leaned on the long lighter and looked sternly a1 the lad.
"I'm thinkin' it is too much time that you have on your hands since you
went out with the Sir on the front of his horse.

Jt's not right for the likes of you to be lyin' lazin in bed until
half-past six in the mornin's and wastin' time when you are up,
learnin' to write off them tombstones.  What would Nurse Hogan say if
she knew?"

But Nurse Hogan did know.  She had come upon him one day when no one
was about, labouring over a sheet of brown paper in the coach house  On
rows of uneven lines scrawled with white chalk were written in great
sprawling words "Richardus O'Car roll nobilis de Kilsheelin 1672 and
William O'Carroll, Kilsheelin, Gentleman, who was happily emigrated to
the Kingdom of Heaven Anno Domini 1701."  Along the wall in front of
the copy paper were ranged the tombstones uprooted by the Big Wind.

The sight of the nameless waif teaching himself to write had stirred
the aching roots of her heart.  It recalled the studious young son who
had been hurled from her life the night the tombstones had been
uprooted.  Had she protested there would have been an end to young
Thomas's writing accomplishment; because the nurse had become almost
indispensable to Lady O'Carroll.  So deftly had she fitted into the
household that she had taken over Mrs.  Mansfield's post with almost
companion status.

A tinkle of bells and a frou-frou of silk warned the footman and his
helper that Lady O'Carroll had entered the room.  Thomas wondered how
her Ladyship's feet operated.  She seemed to float along in a limbless
son of way.  Only the bells and keys in her chat elaine belt suggested
movement.

The boy had never before been so close to her Ladyship.  He had only
peeped through banisters or around corners at a remote and rustling
graciousness, a wafting of fragrance, a tinkling of sound like the
music heard at fairy raths.  He gazed raptly at her foreign-seeming
complexion and her great brown eKs, and the tall lighter in his hand
became a lance uplifted.

She gazed about her to make sure that there was no nook or corner left
unlighted to shadow fearsome ness  Lighted candelabra stood on every
table and cabinet.  She pointed to a branch Alights and bade the
footman place them in a distant corner, Ah^t was better!  Now there
wasn't a dark shadow in all the room.  '

A carriage jingled to a halt outside the window.  A charming y ung
officer whom she had met during the week at a military



hunt breakfast was handing out someone dressed in a ravishing black
velvet hat with a sable cloak.  Margaret gave a discreet peep from
behind the hangings.  She made little smoothing movements with her
fingers down the fifteen bows that reached from her collar to the first
frill of her skirt, then the butler announced, "Mrs.  Appleyard, Mrs.
Kennedy-Sherwin and Lieutenant Fitzharding-Smith."

Mrs.  Appleyard drew Margaret under the brim of her hat and dabbed her
cheek with the edge of her own.  "Sweet Lady O'Carroll!  How charming
you look!  So ingenue I And that i exquisite gown!  I don't have to ask
if it is French.  Only a Parisian dressmaker could have dreamed of
those fascinating bows marching all the way up the facade a

"Like a flight of silken steps."  Margaret pretended not to hear * the
interruption.  There was so much open admiration in the young
lieutenant's eyes that he might mean something subtle.

She turned to Mrs.  Kennedy-Sherwin and was relieved at the sight of
her small, frilly bonnet that could not sweep her inside its brim.  But
the vivacious little brunette was not at all the embracing type.  She
was contented to compliment Margaret on her shy waistline.

Margaret decided that this phrase had better be ignored also.  She
wasn't sure what a 'shy' waistline was.  One never could be quite sure
with the garrison colony.  They were so gay and modern.  She just
smiled and welcomed her but gave an involuntary look towards her
waistline.

Lieutenant Fitzharding-Smith followed her glance and as he bowed over
her hand he said, You must know, Lady O'Carroll, that a lady's waist
has the shy quality of the violet that shrinks but is never
shrunken."

Margaret was glad when the arrival of tea gave her a chance to
barricade herself behind the big tea urn.  Her sense of fun had
survived her rigid upbringing but had yielded no tricks of repartee.

She sipped her unsweetened tea and nibbled at the lump of sugar on her
saucer and listened to the gay gossip that held wisps of scandal.
Captain Bellamy had called out Captain Hatton of the Thirty-first and
when he flicked his sword through his opponent's scalp and displayed on
its tip a lock of rich, but false, brown hair called out, "I am quite
satisfied."

"He had never been really satisfied about its genuineness

before," Lieutenant Fitzharding-Smith explained in case the joke
missed his hostess.

"He must think me very stupid," she thought.  Aloud she remarked,
"Wasn't it a leetle unkind?  And also, why did he not wear a wig
instead of a toupee?"

"Because, my dear," said Mrs.  Kennedy-Sherwin, 'he had not yet
accustomed himself to the premature loss of a very handsome head of
hair."

Margaret was glad now that Roderick was detained, even though the nasty
threats from the Whiteboy organisation did worry her.  Roderick had
never expressed any disapproval of Mrs.  Appleyard and her set but he
showed no urge towards friendship there.  He would certainly disapprove
of such idle chatter.

It was a relief when Hegarty came in to say that Nurse Hogan wished to
know if she would have Miss Sterrin brought down.

Miss Sterrin, in her nursemaid's arms and marshalled by Nurse Hogan,
gazed with complete composure out of deep blue eyes that subdued her
audience into silence.  They grouped around the stage of her beauty and
paid tribute.

"Lieutenant Fitzharding-Smith put a finger under her chin and Sterrin
effortlessly and noiselessly vomited a few bubbles of milk pudding over
his finger on to the frills of Malines lace.  "When she is the toast of
the country I shall boast of this condescension," he said as he brought
the silk handkerchief into action again.

Nurse Hogan was contrite.  "Has she over-eaten again?"  Margaret
asked.

She turned apologetically to her guests.  "She eats enormously for a
baby but she was so tiny when she was born that it is good to see her
thriving so."

"What a quaint name," said Mrs.  Kennedy-Sherwin, 'is it some name of
your family in Belgium?"

Margaret explained the storm significance of the name.  "My dear," said
Mrs.  Appleyard, 'you were the heroine of the hour.  We were having a
card party when a courier came for the surgeon.  The roof of the
guardhouse had blown in and the men Were being blown around like
leaves.  Lord knows how many limbs were broken."

"It was such fun said Mrs.  Kennedy-Sherwin.  "All the guests

/ 61

had to stay overnight.  There were four of us in Cynthia's bedroom and
the men were sleeping on couches in the drawing room."

"Yes, "the flying sentry" came home to find his bedroom gone and his
wife standing on the part of the floor that had not crashed to the
floor beneath.  By Jove, it was deuced funny to see her standing there
in her nightgown.  One wall, all flowery wallpaper, stood behind her.
The other three, and the roof, all gone."  Nurse Hogan's hand
trembled.

Margaret took the baby.  She looked down tensely at the red gold curls.
Through them she saw a bedroom floor and a woman lying in shadow, blood
smearing the hot candle wax.

Nurse Hogan moved to her.  "Shall I take her now, your Ladyship?"

Lieutenant Fitzharding-Smith noticed Margaret's pallor.  As Nurse Hogan
took the baby from her mother, the lieutenant stepped towards her and
made a sweeping bow.  "Allow me to pay a small tribute to one whom I
shall not dare to approach when this dawning beauty has reached its
full noontide."  He suddenly produced a silver flower, tulip shaped,
with a mother of-pearl handle set round with tiny bells that tinkled
sweetly.

Margaret looked up at him and her eyes were wide with gratitude; for
his sensitive timing.  She had thought she was going to faint.  How
could he have known that it was the baby's birthday?  And how could she
admit to any of them that she, its mother, had forgotten what day it
was!  What had that terrible storm done to her?

She looked deep into Lieutenant Fitzharding-Smith's eyes with
affection.  The officer did not dare to interpret her look for what it
seemed to express.  But he was conscious of some deep emotion behind
those lovely eyes.  He felt colour heating his cheeks and his pulse
quickened.

The baby broke the tension with a musical cascade from the costly
'rattle' he had given her.  The nurse adjusted a white fur hood over
the red gold curls against the chill air of the passages and stairs. As
the little procession left the drawing-room a silvery sound of bells
wafted back.  Margaret gave a happy little laugh.  "I love tinkling
sounds!  Every time that I shall hear these bells I shall feel
compelled to think of you."

"Compelled!"  His eyebrows registered mock dismay.  "Only under
compulsion shall I be remembered?"  1

"Mais now' she cried.  You mock my English.  It is when I desire to
say something tres gent il that I sometimes put into it my f00* an * ^y
instead something gauche."

"You could not say anything gauche however hard you tried."

There was homage in his voice and eyes.  Abruptly he turned the topic
to door-knockers.  He had been hauled before the colonel for his part
in a door-knocker raid the night before.  We really expected to be
confined to barracks this week.  We bagged fifteen knockers.  Every
house in the Mall except Dr.  Mitchell's and only ten-shillings fine!
It was deucedly cheap!  I was afraid I should have had to miss the
Moonlight Ball.  Are you going, Lady O'Carroll?"

Before she could reply Sir Roderick entered the room.  Despite the
courtesy of his greeting the tempo of the little gathering abated.
Margaret noted with an inward sigh the stern look that had become so
habitual since that horrid storm.

The small talk faltered like a song gone out of tune.  Lieutenant
Fitzharding-Smith decided to come to the rescue with something solid
and man-to-man.  "I believe, sir," he said, 'that you are having
difficulty with that fellow who grabbed your land?"  To judge from his
host's expression the young man felt that it might have been wiser to
stick to the Moonlight Ball theme.

Mrs.  Kennedy-Sherwin saved Roderick the necessity of replying by
announcing that she had eaten all the French bonbons.  He turned at
once to ring and have the bonbonniere replenished, but she had started
to draw on her pelisse.  He turned back to assist her.  Margaret looked
bleak as Lieutenant Fitzharding-Smith collected the big sable muff that
was en suite with Mrs.  Appleyard's collar.  Her little festivity was
ending!

To prolong the moment of departure rather than of necessity, ^^^^^^ ^ _
^

she led the ladies to the little ante-room where her father-in-
IHIiiiB^^AHA'* \^^Vi law's friends used to put the last touches to
their toilets before llffllllii^^^^^Mt^TL^1'."**!

entering the drawing-room.

They chattered with restored vivacity as they titivated before the
mirror on the wig-powder stand.  Margaret watched closely as Mrs.
Appleyard took the little ewer of rose water from the lower tier and
poured some into the basin on the top tier.  What Would happen if she
wet her complexion?  Rumour had it that the blonde beauty used not only
'visage powder but rouge!

But the lady just wet her fingertips, peered into the mirror

and said she looked a hag.  Her hostess courteously repudiated such a
suggestion, and her friend neither agreeing nor disagreeing told her to
cheer up, the violets would soon be in season.

"Violets!"  said Margaret, intrigued at the hint of a new beauty tip.
"Do they help?"

"Of course," shrilled Mrs.  Kennedy-Sherwin.  "Fancy your not knowing!
It is the most marvelous lotion.  Violets boiled in milk with Oh, my
gracious!  What is that?"

A dull explosive sound followed by a crash sounded from across the hall
in the direction of the drawing-room.  Margaret leaned back against the
wig block, her face ashen .  "Quick!  She's going to faint."  Mrs.
Appleyard pulled smelling-salts from her muff and Mrs.  Sherwin opened
the door to peep out.

Footsteps pounded across the hall.  "La!"  she cried.  "Where are the
gentlemen off to?  They are simply racing out."

The two men were barely in time to see the white-clad figures of men
running into the shrubbery.  They could hear them calling to others to
go back that there were military after them.

Sir Roderick laid a restraining hand upon the younger man's shoulder.
"Put away your pistol.  I don't want bloodshed if I can avoid it.  They
will only shed more blood in retaliation!  Perhaps my wife's or my
child's.1

"Surely not, sir!  Pardon my saying it, but I thought that they did not
attack their owner--I mean you are a Catholic like themselves, I
thought that they respected their own co-religionists."

"They don't care whom they attack.  They have lost sight of the
original grievance that started the Whiteboy movement.  It is no longer
a matter of tithes or evictions or any other agrarian discontent.  It
is sheer brutality for its own sake."  He climbed a little knoll in the
shrubbery, and peered.  "I'll hold a crown that tall fellow is a son of
Keating's.  The white shirt doesn't cover that new suit."  He had
noticed it at Mass today.  He found himself noticing the most ordinary
details about this family whose existence he had scarcely noticed
previously.  His face was bitter as he stepped off the knoll.  Sir
Roderick suddenly became aware of his guest's scrutiny "Forgive my
preoccupation with my own affairs.  It is a churlish way to treat a
guest.  I have reason to be glad of your presence here today.  The
minute they saw the colour of your uniform coming round the terrace
they took to their heels.  They probably thought I had a company of
military installed for protection."

"I'm deuced glad I was here, sir.  Would it not be a wise precaution to
arrange to have a company of military posted here?"

"No, 1*11 deal with them myself.  We have lived in harmony with our
tenants throughout the generations.  It is inconceivable now that I
should protect myself from them with military display.  No O'Carroll of
Kilsheelin has even been known to evict a tenant or raise a rent and
Heaven knows we have held our lands with stress and strait."

"But, sir, I hope you won't think it devilishly impertinent of me to
point out the risk that you mentioned yourself a moment ago.  You spoke
of the danger to your wife and child.  Surely any suspicion of danger
to them would outweigh any feudal conception of protecu'veness towards
your tenantry?"

Sir Roderick realised that the young man spoke truly.  His own
obstinacy and possessiveness was exposing his sweet Margaret and her
little storm flower to danger.  In a friendlier tone he said, "I do not
anticipate a recurrence of such raids.  Tonight has a special
significance.  It is an anniversary and--a warning We had better return
to the ladies.  Let us hope they heard nothing."

He did not catch what his companion was saying about a cockfight the
next morning.  He was thinking if it had only been any of the fields
stretching away behind the castle!  But it had to be from those too few
fertile acres to the front.

They found the drawing-room all aflutter.  Mrs.  Appleyard, with
gold-topped smelling-salts still in play, stood over Margaret.  Mrs.
Kennedy-Sherwin sat beside her on the couch holding her hand and giving
it little pats, and Mrs.  Hogan hovered anxiously in the background.

In the centre of the room the butler supervised the sweeping UP of
broken glass.  Overhead, a mutilated branch had lost twelve blossoms
that had held twelve lights.

"Are you all right, my darling?"  Sir Roderick bent over Margaret and
Mrs.  Appleyard looked in solemn wonder at that tone and gaze of
deepest love that she, the golden toast, had never evoked in any man.

Margaret looked up wild-eyed.  "Oh, Roderick.  It is die same all over
again.  It is not Sterrin's birthday.  It is the anniversary

ill!

*

of the storm.  The crash, that smell, the scorching, and all that
candle grease on the carpet.  It is just like when Mrs.  Mansfield '

He wished the visitors in Timbuctoo that he might take her in his arms.
But little Mrs.  Kennedy-Sherwin gave things a practical turn by
announcing that she felt faint.  Above the six teen-inch waistline her
heart was feeling the protesting pressure of the potato bread.  In that
moment of drama she was able to swoon into a most ladylike faint.

Margaret was immediately on her feet, all attendance and concern.  Mrs.
Appleyard transferred the smelling salts to the petite nostrils that
had a tendency to quiver despite their owner's efforts to maintain a
wan stillness.  Lieutenant Fitzharding-Smith chafed the tiny wrists
that lay so pathetically in his palm.  Nurse Hogan hurried in with
burnt feathers.  Margaret unfastened as many buttons as modesty would
allow.  Roderick, relieved that the poor little lady had averted a
complete breakdown, brought more cushions in an excess of gratitude
while Mrs.  Kennedy-Sherwin felt that this was the most successful
faint she had ever had in her life.  ,;

The visitors made their farewells with practised grace.  Lieutenant
Fitzharding-Smith bent low over his hostess's flaccid hand.  Little
Mrs.  Kennedy-Sherwin murmured something about the morrow's cockfight
breakfast and an opera performance at Sir Jocelyn Devine's in Kilkenny.
Roderick tried to frame a refusal that would not sound too unfriendly.
Nurse Hogan helped Margaret upstairs.

Roderick hurried his guests to their carriage, and waved them on their
way.  Returning, he noticed a man standing by the gate.  George Lucas
was his name and he was seeking employment.

He told Roderick that he was one of the twenty farmers who had been
evicted by Major Darby because a sheep had been stolen.  The evictions
had disgusted Roderick; the farmers involved were decent, honest men.
Darby was the type of landlord who regarded his tenants as being a
lower species than his livestock.

Roderick was not impressed by Lucas, a small man with small eyes that
had the blue-black sheen of the beetle.  His wife, he said, had given
birth to a child the night of the Big Wind; when he returned after
seeking help for her he (found that she and the child that had been
born in his absence had both been drowned

II

by the sudden flood that had washed them from the bed..

It was obvious that the man was pressing an affinity with Sir
Roderick's own experiences.  The poor devil had been tragically dealt
with by that freak storm; but, between workers and hangers-on Roderick
already had more workers than work.  The man persisted.  He had been,
he said, a skilled bricklayer before he had acquired the farm.  He
looked pointedly at the section of boundary wall that still gaped on
the "Sir's road' since the Big Wind.  He wouldn't dream of a
tradesman's wages, just a farm worker's, or less.

The man seemed to speak by insinuations.  Roderick knew that he was
referring to the fact that the skilled men who had been engaged to
rebuild the wall had left it one third finished and rushed off to where
bricklayers had been rumoured to get as much as seven and six a day for
repairing storm damage.  Lucas was effusive when Roderick agreed to
employ him.  Your Honour's Sir will never regret this turn," he said. m
; mi

Roderick looked into the small eyes.  "I trust," he replied "^

coldly, 'that you will never give me cause for regret."

That night when he wrote in his black book, it was to enter: "George
Lucas is to work for me until after the harvest at five shillings per
week and his victuals.  I am to keep back sixpence a week to be sure of
his not going.  If he goes he forfeits sixpence per week."  Roderick
looked long at the last entry.  It was the first time that he had ever
made use of this condition in the terms of Hi a man's employment.

CHAPTER 8

Sterrin came scrambling up the back stairs in answer to her name.

"So you've been in the kitchen again!  What were you doing there?"

"Helping young Thomas to clean the knives."

"What!"  Nurse Hogan was aghast.  "The idea of you demeaning yourself
at such a task!  And don't you know that you are not supposed to go to
the kitchen?"

Sterrin sighed, "All the fun is in the kitchen."  She strained up to
the mirror on the nurse's dressing-table and sighed again.  "I wish I
hadn't red hair.  The fairies are always trying to steal red haired
babies.  They have their eye on me."  The nurse knew where this bit of
pishoguerie was coming from.  She resolved to speak to Mrs.  Stacey.

"Sit down, Miss Sterrin.  I have something to say to you.  No, don't
lean forward with your elbows on your knees like an old man smoking a
pipe.  Sit upright and fold your hands the way you were taught to."

The nurse marvelled anew at the startling contrast between the child's
vivid red hair and jet-black brows.  Sometimes it was hard to realise
that Miss Sterrin was only a child.  She was so much a--a person.  And
that clear voice of hers never fumbled a word and never prattled baby
talk.

"Miss Sterrin, you know that your papa and mamma may be going to Dublin
after Christmas?"

Sterrin nodded.  "Mamma is going to the castle to curtsey to the lady
who rules over Ireland while the Queen is busy keeping her eye on
England."

"Who on earth told you such a thing?"

"Young Thomas."  Before the nurse could remonstrate about her
associates, Sterrin's eyes spilled over.  The nurse's heart smote her.
The child rarely cried or made demands.  It often seemed to the nurse
as though the child lacked the security of

direct and all-enveloping love.  Her parents' love came to her through
the muffling sense of their disappointment that she had not been a boy:
and then they were so wrapped up in each other!

"I shall be very lonely when everybody goes away.  You and Papa afid
Mamma."

The nurse hugged the warm, heaving body; she thought of how her frozen
heart had responded to its warmth the first night she arrived at the
castle.  The child's mother too, for all her grandeur and her
possessions had a lost, helpless look in her lovely brown eyes that had
made an appeal to one who had thought never again to respond to human
emotion.

Did you have an unpleasant experience that night?  her Ladyship had
asked.  Nurse Hogan gripped the child closer as though to protect
herself from the memory of that experience.  Unpleasant I It was
unpleasant to have the roof ripped from above your head; unpleasant to
be hurled in your bed with your husband and your child down through
ceiling after ceiling to the basement.  She thought now of the day when
she returned from the funeral of her husband and son and passed the
bustle of a waiting mail coach.  Someone had shouted something about
Templetown.  The name had penetrated her numbed brain.  That was the
place where she had been engaged to go as Nurse-Tender for the
confinement of a lady of title!  She had lost that too; everything and
everyone.  Then she heard someone expostulating with the guard who was
insisting that those who had paid to travel on Monday must get the
first preference.  As she stood on the sidewalk looking at the gaping
rooms of her roofless home, a thought crawled like some unexpected
living thing across the ruin of her world.  She had paid to travel last
Monday.  The mail coach had not been able to travel until now. 
Husband, child, home, purse, all swept away.  All she possessed *n the
world was a claim to a seat in that mail coach!

Sterrin wriggled.  "You are squeezing me."  The nurse came back to the
present.  Her grip relaxed.  She held Sterrin from her a d looked into
her face.  "Listen to me, Miss Sterrin, if you Promise to be very good
and to keep away from the kitchen and never do anything so unladylike
as to clean knives, I think I could get your mamma to agree to take you
to Dublin."  It was j^rrin's turn to squeeze hard.  Then with an "Up
the White ooys!"  that went ringing round the room and down the
passe9

ml

lit

ages, she went head over heels in a cartwheel of pantalettes and
petticoats.

The nurse grabbed her.  "Miss Sterrin, you limb of the devil, who
taught you to say that?  Was it young Thomas?"

Sterrin shook her head.  "Young Thomas does not say bad words.
Sometimes he speaks like Papa."  The nurse agreed; mentally.

Was it Mickey the turf boy?"

"No.  He merely taught me how to say the divil damn me ould brogues and
'

"That will do.  Don't you know that these "Whiteboys" are1 wicked
men?"

"Some of them are gentlemen."

"Gentlemen can be wicked too.  Miss Sterrin."

That's a sin."

The nurse gave her a shake.  "Don't you know that the White boys nearly
killed your mamma?"  Sterrin's face masked over with an impenetrable
stillness that always baffled the nurse.  What would your mamma say if
she were to hear you shouting that terrible catch cry

"She would say, "Oh, la, la, the bed it is shaking"."

You unnatural child.  You little know what your poor mamma went through
so that you could come into this world, she '

"I know what young Thomas went through.  He suffered a terrible lot to
bring me down into the world; just as much as Mamma did.  She was in
bed but he was out in the storm and he never blames me for headaches or
for the big wind blowing '

The nurse was about to shake her quiet when the white stillness of the
small face broke up into tears.  "Sit down, Alannah," the nurse said
gently.  "Give me your solemn promise that you will never again say "Up
the Whiteboys"."

"May I stick to the chair if I ever say "Up-theWhiteboys" again."
Sterrin raised herself slightly and gave an apprehensive glance towards
the part of her that covered the cushion.

Now promise that you will never go into the kitchen again."

Sterrin's eyes widened with dismay; then her mouth bunched.
"Promise!"

Sterrin raised herself slightly above the chair.  "May I stick to the
chair that I am sitting upon if I ever go into the kitchen again."  The
nurse was not too enthusiastic about the wording

but she knew that it was solemnly binding with those from whom Miss
Sterrin had acquired it.  "Very well, now come with me to your mamma's
boudoir and we'll see whether she'll take you to Dublin."

"Hist!"  Thomas, sweeping hot ashes from the recessed wall ovens,
turned towards the sound.  Miss Sterrin's head was inside the kitchen
door.  The part of her that 'might stick to the chair' was well outside
in the passage.  He shook his head to her beckoning.  "Come on in here
yourself," he said.

"Do," urged the cook.  She was wrapping a big currant soda cake in a
cloth to steam.  "Come in and I'll cut you a piece of currant cake,
Miss Sterrin, gra' gal."  She had a hundred forms of address for the
child, but Sterrin liked best 'gra' gal' that was a diminutive of
'bright love.

"I dare not," Sterrin whispered.  "I promised Nurse.  I swore a mighty
oath."

"Was it "that I may stick to the chair"?"

Sterrin nodded.  "But," she temporised, looking towards the steaming
cake, "I wasn't actually sitting on the chair when I swore."

Thomas suspended his besom.  "That's cheating," he said.

The cook buttered a slice of the hot cake and sent Thomas out with it.
"Maybe you had better stick to your word for a few days until the
strength has left it, Miss Sterrin, aquanie.  Wait!"  She handed
another slice to young Thomas, "I can't have your own mouth
watering."

Sterrin squatted in virtue at the foot of the back stairs while the
knife boy leaned against the banister.  "Why," she demanded, 'are you
demeaning yourself doing Mickey-the-turf s work?"

"He has the smallpox."

"Isn't a knife boy high-classer than a turf boy?"

"Of course."

"Well, if Mickey-the-turf dies, what will happen?"

"In that event Johnny-the-buckets will be promoted in his place and
young Johnny-the-rat will be promoted to the buckets."

They sat in silence pondering on the possible changes in the lower
echelons of the kitchen staff.  "Wah She paused to swallow the last
piece of cake, then stooped and wiped her ttiouth with the plainest of
her petticoats.  "Miss Sterrin, that is

a most unladylike thing to do," he remonstrated.

"Huh!"  she snorted.  "I saw you blowing your nose like this."  She put
a finger to the side of her nose and gave a convincing demonstration.
He ate in silence while the shamed flush covered all his face; then he
pointed out that those who could afford handkerchiefs of fine cambric
didn't seem to know what to do with them.  Wiping your mouth on your
petticoat!  Nasty little He stopped.

"Knife boys have no right to call ladies "nasty little " She put her
elbows on her knees and leaned her chin in her hands.  "Nasty little
what?"  she wheedled.  He moved off.  Over his shoulder he said, "At
least you don't have to worry about wiping the soles of your shoes."
She turned up the soles of her little slippers, Why not?"

"Because you can always wipe them on the knife boy."

Young Thomas," she called after him, 'don't look so cross with me. I'm
going to Dublin too."

He stopped with his last piece of cake suspended at his lips.  You're
not?"

"I am so; and you needn't pretend that you are not sorry.  You look
sad."

"I--of course I'm not sorry.  Now I shall be able to get my work done
instead of always getting into trouble."  Upstairs Nurse Hogan's voice
could be heard calling.  "Are you down there again, Miss Sterrin?"  Her
charge had to content herself with sticking her tongue out at Thomas
and then scampering out the back entrance.

A moment later she walked demurely in the front door sniffing a flower.
The nurse gave her a speculative look and ordered her upstairs to have
her hands washed for her embroidery lesson.

The long-planned journey to Dublin was halted almost at the outset by
crowds.  Every kind of vehicle from carriages to donkey carts filled
the highway; and all the time people kept streaming from fields and
side roads.

At the crossroads the carriages of Lord Cullen and Lord Strague waited
by arrangement.  Lord Strague was in a towering rage.  "You must change
your route," was his greeting.  "The police tell me there are forty
thousand assembled in Roscrea already.  There's no knowing how many are
ahead of us.  I've

seen eighty thousand turn out to meet the fellow in Glasgow."

The fellow' proved to be Father Matthew, the apostle of temperance. The
priest, urged by the Quakers of Cork some years before, had started a
movement to cope with the problem of drunkenness.  The movement had
spread like a flame, not only over Ireland, but over England and
Scotland.  A police officer came up and advised Sir Roderick to
postpone his journey.  The roads were impassable.  Margaret could have
wept aloud.

But the journey was not postponed.  Lord Strague, a distillery owner
whose receipts had been reduced to a fraction by the temperance
campaign, finally stopped inveighing against the priest and the stupid
people who were flocking to take his pledge against alcohol.  His
cousin, Sir Jocelyn Devine, he told Sir Roderick, has extended an
invitation to them to journey across country and spend the night at his
mansion in Kilkenny where he was entertaining a house-party for the
Carlow Races.

"He has engaged that Hungarian musician chap to play A

squeal from inside his carriage interrupted him and Mrs.
Kennedy-Sherwin's head came through.  Xa, Lady O'Carroll," she
shrilled, 'don't you just long to see Mr.  Lizst?  He played in

Dublin last week and I'm told his long golden hair is too '

Lord Strague motioned the coachman and the elegant bonnet receded to
permit his Lordship to resume his place.

Margaret was thrilled.  Hien!  The visit was proving to be one of the
blessings of temperance.  Her small daughter, however, shadowed the
prospect by recounting the legend of Sir Jocelyn's mansion.  According
to the hard, it was haunted by the cries of little children who had
been compelled by Sir Jocelyn's ancestor to dance on red hot gridirons
for the entertainment of his guests.  Her papa rapped out sharply that
little girls should be seen and not heard and remarked to Margaret that
the child's head was overstuffed with bardic mythology.  But Lady
Cullen, that evening in the drawing-room, fluttered rays of truth on
the tale from behind her fan.  She leaned across Margaret to tell her
grand niece whom she was presenting at the vice-regal drawing room how
her own aunt, a cousin of the then viceroy, had got him to investigate
the story and proved it to be only too grimly true.  Fortunately for
Margaret, at that moment the host announced the Hungarian musician ...
and a small, pasty-faced boy of about twelve dressed in a black velvet
suit, bowed and

seated himself at the piano.

He wasn't Mr.  Lizst, but he was Hungarian, and he had played last week
before Queen Victoria and the Prince Consort.  Margaret, watching the
dull, white face had the impression that the boy was maintaining the
ghostly tradition of child performers.  Roderick saw her lips tremble;
then at a gust of wind against the shutters, he saw that she barely
repressed a shriek.

It was the same as last year, and every year on this date, the sixth of
January, she could not forget--even in this splendid social
setting--that this was the date of the Big Storm that had almost
unhinged her mind; and again as on previous years, he recalled as an
afterthought that this was also the date of their daughter's birth.
Tonight she was four years old.

Sir Jocelyn, believed to be Ireland's wealthiest landlord, could not
allow for any plan of his to be disrupted.  It was somewhat later
before his guests discovered for themselves that Mr.  Lizst, on his way
to an engagement in the North of Ireland had been hauled from his
carriage by a crowd of Orangemen and was within inches of being ducked
in a pond when his identity was discovered.  Because he was a splendid
personage in a splendid equip page some of the Orange brethren had come
to the wishful conclusion that he was Daniel O'Connell.  Meantime Sir
Jocelyn produced another Hungarian musician.

Next morning his carriage led the cavalcade along the road to the
racecourse....

CHAPTER 9

Dublin was a pleasing surprise to Margaret.  She had expected to see a
decaying capital with grass-grown streets.  But there was nothing of
this about the stately houses that lined the street.  Roderick
explained that all these houses had been overhauled and refurbished for
the visit, some years back, of George the Fourth.  The stonework, the
graceful fanlights were all in perfect condition; and already the
wrought iron lamps outside the Adamesque and Venetian doorways were
cheerfully alight.  Sackville Street, the centre of its great
expanse--the widest street in Europe, her papa used to tell her--held a
tree-lined mall where fashionable ladies promenaded on the arms of
their escorts.

Roderick's old lady cousins, with whom they were to spend the season,
had implemented the warmth of their welcome by ordering a second fire
in the grate at the far end of their spacious drawing-room.  Its
chimney protested against this strange invasion of heat and sent it
back into the room in clouds of smoke.  Margaret, entering the room,
had the impression of two quaint figures in bygone finery extending
arms to her from mists of time.  The mists dispersed in puffs down into
her eyes, nostrils and throat; everywhere but the chimney.  But they
cast no cloud upon her delight at this charming room whose walls had
the friendliness to permit a muted penetration of the cheery street
cries and music.

Just to sit at her bedroom window in this pleasant house brought joy to
Margaret.  The park outside held no grey tinge from a lost field; no
shadowy figures conjured out of eerie tales of hauntings.  Only the
sounds of children trundling hoops beside streamered nursemaids
wheeling elegant basinettes; of vendors crying, "Malahide oysters,
threepence a dozen, Dublin Bay Herrings a penny a dozen!"; the pie man
calling his hot jam puffs a penny each, the dairyman crying "Milk-o',
and always that distant diapason of the street musicians.

Sterrin asked her something but Margaret didn't reply.  She was
intrigued watching the manoeuvres of a beautifully-dressed girl and her
beau trying to elude their fat chaperone.  They slipped down a shady
avenue near the park railings and the chaperone continued walking on
the main avenue for yards before she discovered their evasion. Margaret
went off into peals of mirth at the spectacle of the chaperone doubling
back in her tracks looking, in swaying hoops, like a large, agitated
duck.

"What is it, cherieT Sterrin had asked again if she might go out and
put her ear to the roadway to listen for Papa's returning carriage.
Margaret went off into fresh peals at the thought of her small
daughter, like the garfonnerie at Kilsheelin, listening for the sound
of her papa's carriage from among all the wheel-rattling and hoofbeats
of a city's traffic.

Roderick was late.  He had gone to the Grecian Club with Lord Cullen.
He was also a little bit drunk.

He drew Margaret to him.

"Here is the lovely girl all aglow from skating on the lake of
Nightingales, I am happy to meet you again."  He kissed her long and
tenderly.

"Oh, you silly Roderick, I am not a nightingale and I do not sing."

"There were swans on that lake.  You are like a swan but not so
white."

"Hein?  Not as white.  That is not a ban mot."

"Yes it is.  The whiteness of a swan is too stark for a lovely lady. It
would give her a white-washed look.  Now, let me see."  He took her
face in his hands and scrutinised it.  Tfours is a creamy whiteness.
Still, that's not right either.  There's a yellow in cream.  That's
because little flecks of butter come through."

She laughed delightedly.  "Oh, la, la, now it is you who are the
charming Irlandais who followed me home to the Place de 1"Eglise,
M'sieu.  I am enchanted to meet you again!"  She kissed him.

"Egad," he cried gaily, 'this is yet another reunion.  What a pity Lord
Cullen is not here.  It would give me an excuse to roar "Bumpers
Gentlemen!"  Ugh!"  He put his hand to his head.  The very mention of
bumpers sent wine blasts through it.

She shivered.  "Roderick, ma chree I am getting good at the Gaelic, am
I not?  Roderick, ma chree, do not let us talk of things that are sad
and sinister."

"Ah, now I know your shade of white," he said next morning as he
picked up a tall glass filled with a yellowish fluid.  "It is the
whiteness of a pearl from a very rare oyster that has blood in its
veins that tints the translucence of its pearl.  And now, my pearly
swan, will you be good enough to throw this out of the window."  He
handed her the glass.

"What on earth is this, Roderick?  Ugh!  It has an ugly smell."

"It is a concoction that the old ladies used to make up for the
gentlemen when they had advanced far in their cups the night before.
Give it to the fig tree."  He stretched and yawned.

Margaret waited at the window for a chance to douche the fig tree that
grew out of the cobbled backyard.  She did not mind Big John, busy
moving to and fro from the stables to the coach house but the coachman
belonging to the cousins was also moving in and out of the yard all the
time, making a fuss about their solitary horse that had to be housed in
the coach-house to make room for the Kilsheelin horses.  Neighbouring
windows found occasion to open more frequently than usual now that the
Misses O'Carroll's yard had come alive.  And Maryjoe, the maid who was
not exactly a housekeeper, but ranked higher than the professed cook,
seemed suddenly to have a great deal of business to take her from the
kitchen door to the little drying green near the stables and Big
John.

Roderick emerged from the small dressing-room in trousers and ruffled
shirt.  He started to tell her about the interesting people he had met
at the "Grecian' the previous night."... and I saw the poet James
Clarence Mangan.  He looked like the walking sublimation of tragedy."

Maryjoe disappeared at last and Margaret douched the fig tree.  "In
future," she remarked, 'you must drink your medicine.  Is that the
gentleman who wrote "My Dark Rosaleen"?"  She opened a little gold
casket and popped a chocolate into her mouth.  "I prefer the poetry of
the other gentleman who writes for the "Nation".  I doted on his poem
about Owen Roe O'Neill."

Roderick looked at her in amazement.  "The Lament For Owen Roe O'NeilP,
the first ballad Mr.  Davis had written, was designed solely for the
purpose of rousing patriotic fire... "May God wither up their hearts!"
it clamoured.  "May their blood cease to flow, May they walk in living
death who murdered Owen Roe'.  Hardly the kind of thing to appeal to a
lady like Margaret who va poured at the mention of blood.

!<i

"Will you tell me, mo craiveen cno, why do you, of all people, say
that you dote on such blood-curdling fare?"

"What does "mo craiveen cno" mean?"

"It means literally, my cluster of nuts.  Figuratively, it means my
nut-brown maid.  That's you.  Answer my question."

He was disappointed when she explained that her interest was merely
because of an association.  Some Belgian school friends who were
descendants of Owen Roe had been full of legends about Earl O'Neill.

"Oh," he said, 'is that all!  I had hoped it stirred some flame deep
below that calm and pearly surface."

She watched him silently as he eased his shapely figure into his body
coat and smoothed down its velvet lapels.  She flicked his silk ruffles
into place.  "Roderick, you are disappointed.  I lack that fla mme you
speak of."

He held her at arm's-length gazing into those enormous brown eyes.  "My
share of the world, my nut-brown maid, in your tranquil depths I am
completely at peace.  As for fla mme you have more than enough to
consume me."

She couldn't leave it at that.  She couldn't resist that age-old
question to which Adam was the only man who could give a truthful
negative.  "Was I really the first woman in your life?  Surely there
must have been someone before before I skated into your view?  Some of
these dashing horsewomen you so admire out hunting.  I'm so terrified
of horses!"

Funny she should mention that!  As though thinking aloud, he had
reminisced about a girl he had once seen in the hunting field.  He had
assisted her when her horse stumbled and she became unseated.  For an
exciting moment they had ridden stirrup to stirrup and then the scene
came back.  He forgot Margaret; forgot his surroundings and saw a
laughing sprite tossing a gay glance over her shoulder at him from tip
tilted eyes before she disappeared into a spinney.

"Was she pretty?"

"M'm.  Her eyes were he almost said 'unforgettable'.  After all, their
unforgettable ness had been drowned in the limpid depths of the
wonderful brown eyes that were gazing up at him now.

A brief encounter: but it had been his initiation to romance.
Over-serious for his age from a lonely childhood bereft of brothers and
sisters; burdened too soon with responsibility, he

had known a moment of shattering joy when he had picked the little
hunts woman from the ground.  Instead of setting her upon her feet he
had gone on holding her in his arms while someone steadied her mount.
She had spoken to him from the saddle, but he had been too intent upon
watching her eyes.  Yes, they were unforgettable; they held three
colours merged into a woodland hazel that was not of autumn but of
spring when the bluebells green-sheathed tinted the brown tree boles.
"Her eyes were what?"  He came back to the brown eyes that probed,
apprehensive of that moment of past romance.  Tm not certain, but I am
positive that yours are glorious."

But she must probe deeper.  "And did you meet her afterwards?"

"Never."

Margaret did not fail to note the wistfulness in the word that betrayed
a bygone regret.  "What was her name?"

"Mansfield, I believe.  What does it matter?  Now I have you."  He
kissed her.  "Mo cuid den saoghail!  My share of the world.  My
completely satisfying share of the world."  He gave her a little push.
"Be off now and put your hair in curling rags until tomorrow night."

"Curling rags!  Tiens!  There is a very grand hairdresser coming
tomorrow afternoon to curl me before I dress."  But inside her Margaret
felt something like a shiver.  It had been a near thing; that encounter
with the hunting miss.

"I think that she went back to school."

So he was still thinking of her!  Of his hunting miss!  Thank heavens
she had had to return to school!  Margaret could too readily envisage
Roderick watching the girl, entranced: as he had watched her when he
saw her that first time skating over the frozen lake in the park at
Anvers.

He didn't think it necessary to tell her that the lovely little face
under the feathered riding hat had tossed its beckoning eyes into his
dreams.  That he had ridden his horse exhausted to trace where she
lived to the banks of the Ara River where her house stood in its en
clasping trees.  But the woodland sprite had vanished forever.

Its apparition still made a haunting in Margaret as she dressed for her
shopping expedition.

"What colour was her hair?"  He put an arm about her waist and drew her
down the stairs.

"Whose hair?  Oh!  fair, I think."

"And, was it straight or curly?"  Roderick hadn't dreamed that his
passing recollection would have aroused such a passion of curiosity.

"I forget."  A sudden vision of wind-tossed curls glinted across his
memory.  "Curly, I think."  He put a finger on the smooth brown coils
beneath her bonnet.  "Forget her, my cluster of brown nuts.  She will
never trouble you; a wraith of forgotten memory!  You are my
reality."

The cousins, cloaked and bonne ted watched them descend the stairs, his
arm about her waist.  "They are so in love!"  they breathed, unanimous
in thought and word and wistful longings undefined.

Hester stuck her head out of the carriage to ask Roderick if he had
taken the potion.  Roderick assured her that he had.  Then Sarah's head
came out and she said that her dear papa always said that it went to
his very roots whenever he felt indisposed the morning after he had
after he had entertained gentlemen to supper!

Roderick assured her that it had gone to the roots of this morning's
recipient.  "My anxious spouse saw to that.  Didn't you, Margaret?"  He
gestured the coachman on and as he turned back to the door his eye fell
on the knocker.  "By jove, solid gold!"  He examined the heavy ring
held in the mouth of a lion.  It was tempting Providence, he thought,
to allow that to hang there in these modern times when no footman slept
inside the door on his trestle bed.  A good thing the knocker-snatching
young subalterns from Templetown were not knocking about!

He had scarcely closed the door before a knocker-snatching young
subaltern from Templetown grasped the ring, then halted in surprise.
"By jove, solid gold!"

On the inside, Roderick heard his words thrown back and wondered if the
door held an echo like that place in Killarney.  He reopened it just as
Lieutenant Fitzharding-Smith was about to let the ring crash against
the lion's brazen neck.  "I wouldn't advise you to try any funning with
that," was his greeting.

Lieutenant Fitzharding-Smith felt that the greeting was not in the
tradition of Fine Old Irish Hospitality.  "Oh, sir, I wouldn't dream of
anything like that."

"No, by all accounts you don't waste time dreaming in the presence of
door-knockers.  You act, forcibly."

Roderick continued to stand in the doorway.  | ij

"It was such a fine morning," the lieutenant said, puzzled by iili

Roderick's discourtesy, 'that I thought I'd take a walk in this
charming square.  I had no idea it was so close to Mr.  Gres ham's."

Sir Roderick looked significantly at the dove-grey moistness of the un
beckoning morn.  "Too bad that you've missed the ladies.  They've gone
shopping.  I was about to fill in these cards for the Levee and
Drawing-room," he said.  "Oh, please don't let me detain you," said the
guest.  He went on detaining him, then looked with amazement at the
parcel he was holding in his hand as though he wondered how it had come
to be there.  "These are chocolates.  I thought that Sterrin might like
them."

Roderick was finding his own discourtesy a strain.

Won't you come in a while?"

4I mustn't detain you," said the lieutenant, promptly following him
into the dining-room.  Roderick moved to the sideboard.

"Brandy, say you?  It is such a fine--such a raw morning.  Or would you
prefer claret?"

The officer preferred brandy.  The Dublin claret, he thought, compared
unfavourably with the claret in the South of Ireland and particularly
with that served at Kilsheelin Castle.  The young gentleman considered
that deucedly splendid claret!

Roderick thawed.  He considered the Dublin claret was hogwash.  But he
did not think it necessary to explain that the Kilsheelin brand came by
night off a French boat to a Water ford cove called Straud-na-Coaleen,
whose full name and meaning was The Strand of the Little Peoples'
Music.  An underground cave and passage from the fairies' strand
conveyed it to cellars of his uncle's home there.  Instead, he called
out to Sterrin who was passing the door.

She came in dressed in her fur-trimmed cloak of green velvet, and
curtsied.  Each of them felt as he gazed at the perfect features set in
gleaming red curls so admirably framed in her Breen hood, that he was
looking not at just a lovely child but at "*5 Beginnings of a poised
and lovely lady.  She carried two sucks pointed at each end.  Big John,
she explained, had whited them for her so that she could play tip cat
with the children 111 the park.  Lieutenant Fitzharding- Smith handed
her the Parcel.  "These are for a good little girl," he said, feeling
that he

K*

was talking like an impertinent buffoon.

Tm afraid I have been rather good since I came to Dublin," said Sterrin
in a tone that suggested there was no possibility here of being
otherwise.  She undid the parcel and gasped at the sight of the
satin-covered box, then she looked up at him seriously.

"But this is a grown-up lady's box.  Is it really for me?"

Her papa hastened to assure her that it was.  Who else would Lieutenant
Fitzharding-Smith want to bring such a nice box of chocolates to?  I'll
hold a crown, he thought, that they were never intended for Sterrin.

In an excess of gratitude Sterrin invited the young officer to join her
for a game of tip cat in the park.  He accepted with unexpected
alacrity.  It would give him an excuse to escort Sterrin back to the
house later.

Into his damned barrow, thought Roderick, as he made his way to the
study at the top of the house.  A queer place to have a study!  No.  9
was not really a terrace house.  It had stood here before the square
had been erected.  It held nooks and crannies not required by modern
life.

Roderick sauntered round the room examining the floral designs on the
bog oak panelling.  Suddenly, there was a clicking sound under his
fingers and the panel gave way, revealing a room exactly like the
study, the same sloping ceiling and panelled walls, except that in the
ceiling there was a large skylight window.

This must be the room where his grandfather's marriage had taken place.
It was bare of furniture except for a low tapestry covered seat, a
chair and a plain chest of drawers made of bog oak, but without any
carving or adornment.  Roderick ran his fingers over the top surface
until he found what he suspected, a spring that lifted the plain top,
revealing below a beautifully carved altar piece.  It was a relic from
the Penal days when the Protestant O'Carrolls made it possible for
their Catholic kinsmen to have Mass there, and a look-out warned them
of danger so that the lid went down hurriedly upon an innocuous looking
chest and the priest made his escape through the skylight.

He opened all the drawers and rummaged through them until he found
another spring that released a panel.  From behind Jt he drew two dust
covered miniatures and a small, thick diary.

When the dust, almost hard from damp, had been scraped

avvay from the miniatures he looked at his grandfather's face.  Except
for the elaborately curled wig, and, yes, the contours of the face were
a little softer, the lips a trifle fuller, Roderick felt that he might
be looking at his own portrait.  The second miniature held his
grandmother's lovely face framed by her famous black ringlets.

Roderick leafed through the diary.  It was his grandfather's.  Much of
it was in French, but there were a few references to
"Straud-na-Coaleen' that Roderick had been thinking about scarcely an
hour ago.  There were references to hours and tides and a few times the
name of a boat and its skipper and its cargoes of silk and brandy and
wine.  One item had such a nonchalant and unrevealing tone that
Roderick wondered that his grandfather had troubled to record the
event--"June sixteenth, year of Our Lord Seventeen seventy-nine I did
give satisfaction to Asculph O'Flaherty this morning in the Barley
Fields below the Rotunda Gardens where Doctor Mosse has his Lying-in
hospital.  His pistols were more than one foot long.  Like all Galway
gentlemen his skill lies in the sword.  Pray God he recovers."  Your
pious prayers, it seems were not answered, Roderick recalled.

The next day's item followed in unemotional routine, "June seventeenth,
I was married to Miss Beamon Blake at my brother's new house in Dublin
A light filtered through into

Roderick's mind.  Miss Blake penniless, but beautiful, had been a
Galway lady; from an estate close to that of the hapless Asculph whose
skill, to his misfortune, had lain in the sword.  The duel and the
marriage were not unrelated!

9'--The ceremony was performed by Mr.  O'Loughlin at nine 'clock at
night, he then leaving by the roof to ride by night to my Uncle John's
estate at Annestown in the County Waterford to await the "Francoise"
for Bordeaux, he not being a registered Pwest.  I gave my wife a
diamond necklace from the sale of the aks by the field of the Hungry
Grass.  The design was in keep- InS- She looked pretty in a white de
mask redingote and a petti ^at-1 was bravely dressed in a buff cloth
suit with waistcoat of

,^nj much trimmed with gold And as though conscience k d Pricked at the
despoiling of the land, there was a note in jackets.  '(With the
slackening of the Penal savageries there is <b t**y the ^ neeo- or *e
concealment of our existence in a r* cloak of forestry.  "He that
troubleth his house," saith the

IrA- **.

U~.  *

proverb of the bravely dressed and likewise gold-vested Solo, mon,
"shall inherit the wind.")' Only, thought Roderick, risim, to his feet,
it was I who inherited the wind.  Not even the dem ned necklace. 
Wonder what became of it!  It had not been among the meagre jewels he
had taken over from his own mother.  There had never been a reference
to the necklace.  Probably sold to meet some other eventuality!  He
pushed the diary far back into the concealed nook and his finger
gripped something cold.  It was a necklace of diamond oak leaves strung
together by links of gold and with a cluster of diamond acorns forming
a pendant.  The design is in keeping!  In keeping with the oaks; not
with the lady's dress as Roderick had assumed.  "Grandpapa," he
breathed, "I--I almost apologise for questioning your prodigality.  You
loved her very beautifully--your Beamon!"  The necklace appeared to
have been pushed hurriedly, and unexpectedly out of sight.  His
grandfather must have been compelled to make one of his hurried flights
from the country.  Possibly on account of that duel... Roderick hurried
excitedly to the st airhead as the butler was admitting the ladies.
Then he frowned.  Lieutenant Fitzharding Smith, holding Sterrin's hand,
had arrived at the same moment.  Blast the young squirt!  He needn't
think he was going to introduce the Templetown garrison customs into
his household.  It might be ban ton for officers' wives to have a sort
of cupid on dec hame in the form of a young subaltern, in tow.  But
this would not do for his wife!

He pocketed the diamond plantation.  The news of his dramatic discovery
must wait.

Later he realised that the young officer's presence had saved him from
releasing the diamonds like a charge of bullets.  The cousins
themselves might have hidden them there for safety.  For some reason or
other, the diamonds must have been willed to them.  But the ladies,
when they heard of them, were as surprised as he had been.  Who but
Roderick had a right to theflto they said?  The diamond leaves and
acorns of the Kilsheeli" oaks!  Miss Sarah suggested that he keep them
a secret ftp111 Margaret until she was dressed and ready for her
Presentation the next night.  Roderick agreed, but he whistled as he
bounded up the stairs, and sang as he dressed for this evening's dinfl^
party at the Liberator's great house in Merrion Square.

There had been times when deep in the pre-Celtic roots of b15

. :ng Roderick had wished that he had not cut the hawthorn ecs that
used to grow in the field of the Hungry Grass.  He Lcw well that the
servants and tenants and even some of the neighbouring gentry
attributed the field's misadventure to his Own high-handedness with
that mystic circle and all that it ^ght enclose.

now, he felt something ridiculously like relief to know that it was his
romantic grandfather who had exposed the field to the merry orgies of
the big wind.  But as he lode with Margaret to dinner at Mr.
O'Connell's town house in Merrion Square he felt as though a sparkle
from the romanticism of that superb recklessness had suddenly shone out
through the years to en glamour his love for his own wife.

Margaret was conscious of his suppressed excitement but she put it down
to the general excitement that was abroad since Mr.  O'Connell's
dramatic announcement.  He had stated publicly that this very year of
1843 would see the repeal of the Act of Union.  The announcement had
sent a wild, concerted throb of hope through all the populace.  At
every street corner that they passed, glee-men were singing the songs
they had composed overnight to commemorate the announcement.  Their
ragged children were doing a roaring trade selling the printed version
at a penny a sheet.

The usual crowd of sightseers, native and foreign, that waited nightly
for a glimpse of the great man had swelled tonight to a multitude.  The
gig lights twinkled on the livery facings of the Liberator's servants
as they went from carriage to carriage, haranguing the onlookers and
forging a path for the guests.

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Roderick's spirits responded to the surging hope.  "The Repeal for
1843!"  cried the crowd.  Why not?  he thought!  Must Ire knd's agony
drag on till the world itself dissolves?  At some ^e, in some year, it
must end.  Why not 1843?  As he crossed 016 hall in the wake of the
servants he felt as though he were Coving bodily towards the starting
point of some new and "lorious era.

The feeling persisted as he mounted the stairs.  The drawing ^ oi was
suddenly more than a place of flooding candle-glow, colour and silk and
firelight and laughter.  It was a gay rally's ground for the
commencement of the new Ireland.  The greeting that burst from him to
his host echoed the catch-cry ^ outside.  '1843, then, Liberator!"  he
cried.

The Liberator gave a hand to each of them and drew them towards the
company.  "Leave numerals to describe other yca^ Sir Roderick/ he
smiled, 'this is Repeal Year.  Mark my words'

The party seemed to have divided itself into two groups.  Tfo older
guests were more noticeable at the top fireplace.  But the hilarity in
the region of the fire that blazed at the lower end of the room was
exclusively youthful.  "That's Davis down there reciting one of his own
lampoons."  The host indicated a young man surrounded by a group that
hung, with obvious delight, on his every word.

Roderick had not expected to see Davis here.  The young leader
begrudged time spent away from his gigantic task of nation building.
His counselling, advising, writing; training the minds of the people
for the new, freer life that was to come; training his colleagues for
the higher duties that lay ahead.  "By Jove, sir," said Roderick, "I
had not expected the pleasure of meeting this new planet.  Lady
O'Carroll will be thrilled.  She is an ardent admirer of his poems;
particularly his more bloodthirsty ones.  Aren't you, my dear?"

The Liberator sighed gustily.  "That is the trouble.  His poems are too
bloodthirsty; too revolutionary for my purpose."  Davis made no secret
of his impatience with O'Connell's peaceful methods of attaining
Repeal.

Their host moved off having disposed of Roderick between a Protestant
parson and a Catholic priest and bestowed the gift of Lady O'Carroll's
company upon a French count.  Roderick finally met Davis and fell under
his spell.  Here, he thought, was a force; no fiery revolutionary here!
So much for rumour!  He had heard that Davis was a religious bigot,
opposed to O'Connell's Catholicism.  The high-minded young genius who
clasped his hand with the warmth of friendship would be as incapable of
being anti-Catholic as he would of being anti-Irish.  Nothing that was
ignoble, thought Roderick, could exist behind that broad brow.  He felt
again the exhilaration he had felt outside.  A movement with two such
leaders could not fail.  But should two such leaders clash?  "Well
then," thought Roderick, as he gaze<1 into the friendly countenance,
the blue eyes set in a framework of solid strength, 'well then, I
should hate to have the choice of fealty thrust upon me."

Their meeting was interrupted by a weird-looking figure who passed
between them and went up to his host with an apology

for his dress.  Instead of the conventional black evening suit, the
long, lugubrious-looking gentleman was wearing a blue body coat with
great, gilt buttons, white duck trousers and Wellington boots.  Just
then a footman hurried up and Roderick caught jhe words he whispered in
agitated Gaelic to his master, "Will your Honour's Liberator come out
and save Mr.  Steele's hat."

So this was the famous Tom Steele!  The Cambridge graduate who might
have been a great inventor if he had not chosen to go a-windmill
tilting.  He had mortgaged his ancestral estates in County Clare to the
tune of ten thousand pounds in order to aid the Spanish insurgents
against Frederick the Seventh.  What he had salvaged from the wreck of
his fortune he had, Protestant, though he was, poured into O'Connell's
movement for Catholic emancipation.  "There was a great inventor lost
in him," Davis commented to Roderick.  "But the only thing he has
invented in recent years is his title for the self-made role of Head
Pacificator of Ireland and the Repeal Funeral; and of course, the only
time he ever varies the uniform for which he has excused himself to our
host is when he drapes it in funereal black, as well as his carriage,
horses, and coachmen and drives off to the scene of some agrarian
outrage to reproach the transgressors and show them that they have put
the Repeal into mourning."

The self-styled Head Pacificator of Ireland returned with a very high
white-peaked hat held tenderly in both hands.  Behind, his back
O'Connell wagged an admonitory finger at some of the students near the
end fireplace.  raiiir-MiA^K-w "Well, Pacificator," said Davis, "I hear
you have been conduct- imiii miA^^AnA w %

I-AW>S

l. *.*-*_rNt

Tx ing one of your funeral services today.  I trust the evildoers were
duly grief-stricken."  "Aye," said the Head Pacificator, "I brought
home to them the harm they were doing to the cause of Repeal and to the
noble efforts of the Liberator.  There won't be another outrage there
again."

"Come, Tom," Davis laughed, 'do you really believe that your Parade of
funeral grief will suppress the impulses of resentment under which
these men labour?"

I do believe, Doubting Thomas, that the bloodless method by which our
leader liberated his people from centuries of bondage and blood-letting
will prevail once more, in his efforts for ReP^-' He raised his voice
so that its lugubrious utterances ^tried through the room.  "They will
benefit more from the

iMji

words of my funeral service than from your warmongering squibs."

As the servant was helping Margaret to salmon, the Liberator turned to
her and told her to wish.  "It is the first of this year's catch."

From the end of the table Steele boomed up, "I can guess what your wish
is, Liberator."

You can indeed said O'Connell.  He held a piece of salmon suspended on
a fork, "My wish is the Repeal for 1843."

Oh, Mr.  O'Connell," she cried, 'you should never reveal your wish. It
is unlucky."  But all the glasses were raised though it was early for
toasts.  "To the Repeal!"  thundered the young men.

CHAPTER 10

The afternoon of the great presentation, Margaret locked herself away
from human gaze to cover her face in a plaster of flowers and lotion.
Roderick argued that it was ridiculous to apply plaster to skin that
was flawless and Margaret argued back that because of that very fact a
plaster was necessary.  One did not bring one's everyday face, flawless
or otherwise, to the vice-regal throne of Dublin Castle.  Roderick took
himself off on mysterious business of his own.  The Mesdames O'Carroll
retired for their nap and Sterrin was left to mope.

Dublin had begun to pall on Sterrin.  The fashionable Mount joy Square
could not offer the sustained interests of the square that formed the
stable yard behind Kilsheelin Castle.  There was life and clatter there
all day; shops too, the estate carpenter's shop, the forge where, for a
small sum, tenants could order anything from a scythe to a thimble, the
slaughter-house where they bought venison for a penny a pound.
Slaughter-house!  As if by miracle the word brought into view the
spectacle of a messenger boy kicking a cow's bladder along the pavement
towards the house.  She strained on tiptoe to peep through the window.
Miraculously the boy stopped at this very railing, then disappeared
down the area.  She tiptoed down the stairs and struggled with the hall
door.  The effort was a lesson in life for Sterrin.  It was the first
time she had ever opened a door.  Always they opened to her approach.
The boy was nowhere in sight but the bladder lay unguarded on the step
all bloodstained and ballooned.  She drew back her foot and kicked.
Something banged against the drawing-room window as the footman was in
the act f setting a tray before his mistresses.  The next minute the
house was in an uproar.  The' footman disappeared from the room with
the announcement that "Miss Sterrin is kilt!"  The kdies joined by
Margaret could just glimpse Sterrin lying on "er back while a fierce
and ragged boy stood over her saying something about a red-haired
rip!

pounds *~1

S,;^^

s;i%

>%^5

**.  >v

Miss Sarah paused in her swoon to watch Sterrin rise, push a ringlet
from her bloodstained nose and inform her adversary that she was about
to 'break his canister'.  The term was unfamiliar to the Dublin
gurrier.  It was only after Sterrin's fist had shot out and landed on
his nose that enlightenment dawned.  Just then a grandiose personage
alighted from a carriage and ordered the footman to haul him inside.
With sinking terror the urchin saw himself leaving his beloved Dublin
slums on a convict ship.  "Don't send me "over", your Honour's
Nobility," he sobbed.

Nurse Hogan discovered that the blood on Sterrin's nose was from the
rebound of the bladder.  She hastened to exonerate the poor ragamuffin.
He was finding it hard to convince the gentleman that he had not laid a
finger upon his daughter.  "Twas the bladder that bumped age'n her,
your Nobility," he pleaded.  "I only gave her one little shove an' she
up an' hot me an' if she hot me nothin' at all furder I'd have no
snotther left."

He went on his way with his pocket enriched by Sir Roderick's shilling
and his vocabulary enriched by what he assumed to be the Quality's word
for describing ones snotther.  He could be heard challenging a gurrier
who had designs on the bladder to hit it a kick at the risk of having
his canister broken!

Miss Sarah was the only one of the three swooning ladies who showed no
signs of recovering.  Burnt feathers to the nose and smelling salts
were all right for ordinary vapours; but for a first class faint like
this, something stronger was demanded and she wasn't going to be
baulked of her cure.  Her wan lips parted, Roderick stooped to catch
the tremulous whisper.  "The French cabinet she murmured.  In a corner
of a painted cabinet he found a brandy bottle three-quarters full.
Halfway through the second glass she allowed herself to return to full
consciousness.

She looked up as Margaret bent to apologise for Sterrin and gave a
squawk.  "Your face!"  she gasped and swooned off again.  Roderick
looked across at his wife.  The candles had not yet been lighted.  In
the twilight her face was purplish and splotchy.  He stared horrified.
Once before he had seen her look this way-1 That night, before he set
out for the witch for Sterrin's birth Sterrin!  What had the brat
brought on her mother?  Tonight of all nights.  He rounded on the child
where she stood apart, he face a white gleam in the dimness.  "Go to
your room, Miss," he roared.  "I'll deal with you later."  Just then
the butler appeared

with lighted sconces and announced the hairdresser.  Margaret clapped
her hands to her face.  "Dieu!"  she cried.  "I had thought to have
this stuff off my face before he arrived."  She started to pick off the
violet petals that had been brewed in the lotion for her complexion.
The butler lapsed into speech.  "And me to be thinking that it was the
cholera that her Ladyship was getting'."

Margaret hesitated at the door.  "Cousin Hester, do you think it is
really necessary for me to have a hairdresser?  I'm sure he will frizz
me.  I vow I should hate to be frizzed."

Miss Hester was shocked.  "My dear, think of your lappets and your
feathers!  You must have curls and pouffes to hold them '

"Besides," murmured the invalid, 'curls are so ladylike and so dainty
I'm sure Roderick would prefer you with curls.  Wouldn't you,
Roderick?"

Margaret wondered if the question would remind him of that hefty
hey-non ny-non ny hunts woman with the curls who had managed to fall
off her horse into his arms.  For a second she thought to dismiss the
hairdresser.  She didn't want curls!

But Roderick looked lovingly at her, clotted cream, withered petals and
all.  "I prefer her hair when it is in two glossy plaits hanging down
over her shoulders," he said.  The suggested intimacy of his words sent
Sarah burrowing in her reticule for a fan to cool her blushes.  But
suddenly the brandy altered her viewpoint.  She stopped groping and
began to giggle.

At last the long tulle lappets and the regulation three feathers were
pinned in place on the shining curls.  The inmost petticoat of
horsehair weighted at the hem with a thick straw plait was covered with
a succession of petticoats, from muslin ones to those of lace-edged
silk that increased in elegance towards the final one of satin, quilted
to the knees and fortified above and below the waist with whalebones
placed a hand's length apart.  While Margaret relaxed in a wrapper
before donning the tour de force of the white satin presentation gown,
Roderick came "to the room.  "Shut your eyes," he ordered.  He clipped
on her wrist a gold bracelet set with diamonds.  She turned to him with
* cry of sheer delight.  His kiss stifled her outcry about its beauty,
its costliness.  "The bangle is my own presentation gift.  Close your
eyes again."

This time when she opened them she made no outcry.  The Slory of the
necklace that he had hung about her throat evoked

the supreme tribute of unvoiced rapture.  The row of candles on the
dressing-table were duplicated by the mirror's reflection.  Roderick,
standing behind her chair, had the impression of an altar alight with
candles before the rapt face that was enshrined by the mirror.  She
touched one of the diamond leaves that shimmered on her throat.
"Roderick!"  she breathed but could not go on.  Instead she rose and
put her arms about him.  He held her from him at arm's-length, Jearful
of disturbing her court coiffure, and told her the story of the
diamonds.

"The oaks of Kilsheelin," she murmured when he had finished.  "The
diamond oaks!  I feel so unworthy of them."  He risked her grande
toilette to crush her to him and tell her that it was the diamonds that
were unworthy.  And while they stood thus together they did not notice
the little figure that came in and stood watching them wistfully, then
tiptoed away.

She was lurking in the shadows of the corridor when they emerged in the
full ceremonial of court dress.  Her papa was superb in velvet court
dress under a cloak, swung casually back from the gold clasps that held
it at his throat.  Her mother with her regal plumes and lappets and an
ermine cloak over her white satin gown was like a snow queen.  Sterrin
couldn't restrain herself.  "Oh, Mamma," she cried.  "You look like a
beautiful queen and Papa looks like a prince, and I'm sorry for kicking
a common boy's bladder and giving everyone vapours."

Margaret had forgotten all about Sterrin's disgrace.  "Where on earth
have you been?"

"I have been waiting to be dealt with--by Papa.  Nurse said that it
meant a spanking."

Roderick's heart smote him.  "Perhaps Nurse mistook me.  I may have
said that little ladies who kicked cows' bladders on city pavements
deserved to be slapped."  He wondered if he had ever kicked a cow's
bladder with Black Pat.  Margaret laid aside her bouquet and held out
her arms.  The pathos of the child!  Waiting in misery to receive her
punishment while she he jslf was receiving gifts and love!  She kissed
her.  "Promise that you will never do such a thing again."

*I promise," said Sterrin, then temporised.  "I promise never to kick a
cow's bladder on a city street pavement."  That didn't include the
Kilsheelin slaughter-house where the bladders were bigger and
bloodier.

"Hm," said her papa, noting the reservations.  He kissed her

UJ

and told her he would take her to the Rotunda gardens next afternoon
to see the dancing bear.

Sterrin was thrilled until she remembered something.  "Lieutenant
Fitzharding-Smith has promised to go with Nurse Hogan and me tomorrow
to help me choose a book for young Thomas.  Perhaps you would come
instead and afterwards we could see the bear?"

"No," said papa.  "I'm afraid that I am not sufficiently conversant
with the literary taste of young Thomas."

He swept her a mock bow and gave his arm to her mamma.  There were
exclamations of admiration from passers by as the two were lighted to
the carriage by the butler and footman holding aloft great brass
lanterns.  Even Big John relaxed his wonted dignity to stare from one
to the other with prideful admiration.  He had never before seen the
young Sir dressed this way.  A cold rain was falling and her Ladyship
reminded him to put on his oilskin cape.  His gratitude was respectful
but his refusal was firm.  Big John was driving to the court of Dublin
Castle.  The KilsheeUn livery would not be covered tonight.  Not if it
was the Big Wind itself that blew!

He drove them through avenues of spectators; Dubliners of all classes,
but mostly the patient Lazaruses snatching the dazzling glimpses
vouchsafed them from the Dives' carriages.  There was no begrudging in
their looks.  Only the eagerness for life's pageantry hinted by the
sparkle of a diamond on a white neck, the gleam of a gold epaulette on
a scarlet tunic.  The lights of hundreds of carriages, the street
lights, the opened candlelit windows filled with craning heads had
transported them out of the sleety greyness of the January night into a
brightness that was clime less and timeless.

At last the wide staircase of the State Apartments unrolled its blaze
of scarlet carpet before Margaret.  Footmen in maroon coats and salmon
breeches stood on every landing; more scarlet glared out from big,
fur-hatted guardsmen.  All these shades Would clash horribly in the
daytime, she thought, but now, in the benign sheen from thousands of
candles in blue and gilt candelabra all tints were blended.

Jn a cloakroom she found Lady Cullen shedding layers of cloaks on to
the attending servants, and they went together to

^kc their places in the procession.  It was a long and painful
ritual.

*>

* * V

A> >>,

Margaret began to feel wilted.  It was a full half-hour since the
procession had made a further move.  It was all right, she reflected,
for girls seeking husbands to endure this elegant hardship but, she
had--Roderick!  And, without any of this; just a quick encounter in the
brisk exhilarating air of the ice rink.  She looked up at the candles
bending in the stifling heat.  The shoulders of the gentlemen's court
suits were frosted with the drippings.  Roderick's shoulders had been
frosted that day at the ice rink.  Something pricked at the back of her
ankles.  Like a pin!  Could anything have come undone?  In panic she
went over the list of her petticoats.  Her long drawers were secured
twice around her waist with running string.  She never tolerated pins.
Nothing but buttons stoutly sewn.  When the procession moved again she
could feel the pricking all around her ankles.  Dieu!  The whalebones
in her petticoat couldn't possibly have come undone!  Suddenly she
realised that it was the straw plait in the hem of her horsehair
petticoat.  The press of bodies was crushing it into her flesh.  And,
horrors!  Despite all the perfume sachets that had been sewn into the
plait it was giving out a whiff!  She looked about her.  But in that
atmosphere of sublimated humanity the straw in one lady's petticoat
made neither reck nor reek.  She flinched, someone in front was looking
around and whispering over her shoulder.  Margaret thought in agony
that she had noticed, but she merely said, "Fancy all this fuss for the
sake of being kissed by the Viceroy!"  Margaret could have sworn that
the girl had rouge on.  A few minutes later, she was certain.

The throne had come into view.  The Viceroy in blue coat and white knee
breeches was not looking too appreciative as he stooped to exercise his
privilege of kissing each debutante on either cheek.  The Vicereine,
a-gleam with teeth and diamonds looked indulgently at the ceremonial
caress.

"He has my sympathy," whispered one of the Honourable Mesdames in the
estrade behind Her Excellency.  A debut an was raising a face ravaged
by smallpox beyond the shelter of lappet or ringlet and the Viceroy
bent in service to his Queen.

When the Viceroy straightened after bestowing the ceremonial kiss on
Margaret's neighbour's cheeks there was a distinct smudge of red on his
upper lip!

The stentorian voice of the chamberlain called out: "Lady O'CarrolI
presented by Lady Cullen."  The aides-de-camp were

spreading out the glory of her train.  Pray Heaven, thought Margaret
as she went down into the billows of her satin, that he von't kiss
rouge on to my cheeks!  But the Vicereine had seen the smudge and
murmured something through lips that continued to smile.  His
Excellency rubbed a handkerchief over his lips and the beautiful Lady
O'Carroll received a kiss that was unsullied and--unhurried I

CHAPTER 11

Next day, Mr.  O'Connell called to collect Sir Roderick, who had
promised to join the Repeal Association at the biweekly meeting at the
Corn Exchange.  The cousins were thrilled to see him and called his
attention to their father's sword hanging over the fireplace.  "We hung
Papa's sword there, Mr.  O'Connell, the day the Union was signed
forty-three years ago," said Hester.  "You would have been too young
then to be concerned with the significance of the Union."

"Too young!"  cried O'Connell.  "In troth, madam, I was not.  When I
saw the new royal standard go up over Dublin Castle on that first day,
and heard the artillery thundering from Phoenix Park and the bells of
Saint Patrick's Cathedral sounding their carillon de joie for Ireland's
degradation, I swore that I would devote my life to restoring our
stolen freedom."

You certainly succeeded," said Sir Roderick, 'when you won the victory
of centuries with Catholic emancipation.  But surely a second victory
so soon is too much to envisage!"  jB

The Liberator put his hand on the younger man's shoulder.  "The road to
freedom has been opened.  By the same method that we won the right to
practise our religion, we will win the right to govern in our own
parliament; not by bloodshed or violence or turbulence, but by legal,
peaceable and constitutional means alone."

He took his leave of the ladies and swung Sterrin on his shoulders for
a pick-a-back down the stairs.  On an impulsf |s he kissed her goodbye
he turned to her parents and said, "Wiiy not take her along with us to
witness your initiation?  It will be something for her to remember
later when prosperity has returned with the parliament that she saw her
papa vow his services to its achievement."  As he watched her skedaddle
up the stairs for her bonnet, he murmured, "There is something about
that child that I find arresting.  Perhaps it is that, like myself

she was hurled into life by storm."

In the Ladies' Gallery at the Corn Exchange, sitting between her mother
and Lady Cullen, Sterrin listened wide-eyed to the sound of her
father's name sent in clarion tones down the thronged hall as the
Liberator introduced that 'distinguished and honourable gentleman.  Sir
Roderick O'Carroll of Kilsheelin Castle, Templetown'.  Her embarrassed
Papa had not anticipated rising to confront such a throng of people. He
was glad when he could sit down and listen to the Liberator.

O'Connell was declaiming that in the last war with France, Ireland had
supplied the general and two-thirds of the officers and men in the
English Army and Navy.  A clock struck.  O'Connell fumbled
automatically for his watch.  "And yet, she has no parliament then
stopped dead and whispered.

Before he could resume Tom Steele was on his feet.  His lugubrious
voice, cracked with emotion, was announcing, "Sacred Heavens!  Have I
lived to see this day of woe!  A transaction unparalleled in the annals
of infamy has occurred in this hall to the country's Liberator, my
august leader!"

A gasp went through the audience.  Roderick rose and looked anxiously
towards the gallery that held his wife and child.  He had exposed them
to danger by bringing them!  Surely Steele was speaking of attempted
assassination.  Steele drew his hands across his face but his voice
still held tears as he said brokenly, "The watch of the illustrious
Liberator has been stolen from his pocket!"

The Liberator calmed the pandemonium.  In the gallery, Mrs.
Kennedy-Sherwin whispered to Margaret that there was nothing to fear.
The audience was soon lost in O'ConnelTs vituperative eloquence against
Wellington and Peel.  Roderick, chuckling away, found himself crushed
sideways by a powerful gentleman.  He was holding aloft a gold watch
which he placed in front of the Liberator.  Up jumped Tom Steele, his
hand on his sword.  "Name the base miscreant!  He is not fit to
live!"

"It was found, sir," said the gentleman calmly, Hinder your pillow in
your bedroom."

Later in the Ladies' Gallery a toast to Father Matthew, the Temperance
leader, was drunk with tea while the band played "Ned Gower's Fairewell
to Whiskey'.  "It appears to be a Lingering "Farewell"," said Lady
Cullen looking down at Lord Cullen who rose more unsteadily to raise
his bumper each time the

l.\ '

\*

V*

toast was repeated.  When the band changed to "We'll Never Get Drunk
Again', she saw him go down for the third time and disappear beneath
the table.  There was nothing she could do about it because O'Connell
was on his feet reading a report on Ireland written by some gentleman
sent over by The Times.

He says here," cried O'Connell, 'that Irish women are ugly."  There was
an angry roar.  Then every gentleman rose to his feet and raised his
glass towards the ladies.  Margaret lifted her fan in front of her face
and there was a fluttering as all the ladies did likewise against the
onslaught of all these staring gentlemen.  Sterrin looked up over her
head to see what it was that some of the gentlemen were actually
pointing at.  It was a great bunch of mistletoe.

Til die!  I vow I shall die," wailed Mrs.  Kennedy Sherwin.

Not likely," said Lady Cullen.

The Liberator, eager to get home to his correspondence, could not see
the cause of the commotion that barred his way; but as the wardens with
Tom Steele booming, "Make way for the Liberator!"  cleared a path, the
cause came in sight.  He strode forward and placed his hand on the
shoulder of the gallant who was bending over Mrs.  Kennedy-Sherwin
under the mistletoe.  "Young man," he cried, 'make way for the
Liberator!"  Mrs.  Kennedy-Sherwin found herself engulfed in the tidal
wave of the Liberator's amorous kisses.

"Come," said Margaret to Sterrin.  "We have had enough excitement for
today.  Let us find your father."

It had been a puzzling day, Sterrin thought, as she and Margaret pushed
their way through the crowd.  She would be glad to find her father, of
course, but gladder still if Margaret had said: "We have had enough of
Dublin.  Let us go back to Kilsheelin."



CHAPTER 12

Young Thomas crouched with his ear to the ground.  "Ah, here they are,"
he murmured.  He had caught a faint subterranean rumble.  They would
soon be here.  Young Thomas was to serve the marriage mass of Ulick
Prendergast's daughter.  He knew the Latin and the priest had asked him
to assist.

He straightened and resumed his arm swinging and stamping up and down
past the back lodge.  It must be half-past five by now, thought he. The
night still held the dawn in its dark grip

A few minutes later there was a gruff, "Whoa there," and Ulick
Prendergast's side-car reined in.

Thomas stepped forward with a God-save-you.  The gruff voice said, "God
save you kindly.  Let you get up on this side.  Why weren't you at the
cross?"

The devil whip you!  thought Thomas; and I obliging you!  "The priest
told me," he answered civilly, 'that you'd pick me up at the back lodge
at half-past five."

"It would have shortened the journey had you waited at the cross."  The
prosperous old farmer was as economical of words and time on the
wedding morning of his only child as on all other occasions.

An overhanging branch spent a spray of drops over their heads.  The
still figure on the far side moved to avoid them.  She seemed to have a
queer, bulky shape, and like her father, nothing much to say for
herself.  Maybe she was wondering what kind of a man she was to marry.
Maybe she had not seen him Vet!

Thomas sighed as he thought of the romances that he read about in
books.  It seemed that only the Quality could have Love Batches!
Sometimes in the kitchen Mrs.  Stacey talked of the l ve match between
the Sir and her Ladyship.  How he had seen her floating over a frozen
lake in a wonderful place called the ark of Nightingales; how he had
stood transfixed at the sight

of her loveliness; waited while her servant removed her skates3 then
followed her carriage all the way to her home.  Her Ladyship, they
said, had peeped the Sir out of the corner of her bonnet and it was
love at first sight with her too.

It would be the same with Miss Sterrin.  One day she would come
galloping down the high road on her horse and some rich nobleman with a
sword at his side and silver spurs jingling against a fine black horse
would fall madly in love with her.  Miss Sterrin for some reason or
other would be dressed like her ancestress in a green cloak embroidered
with the seven colours that only those of royal blood used to wear; and
it flying from her shoulders and her red curls flying in the wind; the
way Athele O'Carroll must have looked when she dashed on her horse
through the woods to warn her father, the little red-haired Sir
Timothy, that Cromwell was riding for Kilsheelin.

A little sound from the far side of the car interrupted Thomas's
daydreams.  The girl had started to say something, then stopped.  The
church spire was in view; the end of her life!  The familiar life of
home, girlhood, convent, home again, her cosy bedroom above the ceiling
of which lay a paradise of bees.  Thomas heard the little sobbing
sigh.

From another direction three men and a boy were driving towards the
church.  The driver, James Keating of Poolgower, looked across the well
at his second son, John.  You won't change your mind about Dublin?"

"No."  The small monosyllable was gorged with emotion: anger;
resentment; despair.

The eldest son, James's James, turned round to his brother.  "People
will think that we are doing things mean."

"I don't give a tinker's curse what people think."

They were trying to get the bridegroom to go to Dublin for the Bed of
Honour.  A cold bed, he thought.  He had no heart to go away with a
woman he had never set eyes on.  He had never dreamed of a match for
years to come.  He, a younger s. i with no prospects; but neither had
he dreamed of this unexpected legacy of a farm from his uncle.
Overnight he had become a man of property.  Overnight too, almost, the
matchmakers had come to 'draw down' talk of a match with the daughter
of the rich and miserly Ulick Prendergast.  He was lucky, they told
him.  A nice-looking girl with everything that a man could wish for!
What did they know about a moment of dance?  What a

man might wish for?  The face that had haunted him for months floated
back.  With it came the golden scene around the platform Dance; the
girl he had faced in the Change Partners; a laughing, breathless moment
as he swung her off her feet, then gripped her tight until she had
steadied herself, then a shocked voice summoning her back to her
parents' phaeton.

The car halted.  They were at the church.  John stepped down.

A sudden squall of wind and rain blew across the chapel yard.  "We may
as well move inside," said James Keating.  Inside!  HUH >

Not even the preface of a meeting in the chapel yard!  By God!  ||||

II

Was he mad to have consented to this marriage barter?  Hadn't Hill It
he finished with his father's tyranny when he acquired a farm of his
own?  Scenes from a life that was over flashed across John's mind; that
first sight of the field that had fallen to them from the skies; a
resplendent officer springing eagerly up the steps of the Protestant
church, smiling, because he was going to marry the woman of his choice;
and again, recurring, unforgettable--a laughing colleen swinging in his
arms to the sound of fiddles; losing her footing so that his hold on
her tightened to a caress, a mingling of laughter, a brushing of soft
hair against his cheek --"There is no sense."  John started to shout
but no one noticed anything because his voice scraped through on a low
pitch.  "There is no sense in getting wet out here."

During the Kyrie he peeped sideways from under his hands.  That must be
she in the blue bonnet!  Her head was bowed and the bonnet brim covered
her face completely.

But her right eye had found a peephole through the involutions of the
velvet niching beneath her brim.  It strained for a sight of the bald
head, the toothless ness that had caused a bride to fly from this very
church two weeks ago.  In the last panic stricken stretch of the
journey she had resigned herself to some such destiny.  The peephole
showed her a young man with glossy hair, lots of it, one wide
shoulder--and the other one must be just as wide--covered in the finest
chocolate-coloured broadcloth with a velvet collar.

Life flowed back into her veins.  It gave her strength to lift her head
and look full at his face.  It couldn't be!  It couldn't!  The stranger
whom she could not forget!  Tis a sin for me to kt thought of that face
into my mind this morning."  But the ^sary beads no longer hung limply
from her hands.  They danced.  All that it needed was music. And the
heart inside of

10]

her was filled with music!

Through the third and fourth finger of his left hand he had glimpsed a
pair of small white hands.  Hm!  Very white indeed for a farmer's
daughter who did the amount of work that was claimed for her at the
matchmaking.  His eyes slewed up higher.

The blue bonnet turned full face at the eye between his fingers.  His
heart gave a mighty thud across the width of his chest.  I'm dreaming,
he cried out in the silence of his mind.  This morning of all mornings,
I ought not to have let that face into my mind!

But the face wasn't in his mind at all.  It was there across the aisle.
It was beside him at the altar.  The little hand that lay in his for
the ring was the one he had clasped on the platform dance at the
Crossroads last August.

"You wouldn't read better in a love-story," said the bridesmaid to the
best man at the breakfast table.  Old Ulick unscrewed something between
a snort and a chuckle.  "Truth," he said, 'is always stranger and
better than fiction."  For it was old Ulick himself who had made the
love-story come true.  He had recognised the boy who had danced at the
Crossroads with his daughter; knew his family's history and had watched
its industriousness.  The moment the inheritance of the farm had made
the lad eligible, Ulick had despatched his emissaries for the 'drawing
down'.

James Keating took out his timepiece.  "There will be a Bian coni at
the cross in three-quarters of an hour.  It catches the mail coach at
Thurles--but I keep forgetting; you are not going on the mail coach."

The bride turned towards him with shining eyes.  Joy and relief had
distilled a radiance that glowed around her like a halo.

"Of course, we are going on the mail coach," she said.

"Of course, we are going on the mail coach," chorused her husband..

Thomas tried to make his farewell to Mrs.  Prendergast.  He had been in
a state of dread since he discovered the identity of the bridegroom.
What would become of him if the Sir were to learn that he had served at
a Wedding Mass for a son of James Keating; the land-grabber of
Poolgower, brother of the man who had led the Whiteboy raid on the
castle and barely missed shooting her Ladyship!

Mrs.  Prendergast was pressing food on Thomas, recognising the boy,
and James Keating sensed the cause of his reluctance to accept.
"Perhaps," he remarked coldly, 'the lad would feel more at home in the
kitchen."

Thomas felt his cheeks stinging.  This was the first time his servitude
had been cast at him as a stigma.

"Thank you, sir," he said quietly.  "I'll just break my fast with the
three sips of water and then I'll be on my way."

The girls were sorry to see him leave the parlour.  They had thought
him some nice-spoken college boy.  A youth called Tim Lonergan, the son
of a well-to-do farmer, had seen the hurt flush on Thomas's face.  He
slipped out after him.  "There is more 'divarshun here in the kitchen,"
he remarked.  Young Donal Keating, a boy of about ten or eleven had
seen the slight but when he tried to follow Thomas, his father drew him
back.  "Stay where you belong!"  he ordered.  "Let us hope that you
will serve the next Wedding Mass in the family

There was always more fun in the kitchen; away from the priest and the
parents and the uncles and aunts, and these uppish merchants, like the
ones inside, who bought the Prendergast farm produce; and the
schoolmaster who was using long words that people only pretended to
understand and quoting, "Let me not to the marriage of true minds admit
impediment', whatever that meant.

There were no poetic subtleties in the kitchen where two long tables,
end to end, had two people squashed together on every chair.  Half a
dozen girls were pelting backwards and forwards from the fire to the
table and "Let go of me arm or I'll let this spill on you, gravy and
all," was the prelude to every helping of roast meat that they tried to
place in front of the boys.  It wasn't bad enough having their faces
roasted off them bending over the blazing turf and from the steam from
kettles and has tables hanging from every hook on the crane, but every
time one of them passed the tables with a plate of roast meat, a hand
reached out to catch her or an arm shot around her waist or some other
piece of dluderin' by play.  Never had gaiety entered the scene of *
wedding so early in the day.  It had burst out from the morn's
Unexpected romance like the sudden flowering of a Nordic summer.

Nora Campion, one of John Keating's cousins, put another kg of chicken
on the plate of a man who had danced in the very

pounds

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Cashel Sets where the bridal pair had met.  "Lay that across your lips
she said, 'and tell us all about it."

He drew her swiftly to his knee and was just telling her that he would
prefer to put his lips to better use when her mother came down from the
parlour with an empty teapot for replenishing.  "Nora!"  roared Mrs.
Campion.

"Well, I must say that's a nice way to behave and the priest in the
parlour!"  But she wasn't as cross as she pretended.  She lifted up her
padded silk skirt and pinned it round her waist showing a black silk
petticoat that was as grand again.  "Move up there, lads," she said to
the boys who were having snacks at the fire until there would be space
at the tables, "Make a space for me here and tell me the story of the
bride and groom."

They were all so full of gallantry and tea and currant cake and port
wine that they jumped to her request and left the form without balance
so that her huge weight landed on the floor.  Young Thomas joined the
dozen young men who dashed to haul her up.  "I'm tellin' you," she
gasped as she restored herself and her seven petticoats, 'that if it
had been myself John Keating had to swing in the Cashel Sets he
wouldn't forget me either.  Go on, anyway, and tell us all about it,
for it has all the love and none of the poverty and heartache of a
young couple that runs away and gets cut off, like the little lady that
ran off with Sir Roderick O'Carroll's foster-brother, Black Pat Ryan.
She's cut off with a vengeance; cut off from her family and cut off
from them she's married into because she's too genteel to mix with
them.  Go on with your story!"

The story was still in the telling when Thomas slipped unnoticed from
the kitchen.  "Twould be powerful to linger for the dancing!  The
squeak of bagpipes and the preparatory scrape of fiddles were all that
troubled to follow him out to the road to entice him back.  But it was
powerful, too, to be alone to ponder on what he had heard the
bridegroom whisper to the bride as he lifted her on to the car after
the ceremony "We must have been meant for eacl.  other from the
beginning," John Keating had murmured, 'from before we met at the
Crossroads dance; before ever we were born."

Could such a thing be?  Could two people be destined that way for each
other?  True, the Keatings since the windfall of the field had become
steadily prosperous; but John had been reared poor and hard.  He could
never have raised his eyes to a well-to 0 pounds well-educated girl
like Miss Prendergast.  Yet it had happened; before Thomas's eyes. Just
as it had happened before Thomas's eyes, the miracle of the field
flying from the castle through the skies to the Keatings.  And here was
Thomas assisting at the Wedding Mass of one of those on whom the field
had descended!  A link in the strange trend of events that had started
on the night of the Big Wind!

He vaulted a high ditch.  Why should the Keating wedding cause his
heart to surge with a gladness that held a sense of hope?

In the castle kitchen he was plied with questions about the wedding.
When he mentioned the bridegroom's name, Mr.  Hegarty lowered the tongs
and dropped the red ember it held, without lighting his pipe.  Slowly
he turned in the chair, revolving himself by his grip on the arms.  He
gazed long at Thomas and his words, when they came, were grim with
outrage.

"Do you mean to stand there and coolly admit that you went forth from
this house; this house, I say, and in the time that belongs to the
service of Sir Roderick O'Carroll, you accommodated James Keating of
Poolgower by assisting at the marriage of his son?"

Thomas's heart quailed but immediately steadied.  It was unjust to
accuse him of disloyalty to the Sir.  He, who alone of all of them, had
been witness to the terrible thing that had happened on that night.
None but he had heard the cry of anguish that had burst from their
restrained and haughty master when he saw his land torn from his ground
and borne from him across the sky to James Keating of Poolgower?

Very quietly came his answer and Mrs.  Stacey thought to herself that
the Sir would not speak more proudly.

You all know," he said, 'that the priest's servant boy left word here
on Sunday that I was to meet Ulick Prendergast at the back lodge at
half-past five this morning to go serve a Mass at his daughter's
marriage.  I was fully vested in soutane and surplice in the sacristy
when I heard the name of the man she was to marry.  Would you have me
profane the Mass by refusing to serve?  The Sir himself would not carry
enmity that far."

The Sir himself would not look more haughty, thought the butler.
There's blood in that lad!  But he merely said that there would be law
and order in this kitchen from this day forth.

CHAPTER 13

It was the gayest Season that Dublin had seen for forty years.  The
Tolka was frozen for weeks.  There were skating parties every day and
Lady O'Carroll was the acknowledged belle of the rink.  Spectators
stood to watch her as she cut intricate figures or waltzed to the music
of mandolins.

Roderick could scarcely take his eyes from her as she skimmed over the
ice; lovelier, livelier even, than on that day in Antwerp when she had
captured his heart.  Incredible to associate this glowing girl with the
melancholy being, all fears and clutchings; crying out, wild-eyed at
the repairing of the castle wall lest it close her in.

Braziers burned along the banks and hot chestnut vendors did a roaring
trade.  Vendors of all kinds were doing a roaring trade everywhere.
Never had such money poured into the tills of Dublin shops.  Never
since the parliament house in College Green had closed its lo nis
porticos on the last member, and the life force of a splendid nation
had drained its way across the seas to another land.  But now by the
dedicated life force of one man those porticos would open soon again,
those rusted mill wheels on the Tolka would turn again.  Already the
feeble pulse of a nation was strengthening.  The word Repeal was
breathed on the frosted breaths of the skaters.  The messenger boys and
wag goners sang the word through the streets in their glee songs.
Margaret and Roderick heard the Repeal cry echoing down the Dublin
hills to the accompaniment of sleigh bells.  They heard it at soirees
in Merrion Square; at military balls; at hunt breakfasts.

This Repeal business, Sterrin thought, seemed to be benefiting everyone
but herself.  It was merely keeping her cooped up in a house that had
neither park nor stable and where the only pef" son remotely near her
own age was her own mamma!  How did they manage to have their knives
cleaned?  No knife boy and as for a turf boy!  Black coal was emptied
through a grating on the

front steps into a cellar beside the kitchen.  Not that it would have
mattered about there being no turf boy, if they had a knife boy, and if
the knife boy was young Thomas.  "Papa," she asked suddenly.  "If Big
John were to wash the smell of the horses off himself would he become a
gentleman?"

"Egad!"  said her startled papa.  "I don't think that Big John needs
any deodorising to make him a gentleman."

"What does that mean?"

"It means that Big John, in his own way, is a gentleman already."

"By the powers of war!"

Her papa told her sternly that little ladies did not say "By the powers
of war' and Sterrin argued that in that case Big John could not be a
gentleman, since he always expressed surprise with that exclamation.
Sir Roderick sighed.  "Sterrin," he asked gently this time, 'has anyone
ever told you that little girls should be seen and not heard?"

"Yes, Papa," she informed him.  "Someone tells me that every day."

It was Sterrin's turn to sigh.  She had heard Maryjoe tell the
Professed Cook that the fishmonger had made so much money supplying
stinking fish to the military barracks and to all the extra festivities
in connection with Repeal, that he had bought a big house in
Ballsbridge, and as soon as he had the smell of the fish washed off him
he would become a gentleman.  It wasn't so much about Big John that
Sterrin had wanted to know, it was about young Thomas.  But, one
couldn't mention him that way to Papa.  If young Thomas, she pondered,
were to wash the smell of the knives from him would he become a
gentleman?  But then young Thomas did not smell of knives.  And he
needed ||j [|] j no washing.  His hands were never dirty and his hair
was always brushed back into shiny curls and he spoke nicely.  He had
learned how to read and read an awful lot of books like Trinity
gentlemen.  Yet he wasn't a gentleman!  She sighed again and decided to
leave the problem until she would be grown up.

Her father noted the sigh and took sudden stock of his daughter's small
figure, so remotely still.  Was it stillness or was it intimidation
from constant repression?  For her age she possessed unusual powers of
observation.  Had she been a boy one might have enjoyed developing such
powers.  But a girl, and a pretty one, had no need for any developing
of the intellect.  It

might, heaven forbid, make her a bluestocking!

He turned towards the door and the sight of his wife's charming figure
dressed for an afternoon's promenade.  "What say you, my dear," he
called out, 'that we bring this little person with us.  Her cheeks seem
too peaked and her brain too active."

When her mamma consented, Sterrin, in an excess of gratitude promised
to be seen and not heard.  And, as her papa escorted his ladies down
the steps, one on either arm, she added for good measure.  "And I
promise also, not to be young more than once."

"A most praiseworthy undertaking," her father assured her.  "Attempts
at repeating youth are rarely successful and always unattractive."

"Then do you think," Mamma asked him, 'that I ought to change this
bonnet?  I am perhaps a leetle too old for its frivolity?"

Sterrin suddenly experienced that shut-out feeling that came so often
when she was with her parents.  Papa was looking completely away from
her towards his wife's slim figure and at her girlish face beneath the
new bonnet of golden chip.  But it was a relief to hear him assure
Mamma that she would never grow old.

The shut-out feeling soon passed for there was a lilt in the air of
Dublin these days.  Other ladies promenading along the Sack ville
Street Mall had, like Margaret, laid aside their hoods and velvet
bonnets for chip ones decked with flowers.  There were flowers already
in the window boxes of those mansions that were still maintained as
dower houses by the great ladies of the past.

More spectators than usual, Roderick thought, were watching the arrival
of the mail coaches.  The attraction was the Shrovetide brides in their
unmistakable blue bonnets arriving from their country weddings for the
Bed of Honour.

"It is almost like watching a play," said Margaret.  Roderick agreed.
All the laughter and quips as one blue-bonne ted figure after another
was swung to the ground by her brand-new husband, lent a kind of ballet
effect.

He squired his ladies around about and they sauntered back in the wake
of those honeymooners who were making for Mr.  Gresham's inn where the
Bed of Honour would contain the irreducible minimum of fleas.  At the
door of the inn one bride108

groom was pleading with the innkeeper.  But Mr.  Gresham kept shaking
his head.  Between the Castle season and the Repeal movement it was
becoming necessary to make reservations in advance.  "These days," they
heard him say, 'honeymoons should not be left to chance, unless," he
smiled, 'yours happens to be a runaway one."  The bride was blushing
furiously while the groom protested.  Then as Mr.  Gresham turned to
indicate another inn, the groom's face showed full and Roderick stopped
dead.  Til wager five crowns that fellow is a Keating of Pool gower!"
he exclaimed.  "And, ye gods!  The bride is old Prender gast's
daughter.  The Keating land grabber must be prospering; a honeymoon at
Gresham's no less!"

Margaret looked from the pretty, radiant face of the bride to
Roderick's; black with anger.  "Roderick," she pleaded, 'the girl is
lovely, and quite genteel.  I believe that she was at school with the
De Lacey girls.  Don't grudge them their happiness.  Neither of these
had anything to do with your land."

He strode on and for a second both Sterrin and her mamma lost their
hold of his arm.  "Forgive me," he said as he slowed for them.  "But a
man's land is sacred; every acre of it.  As sacred almost as He was
nearly going to say as sacred as a man's wife but he was halted again
in mid-sentence.  The weirdest looking equipage came galloping towards
them.

It had all the appurtenances of a funeral coach; plumed horses,
crepe-swathed driver.  But when the mad rocking of the coach parted the
drawn curtains, Margaret and Roderick recognised to their great delight
the gloomy figure of Tom Steele, the Head Pacificator of Ireland.

He sat with arms folded on chest; uniform covered in a long black
cloak, peaked cap bending with crepe.  The Repeal movement was in deep
and angry mourning.

When they reached home they found Lady Cullen's grand nephew Patrick,
and a group of fellow students of Trinity in the drawing-room.  Then
the explanation for Thomas Steele's funeral dash came out.  The
Whiteboys were active again.  They had fired into the de Guider's house
a few nights before wounding Stephen de Guider and mutilating scores of
his cattle.  "Tom Steele's animated corpse went down in the Repeal
Hearse this afternoon."

The news revived in Margaret all the sinister associations that made
her dread to return to Kilsheelin.  That night there was a

>..  ^

beating in her brain that mounted into deafening crashes.  The cousins
brewed the leaves of the small ivy.  It was soothing, they assured
Roderick, when the mind was disturbed.  They didn't say that it was
listed in their herb book as 'a cure for the madness'.  But the sleep
vouchsafed to Margaret by the ivy brew was vivid with the images of
white-clad men with blackened faces, and with the red-dripping horror
of mutilated animals.  And the sounds of screaming winds and screaming
cattle that awakened her were still tearing from her own throat when
sleep had gone.

Sterrin, awakened by the cries, crouched outside her parents' bedroom.
Once its door opened and she saw her mother's face; wild-looking and
unfamiliar.  Papa was trying to hold her in his arms and where Mamma's
hands gripped his shoulders, the cloth of his robe was torn.

CHAPTER 14

He had the whole white world to himself.  The farmsteads with their
roofs of golden thatch were glamorised into fairy palaces of white and
gold.  As he swung down the road his mood burst into song.  The one
that Mr.  Davis had written under the inspiration of the three hundred
Greeks who had died at Thermopelae and the three Romans who had held
the Sublician Bridge

"When boyhoodfs fire was in my blood, I read of ancient freemen, For
Greece and Rome who bravely stood Three hundred men, and three men."

A carriage came round the bend towards him.  Heads craned from the
windows at the sound of the magnificent voice echoing through the white
stillness.  Fiona De Lacey, going to her first Moonlight Ball, called
excitedly over her shoulder to her sister Eithne.  "Quick!  Who is that
divine young gentleman?"

Eithne squeezed into the window space.  "I declare I've never seen him
before.  Perhaps he is some visitor to Kilsheelin.  My goodness, isn't
he handsome!  And what a voice!"

"Let's have a look."  Their brother gave them a privileged push.
"Humph, he's a mere youngster!  Probably he's that chap from Eton who
is staying with Lord Strague's son.  Thinks he owns the bally ground he
walks on!"

The three offspring of a squire en sent their varying looks of ivy,
longing and admiration after the knife boy from the kitchen of
Kilsheelin Castle until he was out of sight.

"I'd vow," declared Fiona, 'that he is going to keep a love tryst." She
groped in her muff for the flannel-wrapped hot brick and gave herself
up to romantic longings.

Young Thomas, following his own voice and awakening the ^hoes would
have welcomed any other tryst than this one to

scout and scavenge for news about the unromantic preludes to Kitty
Dowling's proposed marriage.  Particularly this perfect night!  They
weren't that badly off for news in the kitchen, he thought.  If Kitty
Dowhing was going to marry a rich old man, that was her affair.  He
didn't want any part of it.  Yet he could not deny Mrs.  Stacey her
gossip and, therefore, found himself on his way to the Bowlings to
deliver some dripping.  "Be sure to tell them it's our extra," Mrs.
Stacey had warned him.

Dowling's dog ran out barking as young Thomas opened the gate.

"God save all here," said Thomas as he stepped in the house.  The girl
stooping over a pot on the hearth looked up, startled.  She pushed back
the jet-black curl that had fallen over her nose and answered.

"God save you kindly."

Her mother, mixing a soda cake at the table took her thumb out of the
heap of soda she was about to crush in her left palm.  She let her "God
save you' slip abstractedly through her open curiosity.

He stated his errand with such deprecatory civility that the two women
were delighted to relieve Mrs.  Stacey of the problem of her
superfluous dripping.  "Musha," said Mrs.  Dowling with great relief.
"Sit down there at the fire and take the weight off your legs.  Didn't
I think for a rninnit that you were a gentleman."

You had me fooled, too," said Kitty.  Was it you we heard singing "A
Nation Once Again"?"

"I'm afraid I did not realise that I was making so much noise."

"Noise is it?"  said Mrs.  Dowling."  "Twas the grandest singing.  Sure
we thought it might be some of the quality going to the Moonlight Ball
in the town.  Though I was fearful too that it might be one of the
Whiteboys.  "Tis the sort of night they would be up to their
andramartins only there isn't one of them could sing like that."

Two men, father and son obviously, came from an adjoining room.  They
didn't see young Thomas sitting in the gloam of the chimney nook.
"Kitty," cried her father, 'haven't you got your good gown on yet.  And
look at your hair.  It is to shame us you would?"

"Whisht John," cautioned his wife, 'we've company."  Her husband craned
and recognised young Thomas.  He had seen him

often in the farmyard in the castle.

"God save you, you're welcome here," he said, but he was abstracted.
There was too much at stake tonight.  Men were coming to draw down a
match between his daughter and the richest man in the barony and here
she was dressed as if she were going out to feed pigs.

"Go wash your face and put on your Sunday gown," he said to her in a
low, tense voice.  Kitty kicked off her low shoes and put her feet into
a big, dirty pair of boots belonging to her father that were drying by
the hearth.

"What are you doin'?"  he asked.  They'll be here in a minute."

"I've to go out to the byre to set these eggs under the cluck in
hen."

"That'll hold till tomorrow."

"No," said Kitty, moving to the door.  "She'll have gone off the
cluck."

She tied a canvas apron round her waist and ignored their protests.  As
she took up a lantern and left the room, she said, "I'm dressed well
enough for another woman's leavings."

The brown hen pushed every egg under her puffy chest with a$ much
cackling and scolding as though she had laid them herself.  She had
barely poked the thirteenth under the fertile heat of her feathers and
given an ungrateful peck at Kitty's hand when a low whistle sounded
from the orchard.

She blew out the lantern as she came into the moonlight from the dark
byre, and hurried under the apple trees.  The moon was making a kind of
fireworks display out of the little waterfall and sending up shafts and
sparks of silver flame.  But it etched too clearly the tall figure of
Mark Hennessey, who had been courting her for two years.

"Mark," she whispered, 'you could be seen a mile off."

He stepped backwards over the little stream and drew her after him into
the field below, and under the shade of a great beech tree.  Have they
bid for you yet?"  he asked her as he drew her into his arms.

Her head was down on his shoulder and she left it there as she answered
down between the frieze and the fresh skin of that Stand body that
would never hold her close again.

"I don't know.  I've not been within.  I made an excuse to set ^gs
under a clucker.  Something told me you'd come.  Oh, Mark!"  The words
came tenser and forced her breath in quivers

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against the back of his neck.

To think this is the last time we'll be together.  "Twould have been as
well if I'd stayed inside but I had to torture myself with the look of
you and the feel of you.  I had to kiss you goodbye."

He turned his head sideways and pressed kisses into her black ringlets.
You said last Sunday week that you'd run away with me."

She drew away and as she stood before him he thought her ringlets
looked h'kc shining ebony in the moonlight and the severe beauty of her
features was etched like a marble statue.

"That was before the cow died, and before the proctor thought the place
looked so tasty that we ought to be payin' more tithes to the parson
and the agent thought we ought to be payin' more rent to the landlord.
It broke my heart to uproot the grand shrubs I got from Miss Cullen.
Every time she passed on her horse, she'd turn down the bore en to see
how they were doin and she vowed that they throve better in the shelter
of our yard than in the glass house at Crannagh Abbey.  Twas the same
with the slippings I got from Miss De Lacey.  I had to pull them up and
we had to muck up the whitewash and paint, and leave the gate hanging
on one hinge and be the dirty Irish we are expected to be."

"Sh, you'll be heard."  Her voice had risen and her breast was heaving.
"I know," he soothed.  *Whisht, wasn't I forgetting what I came for."
He took a purse from his pocket and took out three bank-notes.
"Look!"

She took the notes in her hand and read clearly in the white light the
three inscriptions of twenty pounds.  Her eyes were wide with
question.

"Mark is it, is it the Big Wind again?"  He nodded.  "Where did you
find them?"

"In the field at the bottom of Graffin's Hill.  I was slashing briars
on the headlands and I saw something white, two pieces of white.  They
were stuck within the heart of the hedge.  I thought immediately of the
two ten-pound notes Jack Ry311 found last year and he toppin'
thistles."

"But, Mark, are you right to keep it?  Could anyone claim it?  Don't
you remember the trouble there was about the gold that was found?"

"That was different.  That was Mr.  de Cinder's gold beyond a doubt and
it was found on his own grounds.  Now this money

^s in a spot in the hedge that's in direct line with my Uncle Larry's
house and, look here!"  He pulled out the purse again and held up
something between his finger and thumb.  "They are bite ens of feathers
that were stuck inside two of the notes that were rolled up together
'

"Your Uncle Larry's mattress that was blown down the hill?"  He nodded
again.  "There's no knowin' what money he had sewn up in the feathers.
He always made it an excuse that he meant to leave me plenty only for
what blew away that night.  Still, it didn't keep him from leavin' what
was left to his wife's nephew."

"An' all the work you used to do!  Well, 'tis an ill wind that blows no
one good.  I'm glad from my heart for you, Mark asthore, but," her
voice broke, "I suppose it is America for you now."

He drew her back into his arms and held her face upturned so that the
moon glorified the beauty of every feature that he inventoried.  The
blue eyes, the straight Grecian nose, the perfect teeth that gleamed
through half parted lips.  He thought with sickness of this flower
being thrown away on Owen Heffernan's dunghill!  Suddenly he crushed
her to him and kissed her as he had never kissed her since the first
time their lips had gently met in the orchard.

She pushed him from her, panting and frightened of the strange
unfamiliar stirrings within herself.  "Mark."  He had never been like
this before in all the tender courting of the last two years.

He was panting hard but he held her from "him now and gripped her hands
till they hurt.  "Kitty, I can make a bid for you tonight.  Sixty
pounds and the few I've saved isn't much against fifty-four acres of
land that's as good as the Golden Vale, and I believe he has a stocking
of gold for bye  But, Kitty, my life's love," he drew her again into
his arms.  "I've love enough to cover every one of his acres.  It's
piled as rich in my heart as all his hoard of gold."

She pulled herself from him and looked back at the pretty house with
braided thatch and latticed windows that stood in lts generous yard
under the shade of the silvery orchard.  There % taste and industry
there.

"The talk of this marriage has lifted the dread from their hearts.  Two
years ago 'twas the sow.  Last year our fine horse

and then a cow.  And when the cow died last week and dropped its
carcass into the quarry, the schoolchildren they said,

"There's another beast in Bowling's graveyard."  I could s that
eviction was staring my mother and father in the eyes.  0^ bad season
now, and what would pay the rent and tithes?  My father was born here
and my mother came here to live when her own father was evicted.  I'd
rather see them shot the way her father was shot that day than see them
walk down the bore en for the last time and turn their heads for the
work house."  She put her face into her hands.

He drew down her hands."  "Twill be the same to me as if you were shot,
the day you drive down the bore en on Owen Heffernaf?s phaeton on your
weddin' drive."

"Stop!"  She clung to him.  "Oh, Mark, what can we do?"

"Kitty, 'tis the way I was thinkin', the other one of the ould Clarke
couple is dead and the cottage is vacant.  It's not much more than a
cabin '

"But we'd be together.  We'd know our youth together."

"And we have strength enough to rise up out of poverty '

Someone called.  They turned to see Niall coming down the orchard path.
"Kitty," he called, 'there's money bid for you."  She turned to step
over the stream but Mark held her.  "Give me an answer one way or the
other.  If you go this way we'll never meet again."

Niall reached out his hand and pulled her over the stream.  "Come on,
girl," he said, 'there is a gentleman widin, with a face that would
stop a funeral and he's getting' impatient."  He turned to Mark.  "God
save you, Mark.  "Twould be a nice night for the coortin' if there was
no matchmakin'.  Romance isn't for the likes of us."

She turned back to Mark.  "There's a boy inside coordheecing A
respectable boy in service at the castle.  Thomas his name is."

"Young Thomas, I know him."

Til give him a message for you and he'll tell you what happens tonight.
Wait for him at the low part of the castle wall on the Sir's road."

"When I was poor?  sang young Thomas,

"Yowr father's door

Was closed against your constant lover;

With care and pain

I tried in vain

My fortune to recover."

jy/iusha, there was flour in the potatoes tonight," said Mark
[ennessey, stepping out from the shadow of the tree that grew ieh over
the castle wa^-' "Tis well for you that has the heart long so gay."

"There was indeed flour in the potatoes tonight," said 'homas.  "I
never tasted finer.  And the butter was made by the nest butter-maker
in all the country '

Mark interrupted angrily.  "You are playin' tricks with me.  id she
give you e'er a message for me?"  "She did.  But first she gave a
message to Mr.  Heffernan.  She ave it to him personally."  Young
Thomas chuckled.  "Go on.  It's easy for you to laugh.  What did she
say to him?"  "When he had complimented her on her butter, he very
enerously urged us all to put plenty of it on our potatoes as the
utter-maker would soon be removing to his less hospitable oof."

"An' did he admit that much against himself?"  "Not in so much words.
But he left us in no doubt that when hat butter was being made by his
wife, it would not be put town so lavishly with the potatoes for
"coordheecers'V "His wife?"  The words jerked out hoarsely as Mark
turned way.  "Ye need say no more.  Good night to ye."  Young Thomas
kept up with him.  "If it's all the same to you, Viark, I'd as lief
give the message I was given.  Twould only be :ivil."

Mark halted.  "Say it quick and be finished with it."

"She bade me tell you hurry and get Clarke's cottage before 'ftyone
else grabs it and she made me promise to serve the Mass it your
wedding."

Mark swung round and grasped young Thomas's arm in a 'fee.  "Is she
goin' to run off with me you mean?"

"She'll tell you that tomorrow night.  You are to be down the ttchard
at the same time and you are to be sure and have word lbout the
cottage."

"I'll be there, and I'll have the few lines of writing for the ott age
May God increase you, young Thomas, whoever you lrc Thomas stiffened.

Don't take offence, avic," cried Mark," 'tis long sorry I'd ^ to
belittle you.  But look there."  He swung his hand in the dircc.  tion
of the Devil's Bit.  "My great-grand-uncle was said to be the
handsomest officer in the French army.  His people owned all that land
as far as your eye can see but the gentility is gone thin in us with
hardship and poverty and no learnin'.  What I mean is that you have it
in you as strong as 'twas bred.  You're not like the others up there.
I'll always be your friend if you want one and 'tis proud I am that
you'll serve me Weddin' Mass.  God be with you."

Young Thomas still jangled a little under the reference to his unknown
origin, until he had vaulted the wall.  The familiar park scene had its
unfailing effect upon him of soothing graciousness.  He brushed the
brambles from his knees and resumed his song :

"Far, far away,

By night and day

I toiled to win a golden treasure,

And golden gains,

Repaid my pains

In fair and shining measure."

When the song reached the back courtyard, Mr.  Hegarty stopped
translating the newspaper into Gaelic for his underlings and laid down
the Freeman's Journal.  "I'll repay that lad's pains, and in a spot
where he'll repair his breeches."  He looked sternly over his steel
glasses.  "A nice hour, a nice hour," he repeated, 'for a boy of your
age to be night walking

And who sent me night walking  thought the culprit.  "I couldn't help
it, sir," he said.  "They made me wait for the potatoes."

*Musha, what else would they do," cried Mrs.  Stacey.  "An' was it
praties they had?  But sure of course, what else would they have an' it
only a draw in5 down".  Sit in and tell us all."

He told them all and an hour later when the first sleepy cro\v sounded
from the hen shed, Ellen, the parlour maid, as she rose nearly brought
her hands together in applause.  "Do you know she said, 'you had me
forgettin' where I was.  I was between two minds whether it was to
genuflect, I should, like comin' out of the Church, or to clap like the
end of a play."

"But what I can't understand," said Mrs.  Stacey, 'is, how did

pounds tty come to have her Sunday gown on her and the red shoes from
France and her hair brushed down around her, seeing that jhe left the
kitchen in her sack "praskeen" and her father's brogues; and she to say
before she went to set the hen that she was dressed well enough for
another woman's leavings?"

Young Thomas sighed.  This was the third time he had described that
scene.  Though indeed it has stirred himself so much that he had been
lost in the telling.  There had been something so unusual in the way
Kitty had let the long ringlets fall, brushed, but ungathered down her
back, that although his own curls swept back down only to the top of
his collar, the eyes of his audience seemed to see through him the
long, black ringlets flowing over the blue gown as Kitty emerged from
her room and confronted Owen Heffernan with her scorn of his 'evicted
land."  She had heard all from Niall.  "The first time I call to your
husband's house, Kitty," Niall had said, Til be wearing a white shirt
on the outside of me clothes and black on my face, and I won't go
alone."

It was unfortunate for Owen that Kitty Dowling herself of all people,
had been witness to the eviction of Widow Fogarty, one of his tenants.
She stood before him and spoiled the good of the fine potatoes and
butter and sweet milk, as she told him how the bailiffs man had kneaded
the woman's knuckles with his own until she released her frantic grip
of the latch she would never raise again.  How she had watched the
widow kissing the grass that grew inside the yard gate, as they pushed
her through with her children clinging to her skirts.  It was an
accepted caress.  "But do you think," said Kitty, 'that I'd walk in on
that grass that she was pushed from to fall flat on the road with
weakness and heartbreak.  How dare you come to this house for me...?
I'd rather go to my grave!"

His kitchen audience could see the two matchmakers wilting lri their
chairs.  And then young Thomas described how the old suitor turned back
from the door as he was about to leave and shouted "An' me to be near
buyin' a new suit for this!  "Twas God done it that I hadn't the money
from me, and the suit on "te back tonight

"Suit, inagh!"  Kitty had cried.  "Tisn't a suit but a shroud you'll be
needin' when the cross1 is painted on your door ' "Crosses were painted
on the doors of farmers who bought the land of their evicted
neighbours.

He wondered privately would Kitty have been so accusing!  dramatic if
there were no handsome lover waiting in yj orchard.  He yawned.  What
was Mrs.  Stacey saying?  Surely She didn't want him to go over all
that again.

"An' I suppose," said Ellen, 'that Kitty showed off the hair and the
gown and shoes to grig him, let him see what he was missin'."

"No," said young Thomas, rising sleepily, "I think the idea was
prompted by her strong sense of drama."  And off he went to bed where
he dreamed all night long of joyous weddings in Dublin.



CHAPTER 15

Lady O'Carroll gripped the bedpost while Nurse Hogan pulled on her
corset laces.  The gown for the big event of the Dublin season drooped
on its dummy.  "Try again, Nurse Hogan!"  But it was no use.  Every
time the Nurse tugged, her Ladyship heaved.  Til die if I have to miss
the Melon Show at Lord Cloncurry's," Margaret moaned.

"My dear, you look awful," said Mrs.  Kennedy-Sherwin, calling on her
way to the Show.  "I must rush, there will be such a squeeze that my
gown will be hidden out of sight if I am not there early.  It is the
first in Dublin--my gown a la Marie Antoinette that permits the
petticoat to be glimpsed.  I brought it back from Paris.  The first
there too, except the Comtesse de Clery's--but no one saw hers.  His
Majesty--you know who, State visit, no names, no pack drill--slipped
her out on the balcony but the Queen slipped after them and locked the
window.  They were out on the balcony all night, dare not tap.  Now she
won't be coming to Ireland for the Repeal rally; caught a chill, Comte
de Clery is coming alone.  I'll tell you all this evening.  My dear,
you do look awful.  Better stay at home if what I suspect ails you."

"Could she be right?"  Margaret asked the Nurse later.  "All that
nausea?  And my wedding ring finger is paining exactly as it used to
before Sterrin."

"You know what Dr.  Mitchell said, your Ladyship.  It is out of the
question.  No, it is only all the flies on the meat this hot
Weather."

It was a woebegone and bedraggled Mrs.  Kennedy-Sherwin who called on
the way back from the Melon Show.

"What on earth happened?"  gasped Margaret.  "Surely the rain didn't do
that?  She pointed to the crushed and sodden bonnet that the little
lady held fastidiously away from herself by the top of a streamer.

"My bonnet-babet-blonde is ..."  she started to wail, but was

silenced by the usually complacent Jeremy.

"Stop wailing about your wretched bonnet!"  he snapped.  "You are lucky
to be alive."

His wife beckoned Margaret behind a screen and explained the mystery.
As their carriage had driven along the sea road a maid had come to an
upper window to empty a chamber-pot into the sea.  It slipped from her
grip and came hurtling down over the carriages.

"The horses reared up, then bolted!  A most aristocratic-looking house,
Lady O'Carroll; and all the contents!"

"Of the house?"

"Don't be absurd, Lady O'Carroll!  Of the--the thing!  And to think,"
she wept, 'that the Lord Lieutenant never saw it."

"The--the thing?"  choked Margaret.

"Lady O'Carroll!  How could you?  As if His Excellency would look at
No, I mean my bonnet-babet-blonde.  I had hoped it would be the first
to be seen in Ireland.  They were only starting to be the rage in Paris
when we were leaving there.  And as for my Marie Antoinette She broke
down completely.

The fate of the gown a la Marie Antoinette was too much for her.  It
was intended to electrify the guests at the Melon Show, the great
outdoor event that highlighted the Dublin season.  According to its
great Parisian designer, the gown was a daring innovation that
'permitted the ankles to be glimpsed'.

And here, hadn't the rain driven the guests indoors?  And Mrs.
Kennedy-Sherwin found herself jostled into-a nook in an upper corridor
where the gown itself was not glimpsed, much less the provocative
ankles it had dared to reveal.

"Just think," she sobbed, 'of my having to arrive bareheaded in the
full afternoon!  I shall never lift my head again!"

"You were brave," soothed Margaret, 'to face it at all with your head
uncovered."

"And her ankles uncovered!"  said Lady Cullen, appearing round the
screen.  "There is, after all, a Providence that designs our ends; both
ends

That evening in the drawing-room Captain KennedySherwin was telling
Roderick about the stampede at the Me| n Show when word came just as
the refreshments were being handed round, that the Host, Lord Cloncurry
and several other gentlemen including the Liberator and his son, had
been deprived of their office as Magistrate.

"By gad, that is a portentous move.  It is the first step that the
government has taken against the Repeal Movement '

"It has ruined my Marie Antoinette gown from Paris," said Mrs.
Kennedy-Sherwin emerging from the screen.  Sir Roderick swept her a
bow.  "And what," he asked her, 'is the latest from Paris, apart from
that exquisite gown?"

"In Paris," the Captain interposed, 'the talk, as in Dublin, is all
Repeal.  The leader of the French radicals, Ledru Rollins has announced
his intention of coming to Dublin to present in person the big sum of
money that his party has collected for the cause."

"Repeal indeed!"  shrilled Mrs.  Kennedy-Sherwin.  "Everyone of the
"haul ton" is more concerned with the scandal of the Comtesse de Clery
locked out on a balcony with His Majesty with nothing but her satin
gown a la Marie Antoinette--the dernier cri in fashion, that permits
the petticoat to be glimpsed underneath."

"Hmph!"  said Lady Cullen, who was in Dublin trousseau shopping for her
niece Patricia.  "It is just as well that she is not coming here.
Dublin balconies can be very chilly during a Repeal reception; and so
can Dublin hostesses, should they catch their menfolk "glimpsing" the
petticoats of their lady guests."

"Repeal receptions," cried La Petite.  "One might as well be gowned "a
la red petticoat" for all those repealers note of a lady's gown.  It is
amazing the way politics divert gentlemen from their normal
interests."

Some of the French party had arrived already.  Americans who had
attended the week-long meeting in New York addressed by the President
and had heard his threat to seize Canada with American arms if force
was used against the repeal movement, were thronging into Dublin.  So
were English statesmen.  Extra boats brought English holiday-makers.
There was to be a great rally at Tara.

"Roderick, could I not travel to Tara with you," pleaded Margaret,
Virile the road is still clear?  "Roderick was going in his fficial
capacity as Warden in the Liberator's cortege.  It would e a gruelling
journey and Margaret's pale and pea ky looks ^de him fear another of
her wild spasms.

"My darling, there is no such thing as a clear road within twenty-five
miles of Tara.  People have been bivouacking in the

w ^

Ir *,.a

\

fields for days past.  Look at these."  They were driving through
Sackville Street where formations of dust-grimed figures streamed
endlessly by as though they had marched through many nights to the
Assumption Day meeting.  An event, he thought, to speak of to one's
sons.  "Though I vow," he said aloud, 'that I should like Sterrin to
witness it.  It will be an epic of history.  Perhaps we could go the
canal route.  I'll try to find a way."

He found the Grand Canal harbour and a long stretch of the canal packed
with gaily decorated fly boats from the Barrow and Suir and even the
Shannon.  They had cruised up through Munster and Leinster and dropped
their passengers at points of vantage, then continued on to Dublin to
ply for more.  But every seat and space was sold out.

As Big John watched the Sir moving from boat to boat through
disappointed crowds he spied a limping figure that he recognised.  He
was the skipper of a canal boat and was the same Carney that had lost
his shebeen the night of the Big Wind.  He tossed the reins to Joseph
and talked with his old acquaintance.  He pointed to Sterrin and
reminisced of his experience on the night of her birth.

"And you tell me she was born in that storm?"

The skipper saluted Roderick.  "Your coachman has told me of your
Honour's difficulty."  He dropped his voice.  "There's talk of running
a new barge on Assumption Eve.  There are no bookings for there's
nothing fixed but your Honour's name will be the first down.  A fine
Milesian name for such a journey."  He saluted Sterrin.  We'll weather
the storm again, Little Lady."

But there was no storm.  It was a golden day when the sound of the
harbour clock, striking two, drew a long, musical blast over the waters
and streets from the postilion's bugle.  He squared his shoulders in
the new blue livery, drew his whip downwards across the towing horse
and out into the waters slipped the Colleen Bawn at a good four miles
an hour.  Cheering crowds on either bank wished her Godspeed on^er
maiden voyage, and incoming boats sounded courtesy blasts.  Rowing
boats gave the only impression of movement and the sun glittering on
the harp of the Repeal flag gave the suggestion of a flutter on the
Colleen Baton's pennants.

We are going to take a speed test between the twelfth and thirteenth
lock," announced Sternn, returning from her proud

position beside the skipper.

Margaret had dozed from the somnolent heat and the gentle movement and
the incessant muffled thud of the Repeal marchers on the grassy banks.
Sometimes the formation would break and banners were unshouldered while
the thirsty and exhausted sat round three-legged pots over picnic
fires.  The smell of home-cured bacon cooking on bolsters of cabbage
challenged the strong fragrance from hedgerow and hay field

When the Colleen emerged into the thirteenth lock even Repeal yielded
place to the speed test.  The skipper grasped the steering lever and
fixed his eyes on the great turnip watch suspended from a nail before
him.  An elderly English Earl brought forth his gold repeater.  Other
gentlemen did likewise.  And foreigners, thinking it was part of the
Repeal agitation, solemnly produced their watches.  The skipper of Lord
Cloncurry's boat, where it stood in readiness at the private landing of
his country estate, gave a courtesy blast to the Colleen that nearly
upended her tow horse and diverted her course.  But the thirteenth lock
was achieved with a flourish and a triumphant blast and the captain
announced an average speed of four and a half miles an hour.  When the
cheering ceased and flagons had been distributed with the Company's
compliments, the Earl said they would have clocked five miles per hour
only for that damned horn that upset the tow horse.

The skipper agreed and returned to his instructions from this amazing
young lady who was born the night he lost his old home.  It had never
dawned on him that moths and butterflies had names and significance
until she pointed to a butterfly that had lighted on his steering
arm.

"That's called "Skipper" like you," she remarked.  "It's a male
butterfly, you know," and then proceeded to enlighten him about Meadow
Browns and Green Artillerys and Red Admirals until a little old woman
in a big white apron loomed up and demanded her American letter.  The
boat slowed while the captain harangued Mrs.  McNally.

Did she think that the Colleen Baton on her maiden voyage, bearing the
Quality for all ends of the earth to Tara of the K^gs, should slow up
to deliver Mrs.  McNally's letter from her daughter in America?

Mrs.  McNally did.  "And the two loaves of baker's bread I left ord you
were to pick up for me at the thirteenth lock."

"*3w

The skipper nearly hit the bank.  "Are you aware that between the
twelfth and thirteenth locks there was history being made?  The Colleen
Baton achieved a speed never before accomplished by any vessel on these
waters.  She made five miles an hour."

Mrs.  McNally looked pathetically at the letter in her hand.  The
skipper was pulling out without reading it.  The postilion urged the
horse from a walk to a trot and Mrs, McNally had to run alongside to
keep up.

"Sure there's no one left in the town land that could read it for me,"
she pleaded.  "They are all gone to Tara and there's none left but a
handful of children to help me to milk all the neighbour's cows and
feed their stock."

Til read it on the way back."  But she urged that she'd die with the
dint of waiting to know how her daughter fared.

"And the child expected and all!  At my age," she urged, 'the next day
might never come at all."

"She's quite right," said the English Earl who, along with Sterrin, had
taken up a position next to captain.  "The old may not indulge in the
luxury of postponement.  Read the woman's letter."

Margaret, with all due sympathy to the old lady, considered this a bit
high-handed.  The skipper pondered a suitable comment about the Grand
Canal Company's time to quell Lord-doasItell-you when Sterrin tapped
him and said, "Please read the poor old woman's letter."

"Dear Mother," he read.  "I hope this finds you as it leaves me, a bit
weak after the birth but in good health '

"Thanks be to God," cried Mrs.  McNally.  "Is it a boy or a child?"

The skipper glanced over the top of the page and resumed.

"Michael John was on special duty at the big meeting here in

New York in aid of Repeal Cheers burst from the craning heads in the
Steerage while the captain courteously explained to the First Class
that Michael John was the writer's husband and a policeman.

"Go on," urged the old woman.

"Go on," said the Steerage.

"He was that near to Mr.  Tyler who is the President of America that he
could have put out his hand and touched him "On the question of Irish
Repeal," said the President, "I am no halfway man."

The skipper paused for the cheers from the First and Steer- ge to
subside.  He was beginning to enjoy his position.

"Go on!"  yelled the Steerage.  "What does she say next?"

"She says," he resumed, "did you get the woollen combinations I sent?"
Mrs.  McNally nodded repeatedly.

"Indeed, 'twas them kept the life in me last winter.  Twas only in the
real hot weather of last week'--her eyes, un questing met those of the
Earl's--'that I left them off."

The Earl bowed.  "I should think it would be good weather for washing
them too!"

She agreed.  "They'd dry in a night, but," she turned back to the
skipper, 'you didn't say yet if it is a child or a boy?"

The skipper frowned in perplexity.  "It's neither--or else it's spelled
wrong.  D-a-n-i-e-1-l-e, after the Liberator I suppose ..."

Quite unexpectedly the elegant Lady O'Carroll intervened with the
information that Danielle was a girl's name.  "The feminine of
Daniel."

"Did she say how she got over the confinement?"  urged Mrs.  McNally.

"There's details in that, not fit for public hearing.  There's been
enough of indelicate things aired."

He pulled out midstream though the voices of the Steerage protested
that 'they' had not been washed much less aired.

Down in the cushioned saloon the pint of wine that accompanied the
regular four-and-tenpenny dinner of turkey and boiled ham and mutton
was extended without limit and there were sweetmeats and all kinds of
dainties.  The party grew more friendly as it dwindled to disembark
passengers at private landing stages where gaily decorated boats
awaited the morrow's journey.  On drifted the boat in a haze of golden
sunset.  The Riarchers on the bank merged into the velvety darkness.
Their grass^ muffled footfalls sounded the heart beat of a nation. 
Music spurted from the hay fields and waned into distant roads.  From a
bore en a torchlight procession wended its way over a bridge.  Lights
gleaming through the boughs on every shoulder gave the impression of an
illuminated forest moving through the darkness.  Out from its curtain
veil stepped that incurable romantic, the moon, and it bade the martial
airs give place to W songs.

"It reminds me of Venice," said the voice of the Earl.  From ^e
floorboards with her head on her mother's knee the sleepy

\

voice of Sterrin murmured, "I wish young Thomas were here.

As Roderick drove through dawn-hazed Dublin to the Ma$| in the
privileged oratory of the Liberator's town house, he had the impression
that the familiar streets had been transformed into forest glades.  The
fantasy persisted in the bouquet of flowers handed by a pretty girl to
each guest of the breakfast party given in honour of the Liberator by
Mr.  McGarry of Baggot Street.  When the corner of his eye caught a
colourful figure in the balcony of the dining-room window, Roderick
thought for a frivolous moment he was seeing the Marie Antoinette gown
that 'graciously permitted the petticoats to be glimpsed'.  But when
the host appeared with the Liberator a burst of bardic music brought
into view a full-dress harpist who played throughout the breakfast.

The Liberator's own hard occupied a carriage to himself at the head of
the long procession that awaited the moment of departure from Merrion
Square.  Roderick and Patrick Cullen ^ and other members of the
bodyguard disputed minutes from conflicting timepieces.  But the Head
Pacificator, with great gold f hunter extended, arbitrated the ultimate
moment.  At exactly k eight forty-five, to the drop of Tom Steele's
peace bough, the Liberator ascended his four-horse chant.  The picked
musicians;: entered the carriage behind and the two-hundred-carriage
cortege moved out.

The sudden thunder of cheers that seemed to come from the skies made
Roderick look up.  The roof of every tall house was thronged.  Every
window was blocked with people waving handkerchiefs and flags.  The
sidewalks had disappeared beneath a solid mass of cheering, waving
humanity.  He turned to Patrick and expressed a doubt that there might
not be so vast a crowd a* Tara.

But it looked as if no one had stayed at home.  Horses were rearing up
and up-ending vehicles at the tumult of cheering that rose and swelled
through every green-clad street and every were was the all-pervading
odour of flowers and foliage and fresh dung.

When Tara hill came in sight, Roderick stood up and fa8 figure came in
view of the men who marched behind the Templetown band.  They gave the
O'Carroll rallying cry: it ^as taken up and sent back to him by the
curly-headed giant, Job11 Holohan from Upper Kilsheelin who bore the
satin banner od

which Master Hennessey's niece had embroidered in gold, "O'Connell
Monarch of the Irish Heart'.

Acres away Sterrin pulled her mamma's gown.  Tapa must be coming near,"
she said excitedly.  "I hear the O'Carroll cry."

"An se abac Abu!"  came the rallying cry of the ancient
O'Carrolls--"The hawk to victory!"

"And what's more," said Sterrin, 'that's Felix Downey.  He can split a
glass with his voice."

And for the second time Big John encountered Felix marching along the
high road with a leg of mutton on his shoulder.  "It's becoming a habit
with you, Felix," he greeted.  Beside Felix marched the Scout with one
of the most unique of the humorous banners that interspersed those of
silken seriousness.  "Made to my own design by James Wright," he
explained as he lowered the great five-foot-square loaf impaled upon
the staff that supported his weary form.

Roderick, still standing, raised a white flag and one of the Repeal
Cavalry on the hill took the signal and gave the word of command as the
ten thousand waiting horsemen moved forward to escort the leader.  Over
the central plains of Ireland surged the acclaim of one million voices
like the sound, not of many waters, but of many oceans.  Again and
again the old harper touched the chords but the sound died on the
strings.

The ruddy face of the Liberator paled as he stood in moved silence.  No
High King ever witnessed such a spectacle from his subjects converging
upon his palace from the four highways of Ireland that once led to
Tara.

Sterrin was amazed to see so many English ladies and gentlemen as well
as Irish blow their noses and dab their eyes the way grown-ups did when
they didn't want to let on they were crying.  Lady Cullen did not care
who saw her tears.  Neither did her husband.  When he watched through
his glass the Trades of Drogheda carry their flags to the summit and
plant them round the Stone of Destiny so that the colours drooped
forward in a mourning circle, it was not of the kings of Ireland that
were crowned on the Stone that he thought but of the Honourable Edward
Cullen, slim and fair and dandified whs lay with the United Irishmen
who fell there in ninety-eight.  Through the glass he watched the group
of Protestant men escort old James O'Byrne of Wicklow and place their
Orange flag beside his green one on the stone.  It was their
womenfolk

fr ~4*

IJ'^V I*

^^ j_j

who had flung themselves in supplication before the redcoat soldiers
for the life of James's seventeen-year-old son.  But the boy was hanged
before his kitchen door and the Protestant women had died in vain
beneath the horses' feet.

Major de Courcey lowered the telescope to Sterrin's eyes and pointed
out the different Guilds that marched behind their banners.  "These are
the shoemakers and I think that the ones behind are the
glassblowers."

"And who are the giants with the funny hats?"

"They are not giants he laughed.  "They are the copper smiths They wear
the tallest hats in Europe--in fact in the whole world."

"I wish they'd take them off.  I cannot see what is happening in front
of them."  And as if they had heard her, the barrier of towering hats
vanished as every man uncovered to the tinkling of the Mass bell.  The
priest ascended the central altar and a million people knelt in
prayer.

CHAPTER 16

Sterrin was amazed to see how tall young Thomas had grown while she was
away in Dublin.  And it wasn't so much his height; something about his
face!  He no longer looked as though he belonged with the garfonnerie,
the little turf and water carriers and all the other juvenile
odd-jobbers of the kitchen.  He had a grown-up expression, sort of
proud looking; almost like Papa's.  It gave her a feeling she was too
young to recognise as dismay lest he might withdraw that protective
companion ability for which she had been so homesick in Dublin.

But when she sought him out a few minutes after her homecoming, his
face lit up.  He had been dreading the change that the high living in
Dublin might have made in her.  As the carriage drove up he had
glimpsed her in a big flowered hat and new fashionable clothes, looking
proud and unsmiling like the Honourable Miss Athele O'Carroll of
Strague Castle who wouldn't dream of speaking to a knife boy except to
give an order.  But Sterrin was merely cramped from the journey and
aching from the pressure of the hat ribbons tied under her chin.

"Did you like the book I sent you?"  she demanded.

"I read it three times," he told her.  "I'll read it again for you."

But she knew all about the story.  Ignatius, the Misses O'Car rolls'
footman had told it to her three times.  "Ignatius saw the ghost and
met the gentleman who wrote the story."

"Met Sir Walter Scott?"

"Yes, he visited Tyrone House long ago when Ignatius worked there and
he asked him all about the ghost that haunts it."

"Sapristi!  Fancy meeting the gentleman who wrote all those marvelous
books!"

"What does Sapristi mean?"

"Oh, it is said in books.  It is more dashing than Egad and By Jove."

Sterrin looked at him with krrit brows.  "You are a funny knife

*>V

X *

<

i v *.

boy," she said at last.  "There were no knife boys in Dublin but when
we went to lunch in Celbridge Abbey we saw the ghost of a lady called
Vanessa--we didn't exactly see her ghost, we saw her bower in the
garden where she does her haunting, but I met a knife boy there.  He
didn't say Sapristi.  He said Begob, and he had a dirty nose Come back,
it is very bad manners to walk off when a lady is speaking to you.
Where are you going?"

"To clean my nose."

"But it is not Oh, I didn't think you would start being cross with me
so soon.  I learned my alphabet so that I would be able to write to
you.  I learned to write "cat" and "dog" but when I started to write a
letter to you these words were no use."

He turned back.  This was not the welcome he had planned.  Life had
quickened again for him when he had glimpsed her a while back; just as
it had quickened the morning after the Big Wind when he had brought two
copper jugs of hot water to an upstairs room and he had glimpsed the
lovely baby that had come on the storm's last gasp.  The tiredness of
the night had fallen from him, and the castle itself, because that
little being would dwell there henceforth, had acquired an interest
that had waned only when the carriage disappeared through the gates
last January.  Now she was back and here he was displaying boorish
resentment!  As though he had any right to resent anything that she
might choose to say!

"Look," he said.  "Come out here till I show you something."  He led
her across the yard to the smith's shed where two massive iron supports
had been forged to support the trunk of the great oak that used to
stand in the centre of the lawn.  "Why," she gasped.  "It has come to
life again.  It looks like a great big seat growing out of the ground
with branches on it."

"That is exactly what it is meant to look like," he said, 'and see
here."  He showed her the initials entwined in a heart that her papa
had carved when he first brought her mamma to Kilsheelin.  When the
fallen oaks had been taken away to some cabinet maker the Sir had
ordered that this one was not to be removed.  He had given no further
instructions about it and it had lain in a corner of the yard forgotten
until young Thomas, looking at the initials one day, thought it a pity
to see this record of romance lying neglected.  He had shown the
initials to Rafferty

the castle carpenter and asked him how the tree might be preserved.
When Rafferty suggested a seat young Thomas had brought a book from the
library showing a sketch of a pulpit in a church in Belgium.  It seemed
to be scooped out of a tree that had all its branches still growing. It
was just the kind of fanciful work that appealed to Rafferty.  He was
only happy when he was given some lovely period piece to repair or
preserve.

Roderick looked with wonder at young Thomas when Rafferty said that his
was the inspiration for the magnificent structure.  The surface of the
great trunk had been hollowed and planed, and some of its branches had
been cunningly contrived with the aid of skilled carving to appear to
be growing from it in a graceful intertwining pattern.  The trunk had
not, as Thomas had assumed, gone unnoticed by Sir Roderick.  Oftimes as
he passed it lying there he would recall its grandeur in life; recall,
too, that it had been the sound of its crash that had caused him to
open the window and admit the storm's first onslaught.  The initials he
had carved, his own and those of his lovely bride, faced him now from
the centre of the seat's back.  And this gracious thought had come from
the little ragamuffin who had scuttled away that morning in a trail of
brown trusty like--like?  Roderick couldn't remember what he had
reminded him of then and he could not recall what, or whom, he reminded
him of now; that wide brow, the poise of lip, the sensitive nostril;
someone?  "Thank you, Thomas," he said quietly.  "I appreciate your
thought--and your perception."

He couldn't know either that Thomas felt a thrill of pleasure that the
'young' had, for the first time been omitted.  He couldn't know that
the sensitivity that he had noticed for the first time had been
sculpted forth by himself.  It had started when, as he led the doctor
to tend Big John's shoulder after that night ride he had seen the child
lying across two wooden chairs in a sleep of prostration and had given
a curt order that the boy be covered.  When the nameless waif heard
later who it was who had been responsible for the luxury of a tarpaulin
rug, his awe had merged into an agony of gratitude that had awakened
the questing clamour of his intellect.

The seat was placed where it had stood in life.  Cushions were placed
in its couched length and here Margaret lay in the sunny days that
stretched into mid-September, cherished and tended, her mind relaxed in
the detachment of waiting motherhood.

>'^^ ,7

v v *

% >

Returning to Kilsheelin had been, after all her fears, a joyous
experience.  The people had stopped working in the fields and run
towards the roadside as their carriage passed.  Some of them gave great
shouts of "Repeal' as they ran, 'as though," Roderick had said, we had
Repeal packed safely in one of our valises'.

It was good to come home when the fruits of the earth were coming home.
From where she lay she could see the carts laden with sheaves coming
across the fields to the yard.  Later she heard the sound of laughter
and merriment as extra hands joined the workers in the yard for the
threshing.  No tortured lo wings sounded from the fields these nights.
The country under the discipline of Repeal was crime less

The season's toil came to a glorious climax with the dance at the end
of the ten days' threshing.  Sky and earth were bathed in the refulgent
brightness of the harvest moon as Margaret lay under the flowered
drapes of her bed and listened to the music of fiddles and melodeons
and bagpipes that came through the open window.

Suddenly there was a hush in the laughter and the twanging.  A ripple
of musical sound throbbed out on the air, and Margaret knew that the
hard had condescended to grace the dance with his presence.  A little
cloud came over her mood.  The hard played such sad music!  But no
sadness came from the harp strings.  Its music was part of the lyric of
the night.  Three notes formed the prelude; the first low and deep, the
second tender and the third so full of life and passion that the leaves
ceased their whispering and the birds in their nests were oeguiled into
sending back sleepy trills.

When the clapping had subsided the strings throbbed out again in a
melody that surprised Margaret, for she knew the hard dismissed Moore's
melodies as modern and trivial.  But she was still more surprised when
a young voice took up the refrain.

"Believe me if all those endearing young charms'

"Roderick," she called towards the dressing-room.  He came in his robe
and stood listening at the window until the song ended.

"Who on earth," she asked him, 'owns that delightful voice?"

He turned from the window and discarded his robe.  "I have an idea that
it is the property of our highly individual knife boy."  \020"Then,
you knew that he could sing like that?"

He snuffed candles and got into bed.  No darkening followed their
quenching; just a lovely slow whitening as the moon's rays took over.
"Darling," he said flinging his am across the pillow, 'you should
always wear moonlight."  He kissed her and sighed pleasantly.  "It has
been a long day."  He had been abroad since dawn.  She repeated her
question about young Thomas.  Yes," he murmured sleepily.  "Lady Cullen
mentioned to me that she had heard him sing at the Crossroads dancing
lasf Corpus Christi.  She said she slowed the brougham to listen to
him.  I meant to speak to Hegarty about it.  I won't have my staff
clowning for the public.  The business of the seat put his bad
behaviour out of my head."

"The seat was a graceful thought, Roderick, for a young kitchen boy! It
reminds me of Bruckstruyn's famous pulpit at Malines."

Much later, when she thought he was asleep, Margaret heard a muffled
voice, from the pillows, say, "There must be quite a lot about that boy
that I don't know."

Next day he learned something about his knife boy that Thomas had
prayed might never reach the Sir's ears.  It was gale day.  Tenants
came in a steady trickle and lingered over their payments 'longer than
usual.  They all wanted to talk about Repeal.  All of them wore Repeal
buttons in their lapels.  Those of them who had not been to the Monster
Meeting at Tara had been to the nearby town of Cashel on Corpus Christi
when O'Connell had addressed four hundred thousand people.  Roderick
was glad to see Black Pat.  The bell rope was tugged straight away for
refreshments and over their glasses they reminisced pleasantly.  He
asked about his wife whom he had not yet met, and about the farm
occupied by Sterrin's wet nurse, Mrs.  Conry.  It was worrying him.  It
was not being worked satisfactorily except for whatever assistance
Black Pat could give, and for over a year no rent had been paid.

"We'll make a match for her," said Black Pat, getting to his feet.
"There's nothing like a husband for taking the bare look off a woman."
Roderick assured him that he was more concerned about having the bare
look removed from the farm.

No farmer had ever been evicted from the Kilsheelin estate, but no
landlord could be expected to allow one of his holdings to go to rack
and ruin.  Mrs.  Conry had gradually come to

identify herself with Black Pat's fosterage connection because n had
continued to sow and save her crops since the day Sn became Stenin's
wet nurse.  Roderick decided to go and see her right away.  When he
rang for his horse the servant who answered said that George Lucas was
outside, pleading for an interview.

The name conveyed nothing to Sir Roderick.  He had forgotten about the
small dark man to whom he had given temporary employment after being
evicted with nineteen others by Major Darby because a sheep had been
stolen.  Lucas came in twisting his hairs king cap in his hand; but he
came right to the point.  He wanted permission to marry into the Widow
Conry's farm.

It should be the solution to the problem.  The man was^a good worker,
honest, conscientious.  Demmit, he didn't have to be likeable as well!
Roderick studied the little face, neither young nor old, smooth yet
finely shrivelled like an apple pulled too soon.  The thin hair was
blue-black and the small eyes had a blue black sheen.  Like a beetle,
Roderick thought.  Aloud he said, "There are tenants of my own with
sons who have a stronger claim on any vacant farm."

The man gave the cap another twist.  "With respects to your Honour's
Sir, you wouldn't say that they would have a stronger claim than Miss
Sterrin's foster-mother?"  Blast the fellow's presumption I Roderick
curbed an inclination to have him thrown our.  Why did it have to be
Sterrin's foster-mother-of-sorts who had captured his farming fancy?
And what could a fine-looking woman see in this little yellow bittern?
Curtly he told him to return next day.  Meanwhile he would talk to
Black Pat.  Roderick didn't believe in interfering in the lives--and
loves--of his tenants.  Once, in his schooldays he had encountered an
enure family cast from their home because the father permitted the
eldest daughter to marry without first seeking his landlord's consent.
The feudal brutality of the incident had sickened him.  But Mrs.  Conry
had a claim on his interest--he looked up impatiently.  Hadn't the
fellow gone yet I

Your Honour--Herself--my Intended, bid me ask your permission to have
the young scholar that cleans your knives serve the Wedding Mass."

Roderick frowned, "I don't supply Mass servers.  You may go."  So his
knife boy was a scholar as well as a singer!  The man

turned back at the door and there was a blue-black glitter in the
small eyes.  Roderick had a sudden mnemonic flash of very young days
and Black Pat showing him a particularly ugly beetle called the
'darraghadheal'.  If one killed it in a special way and repeated a
stipulated number of Our Fathers and Hail ftlarys one would be forgiven
the Seven Deadly Sins because, Black Pat explained, the 'darraghadheal'
had led the soldiers up to the spot in Gethsemane where Our Lord was
praying.

"It was only, your Honour," the man was saying, 'that my Intended was
in the church last Shrovetide when the lad served the Wedding Mass for
James Keating's son and Miss Prendergast."  He bobbed a half curtsey
and went out.  Roderick strode to the bell rope  "Mass Server!  * he
fumed. "He'll be a notice server when I'm finished with him."

Sterrin rushed after young Thomas when the unprecedented summons came
for him to appear at once before the Sir.  Her papa closed the heavy
door in her face.  No inkling escaped through its panels or keyhole.
She tore round to the open window where she caught some of his angry
words."... damnation cheapening my service ... singing to Crossroad
gatherings not paid to acquire a classical education ... Latin!  ... to
be availed of for the weddings of every Tom, Dick and Harry!"

Sterrin thought that young Thomas looked quite different.  The white
tenseness of his- face made him look like someone else altogether.  Her
papa had the same impression.  Another countenance seemed to be
straining out through the blanched face of the knife boy; one strangely
familiar.  The impression persisted in the boy's answer.

"The Latin was availed of your Honour's Sir, by the priest, and for the
purpose of serving his Mass."

You are insolent," said Sir Roderick confounded by the simple dignity
of the reply.  His accusation sounded as unjust in his own ears as in
those of his daughter and, in his knife boy's.  "How old are you?"  he
demanded.

Thomas was confused.  "I I'm not sure, your Honour's Sir."

"You are old enough," his master told him coldly, 'to know where your
loyalty should lie.  I will have no disloyalty in my service.  You may
go."

There was an awful finality about the words.  Thomas took it that he
was to go from his master's service as well as from his presence.

Another door closed against Sterrin but not deliberately ^ she chased
after Thomas.  She pushed this one open and found him sitting on his
bed forlornly; his eyes fixed on the granite floor where pieces of mica
sparkled from the care he lavished on every cherished inch of his
precious little cubicle of a room.

"Is he sending you away?"  she asked solemnly.  He gave no answer.  His
throat was too full; all the way back to the desolation that ranged
about his heart.  "Young Thomas!"  she pleaded.  He squeezed his eyes
tight until they felt cleared of the prickling moisture.  All his
book-learning and visioning had turned into comical presumption;
comical to others.  He was just a lonely, friendless boy,
panic-stricken at the thought of leaving his beloved home.

"Damnation, Thomas, answer me!"

He opened his eyes.  "So you heard!"

There were some other words like that but I couldn't catch them while I
was climbing to the window-sill.  Young Thomas, why did you keep it
secret from me?  About those weddings I mean.  I wouldn't have told,
even about the Keatings although they are our enemies."

"It must have been that sneaky little Lucas who told.  He has been
a-courting your poster-mother while you were in Dublin.  I suppose he's
been here looking for permission to marry into her place.  I hope he
doesn't get it.  He is not the type of our tenants."

