I might have lived it down if I had stayed. But after all, you know, Mr. Summers, being an Irishman doesn't matter so much in Ireland for the same reason that Hamlet's madness wouldn't have mattered in England.'

'Oh, I don't think it matters much what country a man belongs to,' in a tone that suggested the addition 'once he isn't English.'

'After all it's your misfortune, not your fault, dear,' said Father Mac, so don't worry about it,' addressing Norah as she rose to leave the room.

CHAPTER X.

'IT'S MR. STUDDERT!'

I have supp'd full with horrors.-Macbeth.

NORAH stole away sick at heart, for Maurice had avoided even her eyes. She would have gone straight to her room to torment herself undisturbed, but for a forlorn hope that even yet Maurice might give her the chance, for which she longed, of in some way explaining her relations with Mr. Summers. He might quit the dining-room before the others to seek her in the drawing-room. Thither, therefore, she crept listlessly and sat down to try to think clearly out what she was to say to him, if he gave her the opportunity to say anything. But she could think out nothing clearly. It was not the mere misunderstanding with Maurice which seemed to stupefy her, but the reaction after the intense strain of the scene with the Assassins, and a sense of the peril in which her father as well as herself would be placed, if Mr. Summers escaped their hands. This fear was not definitely present to her mind at the moment, but it oppressed her vaguely, as a sense of yesterday's trouble oppresses you on waking in the morning, before you can realise precisely what it is.

In this stupefied state she sat for some time trying to think, but able only to long for Maurice's coming. At last it occurred to her to play his favourite song, 'The Wearing of the Green,' in the hope that he might understand and obey the signal. But when she had played it two or three times and had sat then in silent and almost breathless expectancy of his steps in the hall, till her last hope of hearing it had died down, she rose angry with herself and him, and resolved to retire for the night under the plea-a very true one-of a headache.

As, however, she made for the bell to leave this message for her father with Nancy, she was arrested by the sound of the opening of the dining-room door and of the well-known step of

Maurice crossing the hall. She stood still midway, her eyes turned to the door, her heart beating violently, and her face to her forehead scarlet with shame for her stratagem, which-now that it was successful-seemed to her transparent and overbold.

The step crossed the hall, but not to this door-to the halldoor, which was opened and shut again sharply. Norah was at no loss to understand what this meant. Maurice, as eager to avoid her society as to escape from that of Mr. Summers, had taken refuge from both in the lawn. For a single moment she was inclined to follow him, but only for a moment. Her pride determined her not only not to follow, but not to fly him. Instead of retiring, as she had intended, she would remain to show as proud and cold and defiant a front as his own.

But, indeed, she had no choice. Before she could have reached the hall her father and his guests were crossing it. As they entered the drawing-room Miles looked all round it and then asked Norah, Has he gone?'

'Who?'

'Maurice.'

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'He's not been here.'

'Not to bid you good-bye? 'Good-bye!'

'Yes; he's off on some sudden business to America to-morrow morning, and had to return home to-night to pack.'

In truth, Maurice, finding or fancying himself a discord and discomfort to the party, and longing to be alone in his wretchedness, suddenly started up and hurried away on the plea Miles repeated to Norah. The suddenness of the move was due to 'The Wearing of the Green,' which had upon him the opposite effect to that poor Norah had hoped from it. He had no doubt—as, indeed, it was not possible he should have-of her engagement to Mr. Summers; and yet she can mock his dead hopes with this tune, which she knew was associated in his mind with her and with his love for her! Therefore, he started suddenly up and hurried resolutely out of earshot of all remonstrances. Nevertheless, Miles, still hospitably bent on keeping him at least till morning, followed, expecting to find him bidding Norah good-bye in the drawing-room.

Gone to America! Gone without a word!

What was her first thought? That he had loved her. If he had felt for ber any feeling less than that of love he would have taken at least a formal farewell of his old playmate, however he might have been disenchanted, or even disgusted, with her. She could not, of course, have inferred his love from the incidents of

the last few hours taken by themselves-from his scorn on surprising her twice with Mr. Summers in the way he did; from his eagerness, first, to speak with her, and, then, to avoid her; and from his abrupt departure without a word. It was not these things by themselves, but these things interpreted by a thousand things in her memory-the dearest treasures of her memory-convinced her in the same moment that she had won, and that she had lost, his love.

Lost it? In her desperation she took a sudden resolution to force upon him the interview he shunned, and allow him to see that he was everything to her, if there were no other way to convince him that Mr. Summers was nothing to her. Absorbed by this resolve, she hurried from the room without a word, sped across the hall, noiselessly opened and closed behind her the front door, and with a fawn-like swiftness crossed the lawn and some fields by a short cut to intercept Maurice at a bend in the high road.

