eatening musket fell of
its own weight, from dead hands--and the skipper went to sleep with more
stars twirling white and green fire across his inner vision than he had
ever seen in the sky.

It was daylight when Black Dennis Nolan next opened his eyes. He was in
his own bed. He felt very sick in the stomach, very light in the head,
very dry in the mouth. Old Mother Nolan sat beside the bed, smoking her
pipe.

"Was it ye let off the old gun out the door?" he asked.

"Nay, 'twas Mary done it," replied Mother Nolan, blinking her black eyes
at him.

"An' where bes Mary now?" he asked.

"In me own bed. Sure, when she was draggin' ye into the house, didn't
some divil jab her in the neck wid a great knife."

The skipper sat up, though the effort spun a purple haze across his
eyes, and set a lump of red-hot iron knocking about inside his skull.

"Bes she--dead?" he whispered.

"Nay, lad, nay, she bain't what ye'd call dead," replied the old woman.

The skipper rolled to the floor, scrambled to his feet, reeled across
the kitchen and into the next room, and sank at the side of Mary's bed.
He was done. He could not lift himself an inch higher; but a hand came
down to him, over the side of the bed, and touched his battered brow.

A week later, Mary Kavanagh was able to sit up in Mother Nolan's bed;
and the skipper was himself again, at least as far as the cut over his
eye and the bump on top of his head were concerned.

The skipper and Mother Nolan sat by Mary's bed. The skipper looked
older, wiser and less sure of himself than in the brisk days before the
raid.

"I bes a poor man now," he said. "Sure, them robbers broke t'rough this
harbor somethin' desperate! Didn't the back o' the chimley look like
the divil had been a-clawin' it out?"

"Quick come and quick go! Ye bes lucky, lad, they didn't sail away wid
yer fore-an'-after," said Mother Nolan.

"Aye, Granny; but it do beat me how ever they come to dig up the
kitchen-floor."

"Sure, an' they didn't," said Mary. "'Twas meself done that--an' sent
the red an' white diamonds away wid Flora's man. 'Twas himself ye took
'em from, Denny Nolan."

"An' a good thing, too," said Mother Nolan. "Sure, ye sent all the
curses o' Chance Along away together, Mary dear! There bain't no luck in
wracked gold, nor wracked diamonds--nor wracked women! Grub an' gear bes
our right; but not gold an' humans."

The skipper gazed at the girl until her eyes met his.

"Was ye worki