Our tenants!  The phrase brought him to his feet.  "I'd better pack my
belongings."  He looked around at them; the bar of perfumed soap beside
the cracked Doulton basin, discarded from upstairs.  The cigar box
beside it held the two linen handkerchiefs purchased since Miss
Sterrin's reference to the knife boy with the snotty nose.  Beneath the
stand the pair of boots made by the Scout of finest leather reserved
for the Quality.  He looked hesitantly at the surtout hanging behind
the door.  It was scarcely his to take away.  It had descended upon
him, taken in and up, when her Ladyship had ordered new livery with
special padding for the coachman's injured shoulder.

He turned away to the galleried table, minus a leg.  On it lay the
treasure mat no one could prevent him from taking away; unless perhaps
the donor decided to do so.

But the sight of her gift Saint John's Eve fondled in his hands sent
her hurtling up the back stairs to seek the interven

I

tion of Nurse Hogan.  There was no use approaching that fierce, "'"

unfamiliar-looking papa who mouthed blasts and damnations.  Nurse Hogan
was aghast.  Young Thomas dismissed!  Young Thomas was dear to her.
When she first came he was the only one of the Gaelic-speaking gossoons
who could speak English to her.  He was the only one also who had no
background, no relatives, not even a name.  No one knew anything about
him.  He had arrived here shortly before herself.  Anything that
might

I have been known about him had died with the housekeeper on the night
of the Big Wind.  His plight had gone to her heart.  She it was who had
first indulged his studiousness.  It was she who had got him promoted
from the toleration of hanger-on

I status to the payroll of staff.  She made a quick swish towards her
Ladyship's boudoir.  But the Sir was there, deep in conversation and
looking in no mood to brook interruption.

"Roderick," Margaret was pleading, 'don't let that storm twist you as
it has twisted me."  He looked at her startled.  She had never before
referred to her attacks so positively.  Nothing

I seemed more unlikely than that there should be any disturbance in the
placid serenity of this sweet being.  The boudoir expressed

| that same serenity.  She had been sitting at her spinet when he
entered.  She preferred its music to that of the grand piano in

I the drawing-room.  The harp she regarded as too solemn and dramatic.
She liked tinkling things, the music boxes that she collected, the
little silver bells she wore on her chat elaine belt.

They heralded her approach in chime with the soft sussurus of her
silken skirts.  Nothing ominous about such sounds; nothing twisted!

"After all," she went on, 'other people didn't go round demanding their
trees when they flew away from them that night."  1 There was a knock
at the door and Sterrin entered.

I She could not stand the strain any longer.  Young Thomas had decided
to go at once without begging, he said.  Mrs.  Stacey I had broken into
tears and lamentation when he bade her goodbye and when he turned to
Sterrin she made another dash for the stairs determined to brave her
father's ire.  She dropped a ispecially deep curtsey first to her
mamma, then to her papa.  "Papa," she began, "I've come to crave a boon
of you."  She wasn't too sure what a boon was but in the story-books
that were read to her the princesses generally said the word when they
wanted to get something out of their royal papas.  She

poured out a graphic and not too coherent description of young
Thomas's merits, his unremitting toil, the grief of Papa's foster
mother, Mrs.  Stacey, and finally the pathos of his plight driven forth
to wander homeless in the snow.

Her papa maintained a serious front and indicated the golden September
sunshine that streamed through the open windows.  The weather
conditions, he pointed out, were ideal for a homeless wanderer.  There
seemed little likelihood of snow.  She had to yield the point.  Her
papa was always right.  But it said snow in the story where the
scullion, who was really an enchanted prince, was being cast forth for
raising his eyes towards the king's daughter.  That was the worst of
the written word.  It seemed to have no bearing on real life; like
c-a-t and d-o-g and m-a-t that she had laboured over only to find that
they were silly when it had come to writing a letter to young Thomas.

Roderick sent Sterrin from the room, but he was smiling.  He went to
the gun-room and dismantled a fowling-piece, then sent an order to have
it cleaned by young Thomas; as though nothing had happened.

Roderick'did not smile after his talk with Black Pat about Lucas.

"She'll have no one, Master Rody, but Lucas."  Black Pat was gloomy,
too.  "She believes that he was meant for her by Heaven.  The Big Wind
that took her husband and child from her took wife and child from
Lucas.  "Tis fate she says."

Roderick sighed resignedly.  "By gad, Pat, fate or the Big Wind has
caused me enough of trouble without blowing that beetle on my
property."  He felt something absurdly like a premonition as he watched
Black Pat walk down the road.  Roderick gave George Lucas permission to
marry Mrs.  Conry, and allowed the 'darraghadheaF to burrow quietly
into the Kilsheelin estate.

CHAPTER 17

Thomas was to go to Dublin for the great rally that was to terminate
the open-air agitation of Repeal Year.  Roderick had decided that he
could use the lad's resourcefulness--and horsemanship-in what some
newspaper reporter had humorously described as the "Repeal Cavalry'.

Thomas was stunned with joy.  He was to be supplied with an armlet that
would identify him as a "Courier'.  He would convey messages through
that mighty throng!  He was to play his minute part in this final
display that would preface the liberation of his country!

Thomas dared to feel pity for the great Mr.  Hegarty; for all of his
friends in the kitchen.  Carrying out their routine tasks; nothing
seemed to have changed for them.  They were un con I sc ious of the
glory that had burst upon his soul.  He rushed to tell his marvelous
news to Sterrin.

She looked at him in wonder.  He was the same young Thomas--but--he was
all shiny; not polish shiny but like the glow around people in holy
pictures.

"Think of it, Miss Sterrin," he said when he had poured out the news.
"Not just going to Dublin, but taking part in such a gathering; the
biggest ever in the world.  Me!  The million that was at Tara will only
be a handful to this last rally.  It is like a 1 play staged by
history; the last act of a long drama and I'll be m there--on the
stage."  He turned away to the window, embarrassed.  For the first time
in his life he had opened his heart to another.  But even to her there
were still things he could not say aloud.  He gripped the iron hasp of
the window.  Even if she were old enough to understand, he could never
tell her what it was that was bringing tears to his eyes.

This wasn't just the flamboyant ardour of youthful patriotism.  He had
felt like this once before; the time he had awakened after the storm
night, cramped from lying across two hard chairs but snug from the
unaccustomed covering that had been

tucked around him.  By order of no less a person than his Honour, the
Sir!  Then, like now, he had felt that he be-longed.

No, Miss Sterrin would never understand what it was to feel like this.
She'd need to be a waif, homeless, nameless, forever blowing her heart
breaths upon the window pane to peep in from outside.

"The castle will seem queer with you away."  The wistful voice dropped
into the surge of his thoughts.  He turned.  She did look poorly.  And
he revelling in his own good fortune.

"I shall be terribly lonely for you," she continued.

"That's just because you're feeling low.  You'll be all right by the
time I'm leaving and you won't mind."  His sympathy was automatic.  She
had said something that had lifted his newfound sense of belonging to
the point of elation.  This great castle would seem different to
someone because it was without him I Miss Sterrin to be lonely for him
I For young Thomas the knife boy!

Sterrin out-sighed him, When Papa is away Mamma doesn't seem to notice
that I am here at all.  I have to ask her everything twice and then she
she almost snaps because she has to come out of her thoughts to answer
me."

"Fancy you noticing that!"

She leaned up on her elbow.  "Why?  Had you noticed it too?"

He moved to the fireplace.  "I'm noticing that it is time I did
something about making a fire.  A big blazing fire will put these queer
thoughts out of your head."

"And will you read a book to me?"

"If Nurse Hogan allows, and if I can manage the time."

As he was leaving the room she called out, Young Thomas, if a dragon
were to run away with me would you rescue me?"

He paused to consider the question.  "If the dragon wore trousers I
probably would.  But they usually wear scales."

On the journey to Dublin he thought on what she had said about her
mamma almost snapping at her in her papa's absence because she had to
'come out of her thoughts' to answer Sterrin.  The idea seemed to
suggest a chink in the structure of Miss Sterrin's love-guarded life; a
chink to admit the grey chill of outside ness that he knew so well.  Of
course, the Sir and her Ladyship were very wrapped up in each other.
Different from

anything he had ever observed among the Quality who came to stay at
die castle; even honeymooners.  They were like the sweethearts in books
whose love-story ended in marriage and the information that 'they lived
happily ever after.  Thomas was always exasperated at that
unsatisfactory phrase.  Why couldn't the author go on and let one
glimpse that happy-ever-after?  But now, in Kilsheelin Castle he was
glimpsing it all the time.

Once in the turbulent city, Thomas forgot his carriage decorum.  His
head kept moving from one side to the other as though it were on a
swivel.  "It is not always like this," Mike O'Driscoll explained.
"Dublin has never seen such crowds before.  Look at that I * He flicked
the whip in the direction of the Customs House where the great bulk of
a man-of-war loomed over vessels flying the flags of all nations.  "It
has never seen the like of that either.  I wonder what it is there
for."

Roderick's travelling companion, his neighbour Mr.  Delaney, wondered
also.  He was like an emancipated schoolboy.  He leaned from one window
to the other and talked uninhibitedly to strangers in the carriages
that crawled on either side.  They dropped him at the crumbling mansion
that had been his grandfather's town residence, and was now occupied by
a recluse kinsman.  Before entering it he made Roderick promise to
collect him later and go to the Crow Street Theatre where me famous
actor Thomas Young was billed to play.  "He has changed his name," he
said.  "Married the wealthy Mrs.  Winterbottom last month and has
assumed her name."

Sir Roderick was amazed.  "How could a man who has made his own name so
famous, throw it aside at the whim of a rich widow?"

Thomas withdrew his head from the rumble and drew forth Mr.  Delaney's
carpet bag.  Ye Gods!  thought the nameless knife boy.  Fancy throwing
away any name, famous or humble; one's own rightful name!  The new
Caroline hat that made him look so tall and grown up had fallen over
his eyes.  A woman who walked alone winked at the graceful youth who
was straightening his hat over crisp curls.

"That lady must have mistaken me for someone else," said Thomas when he
remounted.  O'Driscoll spat.  "The whipster!  Keep your eyes straight
ahead the way you were trained avic.  That's no lady."

"No, I suppose not," agreed Thomas.  "Ladies don't wink."

Later as O'Driscoll turned the horses away from the theatre after
dropping the two gentlemen, Thomas looked longingly back.

"Surely," cried O'Driscoll, 'tisn't wantin' to shut yourself up in a
playhouse you are with all that divarshun goin' on in the streets."

Thomas sighed.  Td give anything to see the acting of a great man like
Mr.  Young."

"Whoa!"  called O'Driscoll to the horses.  "You needn't give anything
except whatever it costs to go in by that door."  He pointed his whip
to the gallery entrance.  But you can give me your word that you'll
slip out before the last word is spoke on the stage and be on that kerb
to open the carriage door when the gentlemen come out."

A grateful Thomas arrived panting at the back row of the gallery just
as the manager had come before the curtain to announce the change in
the famous actor's name.  He apologised that there had not been
sufficient time to alter the billing.  Then the curtain slowly rose.
Thomas gazed and his whole world receded.  He stood at the rails like
some bewitched mortal gazing across the threshold of the fairy land of
Hy Brazil.

The witty interruptions of the surrounding 'gods' scarce reached his
consciousness.  But in the middle of the last act, he was shattered to
reality; the central character--played by Mr.  Young--was lamenting his
lost youth.  "Then, alas," he wailed, "I

was young and across his sentence the raucous voice of

Thomas's neighbour yelled, "And now you're Winterbottom!"  The house
exploded into laughter.  Thomas slipped out during the uproar.

"You kept your word," said O'Driscoll as Thomas climbed up beside him.
"Are you satisfied now?"

"Yes, Mr.  O'Driscoll," said Thomas leaning back blissfully,

'very, very satisfied There was a sound of laughter from the theatre
and he turned to the sight of Sir Roderick and Mr.  Delaney emerging
arm-in-arm; still hilarious over the interruption which they decided
was a better finish than waiting for the finale.

When Thomas had shut them in he resumed his seat and went on talking as
if he had not been interrupted.  "After all, what's in a name?"  he
demanded from the uplifted tail of the livery stable horse.  "A rose
under any other name would smell as

 sweet and Mr.  Young under any other name would sound as sweet.  The
actor's the thing, not the name '

From the corner of his mouth, O'Driscoll hissed.  "It's a bad sign when
a lad of your age talks to himself.  It wasn't natural for a gossoon to
shut himself up in a playhouse and the whole world walkin' outside.
What playhouse could give that divar shun?"  He gestured towards the
kerbs.

Along the kerbs every instrument from a harp to a tin whistle was
striving for supremacy.  And every one seemed to have its own
followers.  The girls and youths from the country danced jigs and reels
around the fiddlers.  The overseas stranger favoured the Celtic harp.

"Mm," Thomas murmured, 'but then I shall have an opportunity of seeing
them all, both the world and the musicians, at the meeting on Sunday. I
might never again have the opportunity of seeing Thomas Young act."

But neither the world, nor the musicians--nor Thomas--saw the meeting
at Clontarf.

The next day, when he emerged from Conciliation Hall after receiving
his armlet and instructions, no one would dream that he was other than
one of the vast troop of well-to-do young horsemen who voluntarily
attended all the Monster meetings under the adhesive nickname of the
Repeal Cavalry.

"Where do you think you are going?"  an angry voice interrupted his
rapt admiration of his armlet.  He stepped apologetically from the path
of a big, important-looking personage.  "What does that indicate?"  The
man pointed to the armlet.  Thomas explained.  "And you are a member of
this "Cavalry"?"  Very emphatically Thomas assured him that he was. You
seem very proud of your assignment.  Your name, Mr.  Cavalryman?" The
question was demanded in that tone of authority to which Thomas was
accustomed to give prompt answer.

"Younger The proud cavalryman had no name to offer but the
classification that distinguished him from the boys who carried the
turf and water.  "Young he stammered, and the gentleman's eyes narrowed
at the evasion.  Thomas's embarrassed eyes fell on the poster
announcing the order of tomorrow's rally.  They were interspersed with
hand bills that blazed the two words to which he responded in lieu of a
name.  Only they were in reverse.  Thomas Young instead of 'young
Thomas'!  And the posters announced the actor as dispensing

with the name.  Thomas turned and smiled at the big man.  My name," he
smiled, 'is Thomas Young."

The gentleman looked silently at Thomas, then gestured one of the
policemen and murmured something.  The policeman stepped nearer to
Thomas.

There had been a titter from some of the young Repeal horsemen when
Thomas read out the actor's name.  "I say," called one of them,
thinking Thomas was a bit of a blade.  "You had some nerve to twit a
big gun like him!"  Thomas learned with shock that vhe had been
misleading one of the police chiefs from Dublin Castle.

"It would have been wiser to have given your own name," said an older
man.  "Also it was indiscreet to make any reference to the term
"Cavalry".  The Liberator has protested to the newspaper that coined
the phrase.  He says it could readily give the government the opening
they are looking for.  It could be construed into something martial;
something challenging.  And there is something afoot.  Why all these
extra police and military twenty-four hours before the meeting?"

The answer followed in the wake of a galloping horseman who drew rein
outside the Corn Exchange and rushed inside.  By obvious arrangement
the police chief and convoy of police moved after him.  Thomas found
himself back in the hall propelled inwards by the rush of Repealers
sensing trouble.  Up in die gallery reserved on festive occasions for
ladies, he could see Sir Roderick with Mr.  Delaney and a party of
provincial gentlemen talking and sending out bursts of laughter through
cigar smoke.  But everyone went still as the messenger strode
purposefully to the Liberator and placed a document before him.

All eyes were focused on O'Connell as he scanned its contents.  It took
but a second; then he spoke quietly; just a few words, but they were
heard through the hall, from the back where Thomas stood to the gallery
where Sir Roderick and the others were now on their feet.  "This must
be obeyed," they heard him say.  "They have declared the meeting at
Clontarf illegal."

The scratching of the quill could be heard as the secretary furiously
wrote to the Liberator's dictation; a clattering broke the stunned
silence as Sir Roderick and the others came tearing down the stairs.
Men were crowding to read the document, then turning to look at each
other.

"Surely, the Liberator will not obey this!"  cried Sir Roderick.

"They cannot forbid the public the right of assembly."

But the messenger had already left for the printers with O'ConnelFs
appeal to the people not to assemble.  The gathering was banned.

With sinking dread Thomas heard voices say that it was a whimsical
phrase "Repeal Cavalry' that had given the government the pretext it
needed.  "You see now," said the young horseman who had thought Thomas
had been merely twitting the police chief about his name.  "He was
trying to trap you into a definite statement that you belonged to the
cavalry."

Thomas reeled.  He had betrayed his great trust!  Heaven, could it
possibly have been his abysmal folly that had crashed this sublime
finale!  He turned and forced his way blindly towards the crowded
entrance.

"Young Thomas!"  Sir Roderick's peremptory summons halted his knife
boy's despairing flight.

He was despatched with those who were posted to the Naas road to meet
the contingents from the South and bid them return to their homes.  At
every approach to the city, North, South, East and West, the Wardens
repelled the processions marching behind their banners and bands.

Once during a lull while they waited for fresh contingents, the two law
students who were with Thomas beguiled their deflated spirits with
anecdotes of their background.  Thomas listened amazed.  The brilliance
of their banter was like a shower of intellectual fireworks that made a
responsive sparkling in his own intellect.  In the darkness he became
disorientated.  His background receded.  He scarcely realised that he
was joining in their sallies with a delicacy of wit that delighted
them.  Then the marching feet sounded again.  "No meeting?"  The weary
men who had walked from the extreme st points of the country could not
believe their ears.

By dawn Thomas was exhausted.  But his work was accomplished.  He had
helped to stem the vanguard.  The posters would do the rest.  They were
up now in every village within twenty miles of Dublin.

As he turned for Dublin he heard his name called and his tired eyes
strained through a mask of dust to recognise a lad from Upper
Kilsheelin.  It was Tim Lonergan, the well-to-do farmer's son whom he
had met at the Prendergast-Keating wedding.

II

"Why should we go back?"  demanded Tim furiously, shouldn't we fight
them?  There is an army of us on the march."

"Hush," said Thomas who knew now that this gruelling vigilance of
Wardens had been to forestall any clash between the marchers and the
military.  "Is it with your peace twigs you'd fight the army that's
mustered back there with cannon and rifle and ships of war?  Don't
speak of fighting.  That is all they want.  One shot will bring down
the avalanche."

"Avalanche!"  Tim spat the word.  He threw his withered peace bough
from him and faced for home without a word of farewell.

CHAPTER 18

Thomas had almost forgotten the incident with the police chief on the
day before the rally that never took place when he was summoned by the
Sir to the drawing-room.  Mr.  LalorShiel, the member for Dungarvin,
was with Sir Roderick.  As Thomas entered the room the two gentlemen
looked very fixedly at him.  Thomas had the sudden feeling that the
Member's call had something to do with himself.

The news was shattering.  The Liberator had been arrested.  The
Government had charged him with conspiracy to excite rebellion.

Mr.  Lalor-Shiel, who had been briefed to defend Mr.  John O'Connell,
the Liberator's son--also under arrest--had heard that enquiries were
being made about his cousin, Sir Roderick O'Carroll.  A young gentleman
who was seen to have been in close company of Sir Roderick at the Corn
Exchange and to have taken whispered instructions from him had
deliberately given the police a false name.  Enquiries at the home of
Sir Roderick's kinswomen, the Misses O'Carroll of Mountjoy Square, had
disclosed that no person of the name had either stayed there or called.
The police suspected that the name given was a taunt to themselves; it
was the name emblazoned on the walls of the Corn Exchange announcing
the visit of the famous actor Thomas Young.  The police didn't like
being taunted.  They had compiled a formidable dossier about the Repeal
activities of Sir Roderick O'Carroll.

The Sir's face was white with anger as he questioned his Presumptuous
servant.  Thomas's face was whiter still.  He had Believed that all
that 'cavalry' business had gone unnoticed.  The whole world knew now
that the government had pounced upon the excuse offered by the term
when some Repeal secretary had used it in drawing up the programmes and
positions for the Meeting.

"I have had to speak to you before about your presumptuous

 activities," fumed the Sir.  "Do you realise what you have done?"

Before Thomas could reply, the piping voice of Mr.  LalorShiel
addressed him.  "Do you realise that you have brought your master under
suspicion.  That he may be arrested?"

Thomas realised but one thing; that he wanted to die!  There and now on
the Aubusson carpet that he had swept so often; he ought to have
concerned himself solely with sweeping and with every other servile
chore, instead of book-learning and politics-the Sir arrested!  The
great, kind Sir beloved of all his employees and tenants.  Miss
Sterrin's papa!  Into his numb brain crawled the Scout's oft-repeated
misquotation of Saint Thomas --"A thing which is not in its own place
is an abomination."  That's what I am--an abomination!

Mr.  Lalor-Shiel was repeating the question.  "Why didn't you give your
own name?"  He had been expecting to see some cocky servant, brash and
glib and ready to break down into whining denials.  But here was
natural dignity.  Not just the kind acquired in genteel service.  He
noted the fine head; the sensitive mouth and nostrils.  He noted how
the shamed colour overflowed into the blenched face as the boy said, "I
have no name of my own, sir."

"If," he said on a less reproachful note, 'you felt it necessary to
assume a name, why pick on one so illustrious?  You might as well have
said you were the Duke of Wellington."  When Thomas explained,
Lalor-Shiel, laughed outright.  "Mr.  Young," said Thomas, naively,
'didn't want his name any more."

Thomas explained the impulse that had caused him to give the name that
had stared out at him from the wall behind the police officer.  "The
words of the name were so familiar to me, Sir.  They were those by
which I am called.  I merely reversed them."

When Thomas had left the room, Lalor-Shiel turned with quirked brow to
Roderick.  "Where on earth did you get him?  Rody?  Who is he?"

Roderick was striding up and down, his mind in a whirl.  One of the
gentlemen arrested with the Liberator had joined the movement only five
days before; had attended the Corn Exchange but once.  What chance had
Roderick?  Deep in the affairs of the movement since his enrolment?  It
was no satisfaction to him to hear Lalor-Shiel just now quote the
Liberator in saying that Sir Roderick O'Carroll's road arrangements for
the

proclaimed meeting, and the subsequent dispersals had been a
'masterpiece of organisation'.  A masterpiece that might land him in
jail!

"Where did I get who?  Good heavens, I don't know where half of them
came from!  The kitchen is always full of God-saveall-here's and
hangers-on and little run-around gossoons."  He resumed his pacing,
then stopped.  "Yes, I believe the lad was a protege of Mrs.
Mansfield's--our housekeeper you remember \who was killed the night of
the Big Wind?  Some woman brought him to her; his mother probably.  She
was leaving for America; probably intended sending for him; never heard
of again."

"He reminds me of someone '

"Forget him, Richard.  It was most kind of you to come and warn me.
Forgive my testiness.  Were it not for the state of Margaret's health I
might find the incident piquant especially about the name that--"Mr.
Young didn't want any more"."  He told him about the witticism from the
'gods' at the expense of Mr.  Young's name.  "Now that you recall it to
me, young Thomas or "Thomas Young" is even younger than I thought.  He
is tall for his age.  I forced the predicament upon him.  He is
resourceful; too damned resourceful."  He pulled the bell rope "Let's
have what Lord Cullen calls a Bumper."

Next morning after a fear-racked night, Thomas spied Constable
Humphreys walking up the avenue in the wake of a mounted Sub-Inspector
of Police.  They were coming for him!

He removed his apron.  In a silver cover dish he saw the reflection of
curls falling over his forehead.  He smoothed them back.  As he rubbed
his moist palms on the roller towel he wondered would there be time to
say goodbye to Miss Sterrin.  But, hadn't the Sir sent for him last
night and warned him not to utter a breath of this!  He must go without
seeing her!  And when he returned, when his sentence was served--but
then the Sir might not take him back into his service!  Anyway she'd be
gone by then; married to "The Sir wants you in the library,

immediately."

By the time he reached the library, the Sir had given the Sub Inspector
the full details about the alleged false name business.

"Nevertheless, if you don't mind, Sir Roderick," said the grandiose
official, "I shall call upon my constable to corroborate."

Constable Humphreys confirmed that he recognised the youth as one whom
he had known for some years and whom he had 'invariably heard
apostrophised by estimable and noted persons in Templetown, as "young
Thomas"."

"Do you know of any surname or patronymic?"  asked his superior.

The constable wished that he had thought up 'patronymic' himself; but
he fished out a beauty from his erudite jaws.  "I have never heard of
the existence of any other nomenclature," he said.  Where the hell,
thought Roderick, does he get them?

The officer was perplexed.  "This, of course, alters the charge of
false representation--somewhat.  But, there is still the intent to
mislead, by the juxtaposition of words."

"Mislead whom?"  asked Roderick irritably and changing the
juxtaposition of his feet.  They were itching to put a toe through all
this bumptious pedantry.  He brusquely pointed out that his servant,
Thomas, brought to Dublin for the first time had been warned to show
caution if any stranger addressed him.  "How could the boy possibly
know that your superior was other than a civilian?"

The Sub-Inspector bowed and wished Sir Roderick good day.  At the door
he turned.  He had thought of another reason for attaching Thomas to
the ironmongery that peeped through the silk folds of the handkerchief
up the constable's cuff.

"He may be required to give evidence at the trials.  I take it that he
will not seek to absent himself?"

Sir Roderick pulled the bell rope significantly.  "I vouch for my
servant," he said.

Thomas looked down at the carpet.  Again, he wished he could lie down
on it and die.  This time in gratitude to the wonderful; omnipotent
Sir!  He raised his eyes for the onslaught, but the face before him was
smiling.  The Sir was thinking that the knife boy's face was as
fine-drawn as one of his own blades.  It would stand no more
sharpening.  "We must see about having you brought to the christening
font," he said.  "Can't have people coming here talking about
nomenclature before breakfast.  Puts me off my food!"

Thomas dared not stir from the castle lest he be summoned to Dublin as
a witness.  But the trial was postponed.  It was discovered that
hundreds of Catholic names that should have been on the panel of jurors
had never been listed.  The only Catholic

names listed belonged to people who had been dead for years.  So the
Crown was reluctantly compelled to concede a postponement until
January.

Not since the inquests on Mrs.  Mansfield and the others after the Big
Wind had a policeman been seen near the castle.  Now they had become a
daily spectacle.  Sometimes from a window Thomas would glimpse the top
of a shako as the police peeped over the opening that had been
partially built up after that night.  On Christmas Eve he almost bumped
into his friend Sergeant Flynn patrolling with the pedantic constable.
He jumped back as if he were stung.  This meant that he would be under
house guard for the lovely twelve days of Christmas when everyone went
to and fro visiting all the time and only the most essential work was
performed.  Golden Meadows would be keeping open house; on a big scale.
Tim Lonergan had mentioned something about taking him along with the
Wren Boys and Mummers.  To parade around the countryside behind the
omadhawn; playing every instrument that would give music!  Every house
open to them to come in and play and dance and feast!  Oh well, he
sighed to himself as he cleaned a knife with a raw potato.  I cannot
have it every way!  I cannot take part in the history of my country and
then go cod-acting around the countryside with the Wren boys!

The Sir frowned as he encountered the police patrol on the little
bridle road.  Was a gentleman to have no privacy even on Christmas Eve?
The Sir's road was private property.  A concession to the public.  Not
a right.  He barely returned the salute.  The sergeant looked after the
proud figure.  The Sir had always reined in for a passing word with
him.  He watched him stop no less than three times to chat with farmers
and to their wives and children ensconsed on feather mattresses that
were covered with Christmas shopping.

"This," said the sergeant to his subordinate, 'is one of the times when
I hate my job.  When I realise that a policeman is, after all, merely a
spy on his fellowmen."

Roderick's ill humour melted in the all-pervading atmosphere of good
cheer.  All the way to Templetown he was hailed; by farmers, their
waggons or phaetons laden with good things.  At every bore en entrance
groups of children watched out for their homing parents and the big
three-quart cans of sweets and the bottles of lemonade with the glass
marbles in the necks of

them.

Two little boys on top of a fence tugged their forelocks to him and
their little 'big' sister gave him a radiant smile.  As he slowed they
jumped down and ran over to him.  "We got the sheep," said one of the
boys.  They were Black Pat's children!  Every tenant had been given a
joint of meat but Black Pat had been sent a whole sheep.  "Oh boys, o'
boys," said the older lad, 'but we'll have "maw galore"!"

Unlike the children of omer tenants they were completely uninhibited in
his presence.  They chattered to him about the good things that their
mammy and daddy would bring them from town.  But when he produced
silver coins and the little boys thrust out chubby palms their sister
stopped them, "Mammy does not allow us to accept money," she said. This
was something out of the ordinary!  Roderick decided that he must meet
this mammy of theirs.  "It is a great pity," said the little girl, her
bright eyes fixed on the money.

Her brother solved the problem.  "Father Hickey gives us money when we
answer our catechism.  Mammy doesn't mind that."

"All right," said Sir Roderick.  "Who made the world?"  They told him
with one concerted gasp.  "How many' Gods are there?"  He asked the
older.  "One, of course."  "Why are you so positive?"

Adam's eyes devoured the half-crown, but the big word had him baffled.
His little brother put up his hand.  "Please, your Honour, I'm not
posibet.  I'm a good boy.  An' there couldn't be two Gods because
they'd fight.  Thanks very much, your Honour."  He turned and raced
homeward in case his Honour might change his mind.  The little girl
looked at her landlord reproachfully.  "You shouldn't have given him a
prize for that answer," she said.  "It is not in the book."

"I know," said Roderick apologetically.  "But his prize was not for
catechism.  It was for logic."  He dropped a half-crown into her pocket
and gave another to Adam.

He rode home in good humour, the police forgotten, until he reached the
entrance to the bridle road.  The peaks of two shakos made a gleam in
the twilight.  He swerved back and rode in through the main gates.  1
Plenty of good things.

In January, Roderick and young Thomas rode to Dublin for the
Liberator's trial.  Young Thomas had thought his hero might be driven
to the trial in some kind of tumbril.  But, in fact, O'Connell
approached the court in triumph, seated in the Lord Mayor's coach,
surrounded by the city fathers.  As he entered the courtroom, the
members of the Bar rose to their feet.  Young Thomas and the Sir joined
the witnesses and spectators in shouting: "Long live O'Connell and
Repeal."

But they had to quit the trial almost before it began.  While listening
to arguments over prospective jurors, Roderick noticed his neighbour's
son, Hubert De Lacey, making his way towards him through the crowded
room.  Hubert had a message.  It was from Nurse Hogan.

The note read--"Your Honour'^ Sir.  I am not happy about Her Ladyship."
He turned swiftly.  His neighbour's son Hubert De Lacey was behind him.
Roderick left the court-room with Hubert to question him.  His mother,
Hubert said, had called on Lady O'Carroll yesterday.  The nurse, when
she heard that Hubert was coming up to the trials had slipped him this
note.

Thought Roderick, as the horses were lashed homeward, I had no right to
linger there with Margaret in stark terror!  Fighting back incipient
madness.  Women were known to go mad in childbirth.  Or, would there be
any hereditary ?

There was so little about her that he knew really, before that day when
he had been halted by the sight of her, floating over the ice.  The
scene had enraptured him, the red glow of charcoal braziers burning
along the lake side, chestnut roasting, musicians playing violins and
mandolins.  And Margaret!  So lovely, so serene!  All he knew was that
he had loved her from that moment with a sort of predestined love that
had permeated his whole existence ever since.  No, there was no
hereditary taint.  It was Nature itself that had gone mad that night
when Margaret's malady had started.  The spectacle of the housekeeper's
pitiful death in the presence of Margaret's agony would have unhinged a
stronger mind.  Dr.  Mitchell often wondered if Lady O'Carroll could
have been struck by a heavy splinter of the massive turret.  Anything
could have happened to her in that inferno through which poor Sterrin
had struggled for the gift of life!  And then that Whiteboy raid by the
Keating brute!

As he and Thomas approached the gates a scurry of gossoons rose up from
the roadway and raced up the avenue.  There must

be something terrible amiss.  He forgot that whenever he returned from
Dublin, gossoons were in the habit of wagering their treasures against
the first one to catch the carriage sound and reach the castle with the
news.

Margaret was haggard and wild-looking.  She clung to him speechlessly.
Nurse Hogan told him later that there had been a storm the night before
Mrs.  De Lacey had called.  Her Ladyship's palms had bled from the
effort to keep calm.  "At last, Sir Roderick," said the nurse, 'she
insisted upon getting up, late and dark as it was.  I couldn't stop
her.  She walked in the park in the open space where there are no
trees.  She said if the child must come in the storm it would be born
where nothing could fall upon its birth or upon its mother.  It was
terrible, your Honour; to think of a child born in a field like an
animal; with respects to you, Sir Roderick, that was why I took the
liberty of sending the note by Mr.  De Lacey.

"You did quite right," he told her.

The nurse asked him for the recipe for the brewed leaves of the ground
ivy.  She couldn't find it, she said, in her Ladyship's herb book.

Roderick had told Margaret nothing about the recipe that his cousins
had given him for her malady.  He had entered it into his own black
record book.  When he had scribbled it out for the nurse, she went
almost stealthily through the woods and gathered the plant herself;
then brewed it in the privacy of her own room.  Though she was a
scientifically trained Ladies' Nurse-Tender, she appreciated that the
illness that attacks the mind must be treated secretly.

In the following days, Roderick went no further from the castle than
the estate bounds.  Margaret grew more distraught.  Every gust of wind
that blew across the treeless lawns made her dread a storm that would
hurl her travail into some windswept gehenna of desolation.  Once, by
mistake, Roderick, with a gun under his arm, a brace of dogs at his
heels, and Mike O'Driscoll alongside with the shot and powder, crossed
into the neighbouring estate.  He realised his trespass as he was about
to aim at a mallard.

"Go on, your Honour's Sir," urged Mike, disgusted at seeing his master
lower the gun.  "You might as well have a bang as any of the other
scoundrels that do be poaching."

Before his master could assess the significance of the remark,

a figure appeared at the foot of the hill and waved.  "It's young
Thomas!"  cried O'Driscoll.  "Her Ladyship must '

Roderick made to jump back into his own territory, missed his footing
and landed up to his waist in bog.  "Get me out!"  he yelled.
O'Driscoll tugged futilely while his frenzied master sank deeper.

"You see," explained O'Driscoll, 'it is always easier to pull a
gentleman out of a bog when he falls in head first."

Roderick, when he eventually surfaced, regretted that he had not the
time to push O'Driscoll in head first.  Til be more accommodating the
next time," he spluttered as he rushed down the hill.  He left pools of
water on the bedroom carpet.  Margaret looked up startled at the
spectacle of the black-faced, grimy apparition that stood over her.

"You don't think that you are going to kiss a freshly ac couched lady
in that condition?"  The doctor nodded towards the little powder room.
"Your son is having a bath in there.  You ought to join him.  You could
do with a bath yourself."

When Thomas returned with the barrels of porter and jars of port wine
for the tenants' celebration, he saw Miss Sterrin standing gazing
upwards at the flag flying from the turret.  He crossed to her side.
"It was I," he said, 'who raised the flag when you were born."

She nodded.  "I know.  But it was Papa's own self who raised it today.
You see this is a more important event."

"Nonsense.  You were the first-born.  Your birth was a far more
important event."

"But there were no celebrations."

Thomas pointed out that there had been a death in the household.  "Poor
Mrs.  Mansfield!"  he sighed.  "It was unfortunate for me that she died
then.  She knew who I was."  Sterrin looked at him speculatively.

"Do you think you might be a prince in disguise?"

He shook his head.  "I've given up that idea.  You see Miss Sterrin, if
I were, she would not have put me to clean the knives."

CHAPTER 19

One early morning the following week, on the way home from Templetown,
driving his flour-laden wagon, Thomas saw a crowd gathered on the main
street near the Dublin Road.  The Scout was there holding a sheaf of
papers.  Thomas drew rein and watched as the Scout read furiously then
looked at his audience.

"Listen to these sacred words!"  he cried.  "The Liberator has been
sentenced to jail."

The words that the Scout had picked out were the ones that O'Connell
had used to comfort his weeping daughters as he _ stepped across the
threshold of Richmond jail.  "Thank God I I am in jail for Ireland."  A
woman fell to her knees with a wailing I "Vo, Vol"

A shop assistant, taking down the shutters of a shop window, tucked up
his blue apron and ran with the news to his employers.  Next minute he
was being helped by other assistants to put back the shutters.  Soon
every shop in Templetown was closed and shuttered again.  The Scout's
grief was palatably seasoned with pride as he watched the Repeal flag
mount slowly over the Assembly Rooms to ride at half-mast for the new
ses that the Scout Doyle had brought to Templetown!

Clattering of hooves sounded and the Scout hurried to where the future
Lord Cullen, his horses a-foam, was reining to a halt.  "God save Your
Honour," he greeted him.

"God blast you, Doyle," replied the Honourable Patrick.  The moment he
sighted the kneeling people he knew that he had been forestalled.  He
was not the first with news.

It had been like this in Dublin yesterday; people dropping on I their
knees as the news hit them: regardless of their surround- J ings.  The
one who had secured them their liberty to pray in public had lost his
own liberty!  Their idol, their high priest, now he had become their
martyr.  Their hereditary sense of tragedy was consummated in this
imprisonment.

Patrick Cullen and scores of his fellow Young Irelanders had ridden
through the night for the honour of being the first with the news to
their native towns.  The Scout looked at the special copy of Nation
that Davis had rushed into print--in green ink--the moment sentence had
been passed.  He repressed a shudder at the thought of how near he had
been to the loss of the golden sovereign with which he had bribed a
night wagoner to bring him the first news of the verdict--and his fame.
Another five minutes and to the Honourable Mister Cullen would have
gone the glory of broadcasting the news in a blaze of emerald.  "Green
ink!"  he gasped.  "Why wasn't I told?"

"An oversight on the part of Mr.  Davis, no doubt," said Patrick
sarcastically.

The damned news mongering shop maker had crashed his elaborate plans.
Along his route he had barely slowed at the gate lodges of a few
friends like the Delaneys to send up urgent invitations to dine at
Crannagh Abbey that afternoon.  Now the Scout was clambering up the fat
sides of a big white horse to ride to Kilsheelin Castle.

"Always a white steed for the man who rides forth on high errand," he
was saying to the ostler.

Roderick, a rod on his shoulders, was emerging from the hall door when
the Scout came clattering up the front avenue, no less!  The Scout was
disgusted at the cart-hose which came to a solid stop when its rider
hoped to rein it to its fat haunches and send a dramatic spray of
gravel over the surge of his news."  "Tis well your Honour's Sir is not
a Greek noble," he started off, 'or I should be beheaded for the
tidings that I bear."  His head was still intact when he led his
charger to the kitchen door.  The staff stood round him, spellbound at
his new ses  Gradually stable and bar, saddlery and forge emptied into
the yard, their occupants crowding the kitchen door and passage.  It
was the Scout's finest hour.  "They have caged the eagle of Derrynane,"
he orated.  "They have silenced the voice that thundered more fiercely
than the waves that beat upon his own wild mountain of Coomakishka He
paused to wipe his eyes.  The eyes are wet," he keened, 'and me throat
is dry '

The butler took the hint.

Johnny-the-buckets laid down the laden pails he had held suspended
throughout the dramatic oration.  For the first time in his brief
career he raised his voice in the kitchen councils.

"Misther Doyle/ he quavered, 'does that mean that the pen ai days will
come back?  Will we have to hear Mass in caves again?"

Young Thomas drew a large cut potato down from the blade of a knife,
then cast it into the pile of cut potatoes at his feet.  "No, o man of
the buckets!"  he cried, with a brandishing flourish of the knife. "The
Liberator, like the dead Cid, will be stronger than ever in
captivity."

The Scout didn't like to be placed at a disadvantage by having to admit
that he didn't know who the dead "Syd' was.  He drained his glass and
instead, asked the youth how often would them cut potatoes be used on
the knives.

"They'll never again be used," Thomas informed him.  Instead of being
downcast like the others he was feeling an inner exaltation.  He, alone
of them, had touched the outer slopes of this great climax.  "They have
served their purpose.  This blade," he said raising it aloft, 'would
reject a sullied spud just as a well bred horse will reject the oats
from which it has previously fed."

Begob, thought the Scout, there's blood in that lad!  Aloud he remarked
that his ould pig wouldn't reject a 'sullied spud'.  He rode home with
a sackful of them in front of his white charger.

The castle was in the throes of a great campaign of prayer and
devotions.  Roderick had invoked its privilege of having Mass
celebrated in the oratory.  Every morning it was offered for the
Liberator's deliverance.  Tenants and neighbours came fasting.  The
congregation overflowed on to the gallery and down the stairs and
hallway.  Breakfasts went on until early afternoon.  When the petition
went to the House of Lords the church ordered a special nine-day novena
of prayer throughout the land to implore that justice might be done.
Sir Roderick gave out the novena prayers at night.  Work finished
early; workers streamed in and knelt on the lawn below the oratory
window.  The wagonette load of De Lacey's, instead of going home after
the midday breakfast, stayed on for the evening novena so that
breakfast ran into dinner.  It was like a medieval feast of the
church.

The summer days were passed, but the earth still paused on its axis to
begin the long descent towards the cold and darkness of winter.
Sterrin's young mind was awed by the solemnity of Jt all.  She was
strangely moved by the sound of prayer that cante

in on a murmuring wave through the oratory window.  Her ear caught the
faint difference in the usual responses.  When her papa gave the
invocation of the old Gaelic litany, "Oh greatest of women!"--instead
of the usual Guide orainn.  "Pray for us," the people answered Guide
air.  Tray for him."  When he came to "Loose the enslaved!  Appease for
us the Judge with Thy prayers and with Thy intercession!"  the familiar
words took on a special significance.  The voices soared with greater
intensity to blend with the same pleas rising from homes and churches
throughout the land in a great pyramid of prayer.

In other lands, throughout Europe, in America, the churches offered
prayers and masses, but Ireland was a nation on its knees.

For thirty years this man had been the nation's right arm, wresting
with it, one after another, Ireland's plundered rights from the flames
of an English Parliament lighted to consume them.  Statesmen might
oppose this petition, lawyers disprove it.  The Times might scoff, but
this kneeling populace, a people cast in an ancient mould, almost
without a counterpart in the world, prayed with sublime and simple
faith, for a miracle.

On the eve of the close of the novena, the eighth night, the Scout
decided to perform his devotions at Kilsheelin.  He might pick up a
crumb of new ses as to how the petition was being received in London.

Towards the end of the litany the man beside him seemed suddenly to be
directing his prayers sideways instead of upwards.  His elbow seemed to
drive them with a holy beat into the Scout's lean ribs.  "Would you
mind prayin' upwards," hissed the exasperated Scout.  Another poke and
a compelling upward look brought the Scout's eye aloft.  "The flag of
privilege!"  he gasped.  Ireland's ancient flag in the delicate tint
called Saint Patrick's blue was being slowly hoisted above the
turret.

In the oratory Sterrin thought that her papa was gabbling the prayers.
Margaret glanced sideways at him.  Never since she had skated with him
in Belgium during their romance had she seen him like this; so flushed
and boyish.  Thomas, emerging from the turret staircase, had to squeeze
a space for himself at the entrance to the accompaniment of "Hush's'
and Whists'.  The prayers were almost over, but he had accomplished his
trust.  To him, again, had fallen the glory of hoisting the flag that
proclaimed a great occasion.  His responses were mechanical as

It

he waited for the announcement that would explain the quick, secret
command issued to him as the Sir hurried past him from the library to
the oratory.

Sir Roderick was almost breathless as he rose from his knees and strode
to the open window.  "Tomorrow/ he called to the kneeling throng, 'will
be the last day of this special devotion offered for the success of
this petition that has gone to the House of Lords.  Tomorrow/ he cried
on a louder note, 'our prayers will be offered in thanksgiving,
because'--he paused-- 'the Liberator has been set free!"

He put out a hand to quell the uproar and told them not to leave
without refreshments.  Behind him, Phineas De Lacey, still on his
knees, held his face in his hands to conceal the tears.  A few minutes
later he was dancing a slip jig on the gallery.  Sterrin, instead of
being lighted to bed, was lighted by torch lights to the great pyramid
of branches that awaited the ceremonial kindling from the taper that
young Thomas handed to her papa.

CHAPTER 20

Roderick was glad when all the fanfaronade had subsided.  Now maybe he
could get down to the business of the estate, and find some time to
spend with Dominic, his newborn son.

Black Pat had been on to him to let him buy a blood horse he had spoken
of selling.  Roderick had doubts.  It was a horse for a gentleman--and
at a gentleman's price.  Still, for old times' sake, he supposed he
would have to let Black Pat have it at his own price!

Roderick's thoughts went back to childhood when he had fostered under
Black Pat's roof.  Even then Black Pat had been fearless with horses.
And it would seem that his foster-brother's little runaway bride was
fearless that way too.

Roderick had been astounded to find a reference to Black Pat's bride in
his father's black book, of all places!  The girl had been the daughter
of well-to-do people in the South Riding.  When they could not persuade
her to marry the rich suitor of their choice they called in the parish
priest to add the weight of his influence.  While the parents were
receiving the priest she slipped through a window and made off on the
priest's horse to Black Pat.

A runaway marriage was something to talk of for nine days of wonder.
But to run away on the priest's horse!  That had been something to
whisper about in dread.  Supposing, went the whisper, that the priest
had needed his horse for some sudden and sacred purpose!  Rumour
strengthened the 'supposing' into a fact.  Someone had died without a
priest, it stated, because of the girl's profane act.  Her family had
written her off.  There would be no record of having the manuscript
that chronicled her family's history from one generation to another.

But Sir Dominic had recorded her in his book when she married his
tenant.  Her high spirits had intrigued him.  And because of his strong
sense of the tie of fosterage, he had given an attractive farm to Black
Pat.  Under the details of tenancy he

 had written, "I trust that its heritage will recompense his little
wife Nonic--for the fine heritage she has abandoned in the cause of
love."

Roderick, too, had been intrigued--and annoyed!  Fancy Black Pat being
the hero of such rich romance!  Extraordinary that he had never
mentioned anything of it to him!  Roderick could scarcely realise the
extent to which he had grown up and away from the little boy who used
to trot like an affectionate puppy at the heels of Black Pat.  Nor,
that his remote and arrogant when was intimidating to the tenants who
had been accustomed to the affability of his father.

He decided to ask Black Pat for her maiden name and fill it in the
blank.

He turned the pages back.  So much of his father came through the
flowing handwriting.  There were several references to Malachy.  His
father had set great store by the fosterage tie.  Malachy had been the
son of the house where he had fostered until he was eight years old. He
seemed to have kept up the link with him until Malachy left to join the
Austrian army.  "I had no shame," he wrote, 'for the tears I shed at
parting with my dear foster-brother."  Further on Roderick read the
record of Malachy's death in Austria.  Underneath, his father had
inscribed the old Gaelic saying--"Dear to a man is his brother; but his
foster-brother is the marrow of his heart."

There was a knock and Hegarty admitted George Lucas to pay his rent.

"I brought it before," he explained, 'but your Honour was-absent."

Roderick noticed the deliberate hesitation.  No other tenant would have
used the word.  It savoured of 'absenteeism'.

Your Honour!"

"What is it?"  Roderick was making out the receipt.  He felt ashamed of
his own brusquerie.

"Herself was wondering that Miss Sterrin hadn't called to see her new
little foster-sister."

"Her what?"

"Aye, foster-sister.  Near two months she is now

Blast the fellow's impudence!  To claim the kinship of fosterage
because his wife had been Sterrin's wet nurse!

*... But his foster-brother is the marrow of his heart!"  Roderick
couldn't imagine the "DarraghadheaF being the mar164

row of any man's heart.  Coldly he yielded to tradition.  Tm sure that
her Ladyship will arrange for Miss Sterrin to visit the infant."

Margaret was contrite when she heard about the new baby.  She was
anxious not to offend any customs.  Her Papa used to tell them such
droll things in Antwerp about the farmhouse in County Clare when his
father had been fostered!  "And I cannot go today.  I am--what is it,
head upon heels?  All this excitement."

Roderick looked at her.  She was holding her own baby son, Dominic. Her
gazelle eyes were sheening with vibrancy.  Excitement suited her. Life
could be stolid in Antwerp.  It wasn't all ice skating!

"Don't worry," he said.  "The fellow had a cheek to remind me.  Let
Sterrin drive that way with the new governess.  It will soothe them to
have her call so promptly."

As the pony phaeton was approaching Ryan's, Black Pat rode towards them
at a sauntering canter, his pipe in the corner of his mouth.  He doffed
his hat to them and Sterrin impishly doffed her bonnet.  Black Pat
always made her feel mischievous.  He looked at her uncovered head with
the most comical consternation, then wheeled round and went pelting
back.

There was not time to query his strange behaviour because it had caused
the pony to bolt.  By the time it had quietened they had reached
Lucas's.  Lucas was not so soothed by the visit as her Papa had
suggested.  He felt it a slight that it was an employee, however
genteel, who had accompanied Miss Sterrin.  He liked to boast to people
that he was the foster-father of Sir Roderick O'Carroll's child.  When
he married her wet nurse he had envisioned perquisites and gifts.

The baby, Sterrin informed her mamma later, was like a halfpenny
orange.  "Not even a penny one?"  asked her papa.  "By the way," he
went on, 'did you happen to see Black Pat?"  When she told him about
his strange behaviour he rode down prepared to tell him that he had
changed his mind about the horse.  The sound of a violin playing
"Love's Young Dream' came to him as he rode into his foster-brother's
yard.

Black Pat was all apologies.  "But sure, Sir Rody, everyone knows that
if a body meets up with a redhaired woman on the way to make a deal
there is nothing for it but to turn straight H back."

"What the devil ...!"  From behind him a clear voice interrupted.  "It
is most unbecoming of Pat to speak in such a way of your daughter, Sir
Roderick."

A tiny figure had appeared at the doorway.  It was Airs.  Black Pat.  A
green cloak, hastily donned, was being tied at the neck with a green
velvet bow.  The voice, in clear and faultless diction, was emerging
from the depths of the velvet-lined hood that almost covered the
wearer's face.  As she crossed the yard towards him the flash of her
shoe buckle made a ripple in the symphony of the greens she wore; green
leather shoes, green cloak; deeper green in the velvet that banded hem
and hood.  Something of woodland occurred to him as he saluted her; no
brim-touching, but a full uncovering with a sweep that he had scarcely
thought to make towards Black Pat Ryan's wife.  "Such silly
superstition!"  she said and proceeded to run her hand over his mount
in the most expert manner.  He might as well not have been there!

"I hope," Roderick said coolly, 'that you don't think this is the horse
that I am selling to your husband."  The hood didn't turn but the voice
inside said just as coolly, "Of course not!  This beauty is something
too special for our barnyard."

"Hmph!"  He thought.  "You seem a bit too special yourself for this
barnyard!"  He wondered if she, too, were a beauty; but short of
bending down and peering inside the green twilight of her hood there
was no way of knowing.  Anyway it did not matter.  He was feeling
strangely rasped.

It did not help his mood, when, as he entered the house for the drink
that must ratify the sale, a potato came flying out and barely missed
his eye.  The culprit came forward and chucked down a black curly
forelock in salute.  He was the chubby little boy whose logic had once
earned him a half-crown from Roderick.  "It wasn't you I aimed to hit,
your Honour," he assured his father's overlord.  "It was Norisheen,"
His sister rose from the music box she was playing in the parlour and
curtsied.  "Adam," she informed Roderick, 'could not hit a haystack."
She made a quick escape and left him alone with the tinkling strains of
"Love's Young Dream'.

Shiny objects highlighted the gloom of the long, narrow room: a trinket
box in chased silver on the cabinet; heavy silver candlesticks on the
mantelpiece.  Trifling but unexpected.  And most unexpected were the
water colours.  The shimmer of their

gilt frames drew his eyes.  Egad!  How did such artistry come to be on
Black Pat's walls ?  From the end of the room a duet of children's
voices informed him that the pictures had been painted by their mammy.
Roderick turned in time to see two small night clad figures who had
been peeping at him from an end room.  Immediately they jumped back on
to a huge feather mattress and proceeded to turn somersaults.

Their father came in with the whiskey and explained that they had the
chin cough  "Aye," he went on as Roderick continued to study the
paintings, 'herself drew them.  A great notion she has for drawin' and
colourin' and the like."  He said it as though they were something to
be indulged and dismissed like the chin cough

Again Roderick was conscious of that rasped sensation.  But just then
he heard an alarmed stamping from the direction of the hitching post.
He dashed to it in time to see Norisheen slide down the offside of his
precious filly and vanish through the hedge.  He had sprung into the
saddle before he realised that it was Mrs.  Ryan who was holding the
bridle; in spite of his anger he was amazed to see how strangely quiet
and timid the animal had gone under her soothing pats.  Normally it
would still be performing a dance of terror on its hind legs.

"Do please forgive us; all of us, Sir Roderick!"  A white cheek came
out from the hood and rubbed itself on the animal's velvet muzzle.  "I
can't think," said the voice from under the horse's neck, 'how that
child came to take such an outrageous liberty."

He had a suspicion that she was laughing at him.  "Can't you?"  he
exclaimed crisply.  He jerked the horse's head round and the white
cheek beneath it disappeared into its hood the way a snail's head
vanishes into its shell at the approach of a human.  "Trot, Mammy;
trot, foal!"  he flung back at her over his shoulder.  At the gate he
turned back.  She was still standing there.  Like a miniature in a
green plush frame, he thought!  He had intended complimenting her upon
her artistic skill.  To atone for his brusqueness he doffed his hat in
a high sweep and rode out, musing upon this highly individual
household.  Too dem ned individual--its juvenile members--and Suddenly
his smile tightened.  The darraghadheal, he thought, and nodded
casually.

George Lucas uncovered to his landlord but the black eyes held no
friendship; only the blue-green shimmer of die beetle.

The darraghadheal had been observing the friendly visit his neighbour
had received from the Sir.  Black Pat's roars of laughter; the child's
easy familiarity.  Mounting the Sir's horse, no less!  There were
landlords who would evict for the like.  This was the kind of
association he had visualised when he married the foster-nurse of the
Sir's child.  The Sir sweeping off his hat to Black Pat's wife as
though she were a very grand lady!

Black Pat Ryan, the little, man argued bitterly to himself as he gazed
after the arrogant figure on the superb horse, was after all only the
nephew of the Sir's foster-mother.  Not her own child, as his was the
child of Miss Sterrin O'Carroll's foster-mother; and the recognition
she gets--on this same day that the Sir himself visits his
foster-brother--is a prim call from a patronising bitch of a
governess!

Roderick rode on, oblivious of the thoughts that were twisting the mind
of this newcomer to his estate who saw himself as a 'millteoir orda'.1
He basked in the gentle warmth of Saint Martin's summer; golden
weather, soft and silent.  A film of mist lay on the Devil's Bit.  All
day in the woods flakes of gold fell gently, making a golden carpet
beneath a golden canopy.

Tenants looked up as Sir Roderick passed and halted the stroke of the
flail to give him a TJia agat'.  This was the finest hour of the year.
Their hearts rejoiced at the spectacle of land pleasantly burdened with
the produce of their toil; gardens of stubble covered with 'shocks' of
wheat, oats and barley; fields of potatoes where the pits full packed
were already raised.  There was a silence about Golden Meadows that
proclaimed an early harvest saved and stored and the family off with
their neighbours, the Ulick Prendergasts and the Campions, to their
lodges at Tramore for the sea water.  Never had Roderick seen the
thatched roofs look so attractive.  There was Black Pat again working
his field.  But what on earth was he up to?

Black Pat was standing in front of his spade that stood upright in the
ground.  For a moment he stood that way, motionless.  Then he doffed
his hat skywards, spat on either hand, rubbed them together, then
plunged the spade deep into the earth.  Roderick waited tensed, sharing
with his foster brother this moment of homely drama.  Black Pat was
performing the opening ceremony of his potato harvest.  And it was a

1 Brother to the Great.

good one.  He raised the first stalk high and shook from it a shower
of potatoes.  Roderick spurred onwards with a sense of gladness.

As he cantered home, he realised that he had forgotten to ask Black Pat
for his wife's maiden name for the record book.  Whoever she was, he
thought as he hummed the tune, his foster brother had captured a prize.
Roderick had the impression that Black Pat was being deliberately
reticent about his wife.  He never presumed on the old association and
now it looked as though he was reluctant to foist his wife's
superiority upon the notice of his landlord.  An independent devil!

"Love's Young Dream' beat the rhythm of his homeward canter.  It must
have been Black Pat's wife who had been playing the violin!  When young
Thomas came to take his horse the Sir was humming ... Svhen my dream of
life from morn till night, was love, still love."

Sterrin came through a wicket gate with her governess.  He asked her
what she had learned that morning and regretted the query.  Love's
Young Dream' retreated before the flow of her learning.  There were,
she told him, nine hundred and fifty-two publications in Great Britain.
A new kind of beehive had been invented--and, oh yes, Sterrin had also
learned the exact day upon which the snake emerges from its winter
sleep.

Miss Ferguson-Coyne found her employer's obvious amazement flattering.
"I feel," she said, 'that the study of nature is most broadening to the
mind of a child."  An overhead whirring made him look up.  Sterrin sent
a long whistle skywards.  The governess was shocked.  "Ladies don't
whistle."  Sterrin looked at her curiously, "What other way could one
call to a jack snipe?"  Roderick followed the course of the snipe until
they disappeared into the wood, "Yes, Miss Ferguson-Coyne," he said at
last, 'the study of nature is indeed broadening to the mind."  He
gestured towards the golden woods.  '... earth crammed with heaven and
every common bush afire with God; but only he who sees takes off his
shoes."  He looked lazily through long lashes at the confused
blue-stocking.  "The snake must be one of those who "sees".  He does
take off his skin.  Doesn't he?"

The governess took Sterrin's hand.  "It is getting chilly out here."

Her employer looked after her.  "I'll wager it is chilly!"  He
chuckled.  It must be!  "For a woman who studies the undressing

l II

habits of snakes."  From under the horse's head came a suppressed
snort.  Roderick had forgotten the knife boy.  He wheeled.  "If you
have digested your nature study, my lad, take that filly around to the
stables."

The year's procession moved on until it caught up with Little
Christmas.  Margaret and Roderick were going to a whist party at De
Lacey's.  It would be Margaret's first outing since the birth of
Dominic.  There would be carpet dancing as well and games and forfeits
and feasting!  Margaret shuddered pleasantly at the thought of the De
Lacey menus.  Their dining-room suggested a butcher's stall to her.
Only that the carcasses were cooked and they sprawled from under silver
cover dishes instead of hanging from hooks.

But the gaily repressed shudder at the sight of roasts was different
from that which convulsed her when the winds blew about the castle on
the feast of the Epiphany.  Every gust and scurry presaged a recurrence
of the night that Sterrin was born.  People overlooked the fact that
Little Christmas was Sterrin's birthday.  It was the anniversary of the
ordeal that her Ladyship endured over Miss Sterrin.  For poor Sterrin
it was a day of undefined guilt.  Every time her mamma tapped the
barometer or dropped something or stifled a scream Sterrin knew that it
was because of something terrible that she Sterrin had in some way,
caused to happen on this day to her own mamma!

But on this particular birthday she was summoned to the hall door and
there was Big John leading a Connemara pony up and down.

The mountainy man who brought her said something about the pony having
fairy blood; Big John couldn't follow the man's Connaught gaelic.

It was with reluctance that Sterrin accompanied her parents to the
party.  Normally she would have been delighted.  Mrs.  De Lacey had
sent a last-minute request that she be brought as she had abandoned the
idea of sending Bunzy and the younger ones to bed.  Every bedroom would
be occupied by overnight guests.  Last year every step of the stairs
and upper corridor had been a 'sit-outcry' for couples.  The youngsters
hadn't slept a wink; nor tried to.

The mountainy man had made another sale.  Immediately Sterrin arrived
at Kilincarrig Lodge she was led out to the stables in an aura of
mystery and lanthorn light.  Bunzy's new

pony was bigger than Sterrin's.  "But that," Sterrin suggested, 'is
probably because it is pure mortal.  Mine has fairy blood."

"If that be so," Bunzy said, 'your pony can't be a thoroughbred."
Sterrin didn't like the sound of that at all.  The infusion of fairy
blood made her pony a more rarefied thoroughbred!  "No ordinary
thoroughbred could catch up on a fairy pony.  It would leave them all
behind," she argued.

"But supposing," said the logical Bunzy, 'that it left them so far
behind that it never came back?  Supposing," she whispered with awful
solemnity and holding the lanthorn close to Sterrin's face, 'that it
were to vanish with you on its back?"

Sterrin preferred not to consider the supposition.  She shivered.  "It
is cold out here."  But inside in the glow of the candle-lit hall her
courage returned.  Her mamma was crowing with laughter as Mr.  De Lacey
strained on tiptoes to kiss her under the mistletoe.  A big blue punch
bowl, the biggest Sterrin had ever seen, was steaming on a wainscoted
seat inside the hall door.  Every new arrival had to sample it before
removing a stitch of wrapping.  Whether the punch was lowered willingly
or under good-humoured coercion the tone of the night was established.
Hilarity began on the threshold.

One didn't have to pretend to be cold to cover one's fear in this
bright warm din of music and chatter and protective grownups, all of
them happy; some of them in fits laughing at being forced to swallow a
'toshkeen' or to yield a kiss under the mistletoe!  "Besides," said
Sterrin blandly resuming their discussion in the pony stall, "I don't
believe in fairies."  Not just now!

"Be careful!"  Bunzy hissed into her ear.  "Red-headed children are not
safe from the fairies until they are seven."  And suddenly Sterrin was
conscious of freedom from the lifelong fear.  "They can't touch me ever
again.  I'm seven tonight!"

Winter lingered too long like a guest that has outworn its welcome.  In
early March the mountains were still clothed in dazzling white and the
pale spring sunlight fell about them like a vesture of gold.
"Mountains," Roderick told Sterrin, 'are never more sublime than when
wrapped in snow."

He held her leading rein as they skirted the plough lands and while he
trained her to ride he imbued in her the love and the lore of the land.
Everywhere the lesser farmers were rushing to get the last drill closed
before Saint Patrick's day.  He slowed and watched the seed fall gently
into his beloved soil, to be held

in tender consummation until the harvest.  "Only there, Gra' gal," he
said, 'lies true fulfilment."

Saint Patrick's Eve was a raw day.  In the afternoon as Roderick
approached Black Pat's on the homeward ride, Sterrin far behind him, a
group of girls ran with a scurry of laughter across the road and into
the house.  Suddenly he slowed and frowned.  A cordon of green wool was
stretched in a barrier across the tiny road.  If he hadn't slowed in
time the horse might have taken fright!

This Ryan Dhuv household would need to have its 'vivre' toned down!
"Will you kindly remove this dem ned thing!"  he called out.  Alarmed
squeals sounded behind the toparied hedge.  There was a further scurry
as the girls rushed to the door.  Before it closed he heard an
unmistakable voice urge them to go on back and 'claim their footing'!

Footing!  His frown was chased by a smile.  Not since he was a child
had he seen the green thread across the road on Saint Patrick's Eve and
the spinning girls claiming a shilling for 'footing'.  If the stranger
were handsome he was let pass on the forfeit of a kiss.  His father had
always paid with a kiss; and his progress on Saint Patrick's Eve had
been slow.  There were always a lot of green barriers in Sir Dominic's
path.

A small figure came out of the house.  "They have no courage, Sir
Roderick," said Mrs.  Ryan.

"Who are they?"  he asked.  She told him they were friends on a visit
for the Holy Day.  He didn't catch what she said.  He was thinking that
it was difficult to believe that this immature little figure had
produced one child; much less six!  Instead of the matron's high-cauled
cap she wore a dainty babet; just like the ones Margaret wore.  For the
first time he saw her face.  High cheek bones, long eyes demurely
veiled, a pointed chin.  They sketched a picture in his memory.
Scarcely a picture, an impression, of prick-eared laughing fauns
flitting through trees.  He couldn't be mistaken, no one else could
claim those woodland hazel eyes.  The memory of that magic moment so
many years ago came flooding back.  "So it's you!"  he said softly.

She lifted the long lashes slowly.  A wicked gleam slipped out.  "Fancy
your remembering me!"

"I He was about to say that he had wondered what had become of her
after that day in the hunting field!  Better say nothing.  Let the
encounter go on lying in the tomb of memory.

He went on looking into her eyes.  Yes, there were still three colours
in their depth.  Woodland colours.  The green of leaves in a brown
pool; blue from the faint reflection of bluebells on its brink.

She held up her hand.  "The shilling!  I'll collect it for them, though
they don't deserve it."

He dropped back the shilling he had been drawing from his pocket.  "I
haven't got a shilling.  You must collect the forfeit instead."

She looked up at him, dainty and cool as a goldfish.  "There is no
necessity for you to pay forfeit on this road."  This was his own road.
Narrow and rough, and rugged and proud!

And the 'footing' was for handsome strangers.  Like the one in the
hunting field.  So, she thought, he remembered!  It had been like a
caress when he had lifted her after she had fallen from her horse.  And
when he had dropped on his knee to let her remount it had seemed like
an act of homage.

She looked at the green ball in her hand.  What had prompted her to his
folly?  "I'll remove it."  She started to roll up the ball.

He seized her wrist.  "Now, who has no courage?"  She pressed her face
into the horse's cheek.  Did he think to snatch a kiss from a wayside
wench!  She'd let him see!

But all that she let him see above the velvet muzzle was one eye
charged with provocative deviltry.  He jerked up Thuckeen's head and
brought down his own.

The kiss lasted through an eternity of seconds.  There had not been
enough time in Nome's life to discover that a kiss could be so
overpowering and yet so gentle.  Pat's kisses had never caused this
tumult.

When she thought it had subsided she looked up.  But it had swept the
colours in her eyes together and tossed them to the surface.  It
requires an artist to mix colours; something like that was his
impression.  It wasn't a conscious boast.  But it was so obvious that
Black Pat was no artist.

He has availed of his landlord's privilege, she thought, and murmured,
"Droit de seigneur She dropped him a mock curtsey.  "I'm honoured your
Honour!"

He frowned.  He felt rasped again; the same feeling he had known the
day he had sold them the horse.  But now as he looked at the porcelain
figurine with the honey gold hair he

recognised the feeling for what it was; the irritation that an artist
feels at the spectacle of a lovely picture crudely framed.

"Blame yourself!  Briseann an ducas tre suleann an cat," he said and
soared over the cordon.  He couldn't wait for her to wind up the dem
ned worsted.  He had to ride those dangerous currents out of his
veins.

Behind her there was a clattering as Black Pat rode into the yard.  He
called her name but she took no notice.  Why had Sir Roderick quoted
that Gaelic saying.  "Nature breaks out through the eyes of a cat'?

"I didn't expect that from you, Nonic."  The gravel-voiced constriction
in Pat's voice made her turn at last.  She scrutinised the lean dark
features.  He was wearing his good broadcloth for the evening's
festivities.  He did justice, she thought, to well-cut clothes; lithe
and well knit; sat his fine horse with the same easy grace as his
aristocratic foster-brother.  The grace but not the graces!  She turned
and looked after the receding horseman.  There rode all the grace of
life that had been envisaged in the romantic heart of the girl who had
eloped with Black Pat.

"And I didn't expect it from Rody O'Carroll either."

"Didn't you, Pat?"  she answered him at last, in a funny, quiet little
voice.  "But people are never quite what they are expected to be.
Neither is life."  He felt that her eyes, so unusually bright, were
looking through and beyond him.  If she saw him at all, it was to take
his measure with the man whose kiss had made her eyes look as they
did.

Suddenly they became aware of him.  "Don't be so serious, Pat duv," she
cried and her voice had resumed its normal brightness.  "It was the
girl inside who tied the wool across the road.  I've never seen the
custom before of course, we lived quite a good stretch in from the
road."

"Aye," he said and the gravel still dried his voice, 'there was an
avenue between you and the road."

Sterrin rode towards her papa and asked him what was the green thing
across the road.  He suppressed the inclination to tell her that little
girls should be seen and not heard.

"I suppose," she reflected when he had explained the old custom, 'that
those kind of people would prefer the shilling to a kiss."

Those kind of people!  Little Oenone, elegant, poised, accomplished;
overflowing with that elusive, indefinable quality of

feminine allure.  How many shillings in the dowry she had spurned for
love's kiss?

"Which would you prefer?  The kiss or the shilling?"

"The shilling, of course," she said hopefully.

For the second time the same shilling was pondered in his fingers, then
dropped.  No bribery, he decided.

They turned into the Sir's road.  Over the gap in the wall they could
see the 'garconnerie' led by young Thomas picking baskets of
shamrocks.

"You won't need that much," she called.

"Won't we?"  said Thomas who hadn't glimpsed the Sir.  "All the Delaney
young ladies have arrived and a carriageful of De

Laceys and Sterrin gave a cry of delight as she spied

Bunzy riding towards her on her Connemara pony.

"Mamma allowed me to ride with Hubert behind the carriage and she says
that I can stay the night if I am asked."

Roderick popped his head over the wall.  "Well," he gasped in mock
amazement.  "If it isn't little Miss Bunzy.  Let us hope that you are
going to do us the honour of staying over for the feast day."  Bunzy
gasped out an excited assurance then galloped off to inform her mamma
that she had been invited to stay.

Margaret was entertaining Saint Patrick's Day celebrants in the
drawing-room.  Roderick made his way to the library by the back and
took down the book of records.  The excited tingling in his finger made
him riffle the pages.  Here it was!  The entry about Black Pat's lease.
'... and I trust that its heritage will compensate his little wife,
Nonic ... for the heritage that she has abandoned in the cause of
love'.

What kind of pompous sentiment was that for his father to record?  The
heritage of a little wayside farmhouse and a half dozen brats fathered
by a rustic.  And what kind of a lady had she been?  Where was her
fastidiousness?  Galloping off after the fellow.  He caught sight of
himself in a mirror.  And she galloped in the opposite direction from
you!  You had to do the galloping after her I What the devil am I
talking about?  He closed the book with a snap and got to his feet.
Then sat down again and opened it and filled in her surname in the
space left by his father; Mansfield.  It looked strange there, the
solitary word in its green ink that was a conceit of Davis's for Repeal
Year; and the Nonic didn't suit it.  Probably a crudity of Black Pat's.
But it suited Her; pert, provocative!  Very painstakingly he squeezed

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in over the surname the name that he had taken care to ascertain after
the hunting incident--Oenone.  Miss Oenone Mansfield I And now she was
Noriie Black Pat Ryan.  The distinctive name looked as strange, pushed
in there between the rather faded lines of his father's writing as its
owner had looked down in the little farmhouse in her green gown,
staring out at him from those marvelous eyes.  He closed the book with
a snap.  What the devil had the love ramifications of his tenants got
to do with him"?  He was making too much about a seasonable kiss;
footing or mistletoe or whatever it was!  Whatever it was it still made
a tingling on his lips as he went to meet his guests.

At the drawing-room door he stopped amazed.  This was something
different from the usual Saint Patrick's Eve celebrations.  A batch of
Delaney girls came round him, all sporting the usual streams of green
ribbon from shoulders to hem.  But it was the gentlemen who had given
him the sudden impression of splendour.

Patrick Cullen in the elegant uniform suggested by Davis to attract the
young nobility to Repeal's 'corps d'elite1 was leading forward Lord
Templetown's son and heir resplendent in the new uniform.

"They make me feel positively dowdy," said Fiona De Lacey.  Her father
assured her that she would feel dowdier still by the time that he had
paid the tailor for Hubert's uniform.

"Forty-five guineas for the jacket alone.  Me!  who has not had a new
suit since I was married!"

Roderick linked his arm and drew him towards the met her cup for the
ceremonial drowning of the shamrock.

"Don't worry, Phineas," he said.  "You'll get it all back on the first
wave of Repeal."

CHAPTER 21

The grain harvest that Fall had been a plenteous one.  Soon it would be
potato-digging time, the 'poor man's harvest'.  Roderick rode down to
see Black Pat.  He slowed to look across a hedge at Black Pat's mare.
It was in foal by the thoroughbred he had sold them.  A fine mare. They
had a profit-making strain there.

When he rode out on to their roadway he heard violin music from the
house.  It had a happy sound.  The life she had chosen must hold for
her some meaning.  Was there meaning he wondered in that tune she had
chosen?  "Love's Young Dream' again.  Because he was tempted to linger
he touched his spurs to his mount and pressed on.  "No," he hummed,
'that hallowed form is ne'er forgot.  Which first love traced..."  He
broke off.  If that hallowed form down there in the field was Black
Pat's, it was behaving deucedly extraordinary!

Black Pat was running from one drill to the next digging a few stalks
and tossing them aside.  Then he jumped across more drills and started
to dig like a maniac.  Roderick set his mount to the hedge and cantered
up the headland.  Black Pat, completely oblivious of his landlord's
presence, flung stalk after stalk from his spade, then with a sobbing
gasp he flung the spade from him in a wide sweep.

It landed at the horse's feet.  The animal reared up on its hind legs
and almost unseated Roderick.  Black Pat turned to the spectacle of the
great horse plunging high and menacing above him.  "The Black
Horseman!"  he screamed.  "Vo, Vol  The Black Horseman that rides
across the land scattering Pestilence and Death and Starvation!"

Down in the opening, as he knelt over the drills Roderick saw heaps of
black, slimy mess.  They were the fruits of the healthy, firm potatoes
he had seen go down in this field on Saint Patrick's Eve ... He averted
his head from the stench.

Black Pat was feeling ashamed of his outburst.  He held the

bridle while Sir Roderick mounted and at last he found voice to say in
Gaelic.  "The dogs have not eaten up the end of the year."  Roderick
assured him that he would not see him short.  A good thing that the
castle crop was so good!  O'Driscoll had turned up a few stalks this
morning for a preview of the crop.  They had been laden with the finest
potatoes.  It looked as if there might be need of them all; if there
were other cases like Black Pat's.

He reached the Cobs where his own potato fields lay.  "Good God!"  He
flung himself from the horse.  "Those leaves have the same spots as
Ryan's."

The leaves that had bloomed green and healthy in the morning looked now
as if acid had been poured on them.  He pulled up a stalk.  It
shrivelled in his hand.  Even while he held it the potatoes blackened
and melted!

He sprang on to a bank and called some workmen to bring spades.  They
dug as madly as had Black Pat.  The results were the same.  What had
been firm tubers this morning were now a putrid mess.  Was this another
trick of nature?  Like the one that had deprived him of his field.  "By
God!  She won't trick me again!"  he said aloud.

The men looked at each other.  But that was their last idle moment All
night the torches blazed in the potato fields.  Indoor and outdoor
staff worked like fiends.  In the lurid glare their faces reminded
young Thomas glancing up from his spade, of the fiends in the
illustrations of the "Inferno' in the library, driving their tripods
into hell's flames.  But these were desperate men fighting with
unrelenting spades the evil force that threatened from the earth.  The
scene reminded Margaret of the time in her childhood when she had been
visiting in Holland and had seen men fighting back the sea from the
gorged dykes.

By morning one quarter of the crop was saved.  The rest was corruption.
It was disaster for the tenants.

At Christmas, after Roderick had added potatoes to the tenants' usual
gift of meat, there was none left for his own family.  Perhaps, after
Saint Stephen's Day, he would ride over to Queen's County and purchase
a few tons of Mr.  Delaney's famous "Queen's County Champions'.

Hounds met on Kilsheelin's lawn on Saint Stephen's morning  The
mist-enshrouded symphony of creaking and jinglings and yaps livened to
the gay exchange of greetings.  Carriages

kept streaming up the avenue.  The dereliction of the potato field
gave way to the gaiety of the hunting field.  Roderick, in the act of
pouring a stirrup cup for Lord Templetown, stopped suddenly.  Egad!"
exclaimed his Lordship.  "What a pair!  What a matched pair!  Whose
turnout is it, Sir Roderick?"  An imposing-looking equipage was
whirring up the avenue followed by a pair of grooms with a blanketed
horse apiece.

Roderick peered with flagon suspended.  A small figure in mulberry
stepped down and opened the door with a flourish.  The outline of the
lady who emerged was sculpted in the perfection of her riding habit.

"God save you, Roddy!"  she called.  "I see that I am in time for the
stirrup juice."

Roderick offered the flagon and doffed his hunting cap.  "By the piper
that played before Moses, if it isn't Mrs.  Delaney."

"I don't blame your surprise, Roddy," she said.  "It is not often that
we take the moths from the carriage.  I thought we would pay you proper
respect for a change.  And--I have a small favour to ask."

Roderick sketched an elaborate bow.  "You have but to name it."

She waved away the mounting block and sprang into the saddle.  "Oh,"
she said offhandedly.  "I only want you to sell me a few tons of
spuds."

"Is that all?"

"Be careful there, Roddy.  You're spilling the wine.  Yes, that's
all."

After the hunt Mrs.  Delaney canvassed every gentleman of her
acquaintance for potatoes.  But they all had the same story.  Their
potatoes had failed.  Lord Cullen had fared worst.  He had saved his
entire crop sound.  But when the pits had been opened at Christmas to
distribute potatoes among the tenants, there wasn't a sound one there.
They had rotted in the pits.  And they were perfect going in.  My
steward graded them meticulously."

They trotted round to the front of the castle.  Mrs.  Appleyard was
being helped from her mount by a military groom.  "Oh la!"  she cried.
"What solemn faces!  Whatever can you gentlemen be discussing?"

"Just potatoes, dear lady," said Lord Templetown getting stiffly from
his saddle.

"Potatoes!"  shrilled Mrs.  Kennedy-Sherwin.  "What a dull

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topic."

"Conversation, dear lady, is always dull when gentlemen are left
together.  It will brighten now under the radiance of your presence."
His tone was like a chuck under the chin.

She purred.  It only needed well-trimmed compliments to bring her into
full sparkle after the excitement of the hunt.  "Flatterer!"  she
cooed. "And anyway there are lots more interesting vegetables.  Myself,
I prefer artichokes."

"Ah, but what an adorably selective palate," piped in Lord Cullen.

The delighted little flirt noticed that even the unassailable Sir
Roderick was smiling at her.  Quite a conquest.

His smile was for his thoughts.  What would Black Pat say if he were to
suggest artichokes to him?  Or, better still.  Asparagus I And then he
recalled that Black Pat had a wife who had not always been beyond the
possibility of--asparagus, who still retained an allure more subtle
than this little siren's.  Better not draw that covert!  "Papa!"
Sterrin galloped up all excitement.  "The Wren Boys are coming!"

Up the avenue, to the music of fiddles and bagpipes came the
traditional Saint Stephen's Day procession of youths and girls.  The
grotesque "Omadhawn', a sack over his body with holes for his arms, his
face masked like the jester of medieval processions, kept order by
capering about and be labouring everyone with a cow's bladder tied to a
suck.  "The wren, the wren, the king of all birds," they chanted.  "On
Saint Stephen's Day was caught in the fur se  Although he is little;
his family is great.  Rise up Lords and Ladies and give us a treat!"

Roderick lightened as he led them inward for the usual reception.  The
blight of the potatoes had not blighted their spirits.  He could still
remember how proud he had felt as a small boy trotting up the avenue in
the wake of the Wren boys with Black Pat; he felt just as awed as the
others at the castle's grandeur.  Consciousness of the knowledge that
he was its heir had not dawned; only consciousness of the fact that he
alone of the small boys who ran in the wake of the procession was
privileged by the leader to be let carry the holly branch that held the
wren.

It was held now by John Holohan who had carried the Templetown banner
so high at Tara's meeting.  The ladies' eyes ranged interestedly over
his six feet five inches.  A scarlet sash

was draped bandillero fashion across his shoulders.  When he removed
his ribbon-decked hat, his hair sprang out in thick rings about his
forehead.

"All he needs," murmured Mrs.  Kennedy-Sherwin, 'is a toga."

"Must you be so classically blue-stocking?"  drawled her friend.

Dominic Landy, the Omadhawn, signalled the musicians and marshalled his
followers into dance formation.  John Holohan laid aside his holly bush
and bowed before Lady O'Carroll for the honour of leading her out.

"How delightfully arcadian!"  said Mrs.  Appleyard to Lieutenant
Fitzharding-Smith.

"And," said Mrs.  Kennedy-Sherwin, 'she needs neither hounds nor
huntsmen to draw her coverts."

The Lieutenant looked longingly towards the lady of his hopeless
devotion.  "Lady O'Carroll is more shepherdess than huntress," he
sighed.

"And you," said Mrs.  Kennedy-Sherwin, 'are more sheep than
huntsman."

He sprang to his feet.  "Lady fair, were a gentleman to make that
statement I should call him out.  I demand that you give me
satisfaction by allowing me to lead you out."

Roderick gave his hand to a golden-haired girl in a scarlet cloak. When
she laid aside her cloak and moved into the centre of the hall there
was something like a gasp.  Her hair cascaded in golden waves down to
the first frill of her gown.  Lieutenant Fitzharding-Smith hummed the
aria from Handel.  "And the glory of golden hair."  Margaret was minded
of the kneeling Magdalen.

When the food was served, Roderick noticed that things were different
with the gay' dancers and mummers.  The flush of the dance receding
from John Holohan's face left it white and thin.  The same with all the
others.  Their faces all too pall idly etched.  They were showing the
shortage of potatoes.  Some of these six footers would eat two dozen
twice a day.

To Sterrin's surprise the pony man from the mountain appeared again a
month later.  He had no ponies; just two wild looking boys and three
little girls who shivered together under the shawl for which their
mother had no further need.

They told Mrs.  Stacey about the shawl as they sat huddled in the
chimney nook gazing with awe at the row of fires.  Eight

fires!  Blazing separately and sending separate spirals of smoke up
the vast chimney; as vast as six of their native cabins put together.

The praties had gone black in the ground.  Attracta the oldest, had
told her; just as they had on everyone else in the parish.  Then the
landlord, Lord Campbell who had been absent in England so long that
none of the children had ever seen him, decided to come back.  Lady
Campbell was bringing thirty guests and the mountain was wanted for a
shoot.  So the tenants houses had to be knocked down.  Mameen had been
sick and when the police and bailiff came on Christmas Eve to put them
out, Attracta had pleaded with them to let mameen stay the night and
the rest would go.  There was a wild storm blowing in from the
Atlantic; terrible sleet and rain.  One could hear the souls in
purgatory crying in the wind.1 But mameen had to get out.

Daddy carried her down the track to the foot of the hill and she was
still in sight of the house when she died.  The smallest child
interrupted to say that her mameen didn't want to die.  She had cried!
Mary Josephine, the middle girl, turned on her and said that it was a
terrible thing to say about mameen.  She didn't mind dying only for
leaving them behind without food.  At this stage of the recital, Mrs.
Stacey and all the female staff were crying.

The rush light had been lighting in every window on the mountain,
Rosheen said, so that the Blessed Virgin and losa gain2 and Saint
Joseph would be able to find their way if they were looking for
shelter.  Mameen had watched every light go out one by one as the
houses fell beneath the crowbar.  Then when the last twinkle vanished
into darkness she lay back in Daddy's arms and died.

But it was only when they reached the workhouse thirty-eight miles
further, that they knew the real anguish of parting.  The girls must go
with the hard-faced woman and live separately from Daddy and the boys.
Pakie had set up a wailing cry for Attracta who had mothered him when
he fretted for mameen.  The gates had started to shut out the wild
mountains that dared not give them shelter.  The hard-faced woman was
drawing

1 A Connemara belief that the wailing of the wind is the souls in
Purgatory pleading for prayers.

2 losagain--Eesagain means Little Jesus.

away the girls.  They were to wear the pauper jerkin.  They were to
give up mameen's shawl.

The shawl decided all of them; with one swift thought as uniting as its
own warm folds.  Attracta drew it tight around the three pairs of
shoulders and Daddy put a hand on the nearest one and said, "We'll not
be stoppin'."

"And that is all very sad," said Sir Roderick when Sterrin had poured
out the whole story verbatim.  She was helping him to tie flies in the
gun room.  "But my own tenants have the first claim on my charity."

"But, Papa '

"Sweetheart, the roads of Connaught are thronged with starving people
making for the districts where the potatoes have not failed and where
bread and meal have not reached famine prices.  We must christen our
own children first.  We cannot afford to adopt a family of bachachs."

"Oh, Papa, the Scallys are not beggars.  No beggar would breed such
ponies and their mother's shawl is not a beggar woman It is
wundruss."

But her papa was adamant.  They would have to go out of that fever hut.
What would happen if any of the servants were to contract fever, now
that the fever hospital was full and all these sick and semi-starving
people moving along the road to the workhouse?

She went and perched on the arm of his chair.  "Don't dare to wheedle
me," he said, drawing her into his arm.  Margaret came in and demanded
her embroidery scissors.

"I would ask the blacksmith to make scissors for your flies but I am
too superstitious.  A sharp instrument might cut our love."

He reached up and touched the brown coils under the prim babet. "Vulcan
himself could not contrive an instrument sharp enough to cut our
love."

"Good!"  cried Sterrin clambering down.  "Then the Scallys may stay."

"Come back, you baggage!"  he called.  *I tell you I cannot pay my way.
I shall soon be touching my hat to the bank manager."

Sterrin sighed gustily.  What a pity the bank manager is not a lady!
You might try paying your way the way you paid your footing to Mrs.
Black Pat."

"Footing?"  Margaret was mystified.  Sterrin explained.  Vividly.
Roderick put up his hand again.  This time to ease out

the ominous crease forming between the brown eyes.

"It is just an old Irish custom," he expostulated.  "Lake you kissing
Mr.  De Lacey under the mistletoe."

"I did not kees!"  Margaret always went very foreign when she was
angry.  "I was keesed--and Mr.  De Lacey is fat, and he is bald where
his wig slips!"

Sterrin sought to reassure her mamma.  "But Mrs.  Black Pat is not fat,
nor bald.  She has golden hair, and it curls without rags or paper, her
daughter says."  Her mamma didn't seem to find the information helpful,
so Sterrin pressed on.  "She dresses very nicely, and speaks nicely
too.  She is much highclasser than Black Pat."

Margaret walked slowly to the table and dropped the scissors with a
little clank in front of Roderick.  "Keep it," she said.  "I give it to
you."

He quirked his eyebrows.  "And what about cutting our love?"

"It ees cut!  In hafs!  By you!  Foo-ting, Hem!"  The little bugle and
bells in her key belt mingled angrily as the door closed.

Roderick looked back to his amazed daughter.  "My dear," he said un
tenderly "will you never learn that little girls should be seen and not
heard."  Particularly, he added to himself, when they have seen!

CHAPTER 22

The 'footing' incident caused the first discord in the lilt of their
marriage.  Margaret got so bogged down in her resentment that she
couldn't extricate herself.  She devoted herself to little DominiCj so
much so that Sterrin felt jealous and out of sorts watching her mother
wheel him about in a basinette and sing him to sleep every night.
Roderick was desperately busy trying to cope with the prevailing
distress; organising relief schemes, attending to the purchase and
sowing of tested seeds, supervising the cleansing of the soil after its
terrible disease.

He took the time off to greet the Liberator along with Phineas De Lacey
and other landlords at the Thurles railway terminus where O'Connell
would entrain on his journey to Westminster to plead for help for
Ireland.  Roderick held that a government's first duty was to save
life.  A national disaster like this, he urged, ought not to be left to
the efforts of private individuals.

Roderick felt sad as he gripped O'ConnelTs hand.  The Liberator was
showing the effects of his imprisonment.  The winter that ought to have
been spent in convalescing from its effects had been spent in relieving
the distress of his own people.  His blue eyes looked unlikely to cause
him further criticism on the score of roving over die curves of a
pretty woman.  He possessed as many faults as the soil from which he
sprang, but lack of charity or generosity could not be listed against
him.  He had brought a doctor at his own expense to cope with an
outbreak of fever in his district.  He had ordered wholesale
slaughtering of beeves and mutton; dispatched blankets to the remotest
parts of his wild mountain territory.  Out of the purblind depths of
his own charity, he held that all charity should be voluntary and
private.  Organised charity, he insisted, offended human dignity.

He listened wearily to the difficulties and suggestions pressed by
Roderick's deputation.  At stages all the way from County Kerry he had
met similar deputations.

But once in England, O'Connell threw off his weariness.  At
Westminster, he was once more the incarnation of Ireland; seeing with
its eyes, enduring its sufferings.  He reminded the House that the
potato had failed in Europe.  The countries afflicted had closed their
ports to the export of grain until their populations were fed; had
ceased distilling; had lowered the price of bread.  Why could not this
be done for Ireland?

He raised again the wondrous and witching voice of a mighty orator,
riveting the attention of the world, drawing all eyes towards Ireland.
But Parliament averted its gaze, and told O'Connell and the world that
the possibility of a famine in Ireland was a 'baseless vision'!

Roderick watched with panic in his heart as the stock in his granary
dwindled.  He would have to buy grain; And with what?  Only a third of
his tenants had paid rent!  He was feeding most of them.  A line of
tenants moved up for the meal that Lady O'Carroll doled out.  She
glanced up and caught his cold expression and her face hardened.  But
he saw only their substance that was draining away through her hands. A
baseless vision indeed!  God knows he didn't begrudge the poor devils
their bit!  But he had a wife and two children and a heritage to guard.
A man should christen his own child first.  He became aware of his
wife's angry scrutiny and turned away.

She watched him ride across the fields and jump the ditch into the old
road that had once been a wolf track.  Somewhere in that direction
lived that Ryan woman!  Margaret had pieced her story together; a
product of a boarding school for Young Ladies!  Hein!  Nothing very
ladylike about flaunting herself on the roadway to be kissed by passing
strargers.  His foster brother's wife!  Perhaps his footing was not
just an annual affair!  Had Roderick gone footing now?  Immediately she
was ashamed of the thought, but it rankled.

Roderick rode to the town land called the Cobs where he was
experimenting with potatoes in lea soil that had not been ploughed in
twenty-five years.  The Cobs lay behind Black Pat's farm.  He could see
the horse he had sold them.  But no sign of the mare.  It ought to have
foaled before now.  He thought for a moment to call and have a look at
the foal but he spied O'Driscoll waiting for him.  As he skirted the
Ryan haggard he heard the tinkle of the music box.

Margaret heard it too as she came along the little road in the

brougham.  A cluster of 'half-acre' holdings lay beyond Ryan's house.
Their occupants were depending entirely upon the food she dispensed at
the castle every day.  There were some who were unfit to come for it.
Margaret, straining after the distant speck that she could still see
bobbing up and down inside the hedge, experienced an urge of charity
that was strangely sudden.  She ordered the brougham and packed a
basket with food.

The Ryan children, peeping through the hedge, saw the fine brougham
lurching along their rutted bore en  They raced in the back way to tell
their mother.  "And she has a big basket of goodies!  She must have
heard that we are in hardship," said the eldest girl, Norisheen.  Her
mother rounded on her.  Had she breathed it to a soul that things were
not well with them?  Had any of them?  But they assured her that they
had let no one know that food was short.  "We tell them, coming from
school, that we have fresh meat every day and soda currant cake and
roast chicken Nonic hushed them.  The phantom menu was torturing.
"And," she chided them, 'it is dreadfully bad manners to speak outside
of what you eat."  She strained on tiptoe in the shadow of the window
hangings.  She had never seen his wife.  Perhaps she might be bringing
the children some dainties?  It would be terrible to accept anyone's
charity.  Still, Pat was his foster-brother.  Sir Roderick would be
bound to feel concern if he had heard that the foal had been still-born
and the mare had died, and that they had lost a cow; that pigs had
rooted among the rotten slime in the potato drills and had died; that
catastrophes had rained upon them!

She smoothed her hair.  But I won't go out to my lady's carriage to
receive her charity with a curtsey.  I'll stay here and accept it
graciously; a gift for the children from their father's foster-brother!
She ordered the younger children down to the kitchen, "And, turn off
that music box!  No, leave it on."  It lent an air of unconcern; a
background for conversation.  You like music, I see?  Oh yes, I adore
Mozart; especially his Fantasia in C Minor.

Lady O'Carroll looked straight ahead.  The corner of her right eye had
glimpsed the toparied hedge, the patches of grass cut in the semblance
of a lawn; the window boxes; and even a Chinese rose blooming away
regardless of season.  Out of place, like its owner!  All of a sudden
Margaret would have given her back

I

teeth to glimpse this little person whom Roderick had lifted in his
arms from the road.  She turned full face and looked at the house as
the brougham passed it.  Margaret felt a surge of rage.  It gave her
gentle face the look that the peeping Nonic took to be its habitual
arrogance.

Fantasia!  It played past Nome's door in an orchestration of creaks and
jingles and wheels and hoof beats.  She had known many a secret moment
of homesickness and heartsickness, but never anything like the
desolation she felt as she stood now in the shadow of the curtains;
steeled to accept the charity that-that had no intention of coming her
way!

She, too, was angry.  Hell roast you for a Belgian barbarian!  But, she
strained after the carriage, its outline was blurred with her own
tears, she is lovely!  Those eyes and hair against the skin! Chocolates
and cream!

The metaphor recalled her to her constant niggling for something dainty
to eat.  She looked up at the beam from where, last year, a row of
bacon flitches had hung.  Would she dare to cut a piece from the
solitary diminishing flitch?  And with Pat away, too!  But then, he was
probably guzzling delicious food at her Auntie's in County Cork.  He
was staying there on his way to purchase seed potatoes from the
Maharees in Kerry; the one place where the, potatoes had not failed.
Her idea, that!  Another of her extravagances, like the horse.  No, the
horse had been Pat's extravagance.  She whirled from the thought of the
horse and their pipe dream of wealth from its stock.  "Stop that
crying, Norisheen!"  she said in a quaky voice.  "Did you actually
think that I would accept food from anyone?  Come on and help me beat
eggs.  I'll make pancakes for supper."

Children are so pathetically easy to please, she thought, as she
sloshed off a layer of bacon to try the pancakes.  They were prancing
with joy.  Pancakes--and with rashers!  They hadn't tasted the like
since the pigs had died after eating the black potatoes.

A thought strove treacherously to rise and remind her that she herself
had been easy to please a while back.  What more than a child had she
been when she let herself in for this-squalor!

The savoury smell from the pan restored her good humour.  As she beat
the eggs she carolled the song her mother's mother once sang long ago
while her servants spun188

"Noto hasten ye women Ye want not for bread The good wheels are steady
Go spin the fine thread."

Margaret, driving back, heard the blithe words.  So did Roderick on his
way to speak to Pat.  The lively clatter of eggs beating and laughter
and the savoury smell came to him as he rode into Ryan's backyard from
the fields.  His father used to hum a song like that.  He had told
Roderick that his own mother used to sing it to her spinning women.  It
was heartening in this semi starvation to hear that gay voice that dare
sing.  "Ye want not for bread."  He started to dismount, then he saw
the brougham.

He jumped on to the bore en and reined in beside the brougham.  "What
on earth brings you down this way?"  he demanded.

Margaret was deep in reverie.  There was pitiful poverty in the cabins
she had just visited.  And then to hear that song "Ye want not for
bread'.  Such bad form!  Whatever her upbringing, the huz-zee was
declassee.  A wayside Loreli trying to lure passing gentlemen--Margaret
looked up startled.  "I don't have to ask what brings you this way."
She glanced back significantly towards the Ryan house.

He looked at her silently.  "No," he said, at last.  "You don't have to
ask.  You prefer to find out for yourself."  She flinched at the
hurtful suggestion--spying!  It was incredible; also it was true.  But
Roderick was not troubling to make suggestions.  "If you must come
spying this way," he stated positively, 'don't take the brougham.  This
road will break the springs."  He spurred his mount and shot out in
front.

Big John thought it was very unlike the Sir to shoot up a spray of
puddle with his horse's hind feet.  Her Ladyship was forced to dab her
face with her handkerchief.  She was still dabbing when he reined to at
the hall door, and her eyes were red.

Life could not wait for moods and misunderstandings.  As days passed,
more and more people made claims on Roderick's time and stocks.
Margaret's food distribution dragged on later each morning.  The
backache acquired at Dominic's birth grew chronic from the prolonged
standing.  And Dominic, too, felt the strain.  His chubby face
lengthened and he missed his mother.

Nurse Hogan came one day to tell Margaret that the celery was
finished.  Last week it had been the cauliflower.  There was nothing
now but the more drab vegetables--cabbage, turnips and onions.  Bacon
was scarce because the pigs that had been fattened for killing before
Christmas, had got hold of those dreadful black potatoes and died.
Margaret thought wistfully of the prodigal slaughtering of pigs during
the prayers for the Liberator's release.  Who would ever dream that
feasting could turn so quickly to fasting?  But who would ever dream
that potatoes could make such a difference?  To everyone, to an entire
way of life!  It had something to do with national economy, Roderick
said.  Meantime, Margaret hated cabbage; silently.

Sterrin too hated cabbage.  But not silently.  She expressed her
aversion so volubly that both parents levelled their jagged tempers at
her.  Roderick was missing the potatoes.  He frequently ate them three
times a day, and always twice.

"You should be thankful," he told her, 'that you have so much other
food.  There are millions who have nothing whatever to replace their
potatoes."

Her mamma told her sternly that she should be prepared to make
sacrifices.  Sterrin promptly sacrificed a heap of cabbage over the
side of her plate.  She tried to make Dominic eat it and offered him a
little when he cried.  She was tempted to warn her parents and
governess that it contained a segment of caterpillar.  There was bound
to be some more in the dish.  But it was bad manners to allude to the
presence of such unscheduled species of cooked life in the vegetables
until after people had eaten them.  Anyway it would do Miss
Ferguson-Coyne no harm to cat some of the Nature Stuff she was always
preaching about.

She shoved a few spoonfuls of rice into her pocket.  It wouldn't
proclaim its presence so messily since it had no cream.  There was so
much milk being doled out that cream was reserved for butter-making
only.  For the past fortnight, Sterrin had been hoarding bread and
butter and cheese and odd bits of meat to deposit in the hollow of a
tree for the Ryan children.  It was a deadly secret.  The Ryans were
awfully jplly.  They said the quaintest things.  The big girl could
sketch and play the violin.  In a couple of years when her parents made
lots of money from selling blood stock horses, she would go to a
boarding school.  Meantime, her mother would skin them all alive if she
knew

that they were accepting food from anyone.

But Nonic knew all about the secret feasts.  The younger ones had let
it slip.  She pretended not to hear and turned a blind eye.  Let them
have whatever they could.  As long as she wasn't supposed to know and
as long as that philandering father of Miss Sterrin O'Carroll and her
stuck-up mother knew nothing.

Sterrin placed a layer of crocuses inside the lid of her basket of
food.  By right, she thought, they should be roses.  The saintly Queen
Elizabeth of Hungary, it seems, used to bring a basket of food to some
poor people.  One day, her cruel, wicked husband intercepted her and
demanded to see what was in the basket.  And, lo, when she raised the
lid there was nothing there but roses.

It was young Thomas who intercepted Sterrin.  He whisked her cloak from
the suspicious-looking hummock in front of her saddle.  "Crocuses my
eye!  Who do you think you are?  Queen Elizabeth of Hungary?"

"Who do you think you are?"  She flashed and saw his hurt flush.  He
might risk the liberty of putting such a question to her.  But never
she to him.  It cut too near the bone of the nameless scullion.

"Anyway," he called after her, 'your charity is misplaced.  The Ryans
have rich relations."  The young Ryans had a way of making Thomas feel
his position.  Their mother looked through him as though he were not
there.  And Black Pat would nod casually as he rode by on his fine
horse.

Now from a distance he watched Miss Sterrin deposit the food in the
hollow trunk of a tree.  From nowhere the Ryan children appeared and
fell to like wolves.

Riding back, Sterrin heard footsteps following her from behind the
hedge.  A wild-looking, long-haired boy was watching her with a passion
of intensity.  The Scallys, the mountain children, were still ensconced
in the fever hut under the lea of the hill out of sight of the castle
and the Sir!

"What are you following me for?"  she called sharply.  It must have
been this Nosey Parker who had told young Thomas about her feeding the
Ryans.

He looked blankly at her as she reproached his ingratitude.  He
understood only the Connaught Gaelic.  But Attracta was picking up the
Munster Gaelic.  She came forward and explained that the sight of
Sighle, Sterrin's pony, made the lad

homesick for his mameen and his wild mountains.  Especially as SighJe
had been such a pet; she being a half capaill jisge.1 Her sire had been
one of the fairy horses that come up oiut of Loch Corrib on moonlight
nights.  He had come one night to the pony shed when Sighle's mother
was horsing and Sighle was their offspring.  Daddy had kept the shed
locked after that: but when the water horse came up out of the lake
again SighLe's mother beat down the door with her own hoofs and went
off with it.  Mameen followed them but it was no use.  With her own
eyes she had seen the little mare go into the lake with the if airy
horse and the water closed over their heads forever.

"Mameen took the little foal that she left behind, into the kitchen on
moonlight nights and let it sleep in the chimney comer where the ca
pail usige couldn't get at it.  It became a great pet."  The boy
reached timidly and stroked Sighle's nose.

Sterrin was disturbed, "I didn't realise that there wa s so much fairy
blood in Sighle."

"As long as you keep away from water, your Honoiur's Miss," Attracta
assured her.  "But, of course, meanin' no disrespect to you, the colour
of your hair might draw the fairies."

Sterrin looked over her shoulder, "Nonsense!"  she said, "I'm over age
for their power.  I'm past seven."  But she hiurried the pony's
homeward pace.

Young Thomas was sympathetic about the homesickness of the Scally boy.
*I could let him help me with Sighle."  The little pony had become his
special care.  He had advanced in all directions from the knife chore
though its title persisted.  "I :ould do with an assistant," he said
grandiosely.

"Thomas," she breathed, "I knew you'd think of something.  I don't know
what I'd do without you."

He whisked off the saddle and started to rub the pony.  "You have her
sweating terribly," he grumbled.  It was not f or him to eply that he
didn't know what he'd do but for her oiwn small elf.  When he was at
his chores and she came down the stairs a ipeck on its scaled expanse
when she entered a room, stole into he kitchen, the stable, it was like
when the grand actors and jctresses from England came on to the stage
in the Assembly *ooms; peopling its emptiness, colouring its everyday
drabness.  "And there are no water horses in Lough Bawn for you to
worry }bout.  The lake has disappeared again."

1A water horse of fairy origin.

She went off, relieved.  Every few years Lough Bawn had a habit of
disappearing for a whole year.  Scientists gave all sorts of
explanations, but the locals knew that it merely was Peig the fairy
woman retrieving what was her own.  Long ago when water was scarce here
she had carried the lake to them, all the way from Killarney, in her
apron.  And who could blame her if she took it back the same way now
and then?

Thomas drove the governess chaise past the vanished lake that
afternoon.  The sight of its empty bed would assuage Miss Sterrin's
fear of lurking steeds of the "Sheeogue'.  Miss FergusonCoyne held
forth about secret streams and suctions and volcanic forces, Thomas
glanced over his shoulder at Miss Sterrin, as they passed the pathetic
stir about line on Major Darby's estate' It the Funny man!"  she
cried.

She was looking at Dominic Landy, the 'funny man' who had been dressed
up as the clown in the Wren boys' procession on Saint Stephen's Day.
Dominic cut no gay capers now.  His hat was low over his eyes; his head
deep in his collar for fear of being recognised taking charity.  Fancy
a good farmer like Dominic in a stir about line!  It was only the very
poor with no land except potato patches who came for free stir about to
Major Darby.

People looked expectantly towards the sound of the wheels then turned
back disheartened.  A great cauldron was smoking away its substance
over a barbecue fire.  The smell tormented those who shivered in the
afternoon wind waiting jo break the day's fast.  Oh God, why doesn't he
come?"  a woman cried.  No one dared touch the cauldron till Darby
himself arrived.  Someone cried: "Here he is!"  A big heavily-built
man, with moustaches branching like plough handles, sauntered across
the yard, tapping his leggings with his crop.  Hunger emboldened one
man to reproach, "We're here this two hours, your Honour."  His
landlord looked at him as though he were some new species of flea. 
Leisurely he went through his pockets until he found a toothpick. 
Then, more leisurely, he proceeded to free his teeth from the clingings
of a substantial meal.  Thomas's hands clenched on the reins.  Dominic
Landy's hands clenched too, but slithered open from the clammy moisture
of febrile hunger.

Darby dropped the ladle into the cauldron and called out the cry that
summons pigs to the swill.  "Suck!  Suck!  Suck!"  he

yelled.

Dominic stepped from his place near the head of the line.  "That's no
way to address human beings."  His voice meant to be defiant, but
weakness caused it to be cracked and shrill.

Darby let the porridge pour slowly back into the cauldron.  "If you
don't like the way I issue my invitations," he sneered, 'you don't have
to accept my hospitality."  From behind, a voice softly counselled
Dominic to patience.  It had taken him weeks of hunger, and those last
three days of complete starvation before he could face in here for the
brew of charity.  Now, someone had moved into his place.  "Get back
there to the end of the line!"  Darby suddenly snapped.  "Or get
out."

"All right, I'll get out.  Keep your pig's swill.  I want no man's
charity."  The words echoed bravely round the spaces reserved for the
dignity of his soul.  He marched to their sound as tired soldiers march
to the strains of their martial music.  All the way down he marched;
not Dominic Landy, of course, but the Wren boys' Omadhawn, the jester
without his cap and bells; down to the very end of the queue.

Next day Sterrin tiptoeing upstairs with head down, bumped into Miss
Ferguson-Coyne.  "What have you in that pocket?"

From the left pocket, bulging and discoloured, came creeping, crawling,
buzzing, caterpillars, crickets, ladybirds, the live collection of
Sterrin's own private brand of nature study.

"Not that pocket!"  The governess' hand shot out and grabbed the pocket
that Sterrin clutched.  She squealed.  Something moist and clammy had
met her fingers.  "Another frog!  If you dare to put it in my bed
Sterrin struggled.

"I'm going to my own room.  Word of honour.  It is a matter of life or
death."

The governess was becoming used to her pupil's dramatic phraseology.
Sterrin bolted her door.  From her pocket she took two wobbling blobs,
one large and white, one small and red, and placed them before the
statue of the Child Jesus.  The scene she had witnessed at Darby's on
Saint Stephen's Day, the suffering, haggard look of poor nice Dominic
Landy who had singled her out to dance with, called for a sacrifice of
something she loved.  Jelly!  "Oh please losagain, accept my sacrifice
for the suffering people and avert famine and if you like jelly, I'll
make the soupreem sacrifice on Friday, if we get any, and keep you a
bigger piece, Amen."  A piece of fluff clung to the jelly.  She

licked it off and turned away, then turned back to ensure with another
lick that there was no more fluff.  Sacrifice, mamma had said, was the
highest form of prayer.  Jelly certainly was the highest form of
sacrifice.  An hour later, when she peeped in, the blobs had vanished.
Her sacrifice had been accepted.

She heard a noise outside the window which faced the Sir's Road.  There
was something happening out there.  Down the road a posse of redcoats
and constabulary marched.  In their midst walked Dominic Landy.  In
handcuffs.  Behind walked a tearful woman and two girls.

Across the fields Papa was galloping like mad, scattering the Ryan
children in all directions.  He jumped the hedge and pulled his horse
across the width of the road.  It barred the passage of a giant of a
man who was following the soldiers.  "Go back, Holohan!"  She heard
Papa shout.  "Go back, I tell you.  There is nothing you can do.  Don't
implicate yourself!"

John Holohan came on unheeding; white fury on his face.  Sir Roderick
swooped and caught his collar.  "Do you want to drag your own mother at
the heels of a procession like that?"

The big man slumped.  Helplessly he stood watching them take his friend
to jail; to the convict ship; for fourteen years.

Dominic had suffered beyond endurance.  Last night, his mind festering
and his brain poisoned from the fumes of a swilled-out stomach, he had
attacked the grain carts.

Lord Strague had tried the case this morning.  It was over when
Roderick, appealed to by Dominic's friends, had arrived at the Petty
Sessions Court.  Darby's evidence had been overpowering.  Incitement,
insolence, obstruction of his benevolence in feeding his tenants.

When Roderick told Lord Strague the true facts, his kinsman yawned.
"Always said Darby was an outsider.  Damned bad form."  Roderick blazed
with impotent rage.  "By God, Strague, had Darby been killed for
calling a man as one calls a pig to the swill I'd have pronounced it
justifiable homicide with a strong recommendation for mercy."

At dinner Roderick was morose.  He pushed the half-eaten food aside and
called for cheese.  The butler looked appealingly towards her Ladyship
and vanished.  "There is no cheese," she said.  Roderick's dismay was
comical.  Margaret herself made the cheese from an old Flemish recipe
that she would not divulge to the Cook.  No potatoes was an act of God.
But no cheese was an

act of of feminine vindictiveness!  He glared at her.  She glared
back.  Did he think she was some little housewife, to make cheese like
bread at the top of her voice for passers-by to hear and halt?

He started to tell her what he did think.  Then realised the
goggle-eyed presence of his daughter.  It was only since relationship
with Roderick had become strained that Margaret had started to let
Sterrin join them at meals when there were no guests.  "Are you aware,"
he asked Margaret, 'that your daughter is handing out cheese, and bread
and butter in basketfuls, to the Ryan children?"

Margaret looked slowly at her daughter as if she were Judas or his
agent, the daraghadeel.  The girl, she thought, was the picture of her
father, only for the red hair.  They were all alike, these O'Carrolls;
secretive.

Sterrin quailed under the unusual scrutiny that was followed by a
severe lecture.  At last she made her curtsey, managed to palm her
father's rejected jelly and made off with it to her sacrificial shrine.
Mamma was unfair!  She had told her weeks ago to share with the needy
and to make sacrifices.  Now she eats the head off a body for just
being obedient.

Carefully, Sterrin divided the jelly between the statue and herself.
The Divine Child seemed to be finding her sacrifice very acceptable.
She eyed the statue and the generous blob that was richly flavoured
with port to make up for the shortage of cream.  For how long more must
she make these sacrifices?  They were yielding no results.  Look what
had happened to poor Dominic Landy!  And now she must go out and break
it to the Ryans that she was forbidden to bring them any more food.

The two little Ryan boys and their youngest sister broke into tears
when she told them.  They climbed up and looked into the hollow where
the food was usually concealed.  They couldn't believe that there would
be no more feasts.  Th&-older ones tried to put a face on their
disappointment and say that it was really quite all right.  They had
just finished their dinner.  But Sterrin was doubtful.  There was a
quaver like tears in their voices and despite what Mamma had said about
them having plenty and having rich relations to help, they looked
hungry.  Or else sick!

She drew out three bull's-eyes she had been keeping for Sunday. 
"Here," she gasped, catching up on them, you could have one between
every two of you and share licks.  There is a lot of

licking in a bull's-eye."

And then something tragic happened.  Young Pat claimed first suck of
the one he shared with his brother.  While Adam watched Pat's lips with
slavering gums, there was a sudden gulp.  The beautiful sweet had
slithered un sucked unsavoured, down into the empty void of Pat's
stomach!  Adam screamed.  He rose on tiptoes and looked into his
brother's mouth as he had looked down the tree trunk.  Pat walked
slowly home, cheated, betrayed.  Every step of the way he could see it,
a hard dark thing, squatting in the middle of his empty stomach;
gloating over the slow delights it had withheld.  Nonic heard Adam's
cries.  There was no turning a deaf ear now.  The whole story came out
in sobbing gasps.  '... and the girl-withthered-hair's father saw the
food and told her mother to forbid it."

The shamed flush burned Nonic's cheeks.  The children watched her
nervously as she stormed about the house.  Would she skin them alive?
But Nonic was thinking of that 'footing' kiss.  And she to think that
it was a token of their meeting on the hunting field.  She was just the
tenant's wife who had caught thfc lewd attention of her landlord as he
passed.  The devil fly away with him, and his stuck-up foreign wife
with her big brown eyes like a cow with colic.  Himself and his
forget-me-not blue eyes.  Raking through a body, making her so churned
up that she had gone off with the next horseman to gallop into her
life.  And look where that gallop had landed her!

The children's scared faces halted her thoughts.  Lord, she hadn't
realised that their faces were so pinched and their stomachs so swollen
out.  It was that new yellow meal from India.  It swelled people up but
left them hungry.  She counted the few shillings left from the
sovereign that her mother had secreted in the cast-off clothes sent by
her sister.  Nonic's father had died and his eldest daughter was in
grim possession of the home--and of her mother.  There was no danger
that the mother's relenting charity would be allowed to reach the
outcast.

Ten minutes later Nonic was emerging from the little all purpose shop
at Upper Kilsheelin just as Lady O'Carroll's brougham was drawing up.

Margaret had run out of wool.  She was constantly knitting for the poor
who had not been able to buy wool last winter.  Now she would have to
drive on to Templetown.  It didn't

soothe her annoyance to be told by the shopkeeper that if she had been
five minutes earlier she could have forestalled Mrs.  Black Pat Ryan.
Mrs.  Black Pat had bought up her entire stock of yarn.  "I don't know
why she needed so much.  But sure, she always buys big."

Nonic made a pleasing picture knitting on the porch as Lady O'Carroll
approached.  A wealth of yarn overflowed from a pretty work basket.  A
pale green shawl from India draped the shabbiness of her gown.  The
grease from the heel of the flitch of bacon hastily rubbed on the pan
at the first sound of the wheels, sent the odour of frying bacon out
through the opened door.

Margaret's misgivings over Sterrin and the food business subsided.
There was no want here.  She stole a glance at the gold head that
hadn't bothered to look up for the overlord's carriage.  The mignon
type!  Petite!  About twenty-six, she would be.  Looks eighteen!

Without warning the head came up.  Too late Margaret looked straight
ahead.  She could have sworn there was mocking laughter in those tip
tilted eyes.  No slightest bow or acknowledgment of her landlord's
wife.  Just cool appraisement.

A horse pushed its head over the hedge and whinnied at the carriage
horse.  What a superb animal to grace a small farmer's haggert,
Margaret thought.  It lent a kind of cachet to the place.  This must be
the horse that Roderick had sold to Black Pat.  He must think much of
this foster-brother.  Or is it that he thinks much--too much--of his
foster-sisterin-law.

The smell from the empty pan was torturing the children.  "It is
carrying pride too far, Nonic," said Black Pat.  Nonic was gazing after
the carriage.  I might have been sitting there instead of My Fine Lady!
Too late had she heard that the week after the hunting encounter, young
Mr.  O'Carroll, the son of Sir Dominic O'Carroll, had twice been seen
on the opposite bank of the river that flowed in front of the lawn at
home.  That lovely little river!  Trickling its green depths between
the willows.

Eyes staring through her brain made her turn from the window.  She
couldn't read the look in her husband's eyes.  She busied herself
mixing a handful of precious flour with yellow meal and sour milk to
spread on the pan before the grease would evaporate.  It would beguile
the children's hunger.

"You are a nice one to talk of pride.  You had only to ask him

to let you have meal, aye, and stock, on credit till the harvest. 
What need was there to be first with the rent?  He is not just a
landlord to you.  He was fostered in your home."

"Aye," said Pat, and his tone was bitter.  Like the River Shannon was
fostered in a pool like a pot at the butt of a hill."  He stood up and
it was to himself that he talked as he went out.  "The stream goes out
from the field that fostered it and becomes a river; full of power--and
treachery."

Day and night Nonic worked at the knitting.  Stockings lengthened and
multiplied from her needle until she had a basketful to carry to
Templetown.  By night she flitted in the shadow of a wall across the
barrack square to the married quarters.  But there were others before
her.  Respectable farmers' wives bartering their crochet and lace-edged
clothes, exquisitely worked cuffs and collars and fichus and babets,
for the price of a few loaves!

An opened door revealed an unmistakable profile.  Nonic crouched back.
She recognised Pat's beautiful cousin, Kitty, the wife of Mark
Hennessey.  Kitty was offering a sergeant's wife an embroidered cloth
with a fall of lace nearly half a yard deep.  The woman quoted a price
and Kitty, too proud and too weary to huxter, accepted.  A cloth that
might grace a banquet changed hands for a florin.

Eightpence a dozen Nonic got for her stockings; if only she might have
retained a few pairs for the children.  The quartermaster's wife
glimpsed the wistful little face as it turned back into the shadows.
"Here, little girl," she called after her.  "Here's a halfpenny for
yourself.  Don't hand it up to your mammy."

Nonic thanked her sweetly.  The woman's husband who had made a fortune
on hand overs for contracts met a child gazing apparently rapt, at the
halfpenny in the middle of her small palm.  He dropped another one on
top of it.  "Now you have a whole penny."

In the street the little jets of repressed laughter were followed by
repressed tears.  The butcher, putting up the shutters saw her wipe
them as she glimpsed the piece of beef that lay lonely on a slab.
"H-how much is it?"  The pretty voice caught on a little hegging
breath.  "Here, take it home to your mammy."  He pushed it into her
basket.  "Take this too."  He shoved a big piece of suet after the
beef.

A bianconi overtook her on the road home.  The driver mis

took her for a child and since Mr.  Bianconi's instructions were never
to pass by a woman carrying a baby nor a child that was heavily laden,
she was still clutching her two halfpennies when she dismounted.
"Unless ye become as little children," she grinned ruefully.

The girl has the divine gift of comedy, thought Sir Roderick O'Carroll.
The lights of the bianconi and of his own carriage showed him the
glitter of curls and of smiling teeth.  She sees her life as a joke;
not a calamity.  Nonic started to decline the lift he offered but he
had taken the basket from her.  "It is heavy," he exclaimed, 'much too
heavy for you!"

"The children will soon lighten it," she said.  Then in case he got the
impression of want, she added casually, "It is amazing how much
children eat."

"Tell me," he leaned towards her, 'what were you laughing at just now?"
The darkness held them in its intimacy.  It showed up that distant
gleam of romance that had been stillborn.

"Nothing much.  The driver mistook me for a child and would not take my
fare.  I omitted to enlighten him."

"I can understand why he made the error."

But there was nothing childlike in the voice that replied.  The former
Oenone Mansfield had suddenly enough of patronage; halfpennies, hunks
of beef, and his Sirship's carriage.  Cool, educated, its accent as
dignified as his own, her voice assailed him.  "Can I help the
impression that people choose to take of me?  I can assure you that I
don't seek to make an impression, of any kind, on anyone."  She groped
for the basket.  The carriage was slowing in to the castle gates but
already she was on the road pulling at the big, uncouth basket.

"Allow me."  Demmit, this was absurd!  Behaving as though he were
squiring a lady with a rose basket.  She looked at the basket he held
towards her.  Bulging loaves had forced up the lid.  Suddenly she put
her hands inside her hood and inside her lovely golden hair.  There was
frenzy in the gesture as though she were gripping something in there
that wanted to burst out and prevent her from resuming this uncouth
burden that typified her life.

He sensed the anguish on her old-young face and his interest quickened
as it would not to a happy woman.  Then the proud imp of comedy
returned to her.  It prompted her to take her leave with a gesture of
equality.  Instead of grasping the handle,

she arched her wrist high in the fashionable over-a-five-bar-gate
handshake.

He matched her gesture with his own.  Very deliberately, he shifted the
basket to his left hand.  As his lips touched her fingers, she felt a
curious pulsation as of frozen ground that feels the first warm breath
of Spring.  Before he could speak, she had snatched the basket and
vanished into the darkness; just as she had vanished from the hunting
field into the darkness of the spinney.

Kitty Hennessey had returned from Templetown and invited young Thomas
to sup with them.  She smiled as Mark stopped in the act of pouring the
watery porridge.  "Baker's bread!"  He stared unbelieving.  It was
weeks since he had seen soda bread; much less baker's!

"Yes," said Kitty nonchalantly.  "I got some in the town.  Draw in your
chair, young Thomas."

Thomas thought her face looked transparent.  He wondered what she had
parted with to get the bread.  But it was good to see her eat so
heartily.  He didn't know that the quickening of a second child was
quickening her constant hunger.  She did not thrill to these stirrings
as she had for Theobald's when Thomas had sung the proud songs of Mr.
Davis, and her heart had surged with hope.  Vo, Vo, for the heritage
she had envisaged in their strains.  Vo, vo, for the great man who
wrote them!

After supper, the Hennesseys walked to the gate with young Thomas. "May
God fasten the life strong in you," Mark said to him in Gaelic.

Thomas looked back at them, standing there so splendid, both of them;
so brave!  To his own surprise he cried out, "Sursum cor da

Mark looked long after the boy.  "It is a pity," he said musingly, 'to
see him a servant boy.  He has the makings of a priest.  Aren't those
Latin words in the Mass, Kitty?"

Yes," she said.  "Raise up your hearts, they mean.  But a priest,
inagh!  That boy was made for woman's love."

As Mark barred the door for the night, he turned on a sudden.  "Kitty,"
he asked, 'what did you sell to buy that bread?"

She shrugged the heirloom from her vision.  "A bit of sewing," she
answered.

At Kilsheelin, Sterrin was wondering how long more would

she have to continue her sacrifice.  Lent was over, but still she made
sacrifice.  Bits of chocolate pudding, anything that she really
relished.  And still no sign of Divine Clemency.  She peeped into her
room.  It would be too soon to expect her offering to be taken.  She
had left it barely ten minutes ago.  But, always she hugged the hope
that some day she might catch Little Jesus unawares, in the act of
eating the jelly!

It was not the losagain the Holy Child whom she caught unawares.  It
was Mickey-the-turf.  She stood rooted with horror at the spectacle of
his sacrilege.

She strode to him and jerked up his face.  Desperately he strove with
his turf-mouldy cuff to wipe a white smear of blancmange from mouth and
chin.  But the turf mould had blended with the blancmange and gave him
a bearded, sinister look that was Judas-like.  "You caluminator!"  she
fumed.  You blasphemer!  You adulterer!"

Mickey-the-turf quailed.  Only from the pulpit when it shook with the
exhortations of the missioner had he ever heard such awful words.

"May it choke you!"  she cried.  She lashed him forth with her crop as
the money-changers had been lashed forth by Him Whom she had hoped to
appease by sustaining Him in His desert fast.

"No wonder people are still suffering!"  she sobbed to Thomas, whom she
had found in the pantry, polishing silver.

Never in the unconscious arrogance of her brief existence had she known
what it was to be tricked and humiliated.  She had been so utterly
buoyed up by her sacrifice: "And losagain never got one little bit!"
The big tears spilled over.  They wet her face.  Her body shuddered in
the way of those who seldom cry.

Thomas patted the hand that still rested on his arm.  He had never seen
her weep like this.  Her Ladyship's full soft eyes could moisten
easily.  But Miss Sterrin's more deeply set, guarded their tears in
their own depths.  He scraped his throat.  "Don't cry, Miss Sterrin,
asthore," he murmured hoarsely, uncertain whether to offer her
Mickey-the-turf s head on the salver he had been polishing or kill her
a half-dozen dragons.

Roderick, on his way to the gun-room, paused at the sound of his
daughter's sobs coming from the silver pantry across the passage.  He
heard young Thomas say gently, "Miss Sterrin, maybe you have been too
righteous about the sacrifice of your

nice jelly."

"Righteous?"

"The kind of goodness that the Proud Pharisee felt."

"Young Thomas!  How could you compare me with that craw thumping
hypocrite?"  A deep sigh wafted across to the gunroom.  "Ah, young
Thomas, I thought that you at least would understand.  At night in bed
I keep seeing Dominic Landy's face among the soldiers; it reminds me of
Our Lord going to Calvary.  The young Ryans' faces too.  They were so
disappointed when they heard that I must not bring them any more food.
You see, I didn't want people to know that I was sacrificing my jelly.
I didn't tell even you, young Thomas."

"A pity you didn't.  But don't fret, Miss Sterrin.  You made the
sacrifice.  You will get your reward, and," he added grimly, 'so will
Mickeythe-turf."

Roderick was dubious about that "I didn't tell even you, young Thomas,"
but he must warn her not to lie awake at nights over the young Ryans.
There were too many children in real need.  He recalled their mother's
laden basket.  That he ought not to have allowed her to carry?  Demmit
this was farcical.  He couldn't go round the country carrying market
baskets.  Why in hell's gates hadn't she been away from home the day
Black Pat had clattered into her father's yard on business?  As she had
been when Black Pat's foster-brother had ridden by.

Tomorrow was Gale Day.  He must enquire from Black Pat if there was
anything that he lacked.  But in the morning Black Pat's rent was
brought to the library by the butler.

"Mr.  Ryan duv was in a hurry, your Honour's Sir.  He could not
wait."



CHAPTER 23

On May the twenty-fourth Margaret handed over the food ladling to Nurse
Hogan.

She came to the library door to ask Roderick if he would soon be ready
to start for town.  The puzzled frown he gave her was for the bank
manager's letter he was reading; not as he assumed, for herself. "Blast
the fellow," he muttered aloud.  "Banks are for giving money; not for
demanding it from their own clients."

Margaret didn't give him time to compliment her on looking so
exceptionally chic and pretty, with a great spray of tea roses on her
carriage cloak and an old-gold chip bonnet tied with cherry coloured
ribbons.  She left the room and let the door close sharply behind
her.

Roderick's frown was deeper still as he emerged from the bank in
Templetown.  He bumped into Phineas De Lacey on the 1 porch of the
bank's building.  Phineas made no secret of his mission.  He was
seeking to get another mortgage on his estate.  Only a few tenants had
paid rent this Gale Day.  He had been carrying the rest on his back all
winter.  T>o you think anything will come of O'Connell's petition in
the House today?"  Phineas asked.  The Liberator, baulked at every
measure for alleviating the present distress, was to ask in the House
that the Crown rents arising from the woods and forests in Ireland be
retained there to pay the interest on the loan that the country had
been forced to raise at its own expense.

Long bugle blasts drowned Roderick's reply.  The mail coach was making
a resplendent entry into the main street.  The special greys reserved
for the Queen's birthday made a great clattering.  Both driver and
guard wore new coats with scarlet facings.  Bouquets drooped on their
chests. Military parades and bands appeared but the usual crowds were
missing. Only the Scout Doyle maintained the festive zeal.  He stood at
the coach landing depot wearing his Sunday 'hardy bastard', and
plum-coloured

body coat, and remembered to say, "Well may you wear," towards the
coach-driver's new coat before asking for the passenger list.

Roderick had forgotten about the Queen's birthday.  So that was why
Margaret had asked him about going to town!  Every ||Hli'll!l year he
had escorted her to see the parades, and meet her friends.  He glanced
up and saw Big John's cockade towering above the other coachmen outside
the Mall coffee house.

He saw Margaret standing inside the door, the centre of fuss and
greetings.  There wasn't an available table.  The place was packed with
the garrison ladies all sporting the red, white and blue colours and
their escorts and parties of loyal County folk.

Roderick was angered to see Margaret venturing there alone.  But she
wasn't alone for long.  Lieutenant Fitzharding-Smith was instantly on
his feet, summoning waiters and calling loudly for a table.  Virginia
Kennedy-Sherwin tried to make room but waiters came edging with a table
over their heads, their feet tripping over swords.

Before Roderick could accept the Lieutenant's invitation to join them
Margaret declined for him.  "Roderick is busy, Basil dear," she cooed,
giving the full battery of her wonderful eyes to the enraptured young
officer.  "He has to give a lot of time to his tenants these days.
Haven't you, Roderick?"

While the waiters manipulated the table, Roderick managed to murmur,
"Two can play at that game, my Lady."

She flinched inwardly at the implied threat, but smiled sweetly and
said, "I know.  The second one has started to play."

He strode out fuming.  The military parades had passed out of sight,
but another parade came past Roderick, straggling in the opposite
direction ... no bands, no banners.  They were the poorest farmers who
could not wait for the approaching crop that promised so abundantly.
They were walking towards the poor-house.  The Repeal buttons in their
rags proclaimed that they had marched in the hope and glory of Repeal
year.  Now they moved to the music of the birthday salvoes 'like
throngs of tattered beggars following, where late went by the pageant
of a king'.  Hope had left them and even as they made their way towards
a living death, O'Connell, at Westminster, was told that the
seventy-four thousand pounds rent from the yellow woods of Ireland must
be applied towards improving Her Majesty's castle at Windsor and to the
aggrandisement of Trafalgar

Square.

Sir Roderick's mood darkened when, at Kilsheelin, Hegarty told him that
onions were the only vegetables left for dinner.  Kilsheelin Castle
without vegetables!  It was fantastic.

"Sure we've been feeding an army, your Honour's Sir.  A few showers
after all this sun," murmured the butler, 'and the peas will be
bursting their pods."

His master snorted.  "Live horse and you'll get grass."  He was dining
alone.  Her Ladyship, Hegarty was informed, was Mrs.  Kennedy-Sherwin's
guest at a garrison Birthday dinner.  Miss Sterrin was staying the
night at Kilcarrig Lodge with Miss Bunzy De Lacey.  The onions, the
butler assured him were most palatable when baked in their coats in the
turf embers and served with butter.

"And savin' your Honour's presence," murmured Hegarty confidentially,
'they are less objectionable that way--afterwards I '

Onions tended to reminisce; a fact to which Margaret delicately
objected when kissed.  Well, she was not likely to be kissed within the
memory of these onions.  With savage relish Roderick ate the whole
dishful.

It was late when he stamped into his dressing-room and tugged the bell
rope.  When no one answered he stuck his head out the door and bellowed
for someone to come and help him off with his jack boots!  By right I
should have a properly trained body servant, he grumbled, but at this
rate of prosperity I'm damned lucky to have a body!  "Young Thomas!" he
roared.

It was Margaret who came through the door.  She stooped swiftly to draw
off the obstinate boot but drew back at the anger of the face that
almost touched hers.  He misunderstood.  "I'm sorry," he was coldly
polite.  "I have not been fortunate enough to go-a-feasting.  You see,
Her Majesty and her Government have overlooked the fact that their
first duty of governing is to save human life.  I have therefore been
so busy saving the lives of Her Majesty's subjects, that I have been
compelled to eat onions on her birthday!  I'm told they are
objectionable--afterwards."

She gripped his boot and lied bravely.  "Roderick, I--I have been
eating onions too."

"Indeed!  How very inelegant--afterwards."

"I mean," she gripped harder, squatting at his feet, her big eyes
pleading into his, "I mean, when two people eat onions206

they don't notice '

He extended his foot.  Woman!"  he ordered.  Tvill off that boot!" She
tugged hard and fell backwards clutching the boot to her chest.  He
lifted her up, boot and all, and kissed her.  Next minute the boot went
sailing out through the window.

Young Thomas came racing around the corner of the castle.  "The Sir is
roaring for you," Johnny-the-buckets informed him.  "He is going to
kill you."

"He has killed me,1 said young Thomas as a riding boot came through the
air and hit him.  He caught it without stopping and raced up the back
stairs three at a time.  "Your Honour," he called softly when his third
knock went unanswered.

Through the closed door, his Honour told him to go to the devil.

The rain came and supplied the necessary swelling to the peas and
beans.  Then the sun returned and ripened vegetables earlier than ever
before as though to make up for the earth's severity in the Autumn.

Margaret sighed as she watched the fine crop of peas dwindle down.  She
had distributed most of them to her tenants to help them over the last
lap towards their own harvest.  There would be no drying of beans and
peas on the bleach greens for next winter!  What matter!  They had kept
hunger at bay and-Roderick and she were back in their love again!

She accompanied him to Dublin when he journeyed to a special Repeal
meeting.  The Liberator was alarmed by the tone of the Young Ireland
party in the Nation.  It was becoming menacingly martial.  He had
written to his son John from England and ordered the meeting convened.
In Conciliation Hall, Roderick listened to John O'Connell's warning
that these militant young men could imperil his great movement for a
bloodless regeneration of the country.  He called upon every member of
the Repeal Association to come and renew his pledge against physical
force.

Outside Conciliation Hall, young Thomas sat on the carriage with the
driver, sleepily recalling the day he had rushed panic stricken from
the hall thinking that it was he who had halted the march of Repeal.
Suddenly he sat straight up.  Through the open windows a voice came
ringing.

"Abhor the sword, my Lord.  Stigmatise the sword!  ... No

my Lord, for at its blow and in ithe quivering of its crimson light a
giant nation sprang from the waters of the Atlantic and by its
redeeming magic the fettered Colony became a daring free

Republic Thomas listened spellbound.  Here was the authentic voice of
youth, intrepid."  defiant; calling on youth!  Suddenly it broke off.

In the Ladies' Gallery Margaret was listening enthralled.  She didn't
understand half of it; she never did of this kind of thing!  But had
this young gentleman, Thomas Francis Meagher, been but half so romantic
looking as he was, she would still have been enthralled.  For he had
started to talk about her beloved Antwerp.  '... I learned," he cried,
'the first part of a nation's creed upon the ramparts of Antwerp ...
stigmatise the sword!  No, my Lord, for it scourged the Dutch marauders
out of the old towns of Belgium; back into their own phlegmatic swamps!
I honour the Belgians.  I will not stigmatise the means by which they
obtained a citizen King '

The spell was broken.  John O'C on nell acting in his father's absence,
broke in to protest.  "These sentiments imperil the Association. 
Either Meagher or I quit the Hall."

Roderick watched the young orator leave.  With him went the leader
Smith-O'Brien and Mitchell and Gavan Duffy; out from the Hall and the
movement it housed.  They took with them their brilliance and their
bravery.  Despite the July sunshine, the glow had gone from the Hall.
He f ?elt en urge to follow them.  This pledge against force suddenly
seemed to mock all the lessons of history.  It seemed as pedaintic and
as pompous as as John O'Connell himself; sitting therre, envisaging
himself in his father's cloak.

On the return drive Margaret wass indignant that the oratory should
have been stemmed in its Beflgian sequence.  "I think it is very bad
form of Mr.  John O'Conne.  U. He forgets that when we won our freedom
in Belgium toitJh the sword that we paid his father the tribute of
nominatinig him for election as our King!"

Belgium and home had been muchi in her thoughts lately.  Her mother had
been ailing and Margarett had longed to visit her but the thought of
the sea, the winds, th e swaying boat!  They were too terrifying to be
faced alone.  And!"  Roderick, could not have been spared during the
recent emergency.

One lovely Sunday afternoon a fe^w weeks later, she decided

to broach the matter.  Roderick lay stretched in a garden chair
feeling at peace with all the world.  The worst was over.  He had
almost dragged his tenants through the last threat of famine.  And now
there was abundance in sight.  Never had he seen such crops.  Through
half-closed lids he enjoyed the spectacle of his wife approaching him.
In her white gown of striped muslin, tight-wasted and billowing, her
country hat of white straw with its fall of white lace round the brim,
she had a bridal air.  He told her so.

"I am a bride again," she twinkled.  She bent over Dominic in his
basinette beside the 'big wind seat'.  "I vow I shall have no
favourites," she cooed to him, 'but you make it difficult for me."
Margaret lifted the baby and seated herself beside Roderick.  From
nowhere Pakie Scally appeared and stood behind them swishing off
midges.

"And brides," resumed Margaret, 'go on honeymoons."  "Honeymoons?"
Roderick was dangling his hunter over Dominic who clutched it and said
"Tick!  tick!"  It was a perfect moment for suggesting a trip to
Belgium.

Roderick's first thought was the expense.  Where would the money come
from?  He had spoken the words before he realised.

She apologised.  "I ought to have remembered what a time you've had. No
rents coming in and everything going out

But' she faltered 'it's been so long; nine years!"

He sat up and looked at her.  She was as slenderly graceful as when he
had first glimpsed her gliding over the ice at Antwerp; the
heart-shaped face just as lovely!  Was it nine years since then?

"We will go to Belgium," he announced.  "No."  He placed a hand over
her lips.  You deserve a break away from this country.  It has tossed
you about too often; it treated you to a display of fireworks when you
arrived that nearly sent you into Kingdom come; then climaxes and
anti-climaxes.  And you've worked like a galley slave all this year.
Hasn't she, Mister?"

"Tick, tick," replied Dominic, reaching to clutch the big watch that
his father still dangled over him.  "Then that's settled.  We go to
Antwerp next month."  "But, Roderick, the money!"

"My love, it is middle class to speak of money.  And besides, in all
the nine years you have been with me I have never seen better crops. We
shall have a bumper harvest.  When it is gathered and

the rents flowing in we shall go sailing up die Scheldt; all four of
us."

Her eyes shone out at him.  "To see Maman again she breathed, to bring
her our children!"  She was near to tears.  Hannah came for the baby.

"Come/ said Roderick.  Let's go for a stroll."

As Margaret adjusted the tapestry that draped the back of the big seat
he stooped to study the scene she had embroidered.  She had depicted
the great tree exactly as it had stood in the centre of the lawn. Under
its branches a girl watched while a man carved their intertwined
initials.  Beyond stretched the avenue with the trees meeting overhead
as they used to, and in the distance the gateway under the arch formed
by the sentinel tree at either pillar.

"It is exactly as it used to be.  I have not fully appreciated your
beautiful industriousness."

They strolled through the pastures to where the first corn lay cut.
Finches and chaffinches hopped song less and businesslike among the
husks.  He helped her on to a bank that throbbed with bees and flies.
Grasshoppers did their best in the way of chirrups to make up for
August's lack of bird-song.  Margaret watched Roderick as his eyes
roved over the fields.  The love of the land lay deep and dark within
him.

Look, Margaret."  He waved towards the golden heads of wheat that bent
towards each other.  "Don't they resemble a conclave of crowned
kings?"

La, la," she cried gaily.  "I wish I could see things as you do.  It
must be the Belgian strain that curbs my Celtic vision."  Belgium, she
thought.  I shall be there soon.  Soon!  The words made a song in her
heart that stripped the fields of mystique.

"Watch the way their leaves tremble," he said.  "Even in this heat!
They are trembling at their own power."

"What a fanciful thought, Roderick!"

"It is not fanciful, Margaret.  It is terribly real.  No monarch on
earth wields such power as these golden sceptres of wheat.  If they
were to lose, suddenly, their crown of golden grain, who would fill the
hungry mouths of a starving world?"

A burst of music sounded.  From the high bank where they stood they
could see figures forming up on the dance platform at the crossroads.

"It has been many a long Sunday since they've held the plat210

form dance.  Thank goodness they have the heart to dance again.
Shouldn't fancy myself dancing in this steaming heat!"  He jumped down
and held out his arms for her.  "Let's go and watch."

Horses were tethered at the four roads that converged at the cross.
Townspeople looked on from their phaetons and passing strangers reined
in to watch the spectacle of a crossroad dance.  Even the old people
were there, lured by the lovely weather and the gladsome sight of the
rich crops.

In the interlude, the piper, Owen Meagher, who was believed to have
been taught his music by the fairies, played a solo.

Margaret murmured to Roderick that she could quite believe that the
Good People had been his teachers.  The sound made her think of the
dancing of fairies and the singing of elves.  Later, the long-haired
girl who had danced at the castle did a Double Jig with John Holohan.
Margaret and Roderick left the crossroads as Big John sang a selection
which made the people roar at its wry humour.

"The Wedding of Ballyporeen'

'... There was bacon and greens but the turkey was spoilt

Potatoes dressed every way, roasted and boiled..  '

Roderick led Margaret back along the bridle path to the Cobs where the
potato field lay.

"We can take the short cut through Black Pat Ryan's," he said.

Nonic had seen the elegant couple passing down through the fields.  The
sight of them, he with his arm around her waist, she floating like
thistledown in her fashionable gown, struck at her heart.

For better or worse!  One might as well have taken the nun's vow and
coarse habit.  Its renunciation of fashionable gowns would not have
been more irrevocable than her marriage vpws.  She turned away.  Gowns
indeed!  In a few more days her darlings would have food; solid food. A
plate of floury potatoes just now would be more acceptable to herself
than a silk gown.

She tried to busy herself.  There was so little to do.  The dishes were
so easy to wash these days.  No grease; no soiled cutlery; no pigs to
boil for; no yarn to knit stockings.  She looked idly through the
window.  He was coming this way!  And the white

I!

 gown floating behind; and he stopping every minute to help her over a
twig or a pebble.  She squeezed her eyes against the sight.  Poor Pat
for all his kindness would never dream of stepping back to allow her to
pass first through that little gap!  JDamn them!  Traipsing coolly
through her land; making her mourn the refinements that she thought to
forget.

She closed the door and drew down the fiddle.  Roderick and Margaret
turned towards the house as they heard the music, but they could only
glimpse a bent gold head.  Roderick's lips twitched.  The tune was old
and saucy 7 met a fair Rosy by a mulberry tree, And though Mass was my
notion My devotion was she '

He burst out laughing.  "She's a minx!"

"A huzz-ee," said Margaret.  She hadn't realised that the unfamiliar
path would have led her past this door.  He drew her over another
stile. Black Pat was sitting on the ground looking at his potato field.
"Be generous, Margaret!  Remember, we are on the first stage of our
honeymoon."  The sight of Black Pat watching his potatoes smote her.
They had so little!  While she--Belgium!  Her mind made joyful plans
about clothes.

"I see you are keeping a close eye on your potatoes, Pat."  Roderick
called out.

Pat rose unhurriedly to his feet.  "No child ever got better mindin',
Sir Roderick.  A few more days of this heat and they'll be leppin' out
of their skins."

The pair strolled on arm in arm.  Sterrin's voice called.  She came up
holding out Margaret's vinaigrette.  You left it on the
Big-Wind-seat."

Roderick took her hand and sauntered along, his senses drowsed by the
mingled scent of woodbine and hawthorn and the particularly
strong-scented wild stock that grew on the hedge by the bog road.

"What a horrible smell!"  said Margaret.  "Let's go back."  She was
deep now in Sterrin's Belgium wardrobe.

Roderick broke off a blossom.  "It is rather pungent, love, but I must
confess I find it pleasing."  Sterrin squealed with laughter.

"Silly Papa!  Not that smell-The one from the potato

fields."

"Potato fields?"  he spoke quietly, but no longer sleepily.

Yes," she said.  "I rode there this afternoon.  I had to turn back from
the smell.  That is why when I saw you heading for the Cobs I brought
Mamma's vinaigrette."

Black Pat's planning was simpler than Lady O'Carroll's field.  Smoking
his first pipe of tobacco for months, he planned about his fine potato
crop.  The priest had given him the tobacco today when he called for a
birth certificate for Norisheen's Confirmation.  He had filled his
pockets with biscuits for the children.  And the delight of them!  Like
Christmas they had said!  But not like last Christmas.  Well, next
Christmas would be different; a goose in the has table again; and
dumplings with caraway seeds.  Shamefacedly, he puffed out a cloud of
smoke.  Mean it was, for a respectable man to give his mind to thoughts
of food.  Like a bachach!

He smiled as he looked at the proud foliage of his potatoes.  They had
repaid his extravagance, the long journey to Kerry for seed potatoes
from the Maharees!  No rich farmer in the three parishes had dreamt of
doing such a thing.  Not even the Sir.  Oh, little Nonic had big ways!
He engulfed the landscape in smoke.

Black Pat looked over his shoulder.  The castle Quality were behaving
very strangely.  Miss Sterrin was running towards the castle.  The Sir
was running in the opposite direction and her Ladyship was just
standin' there; sniffin' elegantly at her smelling salts.  He shrugged
and resumed his seat and his pipe.  There was no accountin' for the
whimsies of the Quality.  A few minutes later he was on his feet
looking curiously over the hedge; just as Roderick had gazed at his own
extraordinary behaviour last Autumn.  Big John, on a horse that he
hadn't taken time to saddle, had led Thuckeen up to the Sir.  Pat could
see the Sir riding the headlands of the Cobs hither and thither;
mounting and dismounting.  Now he was coming this way!  Suddenly the
great black horse rose over the hedge and skidded to its haunches
beside Pat.

"Ryan!"  called Sir Roderick.  "Go down there and see your potatoes are
all right."

"My potatoes, Sir Roderick!  Sure *

"Goon!"

Black Pat turned and ran.  There's nothing wrong with my

2B

potatoes!"  he shouted.  He pulled a piece of furze from a gap.  It
resisted and he forced through.  He raced across the next field and
through the hedge without making for the gap.  He reached his field
unaware that his face and hands were bleeding.  "There's nothing wrong
with my potatoes!"  he sobbed at the first drill.  There was no tobacco
smoke to kill the smell that rose and smote him to the earth!

Nonic found him there when she came to call him to the watery porridge.
He refused to stir; just lay babbling and bleeding.  Stiffly, like an
old woman, she stooped and pulled a stalk from the earth.  It was laden
with fine potatoes.  She gripped one.  There was a squelch as her
fingers closed over slime.  She shook her hand to free it from the
abomination, the stench.  Before her eyes, the mess that had been a
firm potato dropped in black splodges into a deep, gaping hole.  She
screamed.  It was a haunting!  The orchards of hell were forcing their
evil fruit up through the earth!  She fled.

Roderick turned in the saddle and looked back at his stricken fields.
Beyond lay the sprawling colony of tiny holdings that had only potato
patches.  Their occupants, and as many more, to be fed by him!  For
ever!  Was it some other phase of time or was it this very afternoon
that he had talked whimsicalities about golden crowns filled with wheat
to feed a starving world?

His glance fell on the face of the big coachman.  There was a horror
upon it this lovely evening that the terrible night of the Big Wind had
not been able to produce.  There was horror, too, on that lad's face.
And on his hands!  Young Thomas came over and spoke to his master
without being addressed; just as he had spoken to him that night when
the storm had swept all men to one level of helplessness.  "I saw them
move, your Honour's Sir."  He shook his hands to free them of slime.
"Before my eyes they decomposed; like--like an apparition--of some '

"Of some spectre," said his master.  "The spectre of famine."

Thomas stole out at dusk to see how things fared with Kitty and Mark at
the little cottage at Knockgraffin.  Mrs.  Stacey slipped him a wedge
of cake for Kitty.  "I saw her go down to the platform dance this
afternoon.  The creature looked like a brooch."  Thomas understood.  He
had glimpsed Kitty at Mass this morning and her profile had looked like
a cameo brooch etched whitely against the black background of her
hair.

He rushed through unaccustomed short cuts to warn Mark to get his
potatoes out of the ground.

A motionless figure of a man stood silhouetted against the darkening
light in the potato patch.  It was Mark, his head bowed into the crook
of the arm that leaned on the spade handle.  With that awful smell
coming from the opening around the spade the melancholy figure might
well have exhumed the body of a loved one.

Thomas, scraping words of pity, might as well not have been there.  He
moved on into the house.  Kitty was kneeling by the cradle, her cheeks
pressed to the baby's.  She turned at his step.  "God save you, Thomas!
I knew you'd come."

He drew her to her feet.  "You'll be cramped sitting there.  Mark is
taking it hard."

"It is a wonder he hasn't gone mad.  His poor body is only a husk; too
weak to sustain a strong mind.  Coax him inside, Thomas.  I'll brighten
the fire."

He took the support of the spade from Mark and led him in.  Kitty was
turning the fan wheel  Fresh sods of turf stood upright, their heads
together over the reddening embers.

Mark watched smoke dance up the chimney in patterned puffs.  "It was a
trick," he croaked, 'a mean, low trick of nature, cod ding our hungry
hearts up to the eyes with the kind of sunshine that brings abundance.
It made me dance dance!"  His voice thinned upwards.  "That's how
tricksters fool men into putting their savings into a scheme that isn't
there

What in the name of God are you doing with that kettle, Thomas!  ?"

Thomas had swung a kettle of water on to the crane over the blaze, "Are
you dreamin', Thomas?"  cried Kitty.  There was hysteria in her laugh.
She had retched as she turned in the bore en after the dance and the
silent messenger of the Blight had sneaked down the pathway to greet
them with its evil-smelling tidings.  Her mind had retched too, in
hysteria.  She was drained, exhausted.  There was no tea in the house.
Why was Thomas boiling water?

Thomas scalded the teapot.  "We'll find use for the kettle," he smiled.
He took tea from a screw of paper in his pocket.  The brew was weak but
cheerful and there were still a few grains to lighten the despondency
of the morrow.

Kitty's old warm smile shone through her tears as she took

the cup from him and the plate with the generous slice of cake.  She
cut it into three wafer-thin slices and when Theobald whimpered again,
she took him up and fed him crumb by crumb.

