packet from my pocket.
The small outer paper addressed to me was in Tim's hand, and was very
brief. "Dear Barry," it said, "I searched as I promised, and have read
this letter. Time enough when Ireland's business is done to attend to
yours and mine.--Tim." From this I turned with trembling curiosity to
the packet itself, and took from it a faded paper, written in a strange,
uncultured hand, but signed at the end with my mother's feeble
signature, and dated a month after Tim's and my birth.

This is the strange matter it contained:--

"I, Mary Gallagher, being at the point of death,"--that was as she then
supposed, but she lived many a year after, as the reader knows--"and as
I hope for mercy from God, into whose presence I am summoned, declare
that the girl-child who was buried beside my Mistress Gorman was not
hers but mine. My twins were the boy who lives and the girl who died.
My lady's child is the boy who passes as twin-brother to mine. It was
Maurice Gorman led me to this wrong. The night that Terence Gorman, my
master, was murdered and my lady died of the news, Maurice persuaded me
to change my dead girl for my lady's living boy, threatening that unless
I did so he would show that Mike, my husband, was his master's murderer.
To save my husband I consented. Had I been sure of him I would have
refused; but I feared Mike had a hand in that night's work, though I am
sure it was not he who fired the shot. Thus I helped Maurice Gorman to
become master of Kilgorman and all his brother's property. But they no
more belong to him than the boy belongs to me. And if this be the last
word I say on earth, it is all true, as Maurice knows himself, and Biddy
the nurse, who writes this from my lips. God forgive me, and send this
to the hands of them that will make the wrong right.

(Signed)

"Mary Gallagher."

"N.B.--The above is true, every word, to my knowledge.

(Signed)

"Biddy McQuilkin."

CHAPTER TWENTY FIVE.

ON THE BLACK HILL ROAD.

This, then, was the mystery which for eighteen years had hung over
Kilgorman. My mother's letter cleared up a part of it, but the rest it
plunged into greater mystery still. That Maurice Gorman was a villain
and a usurper was evident. But who was the rightful heir my mother,
either through negligence or of set purpose, had failed to state. Was
it Tim? or I?

I recalled all I could of my mother's words and acts to us both--how she
taught us our letters; how she