re, seek below the great hearth; and what
you find there, see to it, as you hope for grace. God send this into
the hands of one who loves truth and charity. Amen."

CHAPTER EIGHT.

A RACE FOR A LIFE.

My impulse, when I read that sad message from my dead mother, was to
rise from my bed and saddle the horse and return, cost what it might, to
Kilgorman. Had I done so I might perchance have saved myself months,
even years, of trouble.

But in a weak moment I let my fatigue and my irresolution and my fear of
the ghost get the better of me, and decided to put off till to-morrow
what I should have done to-day. If in after years my worst enemy had to
confess that what I did I did quickly, it was due to the lesson which
this one act of procrastination taught me.

Putting everything together, the meaning of the letter seemed pretty
clear. My mother, distraught by the sudden death of her master and
mistress, and believing herself to be dying too, had desired to ease her
mind of a secret (I knew not what) which lay upon it; but being in dread
of it falling into wrong hands, had written it and hidden it in some
place, leaving this slender clue to the chance discoverer of her little
book of ballads.

How was it possible to believe otherwise than that Providence had, after
fourteen years, placed that clue in the hands of her son, and thereby
imposed upon me a duty from which, whatever it was, I should have been
undutiful, and a coward to boot, had I shrunk?

But, as I tell you, for one night I shrunk from it, resolving that on
the morrow I would obey the summons. But many to-morrows were to come
and go before the promise could be fulfilled.

His honour returned at dead of night from Derry, and when, as usual, I
presented myself to wait at breakfast, I was surprised to find him
seated there with his wife and daughter.

Miss Kit was in her wonted high spirits, and alarmed me by plunging at
once into the story of yesterday's adventure.

"Father," she said, "why is Kilgorman all barred and bolted against its
future mistress? Here was I, yesterday, standing humbly like a beggar
on the doorstep of our own house, and obliged to slink away disappointed
after all."

His honour looked up with an angry flush on his pale face.

"Kilgorman!" cried he; "what took you there? Don't you know no one is
allowed within the grounds?"

"I didn't know till Barry told me. And even then I did not suppose the
prohibition applied