Thomas watched with pity the way the child devoured the crumbs.  The
tiny features were perfect; like Kitty's, the same black curls.  But
the lovely roses had faded from the once chubby cheeks.  They were as
yellow as the Indian meal his little stomach rejected..;

As they walked to the gate with him, Kitty said suddenly, "Isn't it
strange!  This--calamity reminds me somehow of the Big Wind.  That came
suddenly, too; out of the sky in the evening.  I was bolting the
henhouse and suddenly I was flung along the yard and round the gable
end of the house and the heavens were roaring as though God Himself
were angry.  Not that I associate the thing that has come out of the
ground this evening with God."

Thomas looked back and sketched a restricted wave.  He didn't call
Sursum cor da this time.  Lift up your heart, inagh.

He vaulted a fence.  From the sheaves of corn a company of black-headed
gulls rose silently to the night sky.  Thomas suddenly stopped dead,
his scalp prickling.  A white wraith had appeared before him.  Up and
down it moved, wafting, swaying but never budging from the space before
him; almost eye-level.

He forced himself to move forward, his heart racing with dread.  He
that had no fears of the night!  And then he realised what it was.  How
often had he stopped to watch that marvel of nature, the dance of the
ghost moths.  He forged ahead.  He mustn't let the evening's disaster
unman him.  But the dread was on him.  From the fetid fields the smell
rose up to waft through the night mist like a ghostly haunting of the
landscape.

Sir Roderick was out at dawn.  He checked on every drill.  He had
planted twice last year's potato crop.  Not a drill had escaped!  It
was the same with the tenants.  They wandered dispiritedly through
their drills stopping here and there to pick up a blackened stalk.  He
looked across to Golden Meadows.  Mr.  Lonergan was walking slowly
across a field, his head down.  Roderick rode up the short avenue to
Ulick Prendergast's farmhouse.  The old man was sitting bolt upright on
his horse, tight tipped and grim.  He uncovered silently and Roderick
waited for

him to speak.  Ulick spoke only when he had something to say.

"It is like the Wrath to come," he said, 'no one round here has
escaped."

A stream of callers surged up the avenue all day; landlords doing the
rounds; ascertaining how other estates had fared; what measures to
take.

"I'll evict," cried Major Darby.  There was panic in the threat.  "I
couldn't carry through another season without rents."

Roderick wasn't certain himself how far he could carry mercy.  But he
remembered Darby's tenant, Dominic Landy.  "Our first concern," he said
coldly, 'is to save human life."

"That's all very well," Darby thrust.  "But carrying uneconomic tenants
on our backs is weakness.  A weak landlord is a bad landlord."

"Property," Lord Templetown reminded him, 'imposes responsibilities. 
We can make no plans until we know the extent of the Blight.  If it is
nationwide, then the government will take over."

"The government," said Phineas De Lacey dully, 'will tell us again that
the Blight is "a baseless vision"."  There was a white despair on the
cheerful ruddy countenance.

The Scout was not the only one who awaited the mail coach in the
evening.  A crowd of respectable townspeople waited anxiously for its
news.  The Scout almost scaled the sacred heights of the driver's seat.
But ritual was upheld.  The reins were handed to the ostler.  The white
gloves that remained immaculate no matter how black the potato, were
slowly removed.  Then the driver informed the Scout that the nine mail
coaches that had checked in at the Dublin Depot this morning had all
carried the same tale of disaster.  The Blight had struck all over
Ireland.

CHAPTER 24

"She gave them some broth without any bread.  And she whipped them all
soundly.  And put them to bed."  Roderick couldn't believe his eyes.
And yet it was true.  He was standing at Arbour Hill in Dublin watching
her Excellency the Vicereine dip the ladle into the first Government
Soup for the famine victims.  The ceremony was being held on the eve of
Roderick's return to Kilsheelin after the Landlords' Protest meeting.
His neighbours, the de Guiders, had come with him.  The Government had
not acceded to their petitions for help to combat the famine.  But, it
had made the gesture of sending Monsieur Soyer, the chef of the Reform
Club, to show the starving Irish how to live on a soup containing three
ounces of solid food to one ounce of water!  "A French chef, my dear!"
murmured Miss Hester.

There he stood on a platform above the pit at Arbour Hill barracks
where the bodies of the insurgents of '98 had been buried by their
executioners.  It seemed like a symbol of forgiveness that the spot
should have been chosen by the Government for this act of benevolence.
Palms and flowers adorned the sides.  In the centre stood the Lord
Lieutenant and his lady, flanked by the ladies-in-waiting and by
aides-de-camp in the glory of full-dress uniform.  Her Excellency, the
Vicereine, was dressed for the occasion in a high-necked robe with but
one velvet edged flounce.  It conveyed a dignified impression of
subdued restraint.  It reproached the fashionably-dressed ladies
present in their many-flounced silken gowns.  A military band brought
from England for the event, played a selection of operatic and
patriotic airs.  The Union Jack blew in the wind over the bubbling
cauldron.  The great French chef came before the footlights and stirred
the life-giving brew.

He flavoured and sipped; it was good!  With a gesture of satisfaction
he turned and bowed low to her Excellency.  The band muted its airs.
The bandmaster raised his baton.  There

Was a rumbling and a crashing.  All the gentlemen withdrew their
supporting arms from their ladies and went rigid at the opening bars of
God Save The Queen.

The semi-starving withdrew their support from the starving.  The
cripples straightened over their crutches.  Hungry old veterans
decorated by Wellington drew in their empty stomachs and stood erect to
the anthem that had marched them to many a victory.

As the First Lady moved forward inside her swaying skirt, Sarah
whispered, "Hester, observe how the skirt swings.  Her Excellency must
be wearing one of those new "watch-spring" petticoats."

The chef drew the ladle that was chained to the cauldron.  Like a
knight surrendering- his sword he proffered it to the Vicereine. 
Slowly she dipped it into the Elixir of Irish life.  Roderick turned to
watch the first of the multitude led forward.  It had woman's clothes
and the face of a skeleton.  Miss Sarah fumbled for her smelling
salts.

As the gracious figure in the austere robe of blue barege dipped the
ladle and slowly brought it towards those pallid lips, a young beau in
front of Roderick murmured, "Angel of mercy."  The charming girl on his
arm gave an audible sob.  The ladies were not the only ones moved to
tears by the beautiful charity of this noble lady.  Roderick noticed
one young aide-de-camp furtively wiping a tear.

Whether it was that she was overcome with compassion; whether it was
revulsion at the contortions of the terrible face as the mouth opened
to receive the soup; or whether it was simply that she had filled the
ladle too generously--the Vicereine's hand trembled and a few drops of
soup fell on that exquisite gown!

The lady showed the iron training of vice-royalty.  She went on holding
the ladle while the creature took an un appreciatively long time about
consuming the nourishment that she should have been gulping
frantically.

"That lovely gown!"  exclaimed Miss Hester.  "The dreadful soup is
still dripping on it."

"Don't worry, Cousin Hester," soothed Roderick.  "It is not strong
enough to stain."  And grimly he added: "They ought to have
strengthened it with bones from the pit."  Among the bones of '98
rebels executed were the Vicereine stood were those of his

uncle the red-haired Calvagh O'CarrolI who had blandly helped the
hangman to tie the knot.

The young English gentleman in front glared challengingly back at
Roderick.  He was a recruit of the twelve-thousand strong army of
highly-paid officials who had crossed over to cope with the famine
crisis.

"Shall we move, Sir Roderick?"  Stephen de Guider was nervous lest the
young blade call out Sir Roderick.  People were edging away.

Roderick drew Miss Sarah forward.  Her face had the look that always
told Mike O'DriscolI that the Sir was ready to 'shoot a flea off the
tail of a snipe'.  "Stand aside, sir," he said to the young
gentleman.

On the homeward journey Roderick and James de Guider passed crowds of
starving men moving wearily along the roads to the Relief Works
Schemes.  Sleek and well-dressed officials put them through a catechism
of insolent questions that began with the inevitable, Why should a big
able-bodied man like you seek Relief Work?"  And always it was answered
with the patient statement that echoed through the millions.  "Ta ocr
as orm!"  "The hunger is on me!"

At Kilsheelin, Margaret sat at the window for a sight of Roderick's
returning carriage.  She was physically exhausted.  The gloom of those
daily scenes in the yard had darkened her spirits.  She longed for
Roderick.

Suddenly she saw a figure creep through the grey Light of the fields.
The silence was pierced by the agonising scream of an animal in
torture.  Dear God, it was starting again!  The White boys I The
terrible mutilations!  She pressed her hands over her ears so that they
heard only her own screams.

When Roderick entered his wife's lovely white room with its gilded harp
and its spinet and its glow of fire and candlelight, she was swaying in
Nurse Hogan's arms.  Horror was in Margaret's great soft eyes, in her
voice whose screams had been muffled from him against Nurse Hogan's
shoulder.  "Maman!"  she screamed.  Always before it had been
"Roder-eeck!"  But now she cried out for Maman whom she would have been
with, but for this terrible famine.

She quietened in his arms.  The tenseness went from her body.  He could
feel its own warm seductive ness flow back.  Too late.

She had merely unburdened her strain on to his overburdened shoulders.
There was no escape for him, anywhere, from this seeping) all-pervading
horror.

Roderick knew the sickening truth about the cry that Margaret had
heard.  It was not the Whiteboys this time, but desperate women who
stole through the fields by night to draw blood from cattle to mix with
meal for their hungry children!

Big John was first on the spot from which the cries had sounded.  He
found an emaciated old woman lying near the wounded animal.  "It wasn't
for myself I did it,5 she whispered.  He recognised Mrs.  Downey, the
mother of Felix and Jim.  "The gossoons were fading before my eyes.  I
couldn't stand the look on their faces," she whispered.  He carried her
to the cabin that had replaced the house blown down the night of the
Big Wind.  He had not been able to stop that night and help her because
of his hurry to get help for her Ladyship.  The next day she was
dead.

Hers was the first famine death in Kilsheelin.  The frenzied animal had
lashed out and caught her temple.  Though she died from her own
criminal act, Mr.  O'Neill-Balfe brought in a verdict of Death From
Famine.

"The hunger is on me," was the cry of the famine.  Repeal was forgotten
as men and women scrounged and battled to survive.

Nonic Ryan was desperate.  There was nothing left to sell.  She had
written home at last for help, but there was no word back.  "We can
wait no longer then," she told Pat, "He is giving employment, draining
that snipe bog of his."

Pat looked at her squatting on the straw pali asse her feet tucked
under her like a little fairy woman.  He reached and plucked the
feather that clung to a tear at the end of her dainty nose.  Feathers;
they were every place since she sold the fine down stuffing of their
marriage bed.  "Love!"  he muttered aloud.  "Bad 'cess to it for the
love that made me take you away from full and plenty.  All right, I'll
get work."

Outside he gripped the gate post to cough, and where he spat there was
blood.  Her head came through the window.  "Pat!  I'd do it
again--pries Vs horse and all--if--if I had the energy."

His smile flashed back and his shoulders straightened.

But he went in the opposite direction from Kilsheelin; on to Major
Darby's and his 'famine folly'.  For sixpence a day--and a

:(', 1

halfpenny docked by the pay clerk--men were building a thing called an
obelisk.  He cast a longing upward glance at the bog that Sir Rody
O'Carroll was paying seven pence a day for draining, no pay clerk to
pocket his cut, and only a few fields away instead of this two-mile
trudge!  He halted uncertain and then it came back to him, as vivid as
hunger; the scene on that Saint Patrick's Eve.  Footing kiss
how-are-you!  Hadn't he seen their two faces?  Like of people's that
had found each other after being lost; the slow way their mouths had
come towards each other and clung; and the eyes of her, longing after
the fine horseman of her own kind till he was out of sight.  Black Pat
turned away.  "Dear to a man's heart"," he quoted, * "is his brother;
but his foster-brother is the marrow of his heart".  And you were the
marrow of my heart, Rody O'Carroll.  I little thought you'd ever play
me false."

For Margaret, her turn of duty at the soup cauldron at Templetown
served as some relief from the horror around her.  Despite misery and
sorrow and often repulsive spectacles, when Mrs.  Kennedy-Sherwin was
ladling there was bound to be diversion.  Nothing seemed to depress the
little lady.  She took her place behind the cauldron in the most
startling confections as though she were presiding behind the silver
tea urn in her own drawing-room.  The Misses Cherry and Berry Comerford
and Mrs.  Enright in their big callimanco aprons had given up trying to
impress her with their disapproving sniffs.  She just didn't care.  And
there was never a shortage of gentlemen.  When passing officers saw the
vivacious chatterbox at the ladle they dismounted and leaned
nonchalantly against their mounts, roaring with laughter at her
sallies.  Even the scarecrows laughed gaily when it was she who filled
their soup cans.  All the world loves laughter.

The scarecrows laughed now at Mrs.  Enright pinned up for all the world
to see the announcement that a sum of money had come unsought from a
strange body of people in faraway New York.  They called themselves the
Independent Order of Odd Fellows.

What kind of fellows could they be at all, marvelled the hungry ones!
The Scout enlightened them.  They were a benevolent body of gentlemen
who were handicapped by certain mental disability.  *... what you
ignoramuses might describe as being

a--a bit touched here."  He tapped his chimney pot and the crowd
roared.  "But," he went on sternly, 'the great free land of America
permits all men to go free and therefore these--these kindly gentlemen
though they are--intellectually--like--like

Billy Din there Billy smiled his silly smile and said that they were
good gentlemen and '... they wouldn't hurt me foot," the Scout
continued, 'are allowed freedom to indulge the Christian impulses of
their generous hearts."

After his oration, the Scout would have liked a drop of the soup that
smelled so temptingly.  But it was the brew of charity; and the Scout
styled himself a landlord.  Didn't he own his own tiny house in Love
Lane?  And the lean-to-shanty beside it that was let at two shillings a
month!

Young Thomas moved in a rasping trance--only one thing was clear.  He
was grateful for the memory of the leisurely--the cultured--life he had
known before the famine.  Now he milked cows in the sheds of his
master's friends.  He felt humble as he dispensed charity to
industrious farmers.  Those outstretched hands had cultivated their
owners' soil whilst he had eaten the soft bread of servitude.  Ah well!
He didn't eat much soft bread now!  No lazy reading; no pleasant chats
with Miss Sterrin.  No existence of his own.  He saw few of his
friends.  As for Kitty and Mark, he put the thought of them from him
with panic.  God alone knew how things fared with them.

Kitty watched a shadow fall across her doorway.  Her heart lifted.  A
coordheecer?  Young Thomas maybe!  She hadn't seen him for months.

"God save you," said the man at the door.  "I'm looking for a colleen
named Molly Slattery."  The implements of his trade protruded from the
satchel on his shoulder.  "Has Molly the fever?"  she asked.  At least
this was new ses of some kind.  All new ses were bad these times! "They
don't wait for fever now to get their hair cut.  There is a length of
food value in hers, I'm told."  He watched the nervous play of Kitty's
fingers through the black ringlets.

"How--how much will you give me for it?"

"Two shillings."

She dropped her hand.  Woman's vanity shot the listlessness from her
voice.  "What do you think you are buying?  A bone en

"By the frost, ma'am!  "Twould take a better head of hair than

yours to buy a little pig these days."  He turned to the door.  "I
must be on my way.  Mrs.  Campion has five daughters down bad.  She
wants the hair off them before night.  Not lookin' for money she is.
Only waitin' for the relief I'll give."  He watched her features
straining out at him from the thin skin of her face.

"The Campions!"  she scoffed.  "Who would want to buy yellow hair?"

"Two and six, then," he called.  From the cradle the hungry wailing
started again.  The travelling barber gave a sympathetic, "Tck, tck, I
won't be keepin' you, ma'am.  You'll be wantin' to get the child's
supper."  His eyes slewed deliberately round a circuit that embraced
the empty hearth, the door that swung from an empty cupboard.  "The
mothers of hungry children haven't time to be bargaining about their
hair."

She turned frantically from the cradle and pulled the pins from her
hair.  "How many mothers of hungry children have hair like that to
bargain for?  Four shillings," she challenged.

He stepped back into the room and took out his purse.  "Sit down," he
said.

She kept her eyes squeezed tight until she heard the closing of the
door.  When she opened them the room was empty, but four silver
shillings brightened the table.

The door opened again.  "Where did you say the Slattery girl lived?"

"I didn't say."  She wasn't going to have the plunder of Molly
Slattery's cloak of hair on her conscience.  What will Mark say, she
thought, as she trekked home with her purchases?  He was proud of her
beautiful hair.  But Mark merely asked her in amazement where had she
got the beautiful food.

"I bought it."

He looked round the bare room.  "With what, in the name of God?"

"With a bit of myself."

People spoke strangely these times.  He hoped there was nothing queer
going on in Kitty's head.  He peered out at her over the wooden
porringer.  There was something queer about her.  "Kitty!"  he shouted
suddenly.  "Kitty, cai ling duv machree!"  Dark girl of my heart! 
"Your beautiful hair!"

By Christmas night when Young Thomas saw the Hennesseys, the cut ends
of Kitty's hair had curled around her ears.  The

graceful line of her neck and shoulder stood out uncluttered.

He was delighted by Kitty's short hair and reproached Mark for lacking
an eye for beauty.

"Never let it grow again," he told Kitty.

He had brought them some news and diversion along with a few stolen
pieces from his own festive dinner-plate.  He told them that John
Holohan had left for America on Christmas Eve, that Molly Slattery had
gone with him, leaving her mother keening inconsolably, as she watched
the coach carrying the two away.

Thomas dared not delay.  Christmas Day, except for the meat and apple
dumpling, had been the same as every other day.  Harder.  Every house
on the estate had its gift delivered.  And the stir about line had been
served in the evening as well as in the morning.  It had reached from
the back ddbr to the back lodge.

As he hurried through the darkness the rush lights--despite death and
disaster--still shone from the cottages to light the Holy Family.

Roderick was forced to mortgage the castle.  At night in the library
the faces of his ancestors reproached him from their frames.  Men had
gone on dying, they said, all the centuries that this castle had gone
on enduring.

"I know," answered Roderick aloud.  "But one cannot lean against the
walls of a castle and watch men die of hunger; and women; and
children!"

His eyes roved round the walls to O'Carroll Ribbeach who, when Queen
Elizabeth had divided Tipperary among three men of Cheshire had ridden
forth astounded at the trespass and bade the English quit his land; the
"Handsome O'Carroll' whose descendant had signed the American
Declaration of Independence; on to a dandy in a gorgeous
waistcoat--"You cannot afford to reproach me, Grandfather.  You began
this ramp.  It was you who contrived an entry for the demolition
forces.  You betrayed us to the gales of the Big Wind.  A forest of
oaks for a necklace."  He stopped dead.  The diamond necklace!  It
could avert this disaster.  The diamond oaks of Kilsheelin could give
back shelter to the castle.  There was still time.

He hurried upstairs to discuss the idea with Margaret.  From the
shadowy drapes of the fourposter her quiet breathing came to him.  As
he bent over her she gave a little moan of exhaustion.

He turned and descended to the library to deal with his mail.

The letter on top of the pile that awaited him bore no postmark.  Some
local letter, he presumed, delivered by hand.  As he tossed it aside to
deal with the more distant ones he noticed the inscription on the back,
"American Postage to Ireland Suspended'.  Inside was a draft drawn on
an American bank for more than two thousand pounds.  No name; just
"Anonymous sympathiser'.

For a brief moment Roderick felt a sense of privilege.  Not because he
had been the one entrusted with this magnificent contribution; but
because apart from the impersonal transactions of the bank concerned,
no one but God knew the donor's identity.  No single word of thanks
required; while the papers of the three kingdoms proclaimed the
generosity of Her Majesty for her paltry contribution to her starving
subjects!

He looked through the other letters.  A shilling from a poor widow in
England; a day's wages from a London counting clerk.  On one piece of
paper was scribbled, "Poor Erin!  I give you the first fruits of my
first song."  It was signed "English Songwriter'.

And then came a letter that he must answer.  It came from the
Protestant Archdeacon of an English cathedral and it was signed
Roderick Carroll-Greyson.  His offering, eight hundred pounds, was the
Famine Collection from the morning and afternoon services last
Sunday.

"My Carroll ancestors," wrote the Archdeacon, 'came originally from
Tipperary Perhaps in happier days we may meet '

How pleasant it would be to invite the gentleman here!  Would such a
thing be possible ever again?  Greetings and returning visits!  Lavish
hospitality on one's board.  God!  He put his head down on his arms. He
felt hemmed in by horror; fought back an adolescent urge to run away
from it all.

He shook the feeling from him and took the next letter.  American, the
same superscription on the back; "Postage to Ireland Suspended'.  There
was a grandeur of spirit behind these words that appealed to Roderick.
Here in Ireland every effort in the cause of charity was arrested by
officialdom.  Relief schemes mouldered on office files.  Subscriptions
were passed slowly from one department to another.  Cargoes of
benevolence lay unloaded while heads of departments pondered the
problem of distribu uon and transport.  And in America!  an institute
of State set aside!  the word ireland on any crate, packet, or
letter--a password for priority and free transport!

The letter was from Miss Maryanne O'Regan of Virginia."... the talk is
all of the great calamity in Ireland.... The Governor of Virginia held
a big meeting ... all the big plantation owners It was agreed to send
the Raleigh with several thousand tons of kiln-dried corn and rice and
pickled pork."  Roderick smiled as he read.  *... we held a quilting
bee in the drawing room and all the young ladies with copperplate
writing were set to write instructions on how to cook the food, as I
believe the Irish people have never seen any food but potatoes...."
There was a subscription enclosed and then a postscript.  Had the
consignment of foodstuffs, addressed personally to himself, arrived? An
official notification amid the correspondence informed him that a large
consignment from Virginia, America, still awaited collection.

Immediately he gave orders for men to accompany him before dawn to
Waterford dock.  This valuable contribution had lain too long.  He
thought with panic of the grain ship of the Sultan of Turkey; the first
in the sea-race of mercy to arrive; a feast for the rats because the
English soldiery refused to unload it!

Roderick primed his pistols in readiness and left the rest of the
letters to be dealt with by the De Lacey girls tomorrow.  They would
need more help at the rate subscriptions were coming in.  There were so
few well-educated young ladies available.  Suddenly for the first time
in months he thought of Mrs.  Black Pat Ryan.  She could be useful to
cope with correspondence!  He hadn't seen any of the family for
months--a year, nearly.  Although Black Pat sent his rent to the dot of
Gale day.  Never an hour behind.

Roderick could not know that the rent had come from the sale of the
fine horse.  Nonic looked out forlornly at the empty paddock.  That
speculation had failed; like the speculation of that journey for seed
potatoes, at twice the cost of anyone else's.  And Pat, at last, had to
join the ranks of respectable fanners who were seeking Relief Work.

She moistened her lips and grimaced at the taste of her tongue.  She
drank a few sips of water but the clatter of her cup against the bucket
brought in the children, their stomachs in

their eyes.  She dare not rattle a utensil.  "Bread'n butter said the
youngest.  It was not a request; just a reaction to the clatter that
her mind connected with the preparations for a meal.  Outside there was
a scuffling and Adam ran off somewhere screaming.

"Mammy," said Norisheen firmly, "I'll go to the castle and stand in the
line.  This is the day they give soup as well as meal.  I'll bring home
a canful."

Nonic tried to keep her home.  Her sister had written to say that she
had posted foodstuff.

"The hunger is on me," insisted Norisheen.

Her mother pressed her hands to her temples.  "Go on then," she said
dully.  She turned from the sight of the girl's departure; with a can
that had once held sweets for Christmas.  The hunger is on me!  The
hunger is on me!  The refrain mounted in a mocking crescendo.  "And
how," she cried aloud, 'am I to take the hunger from them?"

From the straw palliasse in the room beyond the parlour little Pat
answered, "You need take no hunger from me, Mammy.  It has gone
away."

She had not noticed that he had gone to lie down.  What was he saying?
The hunger has gone away.  Oh no, not that!  She stooped and put her
arms about him.  You are hungry, my darling; and the food from your
auntie will be here any minute.  I'll cook lovely things."

"I'm not hungry," he whispered.  The words chilled her heart with
dread.  This was the terrible stage of the famine.  First the gnawing,
constant hunger, then wild, devouring hunger.  Then apathy and
prostration.  The juices ceased to make clamour.  The tongue dried up;
so did hope; so did life.  It was the triumph of the famine.  When it
took back the hunger it had created.

She crushed him to her.  "You are hungry, gra' 'gal.  You are.

I'll get you What could she get him?  And then at last she was glad
that Norisheen had gone to beg for charity.  "I'll get you soup.  Sleep
now.  When you waken, Norisheen will be here with the soup.  I'll sing
you to sleep love--"Oh little head of gold!  Oh candle of my house!"
she sang, and her voice was like the releasing of a rusted lock.  He
was the candle of her house; the only bright head midst her dark brood.
"Oh!  moths on the window fold your wings...."  He was looking at her
strangely; unblinkingly.  Oh!  plover and oh!  curlew over my house do
not travel..."  She stopped to catch what he was saying.  Something

about three grains of oats.  Dear God, the famine fever must be on
him!

She looked wildly towards the window.  Someone was on the roadway.  It
couldn't be Norisheen yet.  She laid down the child and went to the
door.  Had God guided someone this way?  A woman, tall and graceful,
was gliding over the road like--an apparition.  Like the Mother of
losagain when She came to a cottage and soothed the wailing babe beside
its sick mother; and when She had gone they both awakened to health!

The woman glanced at the open door and murmured something; but kept on.
A vision indeed, thought Nonic as she closed the door!  The vision of
Lady O'Carroll was not for her or her child!

CHAPTER 25

Margaret had decided to seek out Mrs.  Holohan.  Though she was not a
tenant, Margaret could not forget the woman's face as it looked after
the car that was taking her son to exile.  She shuddered as she thought
of the way she would feel if she were separated from Dominic or
Sterrin.

Margaret went by the short cut that she had taken with Roderick to the
Crossroads dance the evening of the Blight.  It led on to the road past
Black Pat's door.  The house seemed strangely quiet.  As she past the
door it opened with a rush and Mrs.  Black Pat came out.  Margaret gave
her a good afternoon and went on without stopping.  Behind her she
could hear the door close with a crash.

He full lips tightened.  This little Ryan person was mauvais ton.  Why
won't she realise her position?  The absurdity of seizing every
occasion to flounce and flaunt.

There was no sign of life at Mrs.  Holohan's.  Margaret relinquished
the knocker.  As she turned away, she thought she heard the sound of a
moan inside ... she raised the latch and found Mrs.  Holohan lying on
the empty hearth.  Even the water bucket was empty.  Margaret wasted
precious moments searching outside for a well.  If only she could get
her to the castle!  If this were a main road!  But there wasn't a soul
nor a vehicle on this bye-road.

She suddenly remembered the soup kitchen outside Aughnacoll Church.  A
souperism centre where soup was given to the starving provided they
abjured Catholicism; still, they would hardly try to induce a woman
almost in extremis to apostasise!  The place was only half a mile off,
and Mrs.  Holohan was barely the weight of her own clothes.

When Margaret arrived at the outskirts of the crowd people thought she
was carrying a bundle of clothes.  It was impossible to get through to
the cauldron.  The waiting was interminable.  Famished Catholics
thought to change their religion for the

duration of the meal.  Tm a Protestant," they clamoured.  But it
wasn't that easy.  They had to answer a long questionnaire.  Only those
who could produce written proof from a clergyman or authoritative
person that they had attended church services were fed promptly.

Margaret's arms ached.  She set Mrs.  Holohan on her feet but she
swayed and her pallor was getting terrible.  The man in front was
carrying a full-grown adult who pressed bonily against Margaret; and
smelled abominably.  Why on earth didn't I chance the journey home, she
fumed!  I could have got her as far as that Mrs.  Ryan.  At least she
would have given her nourishment.

She strained on tiptoe to attract the attention of a Souper.  At the
cauldron an emaciated wretch was pleading and expostulating.  The soup,
withheld while they catechised him, was tantalising.

Before Margaret could see what was happening, pandemonium had broken
loose.  The man had grasped the cauldron in a frenzy and upset its
contents.  People cupped the spilt fluid in their hands.  They flung
themselves down and lapped it like animals.  They had reverted to
untamed savagery.

Lady O'CarroIl was knocked down.  Mercifully someone lifted her burden.
But a worse burden fell on her; pinned her down.  The body that the man
in front of her had carried.  A dead body!  Its face grinned into hers.
Its incontinence fouled her clothes.  She screeched and clawed from
under the clamping grip.  She found herself running down an empty road;
running from the terrible Thing behind her; from the terrible screams
that filled her ears.  Gradually she realised that they were her own.

A blind, intuitive memory led her suddenly from the road on to the
field path.  The sight of a pretty, braided roof recalled her to a
sense of control.  There was no disapproval in her now.  Here was a
gladsome house!  It had never sounded the hunger cry; only music and
life; life!

She saw a carriage stop.  The small figure that emerged carrying a
child was Virginia Kennedy-Sherwin's.  Dazedly, Margaret followed her
inside and down a passage.  She glimpsed two figures on something that
was neither bed nor couch.  She saw Mrs.  Kennedy-Sherwin lay the child
beside the two figures and turn to hold someone else in her arms.
Margaret put her hands

to her ears.  The screams had started again.  But it was just one long
wail of uttermost despair.  Long after it ceased a small figure
confronted her.

You have come too late.  Lady O'Carroll," said Mrs.  Pat Ryan Duv. "Go
now!"  Lady O'Carroll obeyed.

At the clanging of the bell Nurse Hogan rushed to the landing.  Her
Ladyship at last!  She watched her pass Hegarty without speaking and
skim up the stairs.

Lady O'Carroll offered no explanation for the clay-sodden shoes, the
torn flounces; for the incredible filth of her pelisse and robe.  "Tell
them to bring me a bath," was all she said.

Roderick's spirits lifted as he came into the drawing-room.  It was
heavenly to come back to this calm and lovely woman.  The little
susurrus of her silken skirts as she moved forward and back over the
embroidery frame made a shoheen-sho lullaby in his ears.  Waterford had
been hell.  The whining and begging and keening around the docks!  And
passing Darby's place on the way back he had passed men building a
Famine Folly, a spiral shaped excrescence, neither decorative nor
useful.  One of the workmen had uncovered and given him a God-save-you.
Roderick did not know who he was.  There had been something vaguely
familiar about him; but the characteristics that distinguished one
human being from another had left all their faces.  They all had the
angular outline and stretched skin of death's anatomy.

It must be ages since he had seen Margaret at her embroidery frame;
ages, too, since she had worn a silken gown.  "Hm!"  he sniffed as he
stooped to kiss her.  We are very fragrant this evening--and, very
decorative.  Are we expecting company?"

She touched a wing of grey in the black of his hair.  "No one" The
butler interrupted with a tray.  "I took the liberty, your Ladyship,"
he said, noticing her surprised expression.  The newfangled afternoon
tea had been stopped since the famine, but her appearance when she
returned had shocked him.  "It's killin' ye'rselves ye both are."

Margaret had none of the usual chatter about the Soup Kitchen.
"Anything strange?"  Roderick asked her and immediately thought how
meaningless the phrase had become.  Everything was strange.  People
looked strange, those strange-looking men building a strange-looking
obelisk.  Only what was normal

held novelty.  Like Margaret's silk gown and her embroidery frame!

"No The tea she was pouring slopped over into the saucer.  "Nothing
strange, except a letter for you from Cousin Hester."

His cousin, he read, had instructed her bank manager to send him one
hundred pounds; she had already donated five hundred pounds to the
Central Fund in Dublin.  "They can ill afford that he commented.
Suddenly he burst out laughing.  TJsten to this; apparently despite
famine and pestilence there had been no diminution in the Castle's
splendours for the Second Drawingroom.  '"There was only one
unfortunate incident,"" he read out."  "A line of Debutantes' carriages
got caught up in a line of sick carts but they managed to get to Saint
Patrick's Hall in time to make their curtsies "' Roderick looked up. 
The debutantes, I assume my love, not the sick cans."  Margaret was
looking into space.  More strangeness!  She normally revelled in such
social tit bits  * "Her Excellency," he went on, * "was influenced, it
is generally assumed, in her choice of dress by the melancholy state of
the country.  She actually wore black \ An overskirt and corsage of
black Gros D'Af ri que lined with ..."  what is it Hegarty?"

The butler wished to enquire on behalf of some man downstairs if Mr.
Pat Ryan Black Pat were employed in Sir Roderick's Bog Reclamation
Scheme.  He was wanted at home.  There was trouble there,

Black Pat!  Roderick remembered that he must call there tonight and
enlist Mrs.  Black Pat's service for the famine correspondence.  What
was the fellow talking about?  Black Pat doing Relief Work!  There must
be some mistake.  Surely, if Black Pat needed employment he would have
come to me.  "One of Mr.  Black Pat Ryan's children is dead," said
Hegarty sadly.

"Dead 1' The word struck with all its former starkness.  It had no
connection with the Dead he had driven past today, with the un
deliberate indifference of helplessness.  "It must be fever." Roderick
rose to his feet.  Fever was now taking high toll from homes that were
well above the margin of hunger.  "Don't worry, my dear. I'll avoid
contact with infection as much as possible.  But this is one sick house
I must visit."

In the hallway he glanced up towards a sound in the gallery.  Through a
cloud of perfu-ned steam he saw two servants

carrying a laden bath towards the back staircase.

At Black Pat's he stood where Margaret had stood at the entrance to the
long shadowy room.  Through the open door in the room beyond he could
see the little figures on the straw.  The day that he had sold the
horse they had been there too; with the chin-cough.  But not on straw,
on a mountainous feather bed; turning cartwheels and pelting a potato
that had barely missed his own eye.  They had told him proudly that it
was their mammy who had painted the pictures he had been admiring.  And
suddenly the recollection made him conscious of the bareness about him;
blank spaces where those skilful paintings had hung; the silver trinket
box that had caught his attention was gone; the silver candlesticks,
the lust res the rosewood music box.  Yes, they've all been eaten."

He turned startled.  He hadn't noticed her there, crouching down beside
the straw.  They've all been eaten I And the whole structure of his
existence; his very home was the heritage of his own children consumed
in his efforts against such hunger.  He strode towards her.  Why didn't
you tell me?  Why didn't you come like the others?  Why didn't you
bring them?"

To the stir about line?"  It brought her to her feet.

Yes, the stir about line.  It keeps people alive.  Not pride."

Tride?  There are other kinds of pride.  The pride that made you forbid
your daughter to share her food with my children.  The pride that
caused your wife to drive past doing the Grande Dame.  If only she had
stopped this afternoon, she might have saved one of them, but when she
did condescend to come--it was too late."

Margaret had been here?  "Was Lady O'Carroll here?  This afternoon?"

She nodded.  "Not to see me or mine.  She saw Mrs.  KennedySherwin
carrying Adam in--Adam She would have sunk but he caught her.  It was
like holding a bird whose nest had been plundered; no substance, just a
trembling beat of life.  "I had no right to speak to you like that,"
she murmured hoarsely, 'but when you accused me of letting my darlings
die.  If only Pat were here!  Why doesn't he come?"

His arm tightened around her.  She rested against him with a queer
little peaceful flutter of breath.  He put his hand on her hair.  There
was a dankness in the soft curls.  Dear God, had that impish sprite
become this broken fragment of womanhood?

Was this the fearless girl who had sprung from his knee and gone
riding off into the spinney; tossing back over her shoulder a laughing,
beckoning glance from will-o-the-wisp eyes?

Suddenly something happened to him that had not happened since his
mother and father had died one after the other.  Tears gushed from
beneath his lashes and fell upon her face.

In a sudden passion of tenderness he pressed her to him and when he
stooped to murmur, "I'll find Black Pat for you, little Nonic," his
lips brushed her cheek.

On the way out he stopped dead.  Two sleeping heads showed above the
ledge of the settle bed.  On either side of the ingle were two more
sleeping figures.  One was the oldest girl.  The other, no bigger, but
dressed in the height of bedraggled fashion, was the irresistible Mrs.
Kennedy-Sherwin!  Her little face was strained and its tear marks were
frankly smudged.  She reminded him of a kitten that had been out all
night in the bushes.  A smile softened his lips.  One could always
count upon her to evoke a smile!  He removed his hat again and doffed
it in salute towards a very gallant little lady.  Then he thought of
Margaret in festive gown, bathed in perfume!

He found Black Pat.  It was easier to recognise him now.  The strain
had gone from his features.  He lay with three others at the foot of
the potbellied monstrosity that had become their tombstone!

It was a long time before Roderick remembered to uncover.  He bashed
his gloved hand across the obelisk and cursed.  He cursed the system. 
He cursed the government that forced men to raise monuments to their
own hunger until their dead bodies formed its pedestal.  He cursed
himself who had let the friend of his childhood die; for the simple
want of food!  The untrammelled presence of death released memories
long-forgotten.  Scenes and recollections beat upon him like blows.
Fosterbrother!  The word mocked him; "Dear to a man is his brother; but
his foster-brother is the marrow of his heart!  *

The first sleepy cock-crow was sounding from the fowl sheds as
Roderick's footsteps came up the stairs.  They passed Margaret's door
and moved into the adjoining dressing-room.  She stood and waited.  She
could hear him moving about.  Then there was silence.  She turned,
disheartened, to put out the lamp.  It was starting all over again!
Just like that other time.  And over the same person.  She switched the
reflections from her

 confused mind.  They were sacrilegious in the face of this
afternoon's tragedy; and, he argued, how many nights had not Roderick
gone to his dressing-room after dealing with the Famine subscriptions
rather than disturb her?  He was probably exhausted.  She relit the
spirit lamp.  She would take him a hot drink and she would tell him
what had happened to her this afternoon; what she could remember,
because her head was queer and more confused than ever before.

Behind her the door opened.  She tossed the plaits from about her face
and turned eagerly.  He made no move to come in, just stood there and
looked with a certain fixity at the equipment for the soothing draughts
that she sometimes brewed in the night hours.

You knew didn't you, that there were three children dead?"

"Roderick!"--Oh, how was she going to explain if he stood there looking
at her like that.

She was wearing an intricately embroidered white wrapper tied with a
girdle of plaited ribbons in every pastel tint.  Her chestnut plants
had the gleam of a well-groomed horse.  Margaret was always well
groomed; even in deshabille.  No curling papers rattling and bulging
under her nightcap; no acrid smell of lotions.  The sensuous appeal of
her beauty was almost overpowering.  But Roderick had been emptied of
emotions tonight.  Above his foster-brother's body; and when he had
caught Nonic as she sank after he had told her what he had to tell her,
he had felt that his own soul had approached that region that holds the
hosts of the dead.  The beauty of this woman who had hastened from that
hecatomb to perfume her body and deck it with silk had no power of
appeal to him.

He made no effort to spare her the details of the Ryan tragedy and all
that had led to it.  "And you assured me that they had plenty, that '

"But I thought '

"You thought!  All you thought was that I was philandering.  It has
taken four dead bodies; four splendid lives to convince you that they
were trying to cover their hunger with decent pride."

He turned to the door then turned back.  "But," he said, 'it wasn't
really hunger that caused their deaths '

"Oh!"  The sound came from her in a little breath of relief.  Anything
but hunger!  "Was it fever?"

"Not fever," he said looking at her levelly.  "Jealousy!"  She stared
in stunned silence at the door that had closed on the terrible word.
When she ran to it at last with a long-drawn "Roder-eeck' she was
answered by the slam of a bolt.

The Coroner's verdict was Wilful Murder By Her Majesty's Government of
the four Ryan Duvs.  His own censure was couched in such strong terms
that it was feared that he would be charged with treason, staunch
Protestant loyalist though he was.  But Mr.  O'Neill-Balfe had been
unmanned by the findings of the autopsy on little Adam Ryan.  Three
grains of oats had been found in his empty stomach.  He had snatched
them from his brother and run away, then some stranger had given him a
lift to Templetown Soup Kitchen where Mrs.  KennedyS her win had found
him collapsed and had taken him home to his mother.

A few nights later Sterrin awoke screaming from a nightmare.  Roderick
found her apologising abjectly to Nurse Hogan who was reproaching her
for the fright she had given her poor mamma, and her mamma was saying
that she must get another governess immediately.  Miss Ferguson-Coyne
had returned to Dublin that day in hysterics.  She had been driving
Dominic and Sterrin in the pony chaise when Wright's bread van came
towards them.  From nowhere a fierce mob had suddenly collected.  They
attacked the driver and tore the bread from the van and from each other
like savages.  When the pony bolted, Miss Ferguson-Coyne had lost all
control.  Sterrin had had to seize the reins and cope with her
terrified brother.  "It is a terrible thing, Papa, when a grown-up is
frightened."

The child's world had been taken from beneath her.  The white guilt on
her face infuriated him.  What were they doing to the stalwart little
girl who would follow him on her pony over high jumps without a quiver?
Another child victim of appeasement.  He put an arm about her and told
the nurse in a tone of dismissal that included Margaret, that he would
see to Miss Sterrin.

"And that poor little Ryan boy," Sterrin said.  "When his brother
swallowed down the bull's eye he ran away from him that day also.  Just
as he must have done with those three grains of oats."

For the first time, Roderick heard the story of the bull's eye.

"It was the day you told me not to bring them any more food--Is your
hand hurting, Papa?"  Unconsciously he had put the side of his hand to
his mouth.  Where he had struck it against the obelisk.  Tolly."  There
was a wound.

She went on.  "Did you know, Papa, that their mamma used to ride to
hounds like a lady?"

His lips sucked the cut: she could hear the hurt breath.

"Norisheen told me.  Her papa bought a blood horse so that he could
breed from it and soon she would ride again like a lady."

His mind went back to the 'footing' kiss.  It takes an artist, he had
thought as he looked into the blending colours in her eyes, to mix
colours.  And, presuming bounder that he was, he had dared to assume
that he himself was that artist!  Not Black Pat who could make this
grand fling in the cause of love's romance!  Like Roderick's
grandfather and the oaks!

"It is a terrible thing, Papa, when a sweet slips down one's throat
before one has tasted it.  / know."

He looked down at the promise of beauty in the too-thin face.  "I hope,
my storm ling that the sweets of life will not continue to evade you
before you have savoured them!"

He tucked the clothes about her.  "Forget all this ullagoaning.  Forget
governesses too.  Tomorrow your knife boy squire must take you
bird-nesting.  The tomtits have started house-hunting.  Perhaps you may
encounter that domesticated pair you saw last year."

He knocked at Margaret's door and entered.  Her heart lifted, but she
curbed the smile that was starting.  She wasn't going to fall on his
neck straight away.  She

*I want no further talk of governesses," he was saying.  "No child who
has to witness the squeamishness of its elders will acquire
self-control.  An adult should stand up to things--at least in front of
a child.  Good night."

Twelve little black eyes gazed unblinkingly at Sterrin from the
torn-tit's nest at Golden Meadow.  But they were not tomtit's eyes?
Mrs.  Lonergan with a maid, was ladling porridge to a queue.  She
hurried up, all apologies.  She could not invite them in, she crooned.
Mr.  Lonergan was down with The Sickness'.  It was most catching.  Tim
came along and explained that the torn-tits had cleared off last year
before their family was half

reared.  They had let the nest to a field mouse.  "They climb up by
that," he said indicating a currant bush.

Blackcurrant bushes as ladders for revolting little field mice had no
interest for Sterrin.  They only interested her as the source of black
currant tarts.  All the way over she had been thinking of that
delicious tart that Mrs.  Lonergan had once given them.  "Oh dear," she
sighed aloud, 'you have no idea how disappointed I feel."  None
whatever, she thought!

Tim led them by a right-of-way into the De Lacey estate.  There was a
joyful hail and Hubert De Lacey and two of his sisters came hurrying
down the avenue.  Sterrin's spirits rose.  She hadn't been inside
anyone's house for over a year.  Paying calls or dropping-in was a
thing of the past.

Hubert offered to recompense their disappointment about the torn-tits
with a sight of something very rare.  But Sterrin hastily interposed
with a polite enquiry about his parents and a pointed glance towards
the pretty white house in the trees.  "A sparrow hawk's nest," went on
Hubert.  Fiona, murmuring something about her mamma being indisposed,
led the way very purposefully after her brother towards a rocky crag.

High above them, two fierce eyes watched and suddenly swooped.  The
sparrow-hawk had spotted a prey.  Next minute a poor curlew was
twisting backwards and forwards in the grip of those terrible claws.
Sterrin lashed out with her whip but the curlew lay with its tender
breast cut off as neatly as if it had been carved with a knife.

"If you don't mind," said Sterrin politely.  "I'd rather not see the
nest today."  A row of drops of blood picked out its lie 'that has
taken away my appetite'.

"I wish," sighed the uninhibited Bunzy, 'that it would take away
mine--I'm always--ouch!"  Her sister's elbow discouraged further
disclosures.

When Thomas saw the faint flush on the faces of Fiona and Hubert he
remembered suddenly the whisper that De Lacey's live-stock had been
impounded for debt.  There was not a beast in sight; not a clatter of
maid or workman.

"You must excuse us, Master Hubert and Miss Fiona," he said.  "The hard
warned me to have Miss Sterrin back for a harp lesson.  He is terribly
crotchety."

When they were out of earshot Sterrin demanded what the devil's father
did he mean by telling such a fib.  "I had to say

something," he said, 'with you harping on about appetites and hunger.
It is bad manners to drop in uninvited on people these times.  The De
Laceys were mortified at not being able to ask you in.  And when Mrs.
Lonergan couldn't invite you in you looked fit to join the stir about
line."

*I had been hoping for a piece of tart, like that black currant tart we
got there before," she admitted.  "The thought of nice food a tart or
cake it makes my mouth water.  It always waters now when I think of
food nice food."

Thomas was too embarrassed to reply.  Miss Sterrin's confession of
hunger made him feel the way he did whenever he surprised her in the
garden on her way to the "Necessary'.  It had never occurred to him
that she that any of the family might know what it was to feel hunger.
The famine might have altered their existence.  No more visitors, or
visiting; no balls or whist.  No dainties; bread measured by the slice.
All the game poached despite the beeves and sheep that were slaughtered
all the time to feed the hungry.  But hunger!  He studied the thin
outline of her face.  Not a pick on it.  And its whiteness was thin,
too.  It used to look like the top of the milk.

He scraped his throat.  "What about tickling a trout?  I'll make a
fire."

"A secret picnic?  Just the two of us."  But, as suddenly as it had
come, the light went from her face.  Tapa would be horrified.  A
gentleman would not disturb a trout just now."

"I am not a gentleman; and you are hungry."

The trout he caught was well over two pounds but his fingers after the
icy water could scarcely hold it for cleaning.  She took his hand
between her own and chafed it, and when she stooped and blew upon his
fingers, the little warm breathings were as if, for him alone, the sun
had suddenly shone down out of the January sky and warmed his being and
filled it full with gladness.  He gave his throat another scrape.  "I
erit will be able to hold the trout now He gave the hand a businesslike
shake then prepared the fish and gathered twigs and lit them with
sparks from the iron dp of his heel and all the time he hummed and
whistled as gay as the voice of the young stream that went sparkling
and gurgling between miniature rocks.

When he proffered her the sizzling fish on a big dock leaf, she
insisted upon him cutting half for himself.

You surely don't think that I would sit and eat in front of

you!"  she exclaimed.

Thomas refrained from pointing out that it was his lot in life to serve
her while she ate in front of him.  But just now he felt disorientated.
Away from servitude; away from the famine; alone in a world that held
Miss Sterrin and himself in the warm circle of the dancing flames.

"I wish," said Sterrin and 'twas as though she spoke his thoughts,
'that we could stay here forever."  It was so bright and cosy here with
young Thomas; away from that awful stira'bout line and the sad, sick
faces.  Just young Thomas and herself sharing the lovely big fire and
the lovely trout.  A shadow loomed over the flames and a voice said,
"God save you, Miss."

"Cead mile curses!"  murmured young Thomas.  "It is the
"Darraghadheal"."

George Lucas was standing on the other side of the stream.  "A nice
little picnic ye're havin'.  It does a body good to see children havin'
a bit of comfort an' so many starving!  The poor little Ryan Duv
children!  Three grains of oats, God bless us!  I'm sure the Sir would
not have objected to them trespassing here for a bit of fish; his
foster-brother's children!"

Young Thomas jumped to his feet to remonstrate but Sterrin silenced him
with a gesture.  "You have no right to be here.  My father permits no
right of way on either side of this stream."

Thomas was surprised at the man's quick look of alarm.  He started
muttering something about taking a short cut back.  His wife had had a
child this morning.  "Another covala--foster sister--for you, Miss
Sterrin," he called over his shoulder.

Thomas watched the retreating figure through narrowed eyes.  "I'd swear
that fellow was up to something.  Covala, indeed!  Makes me sick the
way he keeps trying to claim foster ship with you just because his wife
was your wet-nurse.  There's no such thing, these modern times."

"There was such a thing between Papa and Black Pat.  That's what Lucas
was hinting at--blaming Papa for--' She swung into the saddle "Hell
roast the "Darraghadheal"I  I was so happy!"

Thomas scattered the fire with a kick.  Happy!  He had never been so
happy in all his born days.  "May the devil roast crabs in his He
stopped aghast.  But his lapse into coarseness had dispelled the cloud
evoked by Lucas.  Sterrin was flopped over the pony's head in peals of
laughter.

There was no laughter the next afternoon as Sterrin followed humbly in
the heels of young Thomas.  She had never seen him cry before.  The
sight of his tears stirred her deeply.  It was the funeral of little
Theobald, Kitty's and Mark's firstborn.  He had died while Sterrin and
Thomas were picnicking by the stream.  It was Thomas who had discovered
it, for he had run to the Hennessey's the moment he and Sterrin had
returned to the castle.  He didn't know what had prompted him to steal
that hour to see how things fared at the cottage.  As he reached the
door a weird-looking dog was dragging the sweet, small body of his
god-child across the threshold and from the room beyond came sounds of
moans.

Kitty was lying in the fresh agony that had come upon her when she
realised that the child in her arms was dead.  As the slow grinding
pains became unbearable she had let the dead body slip to the floor.
Pain by pain she was forced to yield to the demands of the one who was
clamouring inexorably for the grim heritage abandoned by her
firstborn.

They buried little Theobald in a tiny space behind the tombstone that
said "William O'Carroll, Gentleman of Kilsheelin who was emigrated to
heaven in the Year of Our Lord 1678'.  As Thomas dug the little grave
he recalled how, when he was learning to write from the tombstones, he
used to think that poor people emigrated to America and rich people to
heaven.

When the box was covered, Sterrin stooped and with great reverence
placed her spray of hothouse lilies on the tiny mound.  It was then
that Mark broke down completely.  He threw himself upon his knees and
sobbed; for the little one who had been born to die; for Kitty; for
himself; for the inescapable anguish of life.

Sterrin blenched.  It was terrible to hear a big man sob like that.
Thomas looked at her whitened face.  This was no place for her!  And
there would be murder over rifling the glass house for the precious
lilies, but she had insisted.  Someone, she said, must represent the
family in Mamma and Papa's absence, and do the right thing by young
Thomas's godchild.  She had shown the gardener the same look of
Christian ferocity that she had shown Mickey-the-turf when he had
stolen her sacrificial jelly.

Thomas dropped down beside Mark.  What prayers could he say?  The soul
of the little white blossom that had bloomed and faded needed no
forgiving.  He prayed that God might comfort

Kitty, lying up there spent, the new-born child in her arms.

Sterrin decided to kneel also; although she had been taught that one
did not pray for the soul of an infant.  Praying for the souls in
Purgatory always reminded her of the salts mixed with senna that she
drank once a week while Nurse Hogan held her nose and told her to
'offer it up for the souls in Purgatory'.

After the ceremony Mark hurried back to Darby's Scheme for Unproductive
Labour.  Major Darby had been shot at last night and there was a rumour
that all pay was being stopped as a reprisal.  Mark found Sir Roderick
O'Carroll there demanding the wages that had been refused to Black
Pat's widow.

"Who is responsible for that whiskey hut?"  Sir Roderick demanded.

The paymaster flushed.  From behind a voice called "That's what I
should like to know also."  It was Father Hickey.  The priest had
driven out with his friend Master Hennessey, to upbraid the men whom he
suspected of being implicated in the shooting of Darby.  The sight of
the whiskey huts grieved him.  Every Unproductive Labour Scheme had a
whiskey hut, erected by unscrupulous pay clerks to seduce money from
hungry, exhausted men who had not touched alcohol since the Temperance
Campaign.  "I wouldn't mind," said the priest to Sir Roderick, 'but it
is rank poison."

The pay clerk bridled.  "It is a harmless recipe," he said, 'it gives
the men warmth

"Harmless!"  cried the priest.  "Warms them?  Maddens them!  Kills
them!"  He produced a slip of paper.  "Listen to this," and he started
to read a recipe.  "Here," he said to the schoolmaster, "You read it,
I've left my spectacles at home."

"One gallon of fresh, fiery whiskey," intoned the schoolmaster as
though he were giving out a problem in Euclid.  "A pint of rum, two
ounces of corrosive sublimates.  Three gallons of water '

"It is whiskey like that," interrupted Father Hickey, 'that makes you
shoot your landlords."

"Aye," said the master flourishing the slip of paper, 'and it is
whiskey like that that makes you miss them."

Father Hickey and Master Hennessey drove on to the scene of the
evictions that had caused the shooting.  For a moment they thought they
must have taken the wrong turn.  A hamlet of houses that had crowned
the low hill had disappeared.

A woman and a boy came away from a heap of rubble.

"Was that your home?"  the priest asked.

"Yes, your Reverence," she whispered.  He asked was there any place to
which he could drive her."

"Only to the poorhouse, your Reverence; if they will take us."

He bade the boy hop up behind.  The boy seized the rail and swung but
fell back.  "I'm sorry, your Reverence," he apologised, 'the hunger is
on me."  The master lifted the big, gangling boy in his arms.  He was
no heavier than a baby.  "Did I ever slap you at school?"  he asked.
The boy gave a grin that made wrinkles across his face.  "You did,
faith, Master," he croaked.  "You walloped us every morning.  To make
spartans of us, you said."

The lad hastened to make amends!  "But you gave me ginger lumps,
Master," he assured him.

"Did I now?  And what betrayed me into such weakness?"

"Because I was always the first of the lads from Gortna-roe and I
always brought two sods of turf."

The master drew a check handkerchief from his tail pocket and blew
loudly.  "That's right," he said, 'terribly lazy lads they were from
Gort-na-roe, and only one sod of turf under their oxters."

A group of homeless looked up expectantly at the car but the priest
shook his head, "No room," he said.  He looked at the grasslands that
had held colonies of homes.  "No room in their own green valleys; no
room on the roadside; no room in the workhouse.  May the God of all
consolation find room for them in Heaven."

The woman shuddered with cold.  She had kept vigil all night by her
demolished home.  The priest put his surtout about her.  A newspaper
fell from its pocket.  The master took it up and glanced through it.
Well, Father," he commented, 'at least they are finding room for them
in America.  Listen to the latest emigration figures.  According to The
Times in less than five months, three hundred thousand people have left
Cove for America.  And listen to this!"  cried the master excitedly.
The Times had turned prophet!  "In one more generation"," he read, *
"the Irish Celts will be as obsolete in Ireland as the Phoenicians in
Cornwall and the Catholic religion will be as forgotten as the worship
of Astarte."  He crumpled the paper.  What do you think of that, Father
Hickey?"

The priest flicked the reins.  "Have you ever read the Religio Medici,
Master?"  he said, '"Men are lived over again"," he quoted," "the world
is now as it was in ages past."

"Bedad, Father, I think I'll write a letter to The Times and quote
that.  That will wake the prophet up.  He'll need a caput eeredormitor
after it to make him sleep."

"A what?"  said the priest.

"Oh, that's a grand word I got from Constable Humphreys."

"Sounds like him.  That fellow thinks with his jaws."  Father Hickey
reined in at his door and sighed.  His housekeeper was standing at the
door wearing a disapproving look.  Two more hungry people to be fed!
Out of what?

"Would you like me take them for a bit to my house?"  whispered the
master sympathetically.  The priest straightened his shoulders for the
fray.  "They are my guests," he insisted.  He walked them to the
door.

The housekeeper eyed them and then the priest.  "How many times have I
told your Reverence that you should christen your own child first?" she
muttered.

"How many times have I told you," he replied, 'that you should choose a
more seemly metaphor."

Roderick, on his way back from the Relief works had scarcely cleared
the bay hedge when he was greeted by the gardener with a complaint
about the lilies.

He stormed into the drawing-room.  Sterrin was playing with Dominic.
Margaret was bent over her embroidery.  "Will you kindly restrain your
impulses to strew the graves of the dead with lilies from my glass
houses," Roderick shouted.  "I've given my trees to make coffins; my
food; gone without rents; but I'm damned if I'll supply funeral
lilies!"

Sterrin stood up respectfully to answer the charge.  Papa must indeed
be angry if he would curse a damn before Mamma.  "The lilies were for
the grave of young Thomas's godchild."

"Young Thomas!"  her father exploded.  "Where the devil did he get a
godchild?"

Sterrin proceeded again to give chapter and verse of Mark and Kitty's
love-story that had ended in the Wedding Mass that young Thomas had
served.

"The lovely girl in the scarlet cloak," said her mamma, 'the one we saw
at the fair?"

Yes, Mamma."  Sterrin pressed home her advantage.  "And her baby
Theobald, Thomas's godchild, was born the same day as Dominic."

Margaret's eyes went towards Roderick but met no response.

"And Theobald," continued Sterrin, 'died of hunger but they got a new
baby this morning.  I thought that you would not like the old one to be
thrown into the Dead Pit Margaret's wince cut through but Sterrin
forged on to her final point.  "After all, Papa, young Thomas is of our
household."

Roderick's brows shot up.  Despite her recent display of fear his small
daughter was indeed cast in the heroic mould.  Of our household!  "All
right, Sterrin," he yielded.  "Noblesse oblige!  But in future will you
confine your tributes to primroses."

"In faith, Papa, I prefer primroses.  Let us hope that the new baby
will not need flowers."

Margaret said that she would take Nurse Hogan and drive to see this
Kitty.  Roderick was once more struck by the shape of his wife's face.
It looked as if it might have been outlined by one of those little
heart-shaped patty tins for cakes.  And the rich magnolia tint of her
skin had turned lime white.

"You must not overtire yourself," he said.  It was the first remark
that he had addressed to her since the Ryan tragedy.  Fatigue and the
continuous association with suffering had drained his voice of emotion;
but she thought his dull tone meant sarcasm.

"I don't mind "overtiring" myself.  But I have no intention of hunting
out distress that is hidden under the silly pretence of genteel ness
Her breathing made the bugles and bells on her key belt tinkle.  "No
hardship that I have known of has gone unaided.  No one who comes to me
is ever refused, and mon Dieu, they come to me all the time."  Her eyes
were two brown blobs of anger.  "Your--protegee, or whatever she is to
you--allowed her husband and children to die for the sake of her
bourgeois pride '

"Stop!"  he shouted.  "I won't allow '

"Hein!"  She ignored his interruption.  Td ask for food if f were
hungry."  She whisked out in a whirl of hoops and jingles

"I believe that you would," he said to the door she slammed behind
her.

Sterrin was still in the room; too paralysed to move.  PaPa shouting at
Mamma; and Mamma shouting back!  Rodericks

conscience smote him at the sight of her fear.  He put his arm about
her and soothed her as he had done when she had awakened from the
nightmare.

"Papa," she breathed in an awed whisper.  "Did Mrs.  Black Pat really
do that?  Did she let her husband and little children die?"

He found himself defending Nonic to his child.  He told her what he had
managed to glean; that Nonic had sought help from her parents but they
had been ill at the time and had died, one after the other; that she
did not know that Black Pat had the lung disease.  It was deep in his
branch of the Ryans; in his children, too.  A few days' shortage would
finish them.  "And," said Sterrin placatingly, 'there is a curse on
her, Mrs.  Stacey says because she stole the Parish Priest's horse to
run away with Sterrin flinched.  Her papa had roared "Stop!"  at her
the way he had at Mamma.

"Don't ever repeat that sinful nonsense again!"  He softened at the
sight of her face.  "Promise me, Sterrin," he said more gently.

As he was leaving the room, she said: "The De Laceys would not admit
that they were hungry either but I met Bunzy this morning at our secret
meeting place oh, I never brought food to her, Papa."

He stopped dead.  What was the child saying?  The De Laceys hungry!
What was going on around him?  His neighbours in need; his foster-kin
dying of hunger while he was succouring strangers!  Like the
shoemaker's family that goes unshod.

"They are not hungry any more now that Mr.  Lubey has bought their
estate for a cucumber estate.  Bunzy's Papa made her promise not to
tell anyone and Bunzy made me promise '

Out of the chaos Roderick recalled someone, somewhere, saying that
there was a risk that Phineas De Lacey's place might be liable for sale
under this new Encumbered Estates Act that was about to pass into law.
An act that would give the court the right to sell land that had been
in a family for centuries.

"Bunzy said that Mr.  Lubey would prefer Kilsheelin Castle, but '

Her papa let out a roar that sent the chandelier swinging and singing.
"By the living God!  Would he!  He'll never warm his a- Sterrin saw her
papa's mouth open to say the shocking Word but instead he just said
'/IJi-hem."

When the door had banged after him and the chandelier now danced to its
own singing she put her hand over her mouth to

cover the snicker, "Fancy Papa knouring a word like that

Roderick went down the park at a mad gallop, then wheeled.  There was
someone he was to see but he couldn't think who or where?  He faced
Thuckeen into the niche where the wall had been but partially restored.
Why didn't I build that up long ago!"  He always asked himself the same
question when he faced the jump.  And always when Thuckeen bunched her
dainty hooves and soared over he was answered and restored by a sense
of exaltation.  He looked back as he landed and caught the quick
glimpse of turret and roof that the niche afforded.  So the gombeen man
had dared to raise his eyes to them.  By God!  "Yup Thuckeen!"

When he reached Black Pat's empty house, he realised his mission. Nonic
was still at Mrs.  Kennedy-Sherwin's of course, and the three surviving
children.  Her brother, a doctor and his wife, would be at Mrs. 
Kennedy-Sherwin's this afternoon.  Roderick wanted to see what the
brother was prepared to do for his sister and her orphans before taking
action himself.  He reined a moment and looked at the shut house.  The
Chinese roses bloomed on unconcernedly.  Life and death were the same
to them.  They bloomed both summer and winter beneath the window.

One morning a few weeks later Roderick, in a cape-collared coat and
holding a wide-brimmed hat, unbolted his dressing room door.  That coat
gives him an air, thought Margaret.  She was sitting up in bed sipping
cafe-au-lait.  Or does he give it an air?  Anyway he had come back to
her!  She pursed her lips to check their smiling.

"I merely wished to tell you that I am off to Cork and shall not be
back until tomorrow.  I am despatching some tenants to America.  Young
Thomas will accompany me."

"But you despatched them a week ago!"  There had been a general exodus
from the estates of Kilsheelin and Lord Temple town and Lord Cullen.
The three landlords had assisted with passage money and travelled with
the emigrants to the port of embarkation.

"Mrs.  Ryan and her children are going to America with Mark Hennessey
and his wife."

Her cup went down with a bang.  "Is this necessary?"  He misunderstood
her.

"Mrs.  Ryan is unable to work the farm and too poor to employ
labour."

She shrugged aside his explanation.  "Is it necessary for you to see
them off personally?"

"I might remind you that this particular family has a claim upon
mine."

You don't haf to remind me' she panted, going foreign in her anger,
'that Mrs.  Ryan has a claim on you."

He was walking over to kiss her goodbye but instead turned and strode
from the room.

CHAPTER 26

Nonic raised her foot to ascend the gangway.  A bell sounded.  It made
a clanging in her heart.  Was it too late to turn back?  Now!  Before
this foot took the step?  He had paid their passage money; had sent
money ahead to a New York bank.  She glanced over her shoulder to where
he had halted to speak to a dandified gentleman, with shapely legs
cased in black silk stockings.  She knew that face, beautiful as a
woman's: Father Matthew's!  He had pleaded, she had heard, for her
forgiveness with her father when he visited his relative's estate near
her home; had tried to put down the terrible story that the priest had
failed to reach a dying person because she had stolen his horse.  Her
father had placed the finest horse in his stables at the priest's
disposal.  He had made all the right gestures--except the divine
gesture of forgiveness to his daughter.

A porter with head bent forward under a laden sack jostled her
backwards.  She touched the sack to steady herself.  "What is in it?"
she asked suddenly.

"Oats," he told her.  Oats!  All the seas of the world tumbled about
her heart.  Nausea awoke in her body.  She stumbled forward.  She
couldn't get away quickly enough.  "Three grains of oats!"  She didn't
realise that she had spoken aloud.  A firm hand took hold of her and
led her on to the deck.

"Do you wish to change your mind?  It is not too late."

She looked so young and unprotected to go out into that void with her
little ones and there was me nance that chilled Roderick in the way the
ocean had started to wave its white locks.  He had asked her this
before--if she wished to change her mind--and she had answered him
repeatedly that no ocean was wide enough to put between her and the
hungry land that had devoured her loved ones.  But as she looked up
into his eyes now she knew that now more than ever she must' get
away.

"Tell me one thing before I go," she said.  The stretched look had gone
from her lips.  They had resumed their shapely cur250

ving.  While she spoke he watched the glancing movement of her perfect
teeth.  "Do you still think that it was I--that the children It was
torture still to speak of them, 'that my pride caused their death?"

He became aware of the terrible words these lips were forming.  Did he
think?  Good God, had he said such a thing to this little blossom?  If
he had it must have been in the delirium of his own strain and horror
that night.  He started to reassure her.

"I did seek help--from my people.  It came too late '

He urged her to forget the past.  He almost said that the past was a
mistake.  As if one could dismiss a past that was charged with the
weight of those four lives!  But whatever the past, there was, he felt,
a positive future ahead of her.  There must be; not just because of
these strangely beautiful eyes; not even because of the spirit that had
endured for so long.  Long before the famine had added to her
privations, she had had an indestructible reserve of the quality of
feminine seductive ness that would always, everywhere, enlist men to
her defence.

You belong with the future.  Remember that--Nonic."  The sound of her
name faltering from his lips filled her with a wistfulness that was a
separate thing from that other all-pervading sense of sorrow that never
left her.

Roderick suddenly realised that she was parted from the Hennesseys.
They were in the Steerage penned up with the crying children and
keening ancients.  Above the din Mark suddenly heard his name called.
Sir Roderick O'Carroll arranged with one of the ship's officers for
Mark and Kitty to join the First Class.

Then it was the final moment; when all the impersonal things are said:
You have that address?  You are sure you have enough of money?  You
will let me know the moment you arrive?  But all the time inside, other
thoughts are jostling in a panic to get out; to utter personal things.
Like tiny stars, the brief seconds that had brought their lives
together broke and illumined his memory.  He longed to tell her that
life had not quenched their light; he bent over her.

"Nonic!"

"Rody!"

A bugle sounded and a wild lament rose from the quay side

The Hennesseys came aloft, dazzled by the sudden light.  For an insane
moment Kitty had the impression that Sir Roderick

 O'Carroll was kissing Mrs.  Black Pat Ryan goodbye.  Then he vanished
in the throng.

Young Thomas, standing on the dock, saw Mark and Kitty reappear.  He
craned eagerly over those in front.  He longed to call out something;
to go on talking in a link of words to hold them to him a while longer;
but nothing would rise out of the arid desolation that was within
him--desolation and joy, too.  He touched his cheek.  He had never
known a human caress until the moment when he had reached out his hand
to Kitty and instead of taking it she had flung her arm about him and
pressed him to her and on the cheek that she had kissed she had left a
tear.

A child groped past him and staggered.  He steadied her and a woman
murmured thanks and told him that the child had been partially blinded
when the town of Loughrea in Galway had been set afire by the Big Wind.
From every part of Ireland the emigrants continued to arrive, some
well-dressed, some gentry already beggared by the famine.  They gazed
with haggard wonder at the foodstuffs piled along the quay side for
shipment abroad; thousands of tons of grain were being loaded on to
ships for England.  Beside the emigrant ship a military transport ship
was being provisioned for the West Indies.  Emigrants watched the hams
hauled aboard by the hundred, the firkins of butter.  English soldiers
guarded the wagons of corn grown by the starving emigrants; herds of
cattle were driven aboard; even the skins of the asses that the
emigrants had used for food were being shipped.  They thought the sight
was a progression of the food dreams that had haunted their existence
night and day; a phantasmagoria of food stretching out before their
eyes into the infinity of the ocean.  A thin foreign voice called over
their bedevilled sense for 'the cream for the officers' table!"  Cream
in scientifically sealed tins went aloft so that the officers would
have fresh cream on the high seas!  Was the like ever heard?

"Where did this food come from?"  It was a man from the fertile county
of Wexford who spoke.  Wexford men providently equipped for American
employment with the tools of their calling gazed unbelievingly at the
English soldier's food.  Where did it come from?  What country could
produce such food?  And when they were told, their faces lost that look
born of a submission to a calamity that they had deemed an act of God.
There was a buzz of angry comment.  These men had endured

longer than the other emigrants.  For, strangely, it had been in their
own fertile Wexford with its people noted for husbandry, that the
potato had first failed.  They half turned and looked whence they had
come, as though they thought to return and demand their rights.

Father Matthew, who attended all the emigrant departure ships,
comforting those who had taken the pledge for him in all parts of the
country during his campaigns, watched them take the last four steps. On
their faces he could see the mutiny of their hearts.  He murmured,
"Caelum non animum mutant qui trans mare current."

Thomas, standing sideways from the priest, his eyes glued to the ship,
caught the words and half understood them.  Something, he thought,
about those who must go over the seas, something to do with those chaps
going batty at the sight of all that food and dragging the bitterness
of what it had conveyed to them across the world to another land.

He took a frantic step forward.  The boat had started to move and Kitty
called out to him.  Beside him the priest's Latin still sounded, but
now it spoke a blessing and Thomas fought clear of the surge that
blocked his throat.  His own voice startled him as it went across the
space of water: "Sursum cor da

The clear, brave cry startled Roderick too as he made his way towards
his knife boy.  Roderick was amazed at the vibrancy more than the
words, that had escaped in a kind of cadence from the voice of subdued
servitude.  But he stared at crowds pressed against the railings of the
deck, hoping for a glimpse of Noni, but he could not find her tiny
figure.  He felt a strange sense of finality, as if a large pan of his
life had been cut away.  He stepped forward, raised his hat, holding it
high above his head and remained immobile and unseeing as the ship
moved away from the harbour.  Not until Father Matthew touched his
shoulder the second time and asked if he would share his luncheon did
Roderick return to his surroundings.

CHAPTER 27

Margaret looked up with an expression of delight.  Lieutenant
Fitzharding-Smith had come spanking into the drawing-room.  He dropped
a kiss on Sterrin's nose, a box of chocolates on her lap then bowed low
over her mamma's hand.  It was ages since he had been here.  And it
would be ages before she would see him again.  He was leaving for
India!

Margaret, when he told her, forgot to withdraw her hand.  All those
years she had taken the friendship of this charming young officer so
much for granted.  And now when life was so grey and stark he was going
away.

"To India!"  she cried in dismay.  "Oh, Basil, I shall miss you
terribly."

No one heard Roderick come into the room.  He had some idea of
surprising her; of slipping up behind her at the embroidery frame and
throwing his arms around her.  On the way homewards he had decided that
this childish situation must go no further.  Two people concentrating
on petty grievances in the midst of a people's agony.  He had not
waited to remove his cloak.  He was still holding his beaver.

He went on holding it.  One could scarcely throw reconciling arms
around a wife who was clinging to another man's hand assuring him that
she would miss him terribly.

"I trust," he said coldly, 'that I am not intruding."

"Don't worry," she said, with matching coldness, and then she
remembered that she, too, had planned a different greeting.  She had
planned to run and kiss him and afterwards try to make him understand
the way things had befallen on that terrible afternoon of the Ryan
tragedy.  But here he was as unapproachable as ever!

"Basil is going to India," she explained briefly.

"Oh!  When are you off, Fitz?"  Roderick would like to have sounded
more regretful but he was conscious only of his everlasting fatigue.
Anyway, departures had lost their former significance.

The Lieutenant explained that his draft had been ordered to
yizagapatam in a fortnight.  We leave for Cork tomorrow."  As he looked
round the room after Roderick had left to remove his travelling
clothes, his thoughts went back to the first day that he entered it and
saw Lady O'Carroll, in a 'robe de style' with little bows running like
steps of stairs from the waist to the neck.  His first impression had
been a beautiful girl in a beautiful room.  But he had made some
facetious remark and she had not liked it.  The brittle badinage of the
garrison had left him unready for such superlative graciousness blended
with the naturalness of a pleasing child.  When the lovely baby had
been brought and placed in her arms he had thought of her as a madonna.
Later when she had lain, pale and terrified, amid the broken glass from
the chandelier after the Whiteboys' raid, his heart yearned for her. 
She had become his ideal of womanhood but, despite the smirks of the
garrison set, it had never occurred to him to contemplate an illicit
flirtation.

He sighed, "I'm going to miss all this.  You have no idea how much you
have meant to me since that first afternoon that I came here."

Margaret fought her tears as she bade him farewell.  She watched him
ride down the avenue until he passed out of sight.  Roderick stood
behind her.  "How could you?"  she sobbed.  "Hinting and gibing!  He
shan't trouble you again.  You might have been generous

Roderick had seen too many tears in the past months to be moved by
those in his wife's beautiful eyes.

"I might remind you," he said coldly, 'that there was little generosity
shown to those who left here yesterday to face a grimmer voyage.  But
rest assured that Lieutenant FitzhardingSmith will travel comfortably.
Fresh cream for the officers' coffee on the high seas!  By gad, what
will they think of next?  Forgive me, I must not intrude upon the
sacredness of your grief."

He strode to the dining-room and pulled the bell rope  He was hungry.
Lunch at Father Matthew's had been sparse.  He sat before the dark
expanse of Domingo mahogany, weary and dispirited.  Suddenly he put his
head down on his arms and as he did so he experienced the sentient
feeling of familiarity; and then he remembered.  The night of the Big
Wind he had sat like this; in this posture; feeling the same, racked
and drained; life

an arid desolation.  Father Matthew had said at lunch that the famine
was another big wind only that its blast was foetid lifce the simoon1
of the desert.  Roderick recalled the invigorating uplift and
resurgence that the Liberator and Father Matthew had brought to the
land.  The famine had killed all that.  It had tainted both earth and
people.  He thought of the separate hell of each father and mother. How
could we hope to escape?  We are tainted, Margaret and I. The Big Wind
was the hard's 'wild huntsman' careering on his eight-footed steed. 
But the famine was--a serpent, leaving a wake of slime.

Sterrin, too, watched with sadness as Lieutenant Firzharding Smith rode
down the avenue.  On a sudden she streaked across the park and jumped
up on to the gap in the wall.  He saw the red head pop up in the gap as
he rode past the Scis Road and looked back for a last look where the
castle came into view again.  On a sudden he, too, turned in towards
the gap, reached up and took her face between his hands.  "Goodbye, you
sweet child," he said.  "When next we meet I shall have to stand on a
chair to see Miss Sterrin O'Carroll, the belle of the county, go past."
When the last hoof-beat had died away she turned forlornly and looked
towards the castle.  Everyone was leaving.  Suddenly she remembered
young Thomas.  Her gloom lightened.  There was always young Thomas.

He was in his room.  When he had returned after taking leave of Kitty
and Mark he felt that he must get away from the kitchen atmosphere.
This was one of the times when he was conscious of not belonging there.
But then, he belonged nowhere.  He turned on the pillow to look through
the window at the distant hillside speck that had been for so long his
focal point of outlook; up there he had known complete and easeful
equality with his fellow beings, A knock shattered his reflections. 
The devil whip them!  The Sir himself said that I was to have a rest!

His pull at the door brought Sterrin inwards, clinging to the knob.
Sterrin let out a gusty sigh.  "I'm feeling terribly dovroanach," she
said.  Thomas's sigh mingled with hers.  "I'm feeling dovroanaoh
myself," he said.

"Did you know," she asked him, 'that the De Laceys are going to America
and Lieutenant Fitzharding-Smith to India?"

1 Ahor, dust-laden wind of the Arabian desert.

He didn't know.  Tiredness came back in waves.  He sat on the side of
the bed but remembered his manners and stood up again.  "Is Master
Hubert going too?"

She nodded.  "All of them.  All our friends are going; yours and mine.
Soon, young Thomas, we shall have no one left but each other."

He looked at her silently.  She was getting long and leggy.  It might
be the famine, of course.  But it might also be that she had begun to
grow up.  Another two or three inches would make the world of
difference; the difference between her world and his.  But what was it
that she had said?  No one left but each other?  A warm glow spread
through him.  "Miss Sterrin," he cried, no longer dovroanach, no longer
even tired.  Your papa said that I was to have the rest of the evening
off.  Maybe Mr.  O'Driscoll would allow me to exercise the old Rajah.
We could ride to Lissnastreenagh.  The blossoms are out."

As they cantered across the fields their youthful sorrows went floating
off into the May sunshine.  They dismounted at the fairy rath and
looked down.  It was eerily beautiful.  The trees grew in a perfect
circle around the edge, their branches so closely woven that they
formed a flowered canopy overhead.  The floor of the hollow was covered
with pink and white blossoms.  All the time as they gazed petals kept
dropping in a snow of fragrance.  By June the bowl-shaped hollow would
be filled to the brink.  Thomas reached to break off a stem, but
Sterrin gripped his wrist.  "It is unlucky to touch a blossom," she
warned.

"That is superstition," he said.  "How can one avoid touching them?
Look."  A blossom had fallen on his shoulder.

"That's different," she said, "The hard says that if a blossom falls on
you it is a sign that you will marry your true love.  But if you pick
one yourself, it will bring you bad luck."

Young Thomas sniffed disdainfully.  "The hard lives in a dream world of
pishoguerie."  He was holding the Rajah's reins over his shoulder but
as he removed them to remount he took care not to dislodge the blossom
that had fallen there.

On their return, she pulled up suddenly by the side of the stream.
"Look!"  she cried.  "The fly is risen!"  He reined in beside her to
watch the first flight of the mayfly soaring up dizzy with light and
air after the long, strange life beneath the darkness of the waters.
She flicked the reins.  "I must hurry and tell Papa."  There was a
traditional glory in being the first with that ritual

cry, "The fly is risen!"

"I'm afraid said Thomas dully, 'that there is only one cry now that
your papa can heed."  Involuntarily she slowed.  Even she understood
that everything in life seemed to be subordinated to the unceasing
famine cry, Ta ocr as orm!  The hunger is on me!

Near home they came upon another rare sight.  The hard, wrapped in his
saffron cloak, was pacing a plateau above a small tributary of the
trout stream.  "And where were ye, children?"  he asked.  When they
told him he peered at Thomas.  "Ye have no call going there, a comely
youth like yourself, O'Carroll Og.  You might be spirited away by the
Speir-bhean."  He merged off into a spate of words that held more of
dreaming sound than of sense.  In spite of themselves, its witchery
beat gently into the young minds of his listeners.  Out of its cadence
came the likeness of the Fairy Queen, the Speir-bhean.  Beautiful in
every way she was.  Her hair golden, flowing in trembling waves to the
ground; her eyebrows a curved stroke, deadly as an arrow; her skin
white as the foam of a wild lake.  The beauty of her eyes had laid a
hundred men in weakness.

Thomas, feeling in danger of being drowsed into a weakness himself,
stemmed the flow of vowel music.  "We won't go there again, Bard."

"That's right, O'Carroll Og.  Let ye take yer divarsion here on the
Hill of The Embroidering Women where the Bride's price used to be paid.
There is water here when ye race yer horses."  He was looking dqwn into
the stream that had been there when the great Aonachs of bygone
centuries had been held here and the horses and great hounds had raced
on its banks and the Levantine merchants had waited patiently to sell
their jewels to the ladies from all the thirteen castles of the
O'Carrolls, who were contesting for the embroidery prize that the High
King himself would bestow.

"The poor hard," commented Sterrin when they were out of earshot.
"Isn't it funny the way he mixes you up with the family?  He is
doting."  She cantered ahead and cleared the bay hedge.  Thomas looked
after her.  She might have remembered that the Rajah could not take the
jump.

"Why didn't you wait for me?"  he said when he reached the yard.

She raised her black brows at him and dismounted without

answering.  He flushed and stooped to unfasten the horse's girths. She
came over and looked down at him.  "Isn't it funny the way the hard can
never remember your name?  He remembers everyone else's."

He went on unloosening straps, then from underneath the horse he said,
"It is extremely funny."  He rose to his feet.  You see," he continued
as he led off the horse.  "I happen to be the only one who has no name
for him to remember.1

CHAPTER 28

For the first time in his memory, the Scout had missed the arrival of
the mail coach on the birthday of the reigning monarch.  He had felt so
strangely weak that he had been compelled to send his son to deputise.
And the spalpeen hadn't gleaned an iota of news.

"I have to see to everything myself," the Scout told Constable
Humphreys as he made his way to the inn.

The ostler at the inn could tell him nothing but news of the plague.
"Thirty died above yesterday."  The ostler nodded towards the fever
hospital.  The Scout turned from him.  "Do you call that "newses'V When
he had moved on the ostler remembered something.  He removed his straw
from his mouth and called out.  "There is a cake at the coffee house
might be worthy of your interest."

"Cake!"  The Scout halted and lashed the fellow's insolence.  Cake!  He
that had been first with the nation's most momentous new ses that had
bribed a wagoner with a golden sovereign to bring him the first word of
the Liberator's sentence!  That had been first out of Kilsheelin Castle
to carry to Templetown the new ses of his release!  He drew his sleeve
across his eyes.

The ostler uncovered.  There would be no thunder in the House of
Commons today.  The Liberator had made his last speech.  In a voice
scarce more than a cracked whisper he had pleaded for food for his
starving people.  The desolation of his land that he was powerless to
alleviate was slowly tearing O'ConnelFs heart asunder.  He had stood in
the House a drooping figure of pathos as he stretched out trembling
arms in supplication '... I call upon you to recollect that I predict
with the sincerest conviction that one-fourth of her population will
perish unless you come to her relief...."  It was his final effort.  A
few days later he was dead.

The ostler knew those words like his prayers; like a holy prophecy that
had come true.  *Vo, vo, to the great man that's

gone.  May the angels spread his bed in Heaven!"

"Amen!"  said the Scout.  "And you offer me cake!"  He turned very
slowly.

"Faith, I didn't," cried the astonished ostler.

"Figuratively speaking," said the Scout.  "Not," he continued, out of
hearing, 'that I'd object strongly if a hunk were offered to me just
now--in substance."

The coffee house was deserted.  Half the officers were down with
plague, the waiter told him.  None of the gentry had come.  The Scout
turned away.  Twas amazing the weight of this old hat of his.  He had
gone a few paces when he turned nonchalantly.  Was there any special
sort of food ~ n the menu today; a special cake or the like?  He wasn't
going to ask direct about the cake, the ostler might have been having
him on.

The waiter told him that a duke had got his cook to make a birthday
cake for the Queen and she couldn't reach on eatin' it.  It had been
put up for auction and knocked down to the Colonel of the Ninety-third
and he over in London oh holidays.  He had sent it back ahead of him to
have a raffle here today for the famine.  He thought the usual crowd
would be here.  The waiter drew back a screen and revealed the tallest
cake the Scout had ever seen.

"By the powers of wars!"  Weariness fell away from the Scout.  "Sure
the little lady--no disrespect to her Majesty--would need a ladder to
climb up to that."  It was level with the top of his hardy bastard.

Five feet eight in height it was, the waiter told him proudly, and nine
feet six in circumference.  The statues round the first tier were the
Nine Muses.  The top tier represented Mount Parnassus.

"And the lad sittin' on it, holdin' that yoke like a harp, is called
Apollo.  Belike he's the Queen's Bard."

"Belike," said the Scout scathingly.

Next morning the Vicar found the Scout in a classical delirium.

"God save you, Mr.  Debenham," he raved.  "Will you have a piece of
Terpsichore.  No, I don't blame you.  Sure your poor throat is burning
and she is terribly sugary."

The Vicar lifted him on to the from of his horse and rode with him to
the hospital.  "Take him to the quarry," the doctor ordered.  The Vicar
continued to stand at the ward door holding

the Scout's bony weight, doubting his own hearing.

"Yes, the quarry," repeated the doctor.  "Out there!"  He waved
impatiently in the direction of the window.  There's no more room in
the hospital."

The Scout peered up at the grass and lichened wall of the quarry that
rose up sheer to meet a dappled sky.  "Apollo with his lyre," he
croaked.  It was young Thomas, poised on the brim of the quarry with
prong suspended, after dropping down some of the straw that it was now
his daily chore to bring to the hospital to help the shortage.  He
gazed in amazement at the extraordinary spectacle of the Scout being
lowered into the quarry by the Vicar.  To lie sick in the open quarry
1

It was the first piece of new ses to interest the kitchen for a long
time.  Men in fever put out to lie in the open air!  Twas as bad as an
eviction.

"Even cattle," said the butler, 'are brought in from the fields in
sickness."

That night after the kitchen rosary he added the Scout's name to the
long list of Souls to be prayed for.  But next day when Thomas returned
with a special load of straw for the quarry, the Scout's soul was still
there.  So was his body.  It was there until it was able to clamber out
embodying its own incredible new ses a living legend, the Scout Doyle
who had been put to die with other plague victims in a quarry outside
the hospital!  Who throve and recovered--the others too--while men died
hourly in the reeking wards across the yard!

Sir Roderick stopped dead at the spectacle of the big white structure
that towered from the dining-table.  "What in Heaven's name is that?"
he exploded.  Lieutenant Fitzharding-Smith, Margaret informed him, had
purchased hundreds of tickets for a cake raffled for the Relief Fund.
He had directed before he left that if one of them were lucky the cake
was to be delivered to Kilsheelin Castle.

"And who is going to eat that--that iced orgy?"  he asked.

"I thought we might give a treat to the tenants' children."  She could
have bitten her tongue.  Instantly his bitter expression told her that
he was thinking of those three dead children; seeing them as he had
last seen them!

"Quite in the Marie Antoinette tradition," he said at last.  "A child
with an empty stomach would prefer a hunk of that

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man, that tx ^

him as an interloper His face clouded and he threw the quill from him.
Black Pat had been a born, hereditary tenant; sinew and bone of the
soil of Kilsheelin.

Surprisingly, Roderick found himself enjoying the afternoon.  It seemed
eons since he had savoured the grace and charm of social life.  The
young girls in their crinolines and sashes and flower-laden bonnets
looked like a garland of flowers around the cake.  They oohed and ahed
over it and strained on tiptoe to see the muses.  Three of the Delaney
girls, despite the short notice, had arrived almost first.  From one
Bianconi driver to another the invitation had sped from the lodge gates
of the castle to the lodge gates of Moormount in Queen's County within
an hour and a half.

The hard was enraptured with the cake.  He expounded the Gaelic version
of the muses to the girls.  "Nine Brightnesses carrying nine lanterns.
Only maybe," he said drolly, 'the great Queen's cook hadn't enough
sugar left to make the lanterns."  He looked about him like a naughty
child to see if anyone was looking, then broke off a toe from the
dancing foot of Terpsichore.  He murmured, "You're a sweet little
colleen," sucking the toe, 'but you won't be so nimble now, gra'gal."
This was the way food should be served; a cake like a snow mountain; a
whole side of beef; a pyramid of potatoes.  "Too much talk there is of
famine," he said to the girls.  "Now I remember the Great Scarcity of
Seventeen Roderick gave him an affectionate shove.

"Go and play for the guests, Bard."

The old man sat under the cake and winked up at Apollo.  "Yourself and
your sugar stick lyre!  Listen to this for sweetness,"

Margaret was in billowing white with a great white hat tied beneath her
chin.  Suddenly Roderick experienced that sentient feeling of having
relived this scene before, an afternoon of brilliant sunshine; Margaret
in bridal white planning a Belgian honeymoon!  He walked towards her.
And that tune the hard was playing It was the tune the piper had played
when they had watched the dance at the crossroads; and, later, tragic
little Nonic had flaunted her saucy tune on the violin.  Where was she?
Where were the boys and girls, the long-haired Naiad?  Was it only ten
months since he had listened to the piper play that thing the hard was
now strumming?  And 'twixt the two playings of the lovely melody a
million people had died of hunger.

Tiredness flowed back.  His head felt strangely light.  Mrs.
Kennedy-Sherwin looked over her shoulder and drew in the spread of her
skirt from that of Mrs.  Appleyard with an inviting gesture.  He was
glad to ease himself down between the billows of their crinolines.

Roderick thought how entrancing was the line of cheek and throat that
showed beneath his wife's hat brim.  He i.just tell her He must tell
her.  But he never wanted to stand up again.  How blissful to sit for
ever in this sun-drenched terrace!  A low diapason filled his ears, not
sound but vibration, like the buzzing of hundreds of bees.  What on
earth was Hegarty doing?  Standing over him with a sword in his hand?
Of course--the damned cake!  He must cut it.  He struggled to his feet.
His body had become an automaton, blindly obeying some inner force that
drove relentlessly.  As he raised the sword that the butler had handed
to him, a movement caught his eye.  Only the cuckoo had that curious
habit of slipping over a garden wall.  Someone used to say something
about that habit; someone in his childhood.  Funny how many of these
childhood associations obtruded of late.  Not funny!  So many of them
were connected with Black Pat.  It was Black Pat who used to say that
if the garden wall were raised a foot the cuckoo would be trapped and
good fortune would come to the garden.  The government ought to have
raised the nation's sea walls against the cuckoo merchant ships.  "The
cuckoo," he cried to Margaret, pointing his sword towards the wall. 
But the bird had slithered out of sight.  Margaret saw nothing.  She
merely heard the terrible thing her husband was saying. "My dear," he
was saying, "I ought to have raised the wall.  Then there might have
been no No famine was what he meant to say but on a sudden he
exclaimed.  "Why then there might have been no need for Fitz's cake!"

He brought the sword down through the cake, unconscious of the sudden
silence, unconscious of his wife's white face.  She did not possess his
lore of wild life.  But she did know that the cuckoo was the symbol of
unfaithfulness.  The guests knew it.  It was in their faces.  Even Lady
Cullen who adored Roderick, thought that he had taken leave of his
senses and publicly accused his wife of cuckolding him with the young
officer who had presented the cake.

Roderick unconscious of the drama, was pr ising off sugar muses with
his sword tip.  Catherine Delaney went all coy and

blushing when he handed her Erate and explained that she was the
female of Eros, the God of Love.  "What shall I do with it?"  she
murmured, though everyone knew she would put it under her pillow. "Keep
it for a fast day," he suggested.  "No, wait!"  He took back Eros and
gave her another muse.

With Eros poised on the sword tip he crossed to Margaret.  "My dear,"
he said making a knightly obeisance, 'the very young do not fully
appreciate the significance of Love's symbols."  He was offering her
again his own love; but she made no move to accept the figurine.  Her
face was as white as though the sword tip had pricked her heart.

The little figure toppled from the blade and fell to the ground.
Roderick rose wearily.  She was keeping up the bitterness!  And in
front of this crowd!  He resumed his seat and closed his eyes.

Sterrin stood forlornly on the empty terrace and watched young Thomas
and Hegarty carry away the cake.  Where the sword had cut, a brown gash
bled a trail of crumbs and fruit.  Hungry as she was for sweets,
Sterrin had no craving for that monstrous confection.  She had a
strange feeling of being grown up.  It had something to do with the
strange look on her papa's face.  Sterrin had not known that sorrow
could come like that into the midst of fun and brightness.  She was sad
as she waved goodbye to the Delaney girls.  Would there ever again be a
truly gay party at Kilsheelin?

CHAPTER 29

Mr.  Delaney was dead, struck down by famine fever.  Young Thomas was
ordered to dress in livery with a mourning swathe about his cockaded
hat.  Big John and Mike O'Driscoll, with blunderbusses concealed, had
to journey for a grain consignment.  Young Thomas must supply the
ceremonial courtesy for Mr.  Delaney's funeral.  It was the strangest
funeral Thomas had seen; even of famine funerals.  Five of the Delaney
girls were ill with fever.  Fever was raging madly about the district.
The Delaney's nearest neighbours were all down.  The three daughters
who had been at the tea party at Kilsheelin still wearing their muslin
gowns, only sketchily covered by cloaks, looked strange.  And strangest
of all was the absence of even one clergyman to breathe a prayer at the
graveside.  The curate had collapsed, plague-stricken, between the
hospital beds where he had been administering the viaticum to the
dying.  The parish priest was struggling single-handed night and day.

Mrs.  Delaney looked vaguely about her.  She caught the movement of a
jose-coloured sash as it fluttered from a cloak.  She moved forward and
someone said, "Make way for the widow."  She made way with the others
until she realised that they meant herself.  She was the widow.  She,
who had deplored all her married life that she was nothing but a widow
because Rodney had been so--so gently unobtrusive!  She forced back the
tears because there was something grievously lacking.  Not just the
absence of relatives and friends, of tenants and workmen-except those
three helping Ned-Rua with the burden that four must carry.  It wasn't
even the absence of mourning black, Syrilla looked grotesque in a black
riding coat over the rose sprigged white gown she had worn at the tea
party.  There were but two figures in black; one was her kinsman, Rody
O'Carroll.  The other looked like an O'Carroll too.  But there was no
black figure wearing the white linen bandillero of mourning across
his

shoulders.  No priest to breathe a prayer.  "Rody," she whispered,
'the Latin!"

Roderick swayed out from a trance.  "De profundis clamavi ad te
Domine," he prayed, with a sort of blind obedience that carried him for
about two lines.  His voice trailed away from the void of his mind into
the one that gaped at his feet.

Then out of the silence another voice took up the Latin words, "Si
iniquitates observaveris do mine Domine, quis sustinebit."  No one
seemed to notice that it was a scullery boy who was murmuring that cry
from the depths on behalf of the scholarly son of Sir Dowling Delaney.
Cathleen Delaney stifled the recollection of some poem the O'Carroll's
hard had quoted yesterday --something about a chieftain who had stood
like a lance uplifted.

Roderick, after the ceremony wanted to ask the girls to come back to
Kilsheelin with him.  But already they were rushing back to their
plague-stricken sisters.

"It is sweltering there, Rody/ their mother said as she answered his
queries.  Thomas, holding open the brougham door as erect as 'a lifted
lance', heard his own voice saying, Tut them in the quarry."  Roderick
explained about the Scout and the others who, when struck down with the
plague, had lain in the quarry in open air and had been cured.  The
idea didn't shock Mrs.  Delaney.  It appealed to her sense of the
out-of-doors, but Ned-Rua was horrified.  "Miss Katie," he urged,
'you're not yourself.  If you do such a thing I'll--I'll Automatically
she finished his oft-repeated threat.  "You'll leave me in the
morning."

Ned turned away and wiped his eyes.  "I'll never leave you, Miss
Katie."

On the way home in the brougham Roderick dozed.  He awakened with a
jolt.  Thomas had just made the discovery that he was asleep himself
and in a panic had chucked the unoffending horse to a standstill.  His
master, still fuddled with sleep, had stepped to the ground before he
realised that they were halted at a wayside tavern.  The clamour of
Roderick's weary body and dry throat propelled him inside.

No one answered his knock.  When he called, his voice went off through
the house on its own.  He could hear its echoes.  But apparently no one
else did.  On his way out a man jostled him in

the doorway and continued down the length of the shop.  Roderick
watched him help himself from a big whiskey jar that materialised out
of the gloom at the far end of the counter.  Copper coins were piled
about its base.

The landlord and his household, Roderick learned, were down with fever,
as was the entire neighbourhood.  People were to help themselves
whether they could pay or not.  Whiskey was the best antidote for the
fever.  The man tossed down twopence.  "It's killin' people like
flies," he said.  Roderick thought he was alluding to the unrestricted
whiskey. "Particularly," the man said, 'the gentry.  They make no
fight.  Take another noggin, your Honour."  Roderick did so, then bade
the man send in his driver.

Thomas knew he was in for it!  The enormity of falling asleep driving
was scarcely as terrible as what he had done at the burial when he had
suggested putting the Misses Delaney into a quarry.  He had no idea how
the words came to be said; but when he heard them coming out of his own
lips he had the same sensation that he had known in a dream, when he
thought he was sitting in his nightshirt in a bianconi, and all the
people in the long row opposite him staring out at him over their
travelling coats.

The Sir seemed to say drink this!  But Thomas knew that the impression
was more of the nightshirt-in-a-bianconi feeling and so he kept his
lips tight.  Then the Sir let out an unmistakable, "Go on!"  and pushed
a pewter noggin brimming with whiskey towards him.  After that Thomas
stopped travelling in his nightshirt in a bianconi.  He started
floating.  He forgot to hold his lips together.  Outside they opened
involuntarily at the sight of the gossamer web that spread over the
bank where the horse had drifted to graze.  From grass to twig it
spread and from twig to thistle, the shimmering threads woven by
innumerable spiders, down the other side of the bank and across the
field.  "The winding sheet of Our Lady!"  he cried.  His inflamed
imagination linked the shimmering wraith on the grass from field to
field across thousands of miles.  "A land covered by a shroud!"  His
master recognised the legend of Our Lady's shroud that fell to earth as
She was assumed to Heaven but Roderick was just a little drunk and more
than a little panicky.  He put his boot through the cobweb and turned
back towards the stable.  He decided to ride home.  The house sported a
sign proclaiming it

as a mail-coach halt.  It was bound to have horses.  He helped himself
to a horse as he had to the whiskey.  As he harnessed it he wondered
somewhat drunkenly should he pay for it in the same manner by dropping
coins in the manger?  He strode to the empty kitchen and dropped his
card on the table; then, bidding Thomas continue with the brougham, he
set the horse for the short cut across the fields and bore ens  He must
have action; must gallop away from sight or talk of shrouds whether
they were woven by spiders or humans.

By the time Thomas drove the brougham down the main street of
Templetown, he was far more lathered than his horse; but then, he
reflected, the wise animal had drunk nothing stronger than water.
Thomas's stiff hat was making a ridge in his forehead and his tight
livery held him in a clammy grip.  He stripped off his jacket and took
off his hat.  There was no one to watch him.  The street was deserted
except for a few policemen guarding Wright's bakery.  Young Thomas
wondered if he should speak to them about the sheep that were
disappearing from the Sir's pasture.  Just the other day they had tried
to trap the thief, he and the Sir, lying in wait by the stream.  Once
they thought they saw a shadow of a man, but before the Sir could raise
his gun, a great heron had risen in flight and the man who had
disturbed it disappeared from view.

A play bill caught Thomas's eye.  He could never resist a play bill;
palm trees, minarets, dashing horsemen in colourful uniforms.  Pah, a
recruiting poster.  The picture of the military horsemen recalled
something he had been trying to remember.  Yes, Lieutenant
Fitzharding-Smith.  Miss Sterrin had said he was to go see him.  He
turned the horse's head towards the military barracks.

Lieutenant Fitzharding-Smith was leaving his apartment, followed by a
batman laden with books.  "Ah, thought you weren't coming," the
lieutenant said.  "I was just going to dump these."  Thomas was gazing
fascinated at a party of Tenth Hussars who were defiling before them.
They were resplendent, both horses and men; all that gold in the
officers' uniforms was real; so were the leopard skins across their
saddles, and the cloth in the uniform jacket cost two whole pounds a
yard!  "Not thinking of joining, are you?"  said the lieutenant. "You'd
make a fine hussar."

Thomas tried to shake his head but the effort was too painful.

"I'd never be able to afford the uniform," he said hoarsely.  The
lieutenant gave an amused smile and extended his hand.  "You don't have
to start there," he said, nodding towards the glittering Hussar
captain.  "You could start at the other end."  Where he pressed the
boy's hand there was a gold piece.

Thomas was weaving from side to side in his seat in the brougham.  The
unshuttered window of a jeweller's shop shed a wanton bizarrerie amid
the street's blind and halted commerce.  A finger of green light seemed
to beckon Thomas.  Obediently he dismounted and walked solemnly into
the shop.  "How much is that?"  he asked, nodding towards the window
where the finger of light waved from the green stones of a ring.

"Seven and six."  The jeweller had it out from the window in a flash.
Why not?  The Blight hadn't extended to rings.  Hungry people could
purchase all the jewels they wanted.  Then an emerald ring in a glass
case caught his glance.  "How much is that one?"

The jeweller took in the shirt-sleeved figure and smiled indulgently.
Still!  One couldn't be sure about people these days!  The lad spoke
well; a fine appearance too!  He might easily be a son of the gentry
who were doing their own carting and hauling since they could no longer
feed servants.

"Seventy-five guineas," he said.  "Shall I wrap this?"

Thomas tore his eyes from the lovely emerald.  The little ring in the
jeweller's hand had gone dim and tawdry.  "N-no," he answered slowly.
His eyes strayed back to the emerald.  "No, I'll wait."

As the jeweller replaced the ring in the window he recognised the
Kilsheelin brougham.  A servant boy from the castle!  "You'll wait
indeed!"  He snorted at the shirt-sleeved figure who was studying the
Army recruiting posters outside his shop.  He watched Thomas climb into
the driver's seat.  You'll wait a long time, my lad!"

As he shook out the reins, Thomas became aware of his shirt clad arms
and knew for certain that he was dreaming.  To drive a carriage in
one's shirt-sleeves was more of fantasy than to travel in a public
vehicle in one's nightshirt!  He fingered the hat on the seat beside
him.  It felt real and he put it on.  He'd better put on the coat too.
But he fell asleep instead.

An overhead whirring awakened, him.  He looked up wildly.  The evening
sun outlined the wide and placid wings of a heron.

A heron!  Thee sight of the bird spurred him to a sense of urgency abc
ut t the stolen sheep.  He must find that thief.  He jumped to -heie
ground The reins went trailing amongst the horse's feet.  Htfe looped
them through the whip ring.  "Go hor me yourself," Thonmas said, and
walked off.

He walked iiin the wake of the heron's flight until a bouldler stopped
him at and he lay where he fell.  When he got up he had forgotten
aboutH the heron.  But he trudged on.  There was somtething that he
rrtnust do.  He heard the sound of running water.  It was the
Ussnasstreenagh, the little stream where he had cooked the picnic trou
tit for Miss Sterrin.

When he stoppped to scoop a handful of water, the pain in hus head made
him n stagger, but a firm arm kept him from falling.

"Is it the vayy that the hunger is on you?"  asked the voice of George
Lucas.

It hurt Thonmas to shake his head.  By right he should answter in words
but tit hat was strangely difficult.  There was genuirne concern in the
; man's face now as he offered to help Thomas back to the casstle.
Again Thomas shook his head.  He muist remember not t to do that.  It
let hell loose up there!  "There jis something I muust do," he said.
Lucas nodded understanding!^ "Them that sefrve must obey," he said.
"But the like of yom should have no ) hunger upon you an' you workin'
where there us full and plenty."."

"There is something I must do," Thomas insisted.

He said it aggain later to a man with wild hair and clothing; and a
face that it was not in keeping.  For instead of the claiy colour of
hungeer it had the ruddy glow of health, and the bluie of his eyes
penetetrated the clouds of Thomas's brain.

"Who are you'd?"  cried Thomas.  "You are too well fed."  No one had
the right too look so vigorous and yet so wild.  You are th e one who
is stealiling the sheep!"

The man whhocould he be?  listened to Thomas's babblings about the Sir
wHio fed the multitude and the thief who had i*1 the haunt of thhe
heron.  "The heron!"  he repeated.  "There i's sense in yourrawings,
child!  The heron laid twice this season.  2 guessed that sonmething
more than weather had disturbed th clutch it laid ini February.  No,
I'm no sheep thief.  I've neveir tasted meat in nmy life, nor the
potatoes that men are dying for need of.  I've bee s and goats and a
cave that belongs to God.  Buit I'll watch the he won for you and the
thief.  Let you rest, for th

fever is on you."

gut Thomas wouldn't rest.  He bade good day to the hermit and pressed
on.  He felt as if his body had stepped out from its own skin; out from
that tyrannical force that had driven him relentlessly.  He wafted on,
disembodied, until suddenly weightless, he toppled into masses of
fragrance.

His groping hands found blossoms and more blossoms.  His eyes strained
up through a carnival of lattice branches to the sky.  The Scout's face
swam towards him, peering as it had done from the quarry outside the
fever hospital.  But this was no quarry.  This was the fairy rath of
Lissnastreenagh.  This was better than the quarry.  A little wind
fanned his forehead and gently shook down a frew fragrant petals to dab
his moist forehead.  His timeless journey was over.  No more searching
for--a sheep?  A heron?  Not these.  No more searching
for--companionship, for human affection.

Where was that hand that had reached to shake his and, instead, had
shot about his shoulders and held him against a strangely soft body, in
an excess of tenderness.  It had waved from a ship and vanished.  It
waved again through the branches, smaller and smaller, a little hand
that could never shoot out about him to enclose him like that other,
never bridge the chasm that lay between.

He dozed and a sound awakened him.  He dozed again only to awake to the
same sound.  It was the low musical note of the wind stirring the
overhanging branches, bidding them release their blossoms to blanket
his shivering fever.  It touched with fairy fingers the pine needles in
the fir belt so that they vibrated like the tiny strings of a harp and
played him a lullaby.

When he awakened it was dawn.  The hills were re-echoing with the
bleating of lambs that was answered by the deep baaing of their
soft-voiced mothers.  The sound brought him struggling up.  Sheep! They
were being stolen.  But it was only his thoughts that struggled. His
body lay prostrate.  His eyes gazed helplessly at the remote and tender
sky.  It was as blue as--as the eyes of the man who had promised to
watch for the thief.  Thomas closed his own eyes and let his body slip
out from the grasp of the tyrant that drove it.  "I'm staying here--for
ever."  The hermit with the blue eyes would not let the Sir be
robbed.

When the horse trailed its driverless carriage into the castle

yard there was consternation.  What accident had befallen young
Thomas?  Suddenly everyone realised that he had been driven too hard.
He had moved among them tirelessly; quiet but all pervading, like the
sound of a stream unnoticed until it ceases.  Everyone was aware of the
cessation, the staff, even the Sir himself.  Everyone except Lady
O'Carroll, lying on her chaise longue remote and brooding.

They searched in relays through the night.  They retraced the road to
Templetown and beyond to the point on the Queen's County road, where
Sir Roderick had left Thomas soliloquising about a land covered
completely by a shroud.  Roderick's conscience reproached him for
having left the lad alone with his morbid whimsy.

In the morning there was still no sign.  No one dreamed of lonely,
haunted Lissnastreenagh.  Then the late afternoon brought news that
jolted their concern.  Constable Humphreys had seen the lad
scrutinising the recruiting posters and heard him say that he must go
to the barracks; and on the day of his disappearance he had glimpsed
him reading the East India recruiting notices beside the jewellers; in
his shirtsleeves!

It appeared that the knife boy had run off and 'listed'.  The searchers
felt foolish.  The reference to shirt-sleeves explained the livery coat
lying on the driver's seat of the brougham.  It also showed a
deliberateness of plan that hurt Sterrin and angered her father.  The
fellow was taking no chances of being referred back to his employer! He
had taken the precaution of discarding his livery before presenting
himself for enlistment.

Margaret's brooding strengthened to resolve.  Somehow she must get to
Belgium alone.  There was no other way out.  Roderick had denounced her
before half the county; had insulted and derided her.

Nurse Hogan, coming into the room, showed no surprise at the open
valise on her mistress's bed.  The Nurse's eyes were blurred with
tears.  "Fancy, your Ladyship," she sobbed.  "Who'd think it of him? To
run away at a time like this."

Roderick came to the door to tell Margaret that he was going to
Templetown with the subscriptions from yesterday's post.  This was a
task that he had gradually come to deputise to young Thomas.  And here
was the nurse keening about the fellow.

"Stop distressing yourself he admonished her.  "Anyone who would run
away at a time like this is not worth crying about'

Margaret sat on her bed beside her valise.  The rage that shook her
for her husband's flaunting contempt extended to the whole hateful
castle, even to the brat of a knife boy whose pulling flight had turned
the drama of her own departure into farce.

Sterrin, in spite of her hurt, continued to search for him.  She
wandered down to the stream to the lovely spot where they had had their
picnic.  No one must know the lonely grief that lay behind the still
facade of that small white face.  She walked about aimlessly, trying to
keep back the tears.  And then she found his hat!

Reverently she picked it up from the clump of mosses and speedwells
that grew on the spot where Thomas had cooked the tickled trout.  "He's
drowned," she mourned.

Slowly she moved along to where small boulders lashed up the twelve
inches of water into a miniature waterfall.  There was nothing bigger
than a pin keen in sight.  But for Sterrin the translucent streamlet
held tragedy.  It held the being who was her whole world outside of her
parents, of course--and that was a different feeling.  Slowly she
lifted her gaze to the distant turrets of the castle that would never
be the same without young Thomas.  Behind her the little pony paced
with her, step for step.  When she threw her arms about its neck it
stood very still and its silky mane guarded the secret of the tears it
had dried.

When Roderick saw the hat he wondered for a moment if the boy had
sought escape beneath the gossamer shroud of his imaginings.  But he
turned from his trip to Templetown.  He even forgot the sight of the
terrible anger that had shocked him on Margaret's face this morning. He
rode through every nook and spinney on the estate, seeking to retrieve
the trust that he had lost in this boy who had made such unwarranted
trespass into his master's affections.  Suddenly, he heard a groan.  It
seemed to come from behind the great circle of blossoming hawthorn
trees.

Roderick dismounted stiffly and parted the branches.  He saw what
looked like a decapitated head, dark and curly, amid the blossoms that
covered the slopes and floor of the hollow.  It made a faint upward
movement that displayed a face with petals clinging to its glistening
skin.  The effect was comical.  Like the violet petals that Margaret
used to paste on to her complexion with thick cream.

But there was nothing comical about the spots that inter275

\

spersed the petals.  Roderick had become too familiar with the livid
spots that were the sinister blossoms of the plague.

Young man," he said, you believe in having your fever under idyllic
conditions."  He kicked at the blossoms for a footing and landed gently
on his back beside his knife boy.

Thomas ejected his swollen tongue a few times.  "The sheep," he
whispered, "I'll get the thief when I get water.  There's water--under
the heron."

Roderick thought he caught the gist of the lad's wanderings.  Water. 
He would get him water; and himself too.  But first he must rest.  His
body beseeched him for rest.  And now he was conscious of an
unaccountable sense of gladness that seemed to make rest possible.

After an easeful silence his hands groped as though drawing up
bedclothes.  Blossoms and petals stirred upwards then wafted to rest
upon his face and shoulders.  "The babes in the wood," he murmured,
'bloomin' little robins covering us up with blossoms like the Babes in
the Wood."

Through clouds of sleep he heard a whispered Your Honour's Sir!"

"Huh?"  Turning his head towards the sound made him wince.  The
bloated, petal-spattered face was turned towards him.

"They weren't blossoms, your Honour."

"Huh?"  
"Twas leaves the robins brought.  In their beaks--to cover the
babes."

Roderick digested the information.  "Thank you," he said solemnly. "The
blossoms must have been carried in the fairies' beaks.  Good night!"

But it was sail early forenoon.  Late that afternoon the riderless
Thuckeen was sighted by Sterrin.  Another great search began.  This
time without Big John who chafed aloft on the carriage that waited to
bring her Ladyship on some unspecified journey.  All afternoon Margaret
had wavered, dreading to take the final step towards flight.  At last
she appeared at the door.  Before she reached the carriage she saw the
men carrying Roderick on a hurdle.  Big John caught her as she swayed.
She gripped herself.  Roderick had begun to despise these swayings.  As
they carried him past she saw the plague spots on his face.  Behind him
they brought young Thomas.  She dismissed the carriage.

When Roderick and the knife boy had been put to bed the nurse came to
Margaret for the recipe for the cure for cholera that Miss Sarah
O'Carroll had sent to Sir Roderick.  It was not in her Ladyship's herb
book.  Margaret hurried to the library to see if he had entered it in
his record book.  She knew that he had entered some other of Miss
Sarah's cures there.  As she turned the page she saw his entry of how
pretty she had looked at that first Moonlight Ball at the Assembly
Rooms.  "Bewitching," he had written.  The tears she had restrained in
his presence gushed out.  They splashed on the pages as she turned them
frantically, looking for last year's records.  Her glance was held at a
page of entries written in Sir Dominic's hand long before she came
here.  Something to do with Black Pat Ryan's holding.  But in between
two lines of her father-in-law's heavy script was an entry in green ink
in Roderick's own writing.  "Nonic Oenone Mansfield

Saint Patrick's Eve, March the Sixteenth Eighteen forty-five."  It was
where Roderick had filled in the gap left for Nonic's name by his
father, and on an impulse had added the date.  It danced out at
Margaret, vivid and provocative from the sombre background.  Like the
owner of the name!

The shock dried the tears that his lovely record of herself had
released.  The nurse's voice recalled her to the moment's terrible
urgency.  She nicked the pages.  "Here's the recipe," she said and
frowned.  This was not for cholera.  This was a recipe for the brewing
of the small leaves of the ground ivy.  She had drunk this brew herself
when she had those swayings.  Why was it entered here?  She scanned the
directions in Roderick's slanting copperplate, and then in brackets she
read '... believed to be particularly efficacious in the treatment of
madness '

Madness!  A gasp escaped her.  Was that why they gave her brew?  Why
the recipe was kept from her sight?

Nurse Hogan came over and saw the recipe that she had prepared so
often.

"Your Ladyship," she said in a firm voice, 'this is no time to be
dwelling on yourself."  She flicked the page.  "Here is what we want
The Cholera Cure, one-sixth part of camphor dissolved in six parts
strong spirits of wine She glanced up at her mistress's distended eyes
and resolved that she wasn't going to have three patients on her hands.
She brought the ingredients to the sick-room and asked Margaret to mix
and administer them.  Margaret forced back her rising hysteria as she
poured

two drops of the mixture on to granulated sugar and mixed it with an
exact spoonful of cold water.  With her watch extended she counted five
slow minutes and then repeated the dose.  At the end of five minutes
more he was still shivering.  After the fourth interval of five minutes
when a full eight drops had been administered, Margaret had shed all
preoccupation with herself.  According to the cousins there should be
signs of returning warmth before this.  They had tried it with Lord
Ponsonby and it had been most efficacious.

The nurse urged her to go on with the treatment but Roderick set his
teeth against the spoon.  "It is killing the gentry off like flies," he
muttered, 'they make no fight."

"But it cured Lord Ponsonby," urged Nurse Hogan with naive sincerity.
"Miss O'Carroll said so."  What stronger proof of its efficacy?  The
medicine had cured a peer of the realm!

Roderick dozed.  When he awoke the fever was worse.  He refused the
medicine again.  "It is killing the gentry like flies.  They make no
fight," he insisted.  Margaret's heart contracted.  The treacherous
swaying started in her head.  She must fight it; because Roderick was
refusing to fight.  Roderick, who was deathless was willing himself to
die!

When Mrs.  Stacey heard the trend of his wanderings she faced boldly up
into the sick-room.  "Master Rody," she called firmly into his brain,
'you are no gentry to the fever.  You had it an' you fosterin' an' you
learned how to make a fight.  Don't you remember, agra?"

He looked up at her, seeking to remember.

You had it with Black Pat," she urged.  It was a risk to mention that
name but she had to convince him that he was not like the unaccustomed
gentry who succumbed.  Fever was almost endemic in homes like the one
where he had fostered.

He took medicine from her hand.  Not the aristocratic kind but the brew
she had given him as a child.  It seemed to turn his delirium to that
time.  Repeatedly he spoke Black Pat's name and once Margaret heard him
mutter "Nonic' and then a name like "Mansfield'.

Gradually Roderick's fever subsided.  The time came when he could sit,
first at the open window, then in the garden.  One afternoon, while he
snoozed in the garden, she went to the library.  Fearfully she
approached the black book.  It had acquired an ominous quality; like a
locked room that held a

-rim secret.  She gazed fascinated at the entry that Roderick had
interposed among his father's records.  What had taken place that
afternoon that had caused Roderick to come straight here and write her
surname beside her petit non Nonic so gay, so in time  For all time!
And why in that flaunting green?

Margaret had a sudden recollection of Nonic sitting in her porch, her
golden head bent over masses of wool, and about her shoulders a
charming green shawl!  And then another recollection; Roderick standing
in the bedroom in Mountjoy Square telling her about a girl in a green
riding habit, a girl with blue flecks in her hazel-green eyes!  A girl
called Mansfield.  Nonic!  And Roderick had known all along!  Yes, now
she understood.  Mrs.  Black Pat Ryan was the romantic love that had
escaped Roderick, only to be recaptured too late.

Margaret turned the pages one by one but there were no further
references to the girl; she went back to the entry where the reference
to herself as 'bewitching' had caught her eye the evening he had been
carried home.  '... for the pink creped gown in which my wife looked so
bewitching that night when the cowardly Whiteboys terrified her so that
the doctor feared for the health of her mind as well as her body '

The health of her mind!  Her mind!  She could feel pain pounding at
that dull spot in the back of her head.  She tore through the pages
marked so meticulously with dates of the succeeding years.  She came to
a page dated simply Repeal Year.  Beneath was written the horrible
recipe.  In that golden year when Ireland had stood on the tiptoes of
gaiety and hope, Roderick recorded the treatment for his wife's
madness!

The silence in the library was deep.  August, Roderick always said was
the silent month.  The great bird chorus of the year had packed up long
ago, and the sap energy had abated in all growth.  He knew so much
about Nature!  Her eyes ranged over the shelves that held his botanical
books.  She got up arid peered at their covers.  Here it was!  The one
that would tell her about the ground ivy.  "A hairy, creeping perennial
* she read and went no further.  She dropped the book with a scream as
though some horrid thing had crawled on to her skin.

That afternoon Lady Cullen arrived to pay her first call.  Roderick was
well enough for visitors, and when Lady Cullen was told that Margaret
had gone for a walk, the irrepressible old lady decided to speak plain
and true.

"How could you, Rody," she demanded availing herself of the unexpected
tete-d-tete, 'accuse your wife of unfaithfulness?  Before all those
people!  No," she said putting up her hand, you've used your tongue
enough, hinting smart cleveralities with it, like a tradesman hinting
for a settlement of accounts.  If you suspected your wife of having a
lover why the devil's father didn't you stick your sword into his
gullet instead of his cake?  Dammit, it's not done, Rody."

Roderick wondered if the old lady were feeling all right.  Very gently
he suggested that she might be a trifle 'en fievre'.

"En fievre, my foot," she snorted.  "The others were not "en fievre".
But they were burning, I can tell you; with unholy excitement.  I'll
wager it was the first time any of them was invited to witness the free
spectacle of a gentleman publicly declaring that his wife had cuckolded
him.  Raise the wall against the cuckoo, indeed!"

Roderick sat astounded.  He had gone through that party in a state of
fever.  "It is absurd," he said at last.  "Nobody would dream of
putting such an interpretation on my words not unless they wanted
to."

"Cullen didn't want to.  He wanted to call you out.  I had to stamp on
his toe; the gouty one."

But it's fantastic!  To make a mountain a scandal out of a scrap of
pishoguerie!  The dammed bird was there.  For everyone to see."

"So was the dammed cake for everyone to see.  No one saw the cuckoo."

When Lady Cullen had departed, another carriage swept in the gate; a
resplendent four-horse affair with lackeys erupting from all points;
two from the backboard, one from beside the driver, one from the
inside; all helped Lord and Lady Strague to alight.

The carriage belonged to Sir Jocelyn Devine, who had set it back with
the Stragues.  They had been his guests all Summer since Lord Strague's
recovery from a gun shot wound received during an armed raid on his
grain wagons.  Roderick examined the coach with all the curiosity of a
boy.  He could not resist the sight of anything new in coach work  This
one was the very last word.  The slender shafts were attached to a
spring to neutralise the motion of the horse; whalebone screwed under
the shafts to increase elasticity; every ingenuity to make the carriage
glide

softly and evenly over rough roads.  A fantasy on wheels, Roderick
thought.

Minutes later he thought that he must be listening to fantasy.  Lady
Cullen's revelations were followed up by apologies from Lady Strague
for Lady Margaret's dreadful experience at the Soupers kitchen
conducted by Lord Strague's Vestry committee at Aughnacoll.

"We tiid not discover until weeks later that the lady who had been
trampled down was Lady Margaret, and by that time we were at Jocelyn's
place and Strague had developed a fever from the wound."

The suggestion that Roderick had put to Lady Cullen about being en
fievre could not possibly be made to Lady Strague.  Her voice was too
cool, too assured.  It flowed on in a cool recount al of the dreadful
scene.  After the Stragues had left, Roderick sat in stunned silence.
Poor Margaret.  She had endured so much for so long.  How to make up
for it?

Nurse Hogan interrupted his musings.  She was worried.  "Her Ladyship
ought to have been back from her walk long ago."

"Worried!"  Her master rounded on her as he had never done before.
Where was her worry the time her mistress had endured unspeakable
horrors?  It was the nurse's turn to wonder about fever.  Had the Sir
suffered a relapse?  He was talking of things that might possibly
happen in a nightmare.  She did recall the evening that her Ladyship
had returned like a sleepwalker whose face still held a nightmare's
horror!  She recalled the filth on her Ladyship's gown!

She told him all she knew.  Her Ladyship had never spoken of what had
happened.  The nurse didn't tell him that her own conclusion had been
that some maniac had attacked her Ladyship and she could not bring
herself to speak of it.  She didn't dare remind him that no one not
even her Ladyship could speak to him after that night when Black Pat
Ryan and his children had died.

The autumn sky deepened to purple and still no sign of Margaret.  It
was dark when Roderick climbed weakly into the saddle and galloped
towards Templetown to search for her.  Mrs.  Kennedy-Sherwin was
finishing up after her turn of duty at the Relief Depot.  Roderick felt
deep respect for the outrageous little flirt who was proving herself
one of the famine's heroines.  But Margaret was not there.

Sick with disappointment he turned away; then on an impulse turned
back and asked Mrs.  Kennedy-Sherwin about that night at the Ryan
Duvs.

She told him that she had seen Margaret running along the road towards
the Ryans, that Margaret had called out to Mrs.  Kennedy-Sherwin as she
emerged from her carriage carrying the sick Ryan child.  She described
how Margaret stood horrified in the doorway of the Ryan house.  "She'd
probably been running for help.  Poor darling, she must have fallen
too.  Mud on her face; and her gown!"  Mrs.  Kennedy-Sherwin's voice
shrilled up.  "It was revoltingly ruined!  Poor Mrs.  Ryan wasn't too
cordial to her either."  She sighed.  "The famine changes people; like
war.  Jeremy says that gentlemen behave queerly under war conditions.
Personally, I don't see that it needs either war or famine to justify
their queerness Sir Roderick was halfway across the road.  He turned
back to bow and to say that he was in a hurry.

"Who'd have thought it?"  she murmured after the thudding hooves. What
a delicious quarrel that must be!  Cuckoos, cakes, gallops by night." 
She gave a long sigh.  "Some women have all the luck!"

When the hooves had thudded to a standstill at Kilsheelin there was
still no Margaret.

From the oratory window, Sterrin watched with dread as the men started
out to search for her mamma.  There was something ominous about the
slow-moving figures, some carrying lant horns, others with glowing turf
sods impaled on pike staffs  Out there in the darkness her mamma was
lost or ill or--Sterrin shivered, terrified to let the dread word take
form in her mind.  But it must have formed in Papa's mind.  Because he
was afraid!  She had never thought that such a thing could happen.  Now
there was no shelter left in all the world.

Young Thomas saw her face at the window as he crossed the yard.  They
had ordered him to go back to bed.  He was but a day or two up and
could scarcely crawl.  Still he tiptoed into the oratory just as
Sterrin had dropped to her knees after the last of the lights had moved
into the distance.  She turned at the little sound and all at once it
was as though shelter was restored How could she have forgotten the one
who was down there in the shadow inside the door?  Her heart steadied.
There was always young Thomas!

CHAPTER 30

The Ballduff jingle stopped at the crossroads to let down a passenger.
Lady O'Carroll stepped up and took the vacant place.  At the next
crossroads passengers alighted and hurried towards the long bianconi
car.  She followed them.  When they alighted at Thurles railway station
she did likewise.  As she approached the booking office where they were
buying tickets she felt her first nervousness.  But she listened while
the gentleman in front of her asked for a first-class ticket to Dublin.
She moved up into his place and asked for another.  Travel was easy!

But when the great monster came chuffing from under the tunnel,
clanking and roaring and belching smoke, she panicked.

She stood trembling on the platform while doors opened and banged shut.
A porter went on holding the door for her.  Everyone else had got in.
Timidly she put her foot into the carriage.  The engine emitted a
fearful shriek.  Margaret sprang back.  The porter, all sympathy with
her shouted to the driver to put a muzzle on his ould chimney.  The
driver requested him to put a muzzle on his own chimney.

"Come on, ma'am," urged the porter, 'put yourself in the hands of God
an' I'll hold your own hand."  She thought of the dignified stage-coach
driver; the ostler handing up his immaculate gloves on the point of
departure.  As she gave her hand to the porter, the guard blew a
whistle and the train gave a pre tiniinary lurch.  She withdrew her
hand and fled.

Behind her the porter harangued the guard for his bad Banners.

You and your tin whistle!  And a lady that's used to the ekgance of
horse carriages in the middle of makin' up her mind."

There was no going back to Kilsheelin.  That kind of conduct ^ould be
just another instance of her madness.  She endured a ^Sht at the nearby
Man o' War and the next morning stepped

firmly into the Dublin bound train.  The porter almost clapped,
"You've a powerful strong mind," he commented.

The compliment bore her over the first stage of the journey.  This was
really nicer than the stage-coach.  One was not crushed against
undesirable persons.  One did not have to watch out for one's flounces.
No one spat.  A most polite notice requested gentlemen to refrain from
doing so.  And the sleepers were wooden; not like the granite ones in
that train she had travelled in from Dublin to Kingstown, in Repeal
Year.

jOnce she caught her reflection in the carriage window and peered
intensely.  Strain widened her brown eyes so that they looked wild to
her.  At last, she thought, she was face to face with her own Madness.
She saw the whiteness of the reflection as a symptom of her malady. The
gentleman in the opposite seat was thinking that her pallor glowed with
colour as an alabaster lamp glows from the light within.

The children's faces swam in and out of the rushing landscape.
Sterrin's so sweet but remote.  Dominic, still a baby.  Would they miss
their mad mother?  Aion Dieu!  Look at the fields!  Was her head going
to start this treacherous swaying in front of these gentlemen?

"The fields are running."  She spoke without realising.  Immediately
the gentlemen reassured her.

"One gets that impression when travelling in a train."  The gentleman
in the corner said that when he brought his wife for her first train
journey, she was terrified at the way the fields seemed to run past the
windows.

She thanked them.  Her thoughts turned to Roderick.  No gentleman would
dream of accusing his wife in public.  No matter how wickedly she had
behaved.  Cynthia Appleyard, it was known, indulged in more than just
light flirtations; sinful) bed affairs.  Yet her husband had fought a
duel in her defence!  Roderick had used his sword to point fun at his
wife in front of their friends.

The gentleman in the corner seat was giving his neighbour advice about
travel arrangements.  Margaret listened carefully' Better drive
straight to the packet," he was saying, 'and stay on board all day
instead of waiting to embark in the evening.  There will be no getting
through the crowds later, on account of the funeral."

There was no form or purpose to her flight.  Like a child she

followed these knowledgeable grown-ups.  She bade the porter ho
procured their hackney chaise to procure one for her and (jrive to the
place they had mentioned.  She saw the others pay their fares and step
aboard.  But when she asked her own driver what was his fare, the
efficiency of her itinerancy collapsed.  The Dublin jarvey's renowned
formula, Til have it to yourself, your Honour," left her bewildered.

He watched the sovereign emerging from her reticule.  "Will this be
enough?"  she asked.

He buried it deep under the capes of his surtout, before he answered,
Til not ask for a penny more.  It is a pleasure to drive such a lovely
lady."  Since he wouldn't dare to ask a seasoned traveller for a penny
more than one-and-six he threw in a word of advice for good measure. Td
put away that reticule of yours, Miss.  There'll be a power of
purse-snatchers abroad today on account of the funeral."

His concern touched her.  His compliment like the porter's eased the
ordeal of going aboard.  Travelling on a ship had the quality of
travelling over a narrow mountain road.  One went where the road went.
She paid her money to go where the ship was going.

Her air of distinction, and the shiny contents of her reticule, secured
her a nice cabin.  When food was brought she realised that she had not
eaten since the previous morning.  No wonder the famine-hungry were
always exhausted.  She stretched her tired body on the little bed and
the lullaby of the lapping waters sent her into a deep sleep.

She awoke startled and afraid.  The little room was moving.  Up and
down, then sideways.  Overhead there was clanking.  It was coming down
the chimney!  It was the turret!  Smoke drifted past the window.  My
God!  Where was Mrs.  Mansfield?  No, Nurse Hogan; "Roderick,
Roderick!" But no one could hear her above the roar of the Big Wind.

With a long-drawn "Roder-eeck' she stumbled towards the door.  It
opened and there was Roderick.

She was held firm in the grip of his arms.  The noise stopped.  The
swaying stopped.  Everything was suddenly still; only his voice
murmuring over and over, "My darling!  My lovely, lost, terrified
darling!"

She tried to speak but his kisses stifled over vocal breath.  At he
held her from him, her arms gripped.  Her lovely graceful

arms that had carried a great, full-grown woman!  His eyes devoured
the elegant form that had lain beneath a corpse, rending her as she
dragged herself shrieking from the terrible env brace.  His kisses
spoke his tribute, reverent, tender, passionate

She drew away.  "But I don't understand.  You ought to be at
Kilsheelin, ill."

"So ought you, but not ill--healthy, sound '

"I'm not sound."  The interruption rasped out from her, low and tense.
You know that I am not sound.  I am She couldn't say the word mad. She
looked down at her hands.  "I've read your recipe for--for the leaves
of the ground ivy."  She dar en look up to see his face.  She ought to
have let the thing lie.  A sleeping dog!  A silent menace between them.
He drew her down beside him.  His arms still about her. At last his
voice spoke very low, "Is that why you ran away?"

She nodded.  Her eyes were still on her hands where a big tear had
splashed.  He jerked her chin and forced her to look up.

"Margaret," he said, 'promise me that you will never again let the
shadow of such a thought cross your mind."  He looked straight into her
eyes, "The mind that I love."

His grip on her chin was firm.  She had no option but to give back his
searching look.  Her protests, all the questions she wanted to ask,
became void.

Much later she remembered to ask him how he had come to find her.  He
chuckled.  It wasn't hard to trace the lady who held up a whole train
and then decided to sleep on the project before attempting another
start.  He dismissed the memory of his terrible all-night search and
the frantic gallop with relays of horses to catch up on that 'special'
train.  "That reminds me!"  He jumped up.  "We'll miss the arrival. I'd
never have reached you in time if I hadn't caught up on the funeral
"Special"."

She drew back.  Twice today there had been references to a funeral.  It
had conveyed nothing.  There were funerals every day.

"Whose funeral?"  she asked.

"The Liberator's, of course."  She had forgotten that the Liberator's
funeral had been winding its slow way across the continent from Italy
where he had died.  City after city paid homage to his remains.  In
every port, ships of all nations lowered their flags.

As Roderick and Margaret came on deck, the emigrant ship

Birmingham was moving out.  When it passed, Margaret saw, to her
amazement, a solid mass of humanity, rows and rows, filling the width
of the quay and stretching down its length as far as she could see.
More people, thought Roderick, than had stood to witness the Liberator
pass in triumph to address a million people at Tara.

"I don't understand, Roderick, I thought we were at sea.  I felt the
boat rocking."

He explained that what she had felt was when the boat had been
hurriedly transferred from its accustomed moorings to accommodate the
unusual sea traffic that accompanied the funeral barge.

"Here it comes!"

Slowly the Duchess of Kent in a great convoy of vessels, steamers,
yachts, fishing craft, came streaming up the bay.  The Liberator was
making his most impressive entry into the country he had served so
nobly.

Nearby a tiny boat floundered wildly.  Then another!  The fishermen had
glimpsed the Coffin on the quarter deck, under its vast awning of black
crepe.  Regardless of safety they knelt in their little crafts to
pray.

Suddenly a wild Gaelic keen throbbed over the waters.  The Birmingham
was passing the coffin ship and the emigrants had flung themselves to
their knees in a passion of grief for the Great One who had raised them
up from the prostration of the Penal Law.

Roderick felt Margaret's tremor.  In the strange mood that had
accomplished her flight, how could she have endured this scene alone!
He gripped her fingers.

Hand in hand they stood on the crowded deck and waited.  On the brink
of another black harvest, midst pestilence and hunger, midst the keen
of the death lamentation, the mighty Tribune was coming to his people
in their darkest hour.

Silently the great crowd filed by as the coffin was borne ashore.  The
quickening throb beneath the deck warned Roderick that the engines were
warming for departure.  Another minute and they would have been on
their way to England.

CHAPTER 31

Thomas often wondered if he had dreamed the strange man he had
encountered that day when he had collapsed among the blossoms at
Lissnastreenagh.  A year had passed since then.  The death of Joseph,
the footman, of famine fever, left Thomas little time for wandering
abroad.  He looked at the clock.  Now he had an hour and a quarter to
himself before the nine o'clock tea-tray went to the drawing-room.

He had crossed two fields before he realised that the footsteps beyond
the hedge were padding step for step with his own.  He dropped to his
knees and peeped.  A pair of eyes peeped back at him through the
hedge.

"What are you doing there?"  he demanded.

"Following you."

"You are not supposed to do that."

"Stop preaching and give me a hand through this."

He pulled her through.  She loped beside him panting hard.

"Phew!  You set me a devil of a pace."

"I was not aware that I was pacing anyone; and you should not use the
word Devil in your conversation.  It is most inelegant."

"You don't have to correct my speech."

"No, but I have to take the blame when you speak inelegantly.  Then we
hear that you are mixing too much with the servants.  Meaning, of
course, me."  He suddenly remembered to drop her hand.

"You needn't have dropped my hand as if it were something nasty.  You
are rough."

He stopped and faced her.  "Since I am so rough why do you follow
me?"

"Because," she said sweetly, 'you might get lost.  If I hadn't followed
you last year what would have happened to you?"

His cheeks reddened at his churlishness.  In a low voice he answered,
"I should have died."  And now he knew what had

really prompted the trail of thought that had led him out here this
evening; a wild flower whose name meant 'faithfulness'.  He wanted to
plant it in the flower-bed he had made for her; a tribute to her
faithfulness that kept her searching when the others had given him up
as a runaway; a symbol of his own undying faithfulness.

When he told her about the strange man with the intense blue eyes, her
own eyes purpled with the dint of mystery.

"Young Thomas," she breathed, 'and you were keeping this from me.  Of
course he is the thief."  She grabbed his hand.  "Come on, we'll stalk
him."

But the man needed no stalking.  For suddenly there he was; motionless
by a rock, like the wild things of nature that merge into the
background of the landscape.  When he stepped forward their sense of
mystery was jolted.  There was nothing furtive about him.  As he
watched them approaching hand in hand, he might have been yielding an
audience.

"Is she your sister?"

Thomas dropped Sterrin's hand.  "She is my master's daughter."

The man scrutinised her.  "God save you, Daughter."  And to Thomas,
"You have been a long time coming back."  With a regal gesture he
dismissed Thomas's reply.  "Look down there.  Don't speak; keep on
looking."  Where he pointed a trickle of men kept moving into the
gateway of a farmhouse.  George Lucas's farmhouse.

"Is it a wake?"  Thomas asked.

"No, and there was no wake a month back when they gathered there.  A
game of Twenty-five one of them told me.  A leg of mutton he said the
prize was.  But it looked to me that every man carried home a prize
beneath his cot ha mor."  He put his hand on Sterrin's head.  "Your
father's shepherd was missing a sheep that day."  Thomas whistled a
breath of enlightenment.

"There was a sheep missing the day before yesterday."

While Thomas watched the house.  Sterrin sped back to Kilsheelin and
gasped out the story to her father.  Before he could recall her she was
gone again.  He overtook her, panting over the grass, her red hair
flying out behind her like the tail of a hunted fox.

"Go back home.  Keep out of this."

She pleaded with him.  "Please, Papa!  I feel responsible.  It

was my fault that he came here at all."

"Come on, then.  I suppose you are a bit involved."  He hoisted her
up.

George Lucas's face turned yellow when his landlord strode into the
crowded kitchen.  There was no sign of card playing, but a horse skin
was displayed prominently.

"It's a raffle we're havin' for the skin, your Honour's Sir."  Lucas's
smooth voice was shaking.

The police Night Patrol that Thomas had been sent for were searching
the premises.

"Have you found anything?"  demanded Sir Roderick.

With unfailing pedantry Constable Humphreys informed him that they had
disinterred 'a veritable mutton magazine'.

"Trust old Constable Jawbreaker," whispered Thomas, but Sterrin's
giggle was strained and unnatural.  Sir Roderick ordered them outside.
As they went they glimpsed the cutup carcass of a sheep under the
stripped floor boards of the adjoining room.  They heard words like
'ingrate' and 'thieves' lash out from Sir Roderick as he recognised his
own tenants.  "I stripped my lands of flocks to feed you.  I stinted my
own children '

An old man with tears running down his face seized Roderick's hand.
"The hand that fed us Roderick snatched away the hand.  But a story
emerged through the old man's babblings.  Lucas had led them to believe
that Sir Roderick's daughter, because of her mother's delicacy, had
lived in fosterage awhile with Lucas and his wife.  The men had not
questioned the story, 'though I've seen no fosterage since my youth'.
No one had questioned it either when it was explained that an
occasional gift of a sheep was still sent to Lucas in the old manner.
"Haven't I seen a sheep sent to Black Pat's, Lord rest him?"  The meat
was sold under cover of a raffle lest his Honour be offended and
curtail his benevolence.

Roderick recoiled from the flicker of sheer hate in the eyes of Lucas
as he walked past him between two policemen.  He thought of how he had
been duped into giving him employment the day he came with his tragic
story of the Big Wind and of his eviction with nineteen other men
because one of Major Darby's sheep had been stolen!  Roderick's
instincts had been truer than his judgment when he had likened Lucas to
the 'darraghadheal', the beetle that had been an accomplice to the
betrayal at Gethsemane.

Outside, the hermit brushed aside Roderick's thanks.  "Tis little to
do for your father's son, O'Carroll."  Thomas started at the man's
familiarity.  Roderick assessed the sturdy figure in the green cut-away
body coat, knee-breeches, black worsted stockings and old-fashioned
square-toed shoes with buckles.  The man returned the scrutiny.

"I am the O'Mara of Bannandrum Castle."  He pointed to an ivy gable
wall that loomed against the skyline.  "But," blurted Sterrin, 'you
cannot live in a wall?"

"There was a Mansion there once, Daughter, and the silk of the kine
grazed on thoXe pastures He shook his fist in the direction of Darby's
estate.  "Son's son of a black thief!"  he shouted.

Sir Roderick was too distracted to cope with the lineage of the curious
stranger.  There was something about Bannadrum Castle being
appropriated under the Penal Code while its owner served in Austria;
something too about a son, or was it a grandson, who had grown up
half-wild, clinging with imperishable optimism to the crumbling
walls?

At his trial Lucas let loose a story of landlordism that shocked the
case-hardened court-room.  Eyes travelled to where Sir Roderick
O'Carroll sat; haughty and aloof; waiting for them to silence the
scurrilous wretch.  But Lucas's defence was too good to miss--that
cake!  Lucas increased its circumference from nine feet to fifteen; its
height to twelve feet.  Three men staggering under its weight--one, a
boy, almost falling to the ground.  The prisoner had dashed to his
assistance.  "Twas torture, your Lordship, the smell of beautiful food
so near me."

Roderick had the impression that the judge sent him a look through his
fingers.  The prisoner's black eyes missed nothing.  Words poured from
him in torrent they be suppressed.  "There had been mortal dread on
him," he said, 'since his neighbour, Sir Roderick's own foster-brother,
Black Pat Ryan, and three of his children died of hunger; all four of
them in one afternoon!  *

Roderick braced against the buzz of horror.

Lucas was not deported.  He was given one year's sentence in an Irish
prison.

"How could anyone believe him?"  cried Margaret.  "Believe such things
of you!"  Roderick sat at the dinner table, tightlipped and grim;
scarcely touching his food.  His toil for those

terrible years turned into a Famine Folly!  A grass-grown road leading
nowhere.  His home mortgaged!  His children futureless!

"People believe facts when they see them and the Ryan hecatomb was a
fact inescapable."

Only a few weeks later Sterrin raced across the lawns to where her
parents were strolling arm in arm.  Just as they had strolled on such a
lovely evening as this, unconscious of the Blight that lurked unseen
amid the rich growth of that radiant summer.

"Papa, I've just seen the "darraghadheal" George Lucas."

Her father frowned impatiently at her.  "Nonsense!  The man is in
prison."

"He is not, Papa.  I saw him up there."  Where she pointed they could
see a small figure moving inside the hedge that separated the front
lawn from the adjoining pastures.

"He was peeping in here through the hedge, Papa."

Sterrin was right.  Although the Queen had withheld her clemency from
political prisoners, a number of ordinary prisoners had been released
under her amnesty.  The story of one prisoner in particular had touched
her sentimentality.  She felt that the long arm of coincidence had
guided her clemency towards the wretch who, while starving himself, had
assisted a starving servant to carry the great birthday cake that had
been presented to herself by the Duke of Devonshire.  She had requested
that George Lucas be released forthwith.

Tim Lonergan hailed Thomas one morning to tell him that South Tipperary
was ready to take the field in rebellion; Thomas Francis Meagher and
Smith O'Brien had sent a fierce arousal across Slievenamon to a vast
mustering.  Tonight Meagher of the Sword would hold a meeting at the
crossroads.

Thomas listened at the crossroads enthralled.  The knightly grace of
the speaker, the glowing words sent pictures flashing across his mind;
peasants pouring through the gap of danger; camp fires reddening the
darkness.  *... shall we snatch victory from death?"  cried the rousing
voice '... shall the spirit that has survived the penalties, the
savageries of centuries, the sword of famine, shall this spirit sink at
last?  ... then up with the barricades should we succeed, the joy, the
glory.  Should we fail..."

They failed.  Hunger and disease had burrowed too deeply

I'll!

into the soul of patriotism.  The great columns of marching men proved
to be a handful of youths.  The great revolution was over before Thomas
had word of ks starting.  Meagher and Smith O'Brien and the other
leaders were 'on their keeping'; hunted outlaws, stealing through the
woods by day, hiding in mountain cabins by night.

Late one night Thomas opened his door at a sound.  The Sir, of all
people, was moving stealthily down the passage towards the hard's room;
behind him moved a slim figure, half military, half civilian,
cross-belt, coloured sash, sword hilt over plain dark clothes.  The Sir
turned sharply at the sound of the opening door and came back.  "What
are you doing up so late?"  he demanded; without waiting for a reply he
went on: "Forget whatever you may have seen!  You understand?"  He gave
Thomas a penetrating look.  Thomas returned it squarely.  Yes} your
Honour."

Next morning the hard's tray was handed to Thomas by Hegarty instead of
by the cook.  In addition to the hard's plate of bacon, soft bread and
a jug of ale there was a covered silver dish, a pot of coffee and a
rack of toast.  When Thomas started to lift the cover from the
breakfast dish the old man snapped his head off.  "Leave it be and be
off about your business," he said.  Then when Thomas stooped over the
hearth flags to add more turf the old man became quite agitated.  "Get
away from there!  Get away!"  he kept repeating.  When Thomas was half
through the doorway he added: "And don't you be gallivanting near the
rath of Lissnastreenagh, Thomas Og.  The spells of the Speirbhean are
direful to youths that are comely."  Thomas went off, hoping that his
idol would show up for the next meal.  But there was no extra food on
the next tray.  Long before it was due the news of Meagher's arrest had
arrived.

Sir Roderick attended the trial in Clonmel and Thomas risked bribing a
lad to hold the horse while he ventured into the back of the court. The
last time he had stood in a courthouse had been at the trial of the
'darraghadheal'.  This time there was no whining protest.  The figure
that he had seen moving towards the hard's room was standing in the
dock, upright, defiant, listening to the death sentence.

Then, miraculously, within hours of the scaffold, came Sir Charles
Napier's letter that disclosed how the Prime Minister and some of his
colleagues had once, many years ago, plotted

treason against the Government.  The death sentence was transmuted to
transportation for life.

When Thomas told the hard the old man's eyes found their tears.  "Once
more," he quoted, 'shall oft-widowed Erin mourn the loss of her brave
young men," and he made no protest when Thomas busied himself at the
hearth slabs.  Speir-bhean inagh!  thought Thomas.  From somewhere
under these slabs the exiled patriot had made his way to
Lissnastreenagh; not into the direful spells of the Fairy Queen but
into those of Her Majesty's police.

CHAPTER 32

Christmas that year was something like the ones that Sterrin vaguely
remembered before The Hunger.  Dominic had no recollection of such
wonderful preparations as were going on in the kitchen.  The poultry
stock had been built up; turkeys and geese hung over the fires in a
molten glow of savoury gold.  He was allowed to turn the spits.  He
took a hand at stirring the vast pudding for the staff dance; joined in
threading twine through the holly leaves to make chains for the big
barn for the dance.  Spicy smells steamed out from the wall ovens where
the porter cakes baked.

It was deliciously exciting.  And the Sir's Road!  Never had he seen
such traffic there.  Cars spread with mattresses for the women and
children were passing that way to town all Christmas Eve.

The church was packed for Confession.  Every household had lost someone
to be remembered at the Altar next morning.  Father Hickey let the
people out of the box without delay but the curate in place of the one
who had died of the famine fever was a terror.  He kept people ages
inside.  To make matters worse, Sir Roderick O'Carroll took out his
timepiece with great deliberateness as each penitent entered the box
and took it out again as he or she emerged.  His tactics gradually
worked the desired effect upon the people in the long row ahead of him.
One by one rather than be 'timed before all the world' they surrendered
their places and fell back to the very end of Father Rickey's
penitents.

There was a dreadful storm on Christmas Day and for the twelve days of
festive reunion the rain blew in great sheets.  The usual visiting was
restricted to the shortest journeys.  Sir Roderick, to banish ghosts
and memories, fixed Epiphany Night for the staff dance.  It had become,
too, generally established as the anniversary of the Big Wind. Margaret
dreaded the date.  The servants dreaded it because the roll of those
who had 'seen' Miss

Mansfield's ghost on that night was increasing annually.  Sterrin
could not forget that her birth and the Big Wind had plunged her mamma
in some prolonged and fearful ordeal from which she had never fully
recovered.

It was wonderful to sit in the brightly-lit barn and watch the dancing.
Big John led Mamma out in the quadrilles.  It looked funny to see him
dancing and swinging.  He was always so stiff and dignified.  Papa was
in great form.  He took Sterrin out for the Cashel Sets and the
servants were delighted with the spectacle of the Sir standing in a
circle 'clapping home his partner like the rest of the men.

Thomas, standing in a shadowy corner, wondered if he would dare ask
Miss Sterrin to dance.  But the sight of her, elegant and unexpectedly
tall in her party gown of white voile, filled him with a shyness that
he had never felt towards her before.  Her papa danced her round and
round then swung her off the floor in one final whirl of frills, white
lace stockings, ringlets and breathless laughter.

Thomas had splashed the mad extravagance of seven and twopence upon a
pair of dancing pumps.  Their pointed tips drew glances that ranged
upwards to the curled tips of his black hair.

But the knife boy's eyes watched the young daughter of the castle.
Suddenly, the floor space between him and that young radiance that was,
remotely and strangely, Miss Sterrin, had lengthened out before his
eyes until it seemed insuperable.  He turned and had reached the
entrance when a hand crashed down on his shoulders and dreams.  "Go and
lead out one of them colleens," ordered the voice of Mike O'Driscoll
who was Master of Ceremonies.

He walked Thomas up to a genteel-looking girl.  Thomas bowed.  "Permit
me the honour of leading you out."

She glanced him up and down.  A servant.  But an extremely personable
male.  She silently extended her finger tips.

