his words hurriedly down, and read them over; but when it came
to putting the pen in his hand, he fell back, and I thought all was
over. But after a few minutes he rallied again.

"Hold me up--guide my hand--it all swims before me."

The paper with his woeful scrawl affixed lies before me at this moment
as I write.

"Gallagher," said he, more faintly yet, "be good to Kit, and forgive
me."

"God will do that, your honour," whispered I.

"Pray for me.--Ah!" cried he, starting suddenly in bed, and throwing up
his arm as if to ward off a blow, "I'll take the oath, boys. You shall
have the money. God save--"

And he fell back, dead.

Next day an inquiry was held which ended in nothing. No trace of the
murderer was to be found, and no evidence but that of us who saw the
tragedy with our own eyes. Plenty of folk, who had given him a wide
berth living, crowded to the place to look at the dead Gorman; but in
all their faces there was not one sign of pity or compunction--nay,
worse, that very night, on Fanad and Knockalla bonfires were lit to
celebrate his murder.

The next day we buried him. For miles round no one could be found
willing to make his coffin, and in the end we had to lay him in a common
soldier's shell. Nor would any one lend horse or carriage to carry him
to his grave, and we had to take him by boat to his resting-place,
rowing it through the gathering storm with our own arms. The flag half-
mast on the _Gnat_ was the only sign of mourning; and when we bore the
coffin up to the lonely graveyard on the cliff-top at Kilgorman, and
laid it beside that of his lady, in the grave next to that of the
murdered Terence, not a voice but mine joined in the "Amen" to the
priest's prayer.

When all was said and done, I lingered on, heedless of the wind and
rain, in the deserted graveyard, full of the strange memories which the
place and scene recalled.

Eight years ago I had stood here with Tim at the open grave of her whom
we both called mother. And on that same day her ghostly footstep had
sounded in our ears in the grim kitchen of Kilgorman, summoning us to a
duty which was yet unfulfilled. What had not happened since then? The
boatman's boys were grown, one into the heir of half the lough-side, the
other into a servant of his Majesty. Tim, entangled hand and foot in
the toils of a miserable conspiracy, was indifferent to the fortune now
lying at his feet; I, engaged in the task of hunting down the