She made for a gap in the wall which separated the last field from the road, but was arrested before she reached it by the sound of voices, which stopped the beating of her heart. Her mind was so full of the terrible scene at Shallee Castle that she leaped at once to the conclusion that the whispered voices she heard were those of the same men lying now in wait for their victim. She was right. At least, two out of the three men, having come to prowl about the place, rather to assure themselves that their intended victim was still there, than in any hope of his falling into their hands, had seen Maurice quit the house, and had mistaken him in the darkness for Mr. Summers. They had preceded Norah by but a minute along the same short cut, and were lying in wait in the ditch upon whose edge she stood. She could see in the dimness one straining his eyes, raised cautiously to the level of the top of the wall, on the look-out for their victim, while the other, with the barrel of his gun resting on the gap, knelt with his face upturned to his companion for the signal to be ready. Hardly had Norah's eyes, wide with horror, taken this in, when the fellow on the look-out whispered in a hoarse and hurried tone of excitement, Here he is!' and at once the face of the other was bent down sideways on the gunstock with one eye along the barrel.

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In that intense moment the faculties of this girl-little more than a child as she was—were, instead of being stunned, quickened, as the faculties of the drowning are said to be quickened. She saw in a moment and as by a flash that Maurice was mistaken for Mr. Summers; that in another instant he would be shot; and that a cry of alarm would be less likely to save him than to ensure

her own death as well as his. Springing down she gripped convulsively with both hands the arm on which the gunstock rested, and whispered with a thrilling distinctness, 'It's Mr. Studdert!'

Both men, in the reaction after the intense strain of the moment before, were unnerved and confounded by this sudden intervention. For a second or two the one looked down and the other up at her with a stupid and almost stupefied stare, while she held her breath in an agony of suspense lest Maurice in passing should hear or see them and so rush upon certain death. In this fear she crouched down in the ditch, while still clutching the arm of the would-be assassin—an action which reassured the fellows and probably saved her from being knocked down and stunned with the butt-end of a rifle. Meantime Maurice passed swiftly with rapid steps, whose sound soon died away in the distance--so soon that before the men had well come to themselves he was out of range, though not of reach.

Then Norah rose, trembling, or shivering rather as in an ague, and said again, but now pleadingly and apologetically, 'It was Mr. Studdert.' Now that his life seemed safe, there was room in her mind for anxiety about her own.

The man whose arm she grasped shook her off, and whispering hurriedly to the other, 'Hould an' gag her,' he darted along the ditch in a stooping posture.

Before Norah could recover her breath the other fellow had pinioned with one arm both of hers and with the hand of the other across her mouth had gagged her. For minutes which seemed hours she remained thus dumb and helpless, in torments of suspense-fearing each moment to hear the report which would announce to her Maurice's murder. At length her eyes, straining through the darkness, saw the figure of Malachi, not now crouching, return, and her heart, as though released from a crushing pressure, gave a sudden bound of blessed relief.

'It wor the Captin sure enough,' growled Malachi. Lave go of her,' to Shamus. "Ye shplit?' he said to Norah in a suppressed but savage tone of rage. Norah, not knowing what he meant, remained silent, and of course her silence was understood to be admission of the charge.

'Ye bruk yere oath, but by G-we'll keep ours!' clubbing the musket and raising it to strike her down.

'I didn't indeed, indeed, I didn't!' she cried, sinking on her knees, and holding up both hands to protect her head. Something childlike in both the wording and the tone of her denial reached and touched even the hardened heart of Shamus.

'Hould on!' he said, pushing Malachi back and interposing

himself between him and the kneeling girl. Ye tould him?' nodding in the direction in which Maurice had disappeared. 'I told no one. I swear I told no one.'

'Ay, ye can shwear aisy enough; but he tould us ye tould him,' growled Malachi.

'He!' she exclaimed bewildered. 'He couldn't. I never breathed a word to him.'

Malachi was staggered, and Shamus convinced, by her evident bewilderment. If she had told the Captain she must have looked confused and convicted on hearing that he had accused them on her information; whereas she looked the picture of perplexed innocence. It occurred, besides, to both men that she was little likely to fling herself again, as she had just done, into their hands, if she had both broken her oath and known that they knew it. They spoke together for a minute or two in Irish; Shamus plainly urging upon Malachi something to which the latter at first demurred, and at last assented sullenly.

Meanwhile Norah, still kneeling, watched the two men discussing the question of her life and death, but watched them as idly as though they were playing upon a stage a piece in which she felt the most languid interest. A heavy blow, or a succession of blows, sometimes reduces the mind, as it reduces the body, to a stupor, in which any movement made is dreamy, semi-conscious, and mechanical. And Norah now found herself wondering at the odd sound of some Irish word, uttered by one of the men, and repeated mentally by her again and again with a dull curiosity as to its meaning.

Shamus succeeded in convincing Malachi that her murder would endanger them more certainly than the chance of her betraying them. And Malachi, with a ferocity of manner and language the more horrible because all his violence was now diverted into that shallow channel, called upon her, under pain of appearing in another minute before God, to swear by Him never to breathe a word of what she had heard to-day, or seen to-night, to any living soul.

Norah under this hail of tremendous language, which we cannot repeat, looked up with a childlike expression of perplexity; and when at the close the oath was recited for her to repeat, she remained silent, still looking up bewildered, though she held the Testament given to her in both hands.

Malachi again, in his fury, clubbed his musket, when Shamus, for the second time, shoved him aside.

• Yerra whished wid yere divil's tattoo. Shure ye've knocked the sivin sinses out av her. Lishten to me, Miss; are ye lishtnin'?'