You fancy yourself, Miss, he thought.  She was the daughter of Lord
Templetown's English steward.  At the Change Partners they were facing
Sir Roderick and Miss Sterrin.  "Young Thomas," cried Sterrin joyfully.
Where have you been?  I think I am going to fall.  My head is dizzy."

He placed a hand on her waist.  "We'll reverse.  That will steady it."
The steward's daughter gazed after them and forgot

to dance up to her next partner.  He was gazing after them also.
Roderick's brain was whirling with wine and dancing.  He could not call
to mind the youth who was dancing so pleasingly with his daughter.
Dancing with that ballet-like quality that is the body's dramatic
medium!  He must ask Hegarty about him.  Hegarty misread his signal and
hurried with a flagon on a tray that was slanting at an angle of
forty-five degrees.  "Dancing is droothy work, your Honour's Sir."

"So I see," said his Honour's Sir, whose vision was on a similar slant.
He forgot about his daughter's partner and remembered the steward's
daughter.  He poured her a negus then whirled her the length of the
barn until the next Change Partners restored Margaret to him.  "Get
yourself another partner, Big John," he called gaily.

Next day the shops opened and new ses of the past twelve days
circulated.  The main news item spread horror.  On Christmas Day a
colony of people had been turned out on to the hillside.  Almost a
hundred people driven from their cabins in the pitiless rain.

Roderick had withdrawn from public matters since the release of George
Lucas.  He regarded his release as a public indictment of himself; an
official imputation of Landlordism.  But the savageries of Christmas
Day stirred him to action again.  He addressed meetings; wrote to the
newspapers; travelled to Dublin with the members of a protest
deputation.  The Government was assailed on all sides.

And at last it showed mercy.  In future, it decided, no eviction was to
take place on Christmas Day or on Good Friday.  Henceforth, those under
notice to quit could shelter quite safely under the shadow of Golgotha;
not until the Resurrection eve need they face their own Golgotha; And,
Alleluia!  Neither would they be shelter less on Christ's Birthday.
While angels sang the Birth Hymn they would be free to place the rush
lights in the window for the Holy Wanderers.  Not until the morrow
would they become wanderers themselves.

Father Hickey prayed from the altar for the Christmas outcasts.  He
referred also to the crop of ghost stories that were holding people in
the grip of unholy fear.  "Rest assured," he told them dryly, 'that
those taken to God by the Famine have neither need nor wish to return
to this vale of tears."

Young Thomas gave a cough and sent a sidelong glance

through his fingers at Attracta Scaily.  She had sworn to him that she
had 'seen' the ghost of Felix Downey carrying the 'dead body' of his
brother past the front gates of the castle.  But the church had hushed
to a breathless stillness.  Father Hickey had started to call out the
Christmas dues.  Not a cough nor sound while the congregation strained
with godly fervour to catch the amount contributed by every member.

Lord Cullen of Crannagh Abbey, four pounds; Sir Roderick O'Carroll of
Kilsheelin Castle, four pounds; Mrs.  Lonergan of Golden Meadows, one
pound ten; Mr.  Ulick Prendergast, one pound; John Ryan Shake-hands,
five shillings; always a decent man and so was his father before him.
John Ryan Rua, seven and six and he ploughed my garden a decent man
with ten children to rear."  This list ran on without comment, then an
obvious pause.  The congregation tensed.  There was something good
coming.  "Owen Heffernan' the priest peered out over his spectacles
'five shillings and if he has one acre by now, he has a hundred and he
with neither chick nor child!"  Mr.  George Lubey was growing impatient
to hear his name called from his new mansion.  Killincarrig Lodge,
former home of the De Laceys had always been called out after
Kilsheelin Castle.

"George Lubey He sat straight in his pew.  "George Lubey,"

repeated the priest, 'of Main Street, two pounds ten."

The pulpit, Father Hickey indicated, was not for proclaiming the social
advancement of parishioners.

Outside in his carriage, Lord Templetown looked again at his watch.  He
had thought to catch Sir Roderick emerging from Mass long since.  He
had not reckoned with the Christmas dues and every name in the three
parishes called out with 'due' comment.

Sir Roderick yawned and took out his watch; but the list was ending,
"James Keating of Poolgower, four pounds."  The priest descended the
steps.  Roderick gasped.  Four pounds!  Before the Big Wind it was a
half-crown and an ass load of turf!

The Scout rose for the Gospel.  James Keating!  The same offering as
the Sir of Kilsheelin!  The wheel was surely coming round to meet the
time when The Keating like The O'Carroll had sent his priest four
beeves and a hogshead of wine!

Mass resumed its ritual.  "Dominus Vobiscum' prayed the priest.  "Et
cum spiritu tuo' responded the server.  Sir Roderick, deep in his
missal, turned a page, '... Do Thou we beseech

Thee Oh Lord, sanctify this gift offered to Thee Four pounds!  By the
piper of Moses!  The Bachach!

Lord Templetown begged permission to enter Sir Roderick's carriage to
discuss something important.  He wanted to suggest that Sir Roderick
stand for the parliamentary vacancy in the north riding.  "No," he
raised a hand against the exploding protests.  "You are an exemplary
landlord.  You signalised yourself in the famine, while the gentleman
who will-be your opponent *

"The gentleman who will be my opponent.  You seem, my Lord, to take the
matter as a fait accompli.  I hate politics.  I am no politician."

"No politician, true.  I should say a potential statesman.  Ireland has
a plethora of politicians.  Our best men do not go into public life. We
are represented by mediocrities."

"What about O'Connell?  Davis too.  They were scarcely in that
category."

"They were not in any category.  They moved in the isolation of their
own greatness.  Not every century casts up an O'Connell.  As for Davis,
a genius, a magic personality.  He has ploughed the nation's soil.  Men
like you can guard the seedlings."

"Metaphors, my Lord, did not avail the seedlings we guarded in '45; and
'46; that we cherished in '47?"

Sterrin listened, thrilled.  Would Papa go to the British House of
Parliament?  Would the hard accompany him?  The assembly would never
give his music the verdict.  His knuckles were as big as crab-apples.
If only he could be dressed in a suit of rushes!

Roderick was perturbed.  Margaret too.  He loved his country life.  "We
are a quiet family," he said.  "Worldliness does not become us."

Lord Templetown looked at the two young faces whose well bred good
looks were the complement of the splendid couple seated opposite him.

"Forgive me if I disagree.  You were not designed to browse in
dignified rusticity.  I envisage you returning from Saint Stephen's to
some London Salon of Repeal presided over by Lady O'Carroll."

There had been a time a few years back when Margaret would have been
dazzled by the prospect.  But now, out of calamity and
misunderstanding, she had found contentment.  She asked for nothing but
the continued serenity of their present mode of

life.  Her fingers twined around her husband's.  The worldly old
gentleman looked at them reflectively.  It seemed to him that they
followed close to the original plain for living that had been
blue-printed for Eden.

"The ground is prepared," he said.  Your speeches against the
savageries of last Christmas have made a deep impression.  I leave the
rest to you, Lady O'Carroll."  He took the hand that Lady O'Carroll
extended.  "I trust that I have not broken your Sabbath calm."

During the week when others came for his decision, Roderick's refusal
was positive.  Politics were dirty, he told Margaret.  The estate
needed him and he needed it; needed the soil he loved and its workers
how, through their recent need of him, he had come to love with a
protective tenderness.  There was a thousand and one things to be done.
Cottages that should be rethatched in autumn against the coming winter
had not been thatched in years.  Potatoes for next spring's seeding
were under his constant surveillance.  And this winter he was tasting
again the joy of riding out to hounds; riding home at night with a moon
like a steel mirror in the sky; coping with his accounts before the
blazing turf fire in the library with the red setters stretched at his
feet. Abandon all that for the grey winter of London town!  Some Salon
of Repeal, forsooth!

Then came news of four deaths among the victims of the Christmas Day
evictions.  A mother and three of her seven children had died in the
hospital.

Margaret watched him as he stood gazing out of the window; gazing in
the direction of that little bore en seeing three dead children; two
raven-haired; one beautifully fair, as their mother was beautifully
fair; a wistful imagery to inspire a man's purpose.

Roderick turned and the purpose was there.  In his face; in his voice.
"Margaret, in God's name I'll stand."  He came over to her.  You don't
approve?"

She kept her face over her embroidery.  It was the end of something. It
was the return of Roderick of the famine period; at the public's beck
and call, harassed, irritable.  No, the famine had not caused his
irritation.  She had done that, her pettiness!  She looked up at last.
"You must do whatever you think is right."

"This ebbing away of human life is too persistent," he said.  "A

government's first duty is to preserve life."  The phrase had become
almost his creed.  "This will give me the opportunity to help to
enforce that duty."

But Margaret knew that this would give him an opportunity to atone
before a shrine in his memory.

Repeal buttons flashed again.  Margaret listened to floods of oratory.
Torchlight processions wound through the darkness to the beat of music.
Mrs.  Enright started to organise "Repeal quilting parties'.  No easy
task, since all available blankets had gone to the famine cause.  One
day the hard startled Margaret and Roderick by coming to the
drawing-room and asking for a new cloak.

"Cloak!"  Margaret saw to it that the hard went well shod;
well-provided for in linen and wool lens but the great tour-deforce of
his plaid cloak flowing behind him in warm weather, wrapped about him
in cold, was as inextricably part of himself as his white beard. "Aye,"
he mistook their surprise.  "It is not torn yet.  "Twas only got in
eighteen five, the last roll of cloth before Hennessey's mills closed. 
After '

Roderick stemmed a tide of history.  You ought to have mentioned this
long ago.  That stuff must be thinned out after forty four years."

"It is thick and warm enough," said the hard.  "But it is not grand
enough for Westminster."

Roderick cocked an eyebrow at Margaret.  The poor old boy was actually
envisaging himself preceding his master into the House of Commons in
the bygone strut of bardic glory!

"I shouldn't take Westminster for granted, Bard.  But you shall have
your cloak."

Margaret decided that she also must have a new cloak, and Sterrin and
Dominic.  Lord Templetown had placed his London house at their
disposal.  They couldn't, she said, go to London in their famine
rags.

Mrs.  Delaney was another who regarded Roderick's election as a fait
accompli.  She had written a letter to the government protesting
against her estate being placed on the Encumbered Estates Market.  She
came hot-foot to Roderick with the government's reply in her hand. "And
it took them an unmannerly long time to answer it, Rody," she said.

Ned Rua tiptoed in behind her with its envelope.  "I think said
Roderick, glancing at it, 'that it may have been inadequately
addressed."

The envelope was inscribed--"The Government, England."  It started off
"Dear Government', and pointed out graphically and ungrammatically that
the writer had received no rents for two years while she fed and nursed
her tenants and a few hundred more of your subjects.  She also reminded
'them' of the four hundred beeves her family had sent to London when
people there were starving after the fire.

Roderick held his finger over his lips while he read the government's
polite regret that it had no knowledge of the fire in question or of
the generous gift of beeves alluded to therein.  "They've short
memories," she snorted, as though the Great Fire of London had been a
few years ago.  "I came over to tell you what I want you to say to them
when you go over, Rody.  There is no use in writing letters, I never
believed in '

Your Honour's Sir," interrupted Ned Rua.  "Twas the way Miss Kate
signed the letter.  I warned her.  Sure she hasn't written one since
she was twelve and she'll be forty-six next '

Never mind my age, Ned--God save you, Margaret," she said.  "I signed
it "Yours affectionately", the same as my cousin Lady Judith O'Moore
does when she writes to me at Christmas, and she is a Bluestocking who
writes for the journals

But Ned Rua pointed out that it might have been better to use the
phrase that Mr.  Wilson, the harness-maker uses when he writes for the
money.

Tou forget yourself, Ned Rua," said his mistress with dignity.  "As
though I should sign a letter in the fashion of a tradesman demanding
money!"

The hard appeared from nowhere and asked her Ladyship if she had got
his cloak.  From under his old one he produced--all unexpectedly--a
small harp.  To honour the daughter of The O'Moore, he said, and with
his eye to a festive dinner, strummed them unbidden to the dining-room.
High time, he muttered very audibly into his beard, that The O'Carroll
went to the parliament.  Too long this castle had been without feasting
and harping!

CHAPTER 33

Roderick rode out on Thuckeen to lead his waiting tenants to the
hustings.  From the doorway Margaret and the children waved him
God-speed.  From the turret Ireland's ancient flag, not the green one,
the one of Saint Patrick's blue waved proudly.

There was a fine mustering of horsemen at the crossroads.  Despite
Roderick's repeated insistence that they were free to exercise the
franchise without fear or favour of landlordism, they had expressed the
wish to ride behind him in array.  That was how their fathers, and some
of themselves, had ridden behind his father!

Roderick's heart lifted as he rode towards them.  It was an honour to
own the allegiance of such men.  Few of them were under six feet in
height and their horses were worthy of their riders.

Head and shoulders over the others was Michael Joseph Michael Ryan, on
a light chestnut with cream-coloured mane and tail.  Beside him was his
ancient enemy, Martin Hennessey, the leader of the Hennessey clan that
had fought the Ryans in faction rights at every fair day and election.
Never before had the Ryans and Hennesseys been known to vote for the
same candidate.

The horsemen removed their high hats and greeted Roderick in Gaelic. He
answered them in kind and thanked them for their fealty.  There was a
laugh when he said, "Is it a thing that I see, a Ryan and a Hennessey
riding shoulder to shoulder to vote for the same man?"

"You may thank Father Matthew for that, your Honour," said Martin.
"Only for him we'd still be splittin' each others skulls; if the Ryans
were voting for you, why then, we'd have to vote against you.  Indeed,
the whole Hennessey clan is mindful of what you did for Mark and his
wife and child.  "Twas only yesterday that his brother had word from
him from Canada.  He

said that only for the way you provided for them on the ship they
would never have survived the voyage."  His horse sidestepped in the
crush of horsemen.

"Canada?"  Sir Roderick called after him.  But Hennessey's mount was
pivoting around on its hind legs, and Ulick Prendergast had reined in
beside Sir Roderick.

Ulick owed no vassalage to Kilsheelin, but he had the 'gra' for the
O'Carrolls.  The old man's face had the haunted look that still
lingered on the faces of so many of those who had endured the famine.
Ulick might be stingy enough to shave gooseberries for their hair, but
he had shown no lack of heart to the hungry.

When he had greeted the old man, Roderick had perforce to greet his
son-in-law, John Keating.  He expressed his surprise at seeing him
here.  And Keating answered, "My vote will always be for you, Sir
Roderick."

Roderick thanked him and rode out in front.  The horsemen fell in
behind and the road shook with the thunder of hooves.

At the entrance to the town the Repeal band was waiting to play them
in.

As they clattered up Main Street, the waiting crowd shouted the old
O'Carroll cry, "The Hawk abu!"  The hawk to victory, and then, "Long
live O'Carroll!  Long live Repeal!"

"He looks like a Roman centurion at the head of a hundred horsemen,"
said Constable Humphreys.

Whisht!"  said the Scout.  "He looks what he is, an Irish chieftain at
the head of two hundred horsemen."

Master Hennessey greeted his clansmen.  "Tis the finest cavalcade I
have seen riding down this street, and I've seen the pride of
Wellington's army ride past."

A company of dragoons rode by.  When their officer had ridden out of
sight the soldiers towards the end of the line raised their sabres to
the civilian horsemen.  "And here comes the arch-evictor!"  cried the
Master.  Major Darby rode up with a group of horsemen, followed by a
brake-load of supporters.

A little dark man with a face smooth, yet shrivelled, like an apple
that had been pulled and stored too soon, dismounted from the brake.
Wherever he moved, men turned their backs on him.  George Lucas was
left in the isolation of his treachery.

A sudden blaze of music sounded from the direction of the Mall, and
Lord Templetown, preceded by a piper, rode into view at the head of a
file of horsemen.  Tomorrow would be the

coming-of-age of his son.  His Lordship had doubled his extravagant
arrangements to include the victory celebrations.

Roderick was surounded with well-wishers.  They made a path for Lord
Cullen, who came tottering up on his Regency cane and brandishing The
Times.  "Here's your speech for today," he shouted as he came through.
"Read that to the whig supporters!"

He held his snuff box in the hollow of his palm, and unscrewed the top
with a practised twist of his little ringer.  "There," he said,
indicating the column with the joined fingei and thumb that held the
pinch of snuff.

Roderick blew the snuff from the paragraph, sneezed and read '... in
one year, seventy thousand holdings and their occupiers have been
rooted out of the land.  This year two hundred and fifty thousand
people have emigrated to America.  The Irish are going!  and going with
a vengeance!  Now at last after these six hundred years, England has
Ireland at her mercy and can deal with her as she pleases."

Lord Cullen flicked open his fingers and sent a shower of snuff in the
direction of Darby's supporters.  "At their mercy, egad!"

Roderick did not read out The Times's gloatings but the Scout
straightaway procured a copy and read it at the top of his voice to the
men who followed Darby.  He halted every voter who approached the
courthouse and forced him to listen.  Between the first and last step
of the building he made a number of converts.

The results, as Lord Templetown had hoped, coincided well with the
coming-of-age celebrations.  When the High Sheriff announced, "I
proclaim Sir Roderick O'Carroll to be duly elected," the rest of his
statement was drowned in cheering.  The people went wild with joy.

Tar barrels blazed on the hill behind the castle.  The young Scallys
were on the road, with ears to the ground for the sound of the
carriage.  At the first rumble they were up the avenue in a streak.
When Roderick, with Margaret and the children, turned in the gates, he
saw his people waiting for him.

The flames from the tar barrels cast flickering shadows on the turrets.
Lights blazed from every window.  Out in front was the hard.  And he
played this newfangled air of Mr.  Davis's that young Thomas had dinned
into all of them.  "It has the sound of

marching men," muttered the old man as he drew forth a rousing chord.
The voice of young Thomas soared above the rest when it came to:

"For freedom comes from God's right hand And needs a godly train; And
righteous men must make our land, A nation once again."

Margaret felt a rush of tears to her eyes.  Sterrin glowed with pride
to the words young Thomas sang as though he had written them himself
for her papa.  She was free at last to tell her parents about the
secret rehearsals that had taken place in the hard's big room while
Papa was electioneering.

Roderick was deeply moved.  He would like to have spent this evening
here amidst his own people; so generous; so true hearted; their
helplessness that had made them lean on him in the recent, terrible
past had endeared them to him a hundredfold.

For politics he did not give a tinker's curse; but by heaven, he'd use
them to see that his people would never again go hungry!  He looked at
the tall, dark boy who was carrying the great harp indoors and he felt
within himself those stirrings of affinity that were not new to him. He
must see about that boy.  Meantime, politics had made their first
demand upon his private life.  He must change and return to Templetown
House as a public figure.

Sterrin hastened to tell young Thomas of the complimentary things her
papa had said about his singing and the way he had arranged the
welcome, but she stopped dead at the door of the silver pantry.  "What
is the matter with you, young Thomas?"

He was sitting staring at a letter as though he had been stunned by its
contents.

He had rushed joyfully to read the letter that Hegarty had just sorted
from the post bag.  At last!  A letter from Kitty and Mark!

His joy was shortlived.  No horror that he had witnessed could equal
what he had just read in Kitty's letter.  Their ship had been fourteen
weeks at sea.  Because of the fever it had been forbidden to land at
New York.  When it reached Canada it was one of eighty fever ships put
in quarantine at Grosse Island.

jVlark had been flung bodily on to the beach with the dead.  "For
hours I crawled on all fours through mud and slime and hundreds of
prostrate bodies 'til I found him alive, thank God."

She had found Mrs.  Black Pat as well, her children screaming like
maniacs around their dead Mammy.  The following Sunday, Kitty wrote,
the priest who had carried Mrs.  Black Pat ashore had led her three
children from the sacristy to the altar.

"Here is your sermon for today," he had said to the amazed
congregation.  "Look at them; starved out of their country by bad laws,
their father dead in Ireland, their little mother back there in the
nameless grave pit of Grosse Island '

Sterrin went slowly upstairs to tell the news to her papa.  He had
asked her more than once if young Thomas had heard from his friends.

She found her mamma standing before her mirror dressing for the
coming-of-age party at Lord Templetown's.  She looked radiant in white
with Roderick's diamond necklace, sparkling against her skin.  "Mamma,"
breathed Sterrin, "I've never, never seen you look so beautiful!"  Then
she told her mother about the letter from America.

Margaret's pleased smile froze.  Her ivory skin paled to a frightening
white.  She reached for the back of a chair to steady herself.  Sterrin
hadn't thought the news would have such an effect upon her mamma.  She
looked as though she might faint.

"But, Mamma," she said, 'the children have got lovely homes.  The
letter says that the rich people rushed to the altar to take them.  The
priest had to remind them that they were in the house of God."

From his dressing-room Roderick called out.  Margaret rallied.  She put
her fingers to her lips.  "Ster-een," she whispered urgently, 'not a
word of this to Papa!  We mustn't spoil tonight for him.  Tomorrow I
shall tell him myself."

Roderick came in.  Like his daughter he halted in admiration of
Margaret's beauty.  Like Sterrin he declared that never had he seen
Margaret look so beautiful.

Lord Templetown, watching the pair enter his drawing room, felt
justified in his statement that Sunday morning that they were designed
to perform with iclai before the world.  At the dinner he placed them
on either side of him.  He enjoyed the dazzling image of Lady O'Carroll
reflected in the em panelled mirrors that duplicated the lights from
the candelabra of jasper

and filigree and from the great Renaissance candelabrum in the centre
of the splendid room.

After the dinner the guests moved out to where the tenants were
celebrating.  The heir cut the seven-hundred-pound plum pudding with
his sword and cut the traditional speech to a fraction.

When the cheering had subsided Lord Templetown led forward the new
representative and his beautiful wife.  They stood together while the
crowd gave them a Three-times-Three.

Roderick said it was too soon to talk of politics while the nation was
but rising from her knees after its supplication for bread.

"The Times," he said, 'has told us that at last we are conquered; that
at last we are at their mercy.  It is true that the famine has
succeeded where the oppression of centuries had failed; the Ironsides
of Cromwell; the savagery of the Penal Code, availed less than the
force of the Great Starvation.

"The lesson of the famine has taught us that Repeal is not a question
of political power or party.  It is a question of physical existence.
The only soup kitchen that will supply adequate nourishment is a
Domestic Parliament."

When he and Margaret at last got through the cheering throng to their
carriage they found Lord and Lady Cullen leaning on their canes and on
each other.  Their grand nephew Patrick, completely bottled, was
standing on a bench reciting to a ring of delighted tenants.  On one
side he was supported by the heir and on the other by his Trinity
classmate, Prince George of Cambridge.

"It sounds extremely bad form said Lord Cullen, 'and quite seditious,
but pray continue."  Patrick carried on his recitation of a popular
squib purporting to be about a conversation between Louis Philippe,
hiding in Buckingham Palace after his escape from the Barricades, and
Queen Victoria.

Patrick continued "My dear Vic, sez he, I'm mighty sick, sez he, For
I've cut me stick, sez he, Tarnation quick, sez he.  From te divil's
breeze, sez he, At the Tooleyrees, sez he,

For the Blackguards made, sez he,

A barricade, sez he,

And I was afraid, sez he,

And greatly in dread, sez he,

That I'd lose me head, sez he,

And if I lost that, sez he,

I'd have no place for me hat, sez he.

Stop a while, sez she,

Take off your tile, sez she,

You've come a peg down, sez she,

By the loss of your crown, sez she,

Mille pardon, sez he,

For keepin' it on, sez he,

But my head isn't right, sez he,

Since I took flight, sez he."

Patrick stopped and rubbed his head.  "My own head is a bit light, sez
he '

"Go on, Patrick," roared the Prince.  "Finish it!"  "Go on, sir,"
roared the tenants.  The three young gentlemen supported one another
while they racked their brains for the next stanza.  Roderick and
Margaret entered their carriage laughing.  As it moved off they could
hear Prince George solemnly intoning "Indeed my ould buck, sez she, You
look mighty shook, sez she *

Roderick sighed comfortably.  "It's been a long day.  I own that I'm
tired."

"Oh, Roderick," she breathed, "I felt so proud of you!"  He raised her
fingers to his lips.  "I felt proud of you, too."  They drove in
silence for a stretch.  Suddenly he turned to her.  "Do you know, I
heard today from one of the Hennessey faction that Mark Hennessey and
his wife arrived safely in America-Canada he said--but that is probably
his mistake.  I wonder what can have happened to little--little Mrs.
Ryan."

She half turned to tell him, then stopped.  No, tomorrow!  She would
hold on to this moment.  There might never be such another.  Her breath
caught on her vision of a dainty figure in a chic green shawl, a golden
head bent over her knitting, then

suddenly looking up out of those long beautiful eyes.  Oh, little
ghost, why had you come haunting tonight!

He misinterpreted her sharp intake of breath!  The tensing of her hand
in his.

"Margaret."  He turned to catch her expression in the shadowy light.
"Surely you don't still resent her?  She will never trouble either of
us again."  She will never cease to trouble us, thought Margaret!

She forced herself to say in a low voice, "Of course, I don't resent
her."  Then in a lighter tone she said, "What I do resent is this
sudden onslaught of public life.  It may part us.  I couldn't get near
you tonight.  You will go to London '

"But you will be in London with me, sooner too than I expected.  You
must have all your falderals ready by the middle of next week."

"So soon!  And I postponed all preparations, just just in case."

"Is that all the faith you had in me?"

"No darling, I had no lack of faith in you.  It was just those other
times when we made plans.  Belgium then the Blight fell.  This time I
resolved not to make a single preparation until the election was
successfully over."

Tou have had grim reason to be cautious.  But all that is behind now.
So make no more delay."  He placed his arm about her.  "As for public
life parting us!  Nothing could do that, my darling."

A light shot up.  They were both startled.  But it was only a spurt
from a smouldering bonfire.  Faintly in the breeze sounded a "Long Life
to O'Carroll!"  He replaced his arm across her shoulders and they
turned in at the gates in pleasant silence.

Sterrin was leaning from a window watching the last flickering of the
bonfire behind the castle.  There was still a few revellers round the
fire.  She felt too excited to go to bed and yield up this wonderful
day.  Such a proud day.  Papa had looked like a prince going to battle
at the head of those horsemen.  And both he and Mamma had looked
stupendous tonight.

From the carriage road came the sound of horse-beats.  Mamma and Papa
returning.  She yawned sleepily.  Better not let them find her up at
this hour.  As she crossed the landing she could see the gig lights of
the carriage flashing through the gates.  Then she heard a shot.  She
peered through the panes.

II

ftc carriage had stopped.  There was another shot; and a scream!
Sterrin rushed down the stairs.

Outside, it was Margaret's shoulders that were braced now to give
support.  She crouched rigidly by the driveway where Roderick had
fallen as he made to leave the carriage.  His full weight lay in her
arms.  His eyes stared up at the face of the woman he had loved so
dearly.

As Sterrin dropped to her knees beside them, he was murmuring, "I was
wrong.  I thought--nothing--could part us

"Oh, Papa!"  sobbed Sterrin.  A branch cracked and she turned to see a
man's figure crashing through to the pasture beyond.  ' "The
darraghadheal"!"  she screamed.  She made to rise.  Roderick lifted his
fingers and let them fall.

"Don't go, my storm ling  In the distance the horses pounded
frantically as Big John lashed them to summon priest and doctor.

Margaret cradled Roderick's head in her arms; all her faculties alert.
There was a prayer to be said at a time like this.  She called it into
his ears, then moved her lips to his.  They had a coldness that had
never been there before.  The mad wild shrieks went tearing through her
brain but she checked them at her lips.  He still had need of her.  He
strained with his head and she lifted him up while he looked at the
castle.  A tongue of flame from the bonfire outlined the broken turret.
Above it the flag of privilege hoisted for a great occasion lapped
gently in the wind.  From somewhere beyond, the party cries echoed
thinly, "Long Live Repeal!  Long Live O'Carroll!"

He lowered his head on to her breast and as she held him close, her
fingers crept to his lips.  She could feel the little breaths that beat
against them; until they came no more.

Men came, as in a stride, from the polls to the funeral of the one they
had voted to victory.  Their faces were still stunned from the impact
of the tidings.  Those whom he had led to the town a few mornings ago
now stepped out of line and took it in turns to bear him upon their
shoulders.  Nearing the brink Big John surrendered the reins of the
riderless Thuckeen.  He claimed his right to lend a shoulder to the one
he had revered.

The pain that the weight aroused in the maimed shoulder was flo less
agonising than the memory of the night ride that had given him the
wound.  Sweat drops mingled with the tears as he

recalled how he had returned that morning after the Big Wind's storm
and found new life and gladness waiting.

"Big John's shoulder must be made sound," the young Sir had said later
to the doctor.  "For we all lean heavily on these shoulders."

Lord Templetown looked across at the tall, veiled figure who walked
with the white-faced girl and the boy.  The guilt, he thought, was not
entirely with the little dark man with the distorted brain who had
fired the shots.

Would there come a time when that stricken woman would point some of
the blame towards the man who had entered their carriage that peaceful
Sunday morning, who had urged his wishes and gone his way with the
urbane hope that he had not disturbed their Sabbath calm?  For the
hundredth time he asked himself would this have happened if he had not
intruded upon that Sabbath calm?  Would that lovely idyll of their
lives be still unfolding?

But Margaret, in the numbness of grief that had followed the initial
shock, was no man's accuser.  Her eyes followed what they were doing at
the opened ground at her feet and through her mind there moved unbidden
the lines of some poem.

"Dig the grave both wide and deep For I am sick and fain would sleep..
/

Across the space something fluttered.  Miss Hester dabbing her eyes
with a black-bordered handkerchief!  Or was it Miss Sarah?  The poor
old ladies they were so old.  And poor old Lady Cullen with Lord
Cullen, they were both so old.  So were the De Guider gentlemen; and
she hadn't realised that Lord Templetown was so old.  They were all
old--except Roderick "Dig the grave both deep and wide--and let us
slumber side by side."

Someone took the burden from the tortured shoulder of Big John ... "Dig
the grave and make it ready.  Lay me on my true love's body."  My true
love--Roder-eeck!  But no one heard the cry.  It had gone echoing down
the lonely corridors of her mind.

A hand slipped under her arm and held it firmly.  How was it she had
never noticed that the features of this white small face beside her
were exactly the same as his?  The red hair.  That was

what had clouded the resemblance.  But today it was drawn back beneath
the black bonnet.

Young Thomas let down the harp at last.  Her Ladyship had never liked
the harp's sad music.  He had hoped that Mr.  Maurice O'Carroll, who
had arranged everything, would not have sanctioned the bardic lament. 
But Mr.  Maurice insisted.  There were few families left who possessed
the household hard.  Let the Bard of Kilsheelin uphold its tradition.

The old man's fingers forgot their stiffness.  The melody they drew
from the harp was fraught with such an agony of wild despair that the
lament might have been plucked from the strings of his own heart.

Sterrin looked about her in panic.  There was no escaping that terrible
keen.  And now Mamma's arm was trembling.  She must stand by her with
the support that he had given.  Oh, for the protection of his strong
arms!  For the sight of that haughty face when it softened into
tenderness and playfulness.

Someone was looking at her.  Across the grave she saw young Thomas.  He
gave her a little smile.  Her heart steadied.  There was always young
Thomas!

PART TWO

' "^1

CHAPTER 34

The clanging of a bell brought the silent garden to sudden life.  Girls
of all shapes and sizes in navy gowns and white crochet cuffs and
collars came hurrying in response to its sound.  In the shadow of a
tree by the wall a girl chucked at the pair of legs she was supporting.
Their owner ignored the chuck and continued to strain over the wall.
Her head pivoted to right and left, watching each end of the road.  She
was holding on to the top of the wall with her hands while the girl
below gripped her legs.

"Sterrin!  We'll be murdered.  The Confession bell has gone."  But
Sterrin had spotted the wagon.

"At last!"  she breathed.

A cautious "Whoa' brought it clattering to a standstill beneath her. "I
was beginning to give up hope," she said.  "What kept you, Young
Thomas?"

Tve been haggling like a dealer to squeeze a few extra shillings so
that I could prove to them at home that the price is better in this
town than in Templetown."  He stood up to hand over the packets of
butterscotch.  The girl below gave another tug.  Sterrin swept the
butterscotch down to her.  "Are you sure you can trust her, Miss
Sterrin?"  She nodded, "Winifred would die for me.  Besides, she loves
butterscotch."

"And you love chocolate."  He pushed a small box towards her.

"Young Thomas!"  she cried as surprised as if he had never brought them
before.  In her excitement she forgot to whisper.  "You know that you
mustn't spend your money on me.  It's not right."  He knew that it
wasn't right to be here at all.  If it were discovered in the castle
why he was making excuses about higher prices for produce here in this
town than in Temple town!  It didn't bear thinking of.  "You must have
been paid your wages?"

He nodded, "We were all paid after the harvest."

"Has Thuckeen foaled yet?"

"Thuckeen foaled yesterday," he told her.  But be sure you don't let it
slip that you know when you are writing.  A grand little mahogany bay
filly, Miss Sterrin, but not in Thuckeen's class."

"Oh well," she said.  "It was only to be expected.  The sire wasn't
anything near Thuckeen's class.  It wasn't even a thoroughbred."  She
sighed.  "She would never have been allowed to breed outside her class
if She stopped.  Whenever she tried to speak her papa's name the word
stuck somewhere in her throat and all the words that should follow got
piled up like road traffic behind a balking horse.  The bell cut
through her confusion and the girl below pulled Sterrin by the legs out
of her introspection.  "Jump for it.  I'm going," she hissed.  "Here's
Sister Mary Aliquofiveyardsof-calico."

Winifred might die for Sterrin but she wasn't going to be caught for
her.  Sterrin's head and shoulders had gone down for the second time
when Thomas realised that her ground support was gone.  He flung both
arms around her shoulders and held her.  She dropped the chocolate box
and gripped the back of his collar with her free hand, and that was the
moment that Sister Mary Aliquo came through a clearing in the trees
with the bell and saw them.  She let the bell fall from her hand with
one clanging yelp of its metal tongue.

Sister Mary Aliquo closed her eyes and murmured a prayer.  When she
opened them the vision was still there; the shocking vision of a girl
hanging from the wall in the arms of a man!  For one terrible moment
the nun thought that the immodestly swinging girl was a postulant.  She
was dressed in black.  Then she noticed the auburn hair tied with a
black ribbon and she remembered that Sterrin O'Carroll was exempt from
wearing school uniform until her two years' mourning was up.

The sound of the fallen bell made Sterrin glance over her shoulder; she
saw the nun!  The next moment the horse started to move.  Sterrin was
borne along the inside of the wall for a few yards.  Young Thomas
called out something about having to let her go.  He was being dragged
away.

Sterrin landed on all fours and groped about for the chocolate box. The
nun regarded this as the crowning insubordination.  Any other girl
would have jumped straight to her feet, confused and guilty.

"What is the meaning of this?"  Shock had melted into red faced anger.
Sister Mary Aliquo had frequently to remind herself that Sterrin's
seemingly cool, unintimidated manner was due to the subduing effects of
her tragic experience; that it wasn't just--superiority that seemed to
make such an impression upon her companions--and her teachers.

Sterrin, with one ear tuned to the clatter of wheels and runaway hooves
sounding out in the world--every place outside the convent wall was
referred to as 'the world'--said simply: "I lost my footing."

She rose and waited for the onslaught.  But Sister Mary Aliquo was
beyond speech.  Her soft underlip was wobbling like a motherless
foal's.  All she wanted was to get away from this unhallowed spot.  Her
mind groped for the words she would use to make her report to Reverend
Mother.  That siriful embrace!  The spectacle of
those--dangling--extremities!  Sister Aliquo realised that as Mistress
of Deportment she must voice some reproof.  Conduct came under her
particular sphere.  But not this conduct!  Discipline came to her aid.
"Report to Reverend Mother," she said in a low, hoarse voice, 'but
first go to Confession and see that you examine your conscience on the
Sixth Commandment!"  She turned and hurried inside.

Sterrin's black brows shot up, "Is it broken, Sister?"  She asked it as
though it were something that she had knocked off the wall.  "But,
Sister, you told us But Sister Aliquo had disappeared.

"So that's what that is!"  Sterrin paused in the shoe-room to remove
her outdoor shoes and reflected that Sister Mary
Aliquofiveyardsof-calico was not very consistent.  She had told the
girls to skip the Sixth, "Thou shalt not commit adultery', when they
were examining their consciences.  It did not concern nice girls.

The Head Prefect came hurrying into the shoe-room.  What on earth is
keeping you And then with a sniff, "Do you think lhat you are above the
rules?  I happen to be aware of your conduct this afternoon."

Sterrin put on a black velvet house shoe and tied the ribbon with a
painstaking bow.

"I suppose," the Head Prefect went on, 'that you are going to t ll me
he was your brother."

Sterrin reached for her other slipper.  The HP.  was the only

girl whom she really disliked.  She thought her smug and purse proud.
Her father had cleaned up a fortune on the Great Hunger.  He had bought
up all the potatoes that had flourished unbhighted in the Maharees in
Kerry during the famine.

Without looking up Sterrin said evenly, *I had no intention of telling
you anything."

The Head girl flushed.  Sterrin's white stillness always struck her as
disdain.  "I must say," she said, 'that your behaviour and your manners
do not reflect much credit upon--upon wherever they were acquired," she
ended lamely.

Sterrin thought of the place where she had acquired her manners; and of
other places like it, that had drained out their substance while people
like this girl fattened.  For the first time in two years she felt a
vigorous anger sweep through her.  "I will not listen to criticism of
my home from any black potato profiteer."

The remark, crude and earthy as a pelted potato, struck home.  The Head
girl took a step nearer to Sterrin.  Her eyes narrowed, the dark
centres filled with rage.  "At least," she said, 'we didn't gorge
ourselves in public on cake while the people starved."  She stepped
back.  Sterrin dropped the shoe.  Her hand shot out and on the cheek
where it landed there flamed an angry weal.

Sterrin wheeled and ran through the door, heedless of direction, on
down the front avenue; only to get away!  Not from fear or guilt of
what she had done but from the contagion of those awful words that she
associated with the terrible "Darraghadheal," who had murdered her
father!

She saw the front gates ahead of her without quite realising what they
were.  Then through the bars she saw a face peeping and behind it the
wheels of a wagon.  Thank God!  There was always young Thomas!

He had driven round to the front and lingered in the hopes of gleaning
something about her fate.  And here she was racing down the front
avenue hop pity-hop in one shoe.

"Get out of my way," she said to the scandalised gatekeeper who tried
to bar her way.  She pushed through the wicket.  "Help me up on the
wagon, Young Thomas," she gasped.

"But, Miss Sterrin '

"Do what you are told!"

He did what he was told; then he wrapped the tarpaulin rug

about her shoulders and listened to the gasped-out story.  And he
marvelled.  Her father's name came out freely; again and again.  She
even spoke the name that men did not speak to each other; much less to
the family; the name of the "Darraghad heal'.  The ringing cadence was
back in her voice again and her eyes were purple with anger.  Suddenly
she began to giggle.  "Oh, Young Thomas," she spluttered, 'you should
have seen the face of Sister Mary Aliquo-five-yards-of-calico when I
plopped down at her feet.  Oh, I forgot.  Did you know that what I-what
we--did was adultery?"

"What?"

"Yes, I hadn't realised either.  I thought it was something that
gentlemen called out other gentlemen for; of course, you couldn't be
called out.  You are not entitled to the "point of honour"."

"No.  I'd probably get a horsewhipping."

You would not.  I wouldn't allow anyone to horsewhip you."  A few big
drops spattered down suddenly.  She lifted the tarpaulin from across
one shoulder and drew it around him, bringing them both together under
its fold.  She sighed.  "It would be more convenient if you were a
gentleman."

"Aye," Young Thomas agreed, 'a sword is more convenient than a
horsewhip.  Meantime there's going to be me!  ia1 murder.  What will
her Ladyship say when you tell her that you've run away?"

"What will she say but that I did the right thing.  Do you think she
would have me stay under the same roof as the creature who dared to
insult my father's memory?"

Which was exactly her mamma's attitude.  "Except," said Margaret after
the initial consternation and explanations, 'it would have been more
appropriate if you had waited for the carriage to come and collect you
instead of travelling home in a farm wagon, and if you had worn both
your shoes."

In the general indignation at the dreadful taunt that had been cast at
Sterrin her original mis behaviour went unnoticed.  But Maurice
O'Carroll was not so easily fobbed off.  It was he who had insisted
upon Sterrin's being sent to school.  After her father's assassination,
her increasingly distrait eyes, long spells of silence, sheering off
from any mention of her father's name, had alarmed him.  He insisted
that she be removed from the

1 A homely threat, a 'holy murder'.  kAL

scene where she had witnessed so much horror.  She needed the company
of yougsters of her own age.

Now as he watched her animated expression, heard the vibrancy in her
tone as she explained why she had returned, he felt that his decision
had been wise; though it had seemed harsh at the time.  But he wasn't
going to be put off about Sterrin's part in the affair.

Events flowed from causes, he pointed out.  "What, in the first
instance," he demanded of her, 'were you doing up on that wall?  And
how come that that knife boy fellow happened to be there?  Eh, young
lady?"

"Well!  I knew it was a market day and I heard O'Driscoll say that
there were better prices to be had there than in Templetown something
to do with the iron road.  I was looking out in the half hope of seeing
him; just to hear word of Mamma, you know and Dominic."  She paused and
added in a small voice wistfully, "It was lonely there, Cousin
Maurice."

That settled it.  He patted her shoulders.  "I suppose it was, gra'
gal."

But at the end of his visit something happened that renewed his
suspicions.  Margaret had come to the carriage to see him off, but he
lingered to bid Sterrin goodbye.  She had gone riding on Thuckeen. "I'd
as lief she were back before I go," he said to Margaret, "I doubt if
she's fit yet to handle that mare."

Sterrin's red setter, Anna, that had been her father's, came round the
terrace end of the castle, barking.  It jumped up on Margaret, barking
violently.  "Sterrin must be coming," said Margaret.  "Down, Anna!"

But the setter would not stay down.  She continued to jump up barking,
then she ran back a few yards and stood waiting, then returned again to
Margaret.  Suddenly she dashed at Young Thomas who was holding the
horse's head.  She seized his coat in her teeth and started to pull. He
dropped the bridle.  "It's Miss Sterrin," he cried, 'there's a trouble
on the dog, Sir, it must be Miss Sterrin."  The dog led him across the
fields, looking over his shoulder every now and again to make sure
Thomas was following.

He found Sterrin lying on the ground; the great black horse standing
over her was quivering with the strain of not moving lest it trample
her, for her body rested partly against its forelegs.

Young Thomas swooped up the unconscious girl in his arms

as though she were no one's concern but his.  Maurice, in his
preoccupation with the almost swooning Margaret, was vaguely conscious
of the action.  But when the procession moved towards the house his
awareness became acute; the white look on the knife boy's face, he
reflected, was something beyond the normal concern of the most loyal
servant.  When Sterrin was lowered on to her bed she opened her eyes
and smiled up at Thomas.  Maurice O'Carroll caught the expression on
the servant's face as he returned the smile, and made a decision.

You must not ride j."huckeen again," Lady O'Carroll said when the
doctor had gone and Sterrin was found to be not too much the worse for
her fall.  "Cousin Maurice was surprised this afternoon at my
permitting you to ride her."  She turned to Maurice.  You may be sure
that she shall not expose herself to that danger again."

But Maurice had come to the conclusion that Sterrin was exposed to.  a
greater danger than that from the great black mare with the gentle
eyes.

He beckoned Thomas into the library.  "A word with you, young
fellow."

At four o'clock on a May morning one month later, Young Thomas went
away from Kilsheelin Castle and from Miss Sterrin.

He was not due to catch the bianconi for nearly two hours but it was
ten to four when he tapped at her bedroom door.  She was dressed,
waiting.  Silently they walked together across the park.  Each strove
to say something momentous; something that would refer back to all
their life together.  But every step was shortening their last moments
together and still no words would come.

At the wall gap they both turned and looked back.  She scraped her
throat and said something that sounded 'eejity' to herself.  TLook at
the path we have made."  Across the park where they had walked there
was a faintly gleaming track surfaced by the dewdrops that their cloaks
had brushed from the brown trane ens  His eyes followed the track to
the shadowy castle that had enfolded his life in its grace; they ranged
over the lawns and the fields that held so much memory; they lingered
on the haunted field that he had witnessed rising up to the sky on the
night that his memory was born; then on the graveyard that

held the godchild that he had cherished and the great gentleman whom
he had revered.  At last they forced themselves back to take the
parting look of the one who was the embodiment of all that he was
leaving behind.

Well, it is goodbye, Miss Sterrin."  It was a miserable sort of remark
he thought.  The tenderness of his smile smashed down the sore, hard
pressure behind his eyes.  Tears and words burst out together.

"No,^no!  Not to you not goodbye to you!  Don't go, young Thomas," she
pleaded, then turned away from the futility of her words.  She looked
towards the castle, her face suddenly fierce, her teeth clenched.  "I
shall never forgive Cousin Maurice!  Never!"

"Don't blame him, Miss Sterrin.  It is true what he said about cutting
down staff.  He cannot meet the wages.  He zs cutting down staff.  He
had to make a start somewhere after all I'm the only outsider on the
staff."

"What about Pakie Scally?  There's more to this than meets the eye.
What else did Cousin Maurice say to you?"

"I told you before.  He asked about my parents

"And what did you tell him?"

What could I tell him?  and he asked about my book learning.  He said
it was wasted here, that there was scope for it outside that Come,
they'll be getting up beyond."  He threw his bag over the gap, then
climbed up and reached his hands down to draw her up.  They balanced on
the wall a second, enclosed in the silence of an earth sleeping.  A
thrush yawned a sleepy trill but a little wind made a husheen-husho in
the branches and sent it back to sleep.

The unexpected little bird-note had sharpened the poignancy of the
moment for Thomas.  It was such a homely, everyday sound belonging to
all that had been part of him; the little bird so sure and snug in the
nest that it would fly out from in the morning and all other
mornings.

It had stirred Sterrin too.  "I wish that bird had kept its dem ned
beak shut," she quavered.  "Oh, young Thomas," she cried huskily.  "No
matter who I have waved goodbye to from this gap the loneliness seemed
to go from me once I went back to you.  I thought I would always have
you."  She bent her head.  It was so unreal; a most shameful thing to
be crying like this.  Fancy crying when Mickey-the-turf went to
America! She

hadn't cried even when Joseph the footman had died of famine fever.
But Thomas was so different.  That was one of the things she had wanted
to say.

He put a hand beneath her chin and lifted up her face.  "You ||| !f
11

will always have me, Asthore," he murmured.  "But if I were to stay
here for ever and a day I could never have you.  There is a whole world
between us.  It is only by going away from you that I can bridge that
world.  Do you understand, Sterrin?"

She wasn't sure that she did.  Everything was blurred by her sense of
loneliness.  But she did notice that for the first time in her life he
had called her Sterrin without the Miss!  He had taken the first step
across that bridge which divided their worlds.

He went on looking at her, waiting for her to say she understood.  He
was still holding the hand she had given him to help her up.  At last
she nodded.

"Then it is not goodbye.  It's au revoir.  I'm coming back and I
mustn't waste another minute till then."  He pushed back the tiny curls
from her forehead and in their place he left a kiss.  "God keep you,
gra' gal."  He released her hand and straightened up, but she put it on
his shoulders and strained on tiptoe to kiss him on the lips.  And with
that kiss went all the aching pressure of words unspoken.

The same with Thomas.  The surging joy of that sudden kiss drove out
all sadness.  No regrets for Kilsheelin and the memory of his life
there, could equal this parting moment.  Brightness radiated from his
face as he looked at her, dazed with joy.  Then he sprang down.  He
wanted to rush out into the world on the tide of the strength that was
flowing from his gladness.  She stood there in the wall gap completely
still.  The castle knife boy had gone; her lifelong companion.  But the
desolation had gone out from her too.  The tall figure striding so
purposefully down the Sir's Road was someone else; someone who had
brought a new element into her life; an indefinable something--that
held wonder.

At "the turn he stopped and looked back.  The wall on either side of
her rose up and held her as in a niche.  He let the picture of her sink
in.  The long school cloak made her look tall.  Her hair drawn back out
of sight with a black ribbon increased the impression that she might be
sixteen pr more instead of a fourteen-andahalfyear-old girsha with hair
still slinging.

He doffed his hat and held it high in the air.  She raised her hand in
return.  For one dear moment they stood like that; their thoughts
spanning the strip of road that was now the only barrier between them.
Then he turned and was gone.  Her calm broke up and the heart inside of
her gave a wild plunge that bade her jump and follow him through the
world.  But it was Thomas himself who calmed her as he had always done.
The sound of his singing came back to her and she stopped to listen.
The sleepy birds listened too and when the last note faded beyond the
crossroads seemed to take it up, though not a one of them but Sterrin's
own self knew the words 7 love my love in the morning

And I love my love at noon For she is bright As the Lord of light,

Yet mild as Autumn's moon

And I will love my darling one

Till even the sun shall fade '

When she sprang back into the little track they had made, the two of
them, had gone.  The ringer of sun that had reached out across the
eastern turret had sopped up the dew drops that had marked its way.
What matter!  A new path had started.

CHAPTER 35

Thomas had never envisaged himself growing old in the service of
Kilsheelin like the other servants.  At night in his room, he dreamed
of a brilliant career on the stage.  He would contrive to get some
employment at a theatre.  One night, perhaps, some actor declaiming
Shakespeare would forget his lines and Thomas, somehow, would be the
one to prompt him.  His knowledge of Shakespeare and his ability to
memo rise would create such an impression that he would be offered a
part.  Or perhaps the actor playing Richard III might hurt his arm and,
miraculously, at the last frantic moment it would be discovered that
the obscure call-boy was versed in swordsmanship.

He could never quite get the acclaiming audience to its feet.
Invariably, at that juncture he would be disenchanted by a voice
ordering him to do something like removing the turf ash from the
drawing-room fire.

Now that he had left Kilsheelin he was determined to make his fortune.
America beckoned grandly.  First Liverpool, then America.  But once in
Liverpool, he was forced to find work in a textile mill to augment his
meagre savings.  The work was hard and the spectacle of girls working
half naked shocked his sensibilities.  When one of the girls got caught
in a machine and was mangled, Thomas could no longer hold his tongue.
He began to exhort the workers to demand decent working conditions.  "I
would have the workman be the master of his toil," he said, 'not its
slave."  Those words lost him his job and very nearly cost him his
liberty as well.  Men had been jailed for twenty years for saying less.
A fugitive from justice, Thomas managed to find passage on a convict
ship bound for Australia.  Thomas quailed at the prospect of journeying
down the slopes of the world to the far-off land of Australia.  But
that was where the ship was going and fugitives from the law could not
be choosers.  It offered escape.

Often on mat deadly voyage he cursed the folly of his outcry.

To have jeopardised his hopes, his dreams, his very liberty, for a
pathetic dead girl who had repelJed every instinct in him but his
pity!

In the Red Sea when pestilence levelled passengers and crew the Captain
pressed Thomas into duty.  As food supplies went low the winds rose
higher.  Gales sent the boat rocking off course, until it came within
bowing distance of the white bergs of the bleak Antarctic.  It bowed so
low that at times Thomas didn't see how it could stagger up the sides
of another wave.  A party of old men and women from County Clare
abandoned all hope of meeting the sons and daughters who had gone ahead
to purchase the wealth of Australian acres for a few shillings a
hundred.  Resolutely they struggled into their death habits and lay
waiting to go, suitably garbed, to their Creator.

Thomas worked with a will until the day that he refused to add more
salt to the salt beef that, with a few scraps of hard biscuits, made up
the emigrants' principal meal.  Thomas had noticed the salty beef be^ng
re salted before each meal and thought it was to maintain its
freshness. Soon he discovered that it was an unscrupulous ruse to force
the emigrants to pay out money from their pitiful savings for each sip
of water for their parched throats.

He reminded the Captain that he was a passenger.  He had paid his
fare.

The Captain narrowed his eyes and reminded him that he had come aboard
in an almighty hurry.  The Captain had assessed the anxious haste of
the well-spoken young man who boarded the ship at dark of night.  Some
nob, he had thought, making a getaway from trouble I

Thomas wavered.  Just then a child with swollen tongue and staring eyes
gasped out something.  Its words were drowned in the insane din of men
whose starved bodies were reacting to the inferior grog that the
Captain doled out at an exorbitant price.

"I won't do it," he said doggedly.

He was dragged off, fighting like a maniac.  They chained him to a
fever-stricken convict.  "At least," said the Captain genially, you
will have the distinction of being the only one amongst the convicts
who has paid his own fare to prison."

As Thomas lay exhausted, gazing up at the sullen sky, he swore that if
liberty was vouchsafed to him ever again he would never risk a moment
of it in the lost cause of human pity.

The storm blended day and night.  Time lost its significance.  Days
were chaotic periods of space hurled out from eternity.  The Jbuffeting
winds changed and carried off the sick meanings to which he was
fettered.  He became disorientated.  The creaking timbers turned into
the rending of trees.  The pinnacle lamp swinging crazily sent flashes
that became the sparks from the red burning turf he had held on the
pike staff.  In their flying glow the Sir guided his horse away from
the falling trees to seek help for her Ladyship.  The trailing clouds
became tendrils of hair.  In their suffusion, a face formed; nearer it
floated until it touched his lips.

Dear God in heaven, what kind of an eejit was I to have flung away my
life after receiving such a token!  He lashed in impotent fury.  The
chain bit into his flesh and tugged the sick man into feeble protest.
May the devil ride buck-hunting with Mr.  Maurice O'Carroll!  Why the
devil's father did he think a body had acquired learning!  White,
shadowy, the face floated back in answer.  As its lips reached his a
rough voice asked him what the effing hell did he mean by lousing down
there in comfort and the ship floundering for want of hands.

The speaker was Mr.  Jed Ballantyne, the First Mate.  He was now in
control of the ship.  Captain Ebenezer Lancing had the fever.

Thomas raised himself from a clanking chain of dead and half-dead
convicts and pointed out the inconsistency of the question.

When they unfettered him he sprang to his feet then landed sprawling on
his back.  The chains had paralysed his legs into numbness.  Once he
had massaged them back to life, he forgot everything but the
consciousness of freedom.  It didn't trouble him that he had to do six
men's work.

The sight of land, of the lovely green lowlands of Tasmania's peninsula
stirred no glad emotions in Thomas's heart.  He had Worked hard enough
to wipe out his insubordination about the salting of the meat, but he
was still not sure whether the Captain really meant what he said about
handing him over.

He was ashamed at the relief with which he heard from Mr.  Ballantyne
that the Captain had died of the fever.

"The old man's snuffed it."  Mr.  Ballantyne was beside him.

"Dead!"  The Second Mate had died, the Surgeon, emigrants, but somehow
Thomas could not imagine the invincible Captain

being dropped over the side in a whirling pollution, like that
straw!

"What will become of--of the ship?"  Thomas almost said, What will
become of m ?"

"What'll become of her?"  The First Mate spat.  "What became of her
these last nine days?  There was naught wrong with my skipperin.  And,
for that matter, you didn't do too bad yourself.  If you'n me was
runnin' this ship she wouldn't have gone twelve days off her course."

"We couldn't have controlled the weather."

Weather!  "Twarn't weather; 'twar bad seamanship.  That's what 'twar.
He claimed in black and white in the newspaper, for all to see, that he
was familiar with the coast of Africa, America and Australia; that his
ship was sound and seaworthy and provisioned with the finest vittles to
last for more'n three months.  You saw the kind of vittles them
critters got."

Thomas had seen; to his cost.

Mr.  Ballantyne removed his jacket and proceeded to put on the
Captain's dress reefer for state occasions.  "Good thing he didn't wear
it this voyage.  No contagiousness."

He saluted with an extravagant air.  "Captain Ebenezer Lansing, at your
service.  You can forget I was ever Jed Ballantyne.  He was out off in
the bloom of youth, so to speak."

"What!  But that would be a most serious offence.  "Twould be
criminal."

"Gettin' very law-abidin' ain't yeh?  You should know all about what's
criminal.  "Twarn't for the good of your health you came aboard."  He
swept his hand towards the shore.  "Take a look at your hotel
waitin'."

The great black fortress was well in sight.  The young man's heart
lurched.  Yes, its nice'n friendly," jeered the Mate.  Lackeys will be
comin' to take your portmanteau; comin' with their lashes an' muskets.
There isn't a convict aboard that has a leg that'd hold a chain."  He
looked down at the bronzed well turned legs beneath the short, ragged
trousers.  *Barrin' your own!"

The young man took a long stride as though to assure himself that the
chains that had manacled him to a rotting corpse no longer hampered
him.  He came back to the new Captain.  "What about the other
prisoners?  Are you going to hand them over?"

"Don't worry about them.  We'll fatten them up when we get

provisions here.  They'll make good seamen yet.  Then we'll set sail
for Australia before this wind drops.  Australia!  There's good cargoes
here, and there's men there ready to give lumps of raw gold for a
passage to the new gold find in California.  Seems once they handle
that there gold they'll go to the ends of the earth for more.  What
about it?  Are you goin' to put your scruples over the side or are you
goin' to put them purty legs into irons?  Take yer choice, and take it
quick."

The fortress was looming nearer and groups stood on the shore watching
the approaching vessel.  "All right.  It's not a question of choice.
It's a question of caution.  It would not be manacles if this were
discovered.  It would be muskets for all of us.  To fail to report the
Captain's death could bring us under suspicion of murder and then
there's the question of the Company, the ship owners

"The ship owners  Ballantyne spat.  "Have done with this
insubordination if you know what's good for you.  Get below and cover
them bare shanks.  Surgeon Black's clobber will fit you nicely.  He was
no more a surgeon than yourself, but old Ebenezer warn't asking' no
questions as long as the regulations had a wisp of coverinV

The young man grinned.  The breath of freedom was sweetening the air.
"Aye, aye, sir."  He hurried below but a second later his head came
round the bridge rail.  "Excuse me Captain," he added with pleasing
deference, 'there's just one other point, if I may refer to it."

The new title made such pleasing hearing that its owner had no
objection to listening to any points that followed its sound.  "Be
quick about it," he said.

"What about boarding officials, Captain?  Inspectors from the Board of
Health, that sort of thing?"

The new Captain guffawed.  "Health inspections, did you say!  Look at
them.  They're holdin' their handkerchiefs to their noses already. With
this following wind I'd wager that the whole island has been stunk out
this half hour.  They won't be too keen to come aboard; 'taint as if
'twas a regular convict ship.  Just fill yer nose with that stink, it's
the best friend you ever had.  Trust that and me and we'll get by."

And they did.  They dropped anchor within good smelling ^stance and
formalities were slim and brief.  In the dark hour before dawn they set
sail for Australia with fresh provisions and

a few fresh faces.  For the new Captain's consent had been tacit but
sure when a few sturdy ticket-of-leave men from the provision boat
prisoners granted a certain amount of freedom for good conduct had
clambered aboard in the darkness.

The new skipper was always in good humour.  The remaining handful of
Welsh and Irish emigrants came alive under the vigour of fresh water
for their bodies and fresh-washed clothes that had danced in the
sun-heated breeze.

In the velvet darkness of the First Watch, Mr.  Thomas came to know the
fate he had escaped.  From the four men who had slipped aboard in the
darkness, he heard tales that chilled the warmth of the sub-tropical
night.  "Eighteen and twenty hangings I seen of a fine morning," said a
Yorkshire man who had not poached for thirteen years.  "Twas like as if
Ma had forgot to take the bodies out of die washing of a Monday
morning," he chuckled.

An Irish ticket-of-leave man with a scarred face was the only one of
the four not anxious to reminisce.  The new First Mate watched as he
went silently to his tasks, sail-shifting, rope-slicing,
hammock-scrubbing.  Once when an improvised ball of paper was tossed in
his direction he raised his deck-scrub and diverted the ball in mid-air
with the skill of a hurler and the splendid teeth showed suddenly in a
smile that betokened an earlier gaiety.

As the ball rebounded, Thomas grabbed a brush and caught it aloft with
a matching skill that astonished the ticket-of-leave man.  "I shouldn't
have thought you were Irish, much less a hurler," he said.  He looked
curiously at the First Mate.

Gradually, in the dark of the Night Watch, the scarred man, Bergin,
relaxed.  He told of a January morning when he was nineteen and very
gay and the local lads had clubbed to hire the wagonette for the Garlow
races.  They were all wagering on the certainty of a one-eyed horse
belonging to their landlord a lady who had reduced all their rents that
gale day because she had given birth to a son after ten daughters. Even
the brake horse was in a mischievous mood.  It couldn't be held from
presumptuously galloping abreast with the fine carriage horses of a
gentleman who was rumoured to be the wealthiest landlord in Ireland.

* "Twas he gave me this," said the ticket-of-leave man, pointing to the
scar on his cheek.  "But he wasn't content with that.  He

got me seventeen years at the next Assizes."

"It was a savage sentence!"

The scar-faced man turned to him.  "It was a sentence to turn a man
into a savage."  There was savagery in his voice.  Then it resumed its
toneless ness  "There was a little girl peeping from one of the
carriages.  Queer, the way a simple thing like that sticks in one's
memory!  To this day I can see the horror on her face when I got the
gash."

Could the arm of coincidence be so long?  For a brief moment the two
men, so strangely met, looked out beyond the ocean and the years at the
same face.  Thomas was learning to restrain his impulses.  No need to
tell this embittered stranger that that same horrified little girl--for
of course it must be Sterrin--had told him all about that incident that
had happened on the way to Carlow races in the Repeal year of '43!

"I wonder, will she wait for me?"

Thomas half turned.  Had Bergin's mind become unhinged?  ^^:

An awkward laugh scraped the darkness.  "Someone else I was thinking
of.  She said she'd wait the length of the sentence for me.  Hmph!
Romancing; I was the young hero of a drama.  Who'd expect a girl to
give the whole of her life to waiting for someone who used to please
her when she was too young to know her own mind?  Who?"

The First Mate didn't feel like doling out bland assurances.  His own
aspirations had been growing steadily more remote; more improbable.
Now, all of a sudden they looked downright silly.  He sprang to his
feet.  "Look," he cried with an upward sweep, 'there is the Southern
Cross.  Over there people are waiting for you also; waiting for men
with your fine physique.  They say that there are gold nuggets to be
picked up there like cabbages."

Often on the long trek from Melbourne to Ballarat, Thomas regretted his
decision not to sail on to America as First Mate to the self-appointed
Captain Ballantyne.  Compared to this raw, wild territory, America
seemed near and homelike; only three thousand miles from Ireland! Kitty
and Mark had bought land there with the money they had earned in
Canada.  John Holohan had become a rich man in Chicago.

It was Christmas Day when Bergin and Thomas reached the Sold fields. No
one gave thought to the day.  No one gave

thought to anything but the gold that had decoyed this motley throng
from all parts of the world; peers and preachers; bookkeepers and nav
vies the scum of Norfolk Island, all bedevilled by the same dream of
sudden wealth that so few of them ever realised.

And yet it was here in this outlandish place that Thomas realised in a
dim way his youthful dream of attaining to the stage of a theatre,
through some actor forgetting his lines or becoming ill.

An actor became, not ill, but drunk.  The stage was a platform of
planks in a canvas entertainment tent.  The audience sat on rows of
up-turned kegs.  Thomas was sitting between Bergin and a young
gentleman whom Thomas was assiduously cultivating.  The young man, he
had discovered, possessed a high and ancient title, temporarily
discarded amid the democracy of the gold field.  Thomas was wasting no
opportunity of equipping himself for the young nobleman's world.  It
was Sterrin's world.  Technically he was word perfect in its speech and
its book-learning.  He would not, should occasion offer, err by asking
for a second helping of soup, by carrying a parcel in the street, by
walking abroad without gloves.  But all this unapplied knowledge had
been gleaned from the wrong side of the green baize door.  He longed to
apply it in the atmosphere of accepted equality.  And, here in this
medley of un queried identities, the young nobleman had accepted
Thomas.

In the tent, the audience of diggers chewed and spat and offered rude
suggestions to the floundering actor.  Suddenly, strangely, from that
riffraff group there came a prompt.  Thomas looked back.  In the dim
lamplight, the faces were indistinguishable from one another; all of
them caked with the clauber of the day's toil; then, from the
clay-matted whiskers and beard of one man, Thomas located the outflow
of those lines from Richard III; beautifully enunciated!

The player took up the prompt.  When he muffed again Thomas twisted
round on his tub watching for the next one; but the anonymous digger
had clamped down on his erudition.  And suddenly Thomas heard his own
voice calling out the lines he had often mouthed silently when he sat
at the back of the Assembly Rooms at Templetown and watched them acted
forth by the Travelling Players.

Bergin looked at him amazed.  "It's you who should be up

there," he said.  The words held a young enthusiasm long lost to the
toneless voice.

On the other side, the young nobleman came suddenly to life.  He had
been lounging, bored and somnolent, his wide awake over his nose, his
gauze neck veil clayey and grimy, falling in stiff drapes over his
cheeks.  He pushed back his hat and sat upright.  "Bergin's right; up
you go, chum!"

The occupants of the adjoining tubs supported the motion.  Anything for
a bit of diversion!  They hoisted Thomas from one to another.  He was
thrust on to the stage just as the actor was being assisted off.

He stood there gaping down at the cheering, jeering, raucous I

crowd.  This was not the dream of his young aspirations.  This B^

was a nightmare; like when he used to dream that he was in a '

crowded bianconi in his nightshirt!

Then his brain cleared.  This was no bianconi.  This was a crowded play
tent; a real audience, real actors, drunk or no; a real stage, even if
it wobbled a bit, and by the piper that played before Moses, he was
going to stay put on this stage!

With a sweep he tossed his wide awake from him and finished off the
interrupted speech.  It was King Richard's oration to his army and
Thomas as he progressed, started to enjoy himself.  Some of the words
might have been applied to the mob in front of him.  *... A sort of
vagabonds, rascals and runaways ... whom their o'er cloyed country
vomits forth in desperate adventure '

Drunkenness was no isolated happening in the canvas theatres that
played the gold sites.  A few nights later Thomas lent a hand to drag
an actor blind drunk from a grog shop within minutes of curtain up. The
part was a small one and the theatre manager questioned Thomas about
his previous experience.  Thomas managed to check himself just as he
was about to confess that he had no experience whatever.  He assumed
the Keep Off The Grass look that he had seen on the titled digger
whenever people questioned him about his previous life.  That look was
enough for the manager.  Thomas was a 'quick study'.  He got the part,
but it only lasted him a night.  The players closed in their ranks
against 'digger' competition.  They decided to postpone all serious
drinking until after the performance.

By day, Thomas probed the earth but never did his ears Madden to the
music of his pick catching in a nugget.  The

nobleman's white hands grew hornier with welts and warts.  By night,
it was he whom Thomas helped from the grog shops.

One morning the claim they worked on filled in with water.
Johnny-the-lord pulled Thomas to safety.  "I'm finished with this
dump," he said through chattering teeth.  "I'm off to dig liquid gold
from a brandy keg."  Thomas too, was sick of the unrewarding toil; sick
of the fanaticism on the faces of men who refused to give in.  He
decided to go wit^i Johnnythe-lord.  He would try to take his chances
with the theatre manager.  Silently, Bergin fell in with the two.

On the way back they paused to watch a group of men standing around a
cavity on a hill.  There was something dramatic about the way the men
handed the pan of gravel from one to another for inspection.  Thomas
thought that they must have brought up the colour; but the last man,
when he had pawed through the gravel, flung it from him with a gesture
of disgust.  Without another word the group picked up their belongings
and walked off.

A piece of the flying gravel hit Thomas.  "It's all yours," said the
man who had tossed it.  Thomas recognised him.  He was a London
book-keeper who had sold up everything he possessed to seek gold in
order to get his employer's consent to marry his daughter.

Bergin looked curiously at the 'cradle'.  It was a new type that he
hadn't seen before.  "Damn fool," he said in his grim, toneless way.
"Suit him better to have kept his money and his cushy job in London!
Fat chance the likes of him has of marrying the boss's daughter."

For a weary, sodden moment, Johnny-the-lord reverted to cast and
muttered something about the absurdity of a 'clerk fellow' getting
notions because he had learned to push a pen across his employer's
ledger.

Thomas, chilled to the bone, felt the sudden heart of rage.  He thought
feverishly that they had discovered his own foolish aspirations.  Who
were they, an escaped convict and some discredited squib of nobility,
to scoff at the decent aspirations of love?

Some affinity with the hapless clerk who had made such a bid to win his
employer's daughter made him reach out his hand to the abandoned crank
and set the cradle rocking.  The others called him to come on.  When he
persisted in working it they

returned and worked with him.  They were loyal mates, as well be
realised.  What he didn't realise was die rasped state of his mind and
body from continuous toil and setbacks; from the continuous bare
blueness of the undraped sky above him and the ochre desert of clay all
around him.  He longed for soft, grey clouds; for little roads that
meandered between green hedges; for the sentient winds that breathed
into the mind and stirred its thought; but most of all he longed for
the softness of lips that had touched his and that held him for ever;
ensorcelled to the un deliberate witchery of their magic.

Suddenly he ceased to long; to think.  He became a mindless frenzy.  In
the gravel at the bottom of the 'cradle' his scalded eyes had caught
the glitter of yellow streaks.  Gold!  Gold!  They had struck gold!

The strike proved a small one; less than a thousand pounds' worth.
Johnny-the-lord went on a spree with his share, Thomas and Bergin put
theirs into shares that had started to rise.  It might as well be
making more money for them while they worked their claim.  They
reminded each other of the Gaelic saying "Have a goose and you'll get
one'.  They had only skimmed the surface.  They worked like maniacs.
They went on working when water began to pour in.  Bergin forgot his
past and his bitterness and his half-cherished hopes, just as men there
forgot home and wife and child.  Thomas forgot at kst the face that had
haunted his dreams, sleeping and waking.

But it came back to him in fever when he collapsed with dysentery from
working waist-deep in the ice-cold water.  He reached his burning hand
for the bright nugget.  It wafted from him, darkening as it went and
melting into soft rings and spirals; like the dark gold that sheened
around a young girl's face.

When he recovered he had to face calamity.  The shares he had purchased
had dropped to worthlessness.  The pit they were working had caved in.
Bergin had escaped with his life.  But Johnny-the-lord had not escaped.
Johnny with his fine elegant speech; Johnny with the slender hands that
had pulled Thomas to safety from the first pit, who had returned
against his inclination to the book-keeper's abandoned claim only from
loyalty to Thomas!  Johnny was entombed in the collapsed mine.  He
would have been alive but for Thomas's obstinacy over his slighted
dream!

Thomas felt sick with guilt; sick of the gold fields.  He returned to
the theatrical manager, but he found him breaking up camp for America
... "Can you pay your passage to America?"  he called as Thomas turned
away.  Thomas couldn't.  The barest necessities of life cost more out
here than they had in the blackest pitch of the Famine.

The manager assessed the emaciated features, the dispirited air.  Not
so cocky this time!  He questioned him about previous stage experience
and demanded explicit replies.  No standoff the-grass looks this time!
But Thomas had no heart to ape Johnny-the-lord again.

"Are you a convict?"  asked the manager.  Thomas's quick resentment
convinced him; so did his renditions from different dramatists.  A born
actor, he thought.  But he said, "I don't employ amateurs," when Thomas
confessed to no professional experience.  Cannily he watched the
hopelessness etch itself around Thomas's lips and nostrils then he made
his bargain; good and hard.  A signed agreement for Thomas to work for
him for an unspecified period in return for having his passage paid to
America--and, of course in return for the inestimable value of the
experience he would receive.

Thomas would sign anything that would be the means of getting him to
America.  He grasped the quill to sign with a flourish then suddenly
faltered, the quill drooping uncertainly.

The actor-manager noted the hesitation.  "Are you afraid to sign your
own name?"  he demanded.  He was convinced now that the digger was an
escaped convict.  But Thomas was back floundering in the void of his
nameless ness mocked by his own presumptuous aims and apings.  He could
see the reflection of their folly in the other man's smile.  And
suddenly with a flash of memory he saw something else!  Dublin in
Repeal Year, the stage of Crow Street Theatre, Thomas Young, the great
actor proclaiming, *... alas, then I was young and the gallerite
yelling, "And now you are Winterbottom!"

For the second time in his life he reached for the actor's discarded
name.

A few days later Thomas's foot met the ribbed deck of the America-bound
ship as though it were a long-lost friend.

CHAPTER 36

Sterrin i took the hard's tray from Pakie Scally.  It was no great
burden to3 carry these days.  Since her father's death the old man bad
lost hois zest for food.

He peecred out at her from under his brows.  "The young Sir never
briiings me my supper tray now."  It's funny, she thought, when Youung
Thomas used to bring the tray, the hard would call him everyy name in
the family calendar, but it is only since he left that tithe hard went
so far as calling him that name.  "He hass gone away, Bard.  I've told
you."  "He is aa long time gone."  She moved and opened the window. 
The smelll of hawthorn blew past on a little wind and there was a
lingerinng scent of apple blossoms.  Her eyes followed a little roadeen
i that weni wobbling like a child against the brown shoulder of the
hill.  "A year," she murmured, 'a week, and three days "

"You aire keeping a tight count on the days since that lad left, Miss
Steirrin."  She wlhirled back.  He'd hear the grass growing!  "Bard,
there is no kniowing you.  One minute you talk as if today was a
hundred years ago.  The next minute you are spotting everything that
goes on around you like a pet fox.  Young Sir, indeed!  And it is Youmg
Thomas you had in mind!"

The old man let out a sigh.  "He was the kind to hang a wreath mpon
one's harp.  Thank you for the snack, Sterrin, Daughteir of O'Carroll.
Maybe the next time 'twill be a meal."  She chuckled and took the tray.
"I'll get you more.  You don't usually eeat so much."  She liked to
bring his food.  He was the one person she could talk to about Young
Thomas.  In the kitchen they talked of him, but they talked of him as
one of themselves.  The hard spoke of him as a person.  It pleased her,
strangely, when he confused Young Thomas with the family.

He wsatched her as she lifted the tray.  You're changing," he muttered
'and 'tis no harm so.  I've always found red-haired

women to be treacherous.  Your hair is turning into a sweet dark hood
for the little face of you.  "Tis a pity about that wart.  You
inherited that from the princess who married the tinker."

She looked critically at her reflection in a silver cover dish.  "It is
not a wart.  It is a mole and I could not inherit things from her once
she left the family.  She probably passed on her warts to the tinker's
line."

"Oh, she left the tinker and came back with a fine looking male child
that had a wart beside his eye."

"You're making that up, Bard."  She knew every word of the manuscript
about the O'Carroll Princess who was so ugly that her father had fobbed
her off upon a tinker.

"I don't have to make up.  I know the O'Carroll breed.  Her face might
have been ugly but her blood would be proud.  It would never let her
live out her days, wife to a base-born person without name or home or
origin."

Sterrin picked up the tray.  Til send them with some more supper," she
said coldly.  Even the hard had no right to go that far!

He watched her leave him without a farewell word, head high, true
daughter of all the Sirs and chieftains who had gone before; their
chivalric lineage stamped in her features that were cold against him.
He called to her pleadingly; she was the sun's warmth coming to him in
the winter of his days; she was all of the past glory, coming out of it
in gentleness to tend to him.

You belong in high places, Bright love.  Storm and famine, aye and
murder too--hell roast them that did it--have kept you too near the
ground and the groundlings.  You were meant to soar like the golden
eaglet that yourself resembles greatly--Eagle to eagle--your father
would want it that way.  "Tis soon I'll be meetin' him and it's the
short greetin' he'd have for me if I didn't say what has to be said to
the little one whom he had to leave unguided.  Do you know," he went
on, 'twill be a great gathering of us in the parlours of heaven; your
father and my father and his grandfather, and my grandfather, that was
near a hundred when he died.  He was a lad when he came to Kilsheelin
from Strague Castle.  "Twas the day that Cromwell rode up to its door
and Calvagh O'Carroll handed him up the castle of his fathers without
as much as a Go-to-hell.  "Whose house is this?"  sez Cromwell.  ""Twas
mine yesterday, Lord Cromwell,

'tis yours today."  My grandfather's father said he would not sully
his harp there again You were talking about warts gra'

gal '

"I was not!"

"What harm: my great-grandfather saw Cromwell that day, a block of a
man with coarse nostrils, eyes hard, like a crab that can never ripen
into an apple.  He was thick in mind and body, and a wan on his chin as
big as an onion and another over his right eyebrow.  The foolishness of
men to rate themselves so high!  They are only as important as the
little space of life that holds them.  Let you go now, gra' gal, for
there is an air in my head I must set to music."  He dropped off to
sleep.

She tiptoed out, smiling.  That air had been in his head for as long as
she could remember.  But a few nights later it seemed as if he had put
it to music at last.  The sound of the harp startled Pakie Scally as he
carried the tray for heir to the hard's door.  
"Tis good to hear him
play at last, Miss Sterrin, but it is a terrible lonesome tune."  The
old man was humming in Gaelic as he plucked at his knee harp.  She
stood without lowering the tray for the words made her heart lurch with
dread.

"Long seems to me your coming, Old Herald of God Oh, friend of friends
To pan me from my pain!"  Oh, footstep not heavy!  Oh, hand in the
darkness!  Your coming seems to me long

When she saw his face she turned, still holding the tray, and made
towards the door that had closed on Pakie.  She must call someone; but
even as the thought rose she knew that she was doing what she had done
the night she had turned from her father's prone body--seeking flight
from what she had dreaded to face.  Mamma, the shrinking one, had
stayed at her post like a soldier.

She urged the old man to eat.  "A bird would eat more," she said.

"Aye," he said, 'a young bird."  He reached out and touched a curl on
her forehead then brought his ringer slowly down over the arch of her
nose.  "An eagle," he murmured to himself.  "And

it was no grey bird of the eaves that fledged that other; an eagle
too, perhaps, or maybe a hawk.  A hawk," he repeated, 'an shouk abu!"
And he fell asleep.  The next morning, when Pakie Scally went into his
room, the hard was dead.  The rallying cry of the O'Carrolls, 'an shouk
abu', the hawk to victory!  were his last words.

Sterrin felt as though she had been cut adrift from all her previous
life.  Even after her father's death the castle had not become void.
Its continuity had persisted; because the hard was there.  He was the
spirit of the castle; the guardian of all their lives, past and
present, linked to him in a chain of history.  And now the link was
broken.  Now they would be an ordinary hard less family like the
planters and Anglo-Irish gentry.

To Maurice, when he arrived, Sterrin seemed one with the harps, grouped
in bereft silence in the hard's room; the knee harp of Brian Boru, the
"Tara Harp, the little table lyre that the old man used to carry round
with him and the great ceremonial harp of booming apple wood  Like
them, she seemed to hold within her great throbs of feeling waiting to
be evoked.

After the funeral, Sterrin slipped quietly away on Thuckeen.  She let
the mare break into its beautiful quick canter and bear her away from
the sadness.  Vitality rushed all about her, in the warm wind, in the
little music of birds, in every plant and flower.  It was hard to think
of the hard lying dead beneath earth that held such life above it.  It
was hard to think at all with Thuckeen and herself close-knit in this
glowing sense of speed and power.  She set the mare to a great high
bank and soared over; funny how some people were so timid of jumps!  No
jump ever gave her fear; only people did.  They blocked up her thoughts
and gave her that feeling that they were good and she was bad, or
sinful, or guilty of something.

She saw the hermit of Bawn-na-drum watching her as she cleared the bank
and cantered towards him, kin to the wind and the horse and to the
great liver-coloured dog, half labrador, half red setter that loped
beside her.  He noted her light, firm seat on the saddle and as she
drew off her glove to dab her moist forehead he sensed the fineness of
her hands on the horse's mouth.

"I am sorry for your trouble, Sterrin, Daughter of Roderick O'Carroll,*
he said, addressing her in the olden way.  "Tis the end of a great
tradition."

She didn't want to hear any sympathy.  She had no wish to be

forced back into the past; she wanted to stay in this glowing moment,
and she wanted a drink of water.

When he brought it from his cave in a drinking cup of chased silver she
smothered her amazement in a long drink.  It would be impolite to show
surprise that the old cave dweller should possess a thing so exquisite.
Then she saw the bird engraved on the side.

"Is that a hawk?"  she exclaimed.  She peered close to read the
inscription.  Underneath was written "Hapsburgh abu!  *

"Aye, but not what you think; not the O'Carroll hawk.  It was given to
my grandfather by the Sieur O'Carroll who had a set of them given to
him by Mari Theresa."

He told her that the name of the Austrian royal family, Hapsburg, meant
Hawk's Castle.  When the Sieur O'Carroll led his Irish soldiers on to
the field roaring the O'Carroll war cry, "The Hawk to Victory!"  and
his standard with the O'Carroll hawk flying in the wind, the foreign
soldiers used to think that he was some Irish branch of the
Hapsburgs.

There was a picture somewhere at home she recalled, of the Sieur
O'Carroll.  He was really the Strague branch of the O'Carrolls--the
dispossessed one,

"I have never seen such a beautiful goblet.  I am honoured to have been
let drink from it."

"It is I who am honoured," he replied gravely and he bowed the great
head, 'though 'tis few I have proffered it to.  Thomas Francis Meagher
drank from it and he on his keeping here a few years back, and the one
with him of the O'Brien clan and, meaning no disrespect to you, so did
the youth who used to serve in your castle.  Somehow it did not seem
ill-fitting that he should."  He was reaching out for it and on a
sudden she drew it back and put it to her lips again, as though to
drain the last drop.  Young Thomas had drunk from this cup!  And then
she felt a sense of shame, and that queer feeling of guilt.  Young
Thomas, and all the others downstairs, had drunk from something or
other every day; wooden porringers, thick glasses, cups with Father
Matthew's face on them, or maybe the Duke of Wellington's, with painted
roses blooming beside his big nose and Waterloo under his chin.  What
of it!  She put the cup into the old man's hand and turned the mare's
head.  He caught the bridle.  "Don't give too much of your young life
grieving over those that are gone.  They have lived their lives, your
hard and

all these."  He raised the cup as though it held the ones he spoke of.
"Be said by my life.  If I had to live it again I wouldn't spend it
burrowing under a wall that was all that was left to me of old glories;
other people's glories.  I'd go out and make my own glory.  That's what
he'll do, I'll be bound."  He tapped the cup and she knew tharout of
all the people that it contained for him, he meant young Thomas:

She galloped home, ashamed of the singing happiness within her on this
sad day!  How extraordinary to hear another old man speak so soon again
of the symbolic hawk, and in that same breath to speak of Young Thomas!
Young Thomas who would make his own glory!  Life that had seemed, a
while back, to be closing in, suddenly opened out into a lovely
beckoning vista.

She found Cousin Maurice waiting for her in the stableyard.  "Didn't I
give orders that you were not to ride that mare again?"  he demanded.
And who might you be to give orders about me, said her mind, but it
kept the words to itself.

"I should have sold it long ago," he went on.

"Sold Thuckeen?  What right have you ever to talk of selling Thuckeen."
There was no keeping the words inside now.

He told her of his right.  His right, as her father's administrator, to
pinch and scrape, dodge and plot to keep the place going until Dominic
was of age to take over.  "No enviable right whatever, let me assure
you, Miss.  That horse is worth too much money to be used as a hack for
a thuckeen like you."

The moisture on her hair made it look black; made her look like her
father, he thought, and the words that burst from her made her sound
like her father.

"By God, Maurice O'Carroll," she swore, 'if you sell Thuckeen, you'll
sell me with her.  Where she goes, I go.  My father's horse is no
chattel."

He looked at her silently for a moment.  "In faith," he said quietly,
'you are no chattel either.  You are your father's daughter, but you
could have done with a bit longer in that convent.  We'll talk about
this tomorrow."

The stragglers that follow funerals or weddings still hung around the
yard.  Sterrin, striding towards the back door, took no notice of an
old woman on a crutch who hobbled aside to let her pass.

In her bedroom while she changed from her riding habit she fumed.  Sell
Thuckeen, would he?  This was the last straw.

She'd make a fight for her; this very night after the drawing room tea
she'd rub in hard to Mamma the enormity of letting illl Papa's horse go
to a stranger, and Mamma would back her up ||| H On that score, even if
it sent her off into a a what?  Not a vapour which was what other
girl's mothers had, openly and gent eely with pretty bottles of
smelling salts and providing interesting conversation afterwards.  But
those frightening attacks that had to be coped with behind closed doors
and never alluded to afterwards!

Utensils clattered outside and the door opened to admit Mrs.  Stacey of
all people with two copper jugs of hot water.  She was up to something.
And Sterrin was in no mood to show concern about all this panting from
lugging up a load that it was someone's else's duty to carry.

It was because of her cousin, the cook explained.  "My own first
cousin, and first cousin to Black Pat Ryan's father, back home this day
of all days, after thirty-eight years of service with an English Earl;
home on a crutch only one leg her other leg amputated a year ago.  No
more use to the earl's house; no use to anyone, a burden, they said on
the Poor Rates, so they gave her three ounces of tea and three ounces
of coffee and three twopenny loaves and a shilling and three pence and
sent her home to Ireland.  Home!  All belonging to her dead in the
Great Hunger or exiled.  Myself is all of home that's left to her and
what shelter have I to offer a homeless relative?"  She drew her
wedding ring up and down her finger and waited.

An hour back Sterrin could have melted to this pathetic tale.  Now it
exasperated her.  Why come to her?  Gone was the day when Mrs.  Stacey
might ask Miss Stenin to put in a good word for her over some favour
she sought.  The cook's status had altered since Sir Roderick's death.
Her sorrow then had been a personal thing that had brought home to
everyone the relationship that had bound her to her master.  Lady
O'Carroll would be slow to refuse a favour to the foster-mother of her
beloved husband.  Why this hinting?

For the first time Sterrin noticed how much the cook had aged since
that tragedy.  And tonight there was a red puffiness of recent tears.
Remorse softened her.  TDon't you know well, Banaltra," she said
gently, 'that Mamma will not expect you to turn away your poor cousin?"
The term that her father had used towards his foster-mother startled
her own ears.  It was a

while before the cook could answer.  When she had wiped the tears with
the apron she said, "I know that, Miss Sterrin," but she made no move
to go.

And then she said what she had come to say.  Her cousin had brought new
ses of Young Thomas.

Sterrin listened in silence.  The cook's voice trailed out awkwardly
into the silence.  What was I thinkin' of, to come barging up here with
my story?  Times have changed and a servant now is a servant.  Young
Thomas was a servant and one who had spoken against his betters;
preached against them in the public street.  An 'agitator', they had
called him.  This proud silent young lady was not the eager child who
had followed at Young Thomas's heels; whom Young Thomas had doted upon,
waited on hand and foot.  She had grown out of her child's world of the
kitchen and the stable the same as she had grown out of her dolls.  She
is not living in the past like the likes of me.  She will side with her
caste; that he had reneged.  Muire Dia, but you've paid for your folly,
my splendid boy!  Twenty years in Australia, they had told her cousin.
A life sentence!

She moved across and left the water, un poured on the wash stand.
Sterrin knew that the omission was deliberate, because of her own
silence.  But she dare not part her lips; dare not release their
trembling.

Mrs.  Stacey turned from the doorway and spoke with unaccustomed
quietness.  "I am sorry, Miss Sterrin, for intruding.  I had no right
in the world to come up here to you with that story."

Sterrin reached the door in a stride.  She clutched the cook towards
her by the wide shoulder straps of her apron, and the cook saw the
stricken eyes.  "Banaltra!"  It was a child's stricken cry; from the
child of her loved foster-child.  No proud young lady!

Banaltra, to whom else in the world would you come to with that
story?"

Then the door was closed and the cook heard the great key groan
protestingly towards its unaccustomed lock.

Reverend Mother held the quill suspended over her correspondence.  It
was rarely that the traffic on the avenue disturbed her concentration.
But there was no ignoring these approaching hooves.  Their clamour
filled her quiet study with the portent of

hasty news; the kind of news that it was the duty of Reverend Mother
alone, to break.  With a sigh she sanded over the unfinished page. Pray
heaven it would not be necessary for her to crush the joy from the life
of some unsuspecting child!

Instead of the lay sister's quiet tap there came a quick knock that was
an afterthought.  The knob was already turned.  The figure that stepped
up to the table was not a lay sister's.  The curtsey it started to drop
became shortened to a jerk by saddle stiffness.  Words poured out in a
rush.

"Reverend Mother, I--I've come back; for good!  I shall never run away
again.  I wish to enter."

Not for holiness alone is a nun chosen to be Reverend Mother.  Mother
Berchman looked at her visitor as though it were part of the day's
routine for people to come thundering up the drive; forcing their way
into her sanctum to make breathless renunciations of the world.  Her
calm gaze took in the dust grimed figure.  The skirt was coated with
dust.  Dust masked the eyelids and lashes.  A ridge of dust defined the
arch of the nose.  It gave grotesque emphasis to its arrogance as
though the chastening process of the convent had already commenced.

No dust begrimed the lips.  The Reverend Mother found herself following
the high, full crescent of the upper lip.  Had it always looked like
that, she wondered.  Three years ago when the girl first came here her
lips had been too pallid to notice their outline.  Now, exertion
probably had lent them colour, a curved blob of scarlet that glowed as
though it had been freshly painted on to the grey masking of the face.
Could a face change so much in--how long was it?  Eighteen months?  Or
had the other, earlier face been masked too; with the filmy mask of
young unawakenment that had been held all too rigidly in place by the
grip of tragedy?

Suddenly the lips lost their strangeness.  They became familiar to the
nun, the lips of a young thing; uncertain, trembling.

"I--I have brought my dowry.  Oh, not here!"  The nun's eyes had
dropped to the tight-clutched saddle bag that held a few belongings.
"It is outside.  It--she is worth a lot of money."

Reverend Mother rose and pulled a bell rope.

"Sit down, Sterrin," she said gently, you must first have some
refreshment."  She moved to the window and glanced down.  A great black
horse was quivering and blowing at the hitching ring.

"I think she said, 'that your--dowry would do with some refreshment
also."

The first weeks back at the convent were happy ones for Sterrin.  It
was a relief not to be reminded of Young Thomas at every turn.  Of
course she missed Dominic and her mother but far better a useful life
here than sorrow at Kilsheelin.  Even the grim ceremony of the final
vow which Sterrin watched a young nun take, failed to dampen her
spirits.  For a moment when she watched the young nun, newly veiled in
black, lie prostrate on the floor, her heart beat wildly in terror.
Four nuns held a black pall over the black robed figure.  The doors
were barred for this symbolic entombment.  And then as suddenly as they
had quickened her heart beats steadied.  Sterrin looked across at the
nun lying beneath the funeral pall.  What was it but a piece of cloth. 
It would take more than that to frighten her back to her emptied
world.

Sterrin was radiant as she made her way towards the common room after
the ceremony.  She had conquered her doubts.  The common room was gay.
One of the boarders was playing the piano.  But it was a waltz, and
four pairs of girls were dancing.  Waltzing was strictly forbidden.
Sterrin glanced towards the piano.  She might have known!  No other
girl would defy the ban so blatantly.  And no other girl could play
like that.  Sterrin gripped a chair-back to keep her body from
following the dreamy rhythm of the music.  The pianist, Eileen Morton,
was an enchantress at the piano.  Away from the piano she was sullen,
slangy and uncouth.  Her frequent in discipline was not that of young
high spirits.  It was a deliberate thing done out of mature resentment.
And she knew that she was barely tolerated by the Sisters for the sake
of her musical talent.

A great, gangling, Parlour Boarder went up to her and told her to play
something else.  The pianist told her to go and boil her head and went
on playing.  When the big P.B. put a restraining hand upon her arm she
shrugged it off violently, then lifted her hand over the keys and the
entire hall heard her ask what blasted right had she to give orders.  A
current of shock ran through the room.  But apart from the 'blasted',
Sterrin was in complete agreement with the query.  Parlour Boarders had
no special authority.  They were mostly girls who had returned after
their schooling was finished for the sake of companion348

ship; because life at home was too dull and monotonous.  A few of them
came with the idea of testing their inclination to enter.  The one
remonstrating the pianist had been here for six years.  She had a
fortune of twenty thousand pounds, but even the most daring Abduction
Club member would have found her difficult to run away with.  She was
six feet one!

"You are a disgrace to the school," she said now.  "I feel it my
bounden duty to report you."

The pianist closed the lid of the piano and jumped to her feet "And I,"
she shouted, 'feel it my bounden duty to tell you to go to hell!"

A week later Sterrin watched another ceremony.  The whole senior school
watched and most of the nuns and governesses.  Near the door stood a
woman.  Sterrin could not place her.  Her clothes were shabby and
rather townish.  Her face would be sharp but for the softening moisture
of tears.  It was extraordinary, Sterrin thought, the way tears had
softened the face of the girl who knelt in the centre of the floor;
softened it to pulp.  Eileen Morton's eyes were two red blobs.  Her
lips wobbled pitifully as they strove for the words that she must
say.

Rarely it might happen that the parents of a difficult pupil would be
asked to withdraw her.  But this was the awful ceremony of being
Publicly Expelled.  It must be like a public court martial, Sterrin
thought; like when an officer is drummed out of his regiment and his
commanding officer deprives him of his sword and decorations.

Poor Eileen Morton possessed no decorations, though her father, it
seems, had possessed a sword.  He had been an officer who had married
beneath him and had kept the existence of his wife and daughter a
secret until his death.

The girl's lips and throat worked convulsively and finally the words
came in strangulated gulps.

"I--apologise--for the scandal that I have given to all of you, my
classmates, my teachers Her red, streaming eyes followed around the
watching faces until they rested on her mother's face.  She gave a
choking sound and covered her face with her hands.  Sterrin averted her
eyes.  They went round the rows of faces that were smugly
watching--accepting this act of human abasement.  The big Parlour
Boarder was the only one seated so as not to obstruct the vision of
those behind.  She caught Sterrin's glance and gave a self-satisfied
nod.  Sterrin's

disdainful glance travelled down the whole six feet one and a half
inches of undesired body length.  Sitting there with her feet stuck out
and her twenty thousand pounds and a hole as big as a shilling in the
sole of her mean blue shoe.  As though a blast or a hell would
scandalise her.

Something was rising in Sterrin and this time it was not panic.  It
shook her hopefully, invigoratingly, as water welling up beneath the
parched earth shakes the water diviner's testing.  rod.  Mists and
uncertainties vanished.  Sterrin stepped resolutely from her place and
walked down the centre of the hall.  All eyes watched her.  When she
reached the kneeling girl she bowed and smiled her apology for passing
in front of her.  It was obvious to the amazed assembly where Sterrin
O'Carroll's sympathy lay.

Sister Mary Aliquo recovered her composure at last.  "Miss Sterrin
O'Carroll!"  she called, but Miss Sterrin O'Carroll had taken the
forbidden Grand Staircase two steps at a time and was now at Reverend
Mother's door.

In the act of knocking she halted to recover her breath.  There must be
no more headlong entrances.

"Reverend Mother/ she said when she had been summoned inside, "I wish
to renounce my vows."

Reverend Mother's lips twitched.  "I was not aware that you had taken
any vows."

"I mean--I wish to renounce my decision to take vows."

Reverend Mother refrained from pointing out that the decision to take
vows did not rest entirely with the aspirant.

"What has prompted this sudden change?"  she asked.

Sterrin glanced through the window.  A group of tiny children were
playing on the croquet lawn.  One little girl reminded her of Dominic.
She had fair hair and brown eyes and the same helpless air.  Probably
lonely, Sterrin thought.  She was one of those boarders whose papas
were campaigning in the Crimea and whose mammas had gone to be near
them.  Sterrin knew that Dominic must be lonely, too.

She turned away.  She had meant to express her disapproval to
disassociate herself utterly, from the scene she had witnessed
downstairs.  Instead, to her amazement, to her horror, she heard her
own voice saying, "I wish to get married and have children of my
own."

CHAPTER 37

Nurse Hogan made off with the post bag that lay on the butler's table.
Hegarty would be furious but he was up to his eyes in silver polish and
her Ladyship could not bear to be kept waiting to know if there was a
letter from Miss Sterrin.

She riffled through the fashion catalogues that continued to pour in
from London since the Sir's assassination.  Themselves and their claims
to supply the 'most Lugubrious Appurtenances of mourning.  Widows'
bonnets weighed to the ground with crepe; mourning rings; lockets to
hold the "loved one's hair "' Suddenly, incredibly, she found herself
reading an envelope addressed to Mrs.  Hogan, Housekeeper, Kilsheelin
Castle.  Who in wonder would be writing to her"?  She that hadn't a
soul belonging to her since the night of the Big Wind that had robbed
her of husband and child!

After ten minutes of speculating that ranged back to her childhood
Nurse Hogan decided that the only way to find out who the letter was
from was to open it.

Lady O'Carroll, coming through the communication door-the nurse now
occupied Sir Roderick's dressing-room--was startled to see the woman
who was the bulwark of her life sitting with her face in her hands. But
the nurse looked up to the sound of the bells and keys in the chat
elaine belt and her eyes were shining.  "It is from Young Thomas, your
Ladyship.  He is not in Van Diemen's Land; not in prison.  He is in
America; doing well!"

The news brought no added light to Lady O'Carroll's brown eyes.  She
murmured some remark that approved his liberty but kft no doubt that
there her approval ended.

The nurse had finished her reply and was sanding over the envelope when
a hackney fly drew up on the gravel.  She peeped through the window
then with a cry she ran to the next room.

"It is Miss Sterrin, your Ladyship!"

Margaret skimmed across the landing, then suddenly stopped.

II

Nurse Hogan was saying something about having to open her letter and
change it "And I had barely finished writing to

Young Thomas that Miss Sterrin had left us for ever to take the veil

Margaret turned back and faced her purposefully.  "Nurse, do not alter
what you have written.  Let your letter go as it is."  She moved down a
step, then stopped.  "And Nurse," Margaret was no longer the uncertain
personality who leaned upon her companion-nurse-housekeeper, "I do not
wish you to mention to the staff or she glanced towards the hall door
'anyone that you have heard from America.  Do you understand?"

The nurse looked beyond her mistress to where a young gentlewoman, with
friendly but sure authority, was tossing an order to the butler about
paying the hackney driver and seeing to a feed for his animal 'before
it drops dead.  Sterrin then ran with arms extended towards her
mother.

Nurse Hogan, standing respectfully apart, addressed to the back of her
mistress's bombazine gown, Yes, your Ladyship.  I understand."  She
dropped the letter into the leathern post satchel, locked it with her
own hands, then handed it to Big John.  At Templetown the postmaster,
and none but he, would open the bag with his own key.  No one at
Kilsheelin would ever read the address on that envelope.

Not since the days before the tragedy had Margaret sat up so late. When
Sterrin finally reached her bedroom, she found Mrs.  Stacey herself
drawing the bed warmer vigorously up and down between the sheets.
Hannah wanted to know was there anything else Miss Sterrin required.
She half regretted the query when Miss Sterrin actually asked for a
bath.  Hot water at this hour of the night and the fires ashed down!

But nothing was too much trouble to take for Miss Sterrin.  The
servants hadn't realised until after she had vanished so inexorably,
how much she had meant to them.  It was not, they realised, her
Ladyship, vague and remote; and certainly not the little *y ung sir
timid beyond his years, who was the head of the house.  It was the
tall, poplar-straight girl with the darkening hair, darkening her looks
into a replica of her father's.

With Miss Sterrin the servants sustained the old, homogeneous
relationship that had existed between their forebears and hers; an
association based upon a tradition of shared disasters in life and
hearth, and in creed sustained; unifying master

and man in mood and outlook.  That spirit was not in her Ladyship; no
more than in the ordinary gentry.  But it was in Miss Sterrin;
inculcated into her blood, fostered in her mind by her father and by
the hard.

Mrs.  Stacey went on drawing the long handle up and down although the
bed was as warm as a thrush's nest.  She was on thorns to 'draw' Miss
Sterrin about what had prompted her to give in at last just when her
Ladyship and Mr.  Maurice had withdrawn all further opposition and
decided that she must have received a True Call.  She ducked as a shift
came flying over the screen and landed with a slosh at her feet.

"If only I had known you were coming I'd have had hot bricks in the bed
all week."  She looked hopefully towards the screen and her eyebrows
went up under the frills of her white cap.  A long, shapely leg was
protruding in mid-air beyond the screen.

The cook had been muting her tones to suit the cloister that still must
cling to the body in the hip bath.  And here was half that body up in
the air--the second leg was there now--stark naked!

Sterrin contemplated her limbs with satisfaction.  The clammy rule that
had insisted upon her retaining a garment during her bath had irked her
at the convent.  She waggled her legs.  She was free!  No cloistering
garments.  Nothing would ever again induce her to risk her freedom.  No
matter what happened.  And nothing ever again could be as terrible as
the things that had happened.

Sterrin slipped back into youth's heritage.  Life stretched out
endlessly before her.  The desolateness of the hard's passing had
cleared from the air.  The loneliness for Young Thomas still lingered;
but locked in a secret compartment; not weighing her down all the time.
Her stay in the convent had given her the strength to shoulder her
crosses high.  She was glad to be home, and Margaret was delighted to
have her back.  For she blamed her preoccupation with her own grief for
much of Sterrin's unhappiness.  Now she fussed over her; took her with
her to pay calls.  Once again there was a cosy family atmosphere at
meals, with Margaret at the head of the table and young Sir Dominic and
Sterrin at either side.  Margaret even set her music boxes in lotion
and their tinkling made harmony with the crackling of Pear logs on
hearths that had lain so long empty.  Sterrin felt

encompassed with love and protection.  Except for that raw, secret
place that held her love for Young Thomas.

To forget him was impossible.  Once when she fell asleep thinking of
their last morning together she was awakened by the stable clock
striking four.  She jumped from the bed dazedly thinking that it was
time for their parting rendezvous.  She had started to dress before she
realised that she had been dreaming, but she completed her dressing and
went out.

As she stood beneath the wall gap with the whole world to herself she
deliberately relived that last parting.  In the convent she had crushed
down its memory.  Now she went over everything that he had said and all
the things that she ought to have said to him as a quiet brightness
crept over the sky.  As on that last morning the birds began their
faint cheep-cheep until the first ray of sun beamed over the top of the
hill above the castle, then the birds leapt from their nests.  The
grasshoppers awakened and were busy at a stroke.  There was a sudden
stir in the air that sent her springing up to stand where she and
Thomas had stood in the wall gap.

In the field across the road she could see the caps of mushrooms
thrusting upwards almost before her very eyes.  She was startled to see
a blaze of light moving over the slope; but it was only the tin can of
a mushroom picker reflecting the sunlight.  The sight sent a challenge
to her blood that routed melancholy.  "Whoever you are," she cried, "I
was here first."  She put two fingers beneath the white cap of a
mushroom.  "Pretty," she murmured, 'but you'll be prettier perched on a
nice big slice of bacon."

The thought sent the juices coursing through her gums.  She picked a
'trauneen' and strung the mushrooms through its stem like a daisy
chain.  Her shoes became saturated; but her hair and hands and heart
were warming where little floating clouds turned to liquid gold like
fairy ships across the deepening blue.  Her lips smiled with the
smiling morn.  She looked no farther ahead than the breakfast of
sizzling bacon with the mushrooms that would taste as no other mushroom
because she had found them for herself and plucked them out of the
dawn's magic.

A whoosh and a bump after the last throb of the breakfast bell
proclaimed that Sir Dominic was arriving down the banisters.  Then a
wafting movement bore the tall slender figure of Lady O'Carroll into
the room.  Sterrin, rising at her entrance,

watched the black swaying that seemed to propel her mother without
effort of limbs.  Young Thomas had made her aware of the impression;
something from a poem by his idol Mr.  Davis.  "Her step would scarcely
bruise the flowers."  Young Thomas!  A cloud soughed by.

"Mamam!"  called Sir Dominic.  "May I have breeches?"

"Why, darling, what is the hurry?  You are barely past ten."

"One of the English boys staying at Strague is only nine and a half and
he has breeches."

"In another while, darling."

"Huh!  I suppose when the "Morgidge" is paid."  He was promised
everything that he asked for 'when the mort age would be paid off.  ||
;

Sterrin glanced sideways at him.  He had played so long with childish
things that he was still regarded as a baby.  But he was growing tall.
"Yes, Maman," she agreed, 'he really ought to be breeched."

"If I'm not breeched I shall not go to Strague any more," he announced
in a surprisingly firm tone.  "Those English boys keep pulling up my
petticoats to see whether I am a boy or a girl."

Lady O'Carroll choked over her cafe-au-lait.  "Nevair shall you go
there again!  You shall have a tutor at once."

"If we can afford one," said Sterrin grimly.  "Every quarter's day
staff is being paid off.  I could take over his lessons and he carvgo
to Master Hennessey for Latin."

Her mother frowned, "Master Hennessey!  He is too--too du peuple to
impart a classical education to a gentleman's son."

Sterrin pointed out that he had not been too du peuple to give Papa a
grounding in the classics before he went to college in England.

A long sigh and a faraway look reminded Sterrin that she had said the
wrong thing.  Her mother had gone off again down the corridor of
memories.  It was the same always.  Sterrin dare not mention her
father's name.  She cast about for some safer argument and almost said
that Master Hennessey had made a success of teaching the classics to
Young Thomas.  Young Thomas!  Her own sigh mingled with her mother's.

"Look!"  cried Dominic, 'it is the fellow with the death message."  He
ran to the window.  Behind him Sterrin saw that the woman at the lodge
was behaving strangely.  She had let a vehicle through the gates and
instead of returning to the lodge

Ak.

she had dropped on her knees.

Hegarty glanced through the window then hurried to open the hall door.
"The young Sir is right," he gasped.  "Tis the invention that comes
when someone is dead."

Sterrin, framed in the dining-room, was like a stone.  The kitchen
staff were already crowding the inner hall and someone was whispering.
"It is Mr.  Maurice."

Who else could it be but Cousin Maurice?  Whom Sterrin had hated
because he had dismissed Young Thomas!  Cousin Maurice whose anxious,
pleading visits to the convent had but strengthened her resolve to stay
there.  Who would look after things now?  The whole structure of the
family would collapse.  Already the servants showed signs of going to
pieces.

Nurse Hogan hurried forward to take up her place behind her Ladyship.
Margaret's fingers crawled towards the sinister, pinkish slip that
Hegarty proffered on a shaky salver.  The cook had her mouth open for
the keen when Sterrin's exclamation cut through the tension.  "May the
devil ride buck hunting with Cousin Maurice; arriving by the six
o'clock train indeed!"

The telegram boy deemed it no breach of official trust to divulge the
contents of the telegram to the Kilsheelin tenants as he drove home. It
was friendly and nice to be able to reassure people that there was no
bad news.  But maybe the news was bad!  There were queer rumours afloat
about Kilsheelin Castle.  Maybe this little pink letter from the
castle's administrator was the forerunner of the big yellow poster that
appeared on the gates of mansions that are forced on to the Encumbered
Estates market!  And if the owners were forced out the tenants were
forced out also, and so the telegram might still be a death message.

Indeed, when Maurice O'Carroll spread out the documents that were the
cause of his sudden visit on the table, Sterrin's heart gave a queer
thump.  "The Commissioners For the Sale of Encumbered Estates in
Ireland," she read.  "Kilsheelin Castle, situate in the Eli-Fogarty and
the Eli-O'Carroll ... the said castle..."  There was a list of figures
and then stipulations of rentals like offerings of cattle and tuns of
wine 'together with one fat bee fe and two fat wedders and two pairs of
fat capons as ascates... payable to the prince..."  There was a list of
tenants' names that were as familiar to Sterrin as her rosary.  Lady
O'Carroll kept interrupting her as she read them, to make in356

consequential remarks like "Isn't that the mother of the girl who
married that good-looking farmer from the Queen's County?  Wasn't it a
"love match"?"

Sterrin forgot the significance of the document as she noticed a
reference to a shooting right granted one hundred and forty years ago
to The O'Meara.  "Oh, listen," she cried.  "It says here that The
O'Meara's daughter Tibina was married to the father of Dominic
O'Carroll of Strague.  Wasn't he the father of the one who was cast out
of his castle with nothing but the silver drinking cups that he got
from the Empress Mari Theresa?"

Maurice sighed impatiently.  "You can come out of the past, Sterrin;
all of you; of us," he corrected.  "The mortgage company is
foreclosing.  The castle is about to be placed on the Encumbered
Market."

Sterrin looked at him; incredulous.  This was the kind of thing that
happened to others; not to oneself.  And then she remembered how she
had thought that murder was a faraway unlikely kind of horror, yet it
had happened to her here.  But now Papa's murder had become another
piece of the historicity of Kilsheelin.  The castle was all the more
hallowed because it had happened.

She sprang up with a cry, "Are you mad, Cousin Maurice?  Kilsheelin
must never be sold."

"Of course Kilsheelin must never be sold."  Lady O'Carroll's voice was
brisk and matter-of-fact.  "You must explain to those persons, Maurice,
that Kilsheelin has got to be here for Dominic's coming-of-age."

Maurice looked at her pityingly.  A body could not show exasperation to
so much gracious beauty; and such un diminishing beauty at that.  She
was more damned appealing than ever.

"Margaret, my dear," he said gently, 'the Commissioners for the
Encumbered Estates will not wait for Dominic.  There will be no more
comings-of-age at Kilsheelin.5

The brown eyes looked wildly round the room.  "Coming-of age The phrase
cut sharp through her vagueness; down to the bone of her memory of the
tragic return from that last coming of-age party.  Roderick's night of
triumph; Roderick's night of death; Roderick's blood on a white
ball-gown!

"No," she said quietly.  "No more coming-of-age."  She put her hand to
the back of her head.  Sterrin flinched as her father's name sounded
out in that long drawn "Roder-eeck!"  And Sterrin

knew that she was alone again to face whatever was ahead!  And as she
bade goodbye to her kinsman he held her hand long in his and studied
her face.  The spittin' image of her father.  A real O'Carroll bred
true to the bone.  A pity she wasn't the heir.  My sorrow, he reminded
himself, heir to what?

He leaned out and kissed her again.  "God bless you child!  You are
having a hard passage.  You were born in storm and named for storm.
"Twas the Liberator's idea, that name of yours, I wonder was it wise? I
always hold that a name influences a person's life and the dear knows
your life seems cast in a stormy mould."

Without thinking why, she jerked up her chin.  "I'll weather the storm
she said.

He looked at the determined young face and sighed.  "If you had half as
much money as you have spirit you'd weather anything.  I must hurry
now," he said, 'or I won't catch this train.  A pity they did not bring
the iron road along past this way to Templctown.  It would have brought
some prosperity.  Any more word about it?"

"Not that I've heard."

"Well, goodbye again, girl.  I'll do my best with this damned
Commission tomorrow."

That night, as Hannah gave Miss Sterrin's hair its hundred strokes, she
kept losing count with the dint of trying to sound out about Mister
Maurice's visit.  "Eighty-four, eighty-six, wasn't it a profane sort of
thing to send that death telegram into a peaceful house and it only to
say he was comin' on a visit?  Bad sc ran to that telegram boy!  A
gentleman's life he has.  Three shillings and six pence a week and the
use of a pony; just to bring bad news!  He'd have earned his money in
the famine.  The Banshee needs no wages.  Ninety-ninety-one '

"You are cheating, Hannah.  It is eighty-seven and I've a crick in my
neck."  Sterrin was seated at the open window with her hair flowing
over her face.  Hannah slowed the strokes.  "Miss

Sterrin gra'.  It's not She faltered.  "It's not lookin' for new ses
that I am, but' she scraped her throat 'is there any truth in the
rumour that Kilsheelin is for the Encumbrancy auction?"

Sterrin remained silent

"Kilsheelin is hearth and home to all of us," Hannah said.  "We'd die
for it.  If this terrible thing is true we'll start prayin'

downstairs and we won't stop until our prayers have pierced the
clouds."

"Then start praying."

Hannah, watching the en marbled tensity of the features and the long
hair flowing over the white wrapper, was minded of a statue in a
church; except that Miss Sterrin wasn't looking exactly like a saint.

"Start praying, Hannah," she repeated.  "But God likes a little help;
so while you are piercing the clouds I'll pierce the soil."

"The soil, Miss Sterrin?"

"Aye, the soil, Hannah.  The soil that was taken from us the night that
I was born.  I'll get it back sod by sod.  And once it is back,
Kilsheelin will never be taken from me or mine."  She threw her wrapper
across the room.  "Get me my riding things."

"Miss Sterrin, where are you thinkin' of goin' this hour of the
night?"

"To Poolgower."

"But '

"Don't argue with me."

A few minutes later she went flying down the backstairs.  Big John,
from his room over the coach-house, saw her and hurried down.  Had she
decided to go back to the convent?

When she told him her mission he ventured no remonstrance.  Maybe there
was madness in the escapade, but there was no denying, he reflected as
he watched her go, savouring the flying harmony of horse and rider,
that there was some connection between the ups and downs of Poolgower
and Kilsheelin.  Poolgower was prospering and expanding while
Kilsheelin Castle ... He turned away.  There were things in the world
beyond the wit of man.  Mag Miney had been sleek and fed throughout the
famine.  Her handful of potatoes had never blackened when regiments of
potatoes belonging to respectable men had turned to evil-smelling
slime.

Yet, he wished Miss Sterrin good luck on her strange errand.  One big
sod to divide into four to bind the corners of the field the Big Wind
had lifted away, that could do it, Big John thought.  Perhaps that sod
could change the luck of the O'Car rolls, could keep Kilsheelin free
for the young Sir and for the gallant girl galloping off into the
night.

CHAPTER 38

The watcher in the shadows of the trees relaxed.  The marauder was a
girl!  There was no need to pounce or summon aid.  A whinny from the
pastures behind him brought forth a strange whinny from the
weather-belt of trees where the girl moved stealthily.  It was then he
discerned the horse.  Its docile pacing acknowledged its owner rather
than the rein that hung loosely over her elbow.

It was the horse he recognised first.  Who didn't know that horse?  A
bit long in the tooth but still the finest looking animal in the North
Riding.  So that's who the girl is!  But what is she doing at Poolgower
at this hour of the night?

She came out into the full moonlight.  With a quick sweep of her arm
she drew the reins in a double loop round it then dropped to her knees.
For a moment he did not heed her strange behaviour because her hood had
fallen back and a shaft of moonlight made little sparkles through the
waving tendrils and curls of her hair.  The horse moved nearer and
dropped his mu2zle into the silky coil of the nape of her neck.

"Thuckeen!  you greedy girl, my hair is not hay."  She wriggled her
head and when she turned with a laugh to push away the questing head
she saw the young man.

"It is indeed an unexpected honour to have Miss Sterrin O'Carroll
trespass upon our lands," Donal Keating said coldly.

If he expected her to jump confusedly to her feet he was mistaken.  She
continued to kneel for a few seconds and the gaze that met his was as
cold as his own.  He could not see the flush that was warming through
the magnolia-tinted cheeks because her face was masked with
moonlight.

So this was the youngest Keating, she thought as she rose; the one
studying law at Trinity!  A pity he is not there studying it now
instead of trying to impress his knowledge of it on me!  With a faint
but perceptible movement she avoided the hand that shot out
involuntarily to assist her to her feet.  "I am glad

that you appreciate the honour," she said haughtily.

The moon was behind him so his flush also remained unrevealed.  "It
would have been still more appreciated," he replied, 'had you paid your
call at a more conventional hour."

The moonlight did not mask the raised eyebrows and the curled lip as
she swept a quick glance towards the house that was steadily expanding
into a small mansion.  The glance despised his home, and her tone, when
she replied, dismissed the suggestion that it could ever aspire for a
place on her list of social calls.  "When I pay calls," she said icily,
"I observe the customary conventions."

Anger spurred him a step nearer.  "Perhaps Miss O'Carroll can afford to
break this convention; but she must not assume that she can afford to
break the law with equal impunity.  Not only have you trespassed here,
you have been guilty also of an act of malicious damage."  He pointed
to the square of lea sod she had cut from the ground.  For a moment he
looked at it with naive curiosity.  What on earth was the girl up to?
More of her high spirited whims!  "Do you realise," he demanded, 'that
it is a serious breach of the law to ... to ..."  he floundered, 'to
mud late my father's land like that?"

"Yowr father's?"  Her scorn lashed.  "Do you think I recognise his
ownership?  As for mutilation; that is a subject in which I am not so
well versed as you and your family."  She pushed something like a
trowel into a saddlebag and gave a fastidious flick with both wrists to
shake the soil from her gloved fingers.

Before he could answer she had her foot in the stirrup and the impulse
to offer assistance left him at a loss for words.  But she had swung on
to the saddle and jerked the horse's head away from him so that all
that was left for him to do was to stoop for the discarded sod of
earth.

"Hadn't you better take your plunder?"  he asked.

She looked down at him.  "I've changed my mind.  I think, after all,
that you had better regard my call as a belated return for the one your
family paid ours some years ago.  By all accounts it was rather
unconventional.  Particularly the style of visiting dress.  The shirts,
strange to say, were worn on the outside of the coats.  Come on,
Thuckeen 1'

She set the horse at a gallop for the gate and the breath went out from
young Keating in a long, low whistle.  No horse had ever jumped that
gate before and no rider had ever made the

venture.  Ye gods!  What a jump!  What a nerve!

He stood bemused until the hoof-beats had receded, then slowly moved
towards the house.  As he passed the drawing room windows he could see
his sister-in-law working over her ivory miniature painting.  Poor
Denise!  Life would be deucedly dull for her if it were not for her
lovely miniatures.  He decided to go in and afford her some
sociability.  She no longer got any from James since there was no sign
of her producing the blue tinted stock he had hoped for when he
sacrificed a rich match to marry a penniless aristocrat.

Donal's father was sitting beyond the fireplace reading the Tipperary
Champion; and on a low, armless chair in front of the blaze his mother
turned now and again to fish out embroidery threads from the well of a
mother-of-pearl work table.  i

Hmph!  thought the young man taking in the scene.  And this is beneath
the recognition of a social call from her I The arrogant marauder!  The
tasteful drawing-room of his ladylike mother and his aristocratic
sister-in-law!  That one wants cooling!

A cloud of smoke puffed out from the big armchair that faced his father
and Donal changed his mind about going in to cheer his sister-in-law.
Cheer did not thrive in the atmosphere of smug, purse-proud brother
James.

A maid was drawing in the French windows in the dining room.  He
beckoned to her and made a sign towards the hall door.  She nodded and
let him in soundlessly.  His foot was on the second step of the stairs
when the high, thin voice of James called out, "Is that you, Donal?"

Donal threw a 'yes' over his shoulder and continued up the stairs.  The
high, thin voice called again, "Would it be too much trouble to you to
come into the room and answer?"

The grace went out of the night as Donal stood in the doorway and faced
his brother.  The room was filled with the smell of the strong tobacco
that belched unchecked from the pipe and clouded the bowed head of the
artist.

"Was that someone I heard riding in the "skeugh" field?"  The small
field that had been surfaced by a windfall on the night of the Big Wind
sixteen years before was now distinguished from the many fields that
had since been acquired by the deprecatory term 'skeugh', used to
describe the hairy grass that grows upon the light soil of boggy
land.

Donal did not feel like discussing with his brother the dazzling
vision he had just seen disappearing in mid-air over the gate.  "From
where I was," he answered noncommittally, "I could not hear whatever
you heard from here."

His father pushed his glasses down his nose.  "Can't you answer your
brother naturally, Donal?"  James spat across his mother's skirt folds
into the flowered spittoon.

"The trouble with him is that he can't answer anyone naturally.  That's
what comes of college and professors at his elbow."

Their mother's small, shapely hand that had acquired softness too late
to uncoil the work-gnarled veins, halted over the work-table in the
pointing gesture of enlightenment.  Til tell you who it was," she
cried.  "When Bridget was lighting the candles she told me she saw Miss
O'Carroll of Kilsheelin pulling in her horse and looking over the hedge
at our land.  Would it be a thing that she rode in?"

Her husband put down the newspaper.  "Many's the time I saw her father
doin' the same thing when he thought no one was looking.  Maybe you're
right Ma'am.  I'll hold a crown 'twas she was in it.  They say she has
all his ideas.  If it were not for her red hair a body would think
'twas himself riding past."

"Maybe," said James, * 'twas trowin' one of his begrudging looks at the
"skeugh" she was too.  A small man he was to begrudge a handful of
hairy grass and soil that happened to blow down on a gale of wind '

"James, don't talk like that," his mother interrupted.  "Twas no stray
but God's Own Hand that dropped good soil on a poor field.  It is the
best one that we have."

"Well," he answered with slow portent, 'we'll soon have more where that
came from."  His father lowered the newspaper and the ladies stopped
working.  "Another windfall from Kilsheelin to Poolgower.  The castle
is coming on to the Encumbered Estates Market."  James drew loudly on
his pipe and let out a great blast of smoke.  It fell over his wife
like a pall.

She put up her hand to move it aside.  Would she ever get used to this
horrid smoke?  Papa had never smoked in the drawing-room; and never a
pipe.  His cigars were specially imported even after the Temperance
movement had ruined him and caused him to attempt suicide in one of the
beer vats in his own brewery.  Kilsheelin to come u/ider the Encumbered
Estates Act!  That proud, ancient citadel!  What would become of the

lovely Lady O'CarrolI and her lovely daughter?  She looked through the
smoke at her husband.  So he was planning to buy their estate!  For
half nothing as he had bought her own father's land; as he had bought
herself.

Through the smoke her eyes caught her husband's.  She sensed his
thoughts.  He is wishing that he had waited.  The look of pride in the
possession of a well-bred wife no longer glowed in those cold, pale
eyes.

Denise was right.  James was thinking about Sterrin O'CarrolI.  If only
he had waited, he might have bought in the daughter of the castle as a
job lot with her family's acres.  A mettlesome purchase!  But what a
possession for a man for bye this colourless sample of gentility who
produced bits of painted ivory instead of children.

Donal went from the room, sickened.  He, too, had observed the baleful
brooding in his brother's eyes.  Would the man never be sated?  And
greater than his passion to possess was his passion to dispossess.

Donal struck the under box and carried his candle upstairs, musing on
every step over the strange visitor; the strangely lovely visitor and
her strange behaviour.  The peasants, he reflected, were not the only
ones who cut a sod of their native heath to bring with them into exile.
If it was true that the estate was really coming on to the Encumbrancy
market, it might just be likely that she might wish to take a piece of
that famous field as a souvenir.  He had known sentimental young ladies
who had taken a memento of their dispossessed land to cherish in their
trinket boxes.  But there was nothing mawkish about that flaming
divinity; nor about that whacking great dollop of soil she had dug
up.

Pakie Scally and Big John watched Sterrin gallop towards the gate.  A
pity, Pakie thought, as he watched the shadow of horse and rider
looming over the moonlit grass, that Miss Sterrin's ringlets had to be
put up.  It used to stir him strangely to see them flying in the wind
as she rode.  The long black tail and the mane of the horse and the
rider's flaming ringlets used to make a great, stormy out flinging

He opened the gate for manner's sake.  Miss Sterrin would not take time
to ride through a gate.

"The young Sir wouldn't do it better," Big John murmured as

Thuckecn came over the bay hedge without touching a leaf.

"He'll never do it as good," said Pakie.

Big John looked back at him over his twisted shoulder.  "It wasn't Sir
Dominic I was thinkin' of."

Sterrin tossed him the reign and slid down.  "I had my journey for
nothing, Big John."  She felt foolish.  Her marvelous scheme to save
them all was a child's fantasy.  She felt like crying on Big John's
shoulder as she had done as a child.  But the poor hunched-up shoulder
seemed to look to her for support.  Everyone looked to her.  Dominic,
sweet and over-childish.  Mamma, she looked towards her mother's
window.  In the moonlight the broken turret seemed to lean towards her
too.

"He caught me, Keating's son; down on my knees."

"James's James?"

"No, the other one."

"Master Donal?"

"Master!"  Her scorn lashed him.

"It is just that he is college-bred, Miss Sterrin, and... God forgive
me, he looks so like a gentleman that..."

"That you give him a gentleman's title.  And to have that parvenu catch
me; me!  on my knees, on his land!  And the worst of it is that I
didn't get my big sod, just a little bit of clay with shamrocks."

"But, Miss Sterrin, 'twas the Sir's own land.  "Twas our land that you
were kneeling on.  All the same," he added to himself, "I'd rather
'twas standing you were."

"I know what I'll do," Sterrin was remounting Thuckeen.  "I'll go back.
He'll be inside now telling James's James how he spied on me.  I'll go
back and dig out our sod."

"Ah, wait until tomorrow," Big John urged.  "It's tired you are and
time for bed."

Sterrin laughed and patted the hand that lay on her shoulder.  "Go off
to your "horsery", Big John.  Do you remember when we used to say
that?"  The big man looked down at her tenderly.  He was seeing the
little girl pressed against the window bars of the nursery that was on
a level with his own apartment over the coach-house.  She used to
believe that coachmen slept in hor series just as little girls slept in
nurseries.  "Amn't I always remembering that, Miss Sterrin, blait?"1

1 "Blossom', a term of endearment.

;^^M

Donal at his window slowly unbuttoned the ruffled shirt and gazed
across the field.  Maybe she would return!  the leaves and branches of
a silver birch were wrought into filigree by the moon's silvering.  In
an oval space framed by the tracery he visioned her face, lovelier than
any he had ever seen in his life.  But, oh, its scorn!  She had looked
him as if he were one of the hordes of new beggars that had emerged
from the famine with all self-respect gone.

His indignation at her contempt had cooled under James's earth-binding
methods.  James always spat more fulsomely and spoke more flatly in the
presence of his younger brother's gentility.  When Donal had reascended
the stairs after the drawing-room interview he was no longer the
fashionable young legal blade resenting the scorn of a spoilt beauty.
He had become the brother of a land-bloated farmer, presuming to his
betters.

The sound of hoof-beats came into the silence.  They were coming this
way.  He craned through the window.  It was only Doctor Masterson's
grey horse cantering past.  Donal turned away.  "Visions," he said to
his dog, Bran, 'are not vouchsafed like Hippodrome performances, twice
nightly."

Donal eased out of his tightly stylish pantaloons and pushed his red
setter off the night-robe spread out on the quilt.  Ten minutes later
Bran had decided that he had indulged his master's inconsiderate
treatment long enough safely to resume his place on the bed, he heard
his name from the pillows.  Bran paused guiltily in the crouch of a
spring.  His master never spoke to him after the candle was this long
quenched.  "Bran, you're not fooling me and neither is she, for all her
arrogance.  She's just a pathetic migrant cutting a nostalgic sod to
carry over the ocean."  He turned on his left side and Bran crouched
again for the spring.  But it was the master who sprang.  The covers
were thrown back violently.  "Don't follow me," he said as he put on
his dressing-gown, and tiptoed to the door.

The silver surface had been scraped from the landscape by the sharp
edge of dawn.  It took a few moments before Donal realised that horse
and rider were back.  Sterrin had returned for her sod.  The gap from
which it had been cut made a void in the surrounding grey-green but the
sod was nowhere in sight.  Bran had followed Donal after all, and as
Sterrin's slane gripped deep in the earth, the dog bounded out of the
shadow

"Down, dog!"  Sterrin said calmly.  It's great red plume went

waving in delighted apology.  She stooped and patted its head.

You are a beauty," she said.  Before she could straighten up the animal
was on its hind legs and his tongue had stroked her from chin to brow.
A hand reached for the dog's collar and Donal, his heart pounding
violently, said, "Forgive him, Miss O'Carroll.  Tonight he is but
human."

She faltered in the act of mounting.  Where on earth had he appeared
from?  Why wasn't he inside sleeping?  Her foot resumed the stirrup and
he came to her side.

"He shall be punished.  Shall I shoot him for his profaning?"

She placed her knee over the crutch of the side-saddle and arranged her
skirt and cloak as though he were not there.  "Yup, Thuckeen," she
crooned.  As the horse moved Sterrin looked down into eyes filled wide
with an admiration that the moon could not hide.  "Do as you please
with your own animals.  But if you must continue to make dumb brutes
suffer, don't maim the dog as you maimed our cattle.  Shoot it clean if
you can."

He stood watching her as she clattered down the road.  "Devil a fear,
my lovely lady, that you won't forget to shoot clean: clean through the
bull's eye."

Sterrin streaked home once again, defeated for the second time.  The
sod lay there ready to be taken, when he appeared.  Sterrin wondered if
Donal spent every night in that field.  She took the bay hedge
recklessly and Thuckeen's breathing laboured loud as she cleared the
jump.

"You've pushed her hard, Miss Sterrin," said Big John taking the horse
from her.

"See that Thuckeen gets a good rub down."  She was curt with him.  "I'm
going to bed.  I'm very tired."

At the door Pakie caught up with her.  Miss Sterrin, beggin' your
pardon, but where will I put this for the time being?"  He was holding
a big grassy sod of earth.  She looked at it in amazement.  It was the
one she had cut.  "Where did you find it?"

"Sure, didn't you bring it back with you, Miss Sterrin?  When I took
the empty bag from the mare's saddle I thought that you had your
journey for nothing.  Then when I unsllpped the saddle girths this fell
to the ground."

And she had never noticed it in her fury.  No wonder Thuckeen had been
straining, with that banging against her flank!  Tiredness vanished.

"You'll put it no place "for the time being".  It is going this

minute into the ground where it belongs; for all time.  Will you lend
a hand, Big John?"

"That I will, Miss Sterrin, with a heart and a half."

The three of them walked over to the field of the Big Wind.  When the
last of the four corners had received a piece of the earth that had
been stripped from it seventeen years ago, Big John rose stiffly to his
feet, removed his hat and said solemnly, "God send that I may never go
out from this place with my soul in my body."

Pakie uncovered and replied, "Amen to that."

Sterrin started to say "Amen', but a sleepy yawn stifled the sound.

CHAPTER 39

The Commissioners held their melancholy auctions.  Lord Templetown's
mansion was knocked down to a Liverpool coffin ship owner.  Lord
Templetown, beggared by the famine that had enriched his successor,
went to live in Dublin.

No one knew who bought Major Darby's estate; no one cared.  The famine
had not spared him, but unlike Lord Templetown, he had not been
softened by it.  He saw the tenants he had been compelled to feed as
the cause of his downfall.  A tenant was simply a rent-paying machine;
to have his rent raised or to be evicted.  Darby had but to see a new
garment on a tenant's child to have an excuse to raise the rent.  If it
could not be met the a__ ..

tenant and his family were evicted.

Sterrin, riding with Big John who was schooling Sir Dominic on a stocky
cob, was amazed to see the change in the Darby estate.  Even during the
brief months that she had been in the convent there had been wholesale
clearance of whole colonies of houses.

"He might as well have left them in their homes," she said, thinking
aloud.

"Aye, Miss Sterrin."  Big John drew abreast, thinking she had addressed
him.  "He knows what it is now to be turned from his own home.  Thank
God that you or yours will never know that fate."

Maurice O'Carroll had staved off foreclosure with the prices from bits
and pieces of land that were not included in the mortgage.  But the
staff in its relief gave credit for its reprieve to Miss Sterrin.  It
was her inspiration to take back the castle's plundered soil that had
appeased the Fates!

A well-dressed man came through Major Darby's back gates and moved
across to where an occasional gable or broken piece f wall marked the
site of some twenty homesteads.  They Batched him as he moved among the
ruins then he came towards them.  He uncovered to Sterrin but addressed
Big John.

"Could you direct me to the whereabouts of Mrs.  Landy?"

His tone was grim.

Another upstart owner, Big John thought.  A gentleman would not
approach a servant and engage him in talk in the presence of his
employer.

"Someone of that name went from here to the workhouse eight years ago,"
Big John replied guardedly.

"But," cried Sir Dominic, 'don't you know, Big John, that she has left
the poorhouse.  She is the woman who is living in the cave."  He
pointed up towards the distant slopes where the broken wall of The
O'Meara's castle sheltered the entrance to his descendant's cave
dwelling.

Sterrin shot a fierce warning glance at her brother.

"I'm afraid we do not know anything of the person you seek.  That cave
has been occupied by a hermit for as long as anyone remembers.  Isn't
that right, Big John?"

The stranger saluted her but went purposefully in the direction of the
cave.

"Sterrin, why did you tell that man a fib?  You brought food to Mrs.
Landy at that cave only yesterday."

"Dominic, could you bid the devil to leave you alone?  That new owner
seems to be going about enforcing his privileges.  He'll smoke Mrs.
Landy out of the cave like a badger; maybe get The O'Meara arrested for
sheltering her."

Mrs.  Landy's widowed daughter had taken her mother from the poorhouse
and had paid the penalty.  Derby had evicted her for sheltering an
evicted tenant, even though the tenant was her own mother.

They followed at a distance.  They saw the hermit come from the cave
holding a fowling-piece menacingly.

"My God!"  cried Sterrin.  "He'll hang for this.  He's never gone that
far before."

Then she saw Mrs.  Landy come to the door of the cave; giving herself
up to avoid bloodshed.

Sterrin spurred Thuckeen.  Over her shoulder she ordered Big John to
take Sir Dominic home.  "He mustn't see this kind of thing."

The O'Meara had sheltered many an outlaw in his cave; peacefully.  But
this was the first time that he had sheltered a woman.  "I possess the
shooting rights over this ground," she heard him say.  The stranger
could interpret that any way he liked.

"He is quite right," Sterrin called out as she reined to.  This is our
land and he has the right to shoot.  That woman is under his
protection--and mine."

The stranger uncovered again; more ceremoniously.  "Miss Sterrin, I
have no objection to The O'Meara's shooting rights-as long as I am not
the target."  He turned to the terrified woman.  "Do you not know me,
Mother?"

Mrs.  Landy knew her son, Dominic Landy, the Omadhawn of the Wren Boys'
procession!  Dominic Landy, whom Sterrin had seen marched off among the
military when he had raided his own grain cart in the famine!

She rode homewards, bemused; as though she had been part of a dream
that had come true.  Big John who had not gone too far out of reach to
miss the scene was wiping his eyes.  He, too, remembered the day he had
seen Mrs.  Landy following her son as the military marched him towards
his exile; for fifteen years.  And now!  After but eight years!

The horses went off at a gallop, then slowed, then galloped again as
the thoughts of the riders set the tempo.  One moment they recalled a
procession that had wound down the Sir's Road; a hunger-maddened man,
an anguished woman straining to keep up, straining to hold the sight of
him within her vision.  It had always remained as Sterrin's acutest
impression of the famine.  The weeping woman following the soldiers
with their prisoner, his madness exhausted, held for her a suggestion
of the procession to Calvary.  And now--she spurred the horse--that
woman was weeping again, in the arms of the man who owned the estate
from which she had been hunted.

"It is a miracle, Miss Sterrin," Big John said.

And miracles could happen again--to others.  In the days that followed
the thought kept pushing its way through all her other thoughts.  She
burned to hear details of this rags to riches romance.  Her daily rides
began to take her past the Darby estate.  Would she ever come to think
of it as the Landy estate?  But Dominic Landy was not the type of new
owner, all leather and whipcord and unaccustomed idleness, to ride a
fine horse across his new acres; just for display.  He was always in
the ntidst of his workmen, lending a hand or supervising.

Once she saw him outside the church after Sunday Mass helping his
mother into a phaeton.  "Mamma, don't you think that we ought to call
on the Landy's?"

I!

Her mamma was aghast.  One did not call upon the new shopkeeper
owners, the gombeen men!  The ladies of the old order, shabby, even
horseless, were more strongly entrenched in their feudal dignity than
when these same shopkeepers came bareheaded to their carriage doors to
take their orders.  Not that Lady O'Carroll was shabby.  Because the
castle had escaped the Encumbrancy hammer, she felt encouraged to
invest in some of the Sombre Elegance advertised in the catalogues. She
had ordered Lubey to send away for some pairs of black silk boots with
white satin tops.  Today, Sterrin thought her mother looked dashing. 
She was wearing a daring innovation in mourning wear, white Widow's
Cuffs beautifully embroidered in black.

Sterrin pointed out that Dominic Landy had never been a shopkeeper. "He
has been worse," her mother said.  "He has been a convict."

Sterrin was quelled.  Her conscience pricked her as they drove home in
the chill of Margaret's angry silence.  It had been a bit much to
suggest that Lady O'Carroll should call in her carriage upon the Wren
Boys' Fool, who had pranced before her in his ridiculous sack disguise
for the patronage of her festive food; and upon his mother whom she had
fed in the Stirabout Line!

But Sterrin was determined to know how Dominic Landy had acquired the
freedom to acquire the wealth.  The next time her mother had a migraine
that kept her to her room Sterrin purloined the phaeton and drove up to
the ex-convict's splendid hall door.  She prayed that Mrs.  Landy, whom
she had furtively fed in a cave a few weeks back, would not receive her
at three o'clock in the afternoon in a low decollete'e evening gown,
all bejewelled, like the potato factors' wives did in some of the old
mansions.

Mrs.  Landy tiptoed to the door the way she had tiptoed through life
for the past incredible weeks.  Her starved neck and shoulders were
decently covered in a black stuff gown.  She clasped Sterrin's hand in
both her own.  Pathetically she apologised for her presumption in
receiving her benefactor in this mansion; like an equal.

At last Sterrin got the story of their new fortune.  Dominic had
impressed the prison governor as being an honest, industrious man.  The
governor was one who had retained his humanity.  He was capable of
realising that the hungry Irish, deported for theft during the famine,
were not criminals.  It was a case of

steal or starve.  Dominic had proved to be so conscientious in
carrying out his prison duties that he had been entrusted with
book-keeping.  When two years of his sentence had been served he was
let out on parole as a shepherd.  Soon he was herding his own sheep;
buying his own land, and on that land, alone and unchallenged, he had
found gold.  By accident, at the London bank where he was depositing
the money for the cargo of wool he had brought to England, on his way
home he had seen the lists of Irish estates for sale under the
Encumbered Estates conditions.  English shopkeepers were being offered
loans to purchase them.  And out from that list stared the name of the
man who had called him to his food with the cry "Suck!  ... Suck!
Suck!"  that brings pigs to their swill.  More than his banishment,
more than his cruel sentence, had the degradation of that summons
rankled with Dominic during the lonely years of exile.  Sterrin had
witnessed the last act of that famine drama.  But she had not got what
she came for.

"By the way," she said with great nonchalance as Dominic later assisted
her into the phaeton.  "A former servant of ours was sent to penal
servitude in Australia oh, not by us he was working in England at the
time.  Do you think he is likely to have his sentence remitted as yours
was?"

When he had questioned her about the nature of Young Thomas's offence,
Dominic shook his head slowly and with positive certainty.  "The prison
authorities regard the like of that as the greatest criminality; worse
than thieving, aye or worse sometimes, than murder.  Employers out
there won't take on "parole men" that have a record for agitation and
disturbance among workers.  The governor, in my time, wouldn't stand
for any leniency to that type of prisoner.  He put on my report when he
let me out on parole that I was a useful citizen who had been
mistreated.  He would never consider one who rouses the workers against
their employers as a "useful citizen".  No, Miss Sterrin, he'll service
his sentence and maybe longer.  By the time he is released he won't
feel like making any more trouble."

And that, she said to her face in the mirror that evening, is that! She
scrutinised her features.  You are going to stop cheapening yourself. 
You have your life to live.  You went on hying after your father was
murdered.  Servants have no right to stir up revolt against their
employers.  They have no right

to--no right to stir up revolt in--she rubbed the glass to wipe a
sudden mist but it still blurred her reflection; she wiped her eyes and
her reflection swam back;--in the hearts of--of their employer's
daughters.

She swirled on a sudden from the face in the mirror; shocked at what
she had allowed it to hear.  She crossed determinedly to the wash
stand, sponged her face with buttermilk, damped down her hair from the
rain water ewer until it looked smooth and dark.  Then she returned to
the mirror, "Now," she said to the face that looked out at her, 'that
revolt has been successfully put down."  She tapped her heart.  "There
shall be no more folly there.  Do you hear?"  She bent her face into
the mirror and drew down her cheek.  "That wart must be seen to,
also!"

Thomas peeped through the curtains and shuddered, "Surely," he said to
the manager, 'you could have omitted that fairground clowning down
here?"  Beyond the curtain a German American actor was delivering the
inevitable Big Wind recitation in what was meant to be an Irish
brogue.

It was the usual showman's trick to attract the Irish; a chair out in
front between the acts, and while the scenes were being shifted, no
matter how compelling the play, an actor quoting the crude lines '...
the night of the "Big Wind" when rich men became poor and poor men
became rich..."  and for an encore some familiar lines that travestied
the famine.  The shoddy device never failed to strike an answering
chord.  It didn't fail tonight.  Out through the sophisticated New
Orleans audience that had flocked to see and hear the new young actor,
rose the familiar reaction.  Wherever Irishmen met Irishmen it was
'were you over there for the "gorta mor"' (The Great Hunger)?  and
then: "Do you remember the night of the Big Wind?"  The tragedies of
Shakespeare were fine stirring things to witness; and all the high
dramas of the actors' spoken word; but they were not as important as
the famine to the men and women who had been both actors and spectators
in its grim tragedy, and the dramas of the Big Wind.

They leaned across seats and swapped experiences and after the
performance they came backstage and, as usual, the drama of their
reminiscences topped the drama of the play.  An elegantly dressed man
and woman begged to introduce a young gentleman to the manager and to
the actor who had spoken the

trite entr'acre.  The brogue fell softly from their lips as they told
of how, two days after the Big Wind, when their emigrant ship was
leaving Liverpool, a child of two was sighted crying on the rocks.  It
had been blown on to the rocks from heaven knows where during the Big
Wind and had survived its two day ordeal.  A young emigrant couple
looked after it on the voyage.  "We are still looking after him," they
laughed.  "It was a Big Wind indeed that gave us a son, for we never
had any children of our own."

The manager escorted them to their carriage.  He accepted their
invitation to a dinner-party.  "I accepted for you, too," he said to
Thomas.  Thomas told him curtly that he had other arrangements.

He had planned to go to his room to write to Kitty and Mark Hennessey,
to ask their help in trying to find the woman who had brought him to
Kilsheelin Castle in the weeks before the Big Wind.  He had always been
told that she had gone to America.

"Alter your arrangements," the manager said.

"I do not take orders about my private arrangements."

"Don't you indeed?  Your--er--trifling successes appear to be sending
you beyond yourself.  This invitation was accorded to you as a member
of my company.  As such, I expect you to accept."  The manager threw a
dramatic looking cloak about himself.  "It is an order," he said,
stalking off.

"Noises off stage," said Thomas to his departing figure, 'rude ones."

He went off to dine with the Liverpool couple.  They sent a carriage
for him.  On the way, the carriage halted to let some wagons pass.
Thomas's gaze rested idly on the splendid colonial type house they were
passing and as they did, the door opened and a white-clad girl came
gliding down the steps.  She carried a rose trew on her arm and a
piccaninny followed in attendance; just the way the piccaninny Young
Thomas' used to walk in attendance behind the gliding form of Lady
O'Carroll.  He craned from the carriage.  The girl was beautiful--not
as beautiful as Sterrin.  No girl could be that beautiful!  The house
that he would build for Sterrin would be more beautiful than this one.
She would float down steps that would be wider, more cascading--but
perhaps she might not turn into the float iflg type.  He had to remind
himself that when he had last seen

her she was still displaying limbs; slender, but unfloatingly vigorous
and with a tendency to take two steps at a time.

In the late of that afternoon he took the first step towards building
his dream house.  His host took him strolling through his grounds and
his pastures and showed him great acreage of corn and cotton.  "I was
born on a good County Kildare farm and I earned big wages here when I
landed) but I told myself that I hadn't come to America to work on
other men's land; so bit by bit, I bought my own."  He gave a big sigh.
"I bought too much.  I thought I would have children to work and
inherit but the one that I made my own has no taste for the land.  You
saw for yourself just now he is stage-struck.  In another while it will
be something else."  He pointed to uncultivated acres in the distance.
"I'm going to sell that.  Why should I go on troubling myself?  I had a
mind to build a house there for him.  But he is not interested. Someone
will get a bargain."

It was Thomas who got the bargain.  A few days later he stood upon his
own acres.  Tossed on to his lap, he reflected, by the Big Wind that
had tossed a poor little mite on to those Liverpool rocks.  And to
think that he had protested against that trite recitation about the
"Big Wind'.  Had the manager agreed, and he had been tempted to
suppress the shoddy little entr'acre, the landowner and his wife would
never have ventured backstage with their foster-son.  Things don't
happen by accident.  Thomas knew now for certain, and for all time,
that his destiny was inextricably bound up with that night of storm
that had brought Sterrin into his life.

As he looked up to where his land sloped gently, his enchanted eyes
raised up a white house tall enough to meet the en clasping trees. 
Once he stood enraptured at the sight of a white Colonial-style mansion
from which a white-clad girl had floated down the steps, a rose basket
on her arm, a piccaninny in attendance.  Now in his dreams another
white-clad girl floated down the steps she must float!  The roses,
somehow, were already in the trew and the little piccaninny carried the
secateurs.  Other piccaninnies whisked at flies, or made pretence like
Mickey-the-turf used to of weeding the rose beds.  And then,
wraithlike, other children glided on to the scene; fair skinned
children with gold-red hair, or maybe black.  His children and
Sterrin's!  He had made real his dream of becoming an actor.  Why not
this one, too?

Next evening Thomas was astounded to receive a visit from gig John
Holohan of Upper Kilsheelin.  John and his sweetheart, Molly, the dryad
with the wondrous hair had been among a handful of survivors of five
hundred passengers who had left Cove in a coffin ship that had
justified its name.  It had limped over the ocean for two months, all
the time jettisoning daily the corpses of its plague-stricken
passengers.  Weak and horror wrought, they had gone blindly to the
destinations they had been directed to by the unscrupulous employment
agents who met the boat.  John and Molly were separated by the excited
crowds at the pier.  John found himself in Chicago, then a swampy
village by the lakeside.  His prosperity had grown with the village.
His business acumen equalled his physical powers.  He was a rich man;
growing all the time richer and all the time he pursued an unremitting
search for his lost sweetheart.

His search led him to New Orleans.  This was the last address he had
from her one and only letter.  John brought Thomas a letter from Nurse
Hogan which he had been carrying about for months.

The envelope was covered with crossed-out addresses where it had
followed him about for months before being forwarded to John Holohan's
address in Chicago.  But he could still decipher the thin, reedy
writing that had written many a list that he had dispatched with by
Nurse Hogan.  His fingers tingled at the paper's touch.  There would be
news of her.  There was bound to be some mention.  Wasn't that the real
reason that had prompted him to write to Nurse Hogan?  Though the dear
knows he would have written soon to the woman who had been like a
mother to him "The night of the Big Wind when poor men became rich and
rich men became poor Nurse Hogan was surely one of those who had become
poor that night--in a fearful way; husband, child, home!  Thomas opened
the envelope with great care.

John moved to the window and looked out to give him Privacy.  Thomas
read quickly once, then again.  He folded the letter and stared
straight ahead.  It was.  He had reached the Portals of Sterrin's world
too late.  He was a successful landowner, a young man of property.  He
had built the bridge, but Sterrin was no longer waiting.

"Miss Sterrin has left us for ever to take the veil..."  Nurse **ogan
had written.

Sterrin was on her knees tending the sod in one of the four corners of
the field of the Big Wind when the bianconi driver waved a letter at
her from the gates.  It was an invitation to join a house-party at the
Delaneys for the Maryborough Horse Show; for the whole family, Lady
O'Carroll, Sir Dominic and Sterrin.  It was to be an informal, gay
affair for young and old, a party like the ones that the De Laceys used
to give before the famine.  Sir Jocelyn Devine, the principal
shareholder of the railway line, was bringing guests in a special
train.

Sterrin suddenly recalled what Cousin Maurice had said about the
railway line.  Where it had cut through private property, the owners
had been given big compensations.  Not to mention the access it
afforded to better markets and prices for their products!  She must
meet this Sir Jocelyn Devine.

Nurse Hogan joined forces with her to induce Lady O'Carroll to accept.
The nurse pointed out that it was the only opportunity of dancing and
gaiety that Miss Sterrin was likely to get.  There were no more balls
at Templetown House.  The garrison ladies were off with their husbands
at the Crimean war.  A gombeen man lived in De Lacey's.  A peasant
farmer who was also an ex-convict owned Major Darby's estate.  It was
an opportunity to see the old friends and make new ones.  But her
Ladyship refused to break her mourning seclusion.

