"And me," Mrs. Daly said, drawing the bright face down to her and kissing it: "you don't know how much good you are doing me.”

Lesbia had managed to take Mrs. Daly's heart by storm, and get nearer to it than anybody had been known to do for years; the bystanders noticed the friendship with wonder, not having divined the secret sympathy that united the pair.

"Do you remember this day last year?" Lesbia asked Ellen, when the two girls were standing in the hall equipped for their walk, and waiting till the library door at which they had rapped several times in vain should open. "Can you tell me what we were all doing this day last year?"

"Of course I can, because it is Connor's birthday," said Ellen; "but I wonder you remember the day. I think you did not spend it with us."

I was doing. You had invited me to sail with you in the afternoon and come back to dine. It was the first invitation to dine out I had ever had in my life, and oh, how proud I was of it. I dressed to go; and just as I was leaving the house one of Aunt Joseph's grand friends (the people she called grand, I mean) came in a carriage to ask her to drive, and my aunt ordered me to take my bonnet off and stay at home, because, as she would be away, I was wanted to look after the children. I spent the whole afternoon in picturing what you were all doing, and made myself miserable with the contrast between you and myself. At night I put a little cross in my almanac to mark the day, and as I wrote it I wondered whether I should be more or less unhappy when the same date came round againwhether anything particular would have happened to me. Did you ever do such a thing?"

"No, I don't

think I ever did. I used to be too happy to want to look forward."

"Well, it was seeing that little cross in my pocket-book determined me to make an expedition with you to-day. I thought it would be a charming answer to my last year's question. Nobody will order me to take off my bonnet and shut me up in the house this year. Dear Ellen, have I vexed you by talking of last year? I wish I had been more considerate."

Ellen passed her fingers lightly over her eyes, and then looked up, smiling.

"No, I am not vexed; for a moment I thought how glad I should be if some one who used to give me orders could come through that door, or up those steps, as he has so often done when I have been standing here, and tell me to do-oh, anything for him! But, Babette, I am determined I will not spoil our walk by low spirits. I know you did not plan it just for the sake of making amends to yourself for last year's disappointment; you are as clever as other members of your family in making yourself out selfish when you

mamma an easy day by keeping Pelham with us, and perhaps you thought too of gratifying me by honouring Connor's birthday. I have kept it ever since I can remember, by some pleasure expedition; and I may tell the poor boy, mayn't I, that he was not altogether forgotten this year at Castle Daly!"

"I don't know how it would be to tell him," said Lesbia, demurely. "Here, at last, come John and your brother. Now we may set out."

Ellen's resolution to enjoy the walk was put to a severe trial before they had taken many steps up the steep road. Mr. Thornley, who was walking by her side, turned to her, and remarked in a tone that was meant to be indifferent, but was really full of anxiety—

"You hear from your brother Connor frequently, I suppose?"

"I had a long letter a week ago," Ellen answered, as steadily as she could, while an uneasy vision of Connor detected in some imprudence in their own neighbourhood filled her thoughts.

"He wrote from Dublin, of course." "Yes, of course."

66

Why don't you turn my questions back on myself, by asking why I ask?" "Because I feel sure if you want to tell me anything you will; and if you don't there's no use in my asking."

"What an opinion of my obstinacy you must have-quite erroneous, let me tell you. I hesitate to speak because

I am afraid of alarming you needlessly, though I think I ought to give you a warning."

"Then please say anything you know of Connor at once."

