with pockets in it but not
a trace of a brogue or only the very faintest suspicion. Yet when she
spoke she had the Irish turn of words and she used the word "sure" in a
manner strange to the English.

She had reached the point in the "Gold Bug" where Jupp is threatening to
beat Legrand, when, laying the book down beside her on the hearthrug, she
sat with her hands clasping her knees and her eyes fixed on the fire.

The tale had suddenly lost interest. She was thinking of her dead father,
the big, hearty man who had gone to America only eight weeks ago and who
would never return. He had gone on a visit to some of his wife's people,
fallen ill, and died.

Phyl could not understand it at all. She had cried her heart out amongst
the ruins of her little world, but she could not understand why it had
been ruined, or what her father had done to be killed like that, or what
she had done to deserve such misery. The Reverend Peter Graham of
Arranakilty could explain nothing about the matter to her understanding.
She nearly died and then miraculously recovered. Acute grief often ends
like that, suddenly. The mourner may be maimed for life but the sharpness
of the pain of that dreadful, dreadful disease is gone.

Phyl found herself one morning discussing rats with old Dunn, asking him
how many he had caught in the barn and taking a vague sort of interest in
what the old fellow was saying; books began to appeal to her again and the
old life to run anew in a crippled sort of way. Then other things
happened. Mr. Hennessey, the family lawyer, who had been a crony of her
father's and who had known her from infancy, came down to Kilgobbin to
arrange matters.

It seemed that Mr. Berknowles before dying had made a will and that the
will was being brought over from the States by Mr. Pinckney, his wife's
cousin in whose house he had died.

"I'm sure I don't know what the chap wants coming over with it for," said
Mr. Hennessey. "He said it was by your father's request he was coming, but
it's a long journey for a man to take at this season of the year--and I
hope the will is all right."

There was an implied distrust in his tone and an antagonism to Mr.
Pinckney that was not without its effect on Phyl.

She disliked Mr. Pinckney. She had never seen him but she disliked him all
the same, and she feared him. She felt instinctively that this man was
coming to make some alteration in her way of life. She did not want any
change, she want