Sterrin rose to her feet.  Very well, Mamma," she said with an air of
great resolve.  Tm going back to the convent."

Her mother assessed the scowl that had knit her daughter's brows into
one black sweep across her forehead.

"Aren't you making rather a habit of it?"  she countered.  <

"I mean it.  This time I'll stay.  At least I'll have companionship."
Lady O'Carroll found the last statement undisputable.

That afternoon they drove to Lubey's to order green velvet for a gown
for Sterrin and to enquire why the black silk bootees with the white
satin tops had not been delivered to Lady O'Carroll weeks ago.

They had not been delivered, Mr.  Lubey explained as he accompanied the
ladies to the door without offering to show the velvet, because Lady
O'Carroll in her melancholy preoccupation with her lamentable
bereavement may have overlooked the fact that her account was so long
overdue.  Perhaps when Lady O'CarrolPs mind had been tranquillised by
the settling of the account it would be possible to hasten those
dilatory London

firms with the silk bootees, the velvet also.

Mr.  Lubey's hint cut right down through the years and through the
clouds of Lady O'Carroll's remoteness.  "Quelle audacitte!"  she gasped
as the carriage rolled down the street.  "Do you realise Sterrin that
the person was actually asking me to settle my account?  Me!"

"He must be an optimist."

"Sterrin, I consider your remark to be in very bad taste.  Tell Big
John to stop at Mr.  Hoey's office and I shall instruct him to close
Lubey's account."

"Close it with what, Mamma?  A crowbar?"

"Ster-een!  Spare me your unladylike terms."

"Well, perhaps, Mamma, it would have been more genteel had I said
hammer the auction hammer that knocks down the Encumbered Estates."

"Sterrin, I do not see that the term hammer is any more refined than
crowbar.  And I am not familiar with either."

And I, thought Sterrin, am more familiar with the crowbar than I am
with a croquet mallet.

Big John forgot to urge the horses.  They paced to the tempo of his
thoughts that grieved over his ladies having to return without the
finery they had been refused by a gombeen man.  They drove so slowly
past one turning that involuntarily both ladies turned to glance down a
tree-lined road that led to ornamental gates and white railings and
beyond, the low roof and white walls of a house that stood embowered in
the en clasping woods.  The sight of the De Lacey's former home
recalled the present owner, Lubey, the 'gombeen' man who had dared to
slight Lady O'Carroll with his tradesman's talk.  And all of a HUH K

sudden the two wistful faces became as haughty and remote as though
their owners could afford to cover the whole countryside with green
velvet.

Hannah had the seamstress installed, waiting to get down to the velvet
the moment it arrived.  A few months back Sterrin Would have blurted
out what had happened.  Now she said forHially.  "Let her go, Hannah. 
I was unable to get the right shade."

Upstairs she dropped formality.  She went straight to the face h* the
mirror and gritted her teeth.  "I've got to meet Sir Jocelyn Devine.  I
must have a gown for that party."

She rushed up to the attics and rummaged madly through the trunkfuls of
bygone grandeur.  Velvets, satins, brocades dissolved

at her touch like the stuff of dreams.  The Big Wind had saturated
every trunk and pulped their contents into a gaudy papier mache

She rose to her feet and sent the mess flying with a furious kick.  It
dislodged, of all things, a heap of green velvet.  She ran to her
mother's boudoir with a pair of breeches.  Her mother looked at them
sadly.  "Your dear papa's father bowed in them before Marie
Antoinette."  Sterrin couldn't resist saying that he must have bowed
too low.  There was an obvious split down the seat that was not storm
damage.

"It will make a breeches for Dominic," her mother said, ignoring
Sterrin's crudity.

There was enough left over from Dominic's breeches to make a short
bodice for Sterrin.  One of Lady O'Carroll's presentation gowns was
transformed into a skirt trimmed round the hem with a row of green
velvet leaves.  Lady O'Carroll was forced to admire the result of the
ingenuity.

She was also, under the sustained threat of Sterrin's return to the
convent, forced to permit Sterrin to depart for Delaney's under the
chaperonage of Hannah.  Two train journeys to Maurice O'Carroll in
County Waterford had made Sterrin a veteran of rail travel.  But Hannah
stood on the platform shivering at the thought of committing herself to
the terror of the unknown.  When the great iron monster came, clanking
and roaring, Dominic slipped his hand into his sister's.  Sterrin felt
as though he had placed his whole life and world into her protection.
The next moment the train had roared past.  Hannah was jolted out of
her fears, "There's manners for you," she gasped, 'think of drivin'
past like that and people waitin' to travel!"  The porter assured her
that it was only the nonstop mail for Dublin.  Hannah didn't think this
was sufficient justification for bad manners.  "How did they know but
'twas to Dublin we wanted to go?  The mail coach wouldn't do the like
of that; nor the bianconi."

The next train stopped, obligingly enough, and brought them at an
ambling pace to their destination.  Mrs.  Delaney, waiting at the
station in the maroon carriage had the notion, as they approached, that
if she was hoping to marry off some of her surplus daughters she was
defeating her own ends in inviting such competition as Sterrin
O'Carroll.  Not much suggestion here of the white-faced, reddish-haired
girl who had moved m

the shadow of her mother's beauty; not much suggestion of a nun
either.  Next day, Mrs.  Delaney introduced Sterrin to Sir Tocelyn
Devine at the horse show.

"This is Rody O'CarrolFs girl Mrs.  Delaney told Sir Jocelyn.

"Not Sir Roderick O'Carroll's daughter?"

The same.  A calamity!"

Sir Jocelyn reminded himself that Mrs.  Delaney had never been given to
felicity of speech.  He was delighted by this remarkably beautiful
young girl.  It was immensely flattering the way this sweet young
creature was deferring to him and giving him her undivided attention
although she was the centre of attraction.  Young gentlemen in
immaculately cut riding clothes came in recurring procession, making
excuses to speak to Mrs.  Delaney on the victory of her entry while
their eyes wandered to the stunning Miss O'Carroll.  But it was on the
arm of the middle-aged Sir Jocelyn that she returned to her carriage.

At dinner Sterrin began to fear that she would never get an opportunity
to talk to him alone.  She had not had a moment even to make a plan
since she arrived at Moormount.  She shared a bedroom with three other
girls.  The carriage had been crowded; the Grand Stand had been jammed;
at every meal the younger guests sat two on a chair.

She kept her face towards Sir Jocelyn and beamed at every bon mot till
her face felt stiff.  Young girls could not give a conversational lead
in the presence of the elderly, but when Sir Jocelyn mentioned that the
Dublin gas company was about to give a demonstration of a contraption
that would cook food by gas heat, her gasp of amazement caught his
flattered attention.

"Isn't science wonderful?"  she breathed.  "It makes gas from coal and
it makes coal drive railway trains '

"My dear," smiled Sir Jocelyn, 'it is refreshing to meet appreciation
for the inventions of science in one so young and beautiful."  But
Sterrin was disgusted to find that the scientific track she had started
him on was not a railroad one.  He went on to talk about some
impossible invention called a Talking Machine.  All the young girls
squealed and giggled and someone said that he was a fantastic wag.  "A
talking machine, Sir Jocelyn!"  cried "ks.  Delaney.  "You must be
fooling us now."

"I vow I am not fooling you, Mrs.  Delaney.  I saw it at the ^ice-Regal
Lodge.  It can speak and sing and repeat tunes made by musical
instruments.  This scientifically-minded young lady,"

he bowed towards Sterrin, 'would find it more fascinating than the
railroad invention."

Before Sterrin could assure him that nothing in the world just now
could fascinate her like a railroad, Mrs.  Delaney ordered the young
people upstairs to rest before putting on their ball-gowns.

As she climbed the stairs she heard someone calling for Sir Jocelyn's
carriage.  Her heart sank.  After all her scheming!  She shook her head
impatiently at Fiona Delaney's offer of rags to tie up her ringlets
before lying down.  Fiona thought that Sterrin O'Carroll needn't be
sassy because her ringlets were so natural.  But Sterrin just gazed out
of the window, regardless of the excited preparations.  Belle Delaney
was busy pouring urine from a large, flowered chamber-pot into pretty
china bowls and adding rose water and lily-of-the-valley.  She handed a
bowl to Sterrin.  "If you haven't brought any old kid gloves to wear
while this is soaking, I'll lend you a pair," she said hospitably.

Sterrin spotted Sir Jocelyn's carriage.  He's going!  She almost wailed
it aloud.  Belle misinterpreted the consternation on Sterrin's face.
"There is more rose water in it than the other thing," she assured her.
"Go on, it will make your hands soft and white."  Sterrin took the bowl
but did not use the lotion.  Its third ingredient, she reflected, was
overdoing hospitality.

But the gay sound of the music drew her heart from its worries.  A
section of the military band that had played at the show had been
kindly lent by the colonel to supplement the fiddlers and pianist.  The
wallflowers tried not to gaze enviously at Sterrin.  They discussed the
new paraffin lamps that graced the piano and buffet table.  The novelty
of the lamps gave them something to focus their eyes upon so that no
gentleman would catch their eyes straying in his direction.

Sterrin was never off the floor.  She had to split her dances to cope
with the demand.  Then suddenly, blissfully, she found herself dancing
with Sir Jocelyn.  He had decided to wait for a dance before leaving,
he told her, and his look conveyed that it was for a dance with herself
that he had waited.  Her mind went ha ring after an opening about the
railroad dhd then she became too aware of the modern-looking lamps on
the buffet table.

"May I have some lemonade?"  she asked him.  "I've never seen this kind
of lamp before," she went on.  "Are they a new invention of science?"
/

Mrs.  Delaney started to display their mechanism.  *I believe in
moving with the times," she said.  "This does not burn out the way a
candle does if you are absent from the room a while.  You just turn it
down like this '

"The dear knows what they will invent next," said an elderly lady.
"First it was the iron road '

"Yes, indeed!"  Sterrin grasped at the cue.  "I think that the iron
railroad is the most wonderful of *

"Then," continued the lady, 'they invented those horrid little slips
for bringing bad news; and now lamps that will burn for hours in one's
drawing-room."

"Yes," said Mrs.  Delaney, delighted at her own progressiveness, 'when
you return to the room all you need do is this."  She turned up the
wick in a sudden spurt of flame.  There was an ominous crack and half
the glass chimney crashed on to the uncarpeted floor.  "I think," said
the elderly lady, 'that I shall stick to candles."  And Sir Jocelyn
said that it was time for him to go.

Sterrin could almost see the iron tracks disappearing through the door
in his wake.  Railroad indeed!  But it would seem that Sir Jocelyn had
arranged for a special train to convey the entire house-party to his
mansion on the River More for a five o'clock dinner the next
afternoon.

Sterrin was the first downstairs next afternoon.  The rest were still
titivating in an atmosphere of sublimated woman, urinated hand-lotion,
singed hair and rice powder.

"Sterrin," her hostess called, 'will you run back up and hurry them
down.  We shall be leaving in ten minutes.  Yes," she went on in a
lower tone that was not low enough, 'she is lovely but a bit flat in
the bust.  Gentlemen like a well-turned figure.  Still she has plenty
of time to fill out."  Sterrin decided that she had only ten minutes to
fill out.

She slipped behind the screen that concealed the more intimate pieces
of toilet ware and pushed a small cushion down her neck.  The strain
brought a protest from her grandfather's breeches that burst the
underarm seam.  She tried her heart shaped pincushion.  It produced a
curve that was gentle but lopsided.  Over the screen she spotted a
perfect little velvet apple for holding pins; right in front of Belle
Delaney.  "Hurry down, Belle!  You are holding up everyone, including
me."

But Belle, holding a big red geranium to her nostrils was

furtively absorbed in her own brand of artifice.  As if we didn't
know, thought Sterrin, purloining the cushion from under the
geranium-covered nose, that she lost her sense of smell after the
famine fever and is only trying to dab a bit of colour on her cheeks!

She forced the green velvet apple down inside her gown.  It balanced in
bulk, not in shape, the heart-shaped pincushion, but the combined
effect was more mature and it seemed to be working.  During dinner, Sir
Jocelyn's gaze kept wandering towards her as she sat in profile from
him down the table.  The apple shaped side was turned towards him and
he marvelled at its sculptured roundness.

When the gentlemen rejoined the ladies he came straight to her.  She
had been on thorns listening to the older ladies discussing who was
entertaining who, and who behind their fans was rumoured to be that way
I And the younger ones discussing the prices of Jumping Frog Brown
walking gowns and North Pole Blue evening gowns.  And Sterrin's self
refused a few yards of velvet by a tradesman!

"Sir Jocelyn," she cried eagerly, "Mamma has told me about your aviary
of silver birds.  She said it was beautiful beyond words.  Would you
pleas?  permit me to have a peep?"

He bowed.  "My dear, I shall be honoured to have you view my
collection.  Perhaps some of the others would like to come-you
see--erit is in quite another part of the house."  And delectable as it
would be, one might not indulge oneself in her unchaperoned company.
But Sterrin was on her feet.  "I should never forgive myself if I did
not avail of this opportunity," she said with complete truth.  "Come,
there is no time to delay."  Her eyes and smile diffused the incence of
flattery.  He forgot his other guests; forgot everything except this
sheath of springtime that was awakening responses he had long thought
dead.

As they walked down the room he saw their reflected images in a convex
wall mirror.  No lady, he thought, had befitted his squiring like this
tall, graceful, exquisitely-shaped girl.

The spectacle of the aviary startled her from her strategy.  On
ornamental trees of ebonised mahogany and on branches of palest
sycamore perched; silver birds of every species, all with shimmering
eyes formed from priceless gems.  At the base of the trees orta i6w
platform, ranged the glory of the collection, large peacocks of solid
silver, their great tails tipped with gold and

encrusted with emeralds and rubies.

She moved from tree to tree, touching each bird with reverent fingers,
then dropped to her knees to examine the peacocks.

"Oh," she breathed.  "I have heard Mamma speak of them but I did not
dream of anything so glorious."

He looked down at her gazing up at him, her hands extended to the
length of the bird she held from gold-tipped tail to jewelled beak.
Neither have I ever dreamed of anything so glorious, he thought.  What
was it she reminded him of--the young kneeling figure, the rapt
expression, the hands extended holding the ornamental bird.  Was it of
some virgin to the Temple holding out her offering of doves?

Suddenly she remembered that there was no silver metal and costly
jewels to weight the wings of the time she was wasting.  She replaced
the bird and rose swiftly to her knees before h .  could assist her.
"It will soon be time to catch the train," she said.

He shrugged the idea.  "The train can wait.  It is specially ordered
for my guests."

She beamed.  "How wonderful it must be to have one's own train.  We
have not even a railway line."

"I must say I thought it singularly unenterprising of the landlords not
to have availed of the opportunity of connecting when the main line was
laid."  Her smile shortened a little.  Papa had been one of the
unenterprising landlords.

"Most of the landlords concerned were preoccupied with post famine
conditions," she observed.

"Ah yes," he answered gently, 'and with the forlorn cause of Repeal."

Her smile vanished.  He hastened to recover from his maladroitness Her
father's death, of course, had been one of the final blights in that
dwindling movement.  For a moment he thought of offering her one of his
precious birds.

But she rallied.  Disdain would not meet the mortgage; nor Lubey's
account.  "A railway line would bring prosperity to the farmers.  They
have such a limited market for their produce."

He fingered the replica of a pheasant that he had made rise for three
successive seasons without shooting.  The young farmer who had
subsequently poached it was now happily out of range.  There were no
preserves in the convict settlements of Botany Bay.

"It is touching to see one so young take such an interest in the
people.  Are there no responsible people to sponsor a railway
development without letting a lovely lady like you concern her
beautiful head with such mundane matters.  Come!  Look at this
parakeet.  Its eyes are fire opals.  Don't they give the impression of
life and movement?"

"Yes, don't they said Sterrin.  "You see, there is no one who could
really guarantee the line since Lord Templetown sold out."

"Ah, it is a question of guaranty!  Now, see this bluebird.  It is the
only specimen where I have used a substance other than jewels.  I
introduced la pus lazuli for the wings."

She stroked the blue wing.  "I think this is the prettiest of them all.
You know, in the last year the district nearest the railway sent out
six thousand firkins of butter over a period that exported only that
many hundred before it became linked up with the railway."

He stopped in the act of reaching for another bird.  Butter firkins!
Why was this exquisite creature talking like a dairymaid while she was
being privileged to view one of the rarest collections in the world?

"Perhaps, my dear, you would prefer if I were to show you over my
poultry yard?"

The lapis lazuli dulled somewhat under the blue flash of her eyes.  She
drew herself taller.

"Yes, it might be interesting to see what laid the eggs that hatched
out such birds as these."  She flicked a dismissing finger
tewardsfTfie^prlceies^ species.  He drew her hand inside his arm, but
made no move to escort her hence.  "Forgive me, my dear.  It is not
everyone who is privileged to view my aviary."  He placed his finger
under her chin and held her face close to his own.  "Why are you
concerned about this railway?"

"I... it would be wonderful to be connected with the outside world.  We
are so shut off.  It has been so exciting coming here today in your
marvelous train.  You have no idea.  I'm afraid my mind has been full
of it."

But of course!  He had travelled too far in life and the world to
realise that the novelty of a rail journey meant more to this fresh
young mind than the sight of a connoisseur's collection of ornaments.

His silver birds turned to lead as he looked into the intense blue of
her eyes set in the white glow of her skin and he marvelled anew at the
contrast of jet black brows under the gold bronze hair.  He touched the
soft cheek and his trembling was two-fold for the delicious thrill of
delight and the fear that his touch might harden her cheek into the
Midas texture of his treasure trove.  "And it only needs a guarantor,"
he murmured, 'to hack an iron path to the fortress where you have been
too long turreted."

She gazed up with lips parted and eyes more wide and rapt than when
they gazed upon the peacock.  "Would you like me to guarantee the
railroad?"  She sighed with relief.  It had been hard work among the
silver mummies!

"Would you?"  She breathed it like a holy application.

His smile was indulgent.  Why not!  A few miles of iron rails would not
cost as much as a few of these birds and there were always the naive
butter firkins to repay with dividends.  "And if I give you your
railroad, my dear, what do I get?"

He hastened to retrench.  He noticed the altered look in her eyes, but
he did not know it came from the queer crawling in her spine.  "There,
my dear.  We'll see about this railway."  He brushed her forehead with
his lips and his pat on her shoulder was paternal.

Then Dominic opened the door.  "Sterrin," he said bleakly, 'my breeches
1' He was holding both hands over his seat.

"What on earth have you done?"  she demanded, though she was never so
glad to see him, torn breeches and all.

"I couldn't help it, Sterrin, honestly!  I was stooping over the gold
fish pond.  Now I'll have to go back into petticoats again."  His
little fair face was stricken.

"Nonsense," said Sir Jocelyn.  Tour nurse will put you into fresh
breeches."

"But I have not got another pair of breeches and there's no more velvet
to mend these because the rest of grandfather's breeches was put on
Sterrin's gown."

The gaping tear in the seat of Dominic's breeches ventilated light and
knowledge straight into Sir Jocelyn's mind.  So that explained the
sweet little railroad project and all the tender concern for the
farmers!  The son and daughter of the castle were reduced to sharing
their grandfather's trousers!  This sweet ingenue was like all the
other women whose fingers, in his com387

pany, turned into claws that clutched for his gold.

He turned to the child.  "Return to your nurse, Sir Dominic.  Your
sister will attend to you in a moment."

Sterrin felt as though she had been plunged suddenly into a torrent.
Her body was engulfed.  She tried to cry out, but her lips were sealed
with some breathing pressure that she gradually realised was a kiss.
Like the memory flash of drowning people she recalled other kisses;
Papa's, Cousin Maurice's, young Thomas's parting kiss that had been
like a benediction; none of them like this strange kiss so queerly
intimately male.  She struggled, but her arms were pinioned against her
chest.  They hurt excruciatingly as though they were being prodded by a
hundred pins.

She was released with a quick, angry exclamation.  Sir Jocelyn was
rubbing his wrists that seemed to be covered with blood.  Automatically
she rubbed her own stinging forearms without looking at the rash of
angry pricks.  She was too intent on looking at the face in front of
her.  It had become quite different; cold and contemptuous; so had the
voice that was accusing her of dreadful things.  Tou have not omitted
one single trick," it was saying.  "You must be experienced in such
overtures to be able to defend yourself so readily with the sordid hat
ping trick."

Rage swept the blood from her face.  It choked the words that surged
inside her.  Damn you, they roared, are you accusing me.  Me!  of
jabbing with a hat ping like a totsie from Love Lane warding off a
drunken soldier?

But only her own kind of language escaped from the surge; simple and
direct, like the words that she had heard herself say to Reverend
Mother on that last morning when she had wanted to hurl forth
high-minded phrases about hypocrisy.  Curious, he watched her put her
hand down her bodice, and as though she were drawing forth a tenderly
guarded billet-doux, she produced a velvet apple.  Heavens, she
thought, it is full of pins.

"This is not a weapon," she said coldly.  "It is my pincushion."  She
was too proudly angry to offer an embarrassed excuse about its
presence.  "As your guest I did not think it would become necessary
for\ me to defend myself from my host."

The admiration was back in his face.  There was something gallant about
her^ standing there, her depleted figure restored in part to its almost
boyish lissom ness the velvet apple naively outstretched.

-588

"My dear child," he said, all courtly and benign.  "You have been
playing a part that was not worthy of you.  And I, in turn, played back
to you.  I acted towards the wanton you would have me believe that you
are as I should not dream of behaving towards the true and gracious
lady that I know you to be."  He offered his arm.  "Come, my dear.  The
whole incident has been a make-believe."

She did not accept his arm.  There had been nothing make believe about
that kiss.

That night she could not sleep for thinking of it.  When she did sleep
she dreamt that she was struggling in a swirling torrent and when she
tried to scream a face came over hers, and lips hard as iron clamped
down on her cries.  She sat up gasping.  Guilt more fearful than she
had ever known compressed her.  What wicked things had she done?  That
kiss! Its atmosphere was all about her now.  Its queer man maleness! 
Was this the way girls became Fallen?  Driven from home to die in the
snow; with a bundle in their arms?  She jumped from the bed and ran to
the door tearing at the knob.  Panic beat in her brain.  She tore down
the stairs not thinking where.  In the grip of sleep and fear all she
knew was that she had been overtaken by the fate that caused girls to
drown themselves.

At a table in a store room full of boots and leggings and sacks of
meal, Ned Rua sat in an agony of accounts.  His tongue stuck out across
his cheeks.  He could add any length of figures in his head without
error, but all his accuracy vanished when he had to drag the figures
from his brain with a stump of a pencil.  "They don't scoromund1 Oh,
Holy Mother of God!"  He dropped the pencil and made the sign of the
cross.  A white-draped figure with flowing hair was wafting past the
open door.  Sterrin slowed at the clatter of an overturned chair.  She
became conscious of the cold flags under her bare feet.  "I I wanted
some saddle soap for my boots, Ned," she faltered.

He was as horrified at the idea of her thinking to soil her hands as he
had been when he thought she was a ghost.  "Leave them outside your
door, Miss Sterrin.  I'll collect them myself when I get these to
scoromund.1 I know what oats we bought in and I know what money we paid
out, but I can't for the life of ^me make the two scoromund."1

Poor Ned Rua!  He was part of her innocent past!  So were

1 Vernacular for 'correspond'.

the girls she thought, looking at them sleeping so peacefully; so
appealingly.  Well, maybe not Belle lying on her back with her mouth
open; poor Belle!  It was that famine fever out in a quarry that had
damaged her nose.

She dressed and went from the sleeping house.  The urge towards
self-destruction was slackening every second.  It was that lovely
pre-dawning moment when people make hundreds of plans because the young
untrammelled air gave strength and hope.  Birds were yawning out sleepy
trills and here was she planning to what?  She placed a toe in the
water.  It made a dark patch on the nice green leather.  Her shoes
would be destroyed.  Should she take them off before she But then she
wouldn't need shoes after... A darting movement sent vibrant alertness
through her being.  She dropped down on her stomach and sidled her
hands beneath the water.  It was a most unsporting thing to do, but a
trout was a trout.  Her fingers were just meeting around a scaly belly
when a rattle made her look round.  "Hell roast you, Ned Rua!  You've
made me lose a three pounder at least."

"Whisht, Miss Sterrin."  Ned put down the feed bucket.  "It's there
under that flat stone."

"I've got it.  No I haven't!"

Ned dropped on his stomach beside her.  "There, to the left."  He
jogged her elbow and she nearly overbalanced.

"You gomahawk!"  she hissed grabbing his arm for support.  "You nearly
drowned me."

Belle Delaney and Sterrin shared a chair at breakfast, and shared the
trout, baked in butter on the gridiron.  Halfway through the last
morsel she suddenly remembered that she had forgotten to drown herself.
Anyway, she had made the gesture.  Reverend Mother is right, she told
herself; I have a vocation for living.

CHAPTER 40

Next afternoon Sterrin, standing at her window over the stable yard in
the act of removing her bonnet, saw the Scout come galloping into the
yard.  He was standing astride the shafts, all pride and purpose.  She
was minded of the day he came on a white horse to proclaim the news of
the Liberator's arrest.

"God save ye!"  he cried to the coachman and Mike O'Driscoll and to the
inside staff who were crowding to the back door.  "I've beaten Her
Majesty's news bearer  I've whipped the boyo with the telegram."  He
mounted the cross board of the cart as though it were a rostrum.  "Once
again," he proclaimed, 'it is my painful duty to be the bearer of ill
news to this great house.  I have come to inform you that, on the eve
of his one hundred and tenth birthday, the great liege lord of Crannagh
The donkey moved towards a bale of hay and the Scout collapsed with his
legs in the air.  Sterrin leaned out as his head reappeared.  "Ould
Lord Cullen," he gasped, 'is dead at last."

Mrs.  Stacey halted the start of a keen to ask what had his Lordship
died of.  The Scout mounted his rostrum.  His next lines were not to be
thrown away in the floor boards of an ass cart.  "The illness that cut
him off before attaining the completion of his eleventh decade
was--measles.  Youthful to the last, you might say."

"He mustn't 'a had them an' he a child," said Mrs.  Stacey.

"Perhaps, who knows," said the Scout stepping down for the funeral ale,
'the illnesses of first childhood may not render one immune in one's
second childhood.  It's a thirsty day."

Sterrin saw Mike O'Driscoll removing his straw and his hat to come in
for the courtesy drink.  "Begod," she heard him say as he disappeared
underneath her window.  "If he had lived another couple of years he
might 'a got the chin cough

At Lord Cullen's funeral Sterrin met people whom she had not seen for
years.

-- 391

Lord Templetown had come down from Dublin.  His former tenants crowded
round the elegant, worldly-minded man who had never lacked the saving
grace of humanity.  Master Hennessey came forward as full of classical
quips as ever.  "A noble cortege, My Lord.  At least five hundred cars!
*

"You are inaccurate, Master," the Scout interrupted.  "Five hundred and
ten, including the hearse.  It is heartening to see the fine funerals
back again."  He swept off his hat so sweepingly to Lord Templetown
that his wig was knocked sideways.  "Man's life," he misquoted, 'is as
the hair of his head, as Tom Moore said."  Master Hennessey looked
silently at the bald exposure as though he considered the Scout's
prospects were not too bright.

Sterrin shrank back when she saw Sir Jocelyn approaching the carriage.
He bowed low to Lady O'Carroll and asked her permission to call at the
castle next week.  He would have occasion to be in the vicinity next
week, with a railway engineer in connection with the proposed new
branch line.  He was so grave and gentle that Sterrin wondered if she
had imagined his previous behaviour.  The carriage had moved and he was
gone.  Sterrin suddenly sat up.  Had she imagined what he had said just
now?  The proposed new branch line!

Sir Jocelyn Devine gave the guarantee and the first line was laid with
great eclat.  The band of the North Tipperary Light Infantry, with
unconscious irony, played the Rocky Road to Dublin.  The Deputy
Lieutenant addressed the big gathering and dwelt hopefully on the
prosperity this new link with the outer world would bring to the
district.  His dreary list of statistics finally came to an end and
Lady O'Carroll and Sterrin were free to lead their guests to the first
luncheon party that Kilsheelin had known for many a year.

Sir Jocelyn, on the right of his hostess, charmed her with his courtly
deference and Sterrin, in new clothes and courage, wondered anew if she
could ever have known repulsion from him.

Mrs.  Kennedy-Sherwin, watching the animation on Margaret's face as she
listened to Sir Jocelyn, scented romance and whispered to young Lady
Cullen that it would be the best thing she could do.  And Lady Biddy
Cullen, remembering that he was supposed to be the richest man in
Ireland agreed.  "Look what it would mean to Sterrin," she whispered
behind her fan.  "She could be presented and meet a likely party.
There's no one

here for her except gombeen men and bankrupts.  Wouldn't it be
terrible if she were to become an old maid?"

Mrs.  Kennedy-Sherwin looked towards the beautiful girl who was in the
act of rising in response to her mother's signal for the ladies'
withdrawal.  What an unintelligent remark for anyone to make about such
a glorious creature.  Every man in the room was eyeing her.  "Don't be
prissy, Biddy!"  Sometimes the city bred urbanity of the former Miss
Cuppage-O-Byrne grated.  "The girl will either marry a duke or run off
with a ploughman."

She suddenly remembered something.  "Sterrin," she said, pat uing the
ottoman invitingly, 'what became of that picturesque looking groom who
used to be here?"

Sterrin drew her dark brows together for a second.  "The only
picturesque thing about Mike O'Driscoll is his language.  You must mean
Big John, the coachman.  He is still with us, of course."

"No, that is not the name, and everyone knows Big John.  No this young
man was extremely good-looking.  The first time I noticed him he was
helping to remove that monstrous cake that had been made for the Queen.
He had quite an air."

"Oh!"  Sterrin said quietly.  "He has been gone some time.  He he
emigrated."  The slight stammer might have gone unnoticed but there was
no mistaking the tell-tale flush.  So I was right, thought Mrs.
Kennedy-Sherwin, tingling with intrigue.  And it is the ploughman
instead of the Duke!  Oh, this was delicious!  But the gentlemen
entered the room and Mr.  Maurice O'Carroll came up to take his leave
of Sterrin.

"Isn't it marvelous, Cousin Maurice?"  she said as she accompanied him
to the carriage.  "You can travel all the way home by train only
changing once and at the same time that horrid mortgage is cleared!"

He looked at her compassionately.  "The arrears are cleared, child.
That's only..."  He changed the subject and complimented her upon her
new gown.  Til hold a crown you never bought that in Lubeys."  She
looked down at the flow of champagne-coloured velvet and then held up
her arms to display the blonde valenciennes lace that flowed from elbow
to wrist.

"Paris!"  she proclaimed.  "Lubey sent boxes of stuff on approbation,
and pairs and pairs of the silk evening boots he had HH I <i refused
Mamma, but she scm^ them all back unopened.  The shone en

"He is that all right.  But don't over antagonise him.  He is the
biggest shareholder in the iron road and it was a blow to his pride to
be the only one you left out of today's party."  He sighed as the
carriage rolled down the avenue and wondered how many more times he
would visit the old place.  Only last week he had parted with his own
precious library of priceless books to a Waterford gombeen man.  Paris
gowns!  God help their innocence.  And the sum of money from the
railroad only a daisy in a bull's mouth!

But Sterrin was jubilant.  She was convinced that she had brought
prosperity back to Kilsheelin when she had recaptured some of its soil
from Poolgower.  In the kitchen she was regarded as a saviour.  The
whole staff had gathered at the back st airhead to watch her as she
moved down the stairs in her first formal gown and they gloried in die
proud-held head that others mistook for arrogance.

"If the Sir could see her now breathed Mrs.  Stacey.  "Ye'd think he
spat her out of his mouth."

Big John was the only one who could see over the cook's head.  "If only
Young Thomas could see her now," he said surprisingly.  "She used to
come to him with every new stitch she got.  He'd criticise it for her
as good as any lady of fashion and she had no more pleasure in any
garment that he didn't approve."

Mrs.  Stacey brushed the back of her hand over her eyes.  "God be with
him," she murmured as though she spoke of the dead.

They felt strangely embarrassed when Sterrin suddenly appeared among
them-after the guests had departed.  It was seldom she came to the
kitchen nowadays and tonight in her long, rich gown she stood apart in
the world they lived to serve.  But Sterrin wanted to share with them
her sense of achievement.  Hadn't they shared in the plot that had
brought it about?  Besides, she wanted Attracta to read her cup.

Pakie Scally helped Mrs.  Stacey to lower the rungs of the crane to
bring the kettle nearer the flame and as he straightened up he was
surprised to see Miss Sterrin's eyes fixed on him intently.  To cover
his embarrassment he ventured timidly to say that the sods had brought
luck, but she scarcely heard him.  He was wearing Young Thomas's
livery.  She was seeing glossy curls instead of Pakie's lank hair and
the lithe frame of Young Thomas as he deftly swung the great crane and
inserted the

kettle hook two holes down when Miss Sterrin came to the kitchen. "And
there's shamrocks spreading all over the place where we put the centre
sod, Miss Sterrin."  The curls disappeared and the hands that brushed
the crane grime from each other were no longer shapely and well-kept.

"That's unusual," she said at last.  "I have never found shamrock in
that field."

"Nor anyone else either, Miss Sterrin," said Hegarty.  "Isn't that
right, Big John?"

"It is indeed, Mr.  Hegarty," said the coachman.  "Not even before the
night of the Big Wind."

"Well, in that case," said Mrs.  Stacey, we can take it that the luck
of Kilsheelin has turned."

Hannah placed a big napkin across the velvet-covered knees and tucked a
corner inside the neck of the lovely gown.  "Twas an answer to prayer,
Miss Sterrin.  We stormed the heavens."  Sterrin sipped her tea and
slowly swirled it round the cup to toss the leaves.

"And I stormed the earth," she said grimly.

"And there's storms still to come, Miss Sterrin," said Attracta,
peering into the cup.  "Storms and violence.  There is an elderly man
wishing on you and there's a young man wishing on you too, a fine young
man and you'll meet him sooner than you expect, but treachery will part
you.  I see you standing over a horse, Miss Sterrin."  Attracta was
looking out over the rim of the cup into space.  "A horse that is lying
down."

The girl's gaze returned from the dreamy distance.  Attracta looked
vaguely at her young mistress.  "I can see no more."

Sterrin got to her feet.  "You are not in your usual form tonight,
Attracta.  Nothing you have seen links up with anything for me except
Thuckeen.  It's quite likely that I shall stand over her when she
foals."

Months later Sterrin stood over the prone, prostrate mare and watched
the eyes glazing as Thuckeen reached feebly to lick the natal slime
from the quivering colt.  But the lovely gesture that would reunite the
little foal to its dam was never made.  The great mare had fought all
night and now her questing nuzzle was denied its fulfilment.  Before it
reached the foal her head fell back.  Sterrin in utter and complete
abandon, threw herself across the carcass, her arms clasping its neck,
her hair mingling with the silky mane she had tended as long as she
could re395

member.

The deep, hoarse sobs unnerved her mother when she came to coax her
away.  The sight of Thuckeen loosed a flood of memories.  Roderick
leading the field on the peerless Thuckeen; Roderick smilingly refusing
fantastic sums for her; Roderick soaring high over the bay-leaf hedge
while she watched with smiling lips and terrified heart.

Nurse Hogan led her Ladyship away and Big John standing' beside Mr.
Hegarty was crying openly.  Tears blinded Mike O'Driscoll as he carried
the new-born foal to a foster-mother.  He collided with Sir Jocelyn
Devine who had sauntered casually towards the stable yard when his
knock at the hall door had gone unanswered.

CHAPTER 41

Sterrin paused as she walked up to the gap at Poolgower.  She leaned
her arms over the ridge.  Never, she realised, had she had to climb
this gap before.  Always, she had sailed over it, clean and straight,
never a sod disturbed.  Thuckeen had helped her to rise above the
crosses that had sprung up so frighteningly in her path; her father's
death, the loss of Young Thomas, the death of the hard.

The poignancy of the horse's death had an evocative quality that would
not be suppressed.  Young Thomas burst through the || 1

self-enforced barriers of her memory.  She ached for the comfort of his
presence.  That day, when Sir Jocelyn--Heaven sent--had led her gently,
but so firmly away from Thuckeen, there had come a mnemonic flash of a
dark, yearning face and a voice that had said, "You'll always have me,
asthore!"

She started to chew a blade of grass but spat it forth.  It, too, was
evocative; of undigested grass and the green drool on the lips of the
famished.  And why, she thought inconsequentially did Mrs.
Kennedy-Sherwin keep looking at her at the luncheon party when she
harped on the scandal of the titled lady in the Queen's County who had
run away with the ploughman!

Ploughman indeed!  Young Thomas's shapely hands, so fastidiously
tended, flicked away the implication.  She shifted her head and leaned
it sideways on her arms and suddenly the hedge flowers became a
fragrant evocation of the perfumed soap that Young Thomas used to buy
out of the crown piece that Papa always gave to him on the anniversary
of the Big Wind.  The other servants used the dark soap that Mrs.
Stacey made from niutton fat, but everything in Young Thomas's room
possessed the quality of--not just taste or of apeing his betters--a
kind of natural acceptance that his personal belongings should possess
quality; but never ostentation.  His brushes, bought singly as his
Wages increased, had been of unadorned ivory.  His bookshelves held the
library of a cultured mind.  Such an accumulation of

books since the first one that Lieutenant Fitzharding-Smith had helped
her to choose that day in Dublin.

Her cuff button chafed her cheek and she shifted it to the other arm
while her eyes dreamed up the crystalline gleam of quartz and mica that
Young Thomas's scrubbing had seduced from the granite of his floor.  It
used to look so exotic around the eastern prayer rug that Lieutenant
Fitzharding-Smith had given him when he was dismantling his quarters.
What ploughman would show such discernment?  Pakie Scally had the room
now and no jewels gleamed from its flags.

The sigh that came from her was long and sad.  An echoing sigh followed
it.  Donal Keating had been watching her from the shade of the
headland.  His sigh turned into a cough.

Sterrin stepped back startled and trod on the tail of one of her two
dogs.  Its yelping started its companion barking, then the red setter,
crouching behind the horse, joined in from sheer boredom.

Donal, holding his handkerchief with one hand, had to drop the reins
from his other hand to raise his hat.  The horse, already disturbed by
the sudden yelping, began to plunge madly.

Habit compelled Sterrin to reach out a hand to restrain the animal.
Unwittingly she patted the silk neck whilst instinct brought soothing
words from her until the horse quivered into quiescence.  Midst all the
barking and bolting and coughing she was forced to stand here holding
her resentment in check.  Now, as he thanked her, it burst forth.

"There would be no need for thanks," she stormed, 'if you had not been
spying on me."

"I vow and declare, Miss O'Carroll," he protested, 'that I did not mean
to spy upon you."  She did not realise that she was still holding the
bridle as she stared straight up into his face.

"Of course you were spying upon me!  This is not the first time.  Why
the devil's father do you do it?"

His sudden laughter set him coughing again; as he dived for the
handkerchief in his tail pocket she was forced to take a firmer hold of
the bridle.

"Just look what your violent language has done to me!"  he
spluttered.

The horse's soft nuzzle brushed her.  For a nostalgic moment she
pressed her cheek against the breathing velvet.  Behind the
handkerchief he eyed the wistful caress and coughed to prolong

iJ

its proximity.  Finally he gasped, "Surely if a cat may look at a
queen a mere mortal may pause to worship when he is vouchsafed the
vision of a goddess '

"For heaven's sake," she snapped, 'don't call me a goddess!"

"Yes, it is unoriginal, isn't it?"  he grinned.  "But I don't mean a
simpering goddess in a niche.  I was thinking of a flying goddess of
the chase.  A Diana!"  He bent lower towards her, "A Diana without her
steed."

She dropped the bridle as though she had been stung.  Then with a swish
and a froth of petticoats and pantalettes she was over the gap and
running down the slope.  Oh, to have been able to turn her horse's head
and gallop from his odious presence!  Instead of standing there holding
his damned horse like a lackey!  To cast it in my teeth that I am
without a horse!  The bachach!

At the sound of the train whistle she turned involuntarily; she could
still see Donal, watching her.  The train!  She had a sudden
inspiration.  I'll let him see that I don't have to travel "Irish
tandem,1 even if I am without a horse!  Diana without her steed dinagh!
She ducked behind a tree, pulled up her skirt and fumbled with the
strings of her white cambric petticoat and of the white cotton one and
the one underneath.

As the train approached the driver saw a young lady waving a large red
flag and groaned.  He was already half an hour behind and now, willy
nilly, he must stop.  He had got into trouble a month back for not
stopping because the bite en of red had been so small that he had not
seen it.  But be the power of war, this here flag would stop a bull,
much less a train!

An English businessman fumed audibly at the spectacle of a hatless,
breathless girl coolly holding up an entire train and jamming herself
in among first-class passengers.  To make matters worse a donkey
strayed on to the tracks and caused further delay.  "This is
outrageous," he said taking forth his repeater.  "I intend to report
this."  Sterrin was uncertain whether he meant to report herself or the
donkey.  The officer in the opposite corner left her in no further
doubt certainly shall report this matter.  Young woman!  How dare you
inconvenience your betters?"

The 'young woman' was too much for Sterrin's silent composure.  "I
inconvenience my "betters"," she answered, 'for my own convenience."
Then, with iciest hauteur she deigned to

1 On foot.

explain to him that it was her family's privilege, if they wished to
travel while the train was passing through their territory, to stop it
by waving a red flag.

The officer eyed the now unmistakable young gentlewoman who travelled
unescorted in a carriageful of gentlemen, then glanced towards the
castle outlined in the near distance.  "I beg your pardon," he said
gruffly.

Sterrin, having disposed of all challengers, both here and outside
settled herself comfortably.  Then, "Pardon me, Madam," the officer
beside her, a younger one, was leaning towards her.  "Did you say
flag?" He adjusted his monocle and directed her gaze downward to where
a white string rested upon the gleaming toe of his boot.  She froze. 
Her flag had worked itself from her relaxed grip and hung over her
knees, its purpose disclosed.  The white tapes from the waistband lay
on the officer's shoe.  A row of blue and white feather stitching
treacherously defined the hemline.

She gazed silently at the revolting garment that had been forced upon
her by Nurse Hogan and her mamma to prevent rheumatics after one of her
severe wettings on Thuckeen.  Then, before anyone had realised what was
happening, she was on her feet reaching for the communication cord. The
train came to a clanging halt, and Sterrin, her flag slung nonchalantly
over one shoulder, stepped from the train, and ran all the way home to
Kilsheelin.

She passed the empty rooms to the kitchen where Dominic was listening
with delicious terror to one of Attracta's ghost stories.  Ghosts!
There were too many of them about today.  Attracta and her endless lore
of Connemara's dead and undead until, as Young Thomas used to quote, "I
thought in my heart and even in my soul that the dead who had died
still lived."  She raised the latch that led to the yard and the empty
stable she had avoided this week past, but now the foal was giving
cause for concern.  It was not thriving with its foster-dam.

The slight sound made Attracta turn and as she rose to her feet,
Sterrin heard her hiss, "Ask her now, Master Dominic, sir."  She
paused.

"What is it that you want to ask me?"  Sterrin's voice and face were so
proud and cold that Attracta stood confused.  Mrs.  Stacey spoke up for
her.  
"Tis the way Mrs.  James Wright--Miss Berry Fogarty that

as is letting her parlour maid Attracta's sister help at the upper
next week for the ball in the Assembly Rooms when the gentlemen will
bid to redeem the cloaks that the women were forced to pawn in the
famine.  Attracta was wondering if you would put a word in for her with
Nurse Hogan to let her help, too.  All the committee ladies are lending
their staff."

Attracta found her voice.  "Tis a great cause, Miss Sterrin,1 she
murmured timidly.  To Attracta, the cause of the cloaks that were
handed from mother to daughter was more than great.  "Twas holy.
Sterrin wrinkled her brows.  She had quite forgotten the dance.
"Weren't all these cloaks redeemed years ago?"  she said impatiently.
Tapa gave a big dance in the barn for the ones in this
neighbourhood."

"Will I ever forget that supper!"  said Mrs.  Stacey branching off into
reminiscences.  "There were fifteen hams and..."

Sterrin cut her short.  "And there was a ball in the Assembly Rooms as
well as lots of quilting parties."

"But your Honour's miss," pleaded Attracta, 'these are cloaks belonging
to them that were too proud to admit that the clothes off their backs
were in pawn and they thought they could redeem them later when times
would be better.  Oh, 'twould be a terrible thing, Miss Sterrin, for a
woman to live her life out with her fine cloak beyond her reach or the
right to will it to her daughter!"

Dominic raised a buttery face from his box tie  "Don't mind her,
Sterrin.  It's Lance-Corporal Pluck she wants to meet.  He's playing in
the band.  Isn't he, Attracta?"  His mischievous grin vanished when
Mrs.  Stacey whispered in one ear that she'd never make him another
piece of box tie  In the other Attracta whispered that she'd never tell
him another ghost story.

Sterrin strode back into the kitchen and put her arm around her
brother.  "Don't attempt to threaten him," she said with cold anger.
She rumpled his curls.  "When you have eaten your box tie darling, come
up to my room and I'll read you a cheerful story.  Ghost stories and
box tie are unwholesome diet for a little boy."  The muted servants
watched her dignified exit, her red flag still slung over her shoulder,
and thought of the times when Miss ^terrin had gorged both ghosts and
box tie until she was too full 10 stand and too frightened to walk
upstairs.

She passed into the yard, hating herself for her unfairness to be two
women who doted on the child.  Then she stopped dead.

It was seldom now that a visiting carriage came dri vine through the
water-filled bawn to cleanse its wheels before the return journey.  But
it was not the carriage that transfixed her nor the vague impression of
Sir Jocelyn Devine stepping back from the splashes.  It was the sight
of the horse that looked out at her from Thuckeen's stall!  "Thuckeen!
Thuckeen!  tais mo croidte!  Joy of my heart," she gasped, 'are you
haunting me too?"  Her heart steadied and she patted the forehead and
ran her hand down the gleaming neck.  It was not Thuckeen, but it could
be her double a youthful double.  Behind her a quiet voice said,

You like her, Miss Sterrin?"

She whirled about.  "Oh, Sir Jocelyn, for a moment I thought it was
Thuckeen's ghost!"

"Yes, the resemblance is remarkable.  Their pedigrees are closely
linked."  Sterrin unbolted the door and moved in while the horse reared
up.

"She might have out-classed her, even," she murmured to herself as she
soothed the timid creature.  When she came out he said,

"Aren't you going to try her out?"  She shook her head.  "It would only
grig me.  It is better for me to become accustomed to being without a
horse."

"On the contrary, my dear, I think it is better that you should
accustom yourself to Cloora straight away."

"Cloora!"  It was more a breath than a whisper.

You can rename her as you please.  She is your property."

"Mine!  You mean, Sir Jocelyn, that you are actually giving me this
beautiful, this valuable horse?"

He shrugged.  "Nothing less would be worthy of you."  Her head spun.
Young ladies did not accept gifts from gentlemen unless they were
relatives or fiances.  Thuckeen had cost hundreds.  This horse
outclassed her.  One could not appeal to Mamma just now.  She drew
herself up and made her gesture to the formalities.

"Thank you, Sir Jocelyn.  Thank you kindly, but I could not accept so
costly a gift."  The amethyst eyes were as wide with renunciation as
they had been with concern when she had pleaded for the benefit of a
railway for her country folk  He played up to the convention of her
words and gestured ^ groom.

The sight of the man moving to unbolt the door was too much for Mike
O'Driscoll as he stood beside Big John mingling ue sweat of their
anxiety.  He spat out his straw and hissed, "Is t gone mad you are,
Miss Sterrin?"  Big John broke through the decorum of years as he
stepped forward, his Caroline held above the thick grey waves and said
gravely.

"Your Honour's Sir, I ask your pardon for taking a liberty, but if I
might make bold to suggest that Miss Sterrin ought to postpone her
decision until her Ladyship recovers.  It would be only due to you
and..."  he looked longingly at the head that poked over Thuckeen's
half door,"... to the horse."

When the carriage had passed under the great arch of the stable gate
she turned to the coachman and lifted her hands towards him in a
gesture that recalled the days when he used to lift her on to the backs
of the horses.  She placed them on his shoulders and lightly as she
pressed the maimed one, he winced.  "Oh, poor Big John!"  she cried
remembering.  "Oh, that terrible Big Wind!  And," she added
inconsequentially, 'it was all my fault."  II I'll

"Miss Sterrin," he murmured with the gentleness of love, 'if H !!

her Ladyship was at herself she would tell you--and so would the young
Sir'--she knew he didn't mean Dominic--'that a young lady does not
treat the offer of a magnificent blood-horse the same as if it were a
box of Limerick gloves."

She playfully patted the good shoulder.  "And they would also tell me,
Big John, my Guardian Angel, that a gentleman does not offer a young
lady a horse worth at least a thousand guineas the same as if it were
just a box of Limerick gloves."  She turned to where Mike and Pakie
were standing in reverence before the animal.  "But, oh, Big John, I'd
have died if that glorious creature had gone through that door again
and left Thuckeen's stable empty."  Before he could answer she had
gone, tearing through the kitchen entrance.

As the wine-coloured carriage rolled behind its four bays towards the
lodge, a flying figure came alongside.  "Sir Jocelyn," she gasped.  She
couldn't get out another word, for her breath hurt after the mad race.
"It has all been so sudden, like an aPparition."  She gulped and
swallowed.  "And I don't want to seem disloyal to Thuckeen, but I have
never seen anything so lovely in my Ufe as Cloora--Clooreen."

He watched for a moment the beautiful lips panting out

words and breaths that blew warmly against his face.  Exertion had
reddened them as it did with people of her pallor.  Her skin glowed
with light instead of colour.  Her eyes played no tricks except to cope
with the blue shimmering of their own intensity.

"If you have never seen anything lovelier than Cloora, or Clooreen,
then go straight to your mirror."  She shot out her underlip and blew a
shining curl back from the tip of her nose.  A primitively delightful
gesture, he thought.  "Goodbye, my dear, I shall be back within the
month for your mother's sanction."

Twenty minutes later she knew again the surging thrill of riding high
over the world on the back of a galloping thoroughbred.  Straight for
Cuilnafunchion she made and tried Clooreen with her first jump at the
gap where she had been humbled.

Diana without a steed, Inagh!  She gritted, as Clooreen bunched her
four dainty hooves beyond coarse contact with the gap.  Now let Donal
Keating sneer.

The Coats of Arms of such local aristocracy as still lived in the
district were picked out on the walls of the Assembly Room with red and
white dahlias; but out of appreciation of Lady O'Carroll's great
kindness in breaking her long seclusion to lend her patronage, and in
recognition of the family's right to fly the ancient flag of blue,
there were blue and white flowers on the O'Carroll escutcheon.  It was
a brilliant occasion.  The last of the cloaks was to be redeemed.  The
ladies looked lovely and pleased.  The gentlemen gallant and romantic.
For Mrs.  Wright, it was a triumph.  Yet something was amiss.  The
second dance was coming to a close but there was no sign of Lady
O'Carroll.  Mrs.  Wright began to feel slighted.  She had not enlisted
the patronage of the new gentry who occupied the estates purchased in
the Encumbered Estates Market.  Now, the main feature of the night, the
auctioning of the cloaks was due to be announced and Lady O'Carroll not
here to set it going.  She turned towards a buzzing of excitement near
the door.  A lovely girl was coming straight towards her.  "My mother
became indisposed.  She *ent me in her place rather than disappoint
you."

Heaven forgive me, Sterrin prayed.  Nurse Hogan had almost swooned when
she came downstairs with the note of excuse to be despatched by phaeton
and saw that Sterrin, resplendent in her Paris gown, intended to
deliver the note in person.  When

the-nurse had exhausted her reproaches and remonstrances she concluded
with the stock exclamation, "This could be the death of her
Ladyship."

"If it could then," Sterrin had replied, 'she must be protected from
knowing about it.  If this reaches her ears I shall hold you
responsible for any consequences."  She was suddenly sick of Nurse
Hogan's proprietorial airs and interferences.

Mrs.  Wright disposed Sterrin in the seat of honour on the balcony
among the non-dancing committee ladies.  It was quite obvious to
Sterrin that there was no question of her taking part in the dancing.
To the committee ladies she was there in the stern purpose of a stern
cause.  She leaned over the balcony and pretended to take an interest
in the crayon drawings on the floor of lovely girls in flowing cloaks
of all colours.  Her roving eyes could not discern anyone she might
entice up here to lead her out.

The Master of Ceremonies announced the first performance in Ireland of
King Pippin's Polka, the dance that had taken London by storm.  He
guaranteed that it would set every toe itching.  Sterrin's toes
responded to the guarantee immediately but the only offers to relieve
their itch came from two semi invalids.  Mr.  Enright tapped the region
of his enlarged heart and said, in what he thought was a gay doggy
manner, that only for that he would break through decorum that chained
her to do duty for her mother, and seek the honour of leading her out.
Lord Patrick Cullen caught sight of the bronze curls among the white
caps of the matrons and hastened to pay his respects.  He made no
effort to conceal his astonishment at finding her at her first public
dance unchaperoned.

"A pity," he said when she explained, 'that they are playing this
damned polka.  The only dance that I could offer to lead you out in
with this damned leg is the waltz."

They stood behind her at either shoulder, chatting while the 8ay music
wasted its substance and the M.C. announced that toe local soprano
would sing "Where Are the Friends of My Youth?": It only needed that,
thought Sterrin.  Two crippled cavaliers and the committee ladies
weeping for the friends of their youth!  The ladies put their moist
handkerchiefs in their feticules when the song had ended and leaned
behind her, debatlnB something that seemed to concern her.

They were perturbed about the correctness of asking her to

take her place so prominently on the platform that was being wheeled
into the centre of the ballroom.  They had planned that Lady O'Carroll
would stand there beside the M.C. while he auctioned some new cloaks
that had been presented by benefactors.  The beautiful stately widow in
flowing crepe was scarcely to be substituted in office, however
benevolent by a seventeen-year-old girl who was vividly, challengingly
lovely.

"It might be indelicate," murmured Mrs.  Wright.  Mrs.  Enright found
Sterrin's looks disturbing and muttered about 'a snare and a delusion'.
Sterrin gave something approaching a wink to Patrick Cullen and said to
the mortified Quaker:

"I assure you, Mrs.  Enright, that I have not come here on my mother's
behalf to either snare or delude."

Everyone crowded round to reassure her, but the indomitable Quaker held
her ground.  "Thee are over ready to be loud in self-justification,
Sterrin O'Carroll."  But Sterrin wasn't going to be balked of the fun
of the auction.

You want money, don't you?  Fussing about etiquette won't keep these
unfortunate women warm in the depths of the winter.  Why, some of them
can't get to church or chapel.  It's a great cause," she added,
remembering Attracta.  "Come on, Patrick, start the bidding."

Her appearance upon the raised dais a few minutes later had the effect
of an apparition.  A young lady, not more than a girl, standing up
before a crowded ballroom!  Such a sight had never been seen there
before.  She was wearing the robe de style that had been sent from
Paris for the dinner that had feted the railroad.  Its champagne velvet
folds and drapes that fell away to disclose the gold lace Valenciennes
underskirt were displayed to perfection by the raised dais that served
as a pedestal for gown and wearer.

Mrs.  Wright saw to it that the M.C. stressed the fact that Miss
O'Carroll, at great personal inconvenience, was taking the last-minute
place of her mother, Lady O'Carroll, who was regrettably indisposed,
and trusted that the bidders would show their appreciation of her
unselfish charity.  He then presented a cloak to Sterrin who held it
wide for the general inspection while the gold lace fell from her
extended arms and revealed them white and shapely.  Patrick's bid was
drowned at utterance.  The sovereigns clattered for the object it
mattered not what that was displayed between those lovely arms.

From the corners of her eye she saw the crimson cloak tossed to Darcey
Lubey, the elegant son of the gombeen man.  Dragoons with pinched
waists and shoulders ablaze with golden shells pressed round her throne
and sought to catch her glance with every bid.  She smiled at each and
quickly turned with questioning look to demand more and more outrageous
bids from the upturned faces and clamouring voices.

The funds mounted beyond the wildest dreams of Mrs.  Wright.  She was
getting uneasy.  There was something bizarre to her in the spectacle of
the gently-bred girl attracting all those gentlemen about her like
moths, dazzled by the flame of her radiance.  What if Lady O'Carroll
reproached her for this exploitation of her daughter?  Mrs.  Enright
took no joy from the sight of the salver of gold being emptied and
replenished.  The cause had been gained by means that were ungodly.

But she could not know that Sterrin had swept on to the dais in the
surge of feeling from the evening's ride that had yielded rebirth after
the long, un youthful spell of tragedy and calamity and grief and
responsibility and depression that seemed to climax with the ending of
Thuckeen.  Here was an unrehearsed joyousness to which she could
respond; acclaim that was balm to a spirit that had been brought too
low.  Her laughter rang out as bids were disputed and overtopped and
daring buyers pushed forward to demand that she cast the cloak about
the shoulders of successful bidders.

Suddenly her smile shortened.  Donal Keating, coming late to the
ballroom, had shouldered his way through the excited crowd.  He stood
still for a moment staring at the tall, golden girl.  A gentleman
beside him cried out, "Ten sovereigns!"  Donal called, "Twelve!"  The
girl's smile acknowledged the bids then passed to him with a
questioning quirk of her black eyebrows that suddenly dropped as she
recognised him.  "Fifteen!"  called a voice in front of him.  Donal's
voice drowned the next bid, "Twenty-five!"  he called.

Mrs.  Enright pulled the M.C."s sleeve.  "Knock it down to him," she
commanded quite clearly.  The auctioneer lifted his mock hammer and
reached for the cloak Sterrin held.  Not, she thought, if he bid one
hundred and twenty-five!  With a flick of her wrist she whirled the
cloak about her shoulders and, slipPing her arms through the inside
loops, she held the lovely garment wide, then moved a little to display
the graceful flow of

its folds.  The effect was dramatic.  It was the handsomest cloak of
the lot.  Mrs.  Wright had accepted it unwillingly from the wife of the
Liverpool coffin-ship owner, who now occupied Lord Templetown's
mansion.  It was of a lighter shade of blue than the customary type. It
had white satin lining and at least fifty yards of velvet ribbon
trimmed its hem and hood.  Sterrin wished she could own the gorgeous
thing.  Fancy any farmer's wife lugging eggs to market in this!

There were cries of 'ravishing!"  Bids mounted.  Mrs.  Wright took hold
of one of the M.C."s coat tails.  Mrs.  Enright grabbed the other.
"Stop it!"  they urged.  He gave them a mute shrug of helplessness and
turned to accept the bids.  Donal Keating topped his own bid by another
ten pounds.  He prayed that James's James might not hear of this
night's doings.

Then someone made a gaffe.  "A thousand guineas for the ensemble; cloak
and wearer!"  a voice cried.  In the sudden silence, the M.C. took the
cloak from Sterrin's shoulders and announced supper.  As he preceded
her to the supper room her path was blocked by what looked ominously
like a quarrel.  A very angry Lord Cullen was speaking to a gentleman
with a scarlet cloak dangling from his shoulders.  Lady Biddy Cullen
was stage-whispering to her husband not to risk being killed in a duel
for the sake of defending Sterrin O'Carroll's brazen conduct.

The man with the scarlet cloak turned and recognised Darcey Lubey.  He
made an elaborate bow.  "Forgive me, Miss O'CarroIl, you deputised so
admirably for Lady O'CarroIl that I was quite carried away."  Sterrin
gave him a cool glance, "Thank you she answered.  "I could deputise for
my father equally well but when he taught me to fence he explained to
me that a tradesman may not lay claim to the point of honour.  "Tis the
prerogative of a gentleman."  She sailed into the supper room with head
high.  A latecomer with the tabs of a captain crowded after her. Could
it be possible?  The last time he had seen her she was standing on a
wall waving him goodbye when he was leaving for India.

The next morning, Sterrin was coming downstairs to join her mother for
a carriage promenade when she saw Lady Biddy Cullen's carriage drive
up.  No inkling of last night's outing had reached her mother.  It will
reach her now, Sterrin thought, and waited on the landing to be
summoned to retribution.

But there was no summons.  Through the window she saw the

sit or depart.  A moment later she saw her mother enter her wn
carriage.  "Mamma."  Sterrin was breathless from her rush downstairs.
"Don't you wish me to accompany you?"

Her mother looked at her as though she were seeing her for the first
time.  "No, Sterrin," she said, "I do not wish you to accompany me."
Her tone dispensed with Sterrin's company for ever more.  Her
daughter's outrageous behaviour in public was scarcely as shocking to
Lady O'Carroll as her deceit and callousness in taking such advantage
of her mother's illness.

In Templetown Margaret received a less biased account of the incident.
Mrs.  Wright was warm in praise of the way Sterrin |i|H

had taken her mother's place.  Margaret relented.  Too often in I"'

the past had Sterrin had to cover up for her mother!

But her compunction was short-lived.  A drove of cattle blocked the
carriage as it passed Lubey's.  Margaret glanced idly towards the
window then sat upright.  The big window was bare of its usual
merchandise.  Instead, down the centre hung a scarlet cloak.  In front
of it a placard with letters a foot high stated "As Publicly Displayed
by Miss Sterrin O'Carroll of Kilsheelin Castle'.

The auction story blew like chaff at a threshing.  The prices Miss
O'Carroll seduced for the cloaks mounted higher.  The price Darcey
Lubey offered for herself grew higher still.  When Lady Biddy Cullen
gave a carpet dance for her sisters, Sterrin was not bidden.  Lady
O'Carroll was cut to tears.  No function had ever been held at Crannagh
without the O'Carrolls.

She called Sterrin to her boudoir.  "I am writing to Sir Jocelyn to ask
him to take away his horse."

"You mean Sterrin had to scrape out the words from a choked throat. You
mean you are not going to let me accept Cloora?"

"So costly a gift to a young lady was mauvais ton.  After the slight
you brought upon yourself from the Lubey person, it is unthinkable."

Sterrin went towards the stables feeling like a battered four penny
bit.  Mike O'Driscoll was pacing Cloora.  Tears pricked at Sterrin as
she watched the horse's beautifully held head, its fine action.  She
felt an affinity with the animal; a creature of the Cements; of storm
and thunder and rushing winds.  There came into her head a text her
father used to quote about a fine horse.  "He sniffeth the battle from
afar, the thunder of the captains

and the shouting."  Clooreen was that sort of horse.  TJnhames her,
Alike, I'm not riding her today."  She told him of her mother's
decision.  Mike lost the straw he was chewing.  He had almost lived in
Clooreen's stable.  He comforted himself with another straw and then he
comforted Sterrin.

"Don't be foolish, Miss Sterrin.  Get up and ride her while you still
have her.  There is no use in having a gap between your two front teeth
if you can't whistle."  Sterrin's rueful smile brought out her teeth in
defence of their perfection.

But the sanction that Sir Jocelyn Devine sought when he called had
nothing to do with the horse.  He sought the sanction of Lady O'Carroll
for permission to propose marriage to her daughter.  He would return
next week for her answer.

Sterrin was dumbfounded.  "But, Mamma," she exclaimed, as matter of
fact as Mike O'Driscoll, 'why trouble him to make the journey again.
Couldn't you have given him his answer?"

"What answer Something in her mother's tone made

Sterrin's heart give a little quick beat of dread.  Surely there was
but one answer that her mother could expect her to give to such a
proposal!

Her mother did think that there was but one answer.  She steeled
herself for the conflict.

Day after day it waged.  An honourable proposal from a distinguished
gentleman of great wealth.  On the heels of a public bid that was a
degradation!

"Do you realise the significance of that terrible bid?"  Sterrin had a
shrewd idea.  She preferred not to think of the way Lubey had looked at
her that night.

Sterrin leaned against the mantelpiece in her mother's bedroom and
looked down into the turquoise flame of the black turf.  Her mother was
repeating the arguments that had been arrayed every day.  No chance of
Sterrin meeting an eligible party, their plight, the mansions occupied
by peasants and shopkeepers, no hope of being presented, refused credit
by shopkeepers, ostracised by the Cullens, the only people of one's
class who maintained even a skeleton of social life.  In the flames
Sterrin saw a dark face, the one that used to waft in the suffusion of
clouds and lace when she used to daydream of her wedding.  '... and the
unmarried officers are all away at the Crime aI lost touch with the
garrison.  Before the famine young officers used to come here..."

Sterrin turned from the picture in the flames.  There was one voung
officer who used to come here.  Lieutenant FitzhardingSmith was always
hovering around Mamma.  And now he was back, a captain.  He had been at
the dance, Sterrin had met him for a brief moment in all the furore
after the auction.  How young her mother looked, sitting there on the
low priedieu seat, plaiting her hair!  There was a kind of of unused
look about her mother's smooth forehead.

"Mamma, why don't you marry?"  The words slipped from her.  "You are
still very young and very pretty."

Her mother dropped her plait as though she had been stung.  "Sterrin!
What an unseemly suggestion.  Me, to marry!  After after Papa.  Why, it
would be sacrilege."

Sterrin looked across the flickering shadows at the young face; and the
slim figure.  The romance that her mamma had known!  The love!
"Sacrilege for you to marry," she said and her voice.  was angry.  She
walked to the door then stopped.  "But for me to, make this marriage is
merely sacrifice."  Her mother stayedi looking at the door that had
closed so urgently.  She hadn'tt dreamed that Sterrin was capable of
such bitterness.  She caught^ up on Sterrin and threw her arms about
her.

"You shall not be sacrificed.  Mon Dieul My ewe lamb shallj not be
sacrificed."

Reprieved, Sterrin proceeded to read the Manual For Young* Ladies that
Bunzy de Lacey had sent her from America.  In thcg chapter headed
"First Replies to First Proposals', the ans weir that Bunzy had given
to her first beau was heavily underlined.  '!  _ BiBm
cannot-love-you-but-I-shall-never-forget-you."  So was "I-can_ Ili
not-be-your-wife-but-I-shall-be-a-sister-to-you."  Sterrin tried uq

MMI

see herself going through life being a sister to the elderly any urbane
Sir Jocelyn.

She threw the book aside.  The writer had no formula for a girl who had
a dozen lives depending upon her answer.  Thie workhouse was facing Big
John and Mrs.  Stacey and the others.  What would happen to Mamma? What
would becom^ of little, helpless Dominic?  She knew now that the
compens%_ tion for the iron road coming through the property could nc5t
begin to clear all Kilsheelin's debts.

Sterrin crossed to the window.  In the shadowy light the big yard
looked like a city square; fine buildings built in symmetify by ancient
craftsmen.  In the sentient night air the history ^f

each house breathed out in reproach to her.  From the gam keeper's
house, O'Driscoll's ancestor had been beaten to death because a
Catholic might not carry a walking stick; and in th steward's house
there had been a forefather of Hegarty's who had died screening her own
forefather.  And what has all that to do with me?  Am I to become a
living mortgage to screen their descendants?  And what do I get out of
it?  Suddenly the full significance of things assailed her.  Saving
Kilsheelin for the others meant going away from it herself!

Deliberately she unlocked the secret place of her mind that held the
hopeless comfort that somewhere, always, there was a heart in which she
dwelt; a lover who dare not speak of love; who would go to the end of
the earth for her.  The end of the earth!  "Oh, Young Thomas, Young
Thomas, why had you to be--Young Thomas, the knife boy?"

Sir Jocelyn accepted her rejection courteously.  His proposal was,
perhaps a little premature?

"You will be taking Clooreen today?"

"Not today," he told her, noting the relief in her face.  The transfer
of the horse must await his return from London.  "And when I return,
perhaps I may venture to put the same question to you.  Meantime, think
kindly of me, my dear."

As she sped towards Clooreen she was already feeling kindly towards
him.  So generous!  And he made her feel like a duchess.

She roamed the country on the magnificent horse, lingering with her in
the stable at night, dreading that each goodnight might be the last.
Strange men came to inspect the castle and grounds.  The gloom their
visit cast over Christmas was not dispelled by the scruffy band of Wren
Boys who came next day for their share of the feast.  Like so many of
those who had grown up since the famine they were poorer in physique,
less proud in bearing than their predecessors.  The famine, people
said, had been the end of an era.  A race of fine, manly people had
died or had gone over the sea before they became accustomed to eating
the bread of charity.  There was none among these Wren Boys, Lady
O'Carroll thought, like the handsome giant who had danced with her that
Saint Stephen's Day before the famine.  Where was he?  And where was
the girl who had danced with Roderick; the girl with the wonderful hair
that had suggested the kneeling Magdalen?

On Epiphany Day, Margaret watched the sky, as always, for

. storm clouds of the big wind.  Sterrin did not dare to remind her
that today was her birthday.  Instead she set out for her last

'de on Clooreen.  Sir Jocelyn was coming today.  As she pproached the
gap at Cuilnafunchion where she had had the encounter with Donal
Keating, she slowed and frowned.

Someone had piled up branches over the gap.  She dismounted and started
removing them, when a man appeared from the other side.  "What do you
mean by smashing down that fence?"

he said.

Sterrin looked through James Keating as though he were not there.  The
man, she reflected, must have some post-famine hallucination.  She
decided to have him warned off the property.  But his figure still
blocked the gap.  "Please stand aside," she said coldly.

You appear to be unaware that it was I who bought this lot of land.  I
was prepared to buy the whole estate, castle and all, before it was
withdrawn from the Encumbrancy auction."  His lips gave a twist that
was meant for a smile.  "Withdrawn for a while."

A lonely silence fell across the landscape.  Sterrin felt a chill
tremor.  It was as though an unspent breath of the storm that had
precipitated her birth, that had scooped her father's acres into the
sky to fall at this man's feet, had sighed past her.  In a drowning
flash she saw the castle as the hard had seen it; vanishing fortress
with rush-strewn floors and great wolfhounds and the 'yellow-ringleted
O'Carroll' holding sway.  Near this spot in Queen Elizabeth's day, the
O'Carroll had halted his horse and his gal low-glasses1 to 'bid the
English quit his land'.  The thought roused her back to life.  She
raised her whip high over the bachach's head but before it fell he had
seized her wrist.  He forced it behind her holding her against him. Her
left hand held the horse's bridle.  As he bent over her he saw her suck
in her jaws and her lips formed the kiss he had not hoped to get so
readily; they opened and shot into his eyes the spit she had
gathered.

Big John heard the thunder of hooves before he saw her.  He wondered if
she had lost control.  The black horse moved as a boat moves before a
powerful wind, but instead of spray it cast up sods and stones that
fell unheeded on its rider.  Men in strange livery looked up and stared
as she jumped the bay Ancient term for 'soldier'.

hedge.  In the artificial pond a splendid carriage was discarding the
muddy cloggings from its wheels.

Sir Jocelyn Devine thought there was a boyish gallantry about her as
she walked down the length of the drawing-room to where he stood.  Her
riding clothes were mud-spattered.  Her hair had escaped from its black
snood.  It felt like a bewitched barley stack but he saw only the
sheening aureole.  Had there been no snood but ringlets falling to the
shoulder, had there been a moustache instead of the high curved red
lip, she might be one of the cavaliers who looked out of their frames,
the gentlemen of Kilsheelin who had gone as the Wild Geese to stand by
the Old Pretender; who had fought with Prince Charlie.  But she was all
woman and there was no warm whiteness like the whiteness of her skin.

"Sir Jocelyn!  Why have you come today?  Is it for your horse?"

He looked into the direct eyes, that would brook no skirmishing
by-play.  "I have come to ask again for the honour of your hand in
marriage."

She had no time now for the counsels of the Manual For Young Ladies but
there was a dignity of ritual about the resolute way she removed her
glove and extended her hand to him.

CHAPTER 42

The train clove through the meadows of his native land.  How small they
looked after the great tracts of America!  And had they been as green
as this always?  He lowered the window and leaned out.  The streamlet
that ran cheekily with the train was so close that he could see the
darting minnow.

An insect with gauzy wings flew past and his heart sank a little.  The
mayfly would be rising in the castle river.  He thought of the
excitement when he brought her the word 'the fly is risen'.  Up half
the night she'd be, tying Green or Grey Drake, and off with her at dawn
to follow the river's windings until dark!

More insects swarmed up, dizzy with the ecstasy of their first flight;
their first contact with the air and sun that is the wedding ceremony
of the mayfly.  The ethereal culmination of its two drab years beneath
the water.  Was it an omen?  For he too, after his own drab years of
toil and hardship was returning on the gauzy wings of his success to
perform at the wedding of an Irish Nabob.

Despondency clouded him.  Gone was that bright moment when he had been
certain that he could build the bridge to Sterrin's world, when he had
bought his land in New Orleans and pictured the elegant white house
that he would build for her, and for their children.  He had engaged
the best architect in the city to design it.  That lovely dream was
shattered when John Holohan brought him the letter from Nurse Hogan.
Thomas still had that letter.  He remembered the excitement with which
he had torn open the envelope.  And the horror with which he had read
that Sterrin had returned to the convent.  This time to take her vows.
What convent had she entered?  Surely not the one she had run from that
day long ago?

He wished suddenly that he had not accepted the unexpected invitation
to break his journey to London and play for Sir Jocelyn Devine's
wedding guests at his private theatre.  He had

sworn never to return; he hated Sir Jocelyn for the cruel wound he had
inflicted on Bergin.  But the temptation to perform near Kilsheelin had
proved too strong; it was a chance to see Bergin again, to find out how
he had fared upon his return from Australia.  Thomas looked forward,
too, to spending a few moments with the kitchen group that had once
been family; to the pleasure of bringing lavish gifts to Mrs.  Hogan;
to all of them; to glimpse the gracious being who was the mother of his
lost dream; and to look once again at the setting of a life that was
past and a dream that was ended.

Suddenly the train stopped.  The guard was arguing with a blue-hooded
woman that this was a private train bringing play actors to the mansion
of Sir Jocelyn Devine for the wedding festivities.  Out in the middle
of the sleepers she stood and pointed to the big growth that hung from
her chin and said that if she didn't get to the fair to meet the man
with the cure she would be dead before the next day.  "We'll all be
dead before the next fair day if we take you up," said the guard.  But
she was of the generation that could not understand the unnaturalness
of a vehicle steam or horse that would pass a foot passenger on any
road, whether it were clay or iron.

"And it isn't, she pointed out, 'as though the gentleman that owns it
or any of the gentry, except the play-actors, were on the train."

The engine driver looked at the guard.  "What about the gentleman in
the first-class?"

"The one that's over the play-actors?"

"Aye, but isn't he a gentleman, too?"

"He is," said the guard, 'and for all we know may be a friend or
relation of the Big Man."  He turned to the woman.  "Would you mind
lettin' the train get past, ma'am.  We're off schedule."

"Indeed, you're not off anything," she assured him.  "Keep goin'
straight ahead."  She waved towards the shining tracks.  Ye can't miss
the road.  Let ye not turn right or left an' ye'll be in Kilkenny in a
shout.  An' sure it isn't leavin' me behind you would?"  She coaxed up
to the driver.  "Sure, I can see the kind heart of you on your face."

The guard grew exasperated and waved his flag in front of her.  "Will
you get off the line over that, yerself an' yer plamas.  There's
nothing to be seen on that man's face from one Sunday

1 Pronounced 'plaumaus' flattery or soft-talk.

to the next but soot."

The gentleman in the first-class put an end to the discussion.  "Get in
here," he called, standing by the open door.  The woman nearly fell out
of her standing but she grabbed her basket and rushed.

"Sure, a third-class will do me with the play-actors, Your Honour," she
protested.

"In with you," commanded his Honour, but at the door she hesitated and
looked anxiously in the direction of a stile in the hedge where two,
fair, curly heads peeped.

Too late the guard rushed forward to prevent the defilement of their
muddy little hooves on the red carpet.  The gentleman proved his
undoubted gentility by the tone with which he ordered the guard to
proceed.  "We've wasted sufficient time, sez he," repeated the guard to
the driver who agreed that it was hard to understand the gentry.

In the first-class, the gentleman swung the large basket on to the
rack.  "And if I may say so, madam," he remarked, 'it is truly a heavy
load for a lady who stands in danger of death within the month."

The lady was all apologies.  "Your Honour shouldn't be dirtying his
gloves with the likes of that.  There's sixteen an' a half pounds of
butter there, eight pounds three ounces in one and eight pounds five
ounces in the other."

His heart gladdened at the sight of the gleaming rolls of golden butter
all diamond patted and decorated with rose and shamrock shaped designs.
He put back the cabbage leaves and replaced the lid and reminded
himself to get wooden, fancy shapes to bring back to Kitty on her
Wisconsin farm.

"So, it was your fair day butter and not the growth," he smiled.

"Sure, your Honour, how could I let me customers down that waits for me
in all weathers?  An' the growth is no lie either.  Look!"  She gave
him an uninhibited view of the excrescence.  "I have it this ten year,"
she said calmly.  "An' listen to the children I Sure, I had to get them
to the man with the ass.  They're barking like terriers with the chin
cough

Conversation had to yield to the prostrating whoops of the cough but in
lulls she discussed the fabulous wedding.  He wasn't keenly interested
in the wealth displays of Sir Jocelyn Devine.

"He must have money in every pocket," she was saying.  "She looks a
beauty, they say."

He had not realised that the words that had fallen into the clearing of
coughs were addressed to him.

"I beg your pardon," he said politely.

"The bride, sir.  They say she is a beauty out and out."

He looked back at the scenery.  A gentle wind sent the grass rippling
to the distant horizon in waves of everlasting green.  He felt no
interest in the beauty of the nabob's bride.  He would prefer if this
good woman would permit him to concentrate upon the bronze-haired
beauty whose young white face appeared and vanished in each succeeding
wave of grass.  "My girl has ringlets rich and rare, by Nature's finger
wove."

"I beg your pardon, madam?"

"I was sayin', your Honour, that it is a great match she's makin'
entirely.  They say he has money in every pocket but like that again
it's a case of "have a goose an' you'll get another".  Sure hasn't she
a castle herself beyond in Templetown?"

"Did you say Templetown?  What castle?  What is this Lady's name?"  A
fit of coughing drowned her reply.  She held the child's head out of
the window.

"Get it up now, Alannah!"  Over her shoulder she excused the
indelicacy.  "With respects to your honour, but isn't an empty house
better than a bad tenant!  She is a titled lady," she went on, wiping
the child's mouth and resuming her seat.  "I disremember her name, Lady
Something, but I'd remember the name of the castle if you were just to
mention it to me."

"Would it be Tullow Castle in Templetouhy?"

She shook her head.  "That's not the name, your Honour."

"The Castle of Ballagh?"

She shook her head.

"Would it be Strague Castle?  Or Bawnmadrum Castle?"

She shook her head again.  "It's not Bawnmadrum.  That's the old
O'Meara place, but 'tis a name like that the lady has.  One of the old
names."

He'd been dreading it but now he must cite the name he had withheld. It
couldn't be, of course.  "It is scarcely Lady O'Car roll of Kilsheelin
Castle?"

She nearly jumped in her seat with the excitement of gratifying the
kindly interest of the pleasant gentleman.  "The very one, your
Honour!"  She went on chatting but suddenly she realised

that she had overstepped.  The like of her had no right to impose with
her talk because the gentleman had shown such friendly condescension.
Look at him now, puttin' her in her place with that haughty faraway
look!

But he handed out her basket and her children with courtly grace.  He
swept his high beaver low as though she were a duchess, and he
marshalled his flock and his scenery with his wonted efficiency.

A separate carriage bore him to the marble mansion of the man whose
wealth was famed even in far off America, and Australia.  Every
boatload of hunted tenants gave fresh testimony to its hourly
increase.

Sir Jocelyn came with courtly condescension to meet the celebrity but
his greetings were accepted with such an air of calm equality that,
instead of summoning a lackey to show the way to the private theatre,
he found himself escorting the distinguished-looking personage there
himself.  "I have seen Mr.  Macready in "Virginius"," he remarked, 'but
the critics hold that you surpass him in the title role."

The actor inclined his dark head.  "The critics have been most kind."

"This evening's choice of repertory," continued the host, 'is that of
my fiancee."

Again the actor inclined his head.  "I trust that her Ladyship will not
be disappointed."

Sir Jocelyn gave him a puzzled look, but as he moved away he paused.
"There will be a ball after the performance," he said.  You will not be
too fatigued to attend?"  The excuse rose and went unspoken.  There
would be no need to ride through the night to Kilsheelin.  Lady
O'Carroll too, would be there.  Another gem for this marble setting. 
He tossed from him the picture of a girl in a niche in a wall that was
deep grouted with the steadfast mountain grit a girl waiting!

Waiting, he said to his reflection as he sloshed the coconut butter on
his face; waiting for a vagrant; the First Mate of a stolen coffin
ship, a strolling player!  He pressed in place the short-cropped wig of
tight grey curls and clamped about them a bandeau of gold.  The chair
went backwards to the ground as he pushed it from him to don the Roman
toga.  A little sugar statue fell on its face as he banged out of the
door.  He turned and set it up, then touched it slowly in a sort of
ceremonial gesture.

Somewhere in the front a woman listened and froze.  Out of the past
and across the footlights came words that Roderick had quoted--almost
with that self-same voice--as she lay on the great carved seat that had
been designed by the boy who had ceased his tinkling mid the
tea-service to listen also.  '... she wished," she said.

"That it had been a man.  I answered her, It was the mother of a race
of men, And paid her for thee with a kiss."

The voice from the stage held tones and inflections that beat about her
ears with an intimacy that was frightening.  She clenched her nails to
fight against the credulous fancy.  How could this be Roderick's
voice!

The actor's voice surged with passion because he was declaiming about a
lovely love he had thought could never die; a love that had inspired
his whole remembered life and refreshed him in its gentle backwash
until it had conditioned his emotions to focus upon the fruit of that
love.

"The very flower," he cried towards Appius on his tribunal, 'our bed
connubial grew..."

First of the enraptured audience to rise in acclaim was the
undemonstrative host, Sir Jocelyn.  But the cold, averted profile of
the lady who remained seated in the shadows of the box was not that of
Lady O'Carroll.  The white-robed actor turning again and again before
the curtain could pick out no face that recalled her presence.

Suddenly his heart resumed its lilt.  Of course!  of course!  Lady
O'Carroll was not the bride at all.  he wasn't here.  What had he been
thinking of to give such credence to the gossip of a woman journeying
her children to be cured by a promenade beneath an ass's belly!

In vain the grand audience sought to clap him forth once more, and
finally it desisted.  To disappear without a curtain speech, was
probably, they told each other, some whim of his exclusiveness, the
prerogative of fame.

Back in his dressing-room he hurled the flowing robes from him and
pulled a fresh white shirt over his head without removing his make-up.
"Oh, sir," expostulated his dresser, Alphabet, 'you've smeared your
nice fresh shirt!"

When the black curls had shaken out through the opening of frilled
dawn a streak of yellow ochre showed on every frill.  He pulled the
shirt from him and threw it on to the floor.  "Get me another," he
ordered.  "And get me into these."  He nodded towards the riding
boots.

"A pity to miss the dance, sir"," gasped the dresser as he tugged the
boot loops over the limb held horizontally in midair.

"No, Alphabet," said the actor gaily to Anselm Beracium Conceptionez
Duignan, 'there is a smell of feet in that ballroom."

"Oh, Gawney, sir, surely not!  Not them ladies and gents!"

Down came the booted leg and up with its shapely companion in
embroidered hose.  "No, not them.  Little ladies and gents, only they
weren't really ladies and gents.  That was the trouble.  And they
weren't sweaty feet, Alphabet.  They were sizzling, burning feet
performing the dance of death.  Remind me to tell you about them
someday.  A bien tot Alphabet, and go to bed soon.  This place is
horribly haunted."  A whisk of white satin lining and the tall, cloaked
figure was gone.

"Whoever she is," said Anselm Beracium Conceptionez Duignan to the
closed door, 'by the mortal frost, she must be a stunner!  *

A few strides brought the actor down a passage and across the marble
hall.  Silently he slid the great bolt without benefit of butler or
footman, and as he pulled the door open a prolonged susurrus of silk
and an upward rippling of laughter made him turn.  The artist in him
lingered on the sudden tableau.

Up the stairs in a swaying procession of colour, hooped white satin,
blue brocade, rose moire, climbed a row of lovely girls.  Each one held
aloft a silver candlestick and its flame glinting in their hair
ornaments gave the impression of moving stars.  The buckles in their
shoes, twinkling out of upheld flounces, looked like starry reflections
in the black marble steps that rose wavelike beneath each foaming
petticoat.  As they wended upward for one final titivation before the
ball they chattered and laughed and tossed back words over their
shoulders.

"Ye gods, wasn't he divine?"

"Like a Greek god!"

"Not Greek, 'twas a Roman play.  He looks like a cast of some Roman
emperor."

"Did you see his eyes?"

II

"It was his voice that held me.  Wasn't it superb, Sterrin?"

The words were tossed over a white shoulder.  Then the speaker
disappeared in the upper darkness and the girl in the turquoise was
alone on the stairway, slowly mounting.  Her head was slightly bowed
and the diamonds in the suffusion of her hair looked like stars in the
bronze clouds of a storm cast sunset.  That voice, she thought.  Why
had it stirred her like This?  Why had all these submerged scenes risen
upright?  Frachans1 on the hill slopes!  Mushrooms in the dewy dawn!
Hawthorn blossoms on Lissnastreenagh!  A voice, was it across the
footlights or across Coolnafunchion that had cried, "Come on, Rajah!
Don't let Thuckeen shame you."  And, linked with all, lifelong,
unuttered, unformed, some vague hope that only now, this grey moment,
had finally, despairingly ceased!

A gust of wind guttered her candle.  A noise made her turn.  How
strange to see the door stand open like that at night; and rain and
wind coming through the empty hallway!

Then she saw the man who stood at the foot of the stairs gazing up at
her.  This was a haunted house!  Trembling caused grease to drip on the
turquoise brocade.  This was no ghost!  She could see the white of his
knuckles from the tensity of his grip on the banister.  No convict
either!  Not this elegant stranger!  In all the world there was only
one pair of eyes like these that gazed at her with intensity, bluer
than ever from the liner that still outlined the unforgettable
lashes.

A sudden squall came through the door and up the stairs and moved the
pictures on its way and swirled her silken draperies.  The candlestick
was growing heavy, her arm drooped.  With a bound he was beside her and
taken the weight from her hand just as he had always done!  He held the
light to shine on every vestige of the face that was lovelier than he
had dreamed.  "Sterrin!"

"Young Thomas!"  Their names mingled and then they were silent again.
No words would come to either but her throat moved with the congestion
of words and questions.  Someone was closing the door.  The hall came
alive.  Without speaking he turned to light her up the remaining
stairs; just as he had always done.  Without thinking she moved upward
in the path of light he shed for her.

In the landing he put down the candle and the gesture re1 Bilberries.

leased her voice.  When did you escape?"  But as she spoke she knew
the question was out of character.  There were years of worldly freedom
behind the ease and polish of this elegant man.  His smile was as
gentle as years ago but it was the quirk of his eyebrow at the question
that released just one of all the emotions that strove within her. 
From the thrill and the wonder and the dazed joy came resentment,
fierce and unreasoning.  "Yes, weren't you in prison?  You--you ought
to have been in prison!"  He ought to have been because of all the
anguish she had endured for him.  Lord, the cloud that had shadowed all
those years! The slobbering sentimental ising over his broken life. 
She, running away to share his living entombment.  And look at him! 
The height and breadth of him!  The very air about him throbbed with
his vitality. She felt cheated.  His grandeur mocked her years of
mourning pity.  She could not know how coldly proud was the mask that
covered her humiliation, and seemed to disdain the decked-out finery of
the former knife boy.  He glanced at his clothes and their grandeur
mocked him. He gave a slight bow, "You are right, I ought to have been
in prison. I realise that it was presumptuous of me to be elsewhere. 
Goodbye, Miss Sterrin."

"Young Thomas!"  He had almost, reached the top of the stairs when the
name burst from her as it had that morning years ago when she watched
him moving down the castle bore en out of her life.  He turned. 
Instead of the black ribbon, there were diamonds holding her hair,
instead of the cloak of mourning black there was a gown of blue
brocade, but the face above was fine drawn with the same pleading of
the girl who had waved from the wall; whose heart was as steadfast as
the wall of mountain grit.  In one stride he took her in his arms.

"Giola, mo giola!"  Brightness of brightness!  The old endearment
sprang to his lips before they met hers in a long kiss that was her
awakening and his fulfilment.  When it ended he drew her closer still
and buried his face in her hair.  "And if I had taken one more sulky
step I might have gone beyond recall for ever and have missed this
glorious moment."  He pushed back her hair from her forehead and placed
his other hand beneath her chin and gazed deep into the face that had
been with him in all his wanderings.  How lovely it had become!  "And I
see that you still have your wan."  He fingered the speck of brown
velvet above her eye.

ii

She drew back.  "Wart, indeed!  Let me tell you that my beauty spot is
all the rage.  All the bridesmaids are wearing..."  her gaiety ebbed.

He drew her back into his arms.  "Are all the bridesmaids wearing
warts?"  And suddenly he realised with a pang that the warty woman on
the train had not been wrong.  Lady O'Carroll must be the bride, since
Sterrin was here.  Here in his arms!  The pang gave way to a surging of
joy.  "Sterrin, my love he murmured, 'if I had thrown away this moment.
I think that I must have lived for it since that night when I saw the
field taken up to the sky and I thought that the world had ended and
was being taken up to Heaven all the people except the three of us
there.  Then we reached the castle and I fell asleep and when I
awakened you were there.  I had a sleepy impression that it was you who
had brought calm.  Since then you have been my world."  He looked over
her head into the shadows.  You were there when the storm used to crash
the waves and clouds together and send the boat into a kind of outer
darkness."

She smiled happily against his shoulder.  "Always the stormy petrel!"

"No, mavourneen."

She thought that his beautiful voice crooned music into the world.

"You were the white dove of the tempest."

She gave a sigh of rapture.  This was the moment that her life also,
had awaited.  She twined her arms about him and looked up into his
face, "And I thought that you were in prison a convict."

"And I thought that you were in a convent a nun.  Mo cuid den naim!" My
share of heaven.

She drew back on a sudden.  "But where have you been?  And what brought
you here.  You seemed to appear out of the night on the breath of the
wind '

"On the breath of the wind," he repeated.  "The way you first came.
Then you did not recognise me on the stage?"

Realisation smote her.  "So it was you!"  she breathed.  That was why
she had felt so strangely disturbed during his performance.  Why Mamma
had tensed and agitated her fan so that Sterrin had dreaded the onset
of another attack after so long.  Young Thomas had always imitated
Papa's voice; in a restrained kind of way.  But back there in that
theatre it had

clarioned forth with all Papa's assurance and authority.  "You are the
famous Thomas Young!"  She was awestruck for a moment, then she gave
out a low jet of laughter, "Oh, Young Thomas, how terribly funny and
how terribly like you.  You reversed your own name."

"Not quite.  I decided to pick up the name that Mr.  Young discarded
that time in the Crow Street Theatre in Dublin.  Do you remember?"

"I remember.  You nearly got Papa arrested, and you had police watching
the castle for months.  They thought that you were someone dangerous
and important but she laid her head against him and she could hear the
beating of his heart, 'you were always important to me your heart is
beginning to go thumpity, thump."  She looked up at him.  "It is not
really so startling that you should have become an actor.  Do you
remember the plays we used to get up with Bunzy De Lacey?  And do you
remember when you acted the Lord Lieutenant at Court Presentations you
would not give me the ceremonial kiss?"

"I shall spend the rest of my life atoning for that omission."  His
lips met hers and stopped her reminiscences but they failed to stop the
little chill of dread at his words.  The world around her had returned.
They had been play-acting, the two of them, here in this unrehearsed
moment of reunion.  Now she must face reality.

"Sterrin," he raised her face from his shoulder, 'what was this about
you entering a convent?  The news was like a death blow.  What
happened?"

"Well, you see, Young Thomas Oh, I must remember to drop the "young".
It was always a silly thing.  Why you are years older than She gazed
bleakly into the face that was now so youngly handsome; older only in
their own bright sphere.  Not in that remote phase of sardonic age that
was reaching out from forty years away to grasp her.  The same panic
that she had experienced in the jewelled aviary began to mount.  Then
voices came along the corridor and she started back from him.  Opened
doors threw beams of light and the swish of silken gowns.  From the
stairs came Sir Jocelyn's voice.  She almost dragged Thomas into the
room behind her.  "What is wrong?"  he asked, *I have never known you
to show this kind of fear.  Don't tell me that you are frightened of
your future stepfather?"

She seated herself at the dressing-table; her back to him, her face
staring whitely from the mirror.  Rows of tall candles blazing in
mirrored duplicate gave him the impression of an altar ablaze with
votive candles.  The realisation had a significance un associated with
the time when he used to be in and out of her room every day; to make
sure that Mickey-the-turf had replenished the turf holder; to carry in
her hip bath and place it just not too near the blazing sods; when he
would light her to her room up winding stairs past eerie nooks and
crannies.  He looked at the sumptuous bed and recalled the time when
she had measles and he used to read to her; one hand holding the book
the other reaching out to jerk back the red woollen cap that cloustered
the red hair over the red-patched face.  All that lurid red; the
coverlet, the curtains, the red bed jacket essential colour treatment
for measles.  This mother-of-pearl bed would have disturbed the
treatment.  It was--disturbing.  He took his eyes from its slender
columns embowered in silken drapes and looked back at the face that
stared so strangely at him from the mirror.

"Listen, Young Thomas--Thomas.  No," she cried out, "I mean Young
Thomas."  She rose and came back to him.  "Because you are young.  You
will always be "Young Thomas" to me.  Always."

She had changed.  This was not the Sterrin whom he had known.  That
Sterrin might blaze with sudden temper but she was never distrait. Even
after her father's murder she had conserved her strength to support her
mother.  "Sterrin," he said quietly, 'what is amiss?  There is a dread
on you."

Before she could reply there was a tap at the door and Hannah entered.
"Miss Sterrin," she gasped, 'what are you thinking of?  A gentleman
blaguardin' in your bedroom!  *

"Hannah, you humbug, cried a voice that made her jump out of her
standing.  "Don't pretend to be shocked.  This is not the first time
that you have seen me in Miss Sterrin's bedroom."

"Glory be to the Hand of God!"  she gasped.  "Young Thomas!  Didn't I
think that you were a gentleman."

"What a terrible mistake!  Why, Hannah, you used to say that you'd Know
a gentleman if you only saw him walking upside down on the ceiling like
a fly."

"An' I'm looking at one now, Young Thomas asthore; the finest that ever
I laid eyes on, barrin' Sir Roderick's own self Mrs.  Stacey will be
out of her mind with joy and Big John and

lA^A

indeed Mr.  Hegarty, too.  He often says that you were his right
hand."

"I'm afraid that you will have to carry them the full of my heart of
love and the gifts that I have brought for all of you.  I had hoped to
risk a flying visit to Kilsheelin tonight.  We go to London tomorrow
but now that I've discovered Miss Sterrin to be here I shall not risk
'

"But didn't you know she'd be here.  Isn't that why we're all here?
Sure ..."

"That's all right, Hannah," Sterrin interrupted her.  "I shall be down
in a moment.  And don't breathe a word."  Hannah paused at the doorway;
uneasy.

"I don't like it, Miss Sterrin.  It's neither wrong nor right and his
Honour Sir Jocelyn is asking for you."  Sterrin waved her out
impatiently but still the maid hesitated.  "I'm in dread, Miss

Sterrin.  It's contrary but She turned to Thomas.  "You are the full of
my eyes.  I can't take them off you.  Would anyone believe that you
ever drew a rusty knife down the centre of a raw potato?"

He opened the door and manoeuvred her through.  "No, Hannah.  No one
would ever believe such a calumny.  My knives were never rusty."

A man's voice sounded and Sterrin rushed to close the door.  "He'll
hear you," she whispered.

The laughter went from his face.  With his hand still gripping the
door-knob he said, "Sterrin, who has put this fear on you!  Is it the
man whom your mother is going to marry?"

Her eyes were blue-black in the tense white of her face.  "Mamma!"  She
gave a little laugh that had nothing to do with joy.  "Where have you
been, Young Thomas?  You cannot have been anywhere in the three
kingdoms or you would know the name of the future Lady Devine."

It was his turn to go white.  She noticed the way his knuckles strained
white, too, from his grip of the door-knob.  A black line of words
crawled through his brain.  Words like purblind and love-blind and
presumptuous fool.  But the great actor had no tricks to get his lines
across the silence of this unset stage

"I thought you knew."  So it had been an omen, he was thinking.  That
mayfly on its wedding flight!  "Do you hear me?"  she repeated.  "I
thought you knew."  Her voice reached him at last like the prompter's
insistent cue penetrating the silence of for427

gotten lines.

"And thinking I knew," he said quietly, 'you let me inhale the
bouquet."

"What bouquet?"  She said it lifelessly because she knew he was
reproaching her in some of his bookish metaphors.

"Sterrin," he said softly, 'do you remember the Christmas before the
famine?  Hounds met at Kilsheelin next day and the Wren Boys danced in
the hall oh yes, by the way, Big John Holohan who danced the "double"
with that long-haired girl, Molly Heffernan, is on the way to becoming
another Croesus.  Sir Roderick," he continued, 'had ordered Hegarty to
decant some rare wine for Sir Jocelyn Devine.  He was such a
connoisseur!  Hegarty gave me a lambastin' afterwards because when I
filled the decanter I paused for a split second to inhale to sniff, I
should say, I hadn't learn't to "inhale" in those days.  Then Sir
Jocelyn raised the glass to his lips and savoured it, sip by sip, with
slow delight...."

"How dare you!"  She had caught his meaning.  "You you have no right to
speak like that to me!"

The white horror on her face recalled him from his reverie.  "No,
Achushla, I have no right to speak to you at all."  He twisted the knob
and held the door ready.  "But you cannot withdraw from me the breath
of fragrance that escaped on its way to the connoisseur.  Goodbye,
Sterrin."

Suddenly she was the cool, still girl he remembered.  She placed the
tip of one white-clad finger on the door and its opening ceased.  "I am
sorry to spoil your exit; it deserves applause.  You have learned to
speak drama magnificently, but this is not a play; it is life; not just
mine or Mamma's or Dominic's.  It concerns the lives of people like
Hegarty whose grandfather gave his life to save Kilsheelin from
confiscation; people like Big John and Mrs.  Stacey, born in Kilsheelin
like their parents before them; and Mike O'Driscoll whose grandfather
was flogged to death in the old deer park because he was gamekeeper to
a papist when papists were not allowed to have gamekeepers.  It
concerns the possible eviction of tenants who have occupied our land
since almost since the first Prince of the O'Carrolls lived at
Kilsheelin."

The celebrated actor stood chastened while the descendant of the first
Prince of the O'Carrolls rebuked her knife boy; a true princess of her
line carrying the burdens of her heritage on the

silver and turquoise slopes of her shoulders.  Such young shoulders I
"Too young1."  It broke from him involuntarily and she misunderstood.
Minute by minute she was loving him more, understanding more what had
been the meaning of the things he had said when he bade her goodbye
over five years ago, and with every minute she was resenting more and
more the anguish she had endured on him and the long silence that he
had allowed her to suffer.  What did he expect to find when he
condescended to swoop back in all his glory?  A rustic belle wearing
the willow for him?

"Too young for what?  For whom?  Even those who stay at home grow in
some direction.  They grow old; they even grow rusty..."  His smile
angered her while it twisted her heart with its warm sweetness.  He was
thinking that the qualities that were the antithesis of rust and age,
the qualities of youth and brightness stood out from her like another
dimension in a full length aureole.

"I must go down," she announced in dismissal.  "There is no more time
for explanations or reproach."

He made no move to open the door for her.  There was too much to be
said.  But it opened and Sir Jocelyn Devine said, "I'm afraid, my dear,
we must find time for both, since I find that you are far from
reproach."

Sterrin reflected that she seemed to be observing Young Thomas's
knuckles all night.  They were shining again through the skin.  This
time they were clenched.  He stepped up to Sir Jocelyn.

"That is an unutterable thing to say to Miss O'Carroll."

In the turn of Sir Jocelyn's head there was the reptilian savagery of
the cobra about to strike.  "I found her," he replied and his lips
scarcely moved, 'in unutterable circumstances and --unutterable
company."  Young Thomas almost recoiled from the impact of his
contempt.  "I engaged you," he continued, for the entertainment of my
betrothed wife."  His eyes moved down the room in the direction of the
bed.  "I did not expect you to carry your entertaining powers this
far."

Young Thomas felt that for the rest of his life the scaly lustre of
mother-of-pearl would always suggest Sir Jocelyn's eyes as they glinted
towards the bed.  "Sir," he said quietly, 'your knowledge of your
betrothed wife and your great knowledge of life

m\

ii itii

should reassure you that the circumstances look too black to be
real."

Sir Jocelyn turned from him to Sterrin and said icily, "How does this
man come to be in your bedroom?"

"It would be difficult for me to give an explanation of all the times
he has been in my bedroom."

It was the first time in decades that the baronet's Court-of Saint
James manner boggled.

"He was in my room," continued Sterrin, 'the morning I was born."  And
just as she had once said it when she rose to explain to her father why
she had purloined his rarest lilies for the grave of Young Thomas's
godchild she said.  "He is of our household."

"Indeed!"  He looked curiously at Young Thomas.  "And what position,
pray did this this person hold in your household?"

Blue flames shot from the diamonds in her hair as her head went up to
answer.  "A position of esteem."

Sir Jocelyn's lips curled.  "Obviously, I do not allow laxities among
my servants.  Whelps sometimes get swollen from the crumbs that fall
from the table of their masters."  His contemptuous look measured
Thomas from head to foot.  "Some of them are not even content with
crumbs, they sniff their master's wine and become intoxicated."

"Intoxicated, sir!"  cried Thomas.  "If the wine comes from the..."  he
looked significantly round the magnificent room, 'the vault of a
collector, a whelp might even become exalted."

Sir Jocelyn threw wide the door.  "Leave this room," he ordered, but it
was Sterrin who stepped across the threshold.  With the two gentlemen,
one on either side of her in the corridor she made an agreeable
spectacle for the two pretty little ladies who rushed after them with a
whirring of silk.

"Oh, Sterrin," they gushed, 'we've been looking out for you.  We
hoped..."  they looked coyly at Thomas, 'that you would ask Mr.  Young
to write a verse in our Confession Books."  Each held a white
velvet-bound and gold-clasped book that contained the confessions to
the favourite book, flower, colour and poem of their friends and their
beaux.

Sir Jocelyn stripped a smile.  "We must not detain Mr.  Young He is
leaving at once."  They were all consternation, but Thomas was already
scribbling and over his shoulder Fiona Delaney was rapturously reading
aloud, "Can plumes compare thy dark brown hair?  Can silks thy neck of
snow?"

Her pretty companion presented an open page framed in painted
forget-me-nots.  Hannah tiptoed fearfully past and Sterrin, on an
impulse, turned and called to her.  "Hannah, fetch me my Confession
Book."  The maid paused to argue with her mistress that they did not
possess such a thing and Sterrin said impatiently, "The green book in
the escritoire."

The look that passed between them as she handed Young Thomas the green
diary he had given her for her fourteenth birthday sent the blood
pounding in Sir Jocelyn's temples.

"Sterrin," he said sharply, 'there is no need to delay Mr.  Young
further."  He would have bartered his wealth that moment to crane like
the two young ladies to glimpse what was being written in the little
green book.  But it was held too adroitly and in a flash it was
returned to its owner.  She glanced imperturbably at the lines before
she dropped the little diary in her gold reticule.

As she moved down the stairs on the arm of her betrothed, the guests
gazed upwards in admiration.  They could not guess that her heart was
repeating the lines that a trembling hand had scarce made legible,
lines written by Thomas Davis of his un sanctioned love.

"We told each other to j or get, As if we thought we should, "Twos said
we might not wed, and yet We kissed as if we could."

She danced to its measure no matter the tune.  Its message called her
mood from joy to sorrow; from exaltation to despair.  Sir Jocelyn,
leading his fiancee out for the Quadrille, stood transfixed as his
actor-guest made an entrance that suggested a fanfare.  As Thomas
hastened to where his host and Sterrin stood at the top of the line,
the pattern of the dance broke up and the dancers gathered around him;
the gentlemen clapping, the ladies all dither and delight.

"I crave your pardon, Sir Jocelyn, and yours, Miss O'Carroll, to have
been so unpunctual, but I have been detained by the most unforeseen
circumstances."

A lady pushed forward.  "But this is a wonderful surprise," she gushed.
"We have heard that we were not to have the pleasure."  Thomas bowed
gravely.

"I assured Sir Jocelyn on my arrival, when he so kindly in ll

vi ted me, that I would be here.  Our stay, alas, is all too short and
time is precious."  He turned to Sterrin, "Miss O'Carroll," he said
with a low bow, 'am I too late?  Is your programme written out?"

She glanced at her programme.  "The next is a Lancers.  It has not been
donated."

"Alas, Miss O'Carroll, I dare not presume to conduct you through the
Lancers.  I am not competent.  The waltz is'my one accomplishment."
Under his breath he murmured, "It is more sociable."

When he came to claim his waltz, Sir Jocelyn's face was livid.  "You
are treading on dangerous ground, sir," he gritted.

"So I have been warned, Sir Jocelyn, but don't worry.  My feet are shod
and I shall try to steer my partner past the gridirons."

A footman passed with a laden tray.  "Are you all right, your Honour's
Sir Jocelyn?"  he asked timidly.

His employer removed his hand from his eyes as the queer sensation
cleared.  "Not that!"  He waved away the proffered champagne.  "Get me
brandy!"

Eyes were drawn and space unwittingly yielded to the superb couple as
they glided down the long ballroom.  Dowagers and debutantes watched
with the same sub-ache and wondered what he was murmuring down into
that upturned face.  "Try not to kick my shins," he was saying.

And she was murmuring back, "Those who have had the honour of waltzing
with me could vouch that I waltz like a dream."

He whirled her round a marble pillar.  "And one who had danced the
Double Jig with you can vouch here and now that you kick like a mule.
Have you read your diary?"

"Yes," it was only a whisper and he stooped so low to catch it that his
lips were caressed by her breath.  He danced her back to the centre and
up towards the watching eyes of her betrothed, then in and out of the
garlanded pillars and banks of flowers and avenue of potted palms, and
in a flowered alcove he breathed.

"Sterrin, beloved, you must not marry that gold and marble inlaid
mummy."

There was impatience in her sigh.  "Young Thomas, such talk does not
help.  Neither does it help to bait him."

"Bait!  The child-baiting tradition of this house dies hard."

tiis hand caressed the rounded chin.  "A child still dances to the
macabre chimes of its gold."

She drew back her face.  "What's the use of this, Young Thomas!  He has
not abducted me.  He is a very great gentleman and the highest honour a
man can give a woman is his name."

As though he had received a bullet the arm that still encircled her for
the waltz dropped to his side and his face was wounded w'nite and his
strangled words were the gasp of pain when he said, "And mine is but a
nickname!"

Her arms were around him and her cheek pressed his and her voice choked
with tears as she murmured, "Young Thomas, Mo bheale Asthore, would you
think that I'd own such a thought 1' The blood-giving phrase warmed his
cheek against hers.  Mo bheale Asthore, my life's love.  They drew back
at the sound from another alcove.  It was only a pair of lovers
absorbed in the glamour of their own unhappiness.  A very young officer
of the Blues was urging his plea with a little maiden in gauzy white
whose sigh when she murmured, "Papa would shoot you if you caused
another elopement in the family."  She was Winifred Murray, the girl
who had supported Sterrin on the convent wall while Sterrin watched out
for Thomas.

As the two pairs of clandestine lovers looked at one another from their
separate bowers the young officer's mooning look gave way to an
officer-and-gentleman frown.  He released his arm from its protection
duty about the tiny waist and dropped his hand challengingly on his
sword hilt.  The play-actor was being let see that he was outraging the
hospitality and the honour of his host.

Thomas stepped towards their bower.  "Sir, your sword arm wrongs Miss
O'Carroll.  "Twas better employed before.  After all, people who plot
elopements cannot even throw pebbles."  The officer went scarlet and
Winifred gasped audibly.  "Miss O'Carroll and I are old acquaintances.
I have come direct from America.  It was a most unexpected pleasure to
meet here after years."  Sterrin tapped his arm; the music had stopped.
Thomas adopted a persuasive smile, "Look, sir, and you madam," he bowed
to Winifred, 'could I beg that we exchange partners for a further dance
and return here.  I should like to speak to Miss O'Carroll again before
I leave."

Sterrin consulted her programme.  "I can give you the next ne,
Lieutenant O'Hara.  It is a schottische.  Is yours free, Wini fred?"
Winifred offered up her programme like an immolation Sterrin was up to
something; just like at the convent, but Wini!  fred felt that she
herself would risk her father's shotgun if h\i.  Thomas Young suggested
elopement.  Sir Jocelyn Devine appeared around the pillar looking
ominous but his fiancee was on the arm of Lieutenant Joachim O'Hara and
the play-actor was signing up Miss Winifred Murray's schottische.

"I say.  Miss O'Carroll," gasped the lieutenant, 'you flre expert at
this schottische.  I haven't quite got the this and the that of it
yet."

"We danced quite a lot at the convent."  Her eyes were following
Thomas.

"You surprise me.  Isn't it rather wicked?  That is, new?"

"It is worse than wicked," said Sterrin whose eyes were on Winifred;
free to hop around openly with Young Thomas.

"You amaze me, Miss O'Carroll.  It is scarcely all that wicked,"

She looked at him for the first time.  What was he talking about?  "Oh,
I mean the waltz.  It was forbidden.  The nuns thought it was
sensuous."

"Oh \' There was something deucedly disturbing about such a word on the
lips of a young lady.  This alcove business was disturbing, too.  "I
say Miss O'Carroll, oh, I'm so sorry.  One, two, three.
One--two--three.  I mean there's no need to be afraid.  Winifred and I
won't peach."

There was a group of girls round Young Thomas.  She wanted to go over
and pull him away from them.  Why hadn't he written?  Why has he let
this trap close around me?  "You can trust us."  Her eyes returned to
her partner.  Jove, they were stunning \ They had gone purple because
their owner wanted to scream; wanted to hit him.

"Are you trying to make a bargain with me?"  she asked.  "I'm afraid I
don't huckster."  He sweated embarrassment down his side-whiskers, lost
his one--two--three and hopped over his sword.

"Oh, perish the thought, Miss O'Carroll."  Damn it she needn't be so
glacial.  Dancing towards her tryst with one gentleman; on the eve of
her wedding to another I And this tryst in the alcove was not meant for
a farewell.  Sounded more like a beginning An elopement perhaps.  What
a top hole infectious thought.  Perhaps Winifred might not have to be
immune from its contagion.

In the alcove Young Thomas had indeed been thinking of lopement; "But
Sterrin," he resumed where they had left off, "tis an ungodly
sacrifice.  The price is too high.  Oh, my dove of the storm."  He took
her in his arms and murmured into her hair" You were never designed for
his aviary."  She wanted to stay there, her troubled head on his
breast, for ever.  She felt like a storm-tossed boat that had come at
last to harbour.  Then into her peace came a vision of James Keating's
face bending over her; of herself placing a hand in solemn pledge into
the hand of the man to whom she had fled from Keating.  She lifted her
face.  Tve made my bargain She gave a twisted smile.  "I've told
Lieutenant O'Hara that I don't huckster, but I have huckstered for
Kilsheelin.  I must stand by my word."

"You have not huckstered, Sterrin.  Like great people you have played
for great stakes.  Kilsheelin and its folks in return for the fairest
flower of all its dynasty.  But I won't let that happen.  There must be
a way out."

She put a hand on either side of his face.  "Young Thomas, if it were
just for myself I should not have bartered; but those others; so
helpless!  They are all like people reprieved.  No, there is no way out
of this."

"You must come away with me."  He stepped back and seized her hand.  "I
have found you when I thought that I had lost you for ever.  I won't
let you go.  When is the wedding day?"

"Tomorrow fortnight."

"That gives me time.  I must play in London in two days' time.  I have
arranged for a man to come and meet me here early in the morning before
I leave.  Bergin.  He was with me in the gold fields.  He is an escaped
convict.  He escaped on to the ship that was to have brought me to the
settlement--never mind about that now; there is so much that we have to
explain to each other.  Meantime I believe that I can do something to
save Kilsheelin.  Don't think that it is no concern of mine, the only
home I've known; that gave me bread and life--and love!  Do you think
that I would let the others, the kitchen family, go on the shaughran?
No, we'll hold Kilsheelin."

Winifred Murray peeped through the palm fronds.  "Oh, Joachim, look at
Sterrin's face!  She must have decided to elope."

Joachim looked.  "Now," he said, 'see what elopement does for a 8irl.
One would never think that she was the same person."

CHAPTER 43

Thomas repeated the cue but his colleague, Henry Montieth failed to
respond.  The audience didn't seem to notice.  They were thrilled by
Thomas's performance in the revival of Bertram.  From pit to gallery
the applause surged up and down.  In the boxes fashionable ladies were
rising to acclaim the great American actor.  Under the tumult Thomas
again threw the cue to the actor who should be struggling to his feet
for the curtain line.

Inwardly fuming, Thomas improvised a line and signalled the stagehands.
As the curtain came down he called impatiently to the man on the floor.
"Come on, Harry!  Get ready to take the curtain."  This was the
consequence of treating a cough with whiskey.  And this was the actor
who was to understudy him on Wednesday while he dashed to Ireland.  To
Ireland and Sterrin!  By Heaven, it would be a pity for the man who
would impede those plans.

Thomas swept towards the clamour beyond the curtain but was halted by
the sound of a gasp.  The principals were lining in from the wings for
the first curtain.  The leading lady was pointing dramatically, at the
same time swooning backwards on to the shoulder of the handsome
juvenile who was staring openmouthed over her head.

Then Thomas saw what she was pointing at.  Henry was lying on the
stage, his hands fluttering around his throat.  Thomas dropped on his
knees and supported the actor's head.  Blood flowed from his mouth. The
man tried to say something but only a bubble of blood came through lips
that were stuck together by yellow ochre and congealed blood.  At last
the words came and Thomas stooped to catch the pitiful apology. "I'm
ssorry-Mr.  Young.  I-I tried to cov His head fell back on to

Thomas's arm.

Through the curtains the unappeased audience roared for "Young!  Mr.
Young!  Thomas Young!"  Critics who had come prepared to see a passion
torn to resplendent tatters had been first puzzled and then fascinated
by his technique of restraint juid under-emphasis.  They stampeded with
the rest for the pleasure of his thrilling voice in a curtain speech.

He spoke quietly, just a few words and when he turned to go there was a
roar of disappointment.  "Call that a speech, Guvnor?"  yelled a
galleryite who was settling down to enjoy the cadence for a bit of
extra good measure.  The bills had prepared them for a famous actor but
not for a person and personality who was worth paying to see without
any performance.

Reluctantly, Thomas was forced to divulge that one of his cast had
taken ill.  Only then was he allowed to go.  He stepped back.  Behind
the curtain the actor whose name was billed below his own was making
his last exit between two stagehands.  Poor Henry Monteith would not be
taking his bow.  Thomas, following the procession amid silent actors
and props suddenly realised the full impact of this catastrophe.

Who would understudy him on Wednesday evening?  The programme would
have to be changed.  All the preparations would have to be scrapped,
except his plan to return for Sterrin.  Nothing short of his own death
would alter that plan!

The players, weary from the strain of their first London audience,
shocked by Henry's sudden death, were startled on their way to the
stage door by the callboy summoning a complete all-cast muster.  They
looked at each other.  Did this mean that Mr.  Young was giving them
his usual stage party after all?  It wasn't like him, not in these
circumstances.  They turned without enthusiasm and grouped together as
far as possible from the freshly-washed boards.

Thomas addressed them crisply.  "You all know by now that Mr.  Monteith
is dead.  But "the play goes on".  Perhaps it was that tradition that
contributed to his death.  While he lay in the swoon scene a fit of
coughing caused a suffusion of blood that he retained until it
smothered him."  He broke off on the point of uttering 'needlessly5,
and turned away sickened, not from the sight of the bloodstains but of
himself mouthing platitudes about poor Henry's unnecessary death from
false delicacy and niisplaced heroics.  Out of the shadowy void of the
proscenium Sterrin's face shimmered towards him.  He turned and paced
the deserted end of the stage, then turned in a swirl to face the
silent group.

"The play must go on."  His vehemence was startling.  "But n tonight's
play," he continued.  "You did not know that I h j arranged with Henry
Mr.  Monteith to understudy me Wednesday for a few nights, I must
return to Ireland on business...."  An explosive "Gawney' from Alcium
Beracium Conceptionez Duignan interrupted him.  "And I am putting on
the new piece Romance at the Crossroads.  It went over well the one
night we played it before we left America.  Audiences don't like their
tragedies too distressingly realistic.  We must give them something to
laugh away tonight's realism.  So, everyone on the stage tomorrow
morning at nine.  Goodnight."  He moved off then stopped.  "Fm sorry
that we couldn't have our usual little celebration tonight.  Heaven
knows, you all deserve one.  You must only drink poor Henry's funeral
ale.  God rest his soul!"

A girl padded after him down the dark passage to the stage door, but
Alcium Beracium Conceptionez Duignan with his master's cloak on his arm
and obstruction on his mind, kept ahead of her.  "Mr.  Young," she
pleaded over the valet's shoulder.  Thomas turned impatiently, but when
the lamp over the open door shone down upon the girl whose soft brown
eyes always recalled Lady O'Carroll, he softened.  "What is it, Miss Du
Clos?"

"Mr.  Young," she gasped, breathless with exertion and her own
temerity.  "Who are you casting for Sally?"  Dear Heaven, was he to
cope with casting jealousy at this hour of the night.

"Why you, of course.  Who else?  Didn't you play it last time..."  he
stopped.  She hadn't; another girl, one he had dropped from the company
had originally played Sally.

"You see," exclaimed the girl.  "You do see?"  She was urging him to
see why she had been so presumptuous.

"But," he said, his brows in a black line across his forehead, 'you
were in the cast?"

She nodded.  "As young Peggy; only a few lines."  He nodded as he
remembered, but his mind was occupied with the arrangements he must
settle tonight; new plans for the performances; lugubrious plans for a
funeral; glorious plans for a ... his heart gave a throb and a surge
and his perfect teeth sparkled through a radiant smile at the amazed
actress.  He held his repeater to the lamp that alternated in the wind
with a flash and creak and shadow movement.  "Let me see," he was
almost playful, 'y u

almost twenty-four hours to get into the part.  You can be **
rcj.perfect in that time, can't you, Miss Du Qos?* She could Ll she
was.

She pored over her lines throughout the weary night as she made the
role her own.  Sparrows were chattering matins as she stubbed out the
last of the three candles she had consumed in her all-night
concentration.

"Three candles for bad luck," she rose and stretched her cramped limbs.
"But I didn't have them lighting all together."  She splashed water
from a ewer into a basin and bathed her smarting eyes.  In the mirror
she noticed the network of tiny red veins in the clear blue whites of
her eyes.  "Hm!  No such luxury as three-candle lighting."  She peered
closer at the red veins.  "If I had that I wouldn't have these now. And
that horrid Miss Garland won't show me how to bead my eyelashes. She's
too angry about not getting the part for herself to help me with
makeup.  Would I ever dare to ask him to make her?  What use is it
being word-perfect if my looks let him down.  I'm supposed to be a
sparkling-eyed sprite, not a bleary-eyed hag."

Thomas, too, had spent the night in work.  Soon after his talk with
Dorene du Clos, he had realised that the play was too short.  It would
under-run timing and it was too long for a curtain-raiser.  He had had
to write in another scene.  To make it worse, Alcium Beracium
Conceptionez Duignan came into the Green Room with the news that some
of the scenery for Romance at the Crossroads was still mislaid at the
wharf and added for good measure that he had heard that there was a
likelihood of the Holyhead Packet not sailing tomorrow night if this
wind continued.  "Nonsense!"  snapped Thomas.  "It has sailed in
weather a thousand times worse."

"But it will be very late arriving, sir."  Thomas closed his eyes and
tried to think.  He had planned everything with Bergin.  Horses here, a
hackney chaise there, a cross-country dash to make the Great Western
route to Dublin while another coach containing Bergin and his faithful
sweetheart would decoy pursuit towards the regular Great Southern route
from Thurles.  It was timed with the precision of a battle campaign. 
Tm not the better of that last crossing yet, sir," said the valet and
his master allowed himself the relief of a smile.  Of course!  Alphabet
had been piling on the forebodings because he thought he was to
accompany his master.

"I shall not need you.  Alphabet, on this particular--er--business,"
he remarked and resumed the correction of his script.  But he heard his
valet's

"Oh, that kind of business!"  through the closing door.

"Duignan!"  he roared.  His valet returned, quaking.  Rarely did his
master use his patronymic.  It was too long a journey from the first of
the Christian names.  "Just what kind of business, Alcium Beracium
Conceptionez Duignan?"  The valet winced under the weight of the names
he was so proud of.  They didn't sound up to the standard with that
thin, slow, enunciation, and with them eyes all narrowed.

"B-business of an important nature, I'm sure, your Honour."

"Exactly, now go and get me strong tea."

The valet addressed the ever-boiling kettle.  "Business!"  he said.  He
pelted a fistful of tea into the teapot.  Philandering was right and
proper, but this business menaced that whole delightful free structure
of bachelor existence.  "Business of a most human nature, and with red
hair, I'd swear."  The sound of his own poetry lightened his mood.

Thomas was sipping his tea when the leading lady, Miss Garland, arrived
respectfully and conscientiously--she insisted--to query his wisdom in
casting one so inexperienced as Miss Du CIos in the exacting role of
Sally.  Surely someone more mature... ?  Over his teacup Thomas eyed
the mature shelving of Miss Garland's curves and tried to close his
mind to the vision of her as the elfin Sally.  "Too bozomatique!"  he
murmured without thinking.

"Too what, Mr.  Young?"

"Too Junoesque, Miss Garland.  The piece is but a caprice to lighten a
tragedy that has proved too real.  A light fri vol not worthy of your,"
he eyed her front, he almost said of your chest, 'of your presence."

When the door closed he drained his cup and rose.  "Fancy that boozalem
flopping up and down in a slip jig at the crossroad platform."  He
returned at the sound of an obscene guffaw.  "Are you still there,
thrice-named?  Go out and enquire about that scenery."

At the rehearsal, Miss Du Clos's achievement of the night, was not
noticed.  She had trouble with the new scene.  She had soared through
the original script but her tired brain could not retain the extra
lines.  Thomas drove her relentlessly.  When she

4 paused a third time to rub her eyes he noticed their strained ^\,
probably stayed up half the night to learn, he thought,

nd despatched Alphabet for more tea.

3 His thoughtfulness restored her more than the tea; she romped through
the remainder.  The dress rehearsal went without a hitch until she came
on, dressed for the new scene.  When Thomas had finished his own lines
he hurried down front to watch and while he went the actor who was to
understudy him next night came to the footlights, and called to her
that her brilliant red gown looked magnificent from the stalls.
Suddenly a loud groan from Thomas made her eyes flutter in a succession
of uncontrollable blinks.

"It won't do.  It won't do at all."  It was only now, out front that he
received the full impact of the gown.  "Don't you realise that you are
supposed to be a country girl?  That gown is altogether too smart.  Too
citified!"

Exhaustion made her sway and see black, but righteous anger revived
her.  She snatched her script and peered closely, "It says here, "Enter
Sally decked in finery".  Surely, Mr.  Young," she urged, looking up,
'if I'm supposed to be appearing at the crossroads dance after a long
sojourn in the city it is in character for me to wear city finery?"

"No, it is not," he roared.  "I won't have city finery.  Go and put cow
dung on your nose!"

A very audible titter from Miss Garland saved Dorene from sobbing
outright.  "Take those lines from the beginning again," he ordered. And
so it went on until at last he got the perfection he demanded.

Now the words were right, but Dorene was worried about her make-up.  In
her dressing-room, she grasped the hard eye black and held it to the
candle until it ran liquid.  She decided to do her eyes before putting
on her costume.  She dipped a toothpick into the black liquid and held
it over her head to fall in beaded drops on every lash.  A big black
splash fell on her nose and ruined her make-up.  By the time it was
repaired the hardened eye black had to be re-melted, but at last she
had the marvelous effect that Miss Garland had denied her.  Two black
fringes Weighted with gleaming beads fanned out her brown eyes making
them mysteriously luminous.  Dorene stared at her reflection in the
mirror and dreamed of the applause she might receive tonight.  In her
rapt contemplation Thomas's knock went un441

heard.  His voice wishing her good luck brought her hastily to her
feet.  He gave a startled exclamation.  "Is it possible that you are
not dressed yet and you are due on the stage in exactly two minutes!"

There was a snort behind him and Miss Garland pointed over his
shoulder.  "Look, Mr.  Young/ she said with unctuous emphasis, 'it has
beaded its eyelashes!"  Thomas ignored her.

"Miss Dorene," he said more gently, 'when you are pressed for time,
which no player should be--today is unusual but lightning does not
strike twice--always get into your stage costume first.  You can go on
without make-up but you cannot go on--like that."  She stooped in an
agony to restore the fallen wrapper that had betrayed the curvings of
breasts.

It was fortunate that her part called for a breathless, flying
entrance.  A delighted audience gave her the stimulus to maintain the
tempo.  She sparkled and tripped through three acts until the new scene
where her sweetheart, Thomas, asked her where was his rival.  She
raised her arm and pointed over his shoulder but no words would come.
Twice he smilingly murmured her line.  "He's down there in the green
lane behind the orchard!"

In the enthusiasm of the rehearsal she had visualised that green lane
as she pointed.  Now all she could see was the spectacle of Miss
Garland standing in the wings, unseen by the audience, at her old trick
of disconcerting the on-stage ingenue.

If only she would stay still, thought Dorene, instead of swelling so
ridiculously before disappearing into a black void and then returning
to her own size.  The prompter raised his voice on the third prompt.
The orchestra covered up with a quickening tempo of its rustic dance
selection.  Thomas allowed his shoulders to follow the music in gentle
rhythm.  The movement increased the audience's impression, that the
speechless pointing girl was indulging in a piece of delightful mime
that was completely in character.

At last she found the lines that had eluded her.  Down through pounding
pain they dropped in black blobs but only Thomas heard her gasp,
"It--it beaded its eyelashes, and it pI dow dung on its nose!"

The audience laughed and clapped when she ran swaying from the stage.
They were still applauding when Thomas came before the stage and
apologised for her non-appearance.  She

jl

^d been called away, he said.  He could not tell them, not after last
night'8 apology, that lightning had indeed struck twice.  That ^liss Du
Clos was lying in her dressing-room, her eyes wide Open, unable to
see.

CHAPTER 44

When the horseman had at last outstripped the leisurely train the
passengers withdrew their heads.  The landscape held no further
interest.  The rider, grey-masked with dust, who had paced the train
for three unflagging miles, had passed from their view.  But the
engine-driver's professional pride was challenged.  "Throw on a few
more shovelsfulP he ordered the stoker.  A few minutes later the entire
length of the train passed the rider.  He pressed un spurred heels
against the horse's flank.  It seemed the challenge of a race and
carriage by carriage it gained until the engine's ignominious sobs
sounded far behind.  Suddenly the craning heads sent up a cheer.  Horse
and rider had risen up in the air, clear over tracks and sleepers and
hedgerow into the field beyond.

Thomas drew reign and smiled.  It was his first relaxed moment in the
headlong dash from Dorene Du Clos's bedside to the train that had
seemed to crawl through England; the boat whose engines seemed to be
driven by the urgings of his own heart; to the Irish train that had
crawled so slowly that he had jumped from it at a junction and hired a
succession of livery horses to cut across country.

He patted the blessed animal that had brought him, in that last final
bound, to the soil of Kilsheelin.  He looked back at the railway line.
It had once been a mass path that had led to the hawthorn fort at
Lissnastreenagh.  Who'd have thought when last he jumped it beside
Thuckeen and her rider that it would he turned into an iron railroad. A
railroad through the lands of Kilsheelin!

A smell of burning reminded him that the red coals flying from the
engine had burned tiny holes in the velvet collar of his coat.  "A burn
in your coat is a sign of good luck, according to Mrs.  Stacey."  He
set the horse at a low gap that brought another flash of memory.  He
recalled vaulting it on his return from serving the Wedding Mass of
Eileen Prendergast to John Keat

ing- With the memory came a pang of hunger like the one he had known
that day when, in loyalty to Kilsheelin, he had left before the
feasting.  He had not eaten since he had gulped down a cup of tea at
the station refreshment room early this morning.

Suddenly the broken turret came in view; then the castle itself; and
then the murmuring stream and all the gently rich landscape stroked by
soft winds.  How often had he recalled Kilsheelin's gentle breezes as
he set his teeth against the furnace blasts of dusty winds.  Where
frantic, penniless men babbled about millions as they scrabbled for the
swill of the goldfields.

He skirted the demesne wall and cantered towards the niche that had
been the scene of his parting from Sterrin.  He smiled as he recalled
that early dawn after the Ball in Kilkenny, when he had taken a
leisurely farewell of his host, Sir Jocelyn and fellow-guests and made
a hell-for-leather dash through the fragrance of the May night to his
meeting with Bergin.  Thomas remembered Bergin's incredulous look when
he heard that his old friend was planning to spirit away Sir Jocelyn's
bride-to-be.  They spent two hours plotting the flight.  Then Thomas
had returned to Sterrin.  She had been waiting between the high
topiaried yews that screened them from the house.  She listened
carefully as he outlined the plans he had made for their elopement. 
And when they had kissed and clung and kissed again and finally parted
only to return for one last kiss, she had left him.  A second later she
had come flying after him to urge one alteration to their plot.  They
must meet at the wall gap.  It had been the planning ground and
starting point of all their escapades, and besides, she had urged, he
could see her more easily there as she took her morning canter in the
park.

Thomas reached the blessed gap in the wall and stood up in the
stirrups.  Through the opening he could see most of the park and the
fallow field of the Big Wind's caprice and even part of the hill where
the cemetery lay.  His heart thudded so much at the impact of the
familiar scene that he had to grip the wall at either side to keep
himself from vaulting over and running across the grass to the great
arched gate that led to the stable yard and the big warm kitchen that
was home.

Ruefully he thought of the incongruity of his position that barred him
from the kitchen since he had now presumed towards the regions beyond
the stately hall door that he dared not enter.  He thought of the other
stately portals that had opened

wide to him--in Boston, New York, New Orleans; the gracious ladies who
sought the honour of his presence in their drawing rooms.

A movement on the roof caught his eye.  The flag of privilege was
flying from the flagstaff.  He stared.  The last time he had seen it
fly high was the day Sir Roderick had been elected.  The following day
it had flown at half-mast.  What possible occasion could this be?  of
course!  It was for tomorrow's wedding.  Suddenly all the assurance
bred of prosperity and fame deserted him.  Once more he was a little
bare-legged waif wrapped in a man's brown 'trusty' that was five times
too big for him, standing on the gravel sweep there before the hall
door, gazing with awe at his own achievement.  He alone of all that
household had succeeded in raising the flag above the storm-wrecked
turret; and beside him the great Sir gazing upwards at the flag that
proclaimed his daughter's birth and then turning to bestow a whole
crown to the urchin at his feet.  "Don't be too conscientious about
taking "advantages said the Sir, when the waif had balked at accepting
so vast a sum.  "Just grab them!"

The recollection, set in the familiar scenes of his servitude, filled
him with the consciousness of his great presumption.  What right had
he, the castle's scullion, to intrude upon the event the proud flag now
proclaimed!  The daughter of the castle was going to her rightful
heritage.  He thought of what awaited her at Kilkenny.  Manor, mill and
mine, sparkling trout streams, navigable river, woods and pasture
lands, all hers!  Lawns with pyramids of topiaried yews, pavilions,
hothouses that would produce verdant wonders--for her I

What had he to offer?  He dismissed the thought of his great success.
Made no inventory of the superb body, the handsome features, the proud
head, the massed qualities that brought the hearts of women at his
feet.  He disregarded that quality of presence that made men
everywhere, defer to him.  His was just a fine body to display his
master's livery and grace the serving of his feast, to lend cachet to
the splendour of his coach.

He tightened the drooping reins.  For a moment he thought to ride away.
Then, a little zephyr of wind set the flag flying into a gentle
fluttering that drew his eye again.  Why was it today the flag was
hoisted?  According to castle custom it was flown on the day of the
event, not beforehand.  Probably Hegarty would have too much to do
tomorrow.  No battalions of gossoons now,

n0 retainers, no footmen.  Still, he wished the old man had waited. It
was almost blasphemy that it should be hoisted today to fly high while
the daughter of the castle eloped with the boy who used to clean her
father's knives.  Suddenly he swept his hat off and doffed it towards
the flag.  From somewhere behind him a burst of music sounded.

He turned.  Slowly through the gates came an open carriage.  In it sat
a hard playing a harp.  Thomas stared.  But the hard-Bard O'Ryan was
dead!

Then in through the gateway swept four magnificent greys drawing an
open landau.  It held two people, a man and a white clad girl draped in
a bridal veil.  Other carriages followed.  Great crowds of people were
jostling at the lodge gate.  Some spectators had climbed the walls.  No
one saw anything untoward in the spectacle of the solitary horseman who
watched through an opening in the wall, his hat held high in homage,
doubtless to the bride.  As the bridal carriage came level with the
wall niche the bride suddenly lifted the veil from her face and looked
straight towards the horseman.  Across the intervening space each saw
the tense whiteness of the other's face.

The procession passed on.  Later two men in livery came down from the
castle bearing cloth bags.  They reached into them for coins that they
scattered high into the air and the crowd jostled and scrambled to
catch them.  Not copper coins for this wedding, but great fistfuls of
silver and gold tossed upwards to fall in a gleaming shower.

The motionless horseman took no notice of the scrambling, shouting
crowd.  His eyes followed the bride.  He saw her helped from the
carriage, saw her move towards the tall coachman and speak to him,
probably to receive his good wishes.  The breeze that fluttered the
flag tossed the curls over Thomas's forehead.  He made no move to
replace his hat.  He held it aloft as it had been when he had saluted
the flag.

He was still that way, arm extended like a posed statue, when Big John,
resplendent in new, blue-faced livery, and shining, cockaded hat, came
slowly down the side road from the stables.

He paused, startled.  Who was this white-faced stranger, as white-faced
as his darling had been when she whispered to him just now.  Who did he
recall?  Sir Roderick?  Old Sir Dominic?  Then the stranger spoke
quietly.  "God save you, Big John."

"Young Thomas!  Is it you that's in it, Young Thomas?"

Thomas came to life and dismounted.  He placed a hand each of Big
John's shoulders.  The older man barely suppress j!  his wince of pain.
Thomas noticed the deformed outline und the stiff precision of the new
livery.  "Ah, your poor shoulder You still bear the token of the Big
Wind."

The coachman took Thomas's hand between his own two and gazed long into
his face.  "I thought you were some great gentle.  man whom she knew.
But sure she knew you, and you were always a gentleman."  He was
recalling the way young gossoons and farmers used to doff their hats to
the grown-up Young Thomas.

"So you have prospered and come back to us all.  But how did you hit on
this day?  Did you know that it was her wedding day?"

Thomas drew back his hand and his face was set.  "No," he said, low and
tense.  "That was what I did not know."  The coachman looking at him
thought he might be looking at Sir Roderick.

Suddenly it broke upon him.  This strange encounter!  And the strange
words.  That is what I did not know!  And the stricken look that was
etching out of the white features before his eyes, into that pinched
look that comes on a dying face.  "Dear God!"  he breathed aloud.  "So
that is the way it is with you!  and with her too.  You are the
horseman at the gap that I was to take her message to.  You!"

The brief word was charged with the enormity of Thomas's presuming.
Thomas turned impatiently and pulled at the tired horse that was
cropping the side grass.  "Yes, me!  And what is her message?  Did she
say you were to send me away?  Or," he gestured towards the mob.  "Am I
bidden to go down there and grub among the canaille for the wedding
largesse?"

Big John took the reins from him while mounted.  When he spoke there
was infinite pity in his eyes and voice.  "Why didn't I see what was
shaping before my eyes and you growing up together.  Sure you loved the
ground she walked on.  But didn'f we all?  Only you had the
learning--and a sort of breeding.  I always said it--you were able to
come closer to her comprehension.  God help you both!"  He glanced back
over his shoulder.  "Listen, she bid me tell you to ride over to
Lissnastreenagh.  Go down into the hollow under the hawthorn trees.
She'll come to you there, through the underground passage."  He handed
up the

ins.  Young Thomas."  His voice was stern.  "Let you not set yourself
against God's law nor man's honour.  If I thought that lu planned aught
I swear to you I'll refuse to open the secret door and I'm the only one
that knows how."

Thomas chucked the reins but Big John held on.  "Stand aside," said
Thomas coldly.  Big John obeyed.

In the blossom-filled hollow where he had lain with famine fever Thomas
waited.  Trees bent over him in a circular canopy, petals fluttered
down upon him as they had done when it was his body that was sick.  A
blossom broke from its branch with a tiny creak and came to rest upon
his shoulder.  If you break off a branch it is unlucky; but if one
falls upon you, it is a sign that you will marry your true love!

He stood there, unconscious of the fragrant beauty that en clasped him.
The moments bled away from him.  Suddenly the branch drapes parted and
she stood there.  His exhausted brain could not absorb the realness of
her presence.  He made no move.  She was part of this fairy keep; an
apparition in ghostly white.  And then she was in his arms; his love in
her espousal robe, his pain, his delight, his every breathing.  Her
wedding veil enclosed them.  The blossoms fell unheeded about their
straining bodies.  The mingling of their anguish was a consummation.

At last he held her from him.  "What has happened.  Why are you in your
wedding dress?"  She told him.  Their farewell embrace that morning
after the ball had been witnessed by Sir Jocelyn.  "He went to Mamma,"
she whispered.  "He surprised you in my bedroom.  He--he described the
way he--the way we were when we said goodbye and he let her think that
he found us that way in my bedroom.  I've never seen Mamma so bad.  I
truly believed that she would die.  But he was able to cope with her;
soothed her; said he would shield me.  I wrote you to come at once '

With a groan he took her back into his arms.  "You are not this man's
wife.  A sacrament is not thrust upon one by force; nor by trickery,
for I vow that your letter to me was intercepted.  Come, we have wasted
enough of life in considering the claims of others."  With one arm he
drew her up the slope; with the other he held back the overhanging
branches.  A shower of blossoms fell all about her, clinging to her
veil.

Behind them a door creaked cumbrously.  A voice called "Miss Sterrin,"
and immediately corrected itself and said Your Lady449

ship'.  Big John stood there.  They turned to him.  His presence
dominated them.  Big John's dignity was not a lackey's.  It was of the
soul.  Your Ladyship is asked for."  It was the first time that she
realised that she was being addressed by her new title.  Big John
seemed to imbue it with all its obligations.  Because you are born
noble you have a higher destiny than the peasants!  Out of the past
came that whimper of memory.  Her father's admonition to her when she
had complained in the famine that their own table was stinted
excessively. You must live honourably so as to give an example

She withdrew from his embrace.  "Goodbye, Young Thomas!"  He took a
step after her.  "Mo bheal asthore!"  The whispered appeal was frantic.
At the sound of the old endearment My life's love!  she wavered. 
There were tears in her eyes as she turned to whisper back, "Mo bheal
asthore!"

As she passed through the narrow walls heedless of the crawling green
slime that fouled the satin folds of her gown she heard his voice call,
Til go on waiting."

Slowly Big John pushed the heavy door.  "God be with you, Young
Thomas," he said and Thomas was shut out.

He had no idea how long he stood there in the bower that had become a
tomb.  When he turned at last his footsteps were muffled in the carpet
of petals.  He kicked savagely through them.  They rose in an agitated
shower and fell about his shoulders.

From somewhere his bemused senses caught the sound of a bell; the
ghostly tolling of the Sanctus bell, that sounded as The O'Carroll slew
the priest at the altar?  Or was it the fairy bell in the hawthorns?
Strange things had happened in this ghostly place.

As he swung into the saddle he saw the top of the great marquee and he
knew that the bell was the stable one summoning the tenants and workers
to the feast.  Without a backward glance he wheeled the horse and
spurred it across the fields.

Thomas made no effort to guide his mount.  He rode up the hills
following a track so old that it was believed to have been beaten out
by ancient wolf packs.  In the silence a lamb bleated.  It was answered
by the deep baaing of its mother.  A lark planed down to its sitting
mate.  The horse checked and stopped.  A sound of running water
bubbling fresh from the hills into the brown pools reached its thirsty
senses.  It bent over a pool and

drank deep and long.

Thomas turned in the saddle.  Across the valley he could see the home
of his childhood.  Behind those walls of mountain grit he had absorbed
the creed and tenets of the O'Carrolls.  The horse went forward again.
Thomas began to recognise his route.  Blind instinct had led him up
this primitive path.  It was leading him towards the mansion that was
to receive her tonight.

Much later his eyes, straining frantically, glimpsed a figure that
moved whitely in an upper window where light showed.

She was watching the movement of all the little free things in the lake
below; conscious of every sound and perfume as never before.  Sorrow
had acted upon her unawakened senses like a storm upon still waters;
had tossed up emotions whose existence she had never dreamed of.  She
had come a long way from the little river bank where she had thought it
her duty to try drowning herself because she felt the shame of a man's
kiss.

They had been like Adam and Eve in the ancient garden the young knife
boy and the young girl, happy, carefree, taking each other for granted.
Now they were like Adam and Eve after the Fall, knowing good and evil.
There had been no apple eaten from the Tree of Knowledge.  But the
serpent had raised his knowing head.  Young Thomas!

The cry screamed through her heart.  Dear God, why did I not go with
him today?  Nothing else mattered; home nor family nor servants, nor
marriage vows!  My one love, my only love!  Where are you?

He stood upwards on the stirrups straining towards the lighted window
until the iron cut into his insteps.  From the grass came a long sigh.
He peered and saw a man and woman lying asleep; tinker man and tinker
woman; cleaving to each other and to hell with the world and wealth and
rank!  The moonlight sparkled on something on the man's collar.  A
Repeal button!  They were not tinkers, then, but the new beggars who
had lost the right to their cabin's roof because in the abandonment of
their hunger they had sought the workhouse bread.  What do you care
whether the government sits in Westminster or in Dublin?  Governments
fall.  Dynasties fall.  Only men and women matter.  The man stirred and
flung his arm across the woman.  They had each other.

The shrill cry of a moorhen broke the stillness.  From the

window the white-robed girl recognised the little mincing gait, the
tail flirting with every step.  It turned back to the water and made a
v-shaped ripple as it swam out to wider freedom.  Only the human
watchers knew bondage.

A thrush disturbed by the moorhen's cry flew past with a sleepy trill.
Its note brought from nowhere the sinister shadow of a kestrel.  Panic
rose in Sterrin.  She tapped the glass and moved her hands as though to
wave off this menace to the thrush's freedom.

Suddenly her waving hand was caught in a vice.  She was swung around to
face her husband.  "Is this another signal?  Is your scullion out
there?"  Her arm hurt where his nails pierced.  He had discarded all
the crisp trappings that had concealed age; the elaborate stock, the
collar, the artificial masticators.  She gazed at him horrified.  "I--I
didn't know she said and stopped; because she almost said that she
didn't know that he was so old.  "Answer me!  Is he out there?"

Still holding her arm he dragged the heavy curtain across the window.
The sight of the great folds shutting out the lovely world of nature
and freedom brought back the panic she had felt for the thrush.  But
now it was for the menace that was closing in about herself.

He mistook the look of dismay that she threw towards the curtain.  "So,
he is out there.  By heavens, if he is trespassing again on my property
I'll have him flogged first and then transported I '

"Your property."  Her lips disdained his right to query Young Thomas's
presence upon Kilsheelin property today.

"Yes, mine.  You were already my property when you signalled your
kitchen paramour on the way from the altar today."  His voice thinned
upwards.  "Where did you meet him?  Where?  My charming bride returning
to me with her wedding gown smirched from her scullion's abominable
trespass."

She stared at her husband as her thoughts blurred.  She saw the green
slime from the subterranean walls.  It seemed to be coming from the
Toothless mouthing of those horrible words.  Faces floated before
her.

Pallid faces strained with the green of rejected grass.  But that was
Billy Din; whose face had been gentle.  The green slime had drooled
from his meek hunger.  Another face with lips that smiled slowly
upwards from perfect teeth.  Mo bheal asthore;

"You won't signal through this veil."

A hand was lifting her bronze hair that veiled her shoulders.  She
steeled herself.  No one had ever made her faint!  "You are an
excellent businesswoman my dear.  Now you must keep your bargain."

Her eyes focused upon the arm that stretched from a brocade sleeve; a
sinewy arm, veinous with age, that sought to clutch her.  She felt her
own arm pinioned.  She raised her other, slender, soft, youthful.  To
do what?  To strike the man to whom she had mortgaged her youth, her
life?  She stared deep into her husband's eyes with a gaze full of hate
and fear.  Sir Jocelyn grimaced and suddenly fell heavily to the
floor.

Sterrin looked down at the figure that lay at her feet.  Guilt clamped
down on her, not for what she had done, for she had only revealed her
true feelings; but for the sense of gladness that had started up inside
her.  She ran for help.  Silently, she watched the servants raise Sir
Jocelyn on to the bridal bed; watched them carry in the bleeding bowls;
watched them carry them out, dripping red.

CHAPTER 45

Paris was a tonic for Sterrin.  She rejoiced in the whim that caused
Sir Jocelyn to order this trip as soon as he had recovered.  The city
was at its gayest in the midst of a joyous celebration in honour of the
victory against the Austrians at the bridge of Magenta.  Sterrin was
delighted by the colour and warmth of the beautiful city.  Every day
was a holiday and the excitement of it blunted the horror of her
marriage to the bitter, cynical man who was her husband.  The stroke
had paralysed one side of his face.  The eye rigid.  He blamed her for
his illness and was determined to punish her for it.  He never left her
side, unless in the charge of Margaret's sister, Sterrin's Aunt Yvette,
who had been summoned from Belgium to stay with Sterrin.  She was a
pleasant companion who made Sterrin laugh as she told romantic tales
about her childhood.  She even made Sir Jocelyn smile.

Parisian society took the young Irish beauty to its heart.  Dozens of
invitations arrived every day.

Sterrin embarked on an orgy of buying.  Milliners with gay bonnet boxes
and dressmakers with long boxes beat a path to Sir Jocelyn's chateau
with bolts of silk and satin.  They compared colours with the bronze of
her hair.  Sterrin endured hours of fittings with grace and good
humour--a welcome change for the seamstresses who were accustomed to
the elegant ennui of the court ladies.  Madame de Castiglione, deemed
the most beautiful woman in the world, sometimes walked in a trance
from their measuring tape and roamed the streets burdened with the
overpowering consciousness of her own beauty.

There was talk that la belle Lady Devine's preoccupation was not with
her own looks.  Hint of some young amoureux whom she had been forced to
forsake for the fabulously rich Milord Devine.  The empress favoured
skirts that displayed the ankle.  The dressmakers drew up Sterrin's hem
and nodded vigorously.  Of a certainty, Milady's ankles could emerge
from the shadows.

Out of the bonnet boxes came, not bonnets but hats.  Sterrin fitted on
a little Eugenie model; a saucy little tricorne affair trimmed with
porn-poms.  The mi dinettes threw up ecstatic hands.  The new millinery
made a perfect foil for milady's hair.

The effect of the hat was too much for Sterrin's vanity.  She turned
and twisted before the mirror.  Suddenly she laughed.  Her husband,
entering silently, marvelled at what a hat could do for a woman.  She
had scarcely smiled since her marriage.