"It is not important, though worth mentioning, perhaps. Some men were taken up by the police last night for being found out on the hills at a later hour than is allowed by the new Vagrancy Act, which is very strictly enforced in this district just now, and in the course of their examination this morning a good deal was brought out concerning two emissaries from the Dublin clubs, who have been holding secret meetings down here, and collecting the

One of the men, who was either very stupid, or who wanted to be bribed to tell more, let drop your brother Connor's name. The other prisoners united in swearing that the two gentlemen they had gone out to meet were perfect strangers, who had never been seen by any one in these parts before; and there was an attempt at explanation or mystification by some of them volunteering the remark that one of the strange gentlemen was so like your father that maybe it was a spirit, and no gentleman at all, that had harangued them on the hillside. The police magistrate seemed satisfied, and so in fact was I; only when you are writing to your brother you may as well let him know how thorough the vigilance is in our neighbourhood, and that his friends would be wise to withdraw while they can in safety, and carry on their play at preparations for rebellion elsewhere."

"Mr. Thornley, you should not have said that word 'play.' "Why not?"

"Don't you think that when people are miserable, and angered, and desperate, and told their death-struggles are play, it is enough to goad them into terrible earnest? It is just those contemptuous sayings that do so much harm and sow more bitterness than actual wrong."

"I did not mean it for contempt. I am paying a tribute to Young Ireland's common sense when I call the threats her representatives are flinging about mere play. I cannot suppose them to be so mad and blind as to be in earnest. To dream of plunging the country into rebellion at such a crisis as this would be greater folly than one can conceive."

"We don't worship common sense as you do; and for my part I don't believe anything great was ever done except when that idol of yours was tossed away. It is always in crises of trouble, out of great depths, that deliverance

comes.

"Yes; but what you are looking for would not be deliverance, it would destruction."

"I shall begin to think you are the Eva' or the 'Speranza' who writes pathetic treason in the Nation."

"Don't sneer at them, please. I have read verses of theirs that I should indeed be proud to have written."

"For your brother Connor's sake, I am very sorry to hear you say this. I shall hardly blame him for any lengths he may go to now. It is enough to make any one a rebel to hear you talk. You should be careful."

"Can one be careful when one's heart is breaking? The very blackness of the night forces me to believe that there must be a dawn coming."

"And so there is; though perhaps you won't recognize it as such when it comes. There will come some good out of the present misery, you may be sure. It is good for the country that the surplus population are driven away, even by stress of famine, to seek more prosperous homes elsewhere, leaving the land to be made the best of."

"Desolated that is,-turned into wide, silent, sheep-walks and great pasture-fields, with only dumb cattle in them from sea to sea. Everywhere roofless villages and deserted homes, and only here and there a few companionless people who have lost all instinct of nationality, guarding riches that are not their own. That would be your good; but that is just the fate we Young Irelanders are resolved to make one stand against before it is quite too late one struggle to keep Ireland and her people together."

"You might just as well put up your hands and try to stop the sun in the sky. A country can't exist by itself in these days; it must consent to become what the rest of the world wants it to be."

"I will never agree to that. I think a country is for the people who love it best to live and be happy in, in their own way."

"Then would you leave America to red Indians for hunting-grounds and wigwams?"

I shall not answer such an insulting question. We did not come out to quarrel, did we, Mr. Thornley? I thought it

was to be for rest. We have climbed the hill while we have been arguing, and left Pelham and Lesbia far behind. Let us wait for them here at the top, for this is the view I want Lesbia to admire.. Do you see my little lake-my waterlily preserve-down there, looking like a patch of blue sky that has dropped down and been caught and held fast by the hills? I am glad Lac-na-Weel wears his crown to-day; he looks so much grander covered. He might be any height up in the mist."

"Like Young Ireland's dreams, seen through the mist of eloquence you are wrapping them in. I don't so much wonder at people growing dreamy who live here, for there is glamour over everything. The very beauty of the landscape is made of cloud effects, mistwreaths, and sunbeams. Through any other atmosphere it would be dreary enough, you must allow."

"If you will allow that it is some credit to a country to know how to get loveliness, like this we are looking at, out of bare rocks and bog lands, and such hopes as we have out of despair."

"Yes, if you could always be content with shadow instead of substance, and did not dash yourselves to pieces chasing one in mistake for the other."