He had come to escort her to one of the Empress Eugenie's famous
"Mondays'.  It was a purely feminine affair but he was not content with
the chaperonage of Sterrin's Aunt Yvette.  Impeccably dressed, a
taffeta stock wound twice around his neck, a monocle masking the
rigidity of his damaged eye and cheek muscles, he escorted her to every
function.  It was only because gentlemen were not admitted to the
Empress's parlours that he left her at the door.

The empress took stock of Sterrin as she swept down for the triple
curtsey.  When Sterrin's eyes came level with the high Andalusian
arches and slim ankles of the Empress, she lingered in the obeisance
and missed the timing of the third curtsey.  It was the first time that
she had seen so much limb displayed below a lady's skirt.
"Misericorde!"  breathed Eugenie.

She was gazing over Sterrin's head to where a dainty pair of red shoes
and stockings rose in the air above a tall screen.  "Quelle frivolite
outree' gasped Aunt Yvette.

The feet disappeared and a sleek brown head took their place.  The
Empress broke into a peal of laughter.  "Ah, it is the mignon Countesse
Gabrielle.  She too, like Italy, had been liberated.  Today her
annulment came from Rome and, Hop!  she go head over heels like La
Liberte."

Sterrin listened avidly to what a lady was telling her Aunt behind a
fan.  "She has been seeking for years for this divorce ..."  she heard.
"Her marriage was never ... you understand?  It was un manage du nom
settlement...."

"A marriage in name only," burst out Sterrin.  "Then she is free to
marry again.  No wonder she turns head over heels!"

"Stereen!"  Aunt Yvette was scandalised.  The other lady lowered her
fan and stared openly at the young bride who had made such an
extraordinary statement.

Sterrin's body felt suddenly, strangely, light enough to do cartwheels.
Was it possible that a marriage could be annulled by

Rome for being for being such a marriage as her own?  a glimmer of
light gleamed down the vista of her hopelessness.  She manoeuvred an
introduction and congratulated the liberated Countess.

"I take it that you mean to felicitate me upon my culotte, not my
matrimonial somersault?"

"I both!"  There was no time to be lost in beating around the bush. She
might never again get such an opportunity.  "Look,

how is it possible to to Sterrin could not put it into words.  "What
was your first step?"

"Ah that!' The Countess misunderstood her.  "Simple, voila comment!"
She threw out her arms and proceeded to walk on her hands.  Sterrin
grew desperate.

"It is about your annulment I wish to know.  I must know."  But she was
addressing a pair of legs that waved on a level with her head.  Dear
God!  I must find out!  She glanced over the screen.  No one was
looking this way.  Her husband would be waiting the moment the 'salon'
finished; waiting to guard her like a dragon; for ever!  She threw her
hands down to the floor.  The next moment a pair of green shoes walked
in the air above the screen beside the red ones.  The other girl gave a
squeal of delight.  "Hush," whispered Sterrin, "I must speak to you,
get up."

"Come, I'll race you first," the girl insisted.  With her head down
over the white marble floor, Sterrin whispered things to a stranger
that she could not whisper to her own mirror.  "Will you help me?"

It was desperate, but the stakes were high.  The head beside her nodded
emphatically; unmistakably.  Then her hands fell behind.  Sterrin was
well ahead.  No one could beat her at hand walking.  Not even Young
Thomas.  Suddenly she felt gay and reckless.  Somewhere in her upended
head was the tiny seed of hope that this piece of exhilarating madness
might lead hand over hand to she was gasping to Young Thomas!  Then,
hand in hand with Young Thomas!  For ever and ever and ever!

"This is carrying frivolity too far!"  Sterrin could not hear the stern
voice that addressed the Empress.  Inside her head there was a storm of
silken rustlings from the petticoats that flowered over her ears.  She
didn't notice the dead silence.  There is a lot to be said for these
shortened skirts, she was thinking.  But the

i0ops that held them draped up from the hem were made of heavy twisted
silken cords that banged against her ears.  The amethyst drop from one
of her earrings hand dropped into her ear hole  It tickled.  She was
tempted to flick it out.  Then she saw the boots, small, elegant but,
gentleman's boots t

Up went her hands and down came her feet.  Petticoat after petticoat
dropped mercifully over her pantalettes; too late.  She was standing
before Napoleon the Third, Emperor of France.  Dear God, let me die
now. Let me never walk another step on hand or foot again!

The Emperor watched the glowing face from which the colour was ebbing.
Tiny ringlets escaped from her chignon and fell below her earrings.
Tendrils, moist from her exertion, clung to her forehead.  Her hands
pressed straight and hard by her sides as though to hold down the
terrible revealing petticoats.  She stood like a statue; humiliation
made her face more coldly proud.  Then she remembered to curtsey.  As
she rose a voice thin with rage said, "Sire.  I trust I have your
permission to present my wife?"  She looked beyond the Emperor to the
man who stood behind him.  She saw the compressed lips, the swelling
veins in her husband's temples.  It was the first time that Sir Jocelyn
Devine had known the satisfaction of seeing fear in her eyes.  The
Emperor noticed the flickering.

"Ah," he said, "I recognise you now.  It was difficult when you were
upside down.  It is perhaps one of your quaint Irish customs to
promenade on the hands?"

His anger had not been directed towards the owner of the pair of
seductive pantalettes that had walked towards him in mid-air as he had
entered the room.  It had been for his Empress who had doubtless
incited and encouraged her.  It looked as if the beautiful acrobat
would receive ample punishment from her husband.  A twinkle appeared in
his eye and an answering one danced in Sterrin's.  "I believe, Sir,"
she answered him, 'that my ancestors, a long way back, walked on all
fours!"

"So I believe did mine, a long way back."

His glance fell on Mademoiselle Gabrielle and tightened.  He had
admonished the Empress more than once about her indulgence towards the
unorthodox little Countess.  She 'dropped a curtsey.  "Sire," she
murmured sweetly, 'the regrettable performance was entirely my idea."

The Emperor inclined his head.  "I do not for a moment doubt

that, Countess."

"I challenged Lady dc vine."  The Emperor looked keenly Sterrin.  at

"And I can see," he answered, 'that Lady Devine is not one t refuse a
challenge."

When Sterrin, close to tears, took her leave, the ci-dev ant countess
came flying after her.

"Dear divine Lady Devine," she gasped.  "Don't take it to heart so. The
Emperor has ticked off Eugenie, but la!  she does not mind.  She had
won a pair of earrings from Countess Metternich on your win."  She
stopped surprised.  "Cherie, you are crying!  Whatever can I do to make
it up to you?"  She had seen the look that had passed between the
high-spirited Irish belle and the dandified old satyr to whom she was
married.

Sterrin waved off the lackey who was assisting her into her peterine.
She clutched Gabrielle's hand.  "You can help me!  You must help me!
Where can I see you?  I shall not be permitted to visit you or have you
at the chateau."

Gabrielle frowned.  "Let me see!  There will be no more "Lundis".  They
go to Saint Sauvere next Monday.  A pity you are not going too."

"But we are going.  We have been bidden to join the seaside party,
unless," she said ruefully, 'the invitation is cancelled over this
debacle?

"Pouf!"  Gabrielle dismissed the idea with an airy wave.  "You will be
the rage.  Eugenie will want you to teach her to walk on her hands.
Tomorrow," she continued, "I go to the theatre to see Mr.  Merry, the
English actor.  I must see his Romeo.  I am told it is distractingly
romantic.  Can you be there?"

Sterrin was dubious.  Her husband favoured the opera.  Because of his
depleted vision, the theatre held little attraction for him.  Still,
she might be able to arrange it.  Sterrin looked to where an elderly
dowager was commiserating with Aunt Yvette.  "My Aunt also wishes to
see Mr.  Merry's Romeo."

"Good," said Gabrielle with finality.  "Get her to take you tomorrow.
You'll manage it all right.  I shall come to your box."

"But, Mr.  Young," protested Dorene, 'why ever did you agree to Mr.
Merry's playing Romeo?  Back home in America the critics say you are
the best Romeo on the modern stage Your..."  she stopped, embarrassed.
She had been going to say

our Romeo is the perfection of lovemaking.

They were driving to the special.  Thomas was so deeply preoccupied
with the problem of what to do about her should this Paris doctor offer
no help for her sight that at first he did not catch what she was
saying.  Play Romeo!  He shuddered.  He would never play that part
again.

Romeo had scored Thomas his greatest success.  Its setting was so
familiar that it was as though he had but to re-live his own memories;
Capulet's orchard was the little "Sir's Road' where the gap had been
made in the wall by the Big Wind.  When fourteen-year-old Juliet warned
Romeo '... the orchard walls are high and hard to climb and the place
death considering who thou art', she was really fourteen-year-old
Sterrin, standing on her castle's boundary wall taking a fearful
farewell of the presuming knife boy.  And Dorene wanted to know why he
had agreed to let Mr.  Merry play tonight's Romeo excerpt!

Thomas thought back to that dreadful day in London after his return
from Ireland still numb and bemused, still grief-filled over his loss.
When Alphabet had told him that the little actress Dorene Du Clos had
not yet recovered her sight.  Thomas had gone to her lodgings.  As he
sat by her bedside his mind, his feelings were muted, his mind numb.
When Dorene apologised to him for ruining his scene the night she lost
her sight, the significance of her situation struck home.

Those lovely brown eyes had been strained, the doctor said, beyond
recall.  By him, Thomas thought; by his relentless slave driving.  What
was she saying?  She was still apologising; weaving her hands
aimlessly.  She was helpless.  Thomas realised that he must find out
about her family and get in touch with them.

But Dorene had no family to be notified.  The aunt who had reared her
had died.  She was alone and suddenly she was Thomas's responsibility.
He took her to a famous eye doctor.  When the specialist, at the end of
his examination, shook his head from side to side Thomas began to come
back to life.  He must help this girl.  The doctor had mentioned a
specialist in Paris who had done wonders with cases other doctors had
given up.  Paris!  He had been invited to play there for the victory
celebrations.  The invitation had come while he was in Ireland.  He
would take this little broken blossom with him.  He would leave nothing
undone that might restore to her what he had caused her to lose.  It
might not be too late to accept.  Even if it

were he would still take her there.  They left for Paris the next
day.

The carriage was slowing into the kerb.  He reached for her hand.
"Come," he had started to say!  "Cheer up; don't look so sad."  The
crassness of it.  Must he learn some new phraseology for conversing
with the blind?  And had not she a right to look sad?  Did he suddenly
possess the monopoly of all the grief in the world?  He stepped out and
lifted her bodily from the carriage.  "You are going to be all right,"
he murmured and his lips blew the words across her face that was so
near to his own.

You are going to be all right.  It beat a refrain to the roll of the
carriage wheels on the homeward journey.  Yes, she was going to be all
right.  Everyone, the French specialist included, seemed to be in
agreement on how All Right poor blind Dorene was going to be.  When she
had accustomed herself to her incurable blindness!  He tried to think
of something to say to her.  Words were his business; soul stirring,
grandiose words, composed by others to be relayed by him; and here,
now, in the need of this girl's stricken soul all he could contrive was
some stammering half-articulate grunt.

He reached for the hand that lay on the lap rug.  It felt like a small,
captive bird; a bewildered beat of life.  Wordlessly he went on
stroking it until at last the slow, hard tears came painfully from
between the shuttered lids.  Passers-by looked smiling through the
windows of the carriage at the charming spectacle of the pretty girl
whose bonne ted head lay so gracefully upon his shoulder.

That night Thomas forced her to come to the theatre.  He was to do a
scene from Othello.  Mr.  Merry had already announced his intention to
play Romeo.  Mr.  Young's acceptance had been so belated that there had
been no time for a full collaboration of excerpts from their favourite
roles as had been suggested in the invitation.  As he leaned with
seeming nonchalance against the wall of the box he felt a sudden sense
of gladness.  The audience, packed tightly, tier upon tier, was
gradually bearing in upon his sense of the theatre.  The old response
to it was not dead.  He could feel its mounting stimulation.  He turned
back and saw the shadowy stillness that was Dorene's face.  Was her
tragedy greater than his own?  His mind evaded the answer.  There was
no measuring up of each separate tragedy?  Or was there?  Nothing could
compensate this girl for the loss of her sight.  And

lL

nothing could compensate Thomas for the loss of the love that had been
woven into the fabric of his life--its brightest, strongest thread.
There rose in the dimness a vision of Sterrin in her bridal loveliness
and his breath caught on a quick gasp.  Curse John Holohan and his
pious prating that day in New Orleans.  Holy vows Inagh!  Curse John
Holohan and his gorilla arms that had pinned him the day he had thought
to dash from New Orleans and across the world to snatch her from the
convent.  Convent!  I'll hold a thousand crowns that there was never
any convent.  It was a plot.  They suspected how things were.  Mr. 
Maurice O'Carroll had suspected.  Cutting down staff inagh!  Why hadn't
he cut down on the likes of Pakie Scally, a hanger on that had no claim
on staff status.

"What is it, Mr.  Young?"  Dorene had heard his gasp.  He touched her
shoulder.  "Hush!  The curtain is going up."  She moved her head from
side to side; obediently seeking the direction of the stage that held
no interest for her; and then she heard Mr.  Merry's voice.  As she
listened she made comparisons; she told herself that Mr.  Merry
portrayed the form of the drama; but Mr.  Young portrayed its soul. She
felt another touch on her shoulder.  "I must go behind now."

He saw the sudden dismay on her face.  "Good gracious," he said, 'if
you could only see your face!"  And then he could have bitten off his
tongue.  How was he ever going to remember not to make these kinds of
remarks?  "Immediately I am finished I shall come back here and fetch
you.  Meantime," his fingers pressed her shoulder, 'you are to be my
sternest critic."  He touched her cheeks.

"Don't grieve Little One," he said, "I have not given up hope."

The door closed gently.  Her fingers reached up and pressed the cheek
that his fingers had caressed.

CHAPTER 46

Sterrip was glad the Romeo extracts were finished.  The whole scene and
setting had recalled too poignantly Young Thomas and those young days
at Kilsheelin.  She was on thorns for her meeting with Mademoiselle
Hautdoire and it was ridiculous to allow the play to upset her now.  In
fact she had been so eager to meet Mademoiselle that she hadn't even
bothered to enquire about the programme or actors.  Actors!  There was
only one for her!  She screwed up the handbill she was given at the
entrance and let it fall to the floor.  She mustn't display any emotion
in front of her husband.  It had been difficult enough to get him to
come.  He had had his fill of Shakespeare in the past and had seen all
the great actors.  He only came because he was suspicious of letting
her out of his sight.  Beside her Aunt Yvette was in raptures,
completely lost in the actor.

The door of the box opened and before Mademoiselle Hautdoire could move
inside Sterrin was on her feet and suggesting that they should go in
the promenade in the foyer.  Her Aunt Yvette started to accompany her
but already they were lost among the promenading audience.  The bell
for the curtain-up had stopped ringing when they returned.  Sir Jocelyn
was standing outside the open door of their box, his lips thin drawn
with anger.  His accustomed courtesy towards ladies strained coldly,
when he saw their conspiratorial whispering.  He disapproved of this
Mademoiselle Hautdoire, but before he could vent his anger some
announcement that the stage manager was making brought forth a
resounding applause.

"Now perhaps we may have the pleasure of listening to the play," he
said as the door closed.  Sterrin laid down her glasses.  She wasn't
interested in the play or the performers.  She was more concerned with
what the little ex-Comtesse had whispered to her.  It had been worth
the flight she had had to make to get there.  Suddenly she leaned
forward.  That voice I Great God, if she went on imagining things like
this she would go mad.  That

uality of tenderness and melody!  How it throbbed with passion She
groped for her glasses but could not find them.  Heedless of appearance
she leaned right over the ledge.  In the dim light the black make-up
masked the features she scanned.  But ike commanding; figure, the
movements^ graceful and correct, they belonged to only one man!

He seemed to be speaking direct to her.  The very words were meant for
her.  "It gives me wonder great as my content, to see you here bef fore
me.  Oh, my soul's joy!  If after every tempest came calms.  May the
winds blow till they have wakened death..  - ."  He stopped suddenly.
Now he was looking towards another box:, directing his voice there.
Near it a white face loomed out, loomed in a mist the way it had been
when he was rehearsing the play that had cost Dorene her sight.  But
this was no misty visabn.  This was her face.  She was here!  For the
first time in his stage life he forgot his lines.  His mind was
completely blanlk to everything except that face, like Desdemona's.
'... that whiter skin of hers than snow and smooth as monumental
alabaster."  That was not the line he wanted!

Dorene clenched her hands.  What has happened?  She had never known him
to forget his lines.  He had seemed to be speaking towards her.  Had
the sight of her suggested that awful night when she had broken down
and forgotten her own lines?  The prompter's whisper was quite audible
'... and let the labouring bark climb hills of sea Olympus-high Dorene
mouthed the words and willed them across the footlights.  Suddenly
Thomas made a quick turn and strode across to the prompter.  He took
his line and moved to the stage centre.

"Messieurs and Mesdames," he cried with a beaming smile and
outstretched hands.  "I crave mille pardons.  Your delightful city has
bewitched me.  This wonderful audience had beguiled my senses.  If you
were to drag me forth and hang me from the highest lantern I could not
for the life of me recall that labouring bark."

The audience went wild with delight.  Waves of clapping and 'braves'
rose to the roof.  Dorene unclenched her hands and let out her
breath.

"Mountebank," gritted Sir Jocelyn Devine.  He was certain that he had
been duped into coming.  There had been no talk of any actor but Merry
and he had not been sufficiently interested in the programme to find
out.  Sterrin laughed aloud.

Out through the storm of applause her clear voice penetrated to his
hearing, "Bravo, Young Thomas!"  she cried.  She leaned out of the box
completely oblivious of the audience.  Her husband reached out a
restraining hand.  For a moment he had a crazy impression that she
might be capable of jumping down on to the stage.  Thomas, too, fought
a crazy impulse.  He wanted to raise himself on to her box and take her
in his arms.  Instead he raised his fingers to his lips.  The
perfection of his teeth flashed whitely up at her through the
dark-stained features.  Opera glasses were levelled towards her.  Sir
Jocelyn stood up but the house had gone silent.  Thomas had plunged
into his role.  Dorene's hands were clenching again.  His acting had
taken on another dimension.  Its majesty and grandeur were pouring
forth in a wild metre that was past her understanding.

Til tear her all to pieces!"  The cry burst from the heart wounded
Othello in such a power of exquisite agony that Dorene put her hands to
her lips to check a cry.  Sterrin clenched the plush ledge.  Passion
undreamed of was surging through her.  It poured out from her to meet
the torrent of passion that tore across the stage in a mighty flood.  A
woman screamed.  Sir Jocelyn rose and flung his chair backwards.  He
had been tricked.  They were all in it.  The ex-Comtesse Thiery,
Sterrin's Aunt.  She had manoeuvred this pretending that it was Merry
whom she wished to see.

"This must be stopped," he said thickly.  "It is an outrage!  The
fellow is indecent and so are you!  No decent woman would look
like--like..."  He had never been at a loss in his life.  The sight of
her entranced face, parted lips, eyes moist in a rhapsody of love, was
beyond his endurance.  "I'll have him horsewhipped I'll '

* A Al *

Sterrin came out of her trance and turned to her husband.  "You will
have him horsewhipped," she taunted.  "Horsewhipped and then
transported!  Him!"  She swept her arm towards the stage where Thomas,
transcendental in his own power had made the Moor his own.  The Othello
evoked by her presence had borne down all the barriers and was sweeping
before him all love and reason and mercy.  In a stage box Mr.  Merry
turned to an American newspaperman.  "Bear witness," he intoned
solemnly, "I shall never again act Othello.  Never shall I hazard a
comparison with that I'

Outside, Sterrin for the first time in her life had to fight her

y through a crowd.  She was completely cut off from the carriage- In
vain her husband's voice behind her called to lackeys who stood on its
backboard to forge a path for them.

"Tell those people to move their carriage from my path," he stormed.

One of the lackeys forged his way to them.  "They are jammed in, your
Honour's Sir.  They are gentlemen from the American newspaper waiting
to see the great actor."

"Gentlemen!  Newspaper fellows.  Since when did they become gentlemen?"
Sir Jocelyn was beside himself.  "What is the world coming to?  A
gentleman's carriage held up by a play actor

But all the world was held up for the play-actor.  The din of voices,
the clip-clop of hooves, the carriages with crests on their panels, the
coachmen with cockades in their high silk hats, the footmen in buckskin
breeches, the gentlemen in opera cloaks, the ladies with bosoms bare
beneath en clustering jewels; they were all here, thought Sterrin as
she gained the carriage unaided, because of her father's knife boy!  My
knife boy.  And he is waiting for me!

The surge in her body made her light-headed.  She leaned back and
closed her eyes; and thought of what Mademoiselle Hautdoire had
whispered to her in the box.  This annulment business involved dreadful
disclosures about intimacy.  Worse; disclosures about lack of intimacy.
She squeezed her eyes tight.  It would be unbearable; but I'll go
through with it.  A long, hard fight, Gabrielle had said.  I'll fight;
hard and long.  And at the end there would be Young Thomas \ I'll go on
waiting, he had said.

A burst of clapping made her open her eyes.  Young Thomas was squeezing
through the throng; coming this way!  She half rose in her seat; then
she saw the girl on his arm.  Not the conventional linking with an
escort, but clinging with the close held intimacy of a caress.  And
Thomas was looking down into the girl's face; smiling gently.  Sterrin
had forgotten; had never started to remember that Thomas could smile
like that at anyone else in the whole world.  Suddenly he put his arm
around the girl and drew her towards the carriage.  Sterrin's heart
gave a great lurch.  She was standing fully upright now.  Behind her,
her husband's voice was angrily urging her to sit down.

The blood was draining from Sterrin's heart I She watched

Thomas tuck the lap rug round the girl and suddenly into her brain
burst the cry that had burst from Othello.

"I'll tear her all to pieces!"  Her fingers bent and tensed into claws.
She pressed them against her sides to keep them from stretching towards
the presumptuous interloper.  The dreams she had woven about him, in
childhood, in girlhood.  A background of lost grandeur.  She had
dreamed him up when he had left her to fight his way across the bridge
that would lead him back to her world; a splendid return with fame and
fortune.  And when she had believed him in prison, her dreams had
opened the gates a hundred times in wild escape.  Never for one half
moment had it occurred to her that any other woman would dare to
penetrate the gossamer that had enmeshed her own Young Thomas, the
knife boy, with his--Miss Sterrin!

Primitive rage swept through her.  She did not know the words that had
flashed into her brain, had reached her lips.  Behind her, her
horrified husband and aunt heard her clearly say, "I'll tear her all to
pieces."

Sir Jocelyn snatched the long whip from the coachman and brought it
down savagely across the flanks of the nearest pair.  The horses
plunged and the startled leaders reared up, bringing with them the two
grooms who were holding their heads.

The landau scraped Thomas's carriage with a loud scrunch as it passed.
He reached out to steady himself and saw her; saw the quick look of her
disdain before she turned away.  He was close enough to touch her, but
not close enough to see the trembling of her underlip, her hands, her
knees: all her body trembling with the tenseness of defence.  All he
saw was a white face, chin high, eyes direct, deigning him no faintest
hint of recognition.

"Mo bheal asthore, My life's love," he whispered.

"What did you say Mr.  Young?"  It was Dorene asking.

"I said," he answered and her new sensitivity caught the dullness and
the coldness in his voice, 'that I ought to have stuck to cleaning
knives."

As his carriage forced through the dense traffic he did not notice that
the Paris haute monde was acclaiming the erstwhile knife boy as
enthusiastically as it had acclaimed its Emperor a week before.

CHAPTER 47

A pile of invitations arrived for Thomas at his hotel; great names bade
him to their salons.  He had fought through to her world!  Or had he!
"Don't get carried away, my lad!  You are just a successful mountebank,
a novelty for parading!"

He glanced idly at one with more writing than the rest.  It announced
that the Comtesse de Souvestre had reverted to her former name of
Mademoiselle Hautdoire.  She must be one of the wealthy Hautdoire
family, a Frenchified version of the O'Dwyers who had come to France
with the Wild Geese.  A hurried scribble beneath the invitation said
that the writer had a very special and urgent reason for asking Mr.
Young to come to her soiree.

Mr.  Young held the invitation between finger and thumb.  This must be
from the piece who, rumour had it, had performed a race on her
hands--in her underwear--with some other piece of gilded decadence,
before the Emperor.  "A very special and urgent reason," he mimicked.
The same special and urgent ennui that prompted her tasteless clowning
at Court.  He threw the card aside.

He pounded upon an envelope with an American stamp addressed in Kitty's
handwriting.  Dear, steadfast Kitty!  No alternating heights and drops
in her friendship.  It had endured through distance and hardships and
prosperity from the morning that he had served Mass at her runaway
marriage.

She wrote to say that at last she had traced the woman for whom Thomas
had searched, the one who had left him with Mrs.  Mansfield of
Kilsheelin.

Til give you her name and whereabouts when you return," she wrote.
"Mark and I would like to talk to you here first."  Dammit!  Why hadn't
she written down the address and let him go there at once?  The surge
of excitement receded.  He knew why; as Kitty knew; that the
disclosures would prove unpalatable!  It was what he had always
dreaded; underneath all his

fanciful dreaming!  He scraped back the chair and jumped to hi feet.
Whatever it was he must know.  There was still time t book a passage in
that boat that had just beaten all records and reached France in
fifteen days.

He had gone some yards down the boulevard when he be.  thought himself
of Dorene.  "Blast... I' Why must he involve himself in her misfortunes
?  He remembered the brown eyes he had helped to make sightless.  He
turned back.  He couldn't take her back to America without giving her
the opportunity of consulting that Swiss specialist who had been
suggested by the Paris doctor.

Sir Jocelyn realised at last that he was wasting his breath.  Since his
wedding night debacle he placed great value on his breath.  The
dreadful accusationSj reproaches, insults that he had vented on his
bride all the way from the theatre had brought gasps and sometimes
yelps from Aunt Yvette; but they had no effect upon Sterrin.  He might
as well not have been there.  They would leave Paris, he decided.  They
would go to Switzerland--away from the crowds and from the theatre.

Sterrin was alone; alone as never before.  All her remembered life she
had been one of two, and the heart of each had been in the bosom of the
other.  Nothing had altered that; not separation; not prison; not the
solemnity of the convent; not even the sacred vow of marriage itself.
All the hazards of life and nature, the elements, storm, the ocean,
were possible; but not this, another woman, the most elemental of all;
blind assured fool that I have been, the most likely!

She was in her bedroom now, the maid fussing at the fastenings of her
gown.

"Leave me!"

"But, milady '

"Leave me, I tell you."  She fumbled and tore at the newfangled hooks
and eyes, her unaccustomed fingers dragging out pieces of silk and
gauze with the steel contrivances.  She flung the gown across the bed
and flung herself after it.

From the communicating door her husband watched her anguish liberate
itself in shuddering sobs.  Display of emotion bored him.  He
associated them with discarded mistresses; but this was a revelation!
This still, cold girl, sensitive and proud, child of an aristocracy,
abnegating herself in an agony of betrayed love.  For a bumptious hind,
a kitchen boy who had elevated himself into a posturing play-actor! 
Suddenly he felt that he would barter all his treasures to evoke one
breath of j0ve's emotion for this un possessed treasure.  The scenes he
had envisioned when he had secured this treasure!  His villa on the
Adriatic, Sterrin in filmy lace pouring his coffee on its vine-clad
loggia; grand salons in London and Paris; impressive entrances with
Sterrin by his side, a jewelled flame drawing all eyes, enslaving all
hearts but belonging to him.  And here was the reality.  Sterrin
prostrate from degradation, turning his marriage bed like his bridal
bed into a bier.

Til tear her all to pieces!"  Her groping hands clutched the beautiful
gown as though it were an effigy of the woman who had dared to encroach
upon her heritage of love.

"Tear your rival to pieces by all means, but kindly refrain from
tearing the gowns that I have provided for your adornment."

Her eyes ranged over him as though he were some stranger who had
wandered into her apartment.  She noted the twisted muscle at his
temple; the rigid corner of his lips.  Her handiwork I She looked down
at the gown that she held gripped between her hands at tearing point: a
masterpiece of Worth's, the world famous designer; twenty yards of
gauze over twenty yards of silk and from neckline to hemline flowed
shimmering rivers of sequins.  Its beauty reproached her.

"You know," she said in a small voice, 'you don't really deserve
this."

He tried to tilt a cynical eyebrow but it remained rigid and he
remembered why.  "I came to tell you," he said, 'to be prepared to
leave for Switzerland at nine o'clock in the morning."

"But I' and then she remembered that it didn't matter now.  The visit
to the royal villa, the fresh wardrobe with its four changes of dress
that royal protocol demanded for each day.  She had no more desire to
face Mademoiselle Hautdoire.  Suddenly she realised the enormity of
what she had contemplated; to have her marriage annulled; to tear down
the sacred edifice of church and law so that she could indulge her
deluded passion for a servant, a nameless one at that; someone's bye
blow I

"Kindly give heed to what I say.  Be ready to leave at nine

o'clock."

She remained looking at the door through which her husband had left,
then suddenly rose up with an air of resolve.  One by one she discarded
the modish-coloured petticoats.  White petticoats had become an
antiquity in this ancient city that lived youngly.  But the nightgown
she chose was unrelieved white.

Silently she appeared before him; a white immolation.  She felt as she
had felt the morning she had appeared before Reverend Mother with her
saddle bag in her hand and her dowry tied to the hitching ring outside;
a little, too, like the way she used to feel when Nurse Hogan would
grip her nostrils and give her a mixture of salts and senna and tell
her to offer it up for the souls in Purgatory.

Rarely in his long experience, thought her husband, had he glimpsed the
quality that was housed in this graceful form that stood before him. It
could arouse passion in men, adoration, madness.  Often he had likened
her to a flame but never before had he been so conscious of her
quivering, luminous warmth.  Had the fates reserved for his twilight
hour the most exquisite experience of his life?

Almost fearfully he reached out to her, but even as his pulse sent a
warning to his heart, he noticed her flicker of revulsion.  Pride
curdled his desire into venom.

"What apple have you hidden there now?"

"Apple?"  She looked down to where his head had gestured, then
remembered her trick with the apple-shaped pincushion.  She drew aside
the lace that covered her bosom.

"There is nothing there," she said reassuringly then recovered the
glimpse of tender white curves.  You see," she went on calmly, 'you see
all this differently."  She swept her arm towards the window and the
world beyond that held tonight's happenings and all that they
signified.  Patiently as to a child she explained.  "It was not what
ordinary people understand when they speak of love."

He had to keep very quiet.  The blood was chu-chugging through his
forehead.  He, Jocelyn Devine of the delicious memories, who from his
earliest youth had been an epicure in love's art, who understood women
better than any man in London or European society, which meant any man
alive, was being told by a country-girl not out of her teens that he
was incapable of understanding love--that he was ordinary!

"Ordinary people, like me," he said at last, 'do not regard the
furtive, hole-and-corner precociousness between a servant and his
employer's daughters as--love.  The fellow should have been dismissed.
I am surprised that your father was so hoodwinked."

Her patience exploded.  Young Thomas was no longer worthy of being
defended but she would brook no criticism of her father.

"Papa was not the type to be hoodwinked.  Papa knew whom he could
trust."

"It would scarcely appear so."

"I will not allow you to criticise my father."  Then as suddenly as it
had blazed, her anger subsided.  Why," she went on conversationally,
'when my governess got frightened and lost her head during a bread riot
in the famine Papa said that there were to be no more governesses and
sent me bird-nesting with--with Young Thomas."

There was something elemental, he thought about the way she would
suddenly lapse back from the dramatic intensity into some simple,
direct statement.

Tie caught a trout," she went on, 'and cooked it over a picnic fire on
the bank of the stream.  It was delicious."  A dreamy smile played over
her lips.  He could have kissed them but that he wanted to strangle
her.  The time he had spent conferring with his chef to produce the
rarest food and wine for her delectation.  And here she was
rhapsodising over a crude fish caught and cooked--probably half raw--by
her lover.

"And I have no doubt," he said aloud, 'that he expressed his relish by
wiping his mouth with the back of his hand."

"Oh no," she answered in that practical way that could be so
captivating if he didn't suspect that it was simply contempt for his
pettiness.

"He wiped his hands on the grass.  You see he had given me his clean
linen handkerchief.  I suppose," she went on, 'that it was being so
hungry always that made it seem so nice."

"Hungry.  So you have been hungry as well as ragged?"

She ignored the crudity of his reference to the patched-up dress in
which she had encompassed his beguilement.  She would have worn her
hunger as proudly as she had worn her patched up gown.  Not to have
been hungry in the famine would have been a shameful thing.

But she had lashed him too severely with the weapon of her

crude youth; letting him glimpse that arcadian idyll of a spring time
such as she had never known.  A picture was shaping out of her
reminiscences.  The scullion's white handkerchief betokened an early
fastidiousness; and that regard for his employer.  The haughty young
Sir Roderick O'Carroll was not one to indulge familiarity with a
presuming servant.

"Why," continued the voice of her persecutor, "Papa had been searching
for him night and day when they reported that he had run away '

"Ah, so the prodigy ran away from his benefactors!"

"Indeed, that was just what he did not do."  The actor Thomas Young,
tonight's stranger, was not worthy of her steel, but the knife boy,
Young Thomas, was unassailable.  "He collapsed from famine fever.  It
was I who found his hat."  She made a gesture that released shafts of
blue flame from her diamond rings; as though, he thought, their glory
was but to proclaim that this was the hand that had found the
scullion's hat.  Tapa found him lying among the hawthorn blossoms of
Lissnastreenagh."

This was fantasy; like something glimpsed in a dream, this girl in
bridal white, her bronze hair flowing about her shdulder, here in his
bedroom, deigning him glimpses of some young and lovely world.  He
could almost hear the gay pipes of Pan playing to that feast by the
river bank; hear the scamper of his goat-like hooves among the blossoms
where her lover had lain.  She had been wiser than he when she said
that what she had known was not what ordinary people understood when
they spoke of love.  He put his hand to his forehead.  It encountered
the knotted vein that was a heritage of his wedding night; the moment
of beguilement passed.  How dare she come here?  Offering him what the
scullion had rejected!

He crossed to the bed and pulled the bell rope for his valet.  With his
back turned to her he said, "Did I say nine o'clock?  Pray be ready to
leave at eight o'clock in the morning."

Back in her room Sterrin released a long breath.  She was feeling as
she had felt on that last morning in the convent when she had renounced
the vows that she had never taken.

At the Swiss station Sterrin had to pick her way through the prostrate
bodies of the wounded who had been transported there from Solferino.
The sight of their fly-encrusted wounds brought angry protest from Sir
Jocelyn.  Such repellent sights

2ht not to be allowed to obtrude upon the sensitivities of gvellers;
especially travellers come to seek health.  Sterrin was

Oused to a lively anger.  "Have these poor things not the right to eek
health," she flared.  The sight of the young, maimed bodies, tunics,
hair, faces, blood spattered banished her preoccupation with her own
troubles.

But two days later as she drove from the doctor's with her husband, the
fragrance of a thousand roses, the sound of little waterfalls chased
out of their white snow caps by the sun, the gurglings of nightingales,
filled her with a lonely, undefined longing.

The mood was still upon her as she started to ascend the hotel
staircase.  Then suddenly from overhead there came a voice that set her
heart racing.  A gentleman came in sight around the staircase bend and
Sterrin stopped dead.  Here was the one who had involved that undefined
longing midst the fragrance and melody of the drive.

Once again the woman was with him; the same woman, his arm tight around
her waist, holding her close to him, guiding her down every step in
tender est concern.

He looked up.  "Sterrin!"  His startled gasp made the woman stumble
within his embrace.  Sterrin was here!  But why not; was she not
everywhere that he went?  So many Sterrins, the laughing girl, the
lonely lost girl of the assassination days; the runaway schoolgirl; the
girl with the soft kissing lips that had come to life beneath his own.
But this Sterrin he did not know.  The amethyst eyes that had yearned
out at him from the wedding veil were the blue of challenging metal.
"Sterrin!"  He took a quick step and his companion stumbled again.

The swift, silent drama was splintered by the sound of Sir Jocelyn's
voice, "Don't dare to address my wife with such familiarity!  Come, my
Lady.*

Sterrin allowed herself to be led away.  Dimly she heard her husband
cancel their arrangements for a six weeks' stay.  You will be
recompensed," he said to the expostulating landlord.

From Sterrin there came no expostulation; she had no desire to stay.
The perfumes of the roses had gone; the gurglings of the nightingales;
the sound of the little waterfalls.  Young Thomas had gone from her and
all nature had gone with him.

CHAPTER 48

Thomas stared in amazement at the handsome frame house that stood in
place of the log house where he had stayed with Mark and Kitty
Hennessey on his previous visit to their Wisconsin farm.  The first
time he had stayed here they were still in the rough log cabin that
they had flung together when they had trekked down from Canada.  The
first winter, while snow covered the ground, he had helped them as they
cleared and dug and planted.  By the time spring had banished the white
mantle from the earth they had cleared several acres of land.  In the
autumn Thomas had been touring in the region, and he had shared their
pride when they gathered in their first fine harvest of potatoes and
oats and buckwheat.  More and more acres had been cleared and acquired
under the Homestead Law.  The cabin had been replaced by a comfortable
log house.  now this!  A finer house than that of the landlord who had
starved them out of Ireland in bleak Forty-seven!

"She won't be happy," Mark chuckled, 'until she has a brick house with
pillars and porticoes."

"And why not?"  demanded Kitty.  "John Holohan of Upper Kilsheelin has
an army of young men on the road, buying.  They can't get enough of our
produce."

Although John Holohan was now a successful businessman in Chicago, to
Kitty he was always John Holohan of Upper Kilsheelin.  As she led
Thomas from room to room through the house, every now and then she
stopped and held him at arms length, 'to fill her eyes with the sight
of him'.  He was a pleasure for any woman's eyes; handsome, tall, and
elegant, and beautifully courteous.  Where did all those noble
qualities come from --in this nameless servant-boy?  Well, he'd soon
know.  Kitty wished now that she had never written to Thomas in
Paris.

Thomas had come almost as quickly as his answering letter.  He would
have come still more swiftly had he not taken Dorene to an eye
specialist in Switzerland.  She was there now receiving treatment.
Thomas had not tarried to hear the doctor's verdict,

hut he had been less pessimistic than the others.

In the evening the Hennesseys' neighbours came to greet the famous
actor who hailed, like all in the settlement, from TipraryThomas
marvelled at their ease and independence.  Few of them owned less than
two hundred acres, yet a decade ago they had been despised tenants,
evicted from the few Irish acres that they had held with less right of
tenure than the rabbits.  On any other occasion he would have enjoyed
their quips at each other about having the rent ready for next Gale Day
or they'd be evicted; they were all landlords now.  But Thomas was
afire to talk with Kitty about the reason for his voyage across ocean
and continent.  He listened with half an ear to the settlers
reminiscences; about the Temperance meetings and the Monster meetings
that had awed the world.  Maddeningly they capped each others' stories
of the night of the Big Wind.  And inevitably, though they wished to
forget it, they touched on the famine.

"I never put a spade in the ground for the first of the potato crop,"
said Mark, 'but there comes a dread on me that brings back the evening
of the Blight.  Do you remember it Thomas?* Too well Thomas remembered
his master's discovery of acres of evil-smelling slime that had been
firm tubers that very morning; remembered his rush through fields of
desolation to warn Mark to get his potatoes out of the ground; Mark,
silhouetted against the darkening skyline, head bowed over the spade
handle, the open drill at his feet releasing its evil-smelling message.
Kitty, kneeling in the kitchen beside the cradle, her face pressed for
comfort against the face of the baby that was soon to die in the Great
Hunger!  No wonder that American prosperity had failed to erase the
tragedy from her face.

When the guests had gone and the children abed she pleaded with Thomas
to drop the quest to learn the truth about his ancestry.  She wanted to
withhold the precious information that she had unexpectedly stumbled
across.

"Aren't you being inconsistent, Kitty?  After dragging me across the
world?"

"My conscience made me write to you but my heart bids me advise you to
leave well enough alone.  You might find..."  she stopped herself.

"I might find what you always suspected that I'm somebody's by-child; a
half-caste with the vices of both parents and the

virtues of neither."

"Don't talk like that, Thomas," said Mark.  His voice held a sharpness
never before shown to this man who was dearer to Mark than a brother.

"God has balanced things well for you.  If you have missed out in the
matter of family it has been made up to you in talents-though to your
credit you have multiplied them a hundredfold.  You've carved a name
for yourself that is famed and honoured.  Why hark backwards?  None of
us want to look back to the past."

"Don't you?"  Thomas smiled.  "It seems to me you did little else all
evening, the lot of you."

There was so much he had wanted to talk about.  He would like to have
talked with the two Ryan girls whom Kitty and Mark had adopted when
their mother had died in Quebec.  They had grown into poised young
ladies.  Of course their mother, Miss Oenone Mansfield, had been born a
lady; but she had run off with Black Pat Ryan.  Suddenly he remembered
to tell them about Dorene.

"Well, isn't it strange now," said Kitty when he had told her.  "When
we were on the ocean before the fever took a real grip I used to go
over every last minute with you at the dockside.  Your eyes were glued
upwards at us--you poor friendless boy, and when a little blind girl
bumped against you, you just helped her up the gangway without taking
your eyes off us.  I cared for her when her mother died of ship fever
then I lost sight of her; how could you keep track of one little child?
Six thousand they buried under that mound in Quebec--eighty fever ships
lined along the river.  And the water sparkling and dancing under
them!"  She gave a little shudder.  "Bring her here, Thomas, if the
treatment she's getting in Switzerland doesn't work."

"Kitty, your heart is bigger than your fine new house.  Five children
of your own and the two Ryan children By the way, you have done more
than well by those two.  They are polished young ladies."

She explained to him about the money that Sir Roderick O'Carroll had
sent ahead for their mother.  "It was lying in America all the time we
were in Canada.  John Holohan invested it for them later, and trebled
it.  The Midas touch, they say he has.  We spent it on them, the best
schools--everything!  Thomas, I'll never understand that mystery; my
unfortunate

C0usin Black Pat to die of hunger and three of his children and yet
Sir Roderick--his own foster-brother--thought nothing of sending a big
sum of money like that to provide for his widow when she would reach
America--God rest her."  she sighed.  "Twas all a mad folly, running
off from her fine home with Black Pat, an' maybe it's alive he'd be
today if he had married one of his own class.  That kind of thing is
all right in story books.  It doesn't work out in real life." 
Weariness descended upon Thomas like a pall.  "Thomas," she went on,
'is it true that Miss Sterrin O'Carroll ran away from the convent and
married the richest man in Ireland?"

He rose abruptly.  "I believe it is true.  Kitty, I am exhausted and I
must be away at dawn to find your lady."

She chatted him up the stairs; tested the newfangled stone jar that
proudly replaced the old-fashioned hot bricks between the sheets.  Then
she put her hands on his shoulders.  The last time he had been here he
had been two days and nights on the road with little sleep after a
season of travelling the whole continent, but he hadn't looked like
this--ravaged!

"Thomas, did you go near Kilsheelin?  Did you get a glimpse of Miss
Sterrin?"

There was no gossip's curiosity in the face so close to his; only the
concern that he had cherished when he was a friendless servant boy.  He
drew out a chair.  "Sit down, Kitty."

The first cock was crowing when she stood up again.  The motive power
of Thomas's life had burst its dams.  Its torrents still swept over
her.  The daughter of Sir Roderick O'Carroll and his servant boy!
young, nameless, tribe less Thomas!  It was like something out of a
red-backed novel.  No, out of a fairy tale.  A pair of children shut
off together in a fairy world of castles and grandeur and bygone glory.
And no one to warn one of those children, the friendless, bewitched
one, that the other would grow up and away into her own proud
womanhood.  Kitty looked across to Thomas, musing like herself.  In
troth he had grown into a manhood that seemed just as proud!  And will
that strange bearing of his grow less assured if it turns out that it
has its origin in ignominy.

There was no ignominy.  "But why," Thomas repeated, 'did you bring me
to the back door of the castle?"  The
woman-who-had-brought-Young-Thomas had material477

ised from a phrase into Mrs.  Willis, a small, neat woman; gre and
severe and--bewildered.  Where else but to the back doo would she have
brought a ragged, bare-legged boy?  One didn't bring the likes of him
to the hall doors of great houses; this grand gentleman who had knocked
at her own hall door must have travelled too far into prosperity to
recall his appearance and circumstances the day that she brought him to
Kilsheelin Castle.  People prospered in America.  Hadn't she prospered
herself?  But America had not given him that--air.  She had always
associated it with high birth.  The dear knows that there was nothing
grand about his birth.  He'd have been born in the ditch if she had not
taken in his mother when she collapsed at her gate.

She had told him all and now she wanted to make tea for him but Thomas
wanted to go on asking questions.  Why the back door, indeed!  She was
in tumult; the little nurse-boy she had reared.  Parting with him had
hurt.

"You must eat she twittered and despite his protests she was gone. Some
people found it easier to produce a meal than a caress.

He thought to follow her.  He might lose her again; the faceless,
nameless subject of a lifetime's yearning for identity.  He strode up
and down the little room; his feet kept displacing the rabbit foot mats
that protected the carpet.  He studied the dried grasses and sea shells
on the whatnot in the corner.  He turned to the chiffonier, and there
behind the little glass doors on the upper shelf he saw the silver
drinking cup!  A thing of artistry and beauty, startlingly out of place
among all the quasi-genteel trumpery!  Once before he had seen such a
cup.  On the stone shelf of the hermit's cave.

His face was still pressed to the glass when the woman returned with
the tray.  Her colour drained away.  So that was what he had come for!
She lowered the tray and came over to the cabinet.  "I never meant to
deprive you of what was your right.  A crumb that wasn't mine I've
never in my life taken.  But that cup was so long in the little cabinet
in the house in Aughnacloy then after my husband died and the passage
money came so unexpected from America--a neighbour helped me to
pack-there was only a few days to find a home for you '

"So my mother had this with her?"  All the time she talked Thomas
studied the cup, turning it over and over.  It was an

ct replica of the one in which The O'Meara had once given him a drink
of goat's milk.  The hermit had told him that the hawk wrought on its
side combined the O'Carroll symbol and the Hapsburgh.  A great throb of
discovery surged through Thomas as though the cup were a water
diviner's rod.  It was a while before Mrs.  Willis's embarrassed
excuses reached him.

He turned to her.  "Please, please don't think that I have come to
question what you did with anything that she may have possessed.  You
shall have a dozen silver cups.  It is just that this one has a special
significance for me.  Meantime, I should love a cup of tea."  Over the
tea he probed again for the scant details of his origin.  His mother
had died the night that he was born.  She had asked for water and the
woman, thinking she was thirsty, had proffered milk; when it was waved
away and water brought, the sick woman had made a desperate effort and
struggled up.  She poured the water over the baby's head and her voice
was steady and clear as she said, "I baptise you Thomas in the Name of
the Father, Son and Holy Ghost."  The words of his Conditional Baptism
were the last she spoke.

Thomas was profoundly moved by the infinite pa tho of his mother's
death.  She must have started to die a few nights before when her
husband had been killed at his door by the Tithe Proctor's men before
they tumbled the house.

"There was a bit of writing pinned inside her mantle '

Thomas jerked out of his reverie.  "Writing?  Where is it?"

But it had been handed over with himself to the housekeeper at
Kilsheelin Castle and Thomas knew the rest.  The Housekeeper had been
killed in the Big Wind a few nights later.  Her room was one of those
that had been destroyed with all their contents.  Including the
identity of the waif who became Young Thomas here, and Young Thomas
there, and you, Young Thomas!

'... so I wrapped you in the sheet that she brought Mrs.

Willis had resumed her story and Thomas uncrossed his legs with a force
that slopped his tea.  She insisted upon going off for a fresh saucer.
He didn't want a fresh saucer.  He wanted to know about the sheets. But
he had to sit and chafe while the china cupboard was unlocked and a
perfectly clean saucer washed.  No, it might be dusty.  This set is
only used once a year.  "There is no use looking for the sheet," she
said when she

returned and her voice had gone edgy.  "It was thin with age even
then.  I covered you with it for years."

Thomas brushed aside her self-defence.  "Please-, please don't think
that I am here to question anything you may have done with her
possessions.  I can never do enough to repay you for your immense
Christianity and kindness to my mother and to myself.  But these
articles the cup and the sheet have a very special significance for me;
anything that you can recall about them?  What kind of stuff was in the
sheet?  I mean, was it linen and had it a monogram?"

"A monogram?"  Mrs.  Willis looked with new interest at the un
doubtable gentleman before her.  "There was a bit of embroidery on the
corner an initial maybe or something, I don't know.  But it was made of
linen all right.  Fine linen, the sort that makes good bandages. 
That's what I did with it afterwards when it was too threadbare to use.
I bandaged your leg with it when you cut it on a scythe; a terrible
cut."  She paused to savour the recollection of the cut.  "Anything
that she possessed I put to your own use.  Her clothes were good and I
cut them down to clothe you while they lasted.  I even gave you her
religion.  I taught you the Lord's Prayer with a Who instead of a Which
and I sent you at night to a neighbour's house to join their rosary. 
It wasn't an easy thing for me to do at the time," she concluded.

Thomas fully appreciated how much such an act had meant for his
Protestant foster-mother.  The Penal Code still lingered at the time.
It was a risky thing for a Protestant to shelter a Catholic much less
to endeavour to rear one in the Catholic faith.  But man's essential
humanity had shown itself like a bright, warm thread through all the
dull and blood-stained fabric of the terrible Code.  Many a Protestant
might have enriched himself with the price on the head of a hunted
priest had he not chosen instead to grant him the shelter of his home.
Just as the Irish Catholics in an earlier persecution had sheltered the
fleeing refugees of the Huguenot and Bloody Mary purge.  A thought
struck him.  "That piece of writing!  It was destroyed the night of the
Big Wind, but you must remember what was written on it?"  She shook her
head.  She could not read.  He was on his feet, the cup neatly
parcelled under his arm when another point struck him.  "There were so
many gentlemen's places where similar employment was available for me,
places like Lord

Strague's or the de Guiders' of Aughnacall or the De Laceys' any of
their places was nearer to you, more convenient when you were so
pressed for time.  What made you think of Kilsheelin?"

She drew her brows together.  What had made her go there?  Across the
distance of time and ocean one of these places was the same as the
other and all of them equally dim in her memory.  But the walk to
Kilsheelin, she remembered, had been longer than to those other places.
Oh, she remembered now why she had passed them by.  Setting out with
the lad that day she had recalled suddenly that his mother, before she
collapsed at the gate, had asked how far it was to Kilsheelin Castle.
His foster-mother had picked on the place as a sort of omen.

Thomas went still.  Things don't happen by chance.  After nearly six
years his foster-mother had completed his mother's journey: but not her
mission!  "And so," he said quietly, 'you brought me to the back
door."

This time his remark did not strike Mrs.  Willis as foolish.  There was
something like timidity in her voice as she said, "Would it have made a
difference if I had faced up to the front door?"  He looked so long and
keenly at the viewless window that she thought he was admiring the
draped and tasselled curtains in the gleaming brass bands.

"Perhaps," he said, still gazing through the plush and the lace.
"Perhaps.  But," he said, turning to her with a smile that warmed her,
'it would have made a world of difference if you had not brought me
there at all a lost world of difference."

There was panic in his heart as he left the neat house and the
neat-minded woman whose charity had persisted doggedly up to the
blessed urging that had opened to him the back door of a wonder world.
Supposing she had dumped him at the De Guiders', the nearest place.  He
would have got some kindly, hanger-on's employment that would have
ensured food and shelter.  But his intellect would have remained
plunged for ever in darkness.  The panic of the fate he had escaped
remained with him as he finished the engagement that had justified the
trip across the Atlantic to his foster-mother.  It kept dogging him in
the train between performances.  The Big Wind, he thought, might have
held for him no meaning but that of a severe storm.  He might never
have gone out into that rocking amphitheatre of nature: never witnessed
from a privileged seat the tumult of the heaven's drama.  That night
his own sense of drama was born as

he watched nature's portrayal of the violently illuminated passions of
life, its tragedy, its sombre ferocity, its splendour and again, its
mirthless comedy when an antic wind scooped up an entire, unbroken
field and tossed it up to the ranting clouds.  He would never have
encountered that scenic prop of the storm's drama, his own ancestor's
uprooted tombstone from which he had learned to read and later to
scrawl.

Supposing that the Big Wind had not produced the tragedy of the
housekeeper's death!  Supposing that she had lived!  Would he still
have gone with mop and duster to the library where his tallow candle
had flickered over the shades of the classic period, Roman and Attic,
and on to the pages of the play actor of Stratford in whose strolling
path he now followed?  Would he have lingered at the bookshelves
absorbing the story of his master's family caracoled in stately fashion
down the centuries; awakening to the problematic enigma of heritage?

He took the cup from its wrappings.  Reverently he touched the outline
of the hawk, the heraldic symbol of the O'Carrolls.  "Which of them are
you?"  the hard would say.  And Thomas had put it down to the va
pourings of a bardic mind gone senile.  But it was The O'Meara who had
started Thomas's odyssey that had led him to this Holy Grail of his
heritage.  "May the angels spread a bed for you in Heaven, O'Meara!" He
gazed through the window and out of the rolling mists a pair of
purple-blue eyes looked up at him in child-wonder.  "Maybe you are a
prince in disguise, Young Thomas."  And now, when the prince had
succeeded in taking the jewel from the head of the toad, the princess
had vanished.  And now there was Dorene waiting for him in
Switzerland.

Thomas returned to Europe to a jubilant Paris, a once more city en
fete.  This time for Napoleon's vast congress of nations to bring the
conditions of Europe under review.

"I believe they are on the brink of Gvil War in America," said a man
with whom Thomas shared a compartment on the train to Switzerland.
Thomas was startled.  He had been living in a wildly swinging world of
his own.  "I have heard no war cry," he said.

Alphabet met him at the Swiss station.  The multi-named body-servant
had been aggrieved to have to miss an exciting

tour in order to escort a blind young lady.  The news of Dorene was
not encouraging.  "Not that she gave me the specialist's verdict but
she intimated it by her manner.  I urged her respect-fully to join the
society for improving the conditions of the blind; to make them more
self-supporting."

Thomas caught that.  He rounded on Alphabet.  "Do you consider yourself
seJ/-supporting?  If I find that you have distressed Miss Du Clos you
can support your interfering self at someone else's expense,
Duignan!"

Alphabet looked at the stern countenance beside him and trembled for
his cushy job.  Duignan!  Twenty-six Christian names and to be
addressed by the far-off surname that was only a weary sigh at the end
of his baptismal alphabet!  The boss must be proper peeved.

The boss was feeling deflated.  In the excitement of his own
discoveries he had relegated the problem of the blind girl to the
background.

Now she must face it, and the cause of her blindness; a poor innocent
caught up in the maelstrom of his frenzy to catch himself a bride from
beyond his utmost reach.  Besotted, presumptuous fool.  What did he
know of women?  All his life had been a preparation and a dedication.
Because he had given his love to a child.  Girl-children became women,
unpredictable, unfathomable.  The memory of his first glimpse of the
girl-child turned woman returned.  There was no erasing from his memory
that tableau of lovely girls moving in procession up the stairway,
their candles flickering over the black marble; and, last and
loveliest, the girl in turquoise blue.

He took out a gold cigarette case and tapped it savagely.  Fool!
Damned, quixotic, romantic fool!  I've lived too long in the world of
make believe.  He struck the long sulphur match.  It quenched
immediately under the cold cloud of his breath.

"A superior servant," he said aloud to the second match, 'is neither
fish, flesh nor good red herring."

Alphabet turned to him.  "I do my best, sir, but I do appreciate that
you appreciate that I am superior."

Thomas blew out a cloud of smoke.  "And an actor is no better.  Romance
and tragedy are his stock in trade.  I returned to her at a propitious
moment; the prelude to a splendid marriage that lacked but one thing
romance; and the strolling player supplied it from his repertoire."

He sought out Dorene immediately, dreading the interview but at the
door of the sitting-room he stopped dead.  She was seated at the piano
playing, of all things, a gay gallop.  It was amazing the dexterity
with which her fingers raced up and down the keyboard, never fumbling a
note.  Ornaments on the piano, lust res on the mantelpiece tinkled and
danced to the force of her playing.  Thomas was at a loss to define his
reaction.  It was like hearing rollicking music hopping out of a church
organ.  What had he expected?  A blind Cecilia strumming mystic
melodies!

Somehow it was all out of character.  A person stricken down with
blindness would not play with that reckless gaiety; and suddenly the
explanation dawned on him.  Of course!  She was hardly going to tell
Alphabet.  The news was good and she was keeping it to surprise him.

She sent a ripple of graceful notes running down the board and lifted
her hands with a flourish.

"Bravo!"  She gave a startled shriek and whirled around on the stool.
Her eyelids lifted over a flash of brown, then drooped weakly as she
groped to her feet.  His arm went round her as she swayed
uncertainly.

Tm sorry I startled you, but it was such a rousing performance.  I
don't have to ask what had induced such elan; the news is good.  It is,
isn't it?"  It had to be.  It couldn't be otherwise.  She had expressed
it in every note; and yet, she was silent.

The news was not good.  The doctor could do nothing for her.  Thomas
took her chin in his hand and forced her face up.  Look at me!"  He
cursed himself.  But wasn't there a bloom on her cheek like a sun
kissed peach?  Wasn't there rejoicing in her spirit?

She twisted her face from his grasp.  "I'm sorry that you have to be
disappointed '

"To the devil with my disappointment--forgive me my dear.  It is your
disappointment that matters.  Dammit, I must see the doctor at once."

"No!  No!"  The vehemence in her voice startled him.  Or was it that
her voice was becoming more mobile; acquiring the power of expression
denied her eyes?  She could become a better actress than before.  "He
can tell you nothing that he has not told to myself.  It is not nice
hearing, and it doesn't improve by

repetition."  For the first time since her blindness, he discerned
bitterness in her voice.  Who could blame her.  "He--the doctor-did
everything that he could for me and when there was no improvement I
asked for the truth.  I asked him not to spare me.  I see no mercy in
giving false hope--I see no mercy anywhere but her voice cracked,
'that's only because I can't see anything."

His arm that had assisted her from the piano tightened around her
waist.  "It is all right, Mr.  Young.  I'm not going to be hysterical.
I'm going to be sensible; very sensible.  That was why I was practising
that dance tune just now.  The new railway round the Simplon is
bringing a great many people here for winter holidays.  Madame Kohlat,
the proprietress, told me that there would be plenty of employment for
me playing for carpet dances after dinner.  I thought I would earn
enough to go to America,"

The poor child!  Trying to earn what would release her from this prison
of snow and silence.

"I was longer than I expected to be.  There were some tempting
engagements offered.  Did you think that I was going to leave you here
to turn into an icicle?"

"It was nice in the summer.  The summer catered for the other senses.
There was life in all those lovely smells from shrubs and roses; in the
sound of the waterfalls from the little streams of melted snow always
rushing and gurgling down the mountain, and in and out through their
sound I could hear the nightingales.  It was like a constant orchestra.
Then everything went away, the orchestra, the roses, the waterfalls,
the nightingales '

Poor child, he thought again.  To be blind within sight of Mont Blanc I
To be blind at Lake Leman!  Not to glimpse it through branches of tulip
trees and clumps of crimson rhododendrons I He understood what she felt
about that cessation of life.  It had been the same with him when the
separate stream of Sterrin's life had ceased to flow within him.  The
little waterfalls bereft of sun had frozen into silence.  His fingers
caressed the soft cheek.

"No more worries, little one," he murmured into her hair.  "I'll guide
those little footsteps all the rest of the way."

CHAPTER 49

If she kept busy enough, life at Kilkenny was just supportable.  There
were plenty of young officers around, but Sterrin could not forget that
the military were there to supervise the evictions of Sir Jocdyn's
tenants, who were being driven off their land to make room for a new
breed of cattle he wished to develop.  Tonight there was to be a party,
the first evening of a house-party for the officers and some of Sir
Jocelyn's friends.  Lady O'Carroll had been invited and Sterrin was
pathetically eager to see her mother again.  In truth, Sterrin was
looking forward to the party.  But there was something that clouded her
expectation.  To Sterrin's dismay, she discovered that Donal Keating of
Poolgower was one of those invited.  She protested angrily to her
husband and told him she did not wish to entertain the Keatings.  She
explained about the night of the Big Wind and how her father's field
had landed on the Keating's land.  She even told him about the Whiteboy
raid that almost killed her mother.  But Sir Jocelyn was not the least
bit interested in Sterrin's feelings about the Keatings or, indeed
about anything else.  He simply remarked that he hoped she would wear
one of her new dresses from Paris.

Hannah draped the novel Grecian-cum-Renaissance gown over her
mistress's head and after a certain amount of fumbling managed to
fasten the hooks and eyes.  With a sigh of relief, she stood back to
review her handiwork.

The gown was a revolution from the swinging crinolines.  It was moulded
so tightly that Hannah was embarrassed at its revelation of the lines
and curves of a woman's body.  Moulded breasts, flat stomach; it was
indecent after the out bulging years -of horsehair petticoats and the
steel cage that had supported the crinolines.  And these thighs! Hannah
had never before associated thighs with a lady.  The prophecies of
Saint Columcille were beginning to come true.  Women, said that holy
prophet, will wear trousers.

Her eyes fell to the shortened hemline that revealed two inches of
ankle.  The sight drove her to speech.  "God never meant them to be
seen."

Sterrin raised the skirt and revealed a pair of shapely legs.  "How do
you know that God meant them to be hidden, Hannah?  I doubt if he
bothers about such things."  She swung her leg forward.  "There is
nothing to be ashamed of about them."

"Ah, Miss Sterrin, you are changing.  You were often a wild colleen but
you never used to make light of holy things."

"There is nothing holy about these," said Sterrin, dropping her skirt.
She put a hand on the maid's shoulder.  "I shan't keep you waiting
long.  There will be no music tonight on account of Lady Murray's
bereavement."

Svelte and regal, Sterrin seemed to cleave a path through the crowding
crinolines.  She gave a cool nod towards Donal Keating and pretended
not to notice that officers were raising their monocles.

One of them took her down to dinner.  "You have great courage, my
Lady," he said, 'to blaze this new trail; or should I say train?"  He
indicated the train that flowed out from her as they descended.

"Thank you, Captain," she said.  "Do you find that it takes courage to
face all these people whom you have been evicting this week?"  He
busied himself with the train over the dining room threshold.  His
hostess's tact, he thought, did not march with her beauty.  Evicting
her husband's tenantry was not quite his cup of tea.

"I should have thought," she resumed when they were seated, 'that it
would be a soldier's duty to protect women and children and their
homes."  Her clear voice fell into the shallows that precede the
flowing of dinner talk.  So did his answer, though it was almost a
whisper.  "It was not I who ordered the evictions, Lady Devine."

With ponderous tact the wife of the Deputy Lieutenant for the county
roared in with some questions about the gay doings at the French Court.
"Your charming wife," she said to her host, 'seems to be a devotee of
the French Empress.  I believe that it was she who started this new
vogue."

"Yes, indeed," said Sir Jocelyn.  "Eugenie's edict banning the
crinoline overshadowed the Emperor's New Year speech."

"Humph," said the lady.  "She is not my Empress.  She won't

ban my crinoline."

Sterrin contemplated the lady's bulging proportions then leaned forward
with great deference and said, "That would be most unkind of the
Empress, Madam, to ban your crinoline, I mean.  It is much more
becoming to your style,"

Sir Jocelyn looked down in surprise at his wife.  Her remark to a lady
so much older was not in character with herself.  In all fairness he
admitted to himself that while she was mettlesome and hot tempered, he
had never heard her make unpleasant remarks to other ladies.  Her
laughter was brittle and frequent; but tonight too frequent; her dinner
partner seemed fascinated.  And of course this old hay bag had asked
for the dig she had been administered.  But it was unfortunate that it
had been administered by the hostess.

The Deputy Lieutenant's lady was waving her fan as though to drive off
apoplexy.  "I'll wager," she said to her other neighbour, 'that she is
a rebel."  The fan blew the wager down to Sterrin.

Another lady said that she had happened to be in Austria during
Eugenie's visit.  "She was wearing a gown that fully disclosed her
ankles.  In broad daylight.  Ankles, did I say?  A lot more could be
seen.  I'm told the Emperor Franz Joseph averted his eyes while she was
stepping into the carriage and when his own Empress Elizabeth was about
to step in after her, he stepped forward and completely screened her
and everyone heard him say, "Careful, my dear.  Someone might see your
feet."  Of course it was obvious that he did not allude to the sweet
Empress Sissi, as they call her.  Her gown was long and flowing and,
completely decorous."

Sterrin was outraged and bored.  Without waiting until the footmen came
in to remove the cloth she gave a quick signal to the ladies and rose
to her feet.

"What execrably bad form!"  she said as she rose.  "The Emperor Franz
Joseph's, I mean."  Sterrin smiled reassuringly at the astounded
ladies.  It was bad enough being summoned from the table before the
cloth was removed; but to be accused of bad form.

"One might forgive bad taste in dress," Sterrin said, 'but in speech!
Never!"  Tall, sheath-like, her train establishing a regal distance
between her and the others, she swept out.

Her husband, standing at the head of the table, watched her,

gratified in spite of herself, at her curtain speech.  The others, he
thought, swaying from side to side in the crinolines that he had once
thought so graceful looked suddenly, like waddling ducks.  he was such
a hostess, as he had always envisaged; such a wife?

That night, when Hannah was still struggling with the hooks and eyes of
the dress, he came to Sterrin's bedroom.  "Get out!"  he ordered the
maid.  He groped at the complicated fastenings that strained against
her taut muscles.

Sterrin tensed.

It had to happen some time.  Marriage is a bargain, and she had
collected plenty of the profits; and so had Mamma, Dominic, the
servants, the tenants.  Marriage holds no romantic moments with
romantic bridegrooms.  That sort of thing is thought up by writers of
yellow-backed trash and by by deluded fools brought up in convents and
castles.  This is life; this is There was no sense seeking words.  The
surge within her was not a tiling of words or den ned thought; just a
jabber jabber of sentience to dull the pounding of her heart.  A hook
tore over her flesh.

"God'll mighty!"  she exploded.  "Do you have to tear the flesh off my
bones?"  She looked over her shoulder.  "Ugh!"  The exclamation was not
for 'her scratched flesh; but for the spectacle of his artificial
masticators.  His gasping breaths had dislocated their gutta percha
gums.  They were projecting all purple and slobbery.

Her disgust was the last straw.  The wave of passion roused by the
sight of her beautiful body making its sweeping exit had beaten itself
out in the conflict with the hooks and eyes.  He turned and looked at
himself in the long, pier glass.

"One would think that I was a monster," he muttered to his image.  The
grotesque gums were in position again.

"You are a monster, no," she raised her hand as he turned, 'not because
of this."  She rubbed her smarting back.  "I mean that private army out
there in the park; your bloodless victory.  Six hundred people turned
from their homes.  To them you are a monster."

*I am not concerned with how I seem to the canaille?

"They are not canaille' Her low-pitched voice spiralled.  She blazed at
him.  They are human beings with the right to humanity.  My father
never evicted.  He held that to deprive

people of their homes was to deprive them slowly of their right to
live."

He tapped his snuff box.  "And I don't have to remind you of how your
tenants repaid your father's humanity.  Since you are so concerned with
human rights let me remind you that I, too, have my rights."

"You are free to take your rights," she said quietly.

He looked at her reflection in the mirror; standing so passively, arms
at her sides, the palms out; a sort of self-abnegating surrender.  To
him!  There rose before him a vision of two countesses who once almost
gouged each other's eyes out for the favours of his couch.

In a flash of revelation he saw her as she had been the day she had
accepted his proposal of marriage; swinging towards him down the
drawing-room of the castle with a sort of desperate courage that had
delighted him; the high gallantry of her caste.  Sir Jocelyn, why have
you come today?  It is for the horse?  That heroic gesture; the glove
withdrawn, the hand proffered in surrender.  By heaven she had sold
herself to him for the horse!

"Take off your glove!"  The words ripped out from him.

She lifted her hands slightly then glanced towards the dressing-table
where her long gloves lay.  Was this another rush of blood to the head?
He had babbled this way after they had bled him on his wedding night.

"Gloves?"  she asked.

He turned from the mirror and seized her dress at the neck.  "This/ he
cried, 'this gauntlet."  With one savage wrench he tore the stately
robe a I'Imperatrice apart from neck to hem.  For a moment he stared at
her splendid, youthful body.  He felt a sense of renewed potency and
vigour as he pulled her towards the bed.

A wick spurted in the silent blackness.  In its sudden light Sterrin
saw her reflection in the pier glass; lying in the rags that he had
made of the robe a I'Imperatrice, And then she became aware of her
husband standing by the bed.  Looking down at her abasement!  The
thought gave direction to the spirit that was floundering somewhere in
a pit of shame and degradation.

She raised herself on to her elbow.  By twisting her lips tightly into
a smile she managed to control their wobbling.  They must look like
Sister Mary Aliquo's did that day in the convent

garden.  And was this what Sister Mary Aliquofiveyards-of calico was
alluding to when she used to teach us that nice girls had no need to
examine their conscience on the Sixth Commandment?  Bitterness etched
her smile into steadiness; but in the flickering light all that her
husband noticed was the elusive, enchanting smile that he remembered
from betrothal days.  Her composure astounded him.  He watched her
swing a pair of long legs over the side of the bed, kick back the train
that adhered to one half of the robe, slough off the upper portion from
her shoulders, stretch luxuriously then rise slowly like a hibernating
snake emerging from its winter sleep.

She crossed the room.  Now I'll never challenge Mademoiselle Hautdoire
to walk on her hands; such a silly thought to go forging its way
through her shocked senses.  But now, of course, there could be no more
talk of annulment.

He watched her cross the room.  Not a snake, he thought; a thoroughbred
Persian cat daintily picking its way across a crowded street;
disdainful of its surroundings; more concerned about wetting her feet
than in avoiding the traffic.

She picked up a peignoir, tied it about her, and order seemed restored.
He felt cheated.  His act drained of manliness.

"You have evaded your obligation long enough," he said.

Her answer was so low that he had to crane to catch it.  "One does not
rivet on one's own chains."  She glanced up and for a fleeting moment,
beneath the proudly-held poise he glimpsed her sick misery and horror.
But her expression changed so quickly that he thought that he must have
been thinking wishfully.  "It was a debt of honour," she went on in a
clearer tone.  "One always gets round to meeting that kind of debt." It
might have been a wager on a horse.

When Hannah heard him back in his own room she tapped at her mistress's
door, but got no answer.  It was dawn before a sound made her tap
again.  "Help me with these boots, Hannah."  Miss Sterrin's ladyship
was in riding dress!  The maid almost tripped over the mound of silken
gown that lay inside the door.  So obviously flung there.  "Leave that
thing and do as I tell you."

When her mistress had gone Hannah picked up the gown again.  A great
jagged opening parted the front from neck to hem.  The back was still
held by the new, scientific hooks and eyes; except for the top one.
Science inagh!  She appraised the

disorder of the unslept-in bed.  By the looks of these endra martins1
the prophecies might not come true in this generation.  "A Miller will
come without Thumbs--no.  A Spaniard will rule and ruin Ireland Musha
sure these are the prophecies of

Saint Columcille.  Its want of sleep is on me.  As if a saint would
concern himself with the sinful andramartins of the Quality.  Not, of
course, that it is sinful when they are married.  No, it's not a
prophecy that I am tryin' to remember.  It is a curse.  The one that
was put on this house when the little children died here; dancing for
the Quality on hot gridirons.  The curse that no child would be born in
this house to inherit it.  It would always be passed on sideways, to
nephews and cousins and the like.  Hannah rearranged the counterpane
and freshened the pillows.  Well, by the look of things it might be
that Miss Sterrin's Ladyship might be the one to break that same
curse.

Sterrin had forgotten about the soldiers in the park.  She wheeled from
the sight of each encampment and finally rode towards the distant
farmyard.  The soldiers watched her set her horse at its high gate.
She'd never do it!  "Twas a reckless jump.  "Ye Gods!"  gasped a young
subaltern.  "She rides like an Arab!"

The road held no retreat.  It was filled with the grim cause of the
soldiers' presence in the park.  Even though she had to pull into the
grass margin to avoid the endless procession of dispirited men and
weary women and children, she was only vaguely aware of them as a
roadblock.  They trudged past aimlessly; some glanced up at her, then
turned away from her cold, proud face.  "Mammy, I want a drink of
water--Daddy, carry me.  I can't keep up with you ... I'm tired."

The plaint recurred like a chorus until its metre beat into her brain.
She looked down.  Mothers carrying babies; fathers carrying older ones;
boys and girls carrying toddlers; others lagging behind, tugging at the
grownups.

Sterrin shook her head sadly.  She saw clearly that her preoccupation
with herself was immature emotionalism; that she was running away from
reality.  She moved back in the saddle with some idea of making room
for an exhausted child.  The space she made would scarcely hold one
small child.  And at her feet a whole tide of humanity crawled past.

Six hundred families.  It was what Papa meant when he used to talk
about the Diaspora of the Gaels.  The wailing hundreds

1 Carryings-on.

be had seen when he was despatching some of the tenants to America had
suggested to him the Jewish Diaspora, when the jews went out from
Israel.  This scene reminded Sterrin of the famine years when the roads
used to be thronged with the starving.  But then, there had been men
like Papa and like Lord Templetown and other charitable landlords,
racking their brains and their fortunes to cope; and there were the
quaintly-clad Quakers, tirelessly moving through the countryside, and
the parish priest and the Protestant vicar, out by day and night;
united in the cause of mercy.  But here there was no tempering mercy.
The great overlord had the right to rid his land of humans as though
they were crop-destroying vermin.  And the Government showed its
approval by manpower, military and police, to assist in the
extermination.  The people looked at her, not with hostility, but
without friendship.  It was a relief to realise, gradually, that at
least they did not recognise her.  She had arrived too recently.  And
she had hoped in time, to get acquainted with them, to establish the
same friendly relationship with them as with the tenants at home!

As she walked her horse in tempo with the march of the outcasts she
heard an outcry behind and wheeled.  A group of men with crowbars were
prodding awake some old people and children who had rested beneath a
hedge and -had fallen asleep.  She spurred her horse towards a man in
riding-breeches and leggings, who was holding a horsewhip menacingly.

"Stop those men!"  she cried, reining her mount to its haunches.  "How
dare they touch these people!"

The man looked at her for a moment before raising his hat.  He didn't
recognise her, but she was a very grand lady on a very grand horse, and
she spoke with quelling authority.

"It is against the law, ma'am," he said, for evicted people to shelter
beneath the hedges."

"What law?"  she demanded.

He shrugged.  "Oh, I don't know."  His tone was not over respectful.
"Anyway, it is against my orders."  He turned impatiently and raised
his whip.  "Hi, get you up!"  he shouted to an old man deep in sleep.

Sterrin raised her own whip.  "Don't you dare to touch him!"  she
cried"I am Lady Devine.  You will take your orders from me."

A murmur rippled through the crowd.  The overseer with the

whip went flabby with obsequiousness.  Apathy went from the hunted;
some showed hostility.  Some drew away respectfully.  A few came near
her, sensing hope.  A middle-aged man got stiffly to his feet and
rubbed his knees.  He moved over to Sterrin.  "I'm thankful to your
Ladyship for the concession of resting beneath my own hedge."  The
overseer made to intervene, but Sterrin raised her whip.

Yes," continued the man.  "I made that dyke.  I ditched-in that land,
as far as that bend."  He waved down the road.  "And I ditched in the
fields back there as far as the hill.  I was too good a farmer, I made
my land too valuable.  For every bit of fertilising and every bit of
ditching and every bit of building I carried out, my rent went up and
up until it was beyond all hope of paying.  But if I had done nothing
the result would have been the same.  I'd still have been thrown out
for being shiftless and lazy.  That's what he was told."  He indicated
the man beside him.  "And these others.  Sir Jocelyn Devine, with
respects to you, my Lady, had brought a new breed of cattle from the
Continent and the human stock on his land was in the way.  Up there,"
he pointed to the 'hills, 'the people were turned out because the
pheasant hatcheries were trebled this year to make a bigger shoot."

Sterrin felt a sick heat rising from her stomach to her head.  She had
known nothing of this.  She shifted her whip to the hands that held the
reins and put her free hand to her forehead.  The man mistook the
gesture.  "I'm sorry, my Lady, to distress you with the tale of our
miseries."

"No!"  she said dully.  "It is not your telling me.  It is your misery
itself, the misery of all of you, that distresses me."  She drew on the
rein and the man put out a restraining hand.  For a second she thought
he might be seeking to impede.  She was uncertain about his attitude.
He was well spoken but his voice held cynicism, as well as respect. She
noticed another man who had been moving towards the speaker, a
well-dressed man with a scarred face, who carried a sports gun.  He had
been watching her while the other was speaking and at the back of her
mind there was a sense of familiarity.

"John," he said to the man who had spoken to Sterrin, "I am sorry to
see you this way.  I have come to offer the shelter of my home to you
and yours."

The overseer moved forward.  "Are you aware, my man," he

asked, 'of the penalty for harbouring an evicted tenant?  Every jnan
jack of your family and clan can be fined for it.  Aye, and turned out
too."

The scar faced man's grip on his gun became less casual.  "Listen, whip
master he said slowly.  "Don't "my man" me.  I'm no chattel of your
misbegotten master."  Sterrin flinched.  Did he face towards her at the
word 'chattel'?  She remembered him now.  It was Bergin, Thomas's
friend who had watched for her here in these grounds over a year ago to
help Thomas with his plan for elopement.  How much did this man know? 
Did he know of his friend's volatile loves?  Of her own humiliation? 
He uncovered sketchily towards her then turned back to the overseer.

"Nobody questions my right to receive friends under my roof.  John," he
said to the man who still held Sterrin's bridle, 'that is my boat down
there.  When you get across the river you are on my land."  He looked
meaningly at the overseer.  "Let anyone try molesting you there!"

Sterrin rode back across the path like one possessed.  Soldiers
scurried from her path, once she rode through a smouldering fire and
sent sparks flying in all directions.  An army cook stared open-mouthed
after her, the contents of his skillet pouring down his apron.  A
footman appeared before she dismounted.  She tossed him the reins and
had reached the stairs-foot before she paused to toss a brief apology
to the young gentleman whom she had almost up-ended in the hallway.

Tray don't apologise," said Donal Keating coldly.  "No person has the
right to obstruct the path of Lady Devine 1'

Sterrin hurried upstairs and didn't wait for an answer to her tap at
her husband's door.  "Sir Jocelyn!"  she exploded.

The presence of the valet bending over his master at the dressing-table
checked her outburst.  She paused, expecting the man to be dismissed.
Her husband sent his eyebrows up in what was intended as sardonic
surprise.  Only one eyebrow responded.  The contortion produced in the
mirror disgusted his fastidious vanity.  He reminded himself that his
disfigurement had been caused by the beautiful tyro who was standing
there pouring out breathless expostulations about suffering humanity.

"You must do something, at once!"  She paused for breath.  He leaned
closer to the mirror.

"Bring it a little more forward," he said to the valet.  The man

was drawing forth a lock of hair to shape into a curl over the twisted
-muscle that bulged over his master's eyebrow.  "One might of course,
wear a wig," he murmured, 'but then wigs are so demode--aren't they, my
dear?"

She had the feeling as she looked back at him that the Chinese dragons
on his yellow silk robe were crawling over him.  "Out there," she said,
low and tense, 'there is a blemish that is a reproach to humanity.  How
do you propose to conceal it?"

He drew the curl a little more forward.  You mean those demolished
houses, don't you, my dear?  They are an eyesore, I must admit, but I
hope soon to have all traces of them cleared away."

She turned away in disgust, but the thought of the homeless spurred her
back.  "Won't you make arrangements to feed the people, even soup
kitchens?  They are starving and they are being forced along in
a--death march.  Even the cattle are free to move over the pastures."

He stood up, "They will have much more freedom now," he said, 'and it
will be possible to have many more cattle."  He threw his gown from
him.  "This conversation has gone far enough.  I am paying sufficient
rates to maintain the Poorhouse.  Let these people go there.  Let them
go to America, if it is fool enough to take them in.  But don't bother
me about them again.  It is time you changed out of those clothes. Your
duty at the moment is to your guests."

CHAPTER 50

The chef looked up in amazement at the spectacle of her Ladyship
entering the kitchen.  When he heard the cause of her presence his eyes
and mouth gaped.  "Milady!  C'est impossible.  Cook for six hundred
people!"  His assistant, a Professed Cook from London, folded her hands
and prepared for battle.  Her skill was the complement of his artistry.
As a team they had worked together for years, dedicated to the holy
cause of their Master's palate and securely entrenched in his
appreciation.

Sterrin's eyes roved over the strange territory of this modern kitchen;
the great range burning anthracite coal that cooked and heated without
the gaiety of flames; the brownstone trough where a maid was washing
vegetables in water that poured effortlessly from a tap in a wall; no
Johnny-the-bucket.  No human hand to fetch or carry it away.  No hand
human enough to stretch from such a kitchen to help the hungry.  She
recalled the Kilsheelin kitchen straining at its seams to cope with the
famine; wall ovens steaming all day; never a spare hook in the great
crane that swung its full complement of bastibles, bake pots and
kettles over the eight fires in the hearth.

She turned away.  Kilsheelin kitchen and its occupants were far away in
some other civilisation.  In the passage outside, hurrying servants
flattened themselves against the wall; wide eyed at the spectacle of
her Ladyship coming out from the kitchen.

She found her dinner partner of last night gazing tenderly down the
muzzle of a sports rifle.  He transferred the look to his hostess. When
he heard her request his breath went out in a whistle.  "Lady Devine,
for me to order my men to fix up a field kitchen for your husband's
tenantry would be--mutiny!"

"Why should it be?  As an officer you can surely give orders to your
men.  You have ordered them to distribute food in the famine regions of
India.  You told me so yourself."

Why should a man be compelled to turn from the appeal in

these lovely eyes?  He laid down the gun and smoothed his moustache as
though to clear the path for the words that were about to emerge. "Lady
Devine, in India I should not dare to countermand the orders of a
Maharajah.  Your husband's sway here is just as powerful as a
Maharajah's and he is just as'

He stopped and went scarlet.  He had almost said he is just as cruel.
"I meaner as a magistrate he has the most amazing powers; far more so
than magistrates in England.  Over here they are being granted more and
more power all the time; even over the ordinary public, much less over
their own tenants."

A servant entered.  "Sir Jocelyn's compliments, your Ladyship, and the
shooting brake is ready to start."

As she passed through the door that the captain held for her she said,
"I might have known that you wouldn't understand."  She swept out.  He
hurried after her, protesting.  She silenced him with a gesture.  "I
must make certain that adequate hampers have been prepared.  The shoot
is a long way off.  Our guests must not go hungry."

He caught up with her and barred her way.  "I'll broach the matter to
Sir Jocelyn," and then almost into her ear he murmured.  "I would put
an army into the field for you."

Sterrin moved on to where the luncheon hampers awaited her inspection
before being fastened.  "Loaves and fishes."  She thought wistfully of
miracles.  The butler and housekeeper exchanged looks.  "No, your
Ladyship," the butler corrected her respectfully but firmly.  "These
leaves are packed around ice for the champagne; not for fish.  These
here contain truffled partridges and'

"What's over there?"  Without waiting for an answer she crossed a
passage to where a servant was emerging with a great scoop of flour.
The captain, followed by Donal Keating, came seeking her down the
passage.  She went on assessing the bins of flour and meal that lined
the long room.  "There is sufficient here to feed six hundred people.
Isn't there?"

Mrs.  Ledwidge explained that supplies had been increased to supplement
the soldiers' rations.  "Soldiers?"  Sterrin turned angrily, then saw
the officer.  He sketched a rueful gesture.  His mission had failed.
His host had told him courteously to mind his own business.  She turned
back to the housekeeper.  "How many cakes of soda bread can you produce
from that bin?"  The housekeeper looked as delicately pained as though
she had been

asked how many yards of buttermilk would make breeches for a bull-
Impossible woman.  "Have you not coped with the famine?"  Sterrin's
voice was sharp with contempt.

The housekeeper looked worse than pained.  She looked positively
wounded.  What could one expect, she thought, from a ladyship who would
walk down to her own kitchen?  What could one expect from a ladyship
who saw fit to walk in her underwear before the Emperor of France?  She
folded her hands together over her black sateen apron.  Sterrin
assessed the gesture and waited.  Here was another pair teamed against
her.  These two had been running this household before she was born.

"Your Ladyship," the housekeeper took an impressively deep breath.  "I
have been accustomed to cope only with the needs of the nobility and I
have always given satisfaction.  If I may say so, your Ladyship, I have
always been where there was full and plenty."

"You have been most fortunate," was all that she said; and she said it
gently.  "And now," she turned to a bin, 'since you appear to have no
idea of how many cakes of soda bread this can produce let me enlighten
you.  It can produce fifty; bastible size, each one adequate for six
persons.5

"Indeed, your Ladyship?"

Yes!"  Now the butler as well as the housekeeper recoiled.  Her
Ladyship's voice had become a crack of a whip.  TFifty cakes of soda
bread," she repeated, 'and that is what I want from every one of these
bins.  See to it immediately."

"B-but, your Ladyship The woman's smugness had crumpled before the
force of authority in Sterrin's voice.  "The ovens of a coal range
could never cope with such numbers the chef '

"Waste no further time in questioning my orders."  Sterrin's features
could have been fashioned from ice.  "Set your maids to scouring these
disused bastibles.  Have them slung over the fires in the boiling
houses.  I shall return in something over an hour.  Have the bread
ready for me.  Yes," she turned to where the footman had reappeared at
the door, 'tell your master that I am coming."

Sterrin paused at the door to tell the butler that he might close down
the hampers.  "They are most satisfactory," she smiled.

The smell of baking bread reached down the avenue to greet

r- ~*

her when she returned--on pretext of a headache--exactly an hour and a
half later.  The staff, subdued and perspiring, awaited her
instructions about the mounds of soda cakes that steamed from shelves
and tables.  When she had seen them despatched to where the homeless
were camping on a common beyond the estate boundary she wandered,
deflated down the little path that led to the river.

Her brief sense of victory was over.  Victory inagh!  A bit of bread
for those who had been deprived of their right to grow and make their
own bread; and she would not have gained that victory, she would have
been humiliated before her menials had she given them time to contact
their master.  Their veiled hostility had never troubled her before.
She had been aware of it, but in some nebulous way--connected with the
little French comte sse who had won the victory of her freedom from her
unconsummated marriage--she had regarded her presence here as a
transient thing.  Somehow, some way, down some vista of time she would
be Sterrin O'Carroll again.  But after last night, that hope was
erased.  She felt chilled and solitary.  As she approached the river,
she saw Donal Keating pacing its bank.  "Why are you not with the
shoot?"  The sharpness in her voice startled her own hearing as well as
his.  It had erupted from her self-loathing; and from the loathing in
which she held every male human being.

"I told your husband that I did not feel like slaughter today," and his
voice went a shade colder.

She came through the little wicket gate and walked beside him.  She
said slowly, "Don't antagonise my husband."  He stopped and demanded
impatiently.  "What can he do to me?"  She found herself envying him
his independence of her husband.  He can turn you away from here, too,
she thought.  And suddenly she knew that she did not want that to
happen. He was her own particular enemy; part of all those feudal
enmities of Kilsheelin that time or distance had neutralised.  "And
anyway," continued Donal, 'why does he have me here?  I have no claim
to the distinction of his kind of guest."

She could not tell him now that it gave her husband a twisted
satisfaction to foist what he considered 'the young upstart's obnoxious
presence' upon his wife.  Instead she said, "By all accounts you have
attained distinction in your profession and, for myself, well I am glad
that you are here."  She was surprised

by what she had said.  Yet it was true.

He flushed with pleasure.  "I never thought to hear that from you; the
business of the field went deep with you; with your father."

"It was that "Whiteboy" raid on my first birthday that implanted the
bitterness about the field.  A moment earlier and I would have been in
the spot where the bullet hit.  My mother never fully recovered, she
'

His startled exclamation halted her.  She noted the way the colour
ebbed from his face as he groped for speech.  "Lady Devine, you horrify
me.  I had never heard of any raid until that night when you came for a
sod of the field to bring, as I thought, to America.  You spoke
contemptuously of a "call" that my family had made upon yours, of
shirts worn over their clothes.  Next day my mother explained.  She
didn't approve of die raid.  But I swear to you, Lady Devine, that
neither she nor my father dreamed that there was anything but a warning
shot fired into the air outside.  Your mother wounded!  My God!  I
would never have never have He recalled his bumptious badinage that
night when he first laid eyes upon her, kneeling on the 'skeough' field
in the moonlight; and again, as she walked with her dogs up
CoUnafunchion.  "I would never have faced you, much less flaunt myself
here as your guest."

A pulse beat in his cheek.  His boyish distress clouded up the
recollections of all that he stood for in her life.  She found herself
reassuring him.

"My mother was not wounded.  Her illness had started on the night of
the Big Wind when I was born."

"You were born the night that the field fell upon us?  You see," he
went on rapidly, "I was cut off early from close touch with my family.
I was sent away to school at a much earlier age than other boys; again
something to do with your family.  My eldest brother resented the
patronage of having my brother John's Wedding Mass served by some young
servant lad in your household who knew Latin; a picturesque-looking
chap.  I thought he was some college boy home for the holidays."

But my Lady was not listening.  Another flush tinted his pale cheeks.
Servants as a topic of conversation, as in all things else, was beneath
the interest of such as she.  He apologised for his bad form.  "I
merely mentioned him, my Lady, because his presence there sparked off
something that cut me off too soon from early

association with 'home and its happenings.  In a way, he had an
influence upon my life."

Influence upon your life, she was thinking.  If he only knew the
influence that that picturesque-looking servant has had upon my life.

"You see," he went on, aghast at her disclosures about the raid on her
home, 'the rest of my family do not see eye to eye with my eldest
brother.  He goes his own way, broods over ancient wrongs, keeps
reading the old family manuscripts."

She raised her eyebrows.  "Have you one of those?"

He raised his.  "We did not sprout out of your sky-borne field --as
your family seems to think.  We have been in abeyance for a couple of
generations, but those records have helped us to hang on--oh," he
exploded.  "I wish that I could give you back your field.  I wish that
I could carry it back to you, all wrapped up in an apron.  There is a
legend about a lake in Kilsheelin that was supposed to have been
brought there wrapped up in a fairy woman's apron.  You wouldn't know
about that kind of rustic lore."

Wouldn't I?"  She proceeded to give him chapter and verse of the tale
of the disappearing lake; how Nora, a fairy woman from Killarney, had
carried one of the lakes of Killarney in her apron to oblige another
fairy woman in Upper Kilsheelin when there was a drought there.  "It
was on the strict understanding that it was to be returned, but when
years passed Nora had to come and fetch it away in her apron.
Scientists give all kinds of highfalutin explanations for its strange
behaviour, but," she paused to blow a curl up from her forehead, 'that
is the true explanation."

She really believes it, he thought, as he watched her eyes turned dark
purple and wistful.  He felt that he was being privileged to glimpse
that remote and lovely world she had known in childhood.

"I forgot," he said, 'that you had a family hard to keep you posted in
lore and legend."

"It was not the hard," she said dreamily, 'it was Young Thomas who told
me about Nora and the lake."

"Is Young Thomas your brother?"

Had he said something wrong again?  The look of dreaming reminiscence
that had made her face look like some soft flower was shuttered inside
its everyday mask of cool stillness.  She did

not reply.  Voices sounded on the river behind them.  Two men were
getting into a boat.  A woman with a maid wheeling a bassinette waved
to them then turned back up the hill.

Sterrin recognised the scar-faced man.  The other was the man who had
rested under the hedge earlier in the day.  The woman must be the girl
who had promised to wait for Bergin the whole seventeen years of his
sentence.  What must it have felt like, that glorious moment of
reunion?  And it was the girl who had made that possible; she it was
who had gone on waiting.  The man had but to return.  Dear God, why
didn't I?

The other man was speaking to her.  "I should like to apologise to your
Ladyship for the way that I spoke to you yesterday."  Before she could
answer he went on: "That house up there," he said, pointing to the
remains of the fine stone house that had been his home, 'is more than a
mass of stones and rafters.  My father, my grandfather, aye and his
grandfather were born there and died there.  My seven children were
born there; two of them died there.  Something of all our lives went
into those stones and rafters.  It had a double door."  He was
reminiscing to himself now.  "The inner one blew away the night of the
Big Wind.  When we were replacing it my father added an outer one that
would stand up to any storm.  Mavrone!  What chance had it against the
crowbar?"  He came back to his surroundings.  "I beg your Ladyship's
pardon for forcing my troubles on you.  I only intended asking if you
had any objection to my going on up there to steal a piece of soil to
bring with me to America.  Maybe it will bring luck to whatever land I
may be able to come by over there."

A joyless laugh grated out from Bergin in the stern.  "Steal a sod of
his own soil.  The soil that belonged to the Graces--both sides of this
river--since the Graces were sovereigns of Kilkenny and Kilkenny was
the sovereign city of Ireland."  A stroke of his oar carried the boat
past her without waiting for her permission.

Donal watched her seat herself on the river bank.  He couldn't know
that her knees had started to give way.  The hard had told her about a
man called Grace who had mustered four hundred men from these parts to
fight with King James at the Battle of the Boyne.  King William's great
general had been so impressed with him that when the battle was over
and Grace heading home with his forty survivors, he sent a message
after

him offering him high honours if he would join the victorious
Orangemen.  Grace read the tempting offer then on the back of the Six
of Diamonds he scribbled his reply.  "I despise your offer."

And here was his descendant ousted from his land by the man to whom she
was wife; begging her permission to steal a sod.  She put her hands to
her face and wept as she had not wept since her discovery of
Mickey-the-turf stealing the jelly that she had been sacrificing before
the shrine of the Child Jesus that the famine might end.  The sacrifice
of her marriage, though it had saved Kilsheelin and its tenants, seemed
almost as futile as that of the jelly.  It had not been able to save
those six hundred families.  The horror of that spectacle of the
morning, the horror that she had suppressed last night, came forth now
in a bursting dam of tears.

Suddenly her hands were drawn away from her face; a big fragrant
handkerchief dried her eyes and face.  She was helped to her feet.
"There is no sense of sitting around on damp grass."  Donal was
coughing as he spoke.  "That's what gave me this," he tapped his chest
with his free hand, 'the night that you came to our place for that sod.
By the way, did you find the one that I tied to your leathers the next
night?" She nodded.

They walked in silence for a moment, his hand still holding hers.  She
glanced sideways at him through the porn-poms that dangled from her
sports hat.  The fine skin of his face flushes too readily, she
thought.  It wasn't just a cough he caught that night when she had gone
twice to Poolgower.

"I thought you, too, wanted to take a sod to America," he said.  She
could never let him know why she had been there.  And then with a
sudden, angry clarity she realised that it was for the same reason that
she was here in this place; to save Kilsheelin from the Keatings; from
the threat of that loathsome elder brother.  Donal felt his hand
vacated as though it wexe a contamination.  She hurried ahead.  The
triangles of silk peeping through the slits of her sports skirt made a
sound like an angry sail flapping against the mast.  "Bring back the
field in an apron inagh!"  She stopped and confronted him.  "What about
those other fields?"  x

Donal was lighthearted.  He couldn't keep up with her moods; besides he
had not had breakfast.

"My Lady," he stammered, 'they were bought in open market.

They were offered for sale '

"The castle was not offered for sale.  Your brother gloated to me that
he was going to get it, that '

"My brother did that?  Lady Devine, I swear to you *

"Oh, don't tell me that you knew nothing.  You are all chickens of the
blue hen.  Your brother did worse than that, let me tell you."
Instantly she was sorry; she was taking a mean advantage of a guest; a
vulnerable one.  He looked white enough to faint.  "What did James's
James do?  What in God's name could the lout have done?  I must know
what it was that he did, Lady Devine."

She shook her head.  "It is finished.  I ought not to have mentioned
it.  Anyway, I've halted his march."  He watched her eyes narrow and
the soft mouth crumple into something like bitterness.  "At least, in
our direction."

He took a step towards her.  "You are speaking of things that I swear
to you I know nothing of.  It is hard for you to believe that; but by
heavens I shall get to the root of it.  Whatever wrong has been done
you shall be righted."

She looked at him for a long moment and when she finally spoke he was
shocked at the dull despair in the clear young voice.  "There is
nothing that you can do.  What is done can never be undone; never!"

And then Donal knew with a certainty that lashed him, that she was
speaking of her marriage.  He saw her as he had seen her this morning,
confronting those hostile servants; a spray of starry clematis plucked
from its protecting wall; a white moth torn by rough hands.  Suddenly
he saw his brother's hands, big, unkempt.  He saw them impatiently
brushing aside flowers because they were a waste of useful ground; saw
them knocking to the floor his wife's exquisite miniatures because they
were time absorbers for the children who ought to have absorbed her
leisure.  He saw those hands plucking at the clematis; tearing the
moth's white wings; depriving it for ever of freedom.  He turned from
the sight.  "Where are you going?"  He had not realised that he had
turned from her too.  "I am going away.  It is the only thing that I
can do."  She knew what he meant; then a movement caught her eye.  The
lodge-keeper was opening the gates for the shooting brake.  Panic
seized her.  They were coming back, hex husband and the rest, to
enclose her.  She was alone as she had been when she sent Thomas from
the wall gap.  Only

then she was confident that some unchartered vista of freedom lay
ahead.  Today she was trapped.

She knew she must not let this Donal Keating go out of her life.  There
was an affinity between them that was not with these others.  They had
mutual acquaintances: like Fairy Nora and her apronful of lake; and
wouldn't the tale of the flying field sound as improbable a piece of
magic to these others as that of the disappearing lake?  She seized the
hand that she had dropped the moment before.  "Listen, let us end the
land dispute; for ever."  He tried to think of something to say;
something high sounding that would abjure and repudiate all that his
family had meant to her; he wanted to drop to his knee and proffer her
the sword chat he had never possessed.  "If the damned field," she was
saying, 'had to fall upon anyone I'm glad that it fell on you."

He was moved by her inelegant phrase.  He raised her hand to his lips
and said, "My Lady, you'd coax a haggert full of sparrows."

They watched the cart with the 'bag' move away from the wagonette
towards the back premises.  They could see the great pyramid of
slaughtered birds.  "And now," murmured Donal, 'the Lord sent a flight
of quails over the sea and down to where the camp was."

"What is that about quails?"

"I was referring to a "shoot" in the desert; a flight of quails that
came miraculously to feed the Jews in their y wandering after the
Diaspora."

"Diaspora!  Fancy your using that word!"

He had to remind himself of the enormity of his brother's presuming to
prevent himself making a cynical reply.  He thought she was being
patronising about his learning.

"Yes," she went on, 'this morning as I watched those homeless people I
bethought of how Papa described the famine emigrations as the Diaspora
of the Gaels She stopped dead.

"Quails, did you say?  What price pheasants?  Come on, Donal."

The amazement of the kitchen staff at the spectacle of her Ladyship
coming to the kitchen was duplicated in the yard men at the spectacle
of her sprinting into the yard and breathlessly ordering them to stop
unloading the bag.  One of them ventured something abour Mr.  Wilson's
instructions, but Sterrin merely called to Donal to climb up.

"Cl-climb up!  On that?  You are not going

"I am."  She had the horse started towards the gate as the gamekeeper's
phaeton drove in.  There were contented puffs rising from Mr.  Wilson's
pipe.  It had been a brave day.  And a powerful brave bag.  Allowing
for a couple of dozen for the table and gifts, the rest would be his
perquisite.  Suddenly his eyes gaped.  His mouth opened and out fell
his fine pipe and crashed in pieces on the floorboards.

The gamekeeper was far too prosaic a man to imagine things.  Much less
to imagine that it was her Ladyship who was sitting up there driving a
farm cart.  Then he saw a young gentleman clambering all over the
precious birds.  This was carrying a prank too far.  A prank?  The
young gentleman, as he passed, was protesting to her Ladyship that her
gesture would be none the less charitable for having been carried out
by a workman.

"A workman," said Sterrin, forcing the gamekeeper's phaeton out of her
path, 'would have been challenged by him, and by then my hus--by then
the others would have been on the scene.  Anyway don't be prissy.  My
mother Carried a six-foot woman for over a mile to a soup kitchen; and
didn't you say that the Lord drove a flight of quails down to where the
camp was?"  Donal wondered if the Israelites had looked like these
homeless ones; gazing at the beautiful apparition that had come to
suc6our them in their dereliction.  "Cead mile blessings," murmured an
old woman.  "Manna from Heaven!"  Children eating slices of hot bread
gathered round the cart.

"Not manna," Sterrin smiled at the woman.  "Just quails and I'm afraid
not from Heaven."

A man lifted out a brace of birds.  "Beggin' your Lady's pardon, them's
not quails; them's a sight better; them's pheasants."

Sterrin tightened herself against the flutter of fear at the sight of
her husband standing grim and ominous in the middle of the stable yard.
But her first word scattered the protest that was intended to
annihilate her.  "Jocelyn," she called out, dropping-for the first
time--his title, 'it has been marvelous!  I haven't driven in a farm
wagon since I was a little girl."  He resisted a thrill of exultation.
She had succumbed like all those who had gone before her; that mnemonic
array of beautiful women.  The great lover was restored to his prowess.
He turned to her and his joy withered to anger.  In the amethyst depths
of her eyes he saw mockery.  "The bag," he gritted.  "The birds; what
have you done

with them?"  He hated the sound imposed upon his voice by his
unpolished agitation.

"The bag?"  She withdrew her hand and waved it towards the gentlemen
who were discussing the day's sport at the hall door.  "Captain Saint
John, my husband and I are discussing the bag.  Really I haven't seen
anything like it since since my father's time, but," she beamed around
the circle, "I have a confession to make.  Already I have taken a
liberty with your trophy for some of my less fortunate friends."
Captain Saint John knew what she meant.  He glanced at his host.  Could
the loss of a few birds cause a man to show such naked venom?  And how
much longer could this pinioned beauty continue to oppose her husband?
The other men gathered around their charming young hostess.  To have
given her pleasure, they insisted conferred the accolade upon their
day's achievement.  It was an interesting moment.  Sir Jocelyn was
prevented from replying by the arrival of an enormous and
eccentric-looking carriage drawn by two spanking greys.  "The
Delaneys," cried Sterrin delightedly.

Sir Jocelyn raised the mobile eyebrow.  "I understood that they had
written to be excused."

"Oh, I suspected that that was just shortage of ball-gowns.  I sent a
note this morning by the bia driver not to miss the Assizes' Ball for
the sake of a ball-gown."

"Hm, lack of a ball-gown would not deter you from your purpose.  Did
the demoiselles Delaney not have at least one grandfather?"

Smilingly, she tossed him back his thrust.  "The Delaney grandfather,
Sir Dowling, was only five feet high.  My grandfather was six feet
four.  One can do a lot with breeches of that size."

Sterrin and Sir Jocelyn were moving towards the carriage, to all
appearances chatting cosily while the ritual of Mrs.  Delaney's arrival
was enacted; her babet1 removed, her bonnet that dangled from a hook in
the roof, donned and tied, the little red carpeted staircase unfolded
from somewhere inside the unfashionable high carriage and placed
carefully in position by the faithful Ned Rua.

Mrs.  Delaney was very much the Grande Dame as she greeted her host.
Sterrin was surprised at such unwonted formality from the friendly and
uninhibited lady.  She learned the reason

1 An indoor headgear worn by ladies of fashion.

for it as she led her up the stairs.  "I had no intention of entering
this house ever again," said Mrs.  Delaney, 'but I took it kindly your
writing today about the ball-gowns.  I had not the heart to deprive
them of the Ball, but," she halted on a step, "Sterrin O'Carroll, is it
a thing that your father's daughter could not raise a hand to prevent
six hundred people from being turned from their homes?"

"She could not."

Mrs.  Delaney looked up startled at the abrupt tone.  The face in front
of her had the same unreadable look that it had on its owner's wedding
day; and the dear knows happiness is easy enough to read.

Mrs.  Delaney's gaze followed the great pillars of black marble that
rose up all the way to the roof whose ceiling was of the brothers Adam,
then on to the walls whose panels Angelica Hoffman had painted.  "The
waste of it," she murmured.  And then, surprisingly, for her, she
quoted, "Unless God build the house they labour in vain that dwell
there."

Sterrin interrupted the meditations to ask why Rory had not come.

"Rory has gone to America."

You don't mean that he has--emigrated?"

Mrs.  Delaney gave a sad little nod.  "The sons of the gentry are
emigrating, too; but the prosperity is slow catching up on them until
they forget their gentility."

Sterrin, conditioned from childhood to the awareness of suffering, saw
that it had taken the parting from Rory, the heir born miraculously
after ten daughters, to bring out at last on his mother's face all the
strain of the poverty and debt that dogged the surviving landlords of
the famine era.  "I've made my son an exile.  I carried my tenants on
my back; your father too; six hundred!  *

Sterrin, after a brief vision of Mrs.  Delaney carrying her Papa on her
back the way Mamma had carried Mrs.  Holohan, deciphered the ambiguity.
Even her closest friends, kin to her father who had carried her own
tenants upon his back, were charging her with a share in the guilt of
this fiendish eviction.  She would never escape from it.  Panic gripped
her; she must get out from here; to where?  Not another gallop-by-night
to the convent.

The girls were giving little ecstatic shrieks.  Sterrin had pre509
ceded them to their room where gowns, exquisite beyond their wildest
dreams, were arrayed for their choosing.  Mrs.  Delaney, softened by
Sterrin's thoughtfulness, sought to make amends.  She asked about the
day's shoot; when she heard its amount her sporting enthusiasm was
stirred.  "That should be worth seeing.  I must go down."

"No, no."  The girls stopped their fitting and preening to look towards
their hostess.  Sterrin O'Carroll had been held up to them always as an
example of poise and ladylike control.  There was nothing poised about
her expression now; nor about the sound of her voice.  It was almost
hysterical; over nothing.

Sterrin explained about the bag.  And then, childishly needing to be
understood, she told about the bread.

Mrs.  Delaney looked at her with something like awe.  "You got bread
baked here for six hundred people?  That took more than kindness.  It
took courage; and high courage."  But Sterrin felt only guilt for their
praise.

"Courage," she repeated dully.  "It feels more like cheek; like
offering a poor woman one of her own halfpennies when you have stolen
her savings."

All the county was at the Assizes' Ball that night.  Sterrin, entering
on her husband's arm caused quite a stir.  This was the first public
appearance of the bride of the wealthy Sir Jocelyn.  Her beauty, they
had heard, matched his wealth; and her diablerie, by all accounts,
matched that of the Castiglions and Metternichs of the French courts.
Her gown, people said, must be the dernier cri that had silenced the
creak of the crinoline.  A deaf dowager raised her lorgnettes.  "What's
all the fuss about?  It is a striking gown, but not revealing."

The judge's wife murmured into the dowager's ear trumpet that while the
gown did not reveal it definitely suggested.  The dowager had an
absent-minded way of putting her ear trumpet to her mouth to reply.
"Suggestion is the secret of allure."  The statement came in a trumpet
blast and everyone stopped to listen.  "When I was a girl the
ball-gowns held open display and the gentlemen wouldn't trouble to give
a second look.  What is concealed yet discreetly suggested is much more
provocative."  Everyone looked towards the target of the trumpet
blasts. Sterrin felt naked.

The colonel of whatever regiment supplied the band had the privilege of
leading out the lady of his choice in the first folk

dance of the programme.  The Deputy Lieutenant's wife, anticipating
the honour, started to compress her hoops.  The judge's wife likewise
snapped her fan shut.  The bandmaster waited with raised baton.  The
colonel bowed before young Lady Devine.  The chosen lady had the
privilege of calling the tune, "I think," she murmured after demure
reflection, 'that I should like Paddies Evermore."  She ignored her
husband's startled protest and went on, "You see, it was written by his
Lordship, Mr.  Justice O'Hagan."

The colonel beckoned a subaltern.  "That should please our legal
guests," he beamed.  The subaltern was stammering; making no move to
go.  "Hurry!"  snapped the colonel.  The subaltern hurried; the
bandsman passed on his instruction, then turned in consternation.  Next
minute the subaltern was back whispering to the colonel, "Egad!  Do you
tell me so?  A rebel song?"  Down the length of the room, the dancers
ranged in formation, every right foot poised, heard the exclamation.
The Deputy Lieutenant's wife had been led out by the judge.  She gave
him a look of perplexity.  But the judge was wishing for someone to
lead himself out: out from this embarrassing dilemma.  The song had
been written by his learned colleague back in the days when a coterie
of young barristers had helped Davis to sound in verse the Reveille of
a whole people.  The judge had written a few incendiary verses himself
at that time.  But legal honours had dimmed the vision of young
patriotism, and the judge's ermine had muffled the last sound of its
clamour.  Now here he was, expected to dance to a tune for which he
would have indicted these people had they been ranged before his Bench
instead of on the floor of a ballroom.

But the lady of the dance had stopped for her green brocade train.
Donal and two juniors draped it over her arm.  The dance began, topped
and tailed by the Assize judge, and the Colonel of Her Majesty's 49th
Foot, footing it to as seditious a sound as ever jailed a rebel.  '...
our fathers bled of yore," carolled a group of juniors as they stood
during the Ladies' Chain.  "And we stand here today like them, True
Paddies Evermore."

The colonel's bow was short at the finish.  "A bit rebellious, my
Lady," he said mopping his brow.  "I shouldn't have thought such
sentiments were quite your dish of tea."  Sterrin gave him a knowing
look over her fan.

"I did hear the sentiments from the ear trumpet; about what

is concealed being more discreetly provocative."

This time his bow was more clanking.  You have a nimble wit, my Lady,"
he said and he forgot sedition in the reflection that the eyes that
were twinkling at him were as bright as the diamonds in the lovely hair
above them.

Sterrin forgot things too.  Her saucy victory, as she led her mainly
mutinous corps down the ballroom, had gone to her head to mix with the
praise and the clamouring for dances.  She was exalted.  She remembered
only that she was young.  Overhead a thousand candles bent with heat
and sent their weary substance dripping down to bespatter the shoulders
of her partners.  She stopped troubling to peal off the particles of
hot wax that landed on her face and neck; even dared to dim out the
brilliance of her diamonds.

The depression returned as she left the ball in the stark light of
dawn.  All around the carriage stood the homeless; in groups 11 or
moving a few paces and stopping, afraid to fall asleep less they be
arrested for vagrancy.  Sir Jocelyn could scarcely wait |i for her to
enter the carriage to start the attack about her choice *' of tune;
about her public degradation of her husband, of her_, self.  "Sheer
clowning; nothing else; in the worst possible taste."  I

Sterrin lay back on the upholstery with eyes closed, wishing I that
Mrs.  Delaney would hurry on so that they could get away from these
despairing looks that reproached her to the bone.  Her husband might as
well have been whistling jigs to milestones.  "You should display some
concern for the feelings of others."  |{

Sterrin sat up abruptly and faced him.  "The feelings of others?"  she
repeated very softly.  She swept a gesture towards the window.  "Do you
mean the feelings of these out there?"

"I mean," he snapped, 'the feelings of Colonel de la Sarthe.  He paid
me a great tribute when he honoured you."

Sterrin went deflated.  Everything that she did seemed to turn >

back on her.  The business of the bread yesterday.  A daisy in a PI

bull's mouth!  The purloining of the 'bag'; a childish escapade.  *'

The choice of a dance tune; boorish ness  Mrs.  Delaney got herself
inside at last.

"You led that poor colonel the divil's own dance, Sterrin.  Yourself
and your Paddies Evermore I'

She eased herself back against the upholstery.  "And as for the judge,
he looked as though he were dancing on a hot gridiron."

The icy silence recalled to Mrs.  Delaney the legend of the children
who had danced on the hot gridirons.  She decided that she was not
making a fist of her conversational gambits.  Before she could think of
something to amend her lapse a stone was flung at the carriage.

Suddenly, strangely, a long-forgotten scene came to Sterrin's mind.  A
hunger-maddened mob was raiding Wright's bread van.  It overflowed
around the pony trap.  The terrified governess had dropped the reins
and allowed the pony to bolt while she sat there screaming her terror.
An adult, Papa had said that night when Sterrin awoke from a nightmare,
should control her fears; at least in the presence of a child.  And
here was her husband, his aplomb shattered, screaming like a woman for
the footmen; for the police.

When the police arrived the crowd had vanished in the direction of the
workhouse.  Sir Jocelyn turned in fury to Sterrin.  "There go your
"Paddies evermore".  They stone you for your pains, then run to the
workhouse to shelter at my expense '

"At two and twopence halfpenny per pauper per week," said Mrs.  Delaney
and the dignified modulation, so different from her usual offhand
speech, compelled his attention.  "They will not burden you for long;
the expectation of life maintained at that price level is very short
indeed."

"Anyway," said Sterrin, 'they ought not to be hunted by police for
simply throwing a stone.  If anyone had made me homeless I should not
be satisfied with a stone.  I should fire a bullet."

The English footman, fussing with Sir Jocelyn's lap rug, was caught off
guard.  He gave a startled gasp.  Sir Jocelyn dismissed him with an
angry flip.  He would like to have dismissed Mrs.  Delaney, too, but at
least she had the good taste to go to sleep; deeply asleep, since no
lady in possession of her senses would snore like that in the presence
of a gentleman.

He leaned towards Sterrin.  "Now I know," he started.  Sterrin's head
was leaning towards Mrs.  Delaney's shoulder, He shook her knee but her
head landed comfortably.  TJsten to me," he whispered.  She replied
with a gentle snore; then for good measure she added a little nasal
click like Mrs.  Delaney's.

After breakfast the younger members of the house-party were assembled
on the lawn as eager for their morning's ride as if they had slept all
night.  Some of the mounted grooms wore

massive belts for the support of the more fragile young ladies who
took their horse exercise pillion style.  Sterrin was scandalised to
see Belle Delaney mounting a block and taking her place behind a groom.
Belle, like herself, had always scorned the mounting block.  Much less
to ride pillion!  And then Mrs.  Delaney, of all people, hurried out
and linked the hooks in her daughter's buckle to the one at the back of
the groom's belt.

"Mrs.  Delaney," Sterrin called, 'what on earth is Belle doing riding
pillion?"

"Doctor's orders."  Then grasping Sterrin's bridle she reached up and
whispered, "Internal."

"What!"  A thrill of delicious horror ran through Sterrin.  Tm
surprised at you to think such a thing," said Mrs.  Delaney.  "The girl
may be a bit of a tomboy in the way of riding but she has never been
permitted to forget that she is a lady.  Knows nothing about that kind
of thing; doesn't know how she came into the world, thank heavens.  It
is just that these doctors are finding out more about our insides.  I
told Doctor Drennan that he was insulting us.  Cut him dead at the
Meet."

Sterrin's mount was growing restive.  "Be careful of yourself, too,
Sterrin.  You've had one miscarriage already."  "What!"

"Oh, now," said Mrs.  Delaney, soothingly.  "Sure it is no secret that
you had a terrible miscarriage as a result of your little walk the
wrong way up in front of the Emperor."  "Who said that?"  Sterrin's
voice was very quiet.  "Oh," she was informed, "Sir Jocelyn himself
said it, well, not in so many words but he inferred it."

Sterrin turned her horse's head towards the avenue.  But her mind was
seething.  Now she knew that Sir Jocelyn, suspecting that she had
swapped confidences with the little ex-comte sse in Paris, had found a
way to hit back.

She brought her whip down and the horse rose in the air before
galloping wildly down the park.  Grooms with pillion riders were hard
set to restrain their mounts that stampeded in pursuit.  She cleared
the park and a field before steadying to a canter.

Voices hallo oed and Eva Delaney reined alongside.  "Phew!"  she
gasped. "You've led us a nice dance.  Like you did last night.  Shall I
ever forget the bandmaster's face when you asked for Paddies Evermore.
Hadn't you the nerve?"  When there was no

answer she said, "Do you know, I don't believe, Sterrin, that you have
heard one word that I've been saying."

Sterrin recollected herself.  "By the way," she said, 'it must be an
affliction on Belle to have to ride pillion."  Eva shrugged.

"This was my turn for the riding habit.  Belle wore it to the
Maryborough Show last week."

Sterrin turned and regarded Eva's costume.  If anything it was more
perfectly cut than her own.  "Nothing but the best material; the most
flawless cut, would satisfy Mrs*.  Delaney for her own or her family's
riding clothes.  They were never very strong on gowns but at least they
always had one riding costume apiece.  Fancy Mrs.  Delaney covering up
with such an outrageous whopper.

Then there's nothing wrong with her health?"

"Oh, she has some trouble with the interior mystery; but nothing that a
riding habit wouldn't cure as far as keeping her from riding is
concerned.  Didn't Mamma hunt all day until a half an hour before Belle
was born?  That's why Belle is still expected to believe that she was
found in a covert.  Come on, I'll race you to the gap."

The two tore across the field, a splendid pair of horsewomen, superbly
matched and mounted.  The others slowed to watch and cheer.  Beyond the
gap lay the road gate.  Eva made for it and soared over.  Sterrin, in
the act of following, recalled the scene she had jumped into yesterday
morning.  She turned aside; Donal followed her.  The others jumped the
gate after Eva.

Donal strove to keep pace with Sterrin.  The railroad tracks intruded.
She took them with a jump and landed safely on the far side.  Donal,
leading his horse along the embankment, saw her slow to speak to a
group of children.  They were running and screaming after a
blue-cloaked woman.  Sterrin spurred after her.  "Why don't you wait
for the children?"  she demanded.

"Don't stop me," the woman panted.  When she raised her head the folds
of her hood fell away from a fleshy growth beneath her chin.  Tm going
to America," she said.

"And deserting your children?"  Sterrin was horrified.  The woman never
slowed.  "God forbid!  It is to have them with me that I'm going to
work for another home over there."  A train whistle sounded.  The woman
doubled her speed; behind her the children called frantically.  "He
turned us out."  The words came in breathless sobs.  "Out of our lovely
home an' their father she

choked--'their father not three weeks dead."

Round the bend came a puff of smoke.  She raised her arm high over her
head and waved towards the train.  "Mammy!  Mammy!"  The smallest
toddler had stumbled and fallen.  Its mother returned and lifted the
child in a fierce caress and covered its face with kisses.  "My baby;
my baby.  Here, Storeen!"  She shoved a penny into its hand.  "Buy
sweets.  Mammy will be back tonight."  She put the child down and
fled.

The train halted.  The guard reached out, took the bundle, and the
little peeping sod of the ground from which she had been uprooted and
drew her gently inside.  "Keep clear of the line, children.  Your mammy
will be back shortly."

Donal came to his senses as the train moved off.  He grasped the
carriage window and galloped alongside.  "Do you know where you are
going to?  Have you friends over there?"  She leaned out.  "I'll be all
right that way, sir.  I'm goin' to a place a few miles beyond America,
Quebec, it's called.  There's a neighbour's son works there, or in the
next plough land from it.  He'll get me a situation."  The train pulled
ahead of Donal.

Sterrin was squatting among the children, the reins looped over her
arm; just as he had seen her on that first occasion.  A girl crouching
in the moonlight, curls tumbling over her forehead, her arm linked
through the reins of a horse that muzzled at her hair.  She rose to her
feet and squeezed the handkerchief that had mopped their little wet
faces.  "Does she know where she is going?"  The children could not
hear what the beautiful lady was whispering to the gentleman.  He
continued to look after the train while he replied.  "She is going
across the world to '

a place called Quebec where anyone will tell her the way to her
neighbour's son in the next plough land  He raised his hat to |'

wards the vanishing train.  "God carry you safely," he said grimly, 'to
that next plough land  It is probably a thousand miles from Quebec."

Sir Jocelyn was replacing one of his precious birds when his K

wife burst into his silent aviary.  Words came tumbling from her;
nameless babies; a mother torn from her children; travelling alone to
some unknown destination at the other side of the world.  "Get her
back!  The express train would overtake her.  Bring her back to her
poor little children."

He held the bird up to the light.  "I do believe that there is a chip
in the eye of this bird and, yes, the setting is loose.  How on

earth can that have happened."

"God'll mighty!"  she stormed, 'you are not a dummy like like these
lumps of metal.  You have a soul.  You have to face your God.  You are
answerable for these children.  For the fate of their mother '

"I shall have to send to Dublin for a silversmith he murmured gently.
He replaced the bird on its polished branch.  "No, I shall go there
myself though I suppose that means that I must wait until the
house-party has finished.  I must not take you away from your
guests."

Words halted themselves within her in a shocked surge.  Nobody could be
this callous.  Nobody in all God's world!  "I shall take myself away."
At last she said, "It would be a crime for me to continue to live here
and sanction such such abominations."

He came close to her.  "Where will you go to, my dear?  To Bankrupt
Castle?  Or perhaps to Quebec and send back later for your own homeless
ones?"

A feeling of futility assailed her and suddenly she knew it again for
the feeling she had experienced in those bleak, almost food less days
of the famine when the great sacrifice of her precious jelly had turned
into something ridiculous.

"They shall be homeless you know; if you withdraw your collateral."

"Collateral?  Isn't that something in a bank?  And isn't that an
unnecessary taunt?  I don't possess such a thing."

"Oh, but you do, my dear.  Collateral has many forms.  Clever women use
their bodies as collateral; as you did."

He watched her deep-set eyes rise level to their brink.  They became
like painted eyes done in primitive colour upon bleached white linen;
then he saw her crop go up and he sidestepped like a dancing master. It
landed on the bird that he had replaced and sent it clattering to the
floor.

The silence stretched out like doom.  Gradually she became aware of the
way he was looking at her.  His lips were drawn back over the maroon
gutta percha gums of his false teeth.  She felt a shiver.  "I have told
you," he was saying, thin and low, 'that some day you might go too far.
This, I think is the day."

There was no time to assess the meaning of his remark; no time to carry
out her threat of a dramatic departure.  The guests were waiting for
her and tonight those little motherless children would be waiting also.
She had arranged with them.  But the

devil himself, she felt, was inside the younger guests that evening.
There was no getting away.  They clamoured for carpet dancing,
charades, treasure hunts; anything rather than dissipate their festive
spirits in sleep.

When she finally escaped she had to weave in and out through the
concealed paths of the maze and hug the margin of the artificial lake
where the soldiery dare not intrude.  The Brennan children gazed at her
in awe.  Her shimmering cloak suggested to them a church; something on
a pedestal or on a stained glass window.  Worth had called it his
espera turn cloak but he had never designed it for concealing a big
kitchen basket of food.

The four of them gathered round the basket and timidly savoured the
wonderful dainties that she had brought to them.  Soon food and
friendliness released their tongues.

The eldest boy, the little girls were saying, had a terrible distance
to go.  He was staying with relatives miles off.  The other three were
divided among two households.  They had to be disposed of that way,
unobtrusively, since the law forbade any householder to take in evicted
tenants or their families.

The hug she gave them at parting had more than pity in its warmth.  It
had something of affinity.  And though it had saddened her to find that
they were not to have at least the solace of each other's company there
was a new excitement in her wistfulness.

She hurried away, making plans for them in a surge of compassion.  She
had moved from the grass back to the ornamental paths when she heard
footsteps behind her.  Her heart lurched.  Inside or outside, there was
no place here that was free from the hauntings of those little children
and their ghostly footsteps!  The darkness of the night with its great
immensity of stars turned all the world into a ghostliness.  She
quickened to a run.  The footsteps became less ghostlike.  She turned.
"So it's you!"

She was in no mood for Donal Keating.  Her cloak caught in one of the
walls of toparied yew.  Donal released it.

"You remind me," he said, 'of Queen Elizabeth of Hungary with her
basket of food that turned into roses when her tyrannical husband
overtook her on her errand of mercy.  Allow me."  He reached for the
basket then dropped his arm abruptly.  She had pulled the basket in
close to herself.  He misinterpreted the gesture.  "Forgive me my
familiarity," he said, 'the remark about

Queen Elizabeth's husband was not intended to be personal."

The basket started to cut through the folds of her cloak and dress with
the dint of her clutching; for suddenly, it was holding again the food
that she was sneaking off to the young Ryanduvs, the children of her
father's foster-brother and someone had made a grab at it; someone with
black curls and curvy lips that were demanding: "Who do you think you
are?  Queen Elizabeth of Hungary?  I've a good mind to tell your papa."
A dire threat.  Papa would have seen fit to spank her if he were to
discover that she had exposed herself to the risk of famine fever by
stinting her own nourishment.

"I must leave tomorrow."

She came back to her surroundings.  Oh dear, he's getting hurry again.
And small blame to him.  How could he be expected to keep up with her
moods when she could not keep track with them herself.  She had come
out tonight resolved to stop playing at life.  The plight of that woman
parting from her children had finally jolted Sterrin into reality.

"Oh, please don't go on taking offence.  Don't go.  You've got to help
me with those children."  She told him about the way they had been
severed from each other.  "How could their uncle do such a thing to
them?  Their mother left money with him for their keep."

"He dar en risk eviction for himself and his own children.  The terror
of eviction chills natural humanity."

At the corner of the house they parted; for all the world like
sweethearts, thought Hannah as she waited for Sterrin at the
conservatory door.

Captain Saint John, returning from the camp felt much as Hannah did. He
felt disappointed too.  Somehow, it dimmed his image of her that she
should be conducting an illicit intrigue.  She had looked so gallant
this morning fighting her lone battle for those unfortunate wretches.
Who could have drawn her heart?  The hall light flashed on the face of
the young barrister chap who had been with her among the flour bins.

In the drawing-room Sterrin came straight to the captain.  "I have been
looking for you, Captain Saint John.  I hear that you sing
beautifully."  And you, he thought, lie as beautifully as you do
everything else.

"You can't have looked too far," he murmured.  "I too, was outside."
His glance flickered towards Donal.  Before she could

answer, Sir Jocelyn came up and led her towards the harp.  The title
of the piece that he had chosen for her to play was Moore's Love Thee
Dearest.

The jewels on her fingers flashed as she plucked a defiant ripple from
the strings.  Til play one of the songs that our old hard taught me."
The opening Line was a mother's reproach to her daughter.  "Is there
ne'er a man in Ireland to please your discontent?"  Sterrin looked
straight at the captain as she sang the reply.  "There are men enough
in Ireland but none at all for me.  For I never loved but one young man
and he's beyond the sea."

Was she trying to convey to him, the captain wondered, that he had
misjudged what he had just seen outside?  That the young man who parted
with her so stealthily and who was looking at her now with such
adoration meant nothing to her?  He glanced at his host to see how he
was taking the song; but there was nothing to be gleaned there.  Sir
Jocelyn was gazing down at his young wife, his courtesy a walled city
about him.  The captain felt a thrust of distaste, and then, a sense of
relief at the realisation that his duty here would end tomorrow.
Evicting women and children; battering down their homes, was not his
idea of martial glory.  But his gaze returned to the gold-clad figure
at the harp, this lovely enigma was perilously near his idea of
feminine glory.

On the morrow others were finding excuses for abrupt departures.  The
atmosphere of the evictions was beginning to pall; the presence of the
military; the reproachful eyes of the homeless.  Landlords, themselves
not over-lenient, sent their servants with messages of polite regret.
Unforeseen circumstances, they were all pleading, forced them to cancel
their acceptances for the functions, the concerts and plays in the
private theatre, the banquets, the balls that had been planned for this
elaborate house-party.  One message of regret enclosed a clipping from
the London Times setting the final seal on the general disapproval.
"Sir Jocelyn Devine," it said, 'has always done things on a massive
scale.  He maintained his standards in these recent evictions ... the
affair at Kilkenny," it concluded, 'was not fragrant."

Sterrin's heart sank into utter misery when a letter came from
Kilsheelin cancelling Lady O'Carroll's visit.  She had been counting
the hours until she would meet her mother again.

When the last guest had departed Sterrin was summoned to the silver
aviary.  Her husband was holding the bird she had damaged.  "Isn't it
time," he said, without looking up from his scrutiny of the bird, 'that
Clooreen was brought here from Kilsheelin?"

"Naturally, she will come here when she has foaled," she replied. 
"That was understood."

"In that case there is no further need for her to remain there.  I
desire you to go to Kilsheelin and see to her transfer yourself."  He
went on stroking the bird as though he were soothing the wound of a
living creature.  She restrained an urge to knock it out of his hand.
It looked so lumpish compared to a live bird captured in one's grasp.
No substance; but warm; and soft with the frantic beat of life.  So
Clooreen had foaled.  She suppressed another impulse.  She must not ask
him what it was, a filly?  a colt?  She must show no enthusiasm for
anything; for anyone.  And what the devil's father was he up to?  He
had but to despatch grooms for the mare.  Was it thinking of selling
Clooreen that he was?  At last he looked up at her.  "I leave for
Dublin next week."

She made no sign.  Her face was masked over with the stillness that had
once captured him.  No eager questions about the horse.  Where was the
girl who had chased his carriage down Kilsheelin avenue to thank him
for the gift of Clooreen; the beautiful lips panting out words and
breaths that blew warmly against his face?  "On urgent business," he
added.  No question of her accompanying him, though she was free now of
her hostess duties.  But still she made no comment.  He was up to
something; something of more significance than the repairing of that
shapeless lump of silver in his hand.  What matter!  She was going to
Kilsheelin; and on her own!  An unhoped-for joy.  She would bring her
grandest gowns to divert Mamma.  Poor Mamma, who had had to experience
the ignominy of having rude comments about Evictions shouted after her
carriage,

A week later, on the eve of his departure, Sir Jocelyn suffered another
rush of blood to his head.  Sterrin, counting the hours till her first
meeting with her mamma since her wedding, had to cancel her visit to
Kilsheelin.  She was compelled to spend long hours in the sick-room
reading wearisome newspaper reports that he could have got his
secretary to read.  He kept making her go back over big words that she
had mispronounced.  One day,

when he had been ill a month, she skipped the word
'unpredictability'.

TCindly spell out the word that you have omitted he demanded.

With a tearing rattle she threw the newspaper to the ground.  "Damn the
soul of it!"  she shouted.  "A body would need to have been sleeping
with a schoolteacher!"  Her head felt strangely light.  It seemed to
have lost contact with her tongue.  "Unprewhateverthe-devil you call
it.  No lady has any call to use such words.  I..."

Exactly.  I beg you to refrain from such uncouth utterances."

"I never read a newspaper," she went on, 'much less a thing called a--a
Leading Article."

"Surely you read--and hoard--the Theatrical New sT

She rose abruptly.  Once and for all she was going to put an end to the
gibing on that subject.  Just then the doctor's voice sounded outside.
As he came towards her she dropped a slight curtsey that included the
bed and the doctor.  "If you will excuse me, I am feeling tired."

The doctor peered at her professionally.  You have been overtaxing
yourself, my Lady, cooped up here in the sick-room for a month."  He
darted a closer look.  "Or would it be anything else.  Hey, my Lady?"

Yes, it would."  In the expectant silence a displaced pillow made a
slithering sound as it fell.  Sir Jocelyn was working himself upwards.
You mean... ?"  he began.

"I mean that I am sickening for smallpox."  She closed the door on a
panic-stricken outcry from the bed.  Sir Jocelyn had been above the
recent vaccination law.  No official or doctor would presume to enforce
the filthy, protective virus of smallpox into his sacred, scented
body.

As she left the house it still clamoured with his bedside bell;
demanding the doctor, protection, immunisation.  "That will learn
them," she fumed as she sped through the maze.  This twelve months past
one dare not show a hint of tiredness, not even after two successive
nights' dancing, without becoming the bridal target for coy innuendo.

The children were not waiting at the usual rendezvous.  She continued
to walk in the direction that they usually came from until she spied
them sitting listlessly outside a cottage.  When they saw her, instead
of running towards her, as usual, they

actually made a move inwards.  Sterrin, who had not bargained for
walking two Irish miles of rough road in her velvet and satin bootees,
was in no mood for wilfulness.  She rapped out a summons that brought
them wheeling back on the double.  The younger one looked at the foot
from which her Ladyship had removed the shoe.  "It's a foot," she
gasped, 'like anyone else's."  Sterrin picked two pebbles from the lacy
stocking.  "What did you expect?"  she snapped, rubbing her sore
instep.

"She means, your Nobility," said the other, 'that she thought something
grander would come out of boots like them."  Sterrin had the stocking
off now and the speck of blood from thorns and pebbles was not blue,
but red like the blood that so frequently coloured their own clayey
feet.

"It would have felt grander, anyway," grumbled Sterrin, 'if you had
been where you ought to have been.  Why weren't you?"

They looked at each other then hung their heads.  At last she dragged
it from them.  Their uncle had warned them against her.  She was the
landlord's wife.  They were not to trust her and her
for-God's-sake-la-de-da charity.  There was nothing lade da, Sterrin
thought angrily, about this long walk that had exhausted her so
strangely; and all those baskets of food!  The idea!

Their little sister, the sad little voice was saying, had been
despatched to other relatives.  They didn't know where their brother
was.  Sterrin's eyes closed wearily as the recital went on.  He had
been put away from the relatives to whom their uncle had transferred
him."... and next week the two of us are going to the workhouse."
Sterrin sat upright and pulled on her boo tee "By the livin' God you
won't!"  She didn't know how she was going to stop it, but stop it she
would.

She rushed from them after a hug and the contents of her reticule; a
few chocolates and little tea biscuits.  La-de-da charity was right.
Preening herself over an odd basket of food!  A sop from the woman
whose husband had torn their mother and home from them.

As she emerged from the maze through the little wicket gate, she
glimpsed her husband reclining on a long cane chair, all cushioned and
rugged, basking in the late autumn sunshine in the fountain court.  The
smallpox scare apparently had not induced another rush of blood to the
head.  Still--she wasn't ready for battle.

She limped wearily around by the the kitchen premises.  She ignored
the curious glances of servants as she walked along the back passage.
The store-room door was open.  Without thinking she entered.  She
leaned an arm on a bin either side of her and surveyed the rows that
lined the walls.  The sight of them gave her a sense of her own
futility.  Never, before, in her rather exalted existence had life
revealed herself as superfluous.  What good am I?  I can strum the
harp, sing in Italian badly, in French, a bit better."  She looked up
at a dangling spider.  "I can't embroider as finely as you, and mind
you," she addressed the spider seriously, "I embroider better than
most, except perhaps Mamma but she..."  a sound at the door stopped
her.

Mrs.  Ledwidge, the housekeeper was gaping there was no other word, her
mask of superior servility had slipped at the spectacle of her haughty
Ladyship leaning nonchalantly against a bin of oat en meal; chewing the
stuff and talking right out loud to a big black spider.  "His Honour,
Sir Jocelyn, would like to see you in the fountain court."  Her gaze
fixed itself on Sterrin's mouth.

To Sterrin's amazement Sir Jocelyn informed her that he had decided to
travel to Dublin that very day, without waiting for lunch.  "I find,"
he said, 'that the business that takes me there has been too long
postponed."  There was a measured significance about his words that
Sterrin was to recall later.  A footman came and gathered the rugs and
instead of taking them to the house went on through a grille doorway
that gave on to the front of the house where a carriage awaited.  She
realised then that her husband was dressed for travelling.  He must
have been merely awaiting in the fountain court the preparations for
his departure.  It was a very sudden decision.  She said so aloud.

"Are you sure that you feel up to the journey?"

"It is too late now for you to show concern for my health."  He paused
as though to let the statement sink in.  "Your conduct this morning
showed poor consideration for it.  I prefer not to discuss it.  I have
sent for you to impress on you to go immediately to Kilsheelin, not
later than tomorrow, and bring Clooreen here.  I have arranged for
grooms to go and travel back with her."  A little cloud shadowed the
court.  Sterrin longed to see Clooreen but somehow the lovely mare
belonged to Kilsheelin; as Thuckeen had belonged there.  Why this
urgency?  There were hundreds of horses here.

"Our own grooms can accompany her from Kilsheelin," she replied.  "She
is more accustomed to them."  "She must accustom herself to my grooms.
Good day, my

Lady."  Somehow, it suddenly seemed utterly unnatural to part from sone
one going on a journey, someone part of one's family, without a gesture
of farewell.  She would have flung her arms around Papa; she always
embraced Cousin Maurice; she even kissed Big John whenever she went
away from Kilsheelin.  In fact, she recalled she used to kiss Sir
Jocelyn when he would drive off from Kilsheelin in their betrothal
days.  She was clearing her throat to get out "God-carry-you-safely'
when he turned again.

"You don't seem to be aware that your face needs washing.  There is
meal on your mouth."

She reached down to her little handkerchief pocket, then stopped. She'd
be damned if she was going to obey orders to wipe her mouth as though
she were a grubby child.  She shot out her underlip and blew upwards in
the old careless way.  He remembered how she had done that when she
came panting and blowing after his carriage to thank him for Clooreen,
blowing the moist curls from the lovely white forehead.  The sight of
the meal irritated him.  It outlined the lovely pouting curve of her
upper lip.  He was ashamed of the urge, raw as the meal itself, to kiss
away the clinging particles.  She turned from him with her kissing
mouth that still quivered in debate over a last-minute farewell salute
and then his final words hardened its indecision.

"You will refrain from tampering with the domestic stores for your
misplaced acts of charity.  My staff has its orders."  He went through
to the waiting carriage.

Sterrin strode determinedly down through the green baize door to the
bin-room.  It was locked.

"Does your Ladyship desire anything?"  It was Mrs.  Led widge.

Sterrin repressed a desire to smack this smug face that seemed to
materialise out of a void so often of late; then her mind recoiled from
the un seemliness of such intensity towards a servant.  What is coming
over me?  Quietly she requested the housekeeper to unlock the door.

The housekeeper reared like a viper then as suddenly wilted.  Without
altering its expression the face in front of her seemed suddenly to
have unsheathed the authority of centuries.  She

took the key from her belt and opened the door for her mistress.

I'm behaving like a child, Sterrin thought, when she was alone among
the bins; coming here for defiance!  I want nothing.  Or did she?  She
put a handful of meal in her mouth and felt better.  It seemed to
satisfy some moist, gnawing within her.  How pimply those children had
become!  She took another ri handful and chewed and ruminated like a
young heifer; and out 11 of her rumination she reached a decision about
the children.  Tomorrow she was going to Kilsheelin.  She would take
them with her.  It was as simple as that.  Why hadn't she thought of it
before?  Kilsheelin solved all her problems.  Had she not taken a
father and his five children into the castle when their potatoes had
blackened at the start of the famine?  And there was more room there
now; no teeming servants.  Johnny-the-buckets was a field worker,
Mickey-the-turf had gone to America.  The knife boy was gone.  She sped
up the stairs on the heels of her resolution.  For the first time in
her remembered life she had listed Young Thomas with the other
garfonnerie of the kitchen; without a distinguishing thought; without
his name that had been engraved on every ridge of her mind.

She went from room to room, taking a child's delight in having all
their wonders to herself; thrilled for the first time at the
realisation that she was mistress of all this.  The cavernous wardrobes
in her husband's dressing-room were like Aladdin's cave.  Blue shafts
of light blazed from the jewels that formed the buttons on his
waistcoats.  In his bedroom she spied a pair of gold heels peeping out
from the satin fold of the bed where they touched the floor.

As she picked them up a musical sound throbbed through her body like a
smitten harp.  Hannah came running at the strange sound.

"They are musical shoes," Sterrin told her.  "We saw a dancer in Paris
performing in a pair."  As she tied them on, it occurred to her that
the valet must have received very sudden orders for packing to have
left them lying about so carelessly.

Hannah watched entranced as her young mistress, her skirts held high
over her long slim legs, beat out a jig to the music of the shoes.  It
was like the grand days long ago when Miss Sterrin and Young Thomas
used to dance jigs in the kitchen to the music of Paddy-the-rat's
fiddle.  Poor Paddy-the-rat.  God rest his soul.  He'd drop dead in his
grave if he were to see music

coming out of a pair of feet!

Sterrin threw herself on the bed, panting and coughing.

"You are overdoin' it, your Ladyship's gra' gal.  I'm thinking it's a
chill you've caught with them little wet, satin slippers an' you
overtired with the dint of such walkin'."  She insisted upon Sterrin's
staying in her own room instead of going down to lunch.

"What would you like me to bring your Ladyship?"

All her Ladyship wanted was some oat en meal.

When Hannah returned a few minutes later with a silver dish of oat en
meal mixed with perfumed toilet water.  Sterrin let out an unladylike
expletive.

"How the devil's father do you expect me to eat that mess?"  she
exploded.

"Eat it?  I thought that 'twas to put on your face that you wanted
it."

She went off for another foray to the bin room only to return a few
minutes later with empty hands.  The room was locked and the
housekeeper had gone out on business.  The keys were with her.

"Blast her!"

"Miss Sterrin!"  Hannah forgot the title in her shock.

"It is not to be borne.  Could you imagine Mamma locked out from her
own stores?"

Sterrin was weaving her stockinged feet back and forth agitatedly and
suddenly they hit something that gave a metallic sound that was not of
musical shoes.  She swooped.  Sir Jocelyn's big bunch of keys lying
where they must have fallen unnoticed in his so uncharacteristic rush
of departure.  But Sterrin was not wasting conjectures.

"It is an answer to prayer," she breathed.

Hannah rolled up her eyes.  "Prayer!"  she ejaculated.  Her mistress
handed her the keys and gave her a playful push towards the door then
pulled her back by the streamers of her apron.

"Wait!"  she hurried to her room, dragged down a Parisian band-box,
emptied it of its millinery and handed it to Hannah.  "Get a supply
while we have the key."

Fifteen minutes later Hannah shook her head over the spectacle of her
mistress eating meal from an elegant pink and white striped hatbox,
like like?  A shaft of light lit up threads of red in the dark bronze
hair like a Rhode Island Red hen!

Next morning Sterrin awakened in a high fever.  "And no wonder,"
grumbled Hannah, as she wielded the long bed warmer up and down beneath
the blankets.  Hannah was bitterly disappointed.  Here she was with
everything packed; all the lovely gowns to show Lady O'Carroll, and she
herself counting the minutes to be back in the big, happy kitchen of
Kilsheelin where the staff was the same as the closest blood to her,
and now Miss Sterrin's Ladyship was laid up with a shivering chill;
burning one minute, cold the next.  "Traipsing after them children all
that distance and nothing between your little feet and the ground but a
pair of satin bootees."

Hannah put the warmer down on the floor.  She laid a hand on the hot
forehead.  "Mo bla ban na Sterrin."  Concern had routed anger;
formality too.  Lady Devine was once again Hannah's bla ban na Sterrin.
Her white blossom of the storm!  She pulled violently on the bell
rope.

"What the devil's father are you doing that for?"  The blossom was
white indeed, but uncrushed.

"Ringin' I am to rush someone for a doctor.  You are in a roarin'
fever."

"I never want to see oat en meal again," Sterrin gasped.

"Thank Heaven for that, anyway," said Hannah.

"B-but," chattered Sterrin, "I must get to Kilsheelin.  I must get that
key copied."  Hannah put a hand on the hot forehead.

"Are you sure that you are at yourself, Acquanie?  What for would you
have need of the key when you have taken the turn against the meal?"

"I resent the indignity of having to ask my own servant for it.  Mamma
has a key to every room in the castle.  Could you imagine her having to
plead with Nurse Hogan or Mrs.  Stacey or Hegarty to unlock a handful
of meal for her?"

"Hmph!  I couldn't imagine your mamma's Ladyship stooping to anything
so vulgar as to eat dry meal.  Say this I must, whether you like it or
not.  You are lettin' down the family at home; them that were there
away back in Time when the likes of these' she waved a deprecatory hand
at the surrounding splendour 'were only in the cow's horn.  When your
Ladyship's mamma craved for anything it was for a peach steeped in
champagne."

Sterrin drew herself up in anger, but fell back in weakness.

"Who," she demanded in a croak that was meant to be a shout,

'said anything about "cravings"?  I chew meal to keep myself from
eating chocolates because they are spoiling my waistline.  That's why
Eugenie's ladies-in-waiting smoke cigarettes."

"Aye," muttered Hannah, going to the fire to replenish the bed warmer
'by the look of the carry-ons 'twasn't chocolate that bulged some of
their waistlines."

For a week Sterrin throbbed in pain and fever but fiercely resisted
every suggestion of a doctor.  The day before Sir Jocelyn was due back
she was up at dawn, with the carriage ordered for Mrs.  Delaney's
place.  The forge at Moormount was the same old time, all-purpose type
as the one at Kilsheelin Castle.  Its blacksmith could forge a thimble
or a scissors or a key as readily as he could a set of horse shoes.

"Why this one only?"  asked Mrs.  Delaney when Sterrin, her mission
explained, had detached the store room key from the rest.  "Why not
have them all copied.  It is up to you to know what lies behind locked
doors and drawers."  Then with a sapient nod of her head she added,
"Knowledge is power,"

It was the small hours when Sterrin reached home.  Her husband's
key-ring had held a lot of locksmith and Sterrin now had a perfect copy
of every key, safe in her reticule.

Sir Jocelyn's agitation at not finding Clooreen in the stables seemed
to Sterrin out of all proportion.

"But she ought to be here!  Here in these stables."  He kept repeating
the words as though it were of some very special significance that the
mare should be back; and at that particular time.

When he heard what had prevented Sterrin from carrying out his
instructions, he became still more agitated.  "You've been ill?  What
was wrong?  What did the doctor say?  Why wasn't I informed?"

"For heaven's sake!"  Sterrin exploded.  "I was much too busy sneezing
to send a medical bulletin to Dublin."  She had the feeling that his
anxiety was linked with this Clooreen business.  It had no concern for
herself.

Next day she slipped away and went to see the relatives to whom the
boy's uncle had handed him on.  They disclaimed all knowledge of his
whereabouts.  She rode on, brooding over the cruel fate of the little
chap; his sisters and brother too.  As she skirted a shrub the horse
swerved and reared up.  Next moment the figure of a boy emerged and
started running wildly.  She

called after him, but he redoubled his efforts.  When she caught up on
him he was trembling with exhaustion and terror.

"Surely you are not afraid of me?"  she called.

But he was.  He knew her identity now.  She was the wife of the
terrible man who had torn his mother away from him to the ends of the
earth and made him an outcast.

He was scarcely recognisable from the plum-cheeked boy who had dipped
into her basket of goodies that August night.  He was gaunt and unkempt
from hunger and exposure.  When she pressed money upon him he backed
away again.  "They will say that I stole it."  But she insisted upon
him taking it back to his relatives.  It would sustain him while she
made arrangements to get him to America.  The boy took it fearfully.  A
widow, he told her, who had lived for fifty years in the house next to
his uncle had been evicted for taking in her widowed daughter who had
been turned out in the mass evictions last August.

It was early December when a letter arrived from Donal Keating telling
her that the sorrows of the boy and his sisters were at an end.  He had
written to the Emigration Society in America.  One of its most
prominent members was John Holohan of Upper Kilsheelin.  He had
arranged for passages for the children.  They would be met at Castle
Gardens and-looked after until they could be reunited with their
mother.

The news so heartened her that she decided to ride out that morning to
her first Meet of Hounds.  Her husband and his doctor were standing in
the hall as she came down.  She included them both in a gay good
morning as she passed without slowing.  Sir Jocelyn halted her. "Doctor
Denning thinks that you ought not to hunt today."

She turned to the doctor.  "Is there contagion abroad?"  Her husband
came close and peered through the thick veil that was drawn tight
against her face and secured behind over the curled brim of her tall
silk hat.

"Your look suggests to him that you might possibly be exposing yourself
to risk by hunting.  Are you concealing what it is my right to know? It
is imperative that I know--immediately."

For all his sophistication, she thought, with a string of mistresses
behind him, he sounded like an old maid.  Concealing what is his right
to know indeed!

"Fiddlesticks/ she said, "I'm as healthy as a salmon."  She

de across to the waiting groom, ignored his proffered knee nd swung
herself into the saddle.

What was so imperative for him to know!  She flicked her rse to
outstrip her thoughts; because she knew the answer.  The only
consequence to the revolting experience that night last August that
Sterrin had ever considered was that it had ended her hopes of
annulment.  It had rendered her marriage consummated.  But it was too
unnatural a deed, too gross, for any other consequence.  She lashed the
horse into a full gallop.  If she rode hard enough she would
outdistance this shackling menace.  Nothing would happen!

Pink-coated men on fine horses looked appreciatively at the splendid
horsewoman who rode so recklessly, but so sure.  They shouldered and
jostled their mounts nearer.  All that they could glimpse under the
thick veil was the deep pit of her eyes, the moulding of her cheek
bones, the poreless pallor of white skin.  But the body showed its
perfection in the tight hunting coat of darkest green.

Cattle scampered out of her way.  A little donkey ran alongside her
till the first fence, then brayed pitiably when she left it behind.
Laughter rippled across Sterrin's mind and broke upon her lips.  She
forgot everything but the joy of the hunt.  She thought only of her
mount's easy grace; of the tall fences that its feet despised; the
great wall that had loomed and vanished; the sparkle of water in
streamlets, so lightly crossed, like that problem back there.

The Master was straight in front of her heading for the next ditch.
Beside it stood a riderless horse.  As the Master approached the ditch
the tousled head and muddied shoulders of its rider rose up.  The
Master had barely time to shout, "Duck, Peregrine!"  and over with him.
A cloud of divots came hurtling into Sterrin's vision.  The head of the
unfortunate Peregrine was within four inches of the feet of her mount
before she saw him.  If she chucked sideways, herself and her mount
would be in the green-bronze water of the ditch.  There was nothing for
it.  Here goes!  "Duck Peregrine!"  she yelled, and Peregrine ducked
for dear life.  Sterrin soared over, high and sure and never a touch of
iron on the ditch.  Her spirits soared.  She might as well have been
riding a cloud as a horse.  Laughter bubbled out on the steam of her
breath, as over her shoulder she glanced the benighted Peregrine,
whoever he was, going down

for the third time.

From a hilly lie there came a whimper.  A patch of geese cackled as
hounds waded in.  There was no covert for the small brown thing that
lurked in the gorse.  It broke and slipped through a hedge, down a bore
en that led to a house.  Hounds followed in full cry, jaws mouthing
towards its hunt.  Suddenly their cries changed to whines.

A voice said, "Have they made a kill?"

Sterrin flung herself from her horse, barely conscious of a pain that
rent her' back  The circle of hounds, no longer baying, were backing
away from the body that lay in their midst.  She lifted it and held it
in her arms.

"They've made a kill.  Oh, God, they've killed the little hunted
boy."

A voice said, "These were not made by hounds."  It was Bergin who had
dismounted beside her.  He pointed to the hands manacled behind the
boy's back, to the fingers crusted with blood.

There was a house near by in the clearing.  A face appeared at the
window, then the curtain was drawn.  Sterrin looked down at the body of
the boy, then her eyes focused on the blood on the lintel and on the
ground in front of the door of the house.  She looked up at Bergin.

Who could have done this?  Who could have chained him this way?"  Her
eyes were hard and unforgiving.

Bergin dashed for the house.  He forced the frightful story from the
man and woman who lived there.  Twice last night they had hunted the
boy away.  When he returned the second time they had chained his hands
and brought him to his uncle's door.  All night the boy had banged his
manacled hands against his uncle's door.  When Bergin returned to where
Sterrin still cradled the child's body on her knee, a neighbour came
forward and said that he had heard the wailing but thought it was the
Banshee.  Another spoke up and said he had heard a voice crying, Tut me
on my feet."

Sterrin listened to Bergin tell of how the boy had been left to die,
pleading for shelter, for humanity, for the right to live.

Bergin stooped and took the body.  As Sterrin attempted to swing
herself into the saddle the pain reasserted itself.  She jerked on the
reins for support.  The horse responded and moved forward, dragging her
along with one foot in the stirrup.  Two men

he'd to help her.  As they jerked her upwards a wild pain went rending
through her then everything went black.

Sir Jocelyn watched as the men carried Sterrin upstairs.  At brief
intervals he rapped on her door and demanded reports from the harassed
doctor.  Finally he broke in without knocking.

"Is there no hope of saving the child?"

Faint but clear his wife's voice answered.  "The child was already dead
when we found him.  He had been '

Tshaw!  That brat!"  He dismissed the dead boy as so much vermin.  "My
child!  My child that you have deprived of '

He looked wildly about to assess what his child had been deprived of.
He had been about to say 'existence', but it was too meagre a term for
the plenitude of life that awaited the being of his creating.  Beneath
all his sophistry and cynicism he had maintained a superstitious
acceptance of the tradition that no child would inherit the property
direct.  It had zig-zagged over the years from one distant relative to
another; an oblique heritage.  Somehow to him had been vouchsafed the
privilege of stabilising the heritage; the founding of a dynasty.  His
voice spiralled to a scream.

From her bed, Sterrin had the sensation of having died and was
witnessing the judgment of a soul.  This man who had held the power of
life and death, the dereliction of six hundred lives, stood confronted
by the spectacle of his own futility.  He was powerless to recall the
embryo life that would have crowned his own.  She wanted to tell him
that he had had a long crack of the whip, that God is not mocked, but
her voice sounded calm and assuring as it announced that she would have
other children.  Her husband was startled into silence, then he turned
and let them lead him away.  He sensed that it was her own young body
that she was reassuring.

CHAPTER 51

The child's lonely death sent a throb of horror around the world.  In
Westminster, Mr.  Bright raised his beautiful voice and this time a
shocked House listened in moved silence.  All over England right-minded
men and women clamoured against a government policy that could expose a
helpless child to such a fate.  Not since the famine had so concerted a
feeling pulsed through the nations.

The American press was outraged.  Newspapers edited by men of Irish
blood expressed rage and sympathy in terms that an Irish tenant would
have been afraid to whisper in his secret heart.  Articles were written
by young men who had been homeless, evicted boys a decade before.  In
black captions they dared to cite the names of Irish landlords.  They
dared to suggest assassination.  They urged homeless men who still
dared to shelter beneath Irish hedges to rise up against their
oppressors.

It was a misty, muffling afternoon in December when Sterrin drove up
the avenue after a round of calls.  She was back sooner than was
expected.  The calls were but a card-leaving and the lamps were not
lighted.  With a word to the waiting footman she turned and walked
across the lawn where a little gate gave on to the river path.

It amazed her to see masses of blue beneath the beech trees.  She drew
near and hundreds of pigeons that were gorging themselves on the masts
they had drawn from the beech sheaths rose up in flight.  She looked up
at the blue cloud they made.  Their long-drawn cooing with the great
overtones of their winging made a symphony of muted thunder.  She was
saddened when a potshot sounded; but no bird fell.

A few yards further on she came upon her husband's body.

For a numbed second she stood looking down.  Was this the threatened
stroke?  A blue-grey feather wafted down and settled on his face.  The
gentle encroachment defined its white stillness.  Jocelyn was dead!

dropped to her knees.  There was something she must do;

ething her mother had done when she had held Papa's

^""ng body in her arms.  As she bent to breathe into his ear the aver
for mercy she noticed, as one notices the trivial in the moment of
solemnity, the judicially placed curl.  The valet had maced it where it
would conceal a distorted muscle.  She pushed the hair from over his
ear and displaced the pomaded curl.  It disclosed a bullet hole!

She raised her head and saw Bergin standing on the path.  Her eyes
travelled slowly and rested on the gun held so nonchalantly beneath his
arm.

"It was you!"  she breathed.  Her eyes widened with horror.

He shrugged.  "What I killed is back there."  He gestured over his
shoulder.  His assurance ridiculed her suspicion.  "Shall I summon aid
for you?"  he asked.

"I she was about to give a cold refusal; but no words came.  The shock
was beginning to tell.  He raised his hat and replaced it quickly.  The
respect was for her and not for Death's presence.

"I shall inform them at the house," he said.  As he opened the little
gate he looked up at the sky.  "The outriders should have reached there
by now," he said grimly.  "No doubt the gates will have been flung
wide!"  He passed unhurriedly through the gate to the great mansion.
Before his mind flashed a vision of the lashings he had received in
that penal fortress where he had spent his youth and early manhood. His
hand unwittingly went to his gashed cheek.  "I wonder," he said. He
pulled the bell with great strength.  It clanged long after he had
given his news.

Sterrin continued to kneel there, Sir Jocelyn's head on her arm.  She
had prayed automatically.  But she couldn't continue to pray; nor even
to think.  Since the boy's death she had scarcely spoken to her
husband.  But now she knew no sense of relief; nor any grief.  She
recalled her mother's passionate grief as she fondled her husband's
dead body in her arms.

The river flowed on, indifferent to the passing of the overlord.  It
swept as usual to the bend that hid it from her sight.  Her husband's
head grew heavy on her arm.  Already the twisted muscle was relaxing
into the sculpted modelling of death.  And death presented him with an
impressive nobility; a reminder of what might have been!  He must have
been a remarkably handsome man.  She studied his features without
dread.  She had

fl never before held him in her arms; never been so close except that
night when he had taken her.  Had he been less cruel would she have
come to care for him?  She would have at least respected him.  But,
like her mother, she was capable of but one great love.  There are
women like that!

When the rain fell that night there were people who still cowered
beneath the hedges; still evading the workhouse; without hope of the
passage money to the Promised Land of America.  They looked at each
other as the news spread, but they still dared not speak their
thoughts!

Not so their neighbours who had reached America.  When the news came
over the waters they had freedom to tell each other that justice had
been done.  A San Francisco paper offered a reward to the assassin. The
city's working girls read the news without regret.  Bankers estimated
that within the year these girls had sent a million dollars to maintain
the homes the crowbars had levelled.

The reward went uncollected.  The assassin was never revealed.  Bergin
was questioned; his gun examined.  The shell of the solitary cartridge
discharged was found near the carcase of the bird it had killed.
Routine, said his questioners apologetically.  Bergin was no vengeful
evictee.  He was an estate owner; a rich one.

Sterrin was nearly all packed.  She stood over the open trunks watching
the maids fill them with her gowns and cloaks.  She had not reached
upon wearing a quarter of them.  And now it would be at least two years
before she could wear them again.

"There was no room for any more, your Ladyship."  The sewing maid put
the lid on the last trunk.

"Make room!"  Her Ladyship rapped out the command.  The maid looked up
startled at the set, cold face.

"Get more trunks; get valises, get anything."

The maids hurried out and Sterrin turned to Hannah.  "See that nothing
is left behind.  You understand?"

Hannah nodded ruefully.

"Too well I understand, gra' gal.  You can trust me to see that there
is not a stitch left behind."

A footman tapped and announced that Major Devine would appreciate it if
Lady Devine could spare him a moment in the library before she left.

Tis.

But, my cousin Jocelyn, was most precise on this.  He was most anxious
that the horse be brought here without further delay and, er..."  The
major gave an embarrassed cough, 'according to the terms of the Will
'

"The Will," she broke in, 'bequeathed you all the horses in the stables
at Noremount Manor.  Clooreen is not one of these."  But she was meant
to be.  The reason for her husband's agitation at not finding the horse
here on his return became clear to her; so much about that odious Will
was clear; that morning when she had struck the silver bird in the
aviary and her husband had said, "I have told you that some day you
might go too far.  This, I think is the day," and the other morning
when she had made the unfortunate quip about smallpox and he decided so
unexpectedly to go to Dublin.  "I find that the business that takes me
there," he had said, 'has been too long postponed."  And the business,
as she might well have suspected was this vindictive Will that had
disowned her.  The only thing he had omitted to cut off from her was
the elaborate wardrobe of garments that she was making certain to have
packed.

"As you will," Major Devine said.  "Now," he consulted a list in front
of him.  "There is a casket of jewels mentioned here.  It is not in the
safe."

"It is in my room."  She spoke with quiet assurance.

"Oh!"  There was a challenging note in the exclamation.  Did she think
she could claim the jewels also?

"I will bring it to you."  She turned away.  He stepped after her.

"I will go up With you."

She stopped and looked him full in the eyes without speaking.  He
wilted under the gaze.

"You must not trouble yourself, I shall send a servant."

"Major Devine," she said firmly.  "I will hand you over the casket
myself.  It has been kept always in my room, but Sir Jocelyn retained
the key.  That is it."  She pointed to a small but complicated-looking
key on the bunch that lay on the desk.  He he new owner, Sir Jocelyn's
cousin, came straight to t f As you are leaving this afternoon I
thought I should lithe like

^j'crms with you the matter of having the horse, Clooreen,

to OlM'Ui>o returned to the stables here."  "Clooreen is my personal
property.  She belongs where she

looked down at it, relieved.  "As you will he said again.

He accompanied her to the door and watched her slowly mount the stairs.
Once inside her door she made a dash for the little watch pocket in the
bed drapes.  Thank heavens they were still there!  She had forgotten
about the keys since that night when she had returned from Mrs. 
Delaney.  And thank heaven for Mrs.  Delaney, who had insisted upon her
having all the other keys duplicated as well as the store key. "You are
at least entitled to know what is behind locked doors and drawers,"
that sound woman had said.  "Knowledge is power."

The casket held the less opulent jewellery, including many of the gifts
purchased for her during her engagement.  The grand parures and diadems
and necklaces for great occasions were kept elsewhere.  She rummaged
feverishly, then drew forth a locket, a simple affair on a slim gold
chain, its pendant of mosaic of flowers done in enamel and surrounded
by pearls.  She pressed the spring at the back.  It was there, a shiny
black curl.  She pushed the locked inside the neck of her gown.  "You
are not going round the fat neck of Mrs.  Theopholus Devine."

In the act of replacing a pair of amethyst earrings, she paused.  Her
husband had bought them because he thought that they matched her eyes.
"They may as well go on matching them."  She pushed them down after the
locket.  Rage at his base suspicion had her fingers still trembling as
she locked the casket.  "He'll accompany me, indeed!"  On a sudden she
unlocked it and drew out a handful of rings.  She removed her indoor
mittens and thrust a ring on every available finger.  "That will steady
them," she gritted.

There was no sign of her agitation as she entered the library holding
the casket.

"Would you care to check the contents?"  she asked placing it in front
of him on the writing table.  "I presume you have a list."  She didn't
presume anything of the kind except, perhaps, for such of the jewels as
were heirlooms.  "And hadn't you better take these too my betrothal
ring and its keeper?"  She made a gesture of withdrawing her left
mitten.  He backed away expostulating and embarrassed.  For a moment he
thought to offer her back the casket, then he recalled the rumours that
she might have done the murder herself.  The overseer who had
supervised the evictions had seen her enter the little wicket gate to
that lonely path a moment before the shot sounded.  The footman

h had tucked Sir Jocelyn into the carriage after the Assizes Ball when
a stone had been flung at the carriage, had heard her "If anyone turned
me out of my house I wouldn't be content to throw a stone at him, I'd
shoot him."  Everyone knew that she was a whizzer with a gun.

He swept an arm around to indicate all the priceless objets dart that
crowded the room.  "If there are any of these, or anything elsewhere
that you would like to take, any souvenirs?"

She looked around her and felt her first tug of deprivation.  If she
had taken more care; if she had acknowledged the existence within her
of the child that she had lost, she would not be surrendering her
possessions in this ignominious fashion.  The inheritance would not
have gone on tilting sideways to still another indirect heir.  But she
had not acknowledged the existence of the child even to herself.  It
had just been a nebulous surge; a suppressed conjecture; instinctive as
the urge that had driven her down in the night hours for the oatmeal;
as the one that had impelled her just now to retrieve the locket with
Young Thomas's hair.

Her gaze came back to his.  "I do not covet any souvenirs of my stay
here."

More to avoid the look in those fearless eyes he turned to place the
casket in the great bookcase, where a drop-leaf door in the centre was
down revealing a recessed compartment.  He lifted some parchment
documents out of his way and left them on the writing table while he
disposed of the casket.  She glanced indifferently at them, then the
inscription on one of them forced itself into her consciousness.  Her
heart gave a lurch.  There was a momentary cessation of existence, then
her knees buckled and she sat down abruptly.  He turned at the slight
sound.

You are ill, my Lady?"

The blood had gone from her face.  Its whiteness was no longer of a
white rose, but of thin lime.  He darted to the bell rope and her wits
returned sufficiently for her to curse herself.  Why hadn't she grabbed
the document while his back was turned, instead of wasting time
collapsing.  She fought back the waves of weakness and got to her feet.
She braced her shoulders against the mad pounding of her heart.  She
assured him that there was nothing amiss with her and left the room
with head high.

Inside her bedroom she leaned against the door.  Hannah

looked up startled from sewing the cloak.

"Oh, Hannah, Hannah, this is the worst of all!"

The maid half-carried her to the chaise longue.  "Twasn't in nature to
go on enduring the likes of what this poor white blossom had faced; to
come upon her husband murdered as she had come upon her father; and
after losin' the hopes of her little child!

"Hannah!"  It was only a whisper.  "Hannah, how will I face them?  I've
sacrificed everything.  It has all been for nothing.  Poor Mamma!  Poor
Dominic!  The poor servants."  She had looked up at the anxious face,
"And yourself, Hannah."  The maid stiffened.  Cead mile curses upon the
head of that footman^ The rumour must have drifted to her Ladyship that
'twas her own true aim had fired the shot.

"He has it, Hannah.  The castle.  I saw it.  Down there in the big
bookcase."  The maid put her hand on the forehead that was pressed to
her bosom.  Would she be going a bit like her mamma?  Next minute her
hand was pushed away and Sterrin was on her feet.

"By the livin' God, what am I wasting time ullagoaning for?  God never
made a gap but he grew a bush to stop it with."

Major Devine looked up impatiently from the great roll of parchment,
then jumped politely to his feet.  It was Lady Devine who had tapped.

"I'm afraid," she began gently, 'that I must encroach upon your
hospitality for another night.  I really don't feel up to the journey
this afternoon."  He was all concern and reassurances.

"By all means He barely stopped himself in time from saying, 'stay as
long as you wish'.  That might be a bit too long.

She made no move to go.  "There is something else."  She gave him a
shy, pleading look.  "You were kind enough to ask me if there was
anything that I should like to have as a souvenir.  I'm afraid that I
was not very courteous."

What could she be coveting?  Whatever it was, it would be impossible to
resist these eyes.  She opened the big tapestry embroidery bag that
swung from her arm.  He watched curiously.

"You'll probably think me very silly, but I should like to keep
these."

To his amazement she produced a highly ornate pair of shoes with
jewelled heels.  "They would scarcely fit you.  You are much

hicEer than Sir Jocelyn."

"But, my dear lady," he gasped, if you wished for something so personal
belonging to Jocelyn, why not '

"But you see," she interrupted, 'these are musical shoes.  Look'."  She
whisked off her shoes and put on the others then stood up and with her
skirt drawn up a few inches tapped out a tune.  "Aren't they
delightful?"  she asked.

"They are truly delightful," he agreed, his eyes glued to the slender
ankle and shapely display of limb that rounded slimly up into the hint
of white lace threaded with black ribbon.  She dropped her skirt and
resumed her seat.

"Then I may have them?"  Her eyes wistful and pleading held him while
her toe pushed one musical shoe gently towards the massive fold of
window curtain beside the table leg.

What a child she was!  She was on her feet again, drawing the string of
her bag and securing it on to her arm with a little pat of
satisfaction.  A strange mixture of child likeness and dignity, he
thought.  Circus shoes and all.  Dammit, she managed to go out like an
abdicating queen.

There was a smoky darkness in the library that night when Sterrin
slipped into it.  Those anthracite fumes, so different from the turf,
always caught at her throat.  Tonight they seemed worse than usual. But
since her miscarrage her sense of smell in fact all her sense had
quickened.  She tiptoed to the bookcase and foosthered with her keys.
One after the other failed in the lock.  Her heart was thudding and her
fingers, as each key failed her, began to tremble.  Hurrying footsteps
went racing past the door.  From somewhere there came a sound of
agitated voices.  Strange at this hour.  This night of all nights. 
Dear God, let this key work.  She had to stop to force a handkerchief
into her mouth to muffle the cough.  The fumes were unbearable.  At
last a key engaged.  She groped frantically and found, not one but
three rolls of parchment.  Which one was it?  She raced to the
fireplace.  There was only the faintest red in the dying creesach.  One
roll after another she tried, the evil sulphuric fumes choking her
until tears streamed from her eyes, and she was within a dog's bark of
pitching the lot into the fire, when the mean red eye of the creesach
showed up a familiar word.  At that moment Hannah's voice called out
her name; again and again, at the top of her voice.

"Miss Sterrin!  Miss Sterrin!  Your Ladyship!"  The woman

must have taken leave of her senses to betray me like this.  Oh,
Mother of God!  And then came Major Devine's voice, startled, angry;
"Do you mean to say that your mistress is in there?"

The door was pushed open.  "Lady Devine, what in God's name are you
doing there?"  He lifted the candelabrum high over his head.

There was no one down there where the great gothic bookcase stood,
undisturbed, as he had left it.  The wind bellied a curtain.  There was
a flash of fire on the ground: there was a banner of flame in the room.
It showed Lady Devine on her knees groping in the folds of the curtain
near the writing table.  He saw her fish out something and hold it
aloft.

"I came down to look for this.  I found that I had only one in the
bag."  It was one of the musical shoes.

He bore down on her.  "Are you mad, girl?  Do you realise that the
house is on fire?"  He pulled her roughly to her feet and dragged her
towards the door.  A buffet of fiery air struck them and drove them
back.  The Major pushed Sterrin towards the window.  There was a tinkle
of glass and she was out in the cool air.  From behind came a wail like
a banshee.  Sterrin stepped back into the burning room.  The Major
tried to pull her back but she fought him like a tiger.

"You've caused enough trouble looking for your damned silly shoes."

"Let me go!"  she yelled.  "It is not shoes now but a human being."

She dived for something white from which the wails were proceeding, but
could get no grip; only something bumpy and fleshy and eerie, then
realised that it was Hannah's face, which the maid had had the presence
of mind to cover with an apron; but there was no more presence of mind
left.  She stood there blinded, terrified, yelling.  Sterrin pawed,
found hair and pulled.

"Shut up!"  she hissed.  "If I've to drop what's in my other hand to
pull you out you'll be sorry later that I saved your life."

And that's just what happened.  As she dragged the maid through the
window Sterrin dropped the precious object that was pressed tight to
her side beneath the Vesperatum cloak.  Major Devine looking up from
directing the human chain of buckets from the fountain court, saw the
windows of the ground floor fill with great orange whorls and curling
waves of

As he lookedj a figure in something shimmering went in hrough the
window, as a diver goes towards the water, head

mr*st

"Come back, for God's sake," he shouted, but his voice was lost against
the steady roar of the flame that was like a great

wind.  Inside, Sterrin pawed and clawed along the burning floor.

Flames licked the back of her hand and ran up her arm.  Her quickened
senses could distinguish the intimate singeing smell of her forehead
curls.  And then she found the bag and was through the window again,
the bag held over her face.  "I've got it.  I've got it.  I've got it."
She couldn't stop saying it.

"You deserve to burn, to expose the lives of others for the sake of a
toy."

His voice was savage and so was his grip on her arm.  His cousin, Sir
Jocelyn, knew what he was doing when he disinherited this nitwit.  God
in heaven, what sane woman would venture into that inferno for a
musical toy!  She broke from him and ran.  There was lurid light on the
lawn.  It guided her to the shelter of the trees, black, immense,
shivering in the red darkness.  He must not find her.  He would take
her bag from her.  She must never go down there again.  All around her
the birds were aroused and fluttered in the air with shrill cries of
alarm and wonder.  A swarm of wasps routed from their nest against the
eaves of the house hummed in the night air with savage anger.  Rats
came from the cellars and galloped like grotesque diminutive horses, in
the long grass near the trees.  She screamed and the sound guided
Hannah to her.

A man's voice spoke to her; not the Major's, a grating leaden voice.
The wind blew the words away.  It keened and moaned above her in the
black indignant trees.

Bergin touched her arm and she whimpered with pain.  The face she
turned to him was stunned and horror-stricken; as it had been when he
last saw it above the dead boy's: as it had been when he first saw it,
a little girl's face peeping from a carriage window at the whiplash
that had laid open his cheek.

"I've come to take you to my house, Lady Devine."

He was making no move to help put out the fire.  He had brought no
workmen as other neighbours were doing.  She caught the words and shook
her head.

*I must go home."

"There is no home there to go to."  He nodded towards the blazing,
roaring house.

"Not there.  That's not my home."  She knew no regret for the great,
grand house that opened its doors wide in hospitality to great, grand
people and never a welcome; never a crust for the hungry.

"The little children won't dance there any more.  The gridirons have
set fire to the house.  The little children should have worn musical
shoes.  They would have protected their flesh.  Burned flesh is so
painful."  A low moan shuddered through her.

Bergin ignored her protests and carried her to the river and his boat.
But Sterrin was not deranged.  The fire that drove her was not the one
that raged back there.  She must get to Kilsheelin.  It was in danger,
and she held its safety.

On the opposite bank of the river away from the obscene" smoke she
planted her feet on the cool ground and would not budge.  A dark hedge
outlined an avenue.  Its darkness was the darkness of night, she knew
its colour would be green and sane but she would not linger in the
house it led to.

"Thank you kindly," she said to his urgings, 'but it is imperative that
I get home tonight; if you could afford me transport?  As far as
Moormount, the Delaneys' place, would do."

"I'll drive you there," he said.  If he didn't, he knew that she would
try walking it on her scorched feet.

Mrs.  Delaney, the voluble, made no comment at the sight of Sterrin's
face.  While Ned-Rua, roused from sleep, prepared the carriage, she put
cool linen on Sterrin's arms and painted egg white on her cheeks and on
the scorch marks where the glossy brows used to wing across the white
forehead, that was white no longer.

"You've lived up to the name the Liberator chose for you, Blah na
Sterrin.  Blossom of the storm.  Inagh!  You've known more storm than
blossoming; but you'll know your blossoming yet.  I feel it in my
bones, gra' gal."

She kept hushing Sterrin's thanks.

"But," gasped Sterrin, 'it is for the keys I'm thanking--only for
them--one of them unlocked the deeds of Kilsheelin

Castle she spoke in jerks and gasps her lips swollen from blisters and
sealing with egg white.  "I didn't know that he had

I must get home '

1 4, 'he ^ter you?"  Mrs.  Delaney, startled, cracked an egg on to

Sterrin shook her head.  "He doesn't know, I think.  I'm.  not but if I
get them to Kilsheelin he can do his damnedest."

"More power to you, girl!  Here," she splashed a big jorum of whiskey
into a tumbler, 'try and take a sip of this."  Sterrin tossed the lot
down in a gulp.  Mrs.  Delaney took the empty glass and looked
reverently from it to Sterrin.

"Oh, you'll blossom again all right," she said, 'if your spirit was
only half the strength of your swallow, you'll blossom."

CHAPTER 52

The old peacock gave its proud, high scream as Sterrin drove up the
avenue to the home of her childhood.  The castle was scarcely visible;
just a deeper greyness looming out of the greyness of the dawn, but its
buttressing arms reached out and enfolded her.  And then out of the
clanging awakement it was her mother's arms and Dominic's and Nurse
Hogan's.

Down in the kitchen the fan wheel was set-to furiously and one by one
the eight fires came to life under their cranes.  Sleepy servants came
towards their glow, buttoning livery and tying aprons and talking in
shocked tones about the face that had gone from here in such loveliness
less than two years ago.  Hannah was put in the butler's big chair in
the inglenook while her shins and hands were tended to.  They gave her
the soothing herb brew that had sent Miss Sterrin's Ladyship to sleep,
and before it took effect she retold them what she had told Lady
O'Carroll about the night's horror that was like that of the night of
the Big Wind; and with the mention of that night of nights they
digressed as people always did.  Poor Miss Sterrin was lucky to be born
that night and they had been disappointed that she had not been the
heir, but had not it proved lucky for all of them that she was not?  If
she hadn't gone back through the flames a second time to save the deeds
after going back to save Hannah they would all be facing the road now.
And not one of them, from her Ladyship down, with a solitary notion
that the castle was in danger!

"She's a hero," said Mrs.  Stacey.

Mr.  Hegarty removed his pipe and requested her not to betray her
ignorance.  "She's a hero-ess," he said.

"Tis a great credit to God the way he made her," Mrs.  Stacey
continued. "There is not her equal in the human world and when she dies
the angels will make room before the fire of Heaven for her to warm her
purty shins."  Hannah drew back her own aching shins a little from the
heavenly vision.

"Yes," she agreed, 'but you shouldn't have let her see you make >

n of the Cross when you caught sight of her face and I the w she heard
you saying that eyebrows never grow again.  rfn.ere was no good in
asking' her to bid the divil good morrow until she has to meet him."

Mr.  Hegarty rose to his feet and set the staff about their business
and threatened, as he had threatened after every exciting disruption of
routine for the past twenty-five years, that 'there would be law and
order in this kitchen from this day

forth'.  No pursuer came on the heels of S terrain's gallop-by-night.

But she was taking no chances.  She had them send for Cousin Maurice,
and until his arrival the embroider bag with its incongruously assorted
contents lay beside her on the counterpane.  No one dared touch it.  It
had cost her too dear.  The doctor kept her under sleep as much as
possible but in its intervals she lay in her bandages and relived the
moments that, for her, represented the different sums that had made up
the purchase price.  The wedding night, the terrible night last August,
the morning when she lifted the dead boy in her arms; the afternoon
when she raised her husband's murdered body in her arms, arms, arms.
She lifted her bandaged arms and the movement brought a groan of
pain.

It was on the sound of her groan that Maurice O'Carroll entered the
room.  At the sight of her face he barely succeeded in suppressing an
exclamation.  He forced himself to be hearty and plunged into the
matter of the deeds.

You are sure," he asked as he unrolled the parchment, 'that there was
no specific mention of them in the Will?"

She shook her head; then in slow, pain-filled phrases she told him
about the codicil that had been added recently in Dublin.  "All horses
in the stables at Noremount.  That let Clooreen out He could see that
the grin she essayed was an effort.  Ah, the lovely mouth of her; like
a flower divided!  And the brows that had been as soft and as delicate
as moss.  What had they done to the sweet, brave colleen?

"The same," she went on, 'with the documents in the library, deeds of
certain properties and the titles thereto."

"Has the heir seen this?"  Maurice tapped the parchment.

"I doubt it.  He only arrived the night before the fire, late."

"I fail to understand," Maurice said slowly, his eyes poring over the
deeds, 'why this was not handed over to you after your

marriage.  It was to have been part of your husband's settlement upon
you.  He undertook to clear the mortgage and restore to you the
unencumbered property.  I simply cannot understand it."

A throb of guilt broke the rhythm of Sterrin's pulse.  She could not
tell Maurice of all people, that it was Young Thomas, the servant whom
he had dismissed, who lay behind all the' bitterness that had
terminated in merciless reprisal against them all.

"Anyway," said Maurice, rolling up the parchment, 'you've got it back,
gra' gal, and let anyone try taking it from you again, s No gentleman
would lay claim to this in the circumstances.  But let him try and by
God, I'll call him out; law or no law."

Sterrin dragged herself upward.  "If you don't, she said grimly, "I
will."

He put her back gently.  "

"You've done more than your share, child.  What you have to do now is
to get well."  He ran his fingers through where the silky curls used to
cluster over her forehead but they recoiled from the scorched stubble
that they encountered.

When he had gone Sterrin asked for a hand mirror.  Her cousin's
repressed start when he entered the room had not gone unnoticed.  This
was what Hannah had been dreading.

"Miss Sterrin," she pleaded, 'haven't you had enough excitement for one
day?"

"Is the first glimpse of my face after so long to prove another
excitement?"

Hannah busied herself picking up things as though she had not heard.

"Hannah," called Sterrin as sweetly as her puffed lips would allow. "Do
you remember when I had measles and you covered the mirror when I asked
to see my spots.  You said that it was Halloween and that if I looked
in the mirror on that day I might see the devil.  What are you afraid
that I might see now?"

"Miss Sterrin's Ladyship, it is the way that the doctor said you are to
sleep as much as possible that you have had a great shock and that '

"And that if I see my face I'll get another shock.  Hand me over that
mirror."

A long-drawn wail of horror brought Maurice and Lady 1 O'Carroll
hurrying up from the drawing-room.  Sterrin was

face downwards, her whole body heaving with deep, se sobs, her
bandaged hand still clutching the mirror.  h Days became weeks.  She
studied the mirror by the hour hop for the improvement that the doctor
promised her, though hTdoubted it himself.  At last Hannah suggested to
her what she had suggested in desperation to Sir Roderick the night of
the Big Wind when no doctor could travel and Miss Sterrin near losin'
her fight to be born; that they call in Mag Miney.

The old woman had reached the landing from the back stairs when Lady
O'Carroll spied her.  The sight of her brought back to Margaret the
sight and the smell of the rancid butter with its growth of greenish
black fur that Mag, after delivering Sterrin was about to apply when
the doctor arrived and bundled her out.  And now, before she could
reach Sterrin's door, she was bundled out again.

Her mother's display of authority prompted Sterrin's first urge towards
the renewing of her life.  "Get me into my clothes, Hannah.  We'll go
to old Mag.  I didn't haul this castle back under my arm after being
near roasted alive just to return to being treated like a child
again."

But at the cottage she shuddered away from the evil-smelling concoction
made mostly of stale, thick goat's milk on which a hairy fur had
grown.

"The cure is in that hairy fur, your Honour's Ladyship."

But Sterrin would not tolerate it near her face.  At last she yielded
to an application on her arms.  On the way home she forgot its smelly
presence in- the first sight of the great bog lands rising up behind
the castle.  She had missed the bogs in Kilkenny.  The spring bustle of
farming was in progress.  Ploughmen were shearing through the black
soil, the great, patient horses pulling; crows solemnly following the
fresh-turned furrows and the sowers moving in harmony, dipping into the
great slings about their shoulders and making the wide, splendid,
ritual gesture of sowing the grain.  She looked at the home that had
seen her birth and the birth of her ancestors; greathearted heroic men.
The other home that she had seen die in its flames had been but a
lodging.  Here was peace.  Here was hospitality.  Here, old servants
lived happily.  And by the heels of Christ they'll go on living happily
here!  Did that upstart back in Kilkenny dare to think that he would
ever warm his backside here?  He nor his that had never fought an inch
for it; never spilled

blood as Normans and Elizabethans, and Cromwellians had, to win
themselves a lien on the earth of Kilsheelin!  The cure had started,
not in her arms but in her spirit.

After a few visits to Mag the dreadful scarifying marks on her arms
seemed to grow less, but nothing would induce her to endure the filthy
mess upon her face.  She took to wearing a veil when she rode abroad on
Clooreen and at sight of anyone she knew drew it down over her face.
Once as she rode, unveiled, up to Coolnafunchion, savouring the cool
fresh breath of the air upon her cheeks a horseman slowed towards her
and raised his Caroline.  A thrill of pleasure shot through her as she
recognised Donal Keating but it was stifled at birth by the
recollection of her lost beauty.  She tugged the veil down over her
disfigured face and rode past him without a sign of recognition.

He gazed after her, stunned.  Oh, but this was too much.  Was she
starting her capricious tricks again?  Only a few short months ago and
they were corresponding amicably over the disposal of the Brennan
children.  And now not even a thank-you for his trouble in getting
those little girls off to' America while she was ill.

Kitty took the newspaper from the post-cart driver.  "Here, Dorene,"
she said to the quiet figure waiting in the doorway, 'give this to
Thomas.  The driver tells me there has been some big landlord
assassinated in Ireland/

Some time later Kitty came into the sitting-room saying, "Who was the
landlord, Thomas ?"

"Oh, Madame Hennessey," exclaimed Dorene, "I have been too busy
pleading with Thomas to take me with him to see the house that he is
building on his land in the South."

"What is the use when you won't be able to see it," said Nori sheen
brutally.  Kitty frowned at her warningly.

"The weather is cold for you to travel so far," she said to Dorene.  In
emphasis, she threw a quite unnecessary log on the fire.  "And indeed
for you too, Thomas, after your long tour, would you not wait till the
spring

Dorene lifted her head from Thomas's shoulder.  "But, Madame Hennessey,
we must get our house started.  We cannot stay with you
indefinitely."

Thomas answered Kitty as though Dorene had not spoken.  "I 1

hooked up for the rest of the winter, right into the middle of am.
besides," his tone became less explanatory, 'my--kinsman

6 Kitty stepped back from the scorching flames that suddenly held a
shiver of bleakness like the east wind's breath filtering through the
May sunshine.  She had hoped that with Miss Sterrin's marriage he would
have given up this dream of building one of those old colonial mansions
on the land that he had purchased when he first toured the South.  The
South had seemed so far away, so improbable to Kitty when she had been
all of home and kin to Thomas.  But now that he had traced this
O'Carroll kin somewhere in the 'region of his own property, it was 'my
kinsman' expects me!

The irrepressible Norisheen mimicked his words.  "My kinsman expects
me.  Hoity-toity, let no dog bark!"

Thomas burst out laughing then turned to Dorene.  "I've told you
Dorene, it is a long journey and it has got to be a quick one.

I cannot be he stopped as he was about to say 'hampered'

and now he wanted to be alone, untrammelled when for the first time in
his life he would meet someone in whose veins ran the same blood as in
his own.  "I shall be very busy in New York, signing and attesting and
what-not for my citizenship."  He had postponed seeking out American
citizenship until he had finally established his identity.  Not under a
nickname reversed would he register himself as a citizen of America.

Tleece, Tomas, pleece!"  Dorene linked his arm and entwined her fingers
in his.  He gently extricated himself and left the room.  After a
moment Dorene followed him, sure-footed in the space that had been left
clear of obstacles for her progress from the sofa beyond the fireplace
to the door.

"I believe," said Norisheen, 'that she waves those hands of hers
helplessly in front of him, just to impress on him how pretty they are.
She's always creaming them and buffing her nails."

"Hush, Norisheen," Kitty answered.  "She has as much right to tittivate
as you have.  It is good that she has the heart to.  When a woman loses
her vanity she loses her flavour."  She picked up the newspaper from
behind the cushion where Dorene had sat.

"Well," said Norisheen, "I think that she piles on that foreign
accent

Kitty didn't answer.  She was deep in the newspaper's account f the
assassination of Sir Jocelyn Devine.  That night, she

wrote to New York to Fintan, her brother, who had left Ireland in
Repeal Year and studied by night after his day's labour, to make
himself a solicitor.

Marcus O'Carroll read aloud the document that Thomas handed him--the
accomplishment of the odyssey that had brought him on his long
journey.

'... and we, Richard and Dermot Rourke of Molesworth Street, Dublin and
The Parade, Kilkenny, Notaries by Royal authority, do hereby testify
that according to references made in the record office of the Exchequer
concerning ... hm ... hm and attesting the accuracy of extracts made
from the can telury of the monastery of Holy Cross and papers in the
public archives in Paris ... Thomas O'Carroll to be a gentleman
recognised reputed and qualified by patronage ... issue of the
illustrious house and family of O'Carroll The American looked over the
top of the document, "And you claim to be this Thomas O'Carroll?"

Thomas felt sorry that he had come here.  He crossed his legs and took
out his cigarettes.  "May I smoke?"  He leaned back and gestured
towards the document.  "That Thomas O'Carroll was my father and I did
not come here to make claims *

But his host was on his feet, proffering cigars, pulling the bell rope
for refreshment; making up for his initial reserve.  Even without the
credentials he had been favourably impressed; but one had to move
guardedly.  His family had had no truck with the acting profession. And
the Irish were great ones for claiming greatness.

"I've come at this particular time," Thomas started, but his new
kinsman held up his hand in sudden enlightenment.

You don't have to tell me.  I might have known.  They are all coming to
me; young relatives I haven't seen since they were in smocks and
pinafores; ones I've never seen.  You've come to join in my
regiment."

Thomas had forgotten all about the war.

Long into the night the two men sat traversing the centuries that had
diffused the bloodstream stemming from their joint ancestor; the one
who had been informed against and disinherited by his youngest son.

"And now," smiled Marcus O'Carroll, 'it is my turn to be disinherited.
I mean from my place on the tree.  You see, we had

ken it fc>r granted that it was the eldest son, the disinherited heir
who had come over here and started this branch."

Thomas's documents had revealed that there were four sons.  The two
middle ones had gone to the American colonies.

"Where did the eldest go?"  asked Marcus.

"Nowhere.  He became a raparee."

"A what?"

Thomas explained that the raparees were bands of young men belonging to
dispossessed families.  They clung doggedly to the vicinity of their
old homes; hid in bogs and mountains and made plundering raids on the
usurpers.  They were the forerunners of the Tories and the Whiteboys.

"Later," resumed Thomas, 'he settled in to the humble home where his
father had ended his days.  He married the beautiful daughter of his
father's foster-brother but could not adapt himself to the crude life
of a farmer.  He would drink from nothing but the silver cups given to
his father by the Empress Maria Teresa, but was incapable of earning
anything to maintain their standards.  Eventually he was given a
position as Collector of Hearths and Window Tax and lived the life of
Reilly, dining at all the big mansions where there were plenty of
windows and hearths and often scorning to collect the tax because the
hosts were so hospitable.  But his grandson, Thomas O'Carroll that
Thomas O'Carroll," Thomas nodded towards the document, 'wasn't content
to live on the filmy claims of past grandeur.  He worked his farm
industriously until two days before I was born.  But it was the time of
the Tithe War, when the Catholics started to resist paying Tithes and
Cess for the support of the Protestant clergy and the maintenance of
their churches.  My father was shot at his door for his refusal to pay.
My mother died while journeying to Kilsheelin Castle with the papers of
my identity and ancestry."  He went on to explain how the papers came
to be destroyed the night of the Big Wind.

Suddenly Young Thomas was Cousin Thomas.  Marcus O'Carroll introduced
him to friends and neighbours all over the county as our 'cousin'. When
gracious ladies floated across their drawing-rooms to greet him as
Cousin Thomas, he experienced a feeling of unreality.  Any moment he
would wake up and someone would order Thomas to replenish the turf
chests by the drawing-room fireside.  "Cousin Thomas I want you to meet
'young Thomas, I want you to empty the ashes.

Hurry up with them knives, young Thomas, or I'll leather yOUr
backside!"

But Thomas didn't wake up.  The wonderful reality of his visit
stretched from days to weeks and from weeks to months.  It was more
than three months after he had started out on the visit when he called
on his way back to the firm of solicitors where Kitty's brother,
Fintan, was a junior partner.  Fintan, he was told, was at the harbour
meeting an immigrant boat.  He was representing one of the committees
that looked after the welfare of disembarking emigrants.  Thomas
himself, under the direction of John Holohan, had often helped at
Castle Garden when his engagements permitted.  But today he had no time
for benevolence.  He was impatient at having to trail like this after
his solicitor.  He watched the white-faced passengers disembarking. 
And the efforts of zealous social workers to obstruct the actions of
unscrupulous employment agents and white slave emissaries.  But there
was no one to obstruct the Recruiting Officer.  He was there,
resplendent in his best uniform, to dazzle the hunted outcasts of Irish
evictions.  A fine life awaited them in the American army!  Grand
uniform, good food.  As soon as this war was over, the American army
would be coming over to fight for Ireland's freedom!  Then no more
evictions.  How old are you?  Most of them didn't know.  Some had been
born in the famine.  No one had thought to register their births.  How
old were you the night of the Big Wind.  Oh, hazily, I was breeched
that year!  I was born in Black Forty-seven!  I believe I was born the
day-twelve-months after the Big Wind.  The Big Wind was a date on
history's calendar.  The satisfactory thing, thought Thomas, was that
they had been born, born to flee across the ocean from the landlord's
bailiff, straight into the arms of the Recruiting Officer!

He finally sighted Fintan, resplendent in a blue officer's uniform. 
Now Thomas knew why there had been such a delay with his citizenship
papers.  Fintan had been too busy getting an officer's commission to
attend to Thomas's naturalisation.  To add insult to injury, he seemed
to think it unreasonable of Thomas to be so annoyed about it.

"Can't you get it rushed through for me now?"

But Fintan would be with the 69th.  One of the older men at the office
would see to the matter.  "All the younger ones have joined up."

ll

Thomas thought he detected in the statement a hint of reach to
himself.  Over his shoulder Fintan called, "I may see you at the
wedding if I can wangle leave."  Whose wedding?"  "Norisheen's.  She
made a sudden decision when her beau joined up."

Thomas was amazed to find Hennessey's big parlour filled with military
men.  All the young men he had met here when he had come in response to
Kitty's news about his foster-mother, were in blue uniform.  There had
been a Station planned for the next day and Norisheen had decided to
avail of the presence of a priest in the house to rush forward a
marriage that she had previously tended to postpone.  Other young
couples in the room had, likewise, decided to avail of the Station
function.

Towering above the wedding guests was Private John Holohan.  The
millionaire who could procure commissions for others would not hear of
one for himself.  Thomas made his way towards Kitty, Dorene clinging to
his arm.  Kitty seemed preoccupied and not inclined to indulge him in
his annoyance with her brother, Fintan, over the papers.  John Holohan,
glass in hand, broke into The Wedding at Bcdlyporeen--the song he had
sung at the platform dance the afternoon of the blight.  Then in a
voice as booming as his singing he asked Thomas why had he not joined
up under the command of Thomas Francis Meagher, the idol of his youth.
Meagher of the Sword.

Thomas explained that he was to play in New York in two nights.
"Anyway, I haven't got my citizenship, thanks to Fin tan."

"You don't need citizenship," said Mark Hennessey.

"I know," said Thomas crisply.  "I've seen Ireland's evicted citizens,
her surplus stock, being picked off the ships like so much fodder."

"What's come over you, Thomas?"  said Mark.  Kitty hurried over and
handed Thomas a letter.

"It came this morning," she said.

It was from -his new-found Kinsman, Marcus O'Carroll.  I am here at the
head of my regiment," he wrote.  We are all in.  fine fettle and spirit
with no doubt whatever about the outcome of this conflict.  The spirit
of our ancestor--yours and mine--who fought with Washington will not be
found lacking

"I met Tim Lonergan at the barracks," said John.  You remember Tim
Lonergan of Golden Meadows?"

Thomas nodded and tried to resume the letter.

"I thought he'd be an officer an he college bred John went on.  "But,
of course, Thomas, if you decide to fight you'd get a commission in the
69th."

Thomas looked up from the letter and around at the watching and
listening faces.  He felt strangely rasped.  What right had they to
take him for granted?  As one of themselves.  He wasn't one of them.
His oneness was with the writer of this letter.  "If I decide to fight
he said, "I shall not fight with the 69th."

Tbu'd renege on the Aieagher of the Sword?"  exclaimed Mark.

"And what regiment have you got in mind?"  asked John.

Thomas looked down at the letter.  "I am here at the head of my
regiment The words stared up at him.  He looked back at John Holohan.

"If I decide to fight he repeated slowly, "I shall fight with the
South."

The room went silent.  Small sounds took over; Dorene's little intake
of breathe, the crackling of the fire logs.  Then the crash of a giant
fist on the table and a bellow from the millionaire private.  He
accused Thomas of treachery to the country of his adoption.

It hasn't adopted me yet

"It gave you success wealth."

"My talent gave me success.  My fortune was struck in Australia."

"I multiplied it.  You ingrate!"

Thomas was tossing back frivolous arguments because John wanted
arguments, explanations.  Mark, too.  All of them.  And he couldn't
give them the true reason, that was based on the simplest most
elemental emotion.  That he was following the trail of his kind.  He
could not explain to them that as a child, aye and as a growing
gossoon, he could not pass a cabin where children sat with parents
around a hearth or table without wanting to crawl in among them on his
belly like a little stray terrier and plead to be let stay with them.
He could not explain to these angry, smug men, who were assured in the
consciousness of an identity set in ancestry, what bleak outside ness
of his

eless existence had been.  What it meant to him now to find 2 pie who
had the same blood as his in their veins.  Who had ^ken him to
themselves and called him kin.  Their cause was his cause.... ,

Soon after dawn, Thomas, from his window, saw the priest arrive; and
then the blue-bonne ted brides, for all the world like the Shrovetide
brides whose Masses he used to serve long ago.  On a sudden, he strode
across the corridor to Mark and Kitty's bedroom door.

"Mark!"he called.

There was silence.  "Mark," he repeated.

Kitty opened the door slightly.  Tm not quite dressed, Thomas.  I've
been up half the night."

"It is Mark I want."

"He's asleep Thomas."

"He is not.  I heard him moving.  Mark!"  he called ovet her head.  "I
want you to do me a slight favour, act as my Best Man, then Dorene and
I will go away '

Mark came and stood behind Kitty.  "There can be nothing between us."
He made to close the door.  Thomas pushed it back.  "There need be
nothing more after this."

A girl came up the stairs towards the door, calling Kitty.  Thomas
murmured something quickly.  Mark shook his head and closed the door in
his face.  Thomas heard the key turn.

He stood there for a stunned moment, then turned and went slowly down
the stairs.  Young men were queuing on one knee outside a room for
Confession.  They looked up then resumed their preparations.

Kitty caught up on him outside the hall door.  "Where are you going,
Thomas?"

He looked at her without replying, his face livid, nostrils flaring. CI
don't know," he said.  And then collecting himself, "I'm going to make
arrangements to take Dorene away--I can't leave her here."

"You can, Thomas.  You can!  Where would you take her to now?"

"Kitty, my plans are all upset.  I can't come back here again.  I'll
send you an address in a couple of days.  Could you let one of the
girls take Dorene to me?"

"I'll take her to you myself, Thomas."  She threw her arms about him,
tears streaming down her cheeks.  "Oh, Thomas, I've

read that there is no war so bitter as the war of brothers.  I never
thought such a state should come to pass between us!"  She watched him
go and remembered watching him another time as he walked away from
their cottage after bringing them food and cheer in the famine
desolation.  He had looked back and called something to them in Latin
from the Mass.  And he had called it to them again when he had watched
the emigrant ship taking them to America; taking them away from him.
She said the words after him now.  "Sursum Corda."  Thomas stopped. She
saw the tenseness of his face soften into the old smile.  He raised his
soft hat and the heart inside him responded to the words she had given
him back.  "Sursum Corda!"  Lift up your hearts!

CHAPTER 53

People in the street were pointing in the direction of the Templetown
Assembly Rooms.  A flag was being slowly hoisted over its roof.  Soon a
furious pair of elbows was flaying through the gathering crowd and the
Scout was demanding new ses right and left.

"Who won?"  he clamoured as the Stars and Stripes ballooned out to
their fullest to proclaim the first great battle of the American Civil
War.

It was with proud feelings that he heard that the Federals had won at
Bull Run, was not his son with the 69th, under Captain Thomas Francis
Meagher?  "Why wasn't I told?"  he demanded fiercely.  But soon he was
told without seeking.  A Canadian ship arrived at an Irish port three
days later with details of the battle of Fredericksburg where more than
10,000 of Meagher's Irish Brigade had perished.  The Scout's son was
among them.  He groped in his tails for his handkerchief to mop his
streaming eyes.  "He has paid his debt to America," he said.

Lady O'Carroll and Sterrin came to call on him.  There was an air of
comfort in the little house due to the money that had been sent so
regularly by the lad whose body lay buried so far away.  Sterrin was
startled to glimpse in the room beyond the kitchen the symbols of a
wake.  A bed was covered with the finest white linen and draped with
black crepe.  A candle burned at its four corners and women keened and
prayed about it though it held only a soldier's badge and rosary
beads.

"These are his earthly remains," said the Scout, indicating the beads
and badge.  "It was a kind thought on the part of young Mike Hennessey,
to send them to me.  Your Ladyship will remember young Mike, the
Master's nephew?"  Sterrin nodded.  Big John, another relative, had
told her that Mike had won his officer's sword and shoulder badges on
the battlefield.

"It is a most compressive day, your Ladyships," said the Scout, and
Sterrin was glad that the presence of a body was not

added to the compressive ness of the wak&

"It was such a day as this that the Reverend Mr.  Sealy Debenham, the
Protestant minister, God rest him, carried me all the way from here to
the hospital in his arms, as though I were a baby; and he a lad of
sixteen years.  The poor Vicar was dead in a week with the famine fever
he caught from me and I walked out of the quarry where I had been left
to die, cured."

He bowed them to the door of their carriage like a grandee.  "It was
gracious of you, Lady Sterrin, to step out of your own sorrow to visit
me in mine.  Have they apprehended the pulpit yet?"

"Pulpit?* Sterrin had almost forgotten the Scout's misplaced pedantry.
Before she solved his question he looked up at the sky.

"Oh, the pulpit."  She shook her head.

"Why, I wonder, was my boy spared that untimely death under his native
sky only to meet one as untimely beneath a foreign sky?  Why?  But
there's no use in asking' life a question beforehand.  A body has to
live it first and find the answer later; too late, maybe."

The Scout's profundities found an echo in Sterrin's mind as she drove
out of the lane.  Too frequently did she ask herself why, when she
reflected upon the useless sacrifice of her marriage.  She had
benefited no one.  She felt like telling the Scout that you don't find
the answer even after you have lived your inexplicable experiences.

Two dashing-looking officers walked past while the carriage was halted
outside a shop.  She heard one of them say, "Which of them is the young
widow?"  She was dressed in the same black drapes as her mother.  She
was the identical height.  Even the distinction of being a trifle
slimmer was denied her by all the clustering drapes and weeds.

"I might as well be forty instead of twenty-two," she thought and,
forgetting her scars, flung the veils right back over her crepe bonnet.
They slowed almost to a standstill.  It had been intriguing to
speculate upon what lay behind the dark screen of dual widowhood; their
first impression was of vivid beauty and then they stared crudely.
Gradually, through her remoteness and her weeds, Lady O'Carroll became
aware of the scrutiny of two strange military gentlemen on the
sidewalk.  Behind her crepe barriers she frowned with the effort of
trying to recall if

old acquaintances.  But instinct rushed over the they -we fences of
memory and reassured her that no gentleman bogging^ ntance would think
of staring at her that way.  A Of her ac<jde ^ drew her eyes to the
spectacle of her daughter's

80 m a face "Sterrin!"  she gasped, "Cover your face immediunveilea
!<"<

ate y' -n drew down the veil and turned her head towards the

How beside her.  They drove out of the town in silence.  About two
miles outside, Lady O'Carroll turned suddenly at the sound of a sob.

"Why, Sternn, darling!

Sterrin was quivering from head to foot.  She pulled angrily away from
her mother.

"How could you be so cruel," she sobbed, 'to order me like that to
cover my face.  I--I had forgotten when I raised my veil that I look
like a monster."

Her mother was astonished.  "Sterrin, I never dreamed of your poor
face.  I was thinking of the impropriety of a widow unveiling in public
before she is at least two years bereaved '

"I've never been even two minutes bereaved," Sterrin said.

Cousin Maurice was waiting for them at the castle.  Sterrin had come to
associate the visits of her cousin with the mortgage or the probable
sale of Kilsheelin.  With funerals too, Papa's, and Jocelyn's and, as
far as she was concerned, her own wedding had been a funeral to justify
a visit.  She was sure that this time it must be the mortgage.

Dominic thought the same when he returned home after dinner with Lord
Cullen and Captain Fitzharding-Smith.  Dominic shouldered off the
suggestion that he should join Cousin Maurice in the library to discuss
business.

"I mustn't neglect my guests.  Forget business, Cousin Maurice, and
join us in a rubber."

"Well, read that first," said his cousin, handing him an official
looking document.

Dominic whistled.  "As bad as that!  It's all Sterrin's fault," he said
childishly.

"Your sentiments do you no credit, Dominic.  Your sister has done her
part.  God!  When I think of that child's face when she returned
here."

"Nevertheless," said her brother angrily, 'it is damnably hard to hear
the things that are being said about her."

"Who said anything about Sterrin?"  Maurice's voice \ roaring the
words as the pair entered the drawing-room.

"So you've heard?"  said Patrick Cullen, seating himself at a card
table and stretching his lame leg out on a chair.  Mauric?  stood
still. Patrick looked so obviously like someone who had let the cat out
of the bag; and Captain Fitzharding-Smith was raising his eyebrows and
coughing in a warning kind of way, Dominic took up the cards and
shuffled them.

"Come, Maurice!"  said Dominic dealing them out.

Captain Fitzharding-Smith almost grabbed a hand.  "What shall we play
for?  Your usual, Dominic?  Though I vow I've no livestock in my
purse."

"Faith, then," replied Dominic, "I've no ready cash in my purse; it has
got to be the usual; a sheep a point and a bullock on the rubber."  ^

Maurice threw down the cards.  "I won't play for stock.  There is
little enough of it on the land as it is."

Sterrin came in and stood behind him.  She had often seen Maurice play
away a whole herd.  This must have something to do with whatever
Dominic had been saying to him about herself.

"Look here," he said, 'what is all the mystery?  You are not afraid to
lose a sheep or a few bullocks.  Who said what about me?  Out with it!
I'm going to know."  She turned to Dominic.  "Come on, Dominic, you'll
tell me if I have to shoot it out of you!"

Her choice of threat caught the unsubtle Patrick off guard.  "There's
been enough of shooting for one day," he said and immediately drenched
his treacherous tongue with a long drink of port that emptied a full
goblet.

Out came the story.  Dominic had fought a duel over Sterrin, that very
afternoon.  He had spied the carriage and as it emerged from Love Lane
and had reined-in in time only to overhear the officers' remark about
his sister's face.  *

Dominic wasn't sure whether Sterrin was going to faint or" explode.  He
put an arm around her.  "I I'm sorry I didn't kill the bounder," he
said in his gentle voice.  Maurice regained his lost composure.

"Don't talk nonsense, boy!  Duelling is no longer a pastime.  It is
murder.  Why didn't you stop it, Basil?  As for you, Patrick, you ought
to have had more sense."

Patrick was getting a bit muddled and muttered something

hivalry and loyalty to one's friends.  And Captain Fitz- about^^ it
seemed, had galloped, hell for leather, after baf two officers
immediately he got wind of the affair.  By die *e .  e Ad arrived at
the rendezvous the offending party was umein a wounded elbow.  Went
through clean as a whistle," n'd Patrick and began tittering in a way
that was irritatingly reminiscent of old Lord Cullen.

"Stop laughing, Patrick," snapped Sterrin, "I don't relish being the
subject of your amusement."

Patrick choked, halfway down another goblet.  Hoity Toity he
spluttered.  You are a nice one to talk.  I'll wager you amused His
Imperial Majesty with your hand-springs and what not."  His fuddled
brain was trying to sieve some salacious titbit about Sterrin's sojourn
in Paris.

Sterrin took a quick turn into the centre of the room, pulled off her
belt and tied her skirts around her knees with it.

"Look!"  she said briefly.  Before they realised what she was about she
had swept up her arms and the next moment a pair of shapely legs in
plaid stockings were weaving high in the air.  She walked on her hands
till the tips of her toes set the dangling glasses of the chandelier
chiming.  "Now," she panted, straightening up, 'there is the sum total
of my behaviour in front of the Emperor.  And it was at the Empress's
soiree.  The Emperor only surprised us at the finish.  Does that
justify duels and gossip and the loss of a lady's reputation?  Does
it?"  she blazed, untying her skirts and pushing back her hair into its
snood.

Captain Fitzharding-Smith and Maurice O'Carroll, looking into the
fearless eyes, wide and dark with anger, could readily imagine the
harmless romp that had caused such pother.

Dominic, at any other time would have relished the performance.  But
the remark that had really made him fight the duel was not one about a
frolicsome somersault.  There had been an oblique reference to an
actor; something about his being surprised in a bedroom--with his
sister.  It was, of course, unthinkable.  All his life he had looked up
to Sterrin; followed her lead in every prank.  He fought with her, most
of the time; but he revered her.  She would never be capable of
anything so furtive, or messy.  Still, he had argued all evening to
himself, her husband had been a bit long in the tooth, and Sterrin was
so hellishly good looking.  It wasn't for turning somersaults that she
had been cut out of that heritage of delicious wealth.  There

must have been something.  He, too, looked into her indignant eyes and
knew that he would never challenge her.

Did she know, he wondered, how much slanderous gossip she courted?  It
had been less malicious when it had been assumed that she was an
extremely wealthy young widow.  Now that it had been established that
she had been completely disinherited the gossips were saying "I told
you so' and telling more so.  How could an old man wreak vengeance upon
anyone so young and sweet!  His eye ran over the morsel of lace edging
on the snood that restrained her chignon.  It was the merest concession
towards the widow's cap.

"Sterrin," said Cousin Maurice, 'you promised to show me that talking
contraption that Tom Steele invented."

A crate from Kilkenny, that someone had thought contained some of Lady
Devine's packed clothing, had been found on arrival at Kilsheelin to
contain a Talking Machine that Sir Jocelyn had ordered before his
death.  Captain Fitzharding Smith was diverted.

"I didn't know that Mr.  Steele was an inventor," he said.

"Indeed he was said Maurice, 'he has contributed most valuable
improvements to this new incandescent lighting.  There was a great
inventor lost in him only he insisted upon traipsing after lost causes.
Back in 1820 he was on the track of something in artificial lighting
that has only been discovered recently by the modern scientists.  But
nothing would do for him but go off and help the Spanish patriots
against Frederick VII."

The gentlemen gathered round as she assembled the different parts. "Mr.
Steele didn't invent this," she explained, 'he was carrying out
experiments upon it before he died."

Dominic's carefully assumed sangfroid was tilted to an openmouthed
amazement, when suddenly a human voice--a man's-came singing from the
speaking trumpet.  A woman's voice joined in, but the mingled words
grew shrill and out of tune.  Sterrin turned the winch frantically and
the voices sang in tune to the end.

"By Jove," exclaimed the captain, 'that's incredible!  I've never heard
anything like it.  I've heard attempts in Paris, but they were scarcely
recognisable.  They haven't got that far in America yet."

Cousin Maurice was so dumbfounded that Sterrin offered to wind him into
speech.  "It is not right," he said at last.  "It is

king n ungodly liberty.  Our bodies are the temples of the Holy Ghost.
I don't believe that it was ever envisaged in the Divine scheme of
creation that man should extract that portion of the body that is the
human voice and put it, for amusement,

nto a a joke like that!"  He sat back and mopped his forehead.

"Is there any more to it?"  Curiosity oozed through his disapproval.

Sterrin removed the disc and put in another.  Out of the machine, with
startling suddenness, came a weird voice that just missed being
sepulchral, owing to the tinny timbre of the mechanism.

You are engaged in blood," said the voice, 'and are strengthening the
enemies of your long suffering country *

"My God," breathed Maurice, 'it is Steele himself '

"Now I address these words to you in the hope that, through the power
of science, my voice may come to you and direct you from your folly.
The prophetic utterance of the Liberator has come true.  Before his
lamented death, he said, "I shall not be six months in my grave before
the flag of rebellion will be unfurled in Ireland" '

"Stop it, Sterrin!  Stop it, for God's sake," cried Maurice,

She lifted the rotary spike from the groove.  Dominic's face was white.
"Is it--is it one of those spiritualist things, a mechanical seance
medium?"  he asked shakily.

"Not at all, Dominic," she assured him, "Mr.  Steele was just
experimenting with his own voice to test the machine.  That is the way
he used to address the Whiteboys during the Repeal Movement."

A knock at the drawing-room door brought Nurse Hogan to say that her
Ladyship had got the impression that she had heard singing and in view
of Lady Sterrin's recent bereavement

She looked at the closed piano.  Over in its corner the great harp
stood as silent as ever.  Some of her Ladyship's hallucinations, she
thought, as she withdrew.  She returned to say that her Ladyship had
some embroidery silk and other materials ready for her cousins in
Virginia for Mr.  Maurice to send off.  Nurse Hogan would bring them
down straight away as her Ladyship might not be up when he would be
leaving in the morning.

"I doubt," said Maurice, when she had gone, 'if there is much use in
sending any more gifts.  I've had absolutely no acknowledgements and
I've sent two separate consignments of stuff to

Virginia.  They used to acknowledge by the first possible boat."

"It is like the famine days," said Fitzharding-Smith, 'only the
situation is reversed.  Now Ireland is sending food and things to
America."

"With the difference that then every ship on the sea was cooperating to
get the stuff here.  Now they are trying to prevent a little humane
help getting to the South Look, Patrick is falling asleep.  Call the
carriage."  Maurice turned back at the door.  "Sterrin, for God's sake
get rid of that contraption.  Destroy it.  It may be scientific, but it
is also diabolical.  There is something irreverent about letting the
voice of a dead man be heard after the grave has closed over him."

When the gentlemen had gone, she stood looking down at the machine. She
put her finger abstractedly on the rotary arm.  Nurse Hogan shifted the
bulky packet to open the drawing room door.  Her Ladyship had made up a
lot of little luxuries and elegancies for her cousins, the O'Regans of
Virginia.  The poor ladies must miss their comforts.  And they used to
be so kind; sending all that food during the famine. "Twas to be hoped
that Mr.  Maurice would be able to get it out from the Strand of the
Little Music to some America-bound ship.

She peered into the shadowy drawing-room.  There was no one there.  She
could have sworn that she had heard a voice.  Sterrin, on a mischievous
impulse, stepped back behind the window embrasure.  Nurse Hogan took
another step and froze.  In the empty space a terrible voice was saying
over and over--"I shall not be six months in my grave--I shall not be
six months in my grave."  She dropped the parcel and ran screaming from
the room.

Hegarty came rushing in.  "Twasn't like Nurse Hogan to behave queer
except in a very bad storm.  Mother of God!  She was telling the truth!
He turned with a wailing gasp and collided with Pakie Scally.  They
grappled with each other to get away from the ghostly voice that
repeated over and over "I-shall-notbesixmonthsinmy-grave ' until the
instrument jammed and ran out.

The following day was perfect for the regatta on Lough Dergh; the air
was clear, the water sparkling.  Sterrin's black bombazine was
conspicuous among the gay coloured gowns of the other ladies.  It
proclaimed more than her widowhood and

. identity.  It suggested heartlessness and lack of respect for the
onvention, her venturing to a festivity after so recent a bereavement,
but what could be expected!  It also gave excuses for coy glances
towards the fair good looks of Dominic.

"It doesn't look quite de rigueur," said Dominic withdrawing his eyes
from the brown ones that ogled invitingly from beneath a red parasol.

I quite agree," said his sister, 'a red parasol over that complexion is
disastrous!"

"Don't be catty.  I mean your being here."

Sterrin trailed her fingers through the waters.  Like the sparkling
waters, she refused to be ruffled.  A military band was playing the
Cricket's Ramble Through the Hearth.  There was a son of kinship
between her and this lake.  Once upon a time the O'Carroll chief had
been known as the Lord of Lough Dergh and its lakes and waters where
they would have their hamper lunch was full of their family lore.

"I say, Sterrin, you really do have no regard for conventions.  I
suppose that's from being so much in the kitchen.  I remember the way
you used to trail about after that chap who cleaned the knives."  It
was a shot in the dark but he noticed that her hand came out of the
water with a sudden jerk.  "I just barely remember him," said Dominic.
"Didn't some of the servants say he became an actor?"

Something stirred in his mind.  An actor!  The officer he had
challenged had made an unsavoury reference to an actor and Lady Devine.
Sterrin!  The way she removed her hand from the water!  Her face had
gone still.  She had been so vivid.  All the way along she had been gay
and full of laughing reminiscence and despite the black veil she looked
like a schoolgirl in her ridiculous little straw bonnet.

A shot went off for the start of a race.  Sterrin turned her head glad
of the excuse not to answer.  If Dominic were to guess!  But Dominic
was guessing already.  He was adding two and two and almost making
five.  Ye gods!  A servant!  He had often thought his sister was an
enigma.  Especially when her face went remotely still like it was now.
So that was why she had never seemed to bother about the men who
hovered about her!  That's why she didn't trouble to make more of a
success of her marriage!

They picnicked on an island.  Sterrin showed Dominic the

spot that was haunted by Teresa De Burgha and the last O'Car.  roll to
hold the title of Lord of Lough Dergh.  Young Lord O'Carroll had come
to keep a tryst with Teresa, daughter of the De Burgha, the Norman
Chief, who had seized his property.  De Burgha bored holes in
O'Carroll's boat, not knowing that his daughter planned to elope in it.
The lovers were drowned as they eloped and their shadows were supposed
to haunt the waters.

"The O'Carrolls were not fortunate in their loves," she concluded
dreamily.

"What about Mamma and Papa?"  he asked.  "Their romance had a lake for
its setting, the Lake of Nightingales.  They were very happy."

"But not for long," said Sterrin.  "Mamma can never forget her lost
happiness," and to herself she murmured, 'but at least she had it,
however short it lasted."

Dominic had no more doubts.  Ye gods!  She was still hankering after a
servant-cum-actor!  As Mamma loved Papa!  But Papa was a great
gentleman.  He almost said it to her.

"I wish," he said instead, 'that I had known the people you used to
know, the hard and all his stories, but most of all Papa.  I remember
so little of him."

"He was a lovely Papa," said Sterrin and then she spoke his own
thoughts aloud, 'and he was a very great gentleman."

Dominic lay back on the sward and closed his eyes.  Sterrin's remarks
about Papa set him thinking.  She was the replica of her father.  Her
standards were as high; her assessments as keen.  If she loved an
inferior, he could be no inferior person.  He tried to recall something
of the chap.  Tall, well set up; well spoken too, as good with horses
as Big John, more deft in the house than Hegarty.  Now that he bothered
to recollect him, Dominic recalled that he had become a sort of young
major domo before he went away.  Egad!  Was that why Mamma had urged
Sterrin to marry Devine?

As they started the homeward drive they found the roads thronged with
people moving against them.  Not the regatta onlookers but farmers,
peasants and shopkeepers.  There was a good flow of smart phaetons.
Among the horsemen she recognised Donal Keating.  He passed the
carriage looking straight ahead.  Dominic hailed a barrister friend to
ask him what it was all about.  He tried to halt but was borne on by
the crush.  Suddenly

the landau came to a standstill and Big John clambered stiffly down
and examined the horses' feet.  One of them had cast a shoe.  There's a
forge not fifty yards down the road a gentleman passing in a phaeton
pointed back.  As he pointed a tall, broad-shouldered man pushed
towards them.  He raised his hat to the occupants of the carriage and
then turned to Big John.  "I don't doubt but it is to my forge you are
pointing.  It's sorry I am to disappoint you, but it is closed till the
meeting is over."

The crowds were heading for a meeting on the slopes of Slievenamon.
"But surely," said Dominic, 'that is not sufficient cause to leave us
stranded.  We have fifteen miles to travel.  I am Sir Dominic
O'Carroll."

The man raised his hat again.  "I would be proud any other time to
oblige an O'Carroll of Ely O'Carroll, but this is no ordinary meeting,
sir.  High officers from the American War will speak and Mr.  Kickham
will preside at the meeting '

"The writer--tine man who writes for the Irish People, in Dublin?"
asked Dominic.  Yes, sir, there are other writers to speak also.  Mr.
O'Leary and Mr.  Thomas Clark-Lubey Dominic turned to Sterrin.

"Mr.  Lubey is a scholar of Trinity.  I've heard about him."  He turned
to the blacksmith.  "You will only miss a few moments of your meeting
by shoeing our horse.  Your attitude is scarcely obliging."

The man took out a heavy watch.  "I cannot afford to miss these few
moments, Sir Dominic."  There was an independence in the friendly tone.
"I happen to be on the committee of the meeting."

He did not miss Dominic's raised brows, "But," he continued, 'if you
would like to attend it, there is a short cut down a bore en at the
back of my field.  You could wait there away from the crowd.  I think
of the young lady waiting *

"You won't keep me waiting," said Sterrin, standing up, Tm going to the
meeting."  She reached him her hand but the blacksmith cupped her waist
with his great hands and swung her to the ground delightedly.  Dominic
sat on for a moment in dignity then found himself following his
sister's lead as he had done all his life.  As they passed through the
empty forge he nudged Sterrin towards a stack of newly-forged pikes
leaning against a corner.  Nice peaceful implements for a forge!  So
that's why they y

have a blacksmith' on their committee!"

Tor that matter," said Sterrin, 'they have a blacksmith's son on their
committee in America.  Look at Mr.  Lincoln!  *

Where is he?"  For a panting moment as they climbed the slopes of
Slievenamon, Dominic thought she had seen the President of America
among the many bronze-faced men whose complexions and accents were so
unmistakably American.  I

The blacksmith clove a path through and they followed him to the
summit.  Dominic marvelled that there was no condescension in the
leaders' greeting to the blacksmith.  All of them bore the stamp of
breeding and culture.  The American officers were big, stern-looking
men with countenances aged too soon as the price of bloody victories in
the battlefields of their adopted country.

On the faces of the spectators there was a grim purpose fulness that
had not been on those who had attended O'Connell's Monster meetings. 
These people had lived through an experience that O'Connell's followers
had not known.  They had suffered the Great Hunger and they had
witnessed the Great Death.  Now they were living through the Great
Exodus of the evictions that was draining away the life of the
nation.

Sterrin recognised the faded Repeal Button in the lapels of many of the
older men.  But these men were no longer interested in Repeal, only in
the ownership of the soil that was their birth's heritage and their
life's labour, that they now held with less right of tenure than
rabbits.  They had come to this meeting on Slievenamon Mountain, 15th
August 1863, as members of the new Tenant League, hoping to hear of
some plan or purpose to help them resist being made beggars, landless
and houseless under the government system of eviction.

The speakers were outspoken in their criticism of O'Connell.  To
Sterrin, born in the reign of the Liberator and nurtured in his Repeal
doctrine, they sounded profane.  She studied the elegant form and
features of Thomas Clark-Lubey, the patriotic son of a Protestant
minister; reared in the airs of an ascendency household, prejudiced
against Ireland but passionately espousing its cause; noted the arched
brows, the bright eyes, gloomy and glorious as a poet's dream.  Dominic
listened avidly to the polished sentences shaped by a refined, subtle
intellect.  ClarkLubey told the great assembly that Ireland should no
longer sit weeping over the tombs of her hopes and her wrongs.  He
urged

without florid oratory to bestir themselves and waste no further time
recounting the centuries of their country's mis overnment.  The remedy
lay within themselves.  And Dominic,

azing about him saw to his amazement that the people knew wMt.  he
meant and were filled with grim assent.

Better for men to die as men than as paupers!  Can the outcome of any
struggle be any worse than to be driven from the families they love?
The homes they adore... ?"

In some countries, such a speech might be the prelude to fame and
honour, here it was likely to be a prelude to the gallows.

Dominic was drinking in every word.  Sterrin too.  These words recalled
the terrible evictions from those Kilkenny farmsteads.  To her dying
day she would never forget the spectacle of the dead boy; of the blood
on face and hands, on the cobblestones and door lintel, where it
proclaimed his pitiful struggle jU |jj for the simple right to shelter
in a home.

The writer Kickham spoke about the two-fold purpose of the assembly;
land rights and leases and fee-simples and other legal terms that
Sterrin scarcely understood.  He said that the second purpose of their
meeting upon this mountain was to declare their resolution of labouring
to the death for the liberty of their enslaved country.  Kickham had
the weapon of the famine.  He pointed it down the rich slopes of
Slievenamon to the verdant valleys and yellow corn lands of the Golden
Vale.  He bade his audience look.

Down beneath them the silver waters of the Suir defined the broad
golden acres.  In that silent moment both men and crops were listening.
The warm August wind sent a whispering ripple that only the crops could
hear.  It was a scene of peace and plenty.  Men gazed and remembered
the hunger they had known amid its richness.  Down there men had died
of starvation in a year when forty-five million pounds worth of food
had been produced.  The absent landlords had taken possession of that
harvest when the tenants had neither substance nor seed.  Now the new
landlords were taking possession of their homes!

An American officer with one armless sleeve stepped forward.  **e spoke
of the work of the Fenian movement in America, of the great outdoor
gatherings, that pledged support to Ireland, to has ten here at the
first stir of revolt; to take up arms against England if she went to
war against the United States.

He held up a green flag, and when the cheering ceased he told them
that when the horse of Captain Thomas Francis Meagher had been shot
from beneath him he had jumped to the nearest parapet and pointed with
his sword.

' "Boys," he cried, through the storm of bullets, "look at that flag
and remember Fontenoy "'

The officer couldn't go on for cheering.  "Listen," he cried, 'there
was only one insubordinate man that day.  A young lad emigrated by
eviction from that valley below you.  When the colonel ordered him to
lower the flag because it was too conspicuous, he said: "No, sir, I'll
never lower it".  A bullet killed him immediately but before the flag
could fall from his hand another man sprang to retrieve it.  It went
from hand to hand as they fell; but not a man in the regiment would
lower it."

Sterrin knew a moment of panic as the great storm of cheers surged
across the mountain and went echoing down in the valley round her.  Her
brother put an arm about her and their two hearts quickened to the same
exaltation as they looked at the tall captain holding the green flag in
his left hand.  Behind him another officer upheld the Stars and
Stripes.

Later, as the blacksmith shoed their horse, he told them that the
American captain had lost his right arm as he swooped to retrieve the
flag when the last of his company fell.

The landau rolled homeward behind the horses' leisurely clop clop Its
steady rhythm beat into the day's fatigue, the heads of brother and
sister lolled backwards and forwards till they rested in sleep against
the cushions.

It was the sudden silence as wheels and hooves passed over the grass at
the crossroads that awakened them.

"Jove!"  exclaimed Dominic.  "Are we here already?  I must have been
asleep.  The excitement of the meeting and the long climb tired me."

"It wasn't meant to make people sleep," said Sterrin.  "It impressed me
as a a kind of awakening."

"For heaven's sake, Sterrin," said Dominic.  Why should people like us
become involved?  We've never evicted.  We've never rack rented '

"I have," said Sterrin in a low voice.  "I'll never forget the
reproachful way they looked; all those women and those exhausted
children; and that poor little boy.  I can't shut out the sight of him
running from me the last time I saw him alive."  A

. shuddered up and she put her hands over her face.  s pominic was
dismayed.  Sterrin never gave way to tears.  She , always been his
strength; the one who had dried his own oung tears.  He moved over
beside her, gently drew down her h nds and proffered a handkerchief. He
had been feeling just a t'ny bit of a fool over that damned duel
yesterday.  But now by God, he'd like to fight it over again.

The gate lodge-keeper rose stiffly as the landau rounded the bend.  He
didn't want to be caught with his ear to the ground like a gossoon. But
he was getting a bit hard of hearing and every carriage had its own
sound.  There was a time when he'd known all the family vehicles by
their rumble in the ground before they'd reach the cross.  Sterrin
returned the handkerchief as they drove in the gates.  For want of
something more comforting to say, Dominic told her to keep it for
another while in case she'd want it again.

That night Dominic fell asleep over his claret.  Sterrin stood a moment
looking down at the chiselled features, the fair hair that waved softly
back, the fragile look stirred a chord of tenderness.  The duel had
established its strain before the meeting and played on his emotion
both their emotions.

"Come on, old chap," she said, "I'll give you a hand upstairs when I
have quenched these damned candles.  I wish Mamma would consent to have
lamps."

Upstairs, when they had said good night, Dominic said suddenly, "Do you
know, Sterrin, that must have been a horrible experience for you, that
monster eviction and that poor boy.  Sir Jocelyn can't have been such a
nice person as I thought.  He was always so jolly decent to me: slipped
me a tenner every time.  And you seemed to be having such high jinks.
And then to be left high and dry without a bean!  It's like bequeathing
an insult to a lady; a public accusation from the grave."  He stopped
struggling with a knotted bootlace.

"Accusation of what?"  Sterrin stooped down.  "Here let me help you
with that lace."

^ you know," he went on, 'all those chaps today, and those American
officers; they all seem to have a sort of dedicated spirit.  There's a
terrible antithesis in this business of tens of thousands of Irishmen
slaughtering each other in America, the nes in the North against the
ones in the South.  I suppose it's a sort of reverberation of all the
evils they have suffered here, the

famine and the evictions."  He chucked the other bootlace and made
another knot.  "I keep on thinking of them.  The way they placed the
flag above their own lives.  Being killed didn't matter as much as
keeping the flag afloat.  It made me think how little we value our
flag, the genuine pre-conquest flag, and what it must have cost our
ancestors in blood and valour to earn thef right to hoist it over the
house.  Yet we seem to be detached from all this struggle; sitting smug
because we are safe."

"Safe!"  hooted Sterrin, 'we're nearly out of the door."

"Oh, surely not?"

"Didn't you see the billet Maurice brought last night?"  She yawned and
stretched.  "We're never but a step away from the auctioneer's hammer.
Go to bed, dear Dominic.  At least tonight we know we have a roof over
our heads."  And tomorrow, she thought, I will find out more about the
Fenians.

CHAPTER 54

Through the blue cloud of smoke that had settled across the frozen
plains, Captain Thomas O'Carroll saw a sea of brave, green nosegays.
Wave after wave of green sprigs like offshoots of the boughs of peace
that had made a moving forest of human beings marching peacefully to
Tara.  But the wearers of these nosegays were not marching to Tara; nor
to Peace.  It was the Irish Brigade swinging up towards the Confederate
position on the high ridge west of Fredericksburg.

Behind him, Thomas heard his men muttering, "By God, we're for it. They
are Meagher's men!"  And then from beyond the stone wall where Thomas's
men were waiting a voice rang out.  Thomas had heard that voice for the
first time as he sat on the carriage outside Conciliation Hall just
before the blight.  "Abhor the sword?"  Meagher had said. "Stigmatise
the sword?  No, my Lord, for at its blow and in the crimson of its
quivering glance a giant nation sprang up from the waters of the
Atlantic And now, before him at Mayre's Heights in

Fredericksburg, sword in hand, at the head of the Irish Brigade of the
Union Army was Meagher of the Sword.

"It's Greek to Greek today, boys!"  cried that orator of revolution.
Thomas, recalling his Euripides groaned, "In Greece, alas, how ill
things ordered are!"  And he led his men to give battle against the
hero of his youth; to lower the flag of the land that had given succour
and asylum to millions of his countrymen.

Waves of Irish charged forward, many to meet their fellow countrymen,
man to man, eye to eye, bayonet to bayonet.  One of Thomas's officers,
Lieutenant Hubert De Lacey, suddenly found himself face to face with
Tim Lonergan, who was carry- Jng the green flag of Meagher's gallant
Irish troops.

In spite of the tumult, the noise, the men falling all around, Hubert
recognised the flag-bearer instantly and shouted, "Tim Lonergan."  The
wounded Federal did not recognise his boyhood's companion, matured and
unfamiliar in the Confederate

uniform.  But there was no doubt as to the identity of the Cap.  tain
who rushed with revolver levelled to give Tim the coup de grace.
Uniform did not confuse this identity.  It sharpened the sense of
familiarity.  For Tim had seen this young man in another uniform, the
blue-grey with royal blue facings and gilt buttons, the servant's
livery of the O'Carrolls.  The Captain lowered his gun as the wounded
Tim gasped out the nameless name of his servitude.

Hubert De Lacey, half kneeling, watched the trail of blood as Tim
Lonergan staggered back to his men, colours dipping and swaying, but
never falling from his grasp.  There came to him in that unlikely place
the memory of young Tim Lonergan beckoning him mysteriously up a steep
path that led to that rare find, a sparrow-hawk's nest.  High above two
fierce eyes had singled out a prey and swooped.  Backwards and forwards
a curlew twisted in the sparrow-hawk's grip; but its tender breast was
ripped off neatly as though done with a knife, a bayonet.  The rest of
its body was left untouched and a faint trail of beads of blood led
towards the nest.  Hubert had felt the same squeamish feeling that he
felt as he watched the trail of blood that marked Tim Lonergan's
staggered dash back to his regiment.

"But he held on to the flag.  Every time it dipped to the ground it
came up again with a fresh splodge of blood," he said to Captain
O'Carroll in the field hospital where they both lay wounded, prisoners
of the Federal Army.  Irishmen from both sides, the wounded, the
captured, lay about them in the crowded tent.  From every state, from
every city, town and village, from the forests they had cleared; from
the hills and plains and prairies that their toil and industry had
created; from the mine, from the desk, wherever the Irish were, they
obeyed the summons of their adopted country.  North or South, they had
not paused to argue the righteousness of the cause.  They had acted as
they felt; with the community with which they lived.  The Irish of the
South standing with the state to which they felt they owed their first
allegiance; each side of the line loving America; each fighting with
two-fold purpose, the claim of the country of their adoption and the
honour of the country of their birth.

"It was when he discarded the bough of peace that he learned how to
cling to the bloodstained flag of war said Captain

II

O'Carroll- Lieutenant De Lacey turned quickly.

"Did you know him?"  For Hubert had never associated that tall
broad-shouldered officer in the grey uniform with the blue liveried
youth who used to hold little Sterrin O'Carroll's pony On a leading
rein when she came to visit his sister Bunzy.

Thomas lay on the straw with his hands behind his head and thought back
through the years to the night when he had been posted in the darkness
to turn back the men who came marching to Clontarf; every one armed
with the bough of peace.  He could see, despite its dust mask, the
hurt, angry look on Tim Lonergan's face as he cast the futile peace
bough from him and turned for home.  O'Carroll's peaceful caution had
spared Tim for the death storm at Marye's Heights at Fredericksburg!

"I knew the parent bough of the green sprig that he wore."  Hubert was
surprised at the unusual grimness in the voice of the debonair captain.
"A thousand green sprigs," it went on, 'on a thousand bodies on the
glory of another country's battlefield."

Just then, a huge soldier in Federal uniform walked into the tent
bearing a Southern soldier in his arms.  Thomas thought of Milo of
Crotona bearing the bronze statue of himself through the stadium to the
Altis.  It was John Holohan, the Chicago millionaire, from Upper
Kilsheelin.  His burden protested noisily that he needed no help from
any damned Yankee.  He proved it by sinking to the floor when he was
put on his feet.

John Holohan picked him up and placed him on the straw next to Thomas,
without a sign of recognition, and walked away without acknowledging
the "God Save You John', that Thomas gave him in Gaelic.

Later, Private Holohan came and squatted beside Thomas.  "I want to
speak to you," he said in gruff Gaelic.  He spoke for a quarter of an
hour about a task he had in mind for Thomas, a complicated mission
which, if Thomas undertook it, could gain him freedom.  Tes," Big John
concluded.  "For that purpose you will be set free."

The Confederate Captain looked up lazily at the millionaire soldier in
the Federal uniform.  "For that purpose," he repeated, merely to
convert the British Army to Fenianism; get British soldiers to support
the Irish?  Are you quite sure you have no other little commission that
you would like me to take on, en route?  You would not like me to break
my journey and slip up to Russia to endeavour to make a Fenian out of
the Czar?  The

British Army in Ireland!  You are not asking much!  A rebel in Ireland
is a felon of the lowest degree; fit only for hanging, flogging or
deportation or all three.  A rebel in America is a gallant Southern
gentleman."

Tou ought to know."  John's face had gone grim again.  "You chose to
become one of them.  Why, it beats me to think."

Thomas replied that it beat him, also, to think of being asked to go to
Ireland to help free it from British thraldom, 'while over here you try
your damndest to trample the liberties of a people fighting for their
independence; fighting, like the Irish at home, against complete
extermination."

"Will you go?"

"If I do not, since I may not continue to slaughter my fellow
countrymen, I suppose the alternative is to be held prisoner?  And you,
I suppose, will continue in the holy cause of the slaves who are better
fed and housed than Irish peasants."

"Will you go?"  asked John grimly.  "Will it make a difference if I
tell you Sir Jocelyn has been murdered and Sterrin is ill.  I had it
from my mother last week."

Thomas did not answer.  Sterrin's husband dead?

"Will you go?"  John asked for the third time.

YES, the answer roared through his brain.  I'll go now; to my little
white love!  He even made a movement of his wounded foot.  Pain brought
reasoning.  He moistened his lips.  They were suddenly parched; for
water; for the touch of vivid soft lips that glowed from a bridal
veil?

"Give me time he said.

"Time!"  John Holohan almost spat the word.  "They are too fond of time
in the old country.  That's not the way to get things done over
here."

"No?"  Thomas smiled mockingly to cover the thudding of his heart. "Has
this great Union discovered some other element?"

"Ach!  You haven't to look over your shoulder for a word.  And you know
how to use it; and to direct it.  And, your profession has trained you
for disguise.  You are not likely to get caught straight off the boat
like the other chaps we sent over."

"Speaking of disguise, perhaps you could procure something to disguise
my feet.  They look so obvious without boots.  Mine were removed for my
leg to be dressed.  They have vanished."

The millionaire soldier who refused to become an officer while pouring
his wealth into the Federal funds and now into the

pen ian funds--could procure most things.  Once Thomas's foot had
healed, John Holohan procured all the essentials to assure Thomas's
safe transit to New York where he played in a Command Performance for
Colonel Michael Corcoran of the 69th Regiment, back from his long
imprisonment in Richmond.

New York staged the greatest public display that the city had ever seen
for Corcoran, a brave Irishman whose regiment had fought a glorious
battle.  Under the shower of bouquets, in the midst of the handshaking
and speeches Corcoran turned to speak to Thomas about his mission to
Ireland.  Briefly he outlined a plan of campaign.  He talked rapidly in
between frequent interruptions by dignitaries with testimonials.  At
last the din of bands and fire bells and church bells proved too much.
Corcoran gave an exasperated shrug and turned towards the crowd. 
Thomas edged closer.  He had absorbed his instructions.  He wanted to
say goodbye.  The boat left for Ireland this very evening.

There came a lull in the clangour, Corcoran called over his shoulder.
"This," he said, as he waved his hand at the cheering crowd, "This is
not for me.  This is America on her knees to Ireland!"

There was something different about the Fenians and their plans for
rebellion.  They were a brave, grim-faced band.  Their firmness of will
and organisation were even more impressive than their oath of secrecy
and the guns they smuggled in from America.  They were not like the men
who had followed O'Connell or Davis.  Even Cousin Maurice O'Carroll
noticed it in the men who waited in his cave for the long
oilcloth-covered weapons that were carried from off-shore vessels.

"Do you know, Sterrin," he had said on his last visit to Kilsheelin, "I
don't think this next affair will fail.  There is a frightening
efficiency about these Fenians.  The men were not young hell rakes of
rebels.  They are old-young fired by a relentless purpose.  The famine
did that; cheated them out of boyhood and fun.  Even the military are
leaning towards Fenianism.  I drank a few noggins of claret at the club
the other day with a Hussar officer and by God he made no secret of his
sympathy."

Sterrin felt it too.  When she visited Denis, the blacksmith who had
taken Dominic and her to the meeting, she heard similar accounts of the
military sympathy.  Denis had administered the oath to nearly every
soldier in Clonmel Barracks.

"They are ready to admit the Fenian insurgents when the time comes and
fight side by side with them."

"And when will that time come?"  A man moved out of the shadows.
Sterrin recognised Bergin.  He always seemed to materialise from
shadows.  Later, Denis explained that Bergin was afraid.  But it was a
different fear from most.  Something inside him had broken in the
terrible settlement in New Zealand.  He was chaffing for the first shot
of revolt; prepared to die therein; but to be caught beforehand for a
lesser treason and Sent Over again was a prospect that he could not
face.

"Clonmel is not the only barracks to be taken over," said Bergin. "I've
travelled all over the country organising, and everywhere I have found
disaffected regiments and pregnable forts.  We are at the peak hour to
strike, yet James Stevens counsels us to wait, and meanwhile he writes
columns of highfalutin patriotism in the Irish People.  He is not a
soldier.  He is a dilettante.  The time that he, and others, is
hoarding will not mount up like ammunition stored.  It will melt in
this fever of waiting like gold in a crucible."

"We must wait for the Americans," the blacksmith said.  "It won't be
much longer.  As soon as we've helped them to dispose of their own war,
they will come and help us to win ours.  They've promised."

Bergin gave something like a snort.  "I can't see it happening.  The
Americans are not idealists.  The moment their war is over they will
rush back to their factories and their shops and their offices.  Their
first concern will be to restore their own prosperity."

Sterrin's exasperation with the man broke its bounds.  "Why must you be
so bitter always?"

Berlin looked down at her where she sat on a rough seat near the
furnace and he spoke, a stumble of words and then a cascade.  Here was
another depleted life, thought Sterrin as she listened, like those
Cousin Maurice had spoken of, who had been rushed through the forcing
house of the famine from childhood to a grim manhood.  He had been in
the glory of youth, an athlete, hurler, foot baller the best dancer on
any crossroads platform.  He described how he had got the gash on that
rollicking journey to the Carlow Races.  Sterrin was stunned as she
realised that she had witnessed that scene from the carriage window;
that here was another of her husband's vic Mo wonder he hated her. Was
it to punish her he was tims.  r*v telling her this?

The wound had festered.  Erysipelas had developed.  Women hrank openly
from the sight of his face.  This was far worse,

Bergin said, than the horror of the convict settlement, worse than the
slavery, the starvation, the floggings, the spectacle of hangings.

Sterrin felt abused.  Why must he lash this into me?  Lash, lash, lash
of toneless words I

"DammitI* she rose angrily to her feet.  "The day you got that lash I
was four years old Why should you '

He stepped closer.  You thought fit to ask about me being bitter.  I'm
sorry that I am slow at words.  My own bitterness with life was cured
by by someone who loved you He could hear her quick intake of breath.
"A girl had promised to wait for me.  I didn't think to hold her to
young promises, to bring her my battered face and spirit.  But he told
me that she would be waiting for me that..."

Tid he know her?"

Tie knew you."

She was startled.  The quiet statement lingered in the quiet
darkness.

"He based his faith in all womankind on you."

And now it was her turn to pour forth a cascade of words.  A young
girl's gush of eager questions about her sweetheart.  What did he say
about me?  Did he say I was How did he

Tell me more.  He didn't hear the words.  They were unuttered; silent
jets spraying through her hurt spirit.

"I shall never forget his anguish that day when he came and told me
that the plans for the elopement were off.  You were married to someone
else."  The toneless words fell like stones.  Where the spraying jets
had bedewed was now aridity.

He consoled himself very quickly."

Bergin felt his own bitterness could scarcely equal hers.  "Did he get
married?"  He was startled out of his toneless ness

"I assume," she answered, 'that the woman who was with him in Paris
became his wife.  They were together in Switzerland, too."

He shook his head, too surprised to speak.  He knew now that he would
not tell her, as he had thought, that his bitterness towards her sprang
from the memory of her walking hand in

hand with Donal Keating along the river; gallivanting, as he had
thought, behind her husband's back.

He scraped his throat and started to frame some embarrassed apology for
his misjudgment, but she had jumped to her feet.  She hadn't come here
to listen to his condemnation of her conduct not his self-pitying
whining.  Did he expect her to stand at the coach stop every night like
like the girl who had waited for himself?

"You didn't do too bad, did you?  How many men have known similar
misfortunes without being crowned with such success.  You were able to
buy a big estate.  My husband wanted to buy it."

"That's why I bought it."

"So that you could be within shooting distance of him?"  It was one of
those utterances that seemed to escape from her unaware to startle her
own ears.  She waited for his outburst.  But as though she had never
uttered the terrible charge; as though he hadn't heard, he said,

"I owe my wealth also to the man who loved you and because of his love
for you."  He told her the story of the mine shaft abandoned by the
London clerk who had hoped to marry his employer's daughter.  "It was
sympathy with the young man's hopes, because of his own aspirations,
that made him go back and work it.  We tried to argue him out of it."

She sat down again.  Her knees felt weak.  Nothing else.  And out of
that shaft that Thomas had tried for her sake, was it?  Bergin had
found wealth enough to enable him to come home and shoot her husband
with the maximum of security.  It must have been he The hundreds of her
husband's victims had diffused suspicion; it was eerie, some thread of
fate linking this man with her and her husband and with young Thomas.
So young Thomas had made a fortune!  It wasn't just his salary as an
actor!  The old ache of yearning came upon her like a vapour.  He had
kept his promise.  He had made a fortune for her.  And then to go and
throw it at the feet of another woman!  God, how could he have
comforted himself so quickly?  And suddenly she thought she saw the
explanation. He had probably been engaged to this girl that time when
he had come to play in Kilkenny.  Hadn't he said something about having
been told that she herself had entered a convent!

She little knew how decorative she seemed to the two men as

stood there, tall and graceful.  Denis spoke his thoughts.  "My Lady.
You do us too much honour to come here.  You long in high places.  To
see you there in your lovely cloak, one Ould think 'twas for a palace
or a ball you were dressed instead J for my dirty old forge."

He would not take the hand she offered.  Td dirty it with my black
paws."  He displayed the big, grimy palm, all calloused and blistered.
She didn't offer her hand to Bergin.  Suddenly she felt that she
couldn't touch the hand of her husband's murderer.

CHAPTER 55

In the month that followed, Sterrin's activities crowded out the
thoughts of Thomas.  There were too many victims of eviction to be
succoured.  Seldom a week passed that Sterrin did not journey to the
scene of an eviction, her saddle-bags bulging with food.  The police
and military were finding her an embarrassment.  It was an offence to
render assistance at these operations, but Lady Devine was a haughty
piece, without fear.  The rank and file level regarded the
heavily-veiled face with something of superstitious dread.  The
officers with thoughts of intrigue.  Was it true that the face had been
hideously disfigured?  Their eyes took liberties probing the veil,
admiring the lissom grace of the proud head poised on the neck like
some dark blossom on its stem.

By accident, Sterrin chanced upon the eviction of Ryan Ha Lad.  The
familiar thud of the crowbar reached her as she mounted the summit of a
low hill.

"My God!"  she spurred the horse and the next moment flung herself to
the ground in time to drag an infant from beneath a lurching wall.  The
wall fell in on its back.  It had a gay wallpaper; a tasty house,
roofed with braided thatch.  The falling rain bedewed the flowers on
the wallpaper.  Children screamed at the sight of the four walls that
had held them in the happy safety of a home now lying prone and
battered like murdered things.  Their mother, too, lay prone.  She was
in the last stage of her labour; and then the heavens sided with the
demolition squad.  Their clouds opened and let down sheets of icy
rain.

A word of command sounded above the din.  Police and military assembled
to march away in proud formation.  Sterrin barred the way of the first
line.  "You cannot leave these people like this.  The woman needs
immediate attention."

"Madam," the police officer replied, 'we are representatives of the
law.  We had a duty to perform and we have performed it.  We are not
midwives."

She stopped herself from wasting her breath on outraged re roach He
was doltish and smug.  He thought he had said something cleverly
quelling.  Instead she reached to the kitchen table that lay upended.

"Help me get this to that hedge she said.  "It will shelter her till
the doctor arrives."

His neck swelled inside his tunic.  He put a shiny gloved hand to his
sword hilt.  He, said the gesture, was a sub-inspector of police, with
sword and epaulettes and the power of life and death over men.

"Madam', he barked, "I warn you that you are violating the law that
forbids intervention or interference at evictions.  Stand aside!"

He called out a word of command to his men.  For answer Sterrin jerked
the massive table upwards and pulled it across the front line of men.
The men with right legs raised in precision for the first step were
thrown backwards on the line behind.  Sterrin, assisted by some of the
children, continued to pull the table until it was past the men and in
the shelter of the hedge.  When she tried to drag the woman beneath its
shelter, she shrieked with agony.  Cruelly, inexorably the bony gates
of life were being forced open.  With the imperishable optimism of the
human race, another member was thrusting and forcing, demanding, pain
by pain, its right to know hunger and cold and homelessness.

"Take the baby!  Miss, take the baby!"  The woman must be delirious.
There was no sign of a baby except the one that was trying to play with
the wallpaper.  "Take it, Miss!  Oh take, it.  It's there."

Sterrin's heart turned over.  Deliver the baby, that's what the woman
meant.  Nausea rose in her gorge.  She had never been near a birth.
Never heard the details.  There was before; there was after; but there
was a gross part and this was it.  She dragged off her gloves.  She
groped down there but she couldn't look.  Her eyes fixed themselves on
the flowers on the wallpaper but they denied her a focus.  Rain was
smudging them to a running blob of colour.  Her fingers touched natal
slime.  They cringed with repulsion.  Nausea rose again.  And then,
miraculously her fingers found their sensitivity.  They thrilled to the
contact of Life, frail, quivering but substantial.  A wave of
exultation surged through her.  Fingertips that were separate entities
grew

over-bold as they drew the life away from its background of mystery.
The woman cried out in panic.

"The cord!  Miss!  Your Ladyship!  The cord, you'll choke the child."

Disgust returned.  How could a woman with such a tasteful home use
twine so sluttishly?  Dear Lord, what was keeping Ryan Ha-Lad, her
husband, with the doctor?  A pleasant voice said, "How are you
managing?"

She straightened up.  "I was beginning to--to manage, but she-she seems
to have got herself--got the child entangled with cord or twine or
something."  It was one thing for a woman to secrete a packet of tea
down the neck of her gown, but to have twine--in such a
context--endangering a child's birth!  "It's most careless," she said
aloud.

"Yes, isn't it?"  The doctor spared her a whimsical glance over his
shoulders.  A moment later he handed her the newborn child.

"Have you never heard of the umbilical cord, Lady Devine?"  She hadn't,
but with instant knowledge grasped his meaning.  She felt a thousand
prissy fools.  Why had it to be like this always, she thought, while
she rummaged among the scattered furniture for baby clothes?  This
inane reticence about the most vital of all matters, life itself.  The
wonder of this mystery had never been described to her.  But then who
could have done it.  Not her mother surely.  Not the nuns at the
convent.

Someone was saying something to her.  She couldn't quite catch because
the new baby was proclaiming its presence as loudly as if it had
suddenly realised its folly in letting itself in for such an existence.
Sterrin's brain felt as sodden as her clothing.  The only positive act
she could recall having ever performed for a tiny baby was when she bit
off Dominic's nails when no one was looking because Mrs.  Stacey had
said that that would keep the fairies from getting him.  She stooped in
a sudden and then it occurred to her to put the baby in its mother's
arms.

In the poor little happy silence of their meeting Sterrin at last
managed to catch what the man was saying.  Fear flooded through all the
crevices of her being.  Another man's voice said, "Are you mad?  Do you
realise what you are saying?"  Donal Keating sprang from the dogcart in
which he had driven his brother-in-law to the patient.  "Do you?"

The sub-inspector did realise.  He repeated his words.  He said

Stcrrin.  "I arrest you, in the name of the law He went

1 n to talk about her obstruction of himself and of his men in the
performance of their duty.  He omitted to say that she had made him a
fool before his men; that there had been a suppressed snigger when she
had turned their parade into a burlesque.  All the time that he talked
she observed how the macassar on his hair resisted the raindrops; and
all the time the fear hardened within her until her mind was made up.
That was what she was afraid of.  Not of what he might do to her, but
of what she knew that she was going to do to him.  "I'll kill him," she
thought.  Til kill this bloodless popinjay, just as soon as it takes me
to get home and get a gun.  I'll shoot him through clean as a
whistle."

But there was no returning home.

Sterrin could never recall the exact moment when the handcuffs were
placed on her wrists.  One minute there was a void in the girdle of her
arms where the little soft body had nestled, The next, they were closed
together, manacled at the wrists with an iron chain.  There was a
vacuum silence; like the aftermath of a great blast that has swept away
the air.  Sterrin found her voice.  "Remove these!"  She said it as
though it had but to be said to be obeyed.

The officer gave a signal.  Two policemen closed in on either side.
Fear of a different kind swept through Sterrin.  Panic I This was real.
They were actually daring to lay hands on her-Sterrin O'Carroll.  She
didn't think of herself as Lady Devine.  They were going to shut her up
some place.  She brought the manacled hands down over the horse's neck
and tried to swing herself up.  For the first time since she had
learned to ride the pony with the fairy blood she bungled and
staggered.  For a moment she ran alongside the animal; her hands
achieved the mane.  With super-human strength she held on until she was
in the saddle with a "Yup Clooreen' and the mare breaking into a
beautiful canter.  Police and military jumped from her path.  Sterrin
was away.

But not for long.  Scarlet uniforms and uniforms of bottle green ran
alongside.  The bridle was seized.  The great, black horse reared up
fearsomely; uselessly.

Donal Keating, following in the phaeton, called out something about
bail and rode out ahead.  Later in the blockage of a drove of cattle,
the strange procession caught up on him; scarlet

soldiers with sabres; bottle-green police with carbines; in the midst
the veiled horsewoman, proud, straight-backed.  The profile beneath the
veil made him think of a young eagle in a close meshed cage.  He could
have touched her, they were so close in the little rough road but he
called out again about getting bail.  She nodded silently.  He could
see a swallowing in her throat that made him lash the horse and blink
the sudden moisture from his eyes.

Ryan Ha-Lad rode a naked donkey, no saddle or reins, across field and
dyke to Kilsheelin Castle.  When he gave the news it was like the night
of the Sir's assassination.  The household was stunned with horror.
Then the sound of wailing, Hannah's and Mrs.  Stacey's, reached Lady
O'Carroll before the news itself; and like on that terrible night it
was Margaret who took control.  She calmed the others and went with
Dominic to the gun room.

"Go instead to Mr.  Hoey," she urged.  "It is a solicitor she needs,
not a gun."

But Dominic, white-faced and grim as never before, went undeterred.

It was Mike O'Driscoll who rode like the heels of hell for Patrick
Hoey, the family solicitor.  Big John had gone quietly to his room,
lifted a loose floorboard and taken out a brassbound box, then ridden
off in the wake of Ryan Ha-Lad's little donkey.

People said that it was like a horse fair or--God between us and all
harm--a sudden illness and the friends amd relatives dashing to the
bedside.  There seemed to be a continuous thunder of hooves up the
avenue of the house of the magistrate who was holding the Summary
Court".  News of the arrest had flown like chaff in high wind.  Ryan
Ha-Lad, short-cutting through Major Darby's former estate, gasped it
out to a workman.  On the fastest horse in his stable Dominic Landy,
the ex-convict owner, came galloping to the rescue of che woman who had
succoured his mother.  He tossed gold in front of the magistrate.  "Is
that enough?"  Dominic Landy demanded and without waiting for an answer
tossed down more.  On his heels came dapper little James de Guider,
looking, at close quarters, not so dapper, and holding a little red
money bag, not quarter full, in front of him like a child holding a bag
of sweets.  Pathetically aware of its inadequacy he did not say, "Is
this enough?"  he merely said, "Will this help?"  Sterrin was touched
to the heart.

And then Big John.  The towering coachman looked with stern
disapproval at the sacrilegious policeman, ignored the magistrate and
laid his offering before his mistress.

"Your Ladyship, I have brought the bail money.  There is thirty-eight
pounds and eighteen shillings here."  Poor Big John.  His savings since
the famine!

Sir Dominic strode into the makeshift court-room like an avenging, mud
spattered god.  Hand over holster.  He demanded his sister's liberty;
he demanded satisfaction.  He threatened the law on them; the crown. 
He was Sir Dominic of the O'Carrolls.  Release my Lady, his sister! 
The sub-inspector stepped forward ominously.  It was looking as if
there was going to be another arrest when Doctor Quigley-Greyson
arrived in the midst of the outburst.  He described and ridiculed the
police officer's obstruction charge.  Far from Lady Devine obstructing
the law, she herself was obstructed in an act of humanity.

The magistrate had been feeling mildly piqued at not being able to get
a squint behind that thick veil she was wearing and his gout was giving
him severe pain, a fact which Sterrin had not failed to observe.  When,
during the doctor's recital his glances in the prisoner's direction
altered, Sterrin availed of the chance to raise her veil sufficiently
to allow of a delicate dab at her nostril and to cause the magistrate
to reflect that if the rest of her face matched up to that mouth it
must be a very beautiful one indeed.

He rounded on the officer who had brought him on gouty foot from his
bed of pain and icily informed him that it was the primary duty of the
police to protect life, and that instead of assisting this charitable
lady in her great act of mercy he had actually obstructed; therefore,
and in view of all the facts he would now, with deep apologies for the
distress and humiliation inflicted upon Lady Devine, dismiss the case
and rule that the bail money of one hundred pounds be returned.  He
lifted a cheque in the direction of a young gentleman, who stepped from
the shadow of a tall policeman and, for the first time, the runners in
the ransom race became aware of Donal Keating.

Outside, afterwards, Sir Dominic's tone was cool and distant as he
offered his thanks to Donal.

"Of course, we couldn't have accepted..."

"We could and we did," said Sterrin crisply.  "What did you expect me
to do?  Go to prison comforted by the fact that you

had got yourself arrested, too?  Charging in with a gun.  You might at
least have brought along a batch of bullocks and some sheep.  Do you
not think me worth as much as a few rubbers of whist?"

She could afford to rag him now that she was safe but her heart had
contracted with dread at the sight of him coming in all doughty and
feudal.  She kissed him.

"Thank you, you darling, gallant thing."  Her voice felt a bit gravelly
with tears.  "What would I have done if they had arrested you?  What
would Mamma have?  I'm not worth risking your safety."  Before he could
say anything she turned to Donal.  "And thank you, Donal," she said
offering her hand.  "I can never thank you enough."

Lady O'Carroll stood at the oratory window like one of its statues.
Dread had turned her heart to stone.  Every few minutes she would go
and kneel at the altar but she could not keep up any sustained prayer.
What were they doing to Sterrin a delicately nurtured lady in the hands
of rough police and military?  And what would they do to Dominic?
Dominic, her darling.  Would they execute him if he used that gun?

The rain had stopped and the fragrance of the flowers blew towards her
with kindness and a bird murmured sympathetically in the trees.  Was
that a hoof-beat?  No, 'twas her imagination.  Her children would never
come back here again; back to the castle for which Sterrin had risked
her beauty and her life.  What would Roderick say?  His daughter proud,
lovely arrested like a thief.  Was that a hoof-beat?  There was no
doubt about it this time; a great, urgent clattering of many hooves.
Ah} Sacree Vierge, give me strength for what I must hear.

In through the gate rode Sterrin; beside her rode a strange young
gentleman and behind Oh God be praised!  Dominic.  A whole cavalcade
followed and then something like a dray with someone lying on it and
children's heads bobbing and alongside the man riding the donkey again,
the man who had brought the news of Sterrin's arrest.

Margaret, skimming down the stairs, absorbing things in that sentient
way of hers, without concrete thought sensed that the callers in the
dray cart and its outrider, had come to stay.  Another family to take
up residence in the fever hut like the one that Sterrin had installed
there in the famine.

In the blessed relief of reunion, Lady O'Carroll did not realise

till later that the farmerish looking man she had received in her
drawing-room and fed in her dining-room was one of her daughter's
would-be saviours, was the convict she had seen arrested for raiding
the grain carts and whose mother she had fed in the stir about line in
the stable yard.  The world was upside down indeed!  The genteel
daughters of the former owner of this man's mansion were doing discreet
home laundry in England.  Genteel washerwomen!  But did Sterrin really
need to have him here as a guest?  After all, he was only repaying a
debt.  Roderick had gone to great extremes to save him from prison and
deportation.  But Sterrin was a law unto herself.  And then Margaret
stiffened to cold anger when she realised the identity of the handsome
young gentleman she had been chatting to so graciously and thanking so
warmly for having put up the bail money, was none other than one of
those crude, criminal Keatings, who had once fired into the castle and
just missed killing her.

Under cover she scrutinised him, Frank, open.  Nothing murderous there;
nothing crude; gentle eyes; but they were devouring Sterrin.  The
presumption!  But it was blood treachery to have brought him here. What
was she thinking now, in face of that ardent gaze?  There was no
knowing behind that dreadful veil.  And then Lady O'Carroll realised
that it was not a dreadful veil.  It was beautiful.  Sterrin might
protest that she was no longer interested in her appearance, but there
was interest indicated in the choosing of that veil and, hein, it was
intriguing.  It was drawing all the men's eyes to the mystery that lay
behind.

When her excited guests had departed, Margaret went out to where the
fever hut lay in the lea of a low hill out of sight of the castle.
Windows had been added to the once miniature fortress designed to lock
contagion away from the healthy.  Mrs.  Ryan Ha-Lad lay in the bed near
a bright fire and the children played happily in and out between the
two apartments, thrilled to be within the safety of not just four
sturdy walls, but eight--for the hut, as big as their own house, was
octagonal.

Mrs.  Ryan Ha-Lad's outpourings of gratitude and praise for Lady Devine
were so fervent that Margaret reflected that anyone might think that
Sterrin had delivered the child.  Mrs.  Ryan Ha-Lad, like most women
basking in the aftermath of a satisfactorily concluded labour went on
to dwell on the details.  Lady O'Carroll felt one of her swayings
coming on.  She reeled.  Ster

rin had delivered the child.

She hurried to Sterrin's room.  As Sterrin listened to her mother she
felt a growing ... growing sensation of the one she had felt on the
morning that she had witnessed Eileen Morton's odisasement.  "I
thought," concluded her mamma, 'you had merely helped them to shelter
and secure a doctor, but--to take part--to witness.  You!  A young lady
of your background!  You poor child, it must have been hideous for
you."

"It was a privilege."  Sterrin was sitting in a low chair near the
fire; her back to the dressing-table mirror.  A small ornamental mirror
that used to stand on che mantelpiece had been removed.  Anything that
could reflect her face had been removed.  Her hair was down and she was
holding a strip of linen to either side of her face.  It irritated
Margaret mildly the way Sterrin shook the hair down over her face
whenever she entered her bedroom.  She, her mamma, who had tended to
all her childhood's ailments, all the tenants' too, for that matter.
Including skin ailments I "The only "hideous" thing about the
experience was that I made a silly fool of myself.  I expressed
something like disgust to the doctor because Mrs.  Ha-Lad mentioned
something about a cord.  I thought it was some crudeness of dress."

"What else could you be expected to think?  Girls like you '

"Girls like me, I suppose, don't come into the world attached to cord;
or are they attached to something silken?  Like this?"  She flicked the
braid on the satin cushion.  "Girls like me," she went on, 'are only
fit to be pushed blindfolded into marriage and find out all the natural
things, or should I say the "hideous"

things--in a hideous way Her mother's quick intake of breath halted her
for a moment.

What awful experiences must this child have gone through to make her
speak with such bitterness.  It was not today's terrible ordeal; nor
her maiming, nor her being disinherited.

"I'm sorry, Mamma," Sterrin went on.  "But my values have changed. I've
been through more in the past two years than any nice girl would have
to endure in ten long lifetimes.  I've no more time for sham dressed up
as gentility.  The real things in life, the raw things, have been
covered in stupid mystery.  Mrs.  Ha-Lad has known more happiness than
ever I have.  You should have seen Ryan Ha-Lad crying when she moaned
in her

labour.  He was more concerned about his wife than about the loss of
his house.  He cried again when he took the new baby in his arms, cried
for joy."

"But darling, Hannah told me that Sir Jocelyn was frantic with concern
when when you had the mishap.5

"He was frantic for the fate of the inheritance savagely so."

Lady O'Carroll wondered was she going to hear the true facts at last.
She could readily credit the savagery part.  She would never forget the
cold thin anger he had displayed the time that actor, who had been in
service here, had presumed into Sterrin's bedroom.  Vraiment!  The
anger, partly justified, had been terrifying to regard.

But Sterrin, sat silent, her elbows on her knees, her hands holding the
pieces of linen to her cheeks.  Margaret tiptoed to her and kissed the
top of her head.  "Would you let me see your poor face?"  Sterrin
twisted her head further away.

"When you saw it that first time I saw your face, and I saw Cousin
Maurice's and I saw Mrs.  Stacey making the sign of the Cross."  There
was no reaching this Sterrin.  Her mother left another kiss on the bent
head.

"You have had a dreadful experience today.  Dieu, when I think of
it!"

"Did you did you collapse, Mamma?"

It was Margaret's turn for hurt.  "There are times, Sterrin, when I,
too, manage to face up to things."

Sterrin dropped the ointment-smeared linen.  "Oh, Mamma, I did not mean
it like that.  Too well I know how you can stand up to things.  It was
the memory of the way you held Papa in your arms when he was shot and
and did whatever had to be done; no hysteria; no panic; and all those
other times.  The horrible sights out there in the stir about line and
the way you carried that giant's mother all the way to the soup
kitchen.  It was your example, I say, that kept me from running away or
doing something dreadful when when."  She broke off, fearful of having
said too much.  She had never touched so close to the actual moment of
her mother's tragedy.  But this moment that was between them was sane
and close as never before.  "It was a 8nm coincidence," she spoke into
the flames, her face in her hands again, her hair hanging forward,
'both of us, mother and daughter, both to know our husbands
assassinated; but you, of course, lost more."  Margaret was touched to
a yearning pity.  But

you, of course lost more.  The naive little sentence dismissed wealth,
power and glamour compared to the loss of love.  She stooped low and
kissed a little white patch of forehead that showed between the drapes
of hair.  "Drink your tilleul, my darling.  It will make you sleep."

She paused in the opening of the door.  "Darling, you spoke of being
"pushed blindfolded into marriage".  Have you forgotten that I had
completely withdrawn from the notion of your marriage.  There was no
one more surprised that I when you told me that you had given Sir
Jocelyn your consent."

"The Keatings were on the point of buying the castle.  That justified
anything; marriage or murder."

"And yet you could bring one of them here today?  Under this roof?
Sterrin, my dear, you never cease to amaze me."

Lady O'Carroll would have been further amazed late next night had she
seen Sterrin waiting in the Sir's Road for the horse that Big John was
leading with cloth-muffled hooves across the cobbled yard.

You know what you are doing, your Ladyship?"  His voice was an anxious
whisper.  Her voice whispered back.

"This is something that has been laid upon me by my conscience."

More than an hour and a half later she stood in the blacksmith's forge
and gave the same answer to the same question.  The blacksmith then
turned to a man standing in the shadow.  "It's only for a minute that
we'll be turning you out, Mr.  Keating.  Sure you know that yourself."
Donal, in the knowledge that no third person must be present, moved out
without a word.

Sterrin, standing in the dark red gloam of the forge, her right hand
upraised, felt a momentary dread.  It was like being part of some
cabalistic rite held in some sinister, underground cave.  Fortunately
for her purpose, the dimness cloaked her wavering and Denis marvelled
to himself at the resolute quality in her low pitched voice as she
repeated after him--"In the presence of

God, I, Sterrin Mary O'Carroll To the last unrelenting word of the
Fenian oath, she never faltered, as some that he would have thought
more intrepid might have done.  "You are the fifty-first this night
that I have given the oath to.  The other fifty were of the Highland
regiment widin' in the town.  There's more than half the regiment with
us.  Aye," he said at her ex594

cjaination, 'ten minutes ago I couldn't have told you that."

Donal had come back.  "Was there any great need to bind Lady Devine to
an oath?  O'Donovan Rossa, our greatest leader in the movement has no
oath."

Denis bent over the furnace to put a kettle on for tea.  He put Sterrin
in mind of Big John; so utterly dependable and, that same unpretentious
dignity that commanded one's respect.  He looked up with a smile, "I
suppose they think the ladies are so tender that their hearts would
need to be span celled to their heads by an oath or they might let it
run away with them."

A teapot stood on a stone shelf and beside it a white mug; ostensibly
his own, for Sterrin noticed when he moved a slab in the wall that
there were other white mugs there.  In readiness for grim tea parties!
For grim men coming by night across Ireland; across the Atlantic? Denis
started to pour then suddenly stopped and with a 'where's my manners'
hurried out.

Donal moved over to Sterrin.  "Do you have to do this?"  he whispered.
"Isn't it sufficient for someone like you to well, exist?"  It was
something he realised, to be said looking into a woman's eyes.  In this
red darkness that was like the blood tinted darkness behind closed
eyeKds, it sounded banal.  Even that damned veil couldn't conceal her
impatience.  It came seeping through the mesh.

She turned towards his whisper.  "Is that a gibe or a compliment?  No,
forgive me.  I shouldn't say such a thing to you after what you did for
me when they arrested me.  But no one knows better than you why I must
do this."

He knew that she was alluding to the six hundred evicted from her
husband's land and to the fate of the little hunted boy.  As she gazed
into the glowing furnace she spoke of the famine horrors and he saw
through her eyes the macabre scenes that had shadowed her childhood.

"All these things have happened because people like me our class have
been content to, just exist.  Most of them have been living on their
tenants like warm well-fed fleas in a skinny dog's coat.  Papa used to
say that in other countries it was the aristocrats who used to lead
their people against oppression.  Here the aristocrats hold aloof.
That's why all our rebellions have failed and '

"This one won't!"  His voice cut through like a blade.  Her revelations
made him feel that he had scarcely skimmed the

surface of life.  "Look," he pleaded, Svhen I spoke of you just
existing I meant that it was enough that you should add grace to the
lives of others, that oh hang it, I was alluding to your beauty.  If
"Beauty!"  He recoiled from the savagery in her voice.  He watched her
hands tear at the fastenings of her veil, then just as suddenly they
fell limply to her knees.  Vanity was stronger than bitterness. Anyway,
she reflected, it is too dark here to let him have the full blast of
what had caused Mrs.  Stacey to make a sign of the Cross.  He watched
the deliberate way she unbuttoned her glove.  "Look," she reached him
her bare hand.  "My face is like that mark there."  Since the morning
when she had snubbed him he had caught a wisp of rumour that she
avoided people because of some disfigurement incurred through saving
her maid from the fire; but all he could see now was a shapely
whiteness.

He held the soft hand in his and felt the quiver of her misery.
Suddenly he stooped and she felt his lips on her palm and then on every
finger.  Nothing Frenchified, a throbbing caress that sent an answering
throb through all her being.  She wanted to throw herself forward and
feel his young arms about her body and his warm questing lips upon her
own.  Then there was a clink of china.

The blacksmith moved forward.  "This is more becoming to you, my Lady,"
he said as though he had never seen her draw her hand from the clasp of
Mr.  Keating.  She gripped the little cup.  Its gold rim glinted in the
glow.  To regain control she focused on its hand-painted flowers.
Tansies for remembrance," she murmured.

The words, a stop-gap, drifted into silence then suddenly they
rebounded; impelling her to remember.  She knew now who Denis, busy at
the furnace with kettle and teapot, reminded her of.  Not Big John at
all!  Those wide shoulders, lissom and straight!  Poor Big John's were
bunched from that terrible accident on the night of the Big Wind.  The
blacksmith looked up and took the cup from her to fill it and the
sudden blue flash of his eyes recalled eyes that were bluer still.  The
fantasy persisted in the play of flames upon his crisp dark hair;
lending a suggestion of moving curls, shining and jet black!  The
emotions aroused by Donal's kiss went surging through her veins,
clamouring for someone who was not Donal.  She was no longer a sworn
soldier of the Irish Republican Sisterhood.  She was all

woman; craving for the one man in all the world whom she could ever
love!

When the tea was finished Denis put the cup away in the secret place;
giving it dark purpose; making her one with it.  But all the way home
the longing for lost beauty that was ensorcelled to lost love stayed
with her; unconscious of the love Dhat rode and flowed beside her.

The first beam of sun was starting to stretch with a lazy warmth out of
the east when Sterrin rapped at Mag Miney's door.  "A Mairead!"  she
called out in Gaelic.  "I have decided to try that messy cure of
yours."

The old woman opened the door and peered up.  "I knew you wouldn't stay
sittin' up behind that black screen much longer; frightenin' crows and
little childer.  Come in, my pulse!"

Half an hour later, Sterrin, half fainting from the smell, clamoured
for the abomination to be removed.  "Another quarter of an hour, my
pulse," pleaded Mag.

"Not another minute."

She washed her face in a tin basin of rain water into which she flung a
half dozen of the scented wash balls she had filched from her mother's
bedroom.  But she came again the next morning and the next.

One morning, returning from her treatment and on her way to discharge
her first task for the Fenians at the Campions' farmhouse, she met
Donal.  They dismounted and strolled along a bridle path that skirted
Owen Heffernan's house.  Sterrin thanked heaven for the scented wash
balls  Mrs.  Heffernan came to the back door to drain the three-legged
pot of breakfast potatoes.  "The potatoes are the merest aperitif,"
Donal told Sterrin.  "When Owen goes to the fields his dainty little
wife will cook a breakfast for herself that would choke a horse, and
more Power to her, he is a dreadful old skinflint."

Sterrin laughed at her own recollections of Owen.  "When I was a child
one of the brides picked for him ran away from the altar when she got
her first glimpse of him.  Another one, a beautiful, but very poor
girl, called Kitty Dowling had run away from him before that.  While
the matchmaker and her parents were disposing of her to old Owen, her
own sweetheart, Mark Hennessey, arrived in the orchard and whistled her
out to tell her that he was in a position to marry her.  He had found
some bank-notes that day in a hedge while he was ditching.

They had been lying there for years since the night that the Big Wind
blew thatched roofs with people's life savings all over the country."

"And did they live happily ever after?"  He watched the heavily-veiled
head shake slowly.

"They are now, I hear, and rich.  Their first child died of hunger.
They nearly died themselves.  My father despatched them to America with
the widow and the children of his own foster-brother."

"Black Pat Ryan?"  He cursed the interjection that betrayed raw
curiosity.  The mystery of the hunger deaths of Sir Roderick
O'Carroll's foster-brother and three of his six children, all in one
evening, was still debated locally.  It had been hunger not the famine
fever that had killed the fat as well as the starving and yet they had
lived in a good holding and Ryan was said to ride a horse that was as
splendid as that of his foster-brother.

He sensed her angry silence as she walked ahead, leading her mount.  He
stumbled and gave an angry exclamation.  She looked back over her
shoulder.

"I walked on an egg-shell," he explained.  "It is a habit I seem to
have when I'm with you."  Her laughter rippled back at him.  He was so
dear and companionable!  And that fierce and secret oath that bound
them was so much bigger than their separate entities.

"It was his wife's pride."  She vouchsafed him an explanation.  "She
had been a lady of well-to-do family, who ran away with Ryan.  Her
family cut her off.  Calamities suddenly hit them; loss of livestock as
well as crops.  None of us knew that they were hungry.  They never let
on." A wave of guilt smote her.  They had let on.  The younger ones had
howled with disappointment the day her father had discovered her little
drama of putting her own dinner in the trunk of a tree for them.

"If you were to run away with someone beneath you."

This time it was she who stumbled.  Dammit, did he know that too?

"And you were hungry, would you let on?  Would you ask for food?"

"I couldn't see myself begging for food; not if I knew where it was to
be had."

You mean that you would steal it?"

She shrugged and halted to mount where the track gave on to

a bore en

"I say," cried Donal, 'let's ride to Lissnastreenagh.  The blossoms are
out."

Lissnastreenagh with its fields like some wonderful carpet of pink and
white on a green ground from fallen blossoms and its circle of
hawthorns in full bloom; a great tent of blossoms over the intertwining
branches.  Don't break off a blossom, Young Thomas!  It is not lucky!
But if the blossoms fall on you themselves, you will marry your true
love.  And the blossoms fell on his curly black hair; and they fell on
his bloated, fever-stricken face when he collapsed there after the
famine; and they fell on his hair and shoulders and on hers and on her
bridal veil when he crushed her to him and swore he would go on waiting
for her.  Your true love, inagh!

Donal's voice brought her out of her reverie.  He was starting to
apologise stiffly.  The Fort-of-the-blossoms was on Kilsheelin
territory.  The whole world might go to view the wonder of it, but not
one of the Keatings of Poolgower.  She interrupted him.

"I haven't been there since and then without thinking she said, "I'll
face it."

Before he could ask her what was there to face, she cried out, Til race
you!"  and galloped off.

She was there before him; sitting erect, silent, rigid; every line of
her body betraying tenseness.  The blossoms were too newly out to have
started to drop down their magic carpet but the great circle of
hawthorns that bent over the deep hollow was completely roofed and
walled with pink and white flowers.  Their fragrance filled the air.
Waves of memory wafted through her with every wave of perfume.  A
sadness more desolate than that she had known on her wedding day swept
through her.  Then, there had been ecstasy too.

"One should never go back," she murmured.  He finished the H||i
sentence for her to where one has known happiness that has "

fled."

What could this nice young man know of happiness that has fled?  Of the
happiness of racing against young Thomas, he on Rajah, she on her
Connemara pony; happiness, after that two days' search, when she had
found the half-conscious young Thomas lying hidden among these
blossoms; when she had come to him here straight from plighting her
vows at the altar, there had been happiness in her anguish.  How else
could it have

been and she to have his arms about her.  Ah God, to feel them about
her now!

When she had ridden a while she glanced back and then wheeled and
returned to where Donal still stayed his horse.

"Little Fido didn't follow," he said.

Tm sorry for going off like that.  This place gives me shivers It's
haunted."

"By what?"

"By by the ghost of a priest who was slain by an ancestor of mine;
slain at the altar for daring to start Mass before his Chieftain had
arrived.  There were vestments found down there in that hollow;
chalices too."

"I wish you would take off that veil so that I might see how you look
when you are lying."

"Are you accusing me of telling lies?"

"Yes.  Your castle, they say, swarms with ghosts.  I expect that they
come haunting every night, with Hippodrome performances on Mondays,
Wednesdays and Saturdays.  I don't think that ghosts trouble you
sufficiently, my Lady, to make you ride away from them.  Who did the
blossoms fall upon or fail to fall upon?"

He could almost see her jawline harden behind the veil.  "I don't
believe in pishoguerie."  She made to shake up the reins but he reached
out and grabbed die bridle.

"We all believe in pishoguerie, my Lady fair, when it is the
pishoguerie of romance.  This morning I had the presumption to invoke
the fairies to let their blossoms fall upon me."

"Why should that be presumptuous?"

Immediately she regretted the query.  The last thing that she wanted
was a declaration from him, from anyone.  She was free as never before.
She wanted to stay that way.

"There is no presuming about my loving you.  To do that is as natural
as to breathe.  It was in testing the blossoms to see if my love was
returned that I presumed."

His grip on her bridle tightened.  Presumed indeed, but there had been
no presuming when it was a servant boy who had spoken his love here and
the blossoms had showered their benison upon him.  An arm of sun
reached down upon the branches and un stoppered a new fragrance;
provocative, inveigling their senses.  The bird song resumed with a
saucy piping of finches, and then, what must traitorous Clooreen do
but

h.  out and start nuzzling Donal's mount with velvety kisses!
reasterrin felt the antennae of her womanhood reach out like riooreen's
velvet nuzzle, to absorb this moment that was bath g all her senses in
a sweet suffusion.  In another moment the human heads must meet in
harmony above their mounts.  Then a startled exclamation broke from her
and brought the horses

apart.  "Ye gods!  I had forgotten about Campion's "station".  You

and your blossoms!"

He watched her ride away.  He, too, had completely forgotten that she
was on a secret mission of her Fenian oath.  Her voice

came back to him.

"It is too soon to expect the blossoms to fall upon you."  His heart
surged.  Too soon!  Dolt that he was; of course, it had been too soon
in her widowhood.  He spurred after her.

"Does that mean ?"

"It means," she called back with blithe unconcern, 'that the blossoms
are too new.  You must wait till they are full blown if you want them
to fall on you.  Yup, Clooreen!"  She was over the hedge and away.

CHAPTER 56

Men in groups outside the Campion farmhouse ceased their chattering as
Sterrin rode in.  Which one of these is my 'contact' she wondered.  The
clatter of preparation for the Station breakfast muted as women's faces
peered through the windows of the front kitchen.

"It is Lady Devine."  Mrs.  Campion straightened up from the chickens
she was basting and came forward.  "What broke a ribbon of Lady Devine,
Miss Sterrin O'Carroll, that was, to come to this Station?  None of
them had ever come to one before, or to any other Station, and why
should they with a chapel in their own house?"

She greeted Sterrin with a quiet dignity.  She was no longer the plump,
jolly woman who had enlivened the wedding that had roused such a stir
in the castle long ago because young Thomas had served its Mass.  She
had the ha' anted look of the famine's visitation.  Its fever had taken
her husband and two of her daughters.  She turned to a young girl in
the doorway and bade her have someone see to Lady Devine's horse.

The girl glanced towards the horse and back to its owner.

"Will Lady Devine be staying for the Station?"

There was a polite surprise in her tone and in the eyebrows that seemed
to ride towards Sterrin's riding hat and down to her riding boots.
Sterrin realised that the girl was wearing a school uniform with the
little white veil that boarders wore in convent chapels; that people
were alighting from phaetons and jauntings cars and farm carts, all in
their Sunday garb.  The porch was ablaze with blooms.  Every plant had
been forced into bloom.  The roof had a new thatch; the walls a fresh
coat of lime.  Suddenly Sterrin understood that quick up-anddowfl
glance.  This thuckeen of a girl was1 no goat's toe.  She had made Lady
Devine realise that she had come spanking in to a religious function as
if she were entering for a Point-to-point.

She managed a gracious apology for her attire and then to her

1J

dismay she found herself placed at the head of the penitents ho knelt
in a line from outside the parlour door across the Tng kitchen and up
every step of the stairs.  Confession!  Sterrin hadn't bargained for
that.

Her examination of conscience got a sudden jolt from the oenitent whose
place in the queue she had supplanted.  Old Mrs.  Hannigan's knees were
killing her.  Her fasting gurglings after her five-mile walk on an
empty stomach were killing the meditations of the other penitents.  But
at last she had reached the head of the line.  And then, shutting out
the light of heaven from her, Mrs.  Campion comes and planks down
fornint her a young lady that looked as if it 'twas to hunt foxes she
was goin' instead of to confession.  The susurrus of Mrs.  Hannigan's
"Hail Marys' grew louder and angrier.  Recognition dawned.  She pinned
__.

down the seventh' "Hail Mary' with her thumb and called to her ||!il
hostess.  "Whisper!  Is she," she nodded towards Sterrin's head, 'the
one who danced before the King of France in her drawers?"  '... and
forgive us our trespasses as we forgive--the blasted old bachach!"
Sterrin swayed on her knees; grappling with her fury and her soul.  The
spirit triumphed.  Those within earshot, not certain if they had heard
aright, decided that they had not when they saw Lady Devine rise to her
feet and gesture the old woman to resume the place that she had been
deprived of.  Mrs.  Hannigan shuffled gratefully forward on her knees.
"And anyway," she remarked with kindly ambiguity, 'your Ladyship would
have needed more time to count your sins.1

Sterrin knelt on, in conflict with herself and her surroundings.  Was
it a thing that the luxury of her married life had left her no longer
en rapport with this life and its people?  That's ridiculous.  It is
because of the people that I am here.  But that was the cause of her
unease.  Using a religious gathering for a political purpose!  No, it's
these damned flags.  Oh, heavens, such language and I preparing for
confession.  She buried her face in her hands.  Mrs.  Hannigan's
gurglings got through their defence.  So did the unmistakable
consumptive cough of new arrivals; overheated from tramping the long
dogged miles on empty stomachs.  The smell of roasting chickens and
boiling hams sent out their tantalising beguilement.

Something came to her from her spiritual readings when she had aspired
to take the veil.  Saint Teresa of Avila had such trouble in
concentrating on her prayers that she started counting the nails of the
boots of the nun kneeling in front of her ann offered each nail as a
prayer.  Sterrin dropped her hands fro her face. The hobnails in Mrs. 
Hannigan's boots were arrange.  in little clusters of three, like
shamrocks.  Sterrin counted them separately and offered them up in sets
of three "Hail Mam1 She had reached halfway down the sole of the right
boot where a piece of dung covered the cluster of nails and shattered
her concentration.

The parlour door opened to discharge a penitent and boots and nails
disappeared as Mrs.  Hannigan rose to her feet, but the opening was
blocked by the figure of Father Hickey.

"I just thought I'd see what has happened to the men."  He assessed the
few males among the kneeling women; young boys and old men.  Mrs,
Campion was torn in all directions; basting chickens, cutting bread,
supervising the tables spread out in the barn.  Father Hickey saw
Lorcan Campion talking with1 a well dressed stranger--a man with a
cruel scar on his cheek--listening with head bent as though he were
deeply interested in the pattern that his toes made in the gravel.  It
seemed it was always strangers, from some distant part, who came to
give orders and to impart the Fenian oath.  No "Circle* knew from whom
its orders came and so no person could betray.  All around the yard men
were talking, low and stern, instead of goshering1 about cattle and the
prospects of the harvests as at previous Stations.

What brings them here since they will take no part in the ceremonies?"
the rJriest asked; and he shook his head with infinite sadness as
though he knew the answer.  They had probably been excommunicated in
their own diocese; like in Kerry where a Fenian had shot a member of
the Crown forces and the bishop had made that terrible pronouncement
that "Hell is not hot enough nor eternity long enough for whoever did
the deed'.

Sterrin was put beside Father Hickey at breakfast and found that her
partner on the other side was Mrs.  Lonergan.  She turned to greet her
but to her surpriseo the old lady took advantage of the cup of tea that
was put in front of her just then to take a very long, appreciative
draught and then leaned across to say, "It is too fond of the tea an
old woman like myself is Father.  When the Gorta Mor was on us I didn't
know die taste of it.  I was glad of porridge made with yellow meal
from India But now, the only thing I'll miss when I go to Heaven is the
sup

1 Chattering.

' She pronounced it 'tay' not so much from brogue but Al he had
received her schooling from a band of French nuns ^ had found refuge
from the French Revolution in her h r's house.  The priest looked
pityingly at the patient face.  She had been through so much.  But
hadn't they all?  Every face the table bore the strong lines of
suffering endured.  He re1 lied when five rooms in this house held
typhus patients and tie two eldest girls and the father had died.  His
hand went abstractedly to the piece of turnip in his pocket.  He had
never lost the habit of carrying a piece since the time when it used to
be the only thing that broke his fast on the long journeys by dark and
day, bearing the Viaticum to the stricken.

"And who," he asked, 'told you that you would have to go without your
tay in Heaven?  Won't you have Te Deum and Laudamus Te and Glorincatum
Te.  Sure isn't it Te, Te, Te, all the time in Heaven?"

Mrs.  Campion stopped pouring over the shoulders of her guests.  "Is it
jokin' you are, Father?  Bad manners to me to doubt your word.  Didn't
I always hear that there wasn't the beating of you in Rome for
Teeology?"

Mrs.  Lonergan sighed.  "The dear knows I'll be glad to go even without
all that nice Latin tay.  This world can do no more to me."  She sighed
again.  "A queer, modern world, wars and trains and telegrams.  Indeed
we get the bad news as quick without the telegrams.  I heard the
banshee the night before Tim was killed.  I heard it as '

"Tim!"  Sterrin put down her knife and fork and turned.  "Mrs.
Lonergan, I didn't know.  How did it happen?"

Talk and clatter quietened.  For a moment Sterrin thought that she was
going to be publicly slighted, then Mrs.  Lonergan for the first time
raised her head from the down-drag of spirit tivat held it in its grip.
Her eyes looked straight into Sterrin's.

"Naturally, you didn't know.  The fate of one ordinary Irish soldier
would be of no consequence to your kinsman."

"My kinsman?"  Sterrin was mystified.

"Aye, your kinsman ... the officer who killed my son ... from h e. His
name is O'Carroll."

The whole table had gone silent.

"But Mrs.  Lonergan I have no relative fighting in the Civil War.
Ancestors of mine went to the American colonies more t an a hundred
years ago.  We cannot be held responsible for

what their descendants do.  We have no knowledge of them; no
contact."

"No contact?"  Mrs.  Lonergan repeated.  "Yet you send them food."

"But not to any O'Carrolls.  We send food to relatives of my mother
called O'Regan.  And," Sterrin bridled, 'why shouldn't we?  They sent
big consignments of food here in the famine.  Shiploads!  My father
used to go armed with guns to protect the wagons all the way from
Waterford. It would be very strange if we would not send help to them
now when they are in want themselves."

There was a murmur of agreement.  Mrs.  Lonergan looked appealingly
towards the priest.  "Would there be a mistake, Father?"

She turned to Sterrin and her voice held its old caressing quality. "It
was a chaplain in America who sent the story of what happened.  I don't
know what to think."

Sterrin was glad to have calmed the sweet old lady, and glad of the
chicken and ham and griskins and all the delicious dishes that
followed.  She realised that it was nearly one o'clock and that she had
been riding since six this morning with nothing to eat since the nine
o'clock tea in the drawing-room the night before.

The priest followed her to the yard as she was mounting to leave.  He
noticed that the man with the scar seemed about to speak to her.  "Are
you sure, Lady Devine, that there is none of your family here fighting
with the South in the Civil War?"

Sterrin shook her head.  "Who could there be from here but Sir Dominic?
My cousin Maurice of Waterford is the only other relative.  He has no
children."

"It is strange said the priest.  "My informant seemed certain.  Tim
didn't die immediately on the battlefield.  He told the chaplain who
attended him in hospital that he had recognised the officer who
followed on the heels of the two rebels who had given him the final
lunge.  He was seen to speak something to the officer and the
recognition appeared to be mutual."

Sterrin shook her head again.  "I don't understand it.  There could be
a great many of our name out there for all I know.  It is a big war."

"A big war, indeed," the priest agreed.  "No war is as hate inspiring
as a Civil War.  Ah, the wanton waste of those young

lives that went out from here in friendship with each other;
neighbours' children killing each other."

Out of the comer of iier eye Sterrin saw Bergjn watching her.  He must
be her contact.  But the priest was not finished.  He drew his piece of
turnip to the tip of his pocket and then dropped it back, but made no
move to go.

"What's this I hear about a talking head at the castle?"

"Talking head?"  Sterrin was puzzled.  "Oh, you must mean the talking
machine.  Would you like to hear it?  I'm afraid the discs that contain
the sound have gone silent.  They need to be kept in a certain
temperature and the castle is so damp.  But if you care to hear Mr.
Steele's voice, his disc is a bit better than the others.  He adjusted
it himself."

The priest shook his grey locks.  "No, I knew that Mr.  Steele had the
inventive faculty, but, the human voice!"  He shook his head again. "To
seek to perpetuate it in a separate mechanical existence is--is a
presuming on the divine power of creation--it savours too much of Deism
and Spiritualism."

Sterrin glanced towards Bergin.  He was waiting for her.  She reached
her hand down.  "Goodbye.  Father.  It will do no more harm.  It has
been silenced."

"That's good.  That is what Saint Thomas Aquinas did as far back as the
thirteenth century.  A philosopher called Magnus invented a thing
called a Talking Head.  He introduced the mechanism into a skull.  The
saint had it smashed."  Sterrin pulled one rein a little, but the
priest had taken out his piece of turnip and was taking a nibble as he
always did in preoccupation.  "Sterrin, I may call you that since I had
the pleasure of knowing you since your infancy.  There are people here
today who did not come to participate in the sacred functions of the
gathering.  It is heartening to see you here, though."  He nibbled at
his piece of turnip.  "I have lie ver before encountered you at any but
the one in your own oratory.  I have witnessed your charitable
activities among the unfortunate people but don't allow your pity to
lead you into dangerous paths.  Young people are being led into taking
rash oaths that are a profanation of the sacred name of God.  They have
grievances, the dear knows, but oppression is better than putting their
necks in the halter by disturbing the peace of society.  No rulers on
earth will permit ny order of men to overturn established law, by
private author *ty.  My Lady, Sterrin child, your mother has had her
share of

sorrow."

Thtl w CWc mark he moved towards his phaeton

Her nTn n Slgn f ^ SCar' faCed as Sterrin rode < Her mind was so torn
with the unease of the priest's vert pointed homily and concern that it
might have caused helS

he h r 7f- BUt AT She CmergCd f~ ^en the high road he emerged from a
field.

"I waited to give you the password."

passed-rrc re to me iast week ^ -* **

circleThl^3"^ immediately There i an informer in the circle.  The whole
group was surprised last night One of them was captured a few hours
back and shot!  g *

"Without a trial?"

He nodded.  "They have orders to shoot at sieht if necessarv

wlfhThS **$ 'r *: * * sS'menTS uoLn t g 3 fCW, PlkeS" But they did h W
an inquest upon this one.  He was of sufficient consequence The verdict
this morning was-justifiable manslaughter'

shfSt^T'nAn l Uld thCy haVe cau*ht Donal after she left turn?  Not
Donal!  "Was it Donal--Mr.  Keating'

came'oJherT8 ,lof k "arrowed Was Aes.  Would Keating be the cause of
her zeal for Femanism?

loo ne To^1 f'ienH lA.  anVil mUSt.  be wame^.  They are jookmg for
him, and then he answered her auerv "No not Keating," he said shortly.
"Listen' he went S*' , u Password and made her' repeat8 ftVei iKLr^MA
ta MSer^f f^Ac Wa^word of the Maori eT o Pd taunt UP the reinS' VCr her
Shoul^r she tossed a

pounds e you quite sure that you can trust me to pass it on?"  H,s
constant air of cold watchfulness was berinnrngto t on her nerves.  He
swung up to the saddle eSmiunS to let on

pa^"I ttakeeiththeSraid ^ he.^hedcd his horA towards the bridle pam I
take it there is no inducement to make You break faith'

The crack of her whip made a duet with theTrnTp he^ ave

Arab^U.  ^ mad'C ff " diffCre- "- *^*S Z ^^S r^tluow pa^woT311383115 ^
bl3CkSmith'to incur ^ * pounds t JJS

She thought to rush straight off to warn him, but Mamma must be very
worried about her not returning to breakfast, much less lunch, and also
she would need to change horses.  Clooreen would be overworked before
nightfall.  As she turned in the stable yard she saw the Delaney
equipage, being wheeled back and forth through the carriage-cleaning
pond.

"It must have been hard driven," she said to Mike O'Driscoll.

"Too hard," he said.  "But it had hard reason."

"What reason?"  Sterrin asked and looked curiously at the faces round
the pond, Big John's, Ned-Rua's and Mike's.  There was a definite
something in the air.  Mike took out his straw to explain, but Ned-Rua
intervened.

"Let your Ladyship go inside.  Miss Katie will tell you herself.  Some
people," he looked angrily at Mike, 'are inclined to forget their
place."

Mike put back his straw.  "Someone has forgot their place now with a
vengeance!"  said Mike.

In the drawing-room Sterrin found Mrs.  Delaney as near to a vapour as
it would be possible for her to achieve.  The 'someone' who had
forgotten his place was the young groom with whom Belle was in the
habit of pillion riding.  The pair had eloped.

"What!"  Sterrin was scandalised.

They had been seen by a bianconi driver heading towards Templetown. "We
caught up on them but we lost them in Templetown; another bianconi
driver said he saw them heading for the Thurles road, but at your cross
the lynch pin came loose.  It finished me altogether to find you away.
I was counting on you."

"Where were you, Sterrin?"  her mother demanded.  "I have been
distracted with anxiety."

"She's here now."  Mrs.  Delaney was impatient of petty grievances in
the face of such calamity.  You'll go after her, Sterrin dear?"  She
mistook the look of consternation on Sterrin's face.  "I suppose it is
too much to expect from you."

Sterrin dropped on her knees in front of Mrs.  Delaney and gripped her
hands.  "Nothing is too much for you to expect from me."

She was thinking of the night of the fire when Mrs.  Delaney could not
do enough for her; but she was thinking, too, of her commitments to the
secret cause she was sworn to.  Why did she have to swear that terrible
oath?  And Father Hickey said that it

was a profanation.  But if she didn't start out soon Denis, the
blacksmith, would have set out for the night's rendezvous; his freedom
was at stake; his life.  She trusted the big man with his quiet
strength; his quality of utter reliability.  And the blacksmith had
rewarded her confidence with his implicit trust.

Every foot of the wood and mountains was familiar to her; and the
haunts of the wild bird and its cry.  Sometimes men scattered over The
Devil's Bit 'on their keeping' would hear the sweet musical cry of the
Grey Lag Geese long before it was time to look upwards for the V-line
gaggle.  They would know then that someone was telling them that men
had come over the Atlantic; Americans to drill and equip them.  And if
some hidden outlaw spied Lady Devine roaming on horseback over the
hilltop he did not suspect that it was her lips that had uttered the
wild goose cry.

Denis was surprised to see the carriage draw in at the forge.  Always
she came by horseback and by night.  She passed on the warning.  There
was an informer among them.  The blacksmith was able to put her on the
trail of the elopers.  A body wouldn't need to look twice to know what
they were up to.  Ill assorted and guilt-marked, they had been spotted
easily.

"Ah, youth is a drover," was his comment.  "There is a clamouring
inside it like the sounds from a red-hot anvil.  High or low, it makes
no difference.  But he should have respected her and, she should have
respected herself

Sterrin was surprised at the calm way he had taken her warning.  No
anxiety, no drama.  The little saucepan spat out its own warning.  He
opened the cupboard that contained the little china cup.  The sight of
it, flowered and fragile among the big, stark mugs reminded her of
herself among those stark revolutionaries; except Donal.  The hovering
cloud melted into the recollection of him.