"I think I like shadows best," said Ellen; "such shadows as those on the hills. I pity the people who have to leave them to live on some ugly, flat plain in America or Australia, let it be ever so substantial and fruitful."

There was a low stone wall skirting the pathway. Ellen seated herself on it as she spoke, and began to pluck the small ferns and stone-crop that grew among the stones, letting them fall absently from her fingers as fast as she gathered them. She was feeling much alarm on Connor's account, and had made a brave effort to talk unconcernedly to conceal from her companion the shock his information had given her. And now she was glad to relax the strain and take a silent moment to argue away her fears. How glad she would be to know that Connor was safe in Dublin. She almost smiled at her own

inconsistency as she confessed to herself that it was only the distant view of conspiracy and rebellion she could look at with toleration; when it came so near as to bring one's own friends into danger, then it wore quite another aspect. Mr. Thornley stood by her side, watching the changes in her face, which he thought revealed the coming and going of happy or sad thoughts through her mind as clearly as the mountain sides showed the passage of clouds across the sun, and owed, like them, its haunting beauty to the alternate lights and shadows. The leaves she let fall from her fingers brought back to his memory a passage from a tale of Madame Rabaud's, which he had overheard Lesbia reading aloud to Bride a few days before. It described a last interview between two lovers, where the girl, seated on the turf by her lover's side and telling him news that must separate them for ever, mechanically plucked and threw away as she spoke the blades of grass near her; and her lover, unseen by her, gathered them up as they fell from her fingers, to keep them for ever. He remembered how absurd and sentimental he had thought the picture, as he listened. How incredible it would have seemed to him then, that he himself could ever be so infatuated as to value dead leaves because a particular hand had plucked them-a hand whose owner was certainly not occupied with any thought of him in her absence of mind. He had not come to that point yet. He was not coveting Ellen's fernleaves, he assured himself. Just then a little puff of wind blew one of the tiny fronds almost into his hand. He closed his fingers over it quickly, and slipped it hastily inside the cover of his pocket-book; for just then Ellen woke from her reverie and turned round to speak to him.

"Do you see that winding road skirting the foot of the hill, and the lame man plodding along it? He is singing as he goes, and as he passed below us a minute ago I caught a word or two of his song. Would you like to know

"Yes-he has a fine voice; I caught the sound before he was in sight, but I thought it was Irish he was singing."

"So it is; but I can give you an English version of the words. It is a long poem, much sung about here. The words he is at just now are—

"Woe and pain, pain and woe,

Are my lot night and morn—
To see your bright face clouded so,
Like to the mournful moon ;
But yet will I rear your throne
Again in golden sheen;
'Tis you shall reign, and reign alone,
My dark Rosaleen.

"I could scale the blue air,

I could plough the high hills;
Oh, I could kneel all night in prayer
To heal your many ills.
The heart in my bosom faints
To think of you, my queen,
My life of life, my saint of saints,
My dark Rosaleen,

My own Rosaleen."

To hear your sweet and sad complaints, My life, my love, my saint of saints, My own Rosaleen.

"Oh, the Earn shall run red

With redundance of blood; The earth shall rock beneath our tread, And flames wrap hill and wood, And gun peal and slogan cry Wake many a glen serene, E'er you can fade, e'er you can die, My dark Rosaleen,

My own Rosaleen.

The judgment hour must first be nigh
E'er you can fade, e'er you can die,
My dark Rosaleen.'

"A strangely fierce love-song! What does it mean?"

"It is the 'Roisin Dhu,' the black little Rose; and the black little Rose is Ireland, of course. The man singing

it down there is Murdock Malachy, Anne O'Flaherty's servant; so you won't suspect him of being a sworn rebel. Cousin Anne has great influence, and does not allow her people to belong to secret societies, but she can't keep them from singing. You see, the Young Irelanders are not far wrong in thinking that the old love of country is strong still, and might any day burst into a blaze."

"So much the more careful should they be not to put a light to explosive