"You will pass my message to Donal ... Mr.  Keating if he comes
tonight."

Denis paused.  "Now there's a young gentleman who knows how to respect
a lady, even though he might adore the ground she'd walk on.  The big
men tell me that he is a brilliant barrister with a great career ahead.
They tell me that when he is in Clonmel Assizes the ladies actually
condescend to go into a court-room; just to listen to him."

He escorted her to the carriage and gave directions to Big

John where to find the inn that the lovers had enquired about.

"Don't kill yourself rushing after them.  There won't be a bianconi
passing that way for more than an hour and, I'm thinkin', by the looks
of her she will be glad to see you.  She has had her fling."

He was right.

Belle threw herself straight into Sterrin's arms.  The groom stood
sheepishly by the table, fearful to seat himself in the unaccustomed
setting of carpets and mahogany and brass; disorientated.  Sterrin
curtly ordered him on to the box seat and bustled Belle into the
carriage.  How could she!  she thought, but she uttered no reproach.
Belle unfolded the story of her love and of her disenchantment.  Mamma
had forbidden her to go horse-riding, only pillion riding, doctor's
orders.  Sterrin recalled the spectacle of Belle fastened to the groom
by a hook attached to her big pillion belt and holding on to him around
the waist.  For nearly two years now they had roamed the countryside up
hill and dale in an embrace that had lost its exigency in affection.

But, oh Sterrin, he hadn't enough money for the dinner and he called
the waiter "Sir"."

Mike O'Driscoll intervened for the unfortunate groom against the
onslaught of Mrs.  Delaney.  "It was asking' for trouble, Miss Katie.
Up there behind him on the same horse; her arms around him day after
day.  Him sittin' there ridin' within her ho ult

"There was no need to ride within her hold," stormed Mrs.  Delaney.
"She was attached to him by a strong iron hook."

"Iron hook, how are you, Miss Katie!  Hadn't she a pair of arms too?
and where was she to put them only around his waist?  Women's flesh is
very temptin'."

Back in the drawing-room, Mrs.  Delaney admitted that Dr.  Drennan had
said something that must have meant the same thing.  "He called it
"pro-Pink" something."

"Propinquity," said Lady O'Carroll and looked, unwittingly towards
Sterrin.  That was the word that Cousin Maurice had used the day
Sterrin had fallen from the horse and the knife boy had carried her
home.  Sterrin fumed.  It had never occurred to her that there was any
resemblance between this squalid affair and her association with the
knife boy.  Comparing young Thomas to an oaf who said "Sir' to the
waiter and couldn't

sorrow."

And with that cryptic remark he moved towards his phaef There was no
sign of the scar-faced man as Sterrin rode o Her mind was so torn with
the unease of the priest's we *' pointed homily and concern that it
might have caused her ?  lose her 'contact'.  But before she emerged
from the bore en on the high road he emerged from a field.

"I waited to give you the password."

She reined in.  "You gave it to me last week," she said coldly.  <i
passed it on that same night."

"It must be changed immediately.  There is an informer in the circle.
The whole group was surprised last night.  One of them was captured a
few hours back and shot!"

"Without a trial?"

He nodded.  "They have orders to shoot at sight, if necessary, and
apparently they deem it "necessary" to shoot men drilling with
shillelaghs and a few pikes.  But they did hold an inquest upon this
one.  He was of sufficient consequence.  The verdict this morning
was--justifiable manslaughter."

Her heart turned over.  Would they have caught Donal after she left
him?  Not Donal!  "Was it Donal--Mr.  Keating?"

A suspicious look narrowed his eyes.  Would Keating be the cause of her
zeal for Fenianism ?

"Our mutual friend of the anvil must be warned.  They are looking for
him," and then he answered her query.  "No, not Keating," he said
shortly.  "Listen," he went on.  He spoke the password and made her
repeat it.  "Pei Marier."  It is good to be quiet.  He had chosen the
watchword of the Maories of Pei Marier.  She took up the reins.  Over
her shoulder she tossed a taunt.

"Are you quite sure that you can trust me to pass it on?"  His constant
air of cold watchfulness was beginning to get n her nerves.  He swung
up to the saddle.

"This time," he said as he wheeled his horse towards the bridle path,
"I take it there is no inducement to make you break faith

The crack of her whip made a duet with the larrup he gave his own horse
as they made off in different directions.  The insufferable churl!  It
was the very devil, thought Sterrin, to have to take instructions from
him.  But she couldn't allow Denis O'Flanagan, the blacksmith, to incur
the risk of the wrong password.

thought to rush straight off to warn him, but Mamma be very worried
about her not returning to breakfast, 11111 h less lunch, and also she
would need to change horses.  r reen WOuld be overworked before
nightfall.  As she turned the stable yard she saw the Delaney equipage,
being wheeled back and forth through the carriage-cleaning pond.  "It
must have been hard driven," she said to Mike O'Driscoll.  "Too hard,"
he said.  "But it had hard reason."  "What reason?"  Sterrin asked and
looked curiously at the faces round the pond, Big John's, Ned-Rua's and
Mike's.  There was a definite something in the air.  Mike took out his
straw to explain, but Ned-Rua intervened.

"Let your Ladyship go inside.  Miss Katie will tell you herself.  Some
people," he looked angrily at Mike, 'are inclined to forget their
place."

Mike put back his straw.  "Someone has forgot their place now with a
vengeance!"  said Mike.

In the drawing-room Sterrin found Mrs.  Delaney as near to a vapour as
it would be possible for her to achieve.  The 'someone who had
forgotten his place was the young groom with whom Belle was in the
habit of pillion riding.  The pair had eloped.  "What!"  Sterrin was
scandalised.

They had been seen by a bianconi driver heading towards Templetown. "We
caught up on them but we lost them in Templetown; another bianconi
driver said he saw them heading for the Thurles road, but at your cross
the lynch pin came loose.  It finished me altogether to find you away.
I was counting on you."

"Where were you, Sterrin?"  her mother demanded.  "I have been
distracted with anxiety."

"She's here now."  Mrs.  Delaney was impatient of petty grievances in
the face of such calamity.  You'll go after her, Sterrin dear?"  She
mistook the look of consternation on Sterrin's face.  "I suppose it is
too much to expect from you."

Sterrin dropped on her knees in front of Mrs.  Delaney and gripped her
hands.  "Nothing is too much for you to expect from me."

She was thinking of the night of the fire when Mrs.  Delaney could not
do enough for her; but she was thinking, too, of her commitments to the
secret cause she was sworn to.  Why did she have to swear that terrible
oath?  And Father Hickey said that it

order a meal.  Young Thomas, who from childhood had ordered the
garfonniere like a commander-in-chief; spoken with authority to shop
assistants; respectable farmers had uncovered to him.  She recalled
that night after the ball in Kilkenny when she had conspired with him
to elope--God, why hadn't she gone with him that night--the easeful
authority with which he had spoken to the body servant with the
alphabet of names.  Propinquity!  That was an unjust dig.

"I have never been able to accustom myself," Lady O'Carroll went on,
'to the fraternising with servants that prevails in Irish households.
Servants are bound to take advantage.  At home in my country the
relationship is more de-hauten-has'

When Mrs.  Delaney had gone, Sterrin strolled to the little table
beside her Mamma's chair.  "May I have a cigarette, Mamma?"  Without
waiting for a reply she reached into the embroidery bag and drew out a
little satin-covered box inscribed in gold, "Ma Cherie'.  She proceeded
to light one of the tiny cigarettes that were the vice her mother
thought no one knew about.

"Sterrin!"  Force of habit brought the shocked remonstrance to
Margaret's lips.  Guilt brought colour all through her creamy pallor.
"When did you start to smoke?"  she brought out lamely, just to prevent
herself saying "How did you know that I smoked!"

"I started," Sterrin told her, 'with a clay pipe in the kitchen when I
was about six.  I progressed from that to cigar butts in the turf
ricks.  Unlike the fortunate little girls in Belgium there wasn't
always the concern available for me about "fraternising" and
"de-haut-en-has" and the consequences of "propinquity"!"  She went out
in a puff of smoke, feeling mean for giving her mother one in the eye
for all those long spells of near neglect when the household revolved
around her mother's malaise.  In the corridor she collided into
Hegarty.

"Miss Sterrin!"  The butler was scandalised.  She removed her
cigarette.

"Yes, Hegarty?"  She was very much de-hauten-has.

"Your Ladyship, I--er--I must see to the lights in the drawing-room."
He hurried on.  He'd have a word about this with her other Ladyship.

Margaret had got the full impact of Sterrin's words.  They held a whole
lifetime of reproach; she put her hand to her head.

There was no swaying there.  It was only when she felt that queer,
violent pain in the back of her head that the swaying started up.  Had
she neglected Sterrin?  Had she been left too much with that knife boy,
though indeed he was genteel, not like that uncouth groom.  Too
genteel.  To think of his going straight to Sterrin's bedroom when he
came to play at Sir Jocelyn's house in Kilkenny!  It must have been a
frightful shock to Sir Jocelyn to have found him there.  He could
easily have broken off the engagement, instead of pushing the marriage
forward before the scandal could leak out, perhaps into the papers
even, Sir Jocelyn had said, because the actor was so prominent.
Margaret wished she had a shoulder to lean on; she reached for the
little satin box.

Hegarty came softly into the room and coughed.  "Your Ladyship Then he
stopped dead.  Her Ladyship was blowing a cloud of perfumed smoke from
her lips.

"Yes, Hegarty?"

*Er--shall I light the candles, your Ladyship?"  mm (|

"Of course, why ask?"  She made no effort to conceal the cigarette. The
cat could stay out of the bag.  Hegarty had neither taper nor under. 
He made his escape to the kitchen and blurted his tale into the still
seething excitement about the elopement.

Mrs.  Stacey took the clay pipe from her mouth.  "Cigarettes," she
gasped, 'the two of them at it!"  Then with supreme disregard for
consistency she went on.  "Do you know what I am goin' to tell you?"
They had a shrewd idea.  Tm goin' to tell you that the prophecies are
coming true."

"Saint Columcille never prophesied that women, ladies-would smoke
cigarettes," said Ellen scornfully.

"No," said Mrs.  Stacey, 'but he prophesied something not far from it.
He prophesied that women would wear trousers--it's the same kind of
ungenteel thing.  There's not a gra'dle of differ between a cigarette
in a woman's mouth an' a trousers on a woman's legs."

O'Driscoll got to his feet.  He had been the centre of interest over
the way he had stood up to Mrs.  Delaney.  "I go against you, ma'am.
I'm thinkin' that a pair of trousers would cover more than a cigarette
would; more's the pity."  He ducked from the aim of a turf sod and
Hegarty said that there would be law and order in this kitchen from
this day forth!

CHAPTER 57

Sterrin tossed the little cigarette into her bedroom fire.  It was as
puny as her own exposure of Mamma's secret addiction.  The odd time
that Sterrin took a pull, she liked it to be male and pungent.  Sterrin
was exhausted.  It had been a day of varied excitements.  She made
Hannah set up the hip bath and have the water made hot.  Depression was
not to be tolerated.  She would throw it and her stiffness out
together.  In the distance beyond the window a light spurted up, then
another.  She wondered idly as she threw scent balls into the tub what
it might be.  Probably travelling tinsmiths.  Then Pakie Scally poured
in the big jugfuls of hot water.  He gossiped as he poured.

"There was a young lad in the kitchen asking for milk for the evicted
people."  He nodded in the direction of the distant flames.

So that was what the flame was, she thought.

"There were Peelers all over the place!"

Any ordinary evening she would have been bringing food to the
encampment.  "Peelers!"  she repeated.  Police!  The word alerted all
her senses.  Blast Belle and her plough boy  They had driven all
thought of the password out of her head.  She had not even given it to
Denis the blacksmith, but at least she had warned him to keep away.
Dear God, to have fallen down upon such a trust!  The lives of men at
stake!  She turned from the enticement of the warm, fragrant bath,
every bone in her body aching.  The bath would have to wait.

Surely, she brooded, as she rode up the hill towards the fort, there
must be some other way of helping people besides all this cloak and
dagger stuff?  Lawlessness, grim oaths and men like the unhappy Bergin.
How he would gloat over her failure to do her duty.  Why did he ever
take the trouble to help her during the fire?  Oh, this is no life for
a lady!  I should be lying in my bath.  I should be dancing.  I'm not
the dedicated type.  And then that inexorable phantom procession
approached, the six hundred trudging wearily past, raising reproachful
eyes to her; the

little gaunt boy running from her, from all that she represented.  No
one could not fight that kind of thing alone.  One had to belong to an
organisation that had discipline--and ruthlessness.  That was the only
way to tackle and overthrow the system that perpetrated such
inhumanity.  No good in doing Lady Bountiful with a basket of food to
some homeless encampment.

Revolution was the only solution, and revolutions, as the French
leader, Monsieur Landu Rollins, had said of O'Connell's peaceful
methods, cannot be fought with rose-water.  How often had she heard
Papa quote that!  Well, here is your daughter, Papa, wearing the Red
cap of Revolution!

"Halt!"  Her heart missed a beat.  A file of policemen had emerged from
a thicket.  She thought to urge the horse into a gallop, but caution
prevailed.  High-horsing would not avail this time.  She recalled her
scornful taunt to Bergin this morning.  "Are you sure you can trust me
with the password?"

The officer in charge bade someone uncover the lantern.  It was held up
to her face.  "Your name, Madam," She gave it coldly.  "What is your
business abroad?"

"I am not in the habit of accounting for my presence on my own
property.  What is your business on our land?"

The interrogator was not Sub-Inspector Bible, but his authority was
more compelling.  "Madam," he said with quiet insistence, 'somewhere on
your property there is unlawful assembly and drilling.  This is an
unorthodox hour for a lady to go horse promenading."

She twisted around and pointed her whip to two bulging saddle-bags.
"This is my business abroad--food for those people down there."  She
nodded towards the red glow.  She gave silent thanks for the expediency
that had prompted her charity.

"Indeed," she went on with a smiling change of front.  "I ought to have
been there long ago, but I was busy over another type of lawlessness. I
had to travel quite a distance in pursuit of an eloping couple and
bring the young lady back to her mother."

"Ah," the officer allowed himself to smile too.  "We had been apprised
of that abduction.  I'm glad that you were able to restore the young
lady to her mother.  And now, we must not detain you any longer."

He caught the bridle and with calm deliberateness turned the horse the
opposite way round until it faced directly the distant smoke from the
evictees encampment.

"Did you know," he said blandly, 'that you were heading in the wrong
direction?"  With a quick word of command he turned back in the
direction in which Sterrin had been riding.  She had not hoodwinked
him. She had led them straight back to the spot they had just missed. 
The password!  The police officer would give the other password and the
door would be opened to them and twenty--maybe thirty men would
be--'shot at sight'?  Given life sentences in the colonies?  Hanged?
The one in charge would certainly be shot, perhaps 'at sight'--Donal.
She raised a hand as though to stop the raiders.  The folded whip
dropped to the ground from her limp grip.  Suddenly there came an
excited shout from the raiders.  They had found the entrance to the
Danish fort.  The shout summoned her to her senses.  She dropped the
reins, placed a ringer on either side of her pursed lips and uttered a
wild, whistling, lonely cry.  Would Donal, if he were inside, recognise
the sound drawn from the lonely heart of a betrayed bird.  Was she too
far away for her voice to penetrate the thick walls of the fort?

Donal, tensed at an ear hole in the fort, heard the strange cry of the
domestic goose when the gander that has been its love since Spring,
hears the distant cry of the wild geese and suddenly, in response to
some primal instinct, deserts her for his wild brethren.  He warned the
sentinel not to open the door.  The password was in the wrong hands.

Sterrin tethered the horse a distance away and when the raiding party,
thwarted, had long departed, she tiptoed to the entrance.

"Donal," she called softly.  It was a complete violation of the rules.
Names were never used; only initials, and not one's own.  And of course
it would be a sentinel who would be posted inside the
entrance--demanding the password.  Oh, dear!  Tonight she was a
completely demoralised soldier of the Irish Republican Sisterhood;
completely untrustworthy.  That silly frivolous Belle and her absurd
elopement.

But it was Donal who answered.  And he too forgot the conspiratorial
initial.  Instinct prompted him to respond to that unmistakable
voice.

"Sterrin," he answered, and drew back the massive bolts.  On straw in a
corner lay a youth of about seventeen.  A half-suppressed moan escaped
and Donal dropped her hand and went to the lad.  In the dim light of a
lantern she saw his white, pinched

features.

The boy, Donal told her, was his nephew, James Prendergast Keating, son
of that pair whose wedding long ago had caused such a furore in the
castle; and the near dismissal of a certain knife boy.  James was
supposed to be visiting with his grandparents at Poolgower before
starting his Law studies.  He had escaped with a bullet in the leg from
the raid that Bergin had told her of, where the leader had been shot
dead on sight.

"He must get to a doctor," Donal whispered.  "The leg might mortify.
Even if it does not he is not robust enough to bear prolonged pain."

Sterrin looked at DonaFs strained white face.  It didn't seem to her as
if he either was robust enough to continue the prolonged hardship of
his mountain outlawry.  "If I could get him to Poolgower, my
brother-in-law is there."

"What about your brother?"  She knew that he had made open
pronouncements against the Fenians.

"James's James?"  he said bitterly.  "He wouldn't think twice of
informing upon me.  Fortunately, he is away on business."

"Come then," she said.  "I'll help you with this James."  They
half-carried, half-dragged him along the tunnel to the secret exit and
on down to the dyke where the mare was tethered.  Just as they were
hoisting him on the pommel they heard sounds.  The figures of men
loomed out of the wet mist.  Sterrin jumped bodily into the wet dyke
and took the lower part of the boy's body in her arms.  Donal crouched
beside her holding the upper part.  She prayed that there were no
mounted troops.  Their horses might seduce a coquettish whinny from the
concealed Clooreen.  But it was the police patrol returning.  Over the
bank the two could see them hammering at the fort.  The sentinel would
have plenty of time to escape through the passage and burrow out to the
hilltop.

When the raiding party was out of sight, Sterrin bade Donal take the
mare and go alone for the doctor.  We'll never get him out of this now.
I've got him in a fairly comfortable position."

Donal tried to remonstrate.  It was raining heavily.  Sterrin was
soaked.  "I cannot leave him like this.  Hurry, you're wasting time."

He eased the boy's body against the bank and clambered out.  A swirl of
rain sent him sideways.  He saw her stoop her head to thumb her hood
forward without disturbing the boy.  "Your

cloak is ruined.  You'll be drowned."

"Ssh," she hushed him.  "Tis no time to think of finery.  Take De
Lacey's fields Lubey's, I mean.  He won't be about at this hour. You'll
get to Poolgower that way in no time.  I'd ride it in twenty
minutes."

"You would!"  he smiled and disappeared.

He made the ride in twenty minutes, but not the return ride with his
brother-in-law, Dr.  Greyson-Quigley.  It was an hour and twenty
minutes before sound of their horses gladdened Sterrin's ears.  She
held the boy's limbs out of the water and her own were cramped and
chilled.  Sometimes he moaned.  Once he moved his head and spoke.

"I say, I feel an awful rotter forcing a lady into such a predicament.
You must be suffering frightfully."

"Don't worry about my suffering.  It's the kind that will dry out."

After Donal and the doctor lifted the boy over the dyke, they had to
lift Sterrin in the same way.  She longed to rub her limbs.  I'll
probably have to walk on my hands in earnest tonight, she thought with
a grin.  She had to squeeze back the tears.  It was agony to try
putting her legs to the ground.  But she wouldn't hear of Dr.
Greyson-Quigley's suggestion to come back for her when the patient was
fixed up.

"No, they are waiting for me down there.  I promised.  I feel better
already."

As she neared the glow of the fires she heard footsteps padding hard
behind her.  Heavens, she thought, it must be one of the police
raiders.  But it was Donal.

"I forgot to give you this.-Your cramp put your wetness out of my head.
Put it on!"  He helped her down and drew the horse out of sight of the
squatters beyond the hedgerows.  She was glad to undo her sodden cloak
and put on the cloak he had brought her.  The combs fell from her wet
hair and a sudden red glow from the campfires showed her standing there
with her hair cascading over her shoulders.  He reached out and touched
it gently.

' "A sacred forest covering the mysteries of thought..."  he quoted.
She laughed and wrung the water from it.

"There is no mystery in my thoughts just now; only to dispose of this
food then get home."

He watched as she twisted it and pushed it up under the

cloak's hood and he went on quoting... ' "Its wanton ringlets waved as
the vine curls the tendrils' *

She untied the food bag.  "How on earth can you be romantic on a night
like this!"  He took the bag from her and walked the horse beside
her.

"I can always be romantic where you are.  It would take more than rain
to damp the ardour I feel for you.  Sterrin, will you not change your
mind?"

She stopped.

"Donal, I will not face another loveless marriage."

"Loveless!  How could our marriage be loveless and the love that I have
for you."

"It isn't fair to ask you to do all the loving."

"Oh, Sterrin, I'd do it with a heart and a half and for ever.  Remember
the happiest marriages are those where one loves and one permits
herself to be loved."

His tender logic sent a faltering through her where his love had
failed.  Why not let-herself be loved?  She could never hope to know
those transports of love she had known for another.  Why should she
condemn herself to go through life probably as a sort of spinster
widowed aunt eventually to Dominic's children?  She put out a hand.

"Perhaps when all this is over I I shall permit myself to be loved."

The words sounded condescending to her but they were the response to
his reasoning and her hand pressed his with a gentleness that held no
condescension.  He held it as gently, then raised it to his lips.

"When all this is over!"  His pleasant voice was almost bitter.  "When
will that be?"

v She had never heard him express doubt.  Always he held out high glad
hope that Ireland at last was on the verge of absolute freedom.

"But, surely, it will be any day now.  America will send aid.  We must
be patient.  Her officers have done splendid work already.  The men are
all ready; drilled and eager."

"Drilled to carry pikes and walking sticks against millions of
breech-loaders and the cannons of the British fleet?  Yes, the men are
drilled and eager.  They are on the topmost of their eagerness.  They
can go no further in that direction; only backwards.  We might wait too
long for America.  She has her own

^^

war to finish.  Meanwhile, we have sixty per cent of the British
military in Ireland on our side.  We have a fair stock from the police
barracks that have surrendered to us.  We could make a start before the
disaffected regiments are shipped out of Ireland.  But, no, our leader
keeps preaching patience.  Stephens has done his work.  His secret
society is functioning.  He is a brilliant organiser, but not a
soldier.  He will wait too long."

Sterrin was startled at such criticism of the great patriot who was the
supreme Head of the Fenians!  And from Donal!

"Yes, authority and power have gone to his head.  Why doesn't he lead
the men he has organised into battle?  Why protract this business of
secret assembly, this cloak and dagger play?  The secret administration
of oaths.  The men over there behind that hedge need no oath
administered to them.  If they were not Fenians already they became
ones the moment the pickaxe brought the first wall down on their
hearthstones."

Before she could break the silence he coughed violently.  Impulsively
she put out her hand to him again.

Donal, you are doing too much.  Promise me that you will go home
tonight and rest.  Get out of these clothes.  I'll bring back your
cloak tomorrow."

They were on the outskirts now of the firelight and he drew back from
it in fear of recognition.  From the shadow his voice called softly.

"Keep it.  It is my dearest treasure.  I never hoped to see you wear
it."

What a funny thing for him to say, she thought, as she moved on to meet
the evicted.

She thought of it later as she sat up in bed sipping hot milk laced
with poteen.  Hannah picked up her sodden clothes-"Now that, your
Ladyship, is what I would call a beautiful cloak."

Sterrin, her face coated in layers of ointment, looked at the cloak
that the maid was holding out fully extended--a blue barathea affair,
lined with white satin and heavily trimmed with bands of velvet.  Now
she recognised it.  It was the cloak that Donal bid so heavily for at
the Auction--and with recognition she realised what he had meant about
its being his dearest treasure.  She had been too weary and wet to take
in the implication.

"That isn't the cloak you wore going out, your Ladyship."  It

620 ii

was as near as Hannah dared approach to asking where it had
materialised from.

"I was loaned it when my own got saturated.  I shall return it
tomorrow."

"Where will I tell Pakie Scally to return it to, your Ladyship?" 
Hannah was consumed with curiosity.

"No place, Hannah, and thank you kindly," said Sterrin sweetly.  "I
shall return it myself tomorrow."

Sterrin did not return the cloak the next day.  When she awoke in the
morning her body ached from head to toe.  She was racked with pain and
spent the day in bed.  In the evening a party of military rode up the
avenue.  All in the castle held their breath.

The lieutenant in charge explained his mission to Dominic.  The captain
was on his way.  He was here with his men to give protection or arms
against the Fenians.

Captain Fitzharding-Smith was ushered in in time to hear Dominic give
the reply that the father he scarce remembered had given to Captain
Fitzharding-Smith twenty-three years before, when the then lieutenant
had suggested that he seek protection against the Whiteboys.  His
family, Dominic said, had never sought military aid against their
tenants or any of their countrymen.

The young lieutenant interpreted Dominic's refusal as a personal thing
that slighted his own powers of protection--and perhaps his
swordsmanship.  He smoothed his long moustache and gave a curt word of
command and he marched his men off the premises.  Captain
Fitzharding-Smith lingered on.  He had hoped for a private word with
Sterrin.  He was worried about her.  He had heard mention of her name
in connection with a hideout where Fenians met and trained.  He had
listened to the inexorable order--Fenians to be shot at sight, and he
had seen in lonely places, in the wake of patrols, the unarmed,
unidentified bodies of young men from God-knows where.  Lady O'Car roll
came down and told him of Sterrin's illness.  He expressed his concern
but the news brought him a strange sense of satisfaction.  No warning
of his, he felt, would have caused my Lady Sterrin to lie low.

When Dominic sauntered into Sterrin's room with the news of the
military visit he was hardset to hold her down from rushing to warn the
men in the fort.  Eventually he got the

password from her * though I doubt if it will avail," he grumbled, 'if
the military get there first.  They'll use explosives, not
passwords."

"Take the short cut," she urged and then she recalled him to give a
warning signal in case the military were ahead of him.

She lay restless, refusing draughts that might betray her into sleep.
Lady O'Carroll delayed the late drawing-room tea because Dominic had
told her he would be back for it.  When Hegarty came -to quench the
drawing-room lights, she bade him wait.  At midnight she decided that
Dominic had been thrown from his horse.  The men servants organised a
search.  In the kitchen the women kept vigil.  Mrs.  Stacey turned the
fan wheel round and round with her thoughts until the roar of eight
blazing fires stayed her hand.  At two o'clock Sterrin tossed the
bedclothes from her.

"Are you crazy, Miss Sterrin's Ladyship?"

Sterrin pushed the maid from her path.  In the stable yard Big John
pleaded with her.  She rode out, fever, pain completely overborne by
the force of her dread for her brother.

The forty was empty.  By the light of the lantern that she had carried
inside her cloak she saw the door lying on the ground.  There was a
strange acrid smell in the air.  It was as Dominic had said.  The
military had used explosives instead of passwords.  But where, dear
God, was Dominic?

The mare walked her home unguided almost a dead weight across her
shoulders.  In the stable yard Big John was just in time to lift her as
she slid to the ground.

Captain Fitzharding-Smith came early in the morning to break the news
to Lady O'Carroll that her son had been arrested.

Dominic had been turning away from the fort, his message delivered,
when the military came charging up towards him with bayonets drawn.  As
they seized him, he implicated himself completely by sounding the bird
cry that Sterrin had given him.  The men inside heard and burrowed
through the labyrinth to safety.

In the days that followed the staff at Kilsheelin were helpless and
bewildered.  It seemed to them as though the citadel of their lives was
falling down through the centuries upon their unprotected heads.  Their
Ladyships, both prostrated upstairs.  Their young master about to go on
trial.  For his life maybe.  The end

of a dynasty!  When they heard the name of the Assize Judge they were
filled with despair.  His grandfather used to try the rebels of
Ninety-eight.  Twenty a day he would sentence to hanging, they recalled
to each other, and he would crack jokes with the black cap on his head.
This grandson cracked no jokes, but he found the black cap no burden.
To Fenian rebels, high or low, he was merciless.

Upstairs Sterrin lay half delirious in fever.  Dominic!  The sensitive
boy who had taken so long to grow into his years.  It seemed like
yesterday that he was an un breeched lad rejoicing in his first pair of
trousers, made from his great-grandfather's velvet breeches.  And now,
the grey frieze of the convict.  For all the lovely hours of his youth.
And she had sent him!  The last of the O'Carrolls.  A wailing shriek
went out from her.  It echoed down the corridors and stairs and into
the great kitchen that had known the echoes of her laughter.

Mrs.  Stacey hesitated no longer.  She looked at the faces round her,
Big John's, Hegarty's, Mike O'Driscoll's, Ellen's and in an outer
sphere, not of their close-knit kin, Pakie Scally; gratitude for the
home that had reared him yielding to the loyalty that was theirs by
generations of association.  Milesian servant and Milesian lord
fighting the same odds, sharing the same destiny.  Mrs.  Stacey's milk
had nourished Sir Roderick, the father of Master Dominic, her darling.
At the breast of Hegarty's mother, old Sir Dominic had been nursed in
fosterage.  Big John too, his blood was linked with the O'Carrolls by
the milk of his womenfolk.

Til do it!"  The big cook rose slowly to her full height, grim with
purpose, she dwarfed them all; even the coachman no longer towered. His
good shoulder drooped in sorrow to meet its maimed comrade.  They knew
what she meant.  In the night hours it had been whispered on a
stillborn breath--a thought too terrible to voice.  Hegarty broke the
silence.  "In God's name then!"

Big John turned towards Pakie Scally, "Yoke the back-to back."  He
turned back to the cook.  Til drive you--Mary!"  A frightened gasp went
from Ellen.  "Mary!"

It had started.

They drove first to the house of the widow of George Lucas --the
murderer of Sir Roderick who had died in jail.  She listened and went
pale.  Tve never had anything to do with the

like '

"Mary Lucas/ interrupted Mrs.  Stacey sternly.  "Lady Sterrin is your
foster-child.  Sir Dominic is the last of his line.  If his father's
young life had not been taken from him by your husband '

"You have no need to tell me," the woman whispered.  "I know."  She
looked about her fearfully, then whispered.  "I'll be there."

Josie Scally, neat and lissom in her parlour maid dress, opened the
back door of Mrs.  Wright's private residence beside the shop.  "But,
Mrs.  Stacey, ma'am," she said when she heard, 'my name isn't right.
I'm Josie '

"And Mary too," the big cook interrupted.  You were christened Mary
Josephine."  And then solemnly, "We have need of you, Mary Josephine
Scally."

Dread lent a greenish hue to the olive pallor of the Con ne mara
girl.

"All right, Mrs.  Stacey," she whispered, "I'll be there."

Among the tenants five more women named Mary were enlisted.  We will
get the others at the Crossroads dance on the Holy Day," Mrs.  Stacey
said.  The crowds of the world will be there."

But on the Holy Day the American flag waved forlornly over the empty
dance sward.  Where fiddlers and melodeon players were to have played
for the dancers it was a time of mourning.  Boats still brought lists
of dead from the battlefield at Fredericksburg.  There were
bereavements in every towns land still worse, neighbour glanced askance
at neighbour, for neighbour's son had killed neighbour's son.  It was
said that of the fourteen hundred Meagher took into battle, only two
hundred and fifty survived.  Some told of bodies lying on the frozen
plains still unburied.  At Mass on that Assumption Day it was like Palm
Sunday. Every second prayer book held a green sprig; not of blessed
palm but of the evergreen that had been plucked, at General Meagher's
suggestion, by the great Irish Sixty-Ninth and worn in their tunics as
they rushed to meet the death storm of Mayre's Heights.

After Mass, Mrs.  Stacey waited at the Crossroads but the mourning
women drove past her and past the flag their sons had died for; no
lingering or gosthering.  Mrs.  Stacey drove on, her dread purpose
unfulfilled.  The Assize Judge drew nearer on

LL

his circuit, and in the barracks day after day, Dominic, frail but
inflexible, faced his questioners.  Mrs.  Stacey went to the railroad
station where the mothers and widows of the fallen men were to collect
their pay.  She spoke to the black-cloaked women.  Some turned from
her.  But Mrs.  Ryan Fortynine, a cousin of Black Pat Ryan's, listened
and nodded her head.  One or two others did the same.

Sterrin's fever abated.  As her strength came back, she felt an
overpowering surge to be up making some effort for her brother;
anything, throw herself on the mercy of the court, give herself up; go
plead with the Deputy Lieutenant of the County.  He had been
entertained here at the lunch for the opening of the railroad.  Her
legs felt strangely stiff and weak as she made her first effort across
the room while it was empty.  She rested awhile on the chaise longue
then moved restlessly to the window and rested her warm forehead on the
cool glass.  Gradually as one plan after another chased around her
frantic brain she became conscious of something unusual going on in the
yard beneath.  Every few moments, a woman, cloak-muffled, would flit
almost furtively across the yard towards the kitchen entrance.  As a
fourth woman entered the yard towards the kitchen Sterrin raised the
window.  In the shaft of light as the kitchen door opened to her knock,
Sterrin thought she recognised Mrs.  Ryan Fortynine.  She leaned out
and caught a low murmur of greeting "God be with you, Mary," and the
visitor's response, "And with you, too, Mary."

What on earth would Mrs.  Ryan Fortynine be doing here at this hour? So
far from her little shop in Templetown.  Sterrin was not likely to
mistake Mrs.  Ryan Fortynine.  Every year at Christmas, when she was a
little girl, she used to give her a quart can of sweets.  Another
figure appeared.  This time, even before the light flashed, Sterrin
recognised Mrs.  Ryan Ha-Lad.  But she was a regular visitor to the
kitchen nowadays.  Why this furtive approach, almost tiptoeing and
lockings to right and left?  The greeting was repeated.  Each addressed
the other as Mary and now Sterrin was certain that the one who greeted
the visitors was Mrs.  Stacey.  She had never heard Mrs.  Stacey
addressed by her Christian name.  There was something eerie about all
this.  These women were not dropping in for a friendly coordheec1 in
the kitchen.  They were coming stealthily as

1 Visit.

though their purpose was sinister.  A shiver of memory ran through
Sterrin.  Still another figure was flitting through the dusk and in the
flash from the doorway Sterrin recognised Josie Scally, the sister of
Pakie and Attracta.  She was conscious of something like relief that
there was a break in the dark chain of Marys--But no!  "God be with
you, Mary," said the voice of Mrs.  Stacey.  "And you, too, Mary."
Mary!  From the homeless mite who had materialised long ago in the
kitchen from under her dead mother's cloak that had draped two other
sisters as well, and when they had given their names the High Priestess
of the kitchen had said to her, "Mary Josephine is too long.  I'll call
you Josie."

There was no one about.  Hannah was helping Nurse Hogan with Lady
O'Carroll, who was crushed with worry about Dominic.  Sterrin tiptoed
slowly down the back stairs, clinging to the banisters, amazed that she
could not take two steps at a time.

No voices sounded from the kitchen.  It was strangely quiet as though
some distant torrent had suddenly ceased.  She peeped in.  Ellen sat
crouched over the fireplace, hands limp, no knitting, no crochet.
Attracta sat at a table, her face in her hands.  The men, Hegarty,
O'Driscoll and Pakie Scally, stood around, their eyes straying towards
a passage beyond the yard door.  From where they watched there came a
low diapason of sound.

Sterrin grasped the door and tried to quieten her breathing.  It was
labouring as never before.  But she must see what was happening.
Suspicion was hardening into certainty.  The only way that she could
get to that passage without going through the kitchen would be to
retrace her steps up the servants' stairs and across the gallery and
down the main staircase across the hall to where a little passage
branched off the kitchen to the hard's quarters.

To contemplate that way, it seemed endless.  She who should accomplish
it with a hop, step and a jump!  She set her teeth, gripped the
banisters and started to climb.  When she finally dragged herself
across the gallery she leaned over the polished banisters and slide
down the front staircase on her stomach, the way she had done as a
child.  At last she reached the passage outside the hard's bedroom
where the strange noise was coming from.  Soundlessly she turned the
knob.  The door was locked.  She moved on and let herself into the big
music room, where he

had spent his years since the Big Wind had damaged the outer wall of
his bedroom.  Soundlessly again she turned the knob of the inner door.
It yielded and a gasp of horror escaped her.  The hard's bed was
dressed for a deathbed.  Around the bed the black cloaked women bowed
and writhed and brought their hands together in silent claps and from
their lips came the subdued wails of the death lament.  The focus of
their keening was a small black object that lay in the centre of the
corpse less bed.

And Sterrin knew that she was witnessing the terrible Wake of the
Thirteen Marys.

She turned to flee the horrible scene but her limbs were powerless.
Then she heard Dominic's name, but the black article on the bed did not
belong to Dominic; not as the rosary beads and the military medals of
the Scout's son and of others like him had been waked instead of their
young bodies that lay under American skies.  Dominic was alive and no
one would wake the living youth, unless those who wished him dead.  And
this wake was to wish him life.  Another name was mentioned.  The women
clapped and moaned in a grief that was almost satiric.  Sterrin knew
the name.  In the Fenian 'circle' it was uttered with dread.  The Judge
who bore it left a trail of hangings and transportations and floggings
in the path of his circuit.  Tomorrow he would pass sentence on
Dominic.

Sterrin moved to stop the frightful orgy, but Dominic's face swam
before her, the gentle brown eyes, the fair hair.  Calvagh O'Carroll
had had fair hair too, and he was hanged.  Nonchalant as a French
aristo in a tumbril he had helped the hangman to tie the knot.  And the
citadel of the O'Carrolls had dwindled further.  And the little boys of
old Sir Dominic had died of the cholera.  All but Papa.  And Papa had
been murdered.  Murdered by the husband of that woman over there,
writhing and moaning with the others to save the life of his victim's
son.  The last of the splendid line.

Something stirred in the pre-Celtic roots of her being.  She dropped
the hand raised to protest.  She closed the door and left them to it.

It is only a silly superstition, she told her labouring heart as she
climbed back.  Like putting one's clothes on the floor in the shape of
a T* on Hallowe'en night.  Like pouring melted lead through I "Hannah!"
The maid was rushing along opening doors as she went.  "Miss Sterrin,
where were you?"

Sterrin threw herself in the maid's arms.

"Hannah, don't leave me.  Hannah, stay with me all night."

The maid carried her to her bed.

"You were down there, Miss Sterrin," she spoke in a fearful whisper. "I
see it in your face."  She didn't realise that the face was naked of
masks or bandages or veil.  She saw only the terror filled eyes, the
mouth trembling as never before.

"You saw them!"  She made the sign of the cross.  "Don't think of it,
Miss Sterrin."

"I shall always think of it.  I shall never be able to forget it,
Hannah.  Never!"

The day of the trial extra police were drafted in from neighbouring
towns.  They stood with fixed bayonets round the courthouse.  Every
tenant turned out.  Young Sir Dominic was beloved of them all.  While
they crowded the front entrance a cab brought him to the back entrance.
Inside the panoply of justice was arrayed.  The world must know that
Sir Dominic O'Carroll would not be the victim of an indiscriminate
order.  No shooting at sight.  A jury waited in the wings.  Many of
them, landlords, were incensed, not because of treason against Her
Majesty, but because of this business of Lady Devine.  The idea of
feeding and pampering tenants whom they had chosen to evict.

The minutes dragged by.  Court officials whispered.  In the gallery
Maurice O'Carroll and Lord Cullen looked at watches and conferred. Lady
Biddy Cullen was there and Mrs.  Delaney.  Mr.  and Mrs.  James Wright
and Miss Berry Comerford.  Ulick Prendergast waited as he had waited in
sympathy for the father of the boy that last day of his life. So did
Michael Joseph, Michael Ryan and Marty Hennessey and as many of their
faction as could squeeze in.  James de Guider assisted his brother
Stephen into the court--the first time the lame old gentleman had been
in Templetown since the famine.  Their relative Patrick de Guider was
there, the sole survivor of the fourteen brothers who had died of
famine fever contracted from the stir about line of Connemara
migrants.

The Clerk of the Crown Peace came into the Court and announced that the
trial must be postponed.  The judge was ill!

Pakie Scally erupted from the court.  He went to the Kil

sheelin carriage and whispered to Big John.  The coachman looked down
to where his cousin, Mary Hennessey, stood looking up.  He nodded a
prearranged signal and she turned to Mary Ryan and to Mary Lucas and
behind them was Josie Scally, christened Mary, who had crept out in her
mistress's absence.  They were there; all of them.  The women who had
keened the terrible Wake of the Thirteen Marys.

Mrs.  Stacey tensed at a window in the castle as she saw Pakie Scally
coming at full gallop.  He gave her the news.  The judge was ill at his
lodgings; gravely ill.  He had felt poorly starting out from the last
Assizes town.  The doctors had advised him to 11

desist, but he had pursued his circuit.  And now he lay at his
Templetown lodgings in an agony of colic from which he could scarce
recover.

She moved into the room she had made ready with her own hands.  She
quenched the candles that still burned round the empty, black-draped
bed where she and the women she had summoned had keened the living
judge.  She lifted the three cornered black object from the centre of
the bed and handed it to Pakie.

"Get it back to where it came from," she said.

That night the judge died.

Another came in his place.  His name brought a glint of hope to
Sterrin.  She went to the kitchen.

"This time," she said, 'let justice take its course."  It was the only
indication she allowed them of her knowledge of the wake.  At the door
she paused.  "The last judge died as a result of something that the
doctors are calling appendicitis."  She looked meaningly around the
circle of faces; "Something inside him that burst."

When the door had closed on her Mrs.  Stacey broke the silence.  Low
and grim she muttered: "It waited till the right time to burst."  She
swung the crane from the fire to remove a pot.  "What's this young
Thomas used to say when no butter but turf would come in the milk an'
we churnin', an' across the bog at the same time Mag Miney would churn
pounds of butter from a taschain of cream?  There's more things in
heaven and earth, he used to say, than anyone in this world dreams
of."

Sterrin went to her room and put on the black water-silk gown she had
long since laid aside.  She ran her hands down over her body.  Illness
had whittled down her waistline.  She

cpuld almost span it with her two hands.  That was something anyway!
She felt a sudden resurgence of her old pride in her looks and took a
step towards the mirror then stopped.  No, not now.  If I look at it I
won't be able to go on.  Her marred face would not fit in with her plan
to help 'the course of justice'.  She dragged her hair from its chignon
and pinned it in bunched-up ringlets that fell on either cheek.  The
new style was a help to her scars, though she hated the podgy look of
those barrel curls dangling on women's faces.  She preferred to drape
her hair across her ears and secure it back in a knot on her neck.
Grecian they called it, though the hard used it to say it was the old
Irish fashion.  Ah, Bard, what would you say if you knew that the last
of the family was on trial for his life?  And what would you say, Bard,
if you were to know the paltry part myself is trying to play in this
cause?  Pride and shame halted her, but suddenly she recalled the hard
in his bawdy moments.

I know what he'd say, her thoughts took tongue with the dint of her
desperation.  He'd say, More power to you, Sterrin, Daughter of
Roderick O'Carroll.  Go in there to Templetown and beguile the
daylights out of that man.  She pinned an exquisite veil of finest
Carrickmacross lace over her face.  She rummaged for lip salve and
longed after the French lip rouge in jewelled boxes that had gone with
the flames.  Ah well!  Her eyes fell on the red-backed novel beside her
bed.  She seized it.  Any port in a storm!  She moistened the cover and
rubbed its red dye through the lip salve, then with the aid of a tiny
pocket mirror that barely showed her mouth, she raised the veil and
reddened the pouting outline.  She threw Donal's cloak about her
shoulders and from the doorway darted one frantic look towards the
mirror.

In his Templetown lodgings the judge frowned at the sound of a tap on
his sitting-room door.  Hadn't he given orders that he was not to be
disturbed?  Without waiting for his response the door opened.  Despite
the veil his first impression was that the intruder was a beautiful
woman.  The slender frame, the poise of the head, the suffusion of
hair, the set of the shoulder.  The face was framed in the white satin
lining of the hood that rested upon her shoulder in classic folds.  His
eyes, narrow from assessing men right through their faces to their
hearts to see if they held guilt, tried to penetrate the very
attractive veil, but all that he could see was a glow of red defining a
mouth that would

^

have allured in the days of his susceptibility J

"Madam, this is '

"I am Lady Devine.  I She was about to recall their meeting at the
Assizes Ball at Kilkenny when she remembered her audacious choice of a
rebel song when it was her prerogative to call the tune; and his
embarrassment.  Till now, all she had remembered was his appreciative
glances and the fan-fluttered hints of his amorous past.  "You visited
us at More Hall," she amended.

If this was a belated return visit, it was as disconcerting as her
choice of dance tune!  But he was on his feet to his former hostess. "I
heard, with deep regret, of its demolition by fire.  I heard, too, that
you suffered injuries saving the life of your maid."

A glove ready unbuttoned was removed from beneath her cloak.  He saw
her draw her hand from beneath her cloak as though it were a nervous
gesture of unconscious reaction; noted a quick glance at a red scar on
a pretty hand then it was back beneath the folds.

"I have come about my brother '

His hand shot up.  "My Lady!  This is something that cannot be
discussed between us.  You may not tamper with justice.  The prisoner
who will stand before me tomorrow cannot be tried as anyone's brother
or son.  He will be tried as a rebel and given a fair trial."

"He is no rebel," she flashed.  "It is I who am the rebel."

I can well believe it, he thought.  And a dangerous one.  The kind of
rebel the young men would follow madly and think 'twas Caitlin Ni
Houlihan herself.  Ireland the Queen, with that regal head of hers and
that clear voice.  He'd follow her himself, be god if he were twenty
years younger, ay fifteen years younger.

"I can well believe it, my Lady," he repeated aloud, "I seem to recall
a certain rebel song called for at a certain hall."

"Ah, that was naughty of me!"

"There is nothing I can do, Milady," the judge was firm.

"Sir, he is so young, sensitive, immature The clear voice was cutting
through the surge of memory.  "He is the last of us--my mother You see,
sir, I asked him to take a message.

He had no idea of its implication.  I rushed him because I was ill
myself."

"Otherwise you would have brought it yourself.  What was the

message pray?"  Dammit.  What am I saying?  This was parleying with
her.

"Just to warn brave men that they were to be denied the benefit of
appearing before you in "fair trial".  They were to be shot at
sight!"

A nimble wit, by gad.  It could be titillating to draw it further.

"A daring admission!  My Lady, I regret that I must end this interview;
this discussion.  It is extremely unethical."  Suddenly he frowned.
"There have been other unethical methods tried on your brother's
behalf.  Some absurd superstitious rites.  Stupid, of course, but
ruthless, murderous even, in their concept."

In the Bar mess that evening the barristers had talked of nothing else.
Grand Jurors, they said, were laughing at the idea of it, while looking
over their shoulders apprehensively.

"Surely, my Lady, you don't believe in that kind of thing?"

"My father did."

"He was superstitious?"

"Far from it.  He was intolerant of all superstition except that one.
But, that, of course, was merely an association with him.  In his
childhood some women held the Wake of the Thirteen Marys on a
priest."

"You surprise me.  I didn't think that they would wreak such hatred
upon their priest."

"It was not that they hated the priest whom they waked.  It was that
they loved so much his predecessor who had been transferred.  They
wanted him back."

What happened?"

"The new priest died.  But of course," she commented reassuringly, 'it
was of a broken heart that he died."

"It is monstrous," said the judge.  "Ghoulish such practices should be
investigated by the law and punished.  Tell me, my Lady, this orgy,
this er wake, is it still in progress?"

She gave a slow shrug.  "Who knows?  People our people would do
anything if they thought it would save my brother but she paused and
her eyes seemed to compel him.  He could not see their colour.  Colour
never mattered to him.  It was the setting that he had ever bothered to
observe.  He could detect the almond sweep in the deep pit of those
eyes behind the veil.

"Yes?"

"They would do anything for me too if she paused on the slight emphasis
'if I were to ask them."

The little niggling cloud that had shadowed the judge since he had
heard of the wake seemed suddenly to melt.  His rest tonight would be
all the more peaceful for the assurance that a circle of harpies was
not trying to keen him out of existence.  Her ungloved hand was
extended to him, high-arched, inviting.  He took it and turned the scar
upwards.

"A brave scar, my Lady."  He raised it to his lips.  "You are a very
gallant person, Lady Devine."

Next day on the bench, through interlaced fingers, he watched Donal
Keating conduct Sir Dominic's defence.  Donal's name was not yet on the
Hue and Cry list.  No one suspected that he was a Fenian leader.

The testing time had not found Dominic lacking.  He had divulged no
name to his questioners.  The judge listened to the impassioned plea,
the prisoner's youth, his family's great prestige, and of course, his
complete innocence.  He didn't miss the equally impassioned looks that
escaped from the Defence Lawyer towards the veiled figure in the public
gallery.  Whatever was behind that veil now, there were women who could
exude the quality of beauty even though they were as plain as be damned
I'd take me oath he's pleading for the sister's love as well as for the
brother's release!  The learned Counsel looked a lot thinner than on
the night of the Kilkenny Assizes Ball, when he danced after her,
holding up her train and singing, Paddies Evermore.  The solemn-faced
judge sighed nostalgically.  Didn't I do it all myself?  Rebellions,
love, poet ising until the serious things, fame, money, rank, caused
him to put them away like a gay costume after a Bal Masque^

After his release, Sir Dominic was carried from the Court on the
shoulders of his cheering tenants.  In the out surging crowd Sterrin
got separated from Maurice who had come from Waterford for the trial.
Jammed in the doorway crush she saw the redoubtable Scout; sadly out of
character; no longer the thrusting, elbowing newsmonger clamouring to
know "Why wasn't I told?"  the supreme news bearer who had bribed with
gold a wagoner so that he, Scout Doyle, would be the first to proclaim
to Templetown the astounding news of O'Connell's arrest.  Sterrin had a
flash of memory of the doughty Scout arriving at a lumbering gallop up
the front avenue, no less, to proclaim the great news to her Papa.  As
she passed him Sterrin said, "It is great news Mr.  Doyle."  The sad
face quickened at her

recognition.  The chimney-pot hat swept high.

"An auspital occasion, my Lady.  Most momentatious!  Aty heart mourned
with the mother's heart of Lady O'Carroll in her hour of
decrepitude."

Sterrin had a feeling that the verdict had deprived him of sharing an
equality of grief with her mother.  On a sudden impulse she said:

"I wish we could get the news more quickly to her."  She nodded to
where the eager supporters were endeavouring to unharness the horses
and draw the carriage themselves.  "Would you be so kind, Mr.  Doyle,
as to hire a horse, or fly chaise, in my name at Mullally's and hurry
ahead of us to Kilsheelin?"

Like the old war horse that scented the battle from afar, the Scout was
back in his role.  The horny elbows were flailing right and left
beating a path for the bearer of 'momentatious' news.

Another voice murmured into her ear as she forced through the cheering
mob.  The blacksmith, under cover of assisting her to the carriage
where Cousin Maurice O'Carroll was waiting, had something else to
convey to her with his congratulations.  She gave him a quick look of
apprehension.

"My cousin insists on taking me to Waterford tomorrow-but--only to
recuperate.  No more of the other--I have involved my family too
far."

"Your Ladyship, nothing could be more opportune for us now than your
trip."

She had never heard such urgency in the quiet voice.

"It was yourself who spoke of your uncle's Castle, his Sacred Cove. Let
him allow our ships to land guns in that cove.  Your Ladyship, please! 
This is the last demand I shall make of you.  We are within a heartbeat
of success.  No more trials and transportations."

Maurice O'Carroll drew her to the carriage.  Sterrin struggled to hold
back the tears.  She had reached breaking point, and was shaking from
exhaustion and fear.  The opening of the carriage door seemed a
reprieve from the sinister commitments of secret oaths.  But as she
placed her foot on the step she gave a quick glance over her shoulder
and nodded her head to the blacksmith.

CHAPTER 58

Thomas came from his hotel room drawing on his gloves.  Immediately,
two big obvious-looking men rose from an ottoman and approached him. 
One of them spoke to him, "Are you Captain O'Carroll of the American
Army?"

Thomas was outraged.  7 am Thomas Young, the actor."  He spoke with an
elegant mince.  The plain clothes men looked at each other.  "But sir,"
said the man, 'we have reason to believe that you have documents that
declare your commission in the American Army."

A long, slow dawning played elaborately across Thomas's face.  "Those!
But they are belonging to poor O'Carroll who went down in that awful
charge led by General Hooker He covered his face.  "God, I hate to
recollect it.  I was to play there, and would you believe it, the
theatre had been converted into a hospital!  Blood!  I simply loathe
the sight of it!"  His voice fluted into femininity.

"Poor O'Carroll," he resumed, 'he asked me to bring some belongings to
relatives in Londonderry--he was positively saturated with
this--Seltic--sentimentality--I thought Londonderry was some suburb of
London, but Major de Waters of the 10th Hussars--I'm supping with him
tonight after the performance-tells me that the place is away in the
north of this country, a whole day's journey off.  It is most
inconvenient."

The two policemen looked at each other.  The 10th Hussars!  The crack
regiment of the British Army!

They started an apologetic withdrawal when the door next to Thomas's
room opened.

"Excuse me, sir," said Alphabet Dignam.  "His Excellency's 'ady kong
brought this.  It is for tomorrow's reception at die

Vice Regal Thomas flicked it a negligent glance and closed his eyes.
Blast Alphabet!  He gestured the card towards the police.  "Do you wish
to see this?"  Pray God you don't!  "If you have any further doubts."
The police 'not-at-al led and turned.

Thomas was releasing his breath when they turned back from a whispered
conference.

"Might we just ask you this man's name?"

"That is a difficult question.  You see said Thomas, 'the answer
requires more time than I can spare."  He started enumerating on his
fingers, "Alcium, Beracium, Conceptionez, Dionysius, Ephraim look here,
I have to be on the stage in twenty minutes and he has a Christian name
for every letter in the alphabet show the gentlemen your baptismal
certificate, Alphabet!  The surname is Duignam.  It was his father's
idea, the plethora of Christian names."  The police had reached the
stairs head  Thomas drew out his card and scribbled.

"Perhaps you would like to see the performance?  This will admit you to
two seats, with my compliments."

They thanked him and withdrew.  Thomas rounded on his body-servant.
"You damned idiot!  What did you mean by butting in?  And could you
find nothing more convincing than a card for the Fenian picnic at
Cincinnati?"

"I thought it would add vermilion to your statement, sir."

"It almost did," said Thomas grimly.  "Go peep over the banisters and
see what they are about."

Alphabet returned with the information that the policemen had just
passed out through the front door.  "They seemed satisfied, sir, that
you were not a Fenian.  One of them just tapped his forehead and
shrugged.  The gesture alluded to you, sir."

It was the first shadow on Thomas's luck.  It was also the first time
in years that he had put on the play in which poor Henry Monteith, his
leading man, had died.  As Thomas lay on the Gaiety stage in Henry's
part he almost yawned.  He had spent the previous night on the Dublin
mountains drilling volunteers and he was sleepy.

Up in the gods an impatient wag prodded him awake.  "Ye're a long time
dyin', Misther Young."  The interrupter was chided from the opposite
side of the gallery.

"Shut up, you bosthoon!  Some people have no appreciashun of dhrama."
Thomas, in the process of getting up, nearly fell back when his
sympathiser called down, "Taker your time, Misther Young!  Die away
there!"

Drill, thought Thomas, as he released his yawn in his dressing room
does not blend with drama.  But he kept his supper appointment at the
officers' mess in Island Bridge barracks.  And

he kept his appointment for the slopes of the Dublin hills at two in
the morning, and of the two hundred British soldiers to whom he
administered the Fenian oath there, at least eighty belonged to the
dashing Tenth Hussars.

Sterrin, lying on the chaise longue in her mother's boudoir, read the
account of Thomas's run at the Gaiety.  She was still convalescing from
the rheumatic fever she had contracted and wasn't supposed to strain
her heart by horse promenading or strenuous walking, yet here she was
lying completely still and her heart was beating as violently as if she
had climbed the Devil's Bit on foot!  She resented the horrid thudding;
not only because her heart had been growing strong but because it had
started to know peace.  Since Dominic's trial she had made up her mind
about Donal.  His passionate plea in her brother's defence had stirred
more response in her heart than the pleas he had made to herself. Donal
appealed to her heart though he could not compel it.  And never could
he cause it to beat as it was going now.

"Mamma, will you be needing Big John this afternoon?"  she asked.

"No, darling.  Unless you wish me to accompany you on a carriage
promenade."

Sterrin did not want to be accompanied.  She wanted to go alone to the
forge.  The blacksmith would contact Donal for her.

As she started out for the forge Big John told her that it had been
raided.  It was a year since she had seen the blacksmith.  She dreaded
to find that he might have had to go forth 'on his keepin".  Still, all
seemed well when they got there.  She could hear the smith's voice, a
rich rumble of melody, as she entered the forge.  He broke off with a
startled exclamation as she followed in the wake of the horse Big John
led in.  "Which shoe is it?"  he asked.  Then from somewhere under the
horse's belly he said, "None of these shoes is loose."  He must be
under some strain, she thought.  Normally, he accepted that the horse
was merely led in to cover her visit.

Just then the police arrived.  They seemed strangely surprised to see
the smith here but they ransacked the place just the same.  Constable
Younghusband went up the chimney and when his feet had dangled down
like a pair of churns for ten minutes he

plumped to the ground.  He held out something with an air of triumph
to the officer.  "I found the implements for making cartridges, sir."

Sub-Inspector Bible examined them and threw them aside.  "These are
muddlers for making punch."  The constable hadn't looked too bright not
even without all the soot on his face and his shako not askew.

Another constable brought forth an ominous-looking iron pole.  "Ah!"
the sub-inspector was pleased.  "A pike!"  The smith lifted a shoe from
the furnace.  Without looking up he said, "Mrs.  O'Hanlon doesn't call
it that.  It is the stake she has tethered the goat to for the last
forty years."

The officer brought the pole nearer the fire.  "Of course," said the
blacksmith.  "I may be wrong about the goat, sir, it may not always
have been the same one, but it is the same stake."  The officer flung
the stake from him and told the smith peremptorily that he was sending
his horse, the grey, down immediately for shoeing.

"Certainly, sir," he said cheerfully.  "Isn't it extraordinary," he
continued chattily, 'how fashions change!  When my father had the
livery stable he used to charge five pounds extra to hire out a grey.
Now, greys are quite out of fashion.  A body couldn't hire one out at
all if there was any other colour available."  He tightened his leather
apron.  "It is the same with women's hair.  There was a time when a
body would cross the street out of the path of a red-haired woman. 
Now, red hair is all the fashion."

A shower of sparks showed Sterrin palely proud, the red lights in her
hair intensified by the reddened darkness.  The officer had seen the
elegant carriage outside.  To offset the smith's overfamiliar remarks
he saluted in her direction then withdrew.

Sterrin was puzzled Denis never made facetious remarks.  But she was
not surprised that the inspector's manner had rattled him.  It had
rattled herself.  "I want you to get a message to Donal to Mr.
Keating," she said.

He looked up quickly.  "No," she reassured him, 'it is not anything to
do with the "circle".  It it is something personal.  Well, you know the
way it is."

"Er yes," he said respectfully.  "I know the way it is."

"I have decided' she hesitated 'to take your advice."

She was surprised that he had no eager comment.  Something was amiss.
But what?  In the silence her eyes lighted on the little

iron kettle.  "Constable Younghusband hasn't spilled all the water,"
she said, Svith those feet of his.  Don't you think there would be
sufficient left for tea?"  He looked vaguely round.  Here it is!"  She
picked up the little rusty caddy that the police had pushed from its
usual place.

The great fire had subsided.  Only the rattle of bridle and bits and
the occasional stamping of hooves showed that a horse stood in the dark
shadows behind the glow.

He filled the big mug and extended it towards her.

She looked down at it startled.  No apology for its uncouthness.  "What
has happened to my cup?"  A flame spurted up and played on the mug, on
the black fingers, black as soot, down to the last graceful, tapering
point!  Not the work-hardened, calloused blunt, blistered fingers that
Denis had spread out to show their unworthiness of her handshake.

"Who are you?"  she whispered.  She made no effort to take the mug.  A
flame spurted upwards towards his face and answered her question.

"You!"she breathed.

"Sterrin!"

Often she had wondered what would she do, what would she say, if she
were to meet him again; this man who had rilled her heart so full that
there was no comfortable space left for any other man.  She would pass
him by!  Look through him haughtily.  She scraped her throat.  "Where
is--"L"?"  That wasn't what she meant to say and, Oh, God, she had let
slip the initial by which Denis was known in the "Circle'.

He gave a startled exclamation.  "You know that?"

Wheels sounded on the cobbles outside.

"He is on his keeping."  It was a whisper.  "I am covering for him to
get away while the search is hot."

There were other things she wanted to know.  "Are you in love with that
woman?  Who is she?  How did you come to marry her so quickly," But all
she said was "Are you a Fenian?"

He nodded.  "I am--"V".  Sterrin, listen."  He put down the mug.  They
were alone in the warm sensuous darkness.  Her heart was racing.  It
was not supposed to incur excitement.  Behind her the horse champed,
shook its head and set all its bits rattling.  Thomas strained through
the veil and glimpsed the deep pit of her eye, the poreless pallor of
skin.  "Sterrin!"  Big John blocked the horseshoe opening.  "Have you
finished the

shoeing," he said meaningly and withdrew.

Thomas stretched forth to take her hand.  Involuntarily she took a step
back.  He mistook her gesture.  How could he know that if he threw
those blackened arms around her and crushed her against Denis's grubby
leather apron she would have rested there; never to leave.  "I had
forgotten the black," he said.

Words came to her.  The wrong ones.  "You forget quickly."  Her voice
was tense and strained with the dint of keeping it low.  "Your hands
reach out too readily to women!  The woman you flaunted before me,
pawing her, caressing her in public, so soon after--in Paris in '

"Sub-Inspector Bible wants his horse shod immediately."  A policeman
entered, followed by a groom leading a horse.

"Right you are," the blacksmith called back.  "Thank you, your
Ladyship," he said, Til just lead out your horse and give the coachman
a hand."

The policeman saluted Lady Devine as she passed.  Outside two policemen
guarding the forge saluted.  The blacksmith backed the horse into the
shafts and as he stooped to fasten the leathers, he murmured just loud
enough for Sterrin to hear.  "The "pawing" was necessary.  She is
blind!"

The doctor had told Sterrin she needed rest and care.  There was
nothing that rest and care could not cure.  Nothing.  Sterrin agreed,
as she stared out of the window of the coach.  She was cured of the
excitements that had disturbed her heart.  Heart strain!  No sickness
of the body would have made her heart plunge as the sight of him had
done that day.  No sickness could drag it down with such a lurch as had
those words 'she is blind'.  All the suppressed, unformulated hopes had
died in that moment : the inventive love, half guilty, half yearning,
prompting her that he would tire of the other.  She's some fast actress
who caught him on the rebound; embracing him in public.  She might have
known that Young Thomas of the gentle smile " would never indulge such
behaviour.  Oh that smile that had flashed its comfort at her across
her father's grave!  But wasn't he the one who had come well out of the
debacle of that star crossed love?  Hadn't he got himself a wife who
was young and comely, who would hold him for ever with the mystique of
her blindness and its pleading pathos that would ensure for ever that
pity which is so closely akin to love?

No, no more excitement.

The pace at Kilsheelin slowed perceptively.  Sterrin took solitary
walks.  She brooded in Sir Roderick's study.  She received calls but
returned them with cards left by Pakie Scally, pressed into service as
a footman, in the livery that had been bought out of her lavish
trousseau account.  Were it not for Mrs.  Kennedy-Sherwin, now living
with the Crimea-wrecked Jeremy, nobody at the castle would have known
that Pakie guarding the immaculacy of his white gloves until almost the
very opening of each door had held the cards grasped in his moist
hands.

"One never has to read the inscription on the cards he leaves,"
shrilled the still irrepressible little lady.  "One only had to glance
down at the salver on the ones that have black smudges."  Big John had
nearly died of shame.

There were few visitors at Kilsheelin.  The Delaneys called
occasionally.  James de Guider dropped in quite frequently.  Sometimes
to talk, sometimes to ask for help in tracing his family genealogy.
Soon after Sterrin's return from the convent James had married his
housekeeper.  At the time Sterrin had attached little significance to
James's marriage.  To be sure, it was a come-down for a dandified and
aristocratic gentleman, but James was impoverished, as well as very
lonely.  Lady O'Carroll had refused to call on Mrs.  de Guider.  She
felt that James had let Roderick down by this misalliance.

Now James was seeking the trail of his kind.  The spectacle of his two
little sons being brought up without the graces and refinements that he
had known in his own childhood had spurred him to start another
manuscript of his family genealogy.  The old one had been destroyed by
the Big Wind.  The Famine had finished the downward tread of their
fortunes.  Its pestilence had taken fourteen of his married brother's
fifteen sons.  The surviving one was an invalid.  James felt that since
he could not give his sons fortune of a gentleman's education, it was
incumbent upon himself to leave them at least a record of a lineage of
which they could be proud.

During his visits to the castle, James pored over the hard's records
and prowled around the old roofless church in the O'Carroll burying
ground, where so many of the de Guiders had been buried.  Once Sterrin
went with him to the graveyard and scraped lichen from monuments that
proclaimed that The

Comerford of The Devil's Bit had brought two hundred foot soldiers to
help The O'Carroll drive from his lands the "Four Men of Cheshire' to
whom Queen Elizabeth had given over Tipperary.  The daughter of The
Comerford, ancestors of James's mother, had married The O'Carroll and
was buried beneath the stone.  But what James had hoped to find was
some record of one of the Strague O'Carrolls who had been dispossessed
by his youngest son.  A Timothy de Guider, who had been High Constable
for the North Riding of Tipperary at the time, had appointed the elder
son O'Carroll to a position as Collector of Hearths and Window taxes,
and one of his descendants, Thomas O'Carroll, had married James's very
young Aunt Johanna de Guider youngest of eighteen children.  Her
husband, James discovered, had been killed protecting his holding
against the Tithe Proctor's in 1833.  That same week his wife had given
birth to a son in a neighbouring house, but there was no trace of the
house, mother or child.  "And this child," Sterrin interrupted
excitedly, Svould actually be the lawful heir to Strague Castle?"

James nodded.  "And my children's cousin.  Yes."

She wondered did the Stragues know about this Thomas O'Carroll.  *

Sterrin had an inspiration.  She told him about the silver drinking cup
that the old hermit of Bawn na Drum Castle had shown her.  His
grandfather had got it from the dispossessed O'Carroll.  "He might be
able to trace the boy you are looking for."

As they wandered back through the tombstones, she came upon the tiny
grave of little Theobald Hennessey, Young Thomas's god-child.  She
recalled how Mark, the father, and young Thomas had taken turns
carrying the little wooden box and how the tears had flowed down young
Thomas's face and he couldn't take his hands from the box to wipe them
away.  For the first time she realised what it must have meant to him
to lose the first, the only, human being to whom he could claim some
form of relationship.  Was there ever anyone so bereft of family?

A horseman was reined-in on the little road that separated the cemetery
from the bog.  When James de Guider had driven off in a little
newfangled trap, he dismounted and came towards her.  It was Bergin.
She hadn't seen him since that day at the Campion "Station'.  He told
her that Thomas had been arrested.  The veil could not hide her quick
short breaths.  She managed

some adequate words; then, with a murmured apology about being in a
hurry, left him.  He watched her move along the road, slower and
slower.  Obviously she was in no hurry.  And who was he, he asked
himself, to be wounding her always?  There was a terrible love between
those two.

Around the corner she sat on a low wall.  She had begun to be happy-
She was enjoying the little social whirl that poor Mamma was trying to
whip up.  The visits of the Delaney girls, the tit-bits of scandal from
Mrs.  Kennedy-Sherwin.  Tracing family with James de Guider had been
like the old times with the hard.  And now!

She sprang to her feet.  Why should it worry me?  Let his blind love do
the worrying!  She thought of her mad gallop to the convent when she
was told of his arrest, away from the world that contained him no
longer.  But then she had been a child.  Now she was a woman.  She
quickened her step and then she had to stop and grope for a
handkerchief.  God'll mighty, is it crying I am I If she hadn't gone up
there to the little church with James, she wouldn't have recalled that
gruesome little box and the one who carried it crying.  But someone
must shed tears for a lonely soul taken to prison and only an
unfortunate blind woman to weep for him.  How did he come to marry her?
Was it because he had to marry someone and better one who couldn't see
that he loved someone else.  Because he does; still.  It was in his
face in the forge that day, and in his voice.

A few days later Mrs.  Kennedy-Sherwin's bulletin made farce of
Sterrin's drama.  "My dears!"  the outburst started, as usual, at the
drawing-room door, 'have you heard about that devastating Fenian from
America the one they've been looking for for months!  He used so many
disguises there was no catching him, and do you know why?  He is
actually the famous actor, Thomas Young.  They brought him to the
barracks and, my dears, I would have been out much sooner, but I've
been angling for an opportunity to see him.  They say he is positively
deevy!  And then the very next evening didn't he go and escape?  Wasn't
it infuriating, Sterrin?  My dear, I don't believe you are listening.
But wait till you hear he is really Captain O'Carroll, a Confederate
officer drove out the barrack gate in a bread van!"

"Captain O'Carroll," exclaimed Lady O'Carroll.  She had been singularly
quiet during the recital.  No fan fluttering to conceal

laughter.

When the visitor had gone she came and sat on the ottoman beside
Sterrin.  "I have never referred to your meeting in Kilkenny in Sir
Jocelyn's house with that actor--that mountebank, who used to clean our
knives."

"Then don't refer to it now."

"Sterrin!  How dare you speak to me like that."

"I dare because I won't be taken to task as though I were a child.  I
am going on twenty-seven, a woman and a widow."

"I don't care what age you are."  Margaret jumped to her feet, her
great brown eyes blazing, the keys and bells on her chat elaine belt
jangling.  Sterrin remembered that once, in childhood, she had seen her
mother like this with Papa.

"This--this canaille, this servant--to dare to take our family name.
Sacre Dieu!"  She was beside herself.  "He never knew his place and
you--you spoilt him instead of keeping him down."

"He could not be kept down," Sterrin's voice lifted itself, 'because he
had it in him to rise.  You saw his ability.  His refinement.  You
praised his artistry about the big tree--you--' Hegarty, coming to
remove the tea things, backed out in horror.  Their Ladyships were
nearly shouting at each other.

"I'm not concerned with the talents and refinements of underlings.  I
believe in keeping them in their place."

"Like you did Mrs.  Black Pat Ryan."  The words dropped out of
Sterrin's sudden recollection of the incident where her mother had
looked, and behaved, as she did now.  There was no getting them back.

Margaret stood very still.  She looked down silently at Sterrin and
then she whispered, You are right.  You are not a child.  You are a
woman; a wicked woman!"  She put her hand up to the back of her head.
Sterrin's hand shot out too.  "Control yourself, Mamma!"  Her voice was
only a gasp, but strangely authoritative.  It brought her mother up
short.  Because '

"Because what?"  asked Sterrin's brain.  Her voice answered, 'because
I'm the one who is going to faint."  And she did, straight away.

Once Margaret saw that Sterrin was all right, she went to her room. She
did not emerge for weeks.

Sterrin knew bitter remorse.  It was a terrible gibe to hurl at her
mother.  She started sending little notes to her mamma's room.  There
were no replies.

Sterrin took strolls in the demesne always ending in the direction of
Coolnafunchion; but never a sight of Donal.  If he came to her now and
asked her to marry him she would give him the answer he yearned for. He
was lying low.  She had heard he had come under suspicion.  She wished
him dear luck, for she knew the fear and loneliness of the hunted.

Sometimes men 'on their keeping' would contact her and she would
shelter them until it was safe for them to press on on their secret
purpose.  She put them in the hard's room for a few days.  Even
Americans came, Northerners as well as Confederates.  Men seasoned in
the smoke of battle.  Men convinced of the Fenian cause.  They showed
her a gentle deference as she arranged for their comfort.  Only the
hereditary servants might bring food to the guests' in the hard's room.
You can trust them?"  the strangers would ask and watch the tantalising
white gleam that was her smile behind the veil.  Her cause, she assured
them, was her servants'.  As her ancestors' cause had been the cause of
their ancestors.

It was strange, Sterrin thought, to see these men who had fought
against each other so fiercely in America, now joining together in the
common cause of Ireland.  She remembered how kindly Mrs.  Lonergan had
turned against her under the delusion that Tim had been killed by one
of her name and kin.  One of her name!  A shock of enlightenment shot
through Sterrin.  Mrs.  Lonergan's son had been killed at the hands--or
the orders of young Thomas, the servant boy she had indulged with the
hospitality of her fine home and the friendship of her son.  And I, we,
to bear the blame of that killing because he had the audacity to take
our name.  But was it audacity?  Couldn't it have been--sentiment?  She
turned from the treacherous tenderness.

The landscape seemed bleak wherever she looked, the Movement was
faltering; its march stumbling to a slower tempo.  Dublin Castle had
hunted James Stephens out of Ireland.  But even if he had remained, the
Brotherhood had lost its faith in him.  He had beguiled them over long
with high hopes and glowing promises.  When he slipped away to Paris no
regretful glances turned that way.  He was in the right setting for
dilettante revolutionaries.

News from Canada brought some short-lived joy.  The Fenians had crossed
over the borders of Canada.  The detach645

ments of Canadian volunteer forces, mustered to meet the invaders, had
been overwhelmed.  The regiment of the Queen's Own, rushed from Toronto
had been routed.  King James did not run from the Battle of the Boyne
as quickly as did Colonel Booker, the Commander of the Queen's Own, on
his charger.  But the American government pursued the pursuers and
seized the Fenian arms.  The Fenians crossed back into America with
only the trophies and flags that they had captured.

At last Sterrin received a note from Donal.  He wished to speak with
her about a matter of some importance.  They met in the Hermit's cave
at Bawn na Drum.  "I cannot understand it," she said to him, 'when I
was a little girl and the Liberator was conducting the Repeal campaign
the American President warned England that he would invade Canada if it
fired on a Repeal gathering..."  she faltered.

Donal did not want to talk about politics.  He wanted to talk about
Sterrin.  He wanted her to marry him.  It was a strange setting for a
proposal, she thought.  She looked round the cave, it reminded her of
the forge.  But the heart inside of her was not turning over as it had
in the forge.  It was calm.  It had burned itself out on the-flame of
its own passion.  In such a setting as this her dream love had received
its final blow.  Donal was urging his own love; enough for two.  The
flame from the sods burning in a makeshift hearth in the corner
flickered across his face and showed it handsome, attractive, but
white: too white, too thin.  In the flicker a silver cup glinted on a
stone shelf.  A cup, china, gold-edged, had glinted on the stone shelf
of the forge, too.  Why should Donal have to love for two?  He deserved
the full measure of love.  And why should I go without love; if he has
so much to give?  "What a place to propose marriage to me; and what a
way to rush me here by night!  *

It was half-flippant, half-angry, wholly tempo rising  She shrank from
the final commitment of acceptance.  There was so much to be
considered.  Her mother would never consent.  Sterrin to marry a
Keating of Poolgower?  Her father would die again in his grave.  She
herself would probably have died in her mother's arms on the night of
her first birthday if the horrible James's James Keating had fired into
the drawing-room five minutes earlier.  She might never have lived to
receive his brother's proposal!  Never have lived to receive the insult
of his own--assault And almost as the acceptance trembled upon

,1

her lips she remembered that it was to punish James's James Keating
she had married Sir Jocelyn Devine and made havoc of her life and looks
and by-passed her life's love.  She stepped back, irresolute.  Donal
shook his head sadly.

What is it you want?"  he asked low and tense.  "If it is a romantic
setting you need, remember that I asked you under the blossoms of
Lissnastreenagh.  You said then that they had not blossomed enough, I
should wait for them to fall.  I waited and they fell and they bloomed
again, and fell; season after season and still I've waited."

"You've waited a long time," she murmured gently.

"I can wait no longer."  His tone startled her.

An ultimatum?  Was he intimating that he was not going to wear the
willow for her.  "You've made up your mind to marry, if not me then
someone else?  Thank you for the honour of first choice!"

"There is no one else.  There never could be.  Caitlin Ni Houlihan is
the only other woman in my heart and she is calling very urgently."

"The insurrection?"  she breathed.  "But it has dissolved?"

"No, the Canadian thing has put new heart into the movement.  The men
turned back from Canada are pouring in here.  Ah Sterrin!  We have been
through so much together, must I go into the crucible without something
more from you than half promises and withdrawals?  I must go to take my
stand against our enemies.  I seek no mercy and I shall make no
compromise.  And somehow, Sterrin, I see this attitude to my enemies as
the attitude to the woman I love with all my soul and being.  I want no
mercy, no compromise, from her."

The gentle face was resolute as never before.  Suddenly the full
portent of his words came upon her.  It was one thing to talk of
rebellions, to plan and hope, but here was the reality!  This splendid
life; the brilliant intellect, the heart so tender to human sufferings;
the heart that was her one sure resource.  "No, Donal," the cry burst
from her heart, 'don't go the sacrifice is too great."

"No lesser sacrifice will serve; but if I return He put his hands on
either side of her face.  She stiffened and his hands dropped,
despairingly.

"No," she cried again, 'it is because of my face.  You haven't seen
it.

"It is not by the skin of your face that I measure your soul.  I still
glimpse your eyes behind that veil.  Their spirit is the same as when
it challenged your hostile servants and made them feed the multitude. I
remember the beauty of your face when I danced with you at the Assizes
ballj but more vividly do I remember the tenderness of your face next
day, when you held those bereft children in your arms on that railway
bank.  Aye, and your head is poised as proud and graceful as when you
rode between the lines of your captors--to jail, maybe."

"And you ransomed me.  Oh Donal!"  Her head rested on his shoulders.
His arms went about her.

There was a sound at the cave's entrance.  The old hermit came in,
upright, not a hair of the great curled head missing.  "The patrol has
reached the top of the hill.  It will be starting to return, but it
will be half an hour before it winds this way by the road.  You'll have
crossed the bog long before then."  He handed Donal a vaulting pole. "I
have left a burning sod of turf on every foothold.  It will light your
way.  Jump from one to the other."  He went out.

Donal laid aside the pole and took Sterrin in his arms.  He pushed up
the veil and kissed her lips.  He stroked the hand where she had once
shown him the scars and on the finger that he kissed she glimpsed,
through her tears, a shimmering whiteness.  Then he took up the pole
and it was like a lance as he went forth to his rendezvous with Caitlin
Ni Houlihan.

CHAPTER 59

From end to end of Ireland there was something in the air.  It seethed
in the earth.  It rode on the night wind.  Men straightened their
shoulders and told each other that Fenianism was no longer an idle
theory.  The Fenians could have swept through Canada!  The men took
heart again and drilled in the forts and raths.  There were many
arrests, many more than before.  But now the men from America came, men
who had fought against each other at Fredericksburg and Gettysburg,
survived the war to unite under the Fenian banner and march side by
side to Buffalo, sleeping on its sidewalks waiting to carry the green
flag over the frontier into Canada.  They carried it instead to Ireland
and with it the Stars and Stripes that they had fought for.  Twin
banners equally loved; equally sacred.  "Soon or Never," was the Fenian
cry.  Now it was to be soon.

Thomas travelled through the heart of the' country alerting men to the
coming rebellion.  He noticed birds that he had not seen so far inland
since the afternoon of that Twelfth Day in 1839 when he had scurried
over the bogs and fields with Lady O'Carroll's gift to Lady Cullen.
That day the prescience of some terrible storm drove the birds far
inland.  Now this March day of 1867 he noticed birds that should be
starting on their journey to the islands" of the Hebrides and Iceland
sitting in rows discussing the wisdom of undertaking the journey. Never
had spring wind blown so cold.  The wind whittled through the flesh of
the men as they struggled across the mountains and through the hidden
ways to their long-delayed tryst with rebellion.  Many fell in their
tracks, and lay there.  Only time dare move, and halt their purpose.

When the storm quietened the men rose again.  Then the snow fell
pensively, and without wind.  It betrayed the footsteps of the tiring
rebels, then relented and covered them again.  The snow continued to
fall with the silence of a multitude.  And now it covered their fallen
bodies.  Men remembered no storm so cruel.

The older men recalled the Big Wind but that had been a manly storm--a
storm that lashed a man's blood to warmth.  This snow was mean and
biting.  It slowed the march.  It betrayed the cause, and simplified
the task of the police and the military.

It was easy to track down those whose feet were fettered by frostbite;
whose hands were manacled with its numbness.  The government acted in
other ways, too.  Thomas tried to contact Major de Waters but he had
been transferred overnight, with his Fenian-tainted regiment, to India.
Every disaffected regiment had been transferred from Ireland.  The
Channel Fleet had been drafted to Bantry Bay.

Thomas rode to the Waterford coast to watch for a vessel that had left
New York with arms and ammunition and with officers who had been
trained at West Point, tried at Gettysburg.  It was a lonely, frigid
watch.  The cliffs that curved around the fairy cove where Maurice
O'Carroll's house stood, had become an ice cathedral, and Thomas
wondered if the half moon alone in the great grey sky was feeling as
bleak as himself.  It answered his thoughts with a spectral beam that
revealed the outlines of the ship.

It flew the green flag bearing the proud motto: "Erin JResurgante',
waving like a taunt in the face of Ireland's despair.  Thomas signalled
his presence and slowly rowed out to the ship.  He brought the men
aboard the same tale of defeat they had heard from messengers at other
coves along the coast.  The storm, he told them, that had delayed the
ship had scattered and disorganised the battalions of seasoned troops
who had endured and waited its coming.  Most of them had been arrested,
some already on the high seas to deportation and were imprisoned in
Arbour Hill Barracks over the graves of the executed rebels of '98.
Some were already aboard ships en route to penal deportation.  His own
work among the military gone for naught.  And those who were left had
pitifully few arms.  It would be futile to land.  The officers and men
bade Thomas a grim farewell, helped him into his boat and watched him
to shore.  Then the ship that one week ago might have precipitated the
capture of Munster, the prelude to ultimate freedom, turned round and
faced west into the gale.

Thomas galloped through the snow to where Donal Keating and Bergin
waited near the coast with other survivors of the storm.  A sod of turf
blazing on a pike's head guided him down

the rugged track to a camp fire in a hidden glen.  Donal, on a knoll
away from the fire, had watched through the night alone; guiding the
stragglers by signal^; shivering and dreaming warm dreams of Ireland's
liberation.  The night of her slavery would soon be brightened by the
gleam of patriot steel; her centuries of slumber broken by the music of
patriot cannons!

He listened to Thomas in silence as he watched the distant light of
their ship of hope going from them back across the Atlantic to freedom:
to transatlantic Ireland with its thousands of disbanded Irish soldiers
ready and waiting to come and free their land of the thraldom that had
made them exiles.  It was not to be soon.  It was to be never.  "I told
them in Dublin that we were delaying too long," Donal said bitterly.
"Why did Stephens wait so long?  I told him in Dublin nearly two years
ago that we should not place our hopes entirely upon American aid and
upon the arms in British barracks.  I suggested that we purchase
supplies from England.  There was absolutely no restriction upon their
sale at that time.  A few hundred armed rebels to meet that ship would
have altered the course of Irish history."

Thomas, too, fixed his eyes on the receding speck of light, trying to
hold it back.  "That is what they said out there.  But to have landed
without some armed co-operation would have been madness.  Now we must
send these men back to their homes!  I'll go and divert the rest."

All night Thomas met the stragglers as they arrived, the unpaid
soldiers of Ireland, exhausted, but exultant at having won through the
gale.  It reminded him of Tom Steele waving his peace bough at the
weary hopeful marchers who had converged on Clontarf for the last,
glorious rally of the Monster meeting that was to have brought Repeal
to Ireland.  "Go back!  Go back!"  the Head Pacificator had cried,
'there is no meeting."  "Go back!  Go back!"  cried Thomas to their
sons.  "There is no rebellion."  They listened dumbfounded.

"Fate is on the side of England," said Bergin.  "Nothing could have
defeated us in 17% if the Expedition that Wolfe Tone sent from France
had not been scattered by a hurricane, with thousands of troops and
ammunition for the rebels waiting as we are; the hand of God is against
Ireland."

"Don't blame God," said Donal, 'it is bad leadership."

"Bah!"  fumed Bergin, 'there was nothing wrong with Davis's leadership
in '45.  He had the entire country marshalled to a

victory march!  It was the hand of God who withdrew him from us.  And
on top of that the Famine.  My grief to see brave men deserted!"

"Enough of this defeatist talk," said Thomas.  "Every rebellion is a
step nearer freedom.  The next rising will gain us our freedom."

It was the afternoon of the next day before the three reached the
Tipperary hide-out rest.  As Donal slept, Thomas studied the exhausted
face of the young lawyer who had been prepared to toss away the
prospect of a brilliant career.  But lots of patriots had prospects of
brilliant careers.  What man had such a prospect as Sterrin?  What were
they to each other?  Husband and wife?  Betrothed?  He had not passed
on her message at the forge.  He must do it now when Donal awakened.

Bergin's scar gaped hideously against the weary whiteness of his face.
Sleep was gradually relaxing the bitter lines of his mouth.  Thomas
leaned up on his elbow.  A mouth capable of tenderness; a handsome face
before it had been disfigured by her husband.

Donal stirred and muttered a word.  Thomas heard it.  She was
everywhere.  Her husband's brand on Bergin's face, her name on Donal's
lips.

Clouds of sleep draped his brain.  He would anchor a loyalty to his
poor, blind Dorene.  Of heart he had none to give her, but he would
give her give her his lids drooped kindliness and and courtesy his
possessions.  He would look no longer across the sea to that fairy
turret whose occupant had become a mortal.

Three hours later he was shaken forcibly awake.  A battle was in
progress.  General Burke had taken the field a few miles beyond
Tipperary town.  Thomas's spirits rose.  He had served under Burke. All
was not lost.  Thomas, Bergin and Donal jumped on their horses and
galloped off to the battle.

It was a sorry rising.  Near the fort that was to be the gathering
point Thomas met some of the men whom he had trained.  Like the rebels
whom he had been forced to send home last night, these too had been
dispersed without firing a shot.  "We hadn't a gun to fire one," a
Yankee private said bitterly.  He held up his arm.  "That's the only
arm I've left.  I'd have gladly given it if I had the opportunity to
make one stand for my own country."

Thomas spurred in the direction the men told him Burke had taken.  A
few moments later he had to pull his horse hastily into the shade of
the trees.  Ahead of him was a party of military and even as he sighted
them he saw Burke fall from his horse; saw him manacled by the British
and marched to captivity.  Thomas beat his hand against the saddle in
helpless fury.  The ignominy of it!  A gallant officer like Burke.
Captured in this pitiful, puerile expedition.

A burst of firing behind him brought him weaving back to where he had
left Bergin and Donal.  The firing was nothing; just a rew bravado
shots fired at random after the dispersing rebels.  Thomas found Bergin
almost at once.  They spied Don aTs horse a few paces away; riderless.
Donal had been thrown; but he made no move to remount.  When Thomas
reached Do naPs side he saw at once the crimson stain spreading across
his shirt.  One of those random bullets had found a rebel's heart.
Donal smiled faintly, at Thomas, whispered something,

sighed and closed his eyes.  "Give her He paused.  Thomas bent closer.
"Give her my eternal love."

CHAPTER 60

Sterrin glanced through the library window.  The snowdrops had melted.
She could see the violets studding the tree boles on the avenue.  In
every bush and tree the blackbirds, thrushes and chaffinches were
discussing their marriage and housing plans.  But Sterrin could plan no
more.

Why, she asked herself, for the thousandth time, had she deprived Donal
of the happiness of those past few years: herself too?  She could not
have failed to be happy with him.  He was incapable of making anyone
unhappy.  His goodness had been transparent.  It had a distinct
presence.  That was what had made her so impervious to the bitter
background between their two families.  That was what had been the
well-spring of his joyousness.

Hegarty opened the door without knocking.  "Is it there you are, Miss
Sterrin?"  Age was dulling his formality as well as his vigour.  "It's
Mr.  de Guider.  He's in the hall."

She shook her head.  "Make my excuses."  Then custom asserted itself.
"In the hall?  What are you thinking of, Hegarty?  Show him into the
drawing-room.  Mamma is there."

"It's yourself he wants to see first.  It's private and important."

James de Guider made a tiptoed entrance.  He waited for Hegarty to
leave.  "I was entrusted to give you this."  He drew a letter from
inside his coat and handed it to her.

"Who gave you this?"

"Read it," was all he would say.  He was portentous with mystery.

She read:

Dear Lady Devine--Before Mr.  Keating died he regained consciousness
briefly.  He whispered a message that I feel was intended for you.  It
was--"Give her my eternal love."  Earlier that afternoon I had conveyed
to him the message that you passed on to me in Deegan's forge.  It was
the first opportunity that I had of doing so.

He died bravely.  May his gentle soul rest in peace.

I beg to remain Your obedient servant,

Thomas O'Carroll.

James de Guider hurried towards her.  "Sterrin, Lady Devine!  Are you
faint?  Shall I summon someone?"

She didn't answer him.  Her head was bowed down over the letter.  "Oh
God," he heard her moan, 'this is beyond bearing.  Oh Donal!"  The
poignancy of his message was rending her; then blessedly, she began to
cry.  Till now her grief, as always, had dried her eyes the way the
east wind dries the soil.

She felt a touch on her bowed head.  "I shall not intrude further.  I
had no idea--the She looked up; aware of

James, then down at the letter: aware too for the first time of its
signature.  Donal's message had dimmed out the rest of the letter.

"Thomas O'Carroll?"  She looked up.  A slow wonderment knifing through
the numbness of anguish.  "Who gave you this?  How do you come to know
about--about Mr.  Keating?

James took a step towards her, the eagerness he had been compelled to
restrain bursting forth.  "Sterrin, forgive me, I mean Lady Devine--I
know nothing about Mr.  Keating in relation to your letter--except the
lamentable knowledge of his untimely death.  But, but--the one who
wrote the letter, who gave it me--it is incredible, he is the one I
have been looking for, the son of my father's sister--and it was you
who led me to him: through the old hermit."

This fantasy, set in the grim reality of Donal's death was too much to
absorb.

"Mr.  James," she said, addressing him as she had been taught in her
childhood, 'this is an assumed name.  This person performs on the stage
under another assumed name--Thomas Young.  Before that he worked here
on the staff.  He was one of our house servants '

"I know, Sterrin--Lady Devine.  He was young Thomas, your knife boy.  I
remember him well.  He used to come and milk our cows twice a day when
our staff was down with famine fever."  Excitement drove his voice to a
thin penetrating pitch.  On the other side of the door Hegarty was able
to catch the rest of the words without further strain.  "Young Thomas,"
he heard, 'your

former knife boy is the lineal descendant of Sieur Dominique
O'Carroll, dispossessed by his youngest son on an act of Disclosure.
Young Thomas should be the heir to Strague Castle!"

Not for over half a century, not since his own knife-boy days, had
Hegarty scurried kitchen ward like now.  He burst into the kitchen.
"Wait till ye hear '

Eight minutes later he came through the hall with a tea-tray, not due
for another quarter of an hour.  Mr.  de Guider was in the hall and
Miss Sterrin's Ladyship was on for making him stop.  "No, don't leave
it till another day.  Tell her now.  I'd prefer that she would hear it
from you."

Hegarty, completely outside of himself, and agape for more, oared in
with: "It isn't goin' you are, Mr.  James?  Sure I've put you in the
teapot."

Tea was served in the drawing-room.  Foosthering among the china,
dragging out the ritual of service, Hegarty didn't miss a syllable.

"But what started him--I mean," Lady O'Carroll was asking, 'what first
gave him the idea that he might be other than what he was ?"

"Other than one of the canaille?"  Sterrin put in.

Hegarty, recalling his French, wondered at such contempt from Miss
Sterrin, of all people, that should be leppin' out of her skin.

"It was Bard O'Ryan," James de Guider explained, 'things he used to
say.  Thomas told me that he sometimes would call him Calvagh and
sometimes he would say, "Are you Roderick Achilles, or some other
name?"  But only to Thomas, never to any other servant."

"Oh that's the truth, many's the time I heard him an '

"Hegarty!"

"I beg your Ladyship's pardon.  I'm not at myself with the dint of
excitement.  I've heard talk so often of The O'Carroll who was cast out
by his son '

"And, of course, Mamma," Sterrin interrupted, "Hegarty's grandfather
was killed while protecting my great-grandfather.  That is why it is so
difficult sometimes to be de-hauten-has with one's servants."

Lady O'Carroll noticed Sterrin twisting the pearl ring on her
engagement finger.  She became aware of Sterrin's hands and fingers.
They had been covered with rings when she returned

from Kilkenny.  Unconsciously she said, Tve never noticed that ring
before, Sterrin.  It is a strange ring.  So pale pale for tears they
say."

Yes, Mamma.  All the others were so dazzling.  They outshone it.  But
not any more.  They are all gone.  Sold.  It-is my happy function in
life to part with what I have my jewels, myself, so that Kilsheelin
stands and we can all be frightfully de-haut-en has Isn't it, Mamma?"

Stere en  But you are bitter!"

"No, Mamma.  I am not bitter; not anything.  I am past feeling."

The two might have been alone, regardless of the men guest and
servant.

James de Guider tactfully intervened with a request to be allowed to
see the portrait of the Sieur Dominique O'Carroll, which hung in the
gallery.

"Yes," he said, when they brought him there, 'it is there.  The
likeness persists."

The castle staff seethed.  Hannah was waiting for Sterrin.  "Can you
get over it, Miss Sterrin!"  She was "Miss Sterrin' now as in the days
of young Thomas.  Mrs.  Stacey laboured up the backstairs.  "It's like
a fairy tale, Miss Sterrin."

Maybe you are a fairy prince, young Thomas!  It was a dull thud of
memory.

"Sure it happened to others Lord Templetown, meaning no disrespect to
him, has no real claim to that title.  His father was lorded for votin'
for the Union.  The last real Lord Templetown was working in a livery
stable.  There is many like him, if only they could come into their
own.  Big John says it doesn't surprise him at all.  He always expected
to hear something like that about young Thomas.*

Nurse Hogan had the same to say.  "He was the only one of the lads who
could speak English to me when I came.  An' teaching himself to write
from the tombstones 'twas as if something deep inside him was striving
upwards.  I never heard from him since the day you came from the
convent and he wrote to say how well he was doing on the stage and he
never in a jail at all only she stopped herself: too late.

You knew that he was not imprisoned?"

The nurse looked apprehensively towards Lady O'CarrolI's room.

Sterrin took her first quick step since the news of Donal.  As she
entered the room her mamma turned from the open wardrobe.  In full
view, not out of sight, as always, hung the white satin gown: the dark
brown splotches clearly visible on the skirt; and on the bodice where
his head had rested, Papa's blood!  Sterrin turned and went out, the
reproach unuttered.  Margaret wondered what she had been going to say
when her glance rested on the blood-stained gown.

Sterrin went back to the library to the book of poems she had been
looking up when James de Guider had been announced; some lines she
wanted that had run wordlessly through her brain since the news of
Donal.  Here it was!  "And once again shall oft-widowed Erin mourn the
loss of her brave young men' the print blurred out.  She banged it shut
and pulled another towards her.  It was Papa's black Book of Records.

She glanced through it indifferently.  Incidents of his life since he
took over from his own father stood out in his graceful continual
slant.  They read like a novel.  His meeting with Margaret; the clothes
for her wedding; the homecoming to the castle; the parties for her.

"On the night of January the sixth in the year of Our Lord one thousand
eight hundred and thirty-nine, a great wind blew across Ireland.  It
caused havoc and disaster and the loss of many lives, how many it is
not yet known.  In the course of this storm, nigh five acres of the
land that my forefathers have held through centuries against all
unwarranted approaches, was raised skywards in my presence and borne
out of my sight.  The seventh of January of this same year I rode forth
to the lands of James Keating of Poolgower and there did witness my own
land lying unbroken as it went from me.  I pray God that this act of
Nature will not affect the lives of those whose heritage has been so
strangely visited."

Sterrin snatched up a quill: "On the night of March the fifth,

1865--a snow storm blew across Ireland She paused.  She thought to
write something about Donal--weren't the fortunes linked?  He was part
of their heritage.  Their field had 'visited' his family and stayed.
And Donal's life was affected.  She threw down the quill.  This was
superstition.  And suddenly she remembered the one whose life had
really been affected by the storm's visitation--the little boy whose
identity had been blowc

away.  She turned from the thought of him and read the entry about her
own birth.  The writing was less meticulous--a hurried entry: "An
afterthought," she said aloud, and then she gave an exclamation.  "I
wasn't born the night of the Big Wind.  I was born the morning after!
I'm a day younger than I thought."  No one had ever bothered to refer
to the fact.  She had never known a birthday treat; never received a
gift! Except once!  On her fourteenth birthday the knife boy had given
her-a little leather-bound diary--the one on which he had later
written-- "They told us we should never wed--and yet we kissed as
though we should ..."  It was gone in the flames.

On a sudden impulse she drew his letter from her reticule.  The irony
of it!  That the only writing he had ever again penned to her was to
convey to her another man's undying love!  Beyond the sunlit windows
the chaffinches and blackbirds and thrushes were at it again! Moidering
her senses.  She rang for Clooreen to be saddled.  It was a long time
since she had gone riding.

The mare was led round by Mike O'Driscoll, eager to discuss the knife
boy to knight-errant saga.  But he was deflated at Lady Sterrin's
indifference.  Did they expect her to hoist the flag over the castle?
she thought as she rode out.  Let his blind wife do the jubilating.

The air rushed towards her.  It brushed past her face soft, soothing.
She avoided Coolnafunchion, her favourite ride.  That was where Donal
used to watch out for her.  She took the little bog road--a famine
folly--for its champagne air, but she jumped a low hedge into a field
before it reached the spot where it ended in stark bog.  Across that
strip, narrow but deadly to the unwary, was the hermit's cave, and
between it, half hidden under purple pools of brown skeough grass, lay
the steppingstones that Donal had trod so surefootedly going forth to
the rebellion.

As she jumped back into the little road on her return she glimpsed a
vehicle landed in an impasse.  Nothing but bog in front and no room in
the little road to turn the vehicle round.  They must be complete
strangers.  This was just one of those roads leading to nowhere that
had been built in the famine to make the hungry work for their five
pence-halfpenny a day Relief money.  A young lady stepped from the
chaise and came hurrying towards her.

"Excuse me," she said, 'but could you direct me to a road called the
Wolf Track?  It is a narrow road like this."  She spoke with an accent
that might be American.  An extremely pretty lady, very dark and vivid.
Sterrin took in the saucy hat, the elegant fur-trimmed travelling
coat.

The Wolf Track!  It was years since she had heard the road called by
that name.

You would need to circle all that bog to reach it, but actually it is
only a short distance down there."  She pointed down the fields.  "It
lies behind the railroad.  There!"

"Why, of course!"  the girl cried, we have been down that way already,
but the tracks confused me.  There was no railroad when I used to live
down there."

If she lived down that road, Sterrin reflected, then she must belong to
one of the tenants, but she wasn't the usual 'returned Yank'.  Her
assurance was that of breeding.

"I guess," the girl went on, 'that it would not take me long to walk
down there, to run down; that is if the owners do not set their dogs on
me for trespassing."

"That is unlikely," Sterrin smiled.  "What is the name of the people
you are visiting?"

The girl gave a faint shrug.  "I am not visiting people.  I am visiting
a house; taking a peep rather and a quick one at that.  There is no one
of my name there now.

"And what, may I ask, is your name?"

"Oh, my name has no significance.  Butler is my name.  It was my late
husband's name.  I never got used to it as mine.  He went off to war
the morning we were married.  My father's name was Ryan.  He died in
the famine."  She looked over her shoulder.  Someone was calling her
from the chaise.

"Will you excuse me, please?"  she said and with a little bow and a
smile she turned in the direction of the chaise, called out something
to another lady then went skimming across the field.

Sterrin sat her horse, astounded.  The girl was surely one of Black Pat
Ryan's daughters; one of the children with whom she used to share her
own dinner.  She had the dark good looks and independence of her Papa's
foster-brother; the breeding of her mother Nonic Mansfield.  The
strange encounter had thawed a little of the frozen casings around
Sterrin's heart.  If ever anyone had met with sorrow, with tragedy, it
was that blithe being hurrying over the fields as to a bridal.  Her
mother dead of ship's

fever and now this reference to her 'late' husband.  More tragedy! Yet
there was no bitterness on the girl's face; no blank numbness, no sign
of emotional paralysis.  She just took her fences like a thoroughbred
hunter.  Sterrin straightened in the saddle.  Her head lifted.  In the
distance she could just see the top of the broken turret.  It was a
God's disgrace not to have had it mended long ago. There were a few
pounds left from the sale of her jewellery.  Every penny that came her
way seemed to go into that maw of a castle.  But wasn't it good to have
held on to it, not to have let it go to some Scottish game-keeper,
English shop-keeper or Irish Gombeen man or James's James Keating?

A light footstep sounded behind her.  She turned and saw another girl
approaching.  Beyond her the chaise driver was forcing the unfortunate
horse back into contortions in an endeavour to rum the vehicle round.

What are you trying to do, you stupid man?"  Sterrin rode down to him
and dismounted.  "Don't you know that you'll never turn there unless
you take the horse out of the shafts."  It infuriated her to see
animals ill-treated.  She let Clooreen crop and took hold of the
hackney horse's bridle to soothe him.  She was on the brink of the bog,
the very spot she wanted to avoid.  Another hand, in a kid glove,
reached beside her own to pat the animal's forehead.

You seem to have wonderful control over horses.  I'm terrified of
them."  The voice had a foreign intonation that was attractive,
something like Mamma's.  Sterrin turned to the speaker.  This must be
another Ryan girl.

"Are you not going to visit your old home, too?"  Sterrin asked.  She
tried to study the girl's face but it was partly concealed by the peak
of a very pretty bonnet; one of the new small type that perched on the
top of the head, but it was not fashionable to have the peak down
shading the face like this one.

"I came to see a person.  I have come specially all the way from
America.  He is here, in this district, but there is so much secrecy.
He is one of those Fenians."

"If he is a Fenian, you are risking his safety to make enquiries about
him from strangers."

The girl was stroking the animal inside a diamond-shaped patch of white
on its forehead.  She went on stroking without

replying; her finger tracing the diamond outline.  Then very quietly
she said, You are not a stranger."

Sterrin was startled.  Most people round here knew her by sight.  But
this was an American and the girl hadn't even looked at her.  The
driver led the horse out of the shafts.  Sterrin stepped back.  Across
the bog she saw the old hermit coming to the entrance of his cave and
peering across at her.  Suddenly she remembered the American officers
she had harboured.  Ah!  That must be the link.  She waited a moment
for the girl to establish herself, then she said:

"I do hope you trace who you are looking for.  I'm afraid I cannot help
you.  Good day."

The girl took a step after her.  "You can help me.  You know Mr. Young.
I believe it is because of you that Thomas is focusing his patriotism
in this area."

It seemed a long space of time that the two faced each other in that
wilderness; so desolate that even the grouse and mountain hare avoided
it.

Sterrin started to say something but her treacherous heart was at its
thudding again.  It always made her voice shaky and now as never before
she needed it steady, controlled.  She tried to see the girl's eyes,
but that damned ospried peak was too concealing.

"Are you another daughter of Black Pat Ryan's?"

The girl shook her head.  Thomas brought me to Madame Hennessey
Norisheen's relation.  He was to have come back there for me after the
War, but instead he came here.  I've waited for him all that time but
the mouth, a pretty one,

made a bitter moue, 'you had become a widow meantime and he became a
Fenian."

Behind the veil Sterrin's eyes probed frantically.  This couldn't be
the woman who had been with him she had an irritating way of holding
her head at an angle.  All Sterrin could assess was the flawless skin,
and out of the chaos inside herself there emerged a clear-cut envy.
Something else emerged.

"How do you come to know who I am?"  Norisheen, quite unmistakably had
had no idea.

You you rode out of that castle when we were on the other road and, oh,
anyway, Thomas described you."

"And how did he describe me?"  No shake in the voice now.

"Oh," there was hesitancy.  "Tall, horsy The eyes seemed to flicker
upwards, 'dark hair I forget."  Her back was to the

bog.  Behind her Sterrin saw a movement at the cave entrance.  Another
man had joined the hermit.

"He described you to me also."  The other man had started to move
forward.  It was Thomas.  "He told me you were blind.  I will lead you
to him."

Sterrin put her two hands on the girl's shoulders, with one swirl she
propelled her to the brink of the bog.  "Walk straight in front of you
and you will find him.  He is only a few yards across from where we are
standing."

She gave her a gentle push.  A hump of solid ground rose immediately
beside her out of the bog, beyond was a sheer down suck of quagmire.
The girl stepped on to the hump.

"Go on," Sterrin said, her heart had shifted to her throat.  I won't
raise a hand to help her.  One foot was raised towards the hump.  From
the other side came a warning shout.

The girl stepped off the hump; not forward into the ooze; sideways to
where a half-concealed piece of turf gave a solid footing then forward
to another foothold, then sideways again, then forward.  There had been
lighted sods on them to guide Donal, but even by day one might miss the
footholds if one hadn't good sight.

"Borene!"  It burst from Thomas in astonishment.  And then, You have
recovered your sight.  You can see!"

She can see, all right!  Sterrin couldn't say it aloud.  She was
trembling from head to foot and he was calling something to her,
something like, "My God, what were you thinking to do?"  and the
'blind' one clinging to him like a limpet.  Blind inagh!  She moved
towards the horse and tried to swing up.

Will I give you a hoist, Miss?"  It was the hackney driver.  For once
in her life she was glad of a leg up.

Horsy am I?  I'd take my oath he never said it.  Yup, Clooreen.  Dark
hair!  It wasn't even dark red that time when he returned before the
wedding.  You put your foot in it there, my lassie!  Divil a fear of
you putting your foot in the bog!

Bowling's dog barked as Thomas came down their bore en that night.
Bowling's dog had barked the first night he went there, in Repeal year,
with dripping from Mrs.  Stacey as an excuse to get her the new ses of
a match-making between Kitty and Owen Heffernan.  A different dog.  The
roof of the two-storey farmhouse was different from the thatched one of
1843.  It was

slated; with American money.  Prosperous looking, but less
picturesque.

Kitty opened the door.  She drew him hurriedly inside.  Tou took a risk
to come.  They tell me that even the rabbits are looking out for
you."

"I'd take a bigger risk to see you."  He swung her off the ground and
kissed her.  You could have knocked me down when I met Norisheen and
heard you were on a visit."  He put her down and looked at the black
dress the bunch of crepe tied at the neck with the widow's brooch. Toor
Mark!  I felt as if I had lost my right hand when she told me that he
had been killed.  I had no inkling.  I knew from John Holohan that he
had come through the slaughter of Fredericksburg."

She nodded sadly.  "He came through everything and then, when all was
over--nothing would do him but to join the Fenian attack on Canada. The
irony of it!  If he had been killed in the war they'd have said he died
gloriously.  "Never were men so brave" and all that, but because he
died in the Canadian affair he died--needlessly."

"Aye," murmured Thomas, 'and irony too in the bitterness that came
between us.  No brother could have been dearer to me than Mark.  We are
all united now in the cause for which he died.  I couldn't believe that
any cause would make him turn from me in hostility as he did that
morning--because our loyalties differed!"

"It was not at all like what it looked.  It had to do with Dorene,
Thomas."  Kitty took his hand and led him to the sitting room and set
him by the fire.  He glanced around.  "Dorene is not here?  And
Norisheen?"

"She is staying with Mark's people.  But Dorene has gone to a hotel in
the town."

"You heard what happened today?"

She nodded.

"It should have happened long ago.  No," she put up her hand, "I don't
mean about being pushed in--and I doubt that '

*I saw it happen."

"Well, maybe Lady Devine had her doubts too, like the rest of us."

"But Kitty, she--Dorene--explained to me that sight came to her in
desperation; some "blind" instinct that forced her to see.  She said
she has had such temporary flashes before--when she

sensed danger.  You know it is quite feasible, Kitty.  The instinct of
self-preservation is very powerful."

Kitty was silent for a moment.  She took Thomas's hand again.  Thomas.
I don't know where to begin.  Many a time I tried to put things into
letters, but gave up; and since you came to Ireland you were harder to
find even than the others.  They had their assigned areas.  You were
everywhere, on account of being able to disguise yourself.  Dorene was
on for coming here more than a year ago.  Once she did leave and we
thought that she had come here, but it turned out that she had gone
back to the stage for a while a blind girl's part she was playing.  So
she said, anyway."

Thomas leaned forward.  "Kitty, are you trying to tell me that Dorene
has been deceiving me about her blindness?  It is absurd.  I brought
her to eminent specialists.  She could not deceive them.  The one in
Switzerland was recommended to me as the world's greatest."

"Did he say that she was incurable?"

Thomas paused to recollect.  The Swiss doctor had held out some hope at
the first examination.  He undertook to treat her.  Then when Thomas
returned from America, Dorene said it was hopeless.  He gave an
exclamation.  It was not the doctor who had told him.  It was Dorene.
He suddenly recalled the rollicking music he had interrupted when he
returned to her Swiss lodgings.  He had taken it to mean that she had
recovered.  A girl who had received the final pronouncement of her doom
would not-^-could not have played like that.  He recalled too, how
vehemently, fiercely she had opposed his going to the doctor, "And," he
exploded into speech, "I didn't even pay him.  I went away without
seeing him."

Kitty watched the dawning recollection on the tired face.  It was going
to be a bitter disillusionment.  Thomas," she said on a sudden,
'wouldn't you give up the Fenian work?  There is little prospect of
success now.  You look worn out.  You have been too long "on your
keeping" sleeping in caves and the like."

"I'm sleeping at de Guider's house tonight but I use the cave by day.
There's a big price on my head.  I could not risk staying openly with
the de Guiders even though they are my cousins.  Did you know that,
Kitty?  My full first cousins."

"No!  They couldn't be.  They are too old."

"My mother was the youngest of eighteen children.  Those two

are her eldest to other Stephen Achilles de Guldens children; born
before my mother."

"It is a wonder that you talk to us at all with all the grand relatives
you are acquiring."

"Hmph!  I wonder would they have found me so acceptable if I had turned
up to them as the bedraggled servant boy with no one but you and Mark
to befriend me.  However," he turned from the reflection, "I should
have been gone after the debacle of our ill-fated rebellion but I
waited for General Burke's trial and now I am waiting to see if the
death penalty will be repealed.  I doubt if the Government will go that
far.  There is too much indignation in America.  He is an American
citizen which, by the way, is more than I am.  Thanks to Fintan.  But
Kitty, we are talking in circles.  Let us get back to this matter of
Dorene.  This is unspeakable; if it is true."

"It is true, Thomas.  It is a long story.  It goes back very far and
that matter of your naturalisation papers is part of it.  Twas I who
got them held up."  She put her hand up as he started to exclaim.  "One
day, when Dorene was with us about a week and you were off some place
tying up the last loose threads about your people, Mark began to get
suspicious.  He thought he saw her reading a book one day.  He began
probing; setting little traps for her; drawing her out about her past.
One afternoon the post car driver, when he handed me the newspaper,
mentioned casual like that some very big landlord had been assassinated
in Ireland.  I repeated the story to Dorene not thinking who it might
be and told her to give you the paper.  That evening, after you had
gone to visit your people in the South, I found the paper behind the
cushion where Dorene had been sitting.  It was opened and folded back
at the page that had the account of the assassination a big headline
that you couldn't miss.  His name staring out at you, so '

"I never saw it.  My God!"

"I guessed as much.  So that night I wrote to Fintan and gave him an
inkling of our suspicions and I asked him to hold up the naturalisation
papers.  I suppose it was wrong of me but I knew you were bent on not
taking out those papers till you had had your own name established. You
always said you wouldn't become an American citizen under a nickname
even if it was a stage name and famous and the same went for getting
married.  So we thought we'd postpone the marriage till we made

enquiries.  And we knew you were marrying out of pity and a sense of
obligation."

Kitty paused.  She felt a longing to take Thomas in her arms and
comfort him.  For all the little silver lights that dappled the black
curls on his temples he had a look of young hurt upon his face.  Oh
Muire Dia, but the world and life and the elements had made a plaything
out of him.  You'd wonder why his mother was allowed to deposit him in
this world before her arms were taken from about him.  Tossed by the
wind, cheated of his name, tricked by women!.

He lifted his head.  "What had Dorene to do with Mark's behaviour that
last morning?"

"When you told him, through the bedroom door, that you had decided to
Marry Dorene straight away that morning with the other couples, and
wanted Mark for Best Man, we knew it was the only way you could take
her away with you from a house that had rejected you.  And remembering
about that first night when you took my message from this house to tell
him I had decided to elope with him, and how he promised to be your
friend for ever and of how you served our Wedding Mass it near broke
his heart.  But hell roast it, Thomas!  He couldn't let you walk into
it.  You were more to him than any brother.  You'd never have taken his
word against Dorene's if he told you that he just suspected you were
not the cause of her blindness, when he couldn't give the proof; not
just then, anyway.  His anger over your betrayal of Meagher made it
easy for him to refuse you."

"Betrayal!  That's hard hitting."

"Be fair, Thomas, Mark never heard of Thomas Francis Meagher until you
quoted his speeches to him.  Meagher himself could not rouse men's
blood more than you did when you recited his big speech.  Mark couldn't
understand why you wouldn't want to fight for the North with Meagher."
She noticed how his nostrils quivered in the still whiteness of his
face.  She had gone too far.  She reached across and put her hand on
his knees.

"Thomas avourneen, put the past behind you.  You still have a prospect
of happiness '

"Happiness?"  His mouth twisted in bitterness.  "That may be added to
the past that I too put behind me."

She stood up.  "Let's stop mincing and pretending.  Miss

Sterna--Lady Devine is free

He was gazing into the turf flames, the same bitter twist on his lips.
Without altering his gaze he said.  "Miss Sterrin's romantic attachment
for her servant-companion finished years ago.  The deep and mature love
of Lady Devine was for someone else.  He died in my arms.  It was my
dubious privilege to convey a last message to her.  The nature of it
was too sacred to allow of my obtruding my earth-bound sentiments."  He
shook his head at the pictures in the flames.  It would be
unthinkable."

Kitty gave a sigh of impatience.  "She's alive, isn't she?  The pair of
you are on this earth.  Believe me, it's the only damn thing that
matters after you've come up against the blank wall of eternity...."

"She despises me."

"If she does, why did she take the trouble to push Dorene into the
bog?"

His gaze came up at last from the flame tableau.  "That now, Kitty, is
something I should like to find out."

"Then ask herself."

"I'll do that."

Thomas did ask Sterrin about her strange behaviour at the bog, but not
until after he had sent his profound apologies to the Swiss doctor
about his account and had received the doctor's assurance that the debt
had been discharged by the patient, and the doctor's sincere hope that
she continued to maintain the splendid recovery that she had made
during her stay in Switzerland.

Sterrin, when next he saw her, was walking up the hilly field that
skirted the bog road.  From behind the ditch he watched her pause and
lean against an upstanding rock.

She had walked further than she intended and what, she asked herself,
brought her this way again?  Evening was coming and the call of the
pee-wits sounded sad and weird across the distant bog.  To drown the
sadness she whistled out the long, low warble of a thrush, flutelike,
melodious.

From behind her came an answering trill.  So vibrant, that a male
thrush went hurrying to see if its affianced bride was philandering.
Sterrin glanced back.  The sound came from where two rocks leaning
together formed a shelter known as the Witches Rock, It wasn't a thrush
who had answered her warble.

It was a man.  And once upon a time he had taught her how to imitate a
thrush.  She should move away.

There was a weariness, Thomas thought about the way she was leaning
against the rock.  She must be grieving for Keating.  He could not
charge in straight away now to challenge her about Dorene.  He
approached her quietly, almost casually.  He spoke about Donal.  She
listened, looking straight ahead.

After a pause he said, Were you married to him?"

Still looking ahead, she answered, "We were about to be married."

In the distance he could see the Devil's Bit withdrawing beneath the
shadows.  The whole world was withdrawing itself quietly so as to leave
them alone.  Musingly, almost to himself he murmured, clt is hardly
credible."

"What do you mean?"  she said at last.

"I mean--a Keating of Poolgower.  Over there," he said indicating the
distant turret, 'there was a time when a servant would be dismissed for
having anything to do with a Keating marriage."

She also had a faint recollection of the time she had implored her papa
not to dismiss the knife boy for serving a Keating's Wedding Mass.

"Any woman," she said coldly, 'would have been proud to marry Mr.
Keating.  I don't consider myself as having been worthy of him."

"I quite agree."

She rounded on him.  How dare you?"

There is nothing worthy about making murderous attempts upon the lives
of others.  Pushing people down bog holes!"

"I didn't push her down a bog.  She asked me to direct her to you and I
did.  Your wife is not blind."

"I know that."

"Then why did you tell me that she was blind

"Because I thought so.  All along, until you gave me your convincing
demonstration to the contrary."

You mean Amazement had routed all her dignified reserve.  You mean that
she deceived you?  That she pretended to be blind?"

He nodded.

"Is that her voice scraped, 'is that why you married her?"

"I did not marry her."

In the silence a drop of rain fell upon her face.  She had a sudden
sense of refreshment.  And then the real significance of the words
struck her.  "You mean she is your--tutu?  How revolting I Allow me to
pass."

He grasped her arm firmly.  "The time has come Sterrin, Daughter of
Roderick O'Carroll, as the hard used to say, for you and I to get
things straight between us.  There have been too many
misunderstandings, too many missions and obligations.  Now you listen
'

He talked and he talked and at first she would interrupt with
questions.  And he would put his hand over her mouth.  And finally she
gave up, content to listen.  For his voice had become like a violin bow
across her heartstrings.

The rain fell.  They shifted to the shelter of the Witches' Rock; her
head shifted to his shoulder.  Where else could she put it?  There
wasn't room for two heads where the rocks met in a point.  And it was
easier that way when it came to recount her version of the years and
events that had parted them.  She told him everything.  As he listened,
he felt as if his bones had turned to water.  The strength she had
shown!  "Twas her blood.  The blood of her people!  His heart exulted
far inside him, strong and sure, flowed a tributary of that same
blood.

"Tell me," he said on a changing note, 'what was it made you suspect
Dorene?"

Her brows pondered the reason.  "She didn't act blind; I know so many
blind people in Templetown; those who were blinded when the orphanage
went on fire, the night of the Big Wind, and those blinded in the
famine."  Then she remembered the fingers accurately outlining the
white diamond on the horse's forehead and other things.  "Now you tell
me something.  Did you tell her that I went striding about slapping my
hips with a riding crop and talking about drenches, fetlocks and brood
mares?"

"Good heavens!  Did she say I did?"

"She said you said I was "horsy".  It's the same."

"That is one thing you are not.  Superb horsewoman though you are."

She gave a little sigh.  "I knew you didn't say it.  What will happen
about her now?"  She could feel pity for the girl now.  The conniving
years, the waste of living.

"She has told Kitty that in a strange way she is relieved we know the
truth, that she will be glad to get back to the stage.  I can help her
there."  His voice went grim.  "But she will scarcely need my help. She
has played an exacting role with superlative skill."

Her head got a little jolt where he had shrugged away the memory.  He
put up his hand and gently fixed her head more comfortably into his
shoulder.

"Listen," he said, and the old delude ring raillery was back in his
voice, 'did you hear who young Thomas, the knife boy, turned out to
be?"

Her head shot up, charged with all the excitement and wonder that had
failed her previously.  "It is now that I am realising it.  Now that
you are not turning out to be someone else's fairy prince.  Young
Thomas!  To think that you might have been the owner of Strague."

He pressed her head back again.  "I will be the owner of Strague
Castle, Sterrin, my weary little blossom of the storm."

"But hasn't it gone?  It was on the Emcumbrance Market Lubey had his
eye on it.1

"It has not gone and Lubey will never warm his backside in Strague
Castle pardon the language, my lady fair.  It is the knife boy breaking
out in me."

"Oh, that's all right I heard Papa saying the same when Lubey had his
eye on Kilsheelin.  Only Papa used a briefer term."

"He was more privileged.  Tomorrow morning I shall see Patrick
John-the-Baptist Hoey, the solicitor.  Tomorrow evening I shall present
you with the Deeds, or the equivalent thereto, of Strague Castle, I
regret, though, that I shall not be able to have them suitably
accompanied by a pair of musical shoes."

They were walking now towards the castle, for the soft April evening
was tending towards a chill night.  She turned to face him.

"And what," she asked softly, 'would I be doing with the deeds of
Strague Castle?"

The birds had ceased their singing for the day and the daisies had
closed their faces to the night and the love between Sterrin and Thomas
was as natural as all this; but never a word of it had they spoken.
They had come too far along a trail of disappointment and heartbreak
and frustration for sudden nights of rapture.  It was like long ago
when they spoke by silence, each aware of the other, in harmony,
thinking their dreaming thoughts.

You would be guarding them for me again the day when you would cross
its threshold, chat elaine of the castle.  Woman of my house.  Your own
home; that we will share in peace.  Och!  What happens to one's words
when one wants the use of them at a time like this."

She just stood there looking at him until he saw a tear escape the
veil.

He touched the veil.  "This must be what Nurse Hogan had meant when she
wrote me long ago to say that you had taken the veil.  Why cover your
lovely face?"  He felt her start from him sensing something wrong.  Ah
God, it had to come!  "I told you about the fire," she cried.  TJid you
not understand that I am disfigured?"  She turned from him.

He gripped her arms so that they hurt.  Wear your veil!  Always and for
ever if you wish it that way.  But don't turn from me ever.  What do I
care about disfigurements?  You are part of my life.  I've loved you
since the morning that I hoisted the flag to proclaim that you were
born.  What use to me would be the perfection of any other woman's
face?"  He drew her into his arms and held her to him and she could
feel his body trembling.  "You frightened me just now.  You have turned
away so often."

He was at the end of his tether.  She could feel the panic in his body.
"Don't leave me, Sterrin.  Don't leave me!"

She put up her arms about him.  "Never!  Young Thomas, Never!  Mo bhead
asthore!"

Thomas was emerging from the solicitor Hoey's office in Templetown,
when Mr.  Lubey arrived with his son.  Ten minutes later the Lubeys
picked a crumb of comfort from telling the dour James's James Keating
that he also was too late.  Strague Castle had been bought privately.

The three men watched Thomas as he went into the Livery Stables.

"A play-actor!"  young Lubey sneered, 'and by all accounts, a former
servant at the castle!"

Thomas came towards them from the Livery Stables.  Deliberately, young
Lubey pressed in against the wall of the sidewalk.  "I never," he
sneered again, 'yield the inside of the path to an upstart!  *

Thomas slowed.  "Indeed!"  he exclaimed.  Then he stepped on to the
muddy road and gestured the side path with a sweep of his arm.  "I
always do!"  He uncovered courteously and moved on.

James's James Keating never forgot a face.  A former servant of the
castle!  He remembered a castle servant who had served his brother's
Wedding Mass.  He studied Thomas during the little passage of arms.
James's James was always watching when people didn't suspect; watching
in hidden places for the brother who had been 'on his keeping';
watching Kilsheelin Castle that he had coveted; watching its daughter
that he had coveted more.  He had watched her yesterday in the arms of
her former servant.  He remembered how Sterrin had spat in his face.

That evening James watched as Sterrin waited inside the niche in the
castle wall.  He watched her lover arriving and smiled when he heard
the cry: "Halt!  In the Queen's name!"

Thomas did not halt.  He set the horse to its haunches and as it sprang
over the wall, he tossed an envelope to Sterrin.  She called a word to
him.  The police inspector, in the act of following, was nearly thrown
from his horse.  Sterrin had jumped into the niche as his horse's
forefeet approached.  "This is private property," she said quietly.

The inspector turned and made for the road where the British military
had arrived.  Thomas galloped across the park, over the haunted field,
up the Slopes of the Embroidering Women, past Lissnastreenagh's bowery
shelter and on to the old mountain road.  The military, outdistanced on
the road, came within firing distance of him on the narrow track.
Thomas fired back till his horse was shot from under him.  He gave his
last bullet to the screaming animal, then ran.

The shouting and thudding had long faded away when Thomas crept out
from a dyke made by a stream between the mountain and the moor.  It was
almost dark.  Thomas crawled across the moor top until increasingly
large tufts of heather forced him to his feet.  Their crackling brought
a hare bounding out with ears alert for its cause.  From another tuft
came an officer also alerted by the sudden crackling.  His revolver
rang out but missed its aim in the uncertain light then the sound of

futile clicking told Thomas that the officer's gun was as empty as his
own.  He started to run.  The officer sprang and caught him.  They
grappled and struggled, wrestling each other to the ground.  They
rolled over, displacing great sections of bog topped with heather and
leaving bare patches of black, mould, slippery as butter.  They skidded
down the hill till they met grass and ended up in a great clump of
nettles.  Thomas made one final effort to rise but a grab at his legs
brought him down with a yelp of pain.  He lay gasping for a moment then
sat up and rolled up his trousers to disclose a great zig-zag gash,
barely healed.  "Sorry about that," gasped the officer looking at the
wound.

"S all right."  Thomas took a long, painful breath.  "I don't mind
bullet wounds at all but' gasp "I simply loathe nettle stings."

"So do I!"  said the officer rolling up his cuffs.

Thomas looked about him and made a sudden move.  The officer grabbed.

"It's all right," said Thomas.  "I just wanted to get these dock
leaves.  That's what I like about nature.  She holds no spite.  She
always produces a cure for the stings she inflicts.  Here you are!"

They sat side by side doctoring each other's stings with the soothing
dock leaves.

The officer looked at Thomas's ugly wound.  "Which side were you on?"
he asked.

"Confederate.  I was with Cleburne when I got this."

"Tragic about him.  From around here, wasn't he?"

"No, Cork.  But his father, like myself, came from around here."

The captain economised on breath and let his face show his surprise.

Thomas nodded in the direction of the distant castle.  "Grew up over
there."  Laboured breathing made conversation staccato.  "Remember?"

Captain Fitzharding-Smith, dock leaf suspended in hand, turned round
and looked hard at Thomas.  He knew that he had made the prize capture
of the Movement; the mystery man who had baffled the authorities and
demoralised the army for eighteen months and who had proved,
incredibly, to be the celebrated actor, Thomas Young.  Back in the mess
they were

making wagers about his capture.

"I still have a book that you chose for me," Thomas went on, "Saint
John's pounds e, it is still my favourite."

A speck of white showed on the heather.  An instant's hesitation --and
then away--a white hare with black fringes to its ears.  Together the
two men watched it run like a thing with winged heels; barely touching
the ground till it disappeared around the shoulder of the hill.
"People," said Captain Fitzharding-Smith, 'call that kind of hare a
witch in disguise."

The officer turned back to him.  "You have thought of a great many
disguises.  How is the leg?"

Thomas's eyes still followed the hare's course.  To its right he could
glimpse the tip of the canopy where the circle of hawthorn trees
sheltered the dell that held the underground passage.  This evening as
he jumped the wall niche she had whispered, "Lissnastreenagh," and he
knew that the secret door would be left unbarred.

"Up there," he answered, 'there are dock leaves with special
properties."

They eyed each other.  "Could you find them?"  asked the officer.

Thomas nodded.  "Do you wish me to bring back some?"

The officer helped Thomas to his feet.  "No thanks," he said.  "I've
got to find my horse.  I got unseated in a damned ravine full of
boulders." He moved off then stopped.  "By the way," he called, 'if you
should find it '

From the hedge behind sounded a crackling.  A voice called, "Are you
all right, sir?"  and a redcoat struggled through.  "What happened to
your horse, sir?"  he asked.  "Shall I ?"  He spied the tall figure
limping up the hill and bounded in pursuit.

His commanding officer raised up his voice.  "I left my horse in the
ravine behind that scrub up there to the left."

Thomas swerved to the left.  More smashing in the hedge admitted a
gaggle of police who streaked after the soldier.  Thomas disappeared
into the ravine.  The soldier jumped.  A moment later Captain
Fitzharding-Smith saw his horse clearing the ravine with Thomas on its
back.

Why the devil did you let him get away with my horse?"  he demanded
when he caught up with the crestfallen soldier.  The gasping man could
only look away to the distance where Thomas was disappearing into a
dense circle of trees.

CHAPTER 61

All of Kilsheelin seemed to be assembled in the hard's room.  Sterrin,
white-faced, sat slumped in a chair.  Hegarty was on one knee, his head
down, listening at an opening in the hearth.  A large slab of carved
stone stood upended in the fireplace.  Mrs.  Stacey stood by the
window, while Sir Dominic paced up and down.  Only Lady O'Carroll was
missing. She was to be told later about her new kinsman and the danger
he faced.

Suddenly, Hegarty cried out, They're here!"  All watched silently as
Big John pulled himself through the hearth-opening.  Once through, he
turned back to grasp another pair of hands.  But with a spring Thomas
was in the room.  He is in the castle, Sterrin thought, but still not
through the front door.  Mrs.  Stacey had taken the initiative.  With a
"Cead mile failte, Young Thomas, a boucaleen," she had thrown her arms
around him.  Then, as if suddenly conscious of something about the
voice that answered her, she realised that this was no 'boucaleen' of
the kitchen that she was greeting with such familiarity, she stepped
back. "It's forgetting my manners I am--making so free."  Hegarty, with
a hand outstretched, edged her away and told her that indeed she was
forgetting her manners, then realising that he was forgetting his own,
made way for his master.

Sir Dominic, expecting the former servant to be overwhelmed to be
greeted as a kinsman, was formulating a reception that would be
reassuring, yet tinged with a judicious touch of condescension.  He
found himself according a youthful deference to a dignity that
out-matched his own.

It was in the dining-room later that Thomas felt overwhelmed.  For
after a whispered order from his master Hegarty, like an ancient
Ganymede offering the wine cup to a god, came solemnly to the table
bearing a four-sided cup of yew wood and silver, and placed it before
his master.

"The Mether cup!"  The words burst from Thomas with a kind of awe.  Sir
Dominic had indeed made a gesture of high

tribute.  Sterrin, moved almost to tears, realised that the ceremonial
cup had not figured at her wedding.  No one had thought of it and
Dominic had been too immature.  She felt a rush of gladness for the
omission.  Here was its true occasion.

When was it last filled, Hegarty?"  she asked.

"It was filled, my Lady, when the Liberator God rest him drank your
health from it a few nights after you were born.  It was a great
occasion but' he turned to Thomas 'this, too, is a great occasion, if I
may make so bold as to say so and proud I am Young Tho Mr.  Thomas,
sir, to carry the Mether cup to the table in your honour."

Dominic took hold of one of the cup's silver handles.  "I drink to
Thomas O'Carroll of Strague Castle."  Still holding the handle he moved
the cup to Sterrin.  She gripped a handle.  "I

drink to She looked out over the cup to Thomas, 'to

Young Thomas."  She pushed it gently towards him.  He reached for a
handle and their three hands held the cup while he sipped in
response.

Thomas felt incapable of speech.  His mind was a suffusion of wonder;
of fraternity, of shelter after storm; of a fine-drawn emotion too
exquisite to bear.  At last he said in a low, tired voice,

"You do me too much honour."  Then to cover his emotion he told them of
the silver cup he had got from his foster-mother that was a replica of
the one owned by the hermit of Bawn na Drum.  Sterrin told him how she
had drunk from the hermit's cup and been told its history.  Little
dreaming she broke off.  Young Thomas your eyes are closing with
sleep."

He gave his head a shake.  "Not sleep, they are just dazzled by
everything."

Sir Dominic observed the look that passed between them.  He had been so
taken up with the romance of this splendid clansman who had
materialised out of the mists of the dawn, that he had forgotten that
it had other aspects.  His sister had turned the castle upside down
last night.  She had insisted on opening the subterranean passage for
the first time in God knows how long and she herself had kept vigil at
the exit!  Dominic rose from the table with a remark about seeing that
a guest-room was prepared.  Sterrin smiled at the subterfuge.  As if a
pull of the bell rope would not suffice!

When he had gone Thomas reached across the table and took

her hands.  And as he did he realised that in all his years in this
house, in this room, this was the first time that he had sat at the
same table with her.  For a moment they sat silent, their arms forming
a bridge between them.

"Do you know what this recalls to me?"  he said gently.  He inclined
his head towards their outstretched arms and clasped hands.  "It
reminds me of that early morning, how many years ago--when I went from
you because I had to cross the bridge between your world and mine."  He
drew her closer and reached to kiss her forehead as he had done that
morning.  "It has been a long journey, asthore, but I seem to have
crossed the bridge at last."  His humility swept through her with a
tearing pain.  She placed her head on her arms in an excess of
humbleness.  That such a man should have had to journey so far and so
long; should have had to suffer, to demonstrate his worthiness for
her!

"Oh, Young Thomas, avourneen!  What must God think of us--of people
brought up like me?  We seem to expect him to |

create special beings to be worthy of our class.  That there should
ever have been a bridge 'twixt you and me!  And surely |

God never built a bridge to divide people like Denis, the blacksmith,
from us.  Donal too, I used to look at him from across a bridge."  She
lifted her head.  "People shouldn't trouble to journey across such
bridges.  They should smash them!"

"And why, my storm ling he answered, 'do you think that there are so
many wars and revolutions?  People everywhere are beginning to do what
you suggest; to smash the bridges between m,

one class and another.  Oh, Sterrin a gra, but I'm weary."  He k,

dropped his head on his arms, but raised it instantly.  "Forgive me,"
he murmured sleepily.

He rose to his feet, dizzy with fatigue and the ache of his wound.  He
refused to go to a guest-room, just somewhere with a quick exit.  For
the first time she noticed that he limped.

"Did Basil Fitzharding-Smith do that?"  she asked, as she helped him to
the couch in the hard's room.

He shook his head.  "America's very Civil War--a fellow-Irishman.  He
had a miniature bough of peace in his hat--and a long range rifle in
his hand."  He closed his eyes.  "Like Cromwell exterminating the Irish
with a Bible in one hand and a sword in the other."

He opened them again to the touch of her lips on his forehead

1^

and the sight of her face bending over him as she tucked rugs about
him.  "It is only a dream," he murmured, "I shall wake and find that
you have vanished.  You always do."

She tiptoed from the room.  When she reached her own room, she flung
herself down on the chaise longue, too tired even to undress.

That afternoon, when she awoke from an exhausted sleep, she tiptoed
again.  A few steps, then stopped, then tiptoed again; fearfully she
raised her hands to the fastenings of her veil then dropped them
again.

"Go on, Miss Sterrin," Hannah had come up behind her in the mirror.

"Oh, Hannah, I dar en face up to what I might see."

"You've faced up to worse, Miss Sterrin.  Go on."  She tensed as her
mistress pulled the veil with a desperate tug, without unpinning it
from the band of velvet that held it.

The two women gazed into the mirror, wordless.  At last Sterrin turned
to the maid.  "I don't understand it, Hannah," she breathed.  Hannah
continued to stare.  Close as she had been to her mistress this was the
first time in years that she had seen her face without being covered
either by thick layers of ointment or by a veil.

"You should have taken if off long ago.  I often told you."  She
touched Sterrin's face.  "It's as soft as a baby's bottom.  You can
scarcely see the scars.  I should have used the ointment all the time
the way you did!  My legs are still purple!"

Sterrin had her face pressed to the glass in rapture.  "No, Hannah,"
she answered.  You should have gone to Mag Miney every morning at the
crack of dawn like my Ladyship did."

"No!  Miss Sterrin, you never!"

Sterrin nodded.  "Filthy, smelly stuff with hair two inches long. You'd
think it was the inside of a dead rat that she was applying to your
face."

Hannah made a grimace of disgust.  "But you ran from her at first. When
did you go back to her?"

With a sudden pang, Sterrin realised that it was after Donal had told
her that he loved her, that night when she took the Fenian oath, that
interest in her looks had been reborn.

Poor darling Donal!  She looked at his ring gleaming on her engagement
finger; then deliberately she changed it qyer to the right hand.  You
wouldn't begrudge me my happiness, Donal,

and the dear knows it is not too soon.  She unpinned the ringlets that
dangled over her cheeks and drew her hair back into a figure eight on
the nape of her neck.

Lady O'Carroll, descending the staircase, glancing back over her
shoulder at the spectacle of her daughter tripping down like a
schoolgirl.

"When am I going to meet our distinguished guest?"  she began and then
she stopped and stared.  "Sterrin!  Your face!"  She reached up her
hands as Sterrin came abreast of her.  "Sterrin, what has happened? You
are transformed!"

Before Sterrin could reply a great clanging sounded at the hall door.
Dominic came hurrying from the drawing-room and opened it.  A police
officer stepped over the threshold without being invited.

"I have reason to believe," he said, 'that a dangerous and wanted
criminal has gained access to this castle."

Margaret reached for Sterrin.  Her eyes, detached from sensation,
noticed in this moment of crisis, the scars that had emerged from the
quenched radiance of her daughter's face.

Dominic was demanding the officer's warrant and the officer was saying
something about special powers of entry and search.

The hall filled with policemen gripping carbines.  Sterrin darted away
from her mother straight down the passage to the hard's room.  Lady
O'Carroll took a frightened step backwards.  She lost her footing and
fell heavily, striking the back of her head.  Dominic lunged up the
stairs, shoving policemen aside, and lifted his mother from the
staircase and carried her to her room.

Sterrin, unaware of her mother's fall, burst into the hard's room.

Big John was looking down at the sleeping Thomas.  "He looks a bit like
he did the morning you were born, a little white-faced gossoon
stretched out across two chairs, dead to the world, and the wet black
curls plastered on his forehead."  She had to let him go on talking
while she stood panting against the door struggling to get her breath.
"The Sir gave him a long look and said--"Put covering on that boy"."

"Big John," she gasped at last, 'he needs covering now.  They are out
there--the police--like hounds that have drawn a covert and found hot
scent."

The coachman moved back the stone on the hearth while

Sterrin awakened Thomas.

Til send Pakie with a horse to Lissnastreenagh," she told him.  "There
will be a train passing the Lissnafunchion fields.  He'll stop it for
you with a flag and explain that you are one of us.  You will be able
to connect with the Waterford train and get to Cousin Maurice's."

He took her in his arms.  "Will you join me there?  I won't leave
Ireland without you.  I meant to plan all this out with you we would
get away to America by way of your Cousin's Cove of the Fairy Music,
then later come back to Strague when things have quietened."

She clung to him.  "Do you think I'd let you dare to leave Ireland
without me?  I'll travel down to Waterford tomorrow.  God be with
you."

She sped along the passages to Pakie Scally.  But Pakie, the butler
informed her, had been despatched for the doctor.  O'Driscoll then, she
thought.  "The doctor!"  Sterrin's dismay was tinged with impatience.
"Don't tell me that Mamma has had one of her attacks?"

The butler took out his handkerchief and wiped his eyes.  Too much was
happening too quickly for the bewildered old man.  "It wasn't I let
them peelers into the castle.  Her poor Ladyship!"

There was no mystery or swaying in her mother's room.  Lady O'Carroll
lay unconscious.  Heavy footsteps sounded on the corridor.  Sterrin
suppressed a cry and dropped on her knees beside the bed.  The door
opened without a knock and two policemen entered.  Sir Dominic sprang
up from his seat.  "Get out!"  he ordered.  They looked at the
unconscious figure in the bed, then looked enquiringly at the
sub-inspector who had followed them in.  Dominic strode to him, his
face livid, his eyes blazing.  "Get these men out of this house!  Get
them out!  Look at what you have done!  We are awaiting the priest and
doctor!"

A gasp sounded from behind him as the door closed.  "The priest,
Dominic?  She's not she's not dying?"

Nurse Hogan assisted her to her feet.

Your mamma's colour is improving.  She cut the back of her head.  I
just took advantage of there being a Station down the road to send
O'Driscoll there for the priest."

O'Driscoll not available either!  What would become of Young Thomas?
Sterrin could not stir from her mamma.  "What, in

God's name, will I do?"  It burst from her.

The nurse misunderstood her.  "There is nothing anyone can do, your
Ladyship.  We must only wait until the doctor arrives."

And mercifully, the doctor arrived just then.  Scally had been able to
intercept him at a patient's nearby.

The doctor, with an arm around Sterrin's shoulder, let her out of the
room.  "Leave your mamma to me.  She seems to be coming round."  He was
closing the door on her when he opened it again.  What's wrong with
your face?"

Dully she put her hand to it.  "Nothing," she said.

"So I see," said the doctor.

She reached the hard's room as Big John was emerging from the concealed
passage.  "Did he get away?"  she whispered.  Before he could answer
Young Thomas climbed out.  "There are police in the hollow.  They
haven't found the door, but it is only a matter of time."  Heavy
footsteps sounded in the kitchen passage.  He jumped back down and
Sterrin, as she helped to batten down the flag over the dark curls,
felt as if she were helping to entomb him.

The footsteps moved on to the kitchen.  Mrs.  Stacey, with magnificent
unconcern for the presence of the police, was making pastry.  Her
high-cauled cap towered over the highest shako.  They plied her with
questions but she only shook her head.

"Is she deaf?"  one of them asked.  ,

Sterrin entered the room.  "She does not understand English."  '

The cook looked as if she were about to treat them to some choice
English.  Sterrin spoke to her in Gaelic.  The listening I

police assumed that she was interpreting for them.  Airs.  Stacey gave
her an understanding look, then, placing the pastry in the bastible,
she stalked off with it to the hard's room.  They watched her draw
burning sods from the fire she had lighted there that day for Thomas,
flatten them on the massive hearth slab, place the bastible on them,
put more red embers on the lid, then seat herself, take off her shoes
and proceed to pick her corns.

They tapped the walls.  They dragged the massive bed from its place,
the great armchair, the couch.  "Whose room is this?"  demanded the
sub-inspector.

Sterrin told him it was Mrs.  Stacey's.

"Hm, a very impressive room for a servant!"

"Mrs.  Stacey was my father's foster-mother."  Sterrin said it as if
the reason was supreme.

The sub-inspector moved upstairs again.  He had overlooked the oratory.
There would surely be some old penal day escape hole for priests.

Sterrin went out and up the back stairs.  She reached the gallery just
as Dominic, a lighted, blessed candle in his hand was preceding the
priest upstairs.  Sterrin dropped on her knees in reverence for the
Viaticum he bore with him.  Dread clamped down on all her being.  Mamma
was about to receive the last rites of the Church!  She rose and groped
towards the oratory.

When the sub-inspector and his minions, following her closely, entered
the oratory Sterrin was kneeling before the altar, her face buried in
her hands, her shoulders shaking.  She remained that way, oblivious of
them while they searched.  Suddenly she lifted her head.  The officer
stared.  Downstairs her face had been hidden in the shadows of the
doorway.  It had been veiled when he had arrested her for obstructing
an eviction.  Always it had been veiled.  Now for the first time he saw
it uncovered lovely no arrogance; soft with grief.  The flame of the
altar candles made a sapphire shimmering of the tear-filled eyes. 
Tears overflowed unchecked down her cheeks in a heart burst of grief. 
He murmured something and withdrew.

Later Dominic came.  He knelt beside her and put an arm about her.
Mamma was going to be all right, he assured her.  She was fully
conscious and the doctor had some queer idea that the injury to her
head was going to do her good.

"It wasn't a faint this time, Sterrin; not one of her queer bouts.  She
just slipped and hurt her head.  He says he often wondered if some of
those flying debris had struck her the night you were born.  She was
never able to remember except that she had that queer pain in the back
of her head.  It is not there now; and no tension; just soreness."

She bowed her head again.  "Thank God," she sobbed.

Someone else came into the oratory.  She looked up.  It was Thomas.  He
gestured them to silence.  Mrs.  Stacey, he told them, had released
him, 'from under the apple pie' when the police had gone

"But they've only withdrawn because of my mother," interjected Dominic.
"They'll be back."

I

"I know and I shall give myself up--no He put his hand up again.  "She
told me about your mother.  I've done this to her

Sterrin watched the way he strove for words; so unlike him.  He always
said things the way one would have liked to say them oneself.  His face
was ghastly; and there were traces of slime where his sleeves had
brushed against those subterranean walls.

Like the smear on her wedding dress.

While they argued and pleaded with him the priest came quietly into the
oratory.  He placed a hand on Sterrin's head.

"Your mother is in no danger."  He stopped at the sight of Thomas
stepping forward from the shadows.  Sterrin introduced him and
hurriedly explained what was afoot.

The old priest gazed at him in quiet wonderment.  "Young Thomas/ he
murmured.  "The young Latin pupil who used to serve Mass for me.  So
you are the famous outlaw."  He showed signs of reminiscing.

Sterrin said quickly.  "He wants to give himself up.  It would mean the
death sentence."

The priest nodded sadly.  "It would, I fear.  I wonder He looked at
Thomas speculatively.  "I wonder is there any disguise you could think
of, and maybe you could drive away with me in the old phaeton."

Thomas shook his head.  Before he could answer there came a violent
knocking at the door.  Sterrin tensed.  Then her mind raced in all
directions.  Somewhere behind the altar there was a panel but the steps
that led from it had caved in with the storm.  "Twas too late.
Everything was too late.  The priest was looking at Thomas with
infinite pity.  They could hear voices.  Dominic stepped out to the
gallery.  "It's the military," they heard him say.  A minute later he
was accompanying a military officer into the room.

Without preamble the officer addressed Thomas.  "Get into this
quickly."  He handed him a bulky parcel.  "There isn't a moment to
lose.  If you are caught on the premises Sir Dominic is to be arrested
for harbouring a felon."

In the waiting lull Sterrin whispered a while to the priest, then
hastened to see her mother.  The doctor was coming from her room.

"Let her sleep, Sterrin.  There is no fear of her."  He talked to her
as she returned to the oratory.  Vaguely she was aware of the

servants crowding in the rear of the hall; upturned faces, a
whispering tension.  Hadn't there been a queer stern urgency, they
commented, in the arrival of the friendly captain?

When Thomas reappeared in the oratory, Captain Fitzharding-Smith barely
suppressed a whistle of amazement.  "It becomes you better than it did
poor Orlando de Trafford.  I once told you that you'd make a fine
hussar."  "But you told me that I should begin at the other end."

The captain turned to the door.  "Come, there is not a moment to
spare."

Sterrin reached out a hand to him.  "There is one moment you must
spare."

The waiting servants watched her appear at the gallery head.  "Hannah,"
she called, and then she added.  "All of you!  Come!"

They crowded into the oratory, looking in wonder at each other.  What
was happening?  Dr.  Mitchell was standing there, and the priest wore
his stole, and two splendid officers standing in front of him.  There
was a sort of ceremonial quality about the way the young Sir took his
sister's arm and led her a step forward to stand beside one of the
officers, then with a click of his finger beckoned Hannah to stand
behind her.

"Twas then it struck into their minds.  The splendid officer beside
Captain Fitzharding-Smith wasn't a splendid officer at all.  He was
their own young Thomas, the knife boy and the priest was marrying him
to their own Miss Sterrin.

The moment was over.  Captain Fitzharding-Smith drew Sterrin from her
husband's embrace.

"I will wave to you from the wall gap," she whispered tremulously.

"You will do no such thing."  It was a command from an unfamiliar
Captain Fitzharding-Smith.  He was in his own realm; indisputable.

"Then," she turned pleadingly to Thomas, 'look back when you reach the
gate--just, only look back."

A few minutes later, the lodge-keeper hurried to open the gates as the
two officers came cantering down the avenue.  No sound between them but
the clink of scabbard against stirrup.

As they passed through the gates one of the officers slowed, then
halted.  The castle was closed and silent.  No lights showed from the
windows.  Then as they watched, a tiny flickering light showed in the
broken turret.  A figure loomed there, then van685

ished.  There was another movement above the tiny light.  Twixt it and
the waving moon the flag of Kilsheelin was lapping, gently;
full-masted; proudly.  A great event had taken place in the castle.

THE END