n my heart, I fear--I could see the hand
of death was laid, "one question for you: where is Maurice Gorman's
daughter?"

Martin half opened his eyes. I think he saw the gleam of my pistol,
which, though still in my hand, I had no intention of using. A
convulsive look of terror passed over his face as he muttered thickly,--

"Take that thing away, for mercy's sake, and you shall know all. We
took her and Biddy to the priest's at Killurin; but Father Murphy would
have nothing to say to us. We didn't know _what_ to do. So we--we--
we--ah, Lord, forgive all."

There was a painful pause. For a moment I thought his secret would die
with him. Then he murmured, pointing to the ceiling with his thumb, "We
brought her _here_!"

"What?" I cried in amazement; "Miss Kit is in this house now?"

Martin raised himself with difficulty on his elbow, fumbled feebly in
his belt, and handed me a rusty key. Before I could seize it he fell
back on the floor, and I had to take the key from his dead hand.

In the midst of my woe a wild throb of joy shot through me as I realised
what this unlooked-for news meant.

As I looked from Martin to his dead comrade, and from him to my poor
bruised Tim, from whom, as I feared, life was rapidly ebbing away, my
mind was filled with the pathos and a sense of the useless suffering of
it all. Addressing the two men who only a minute or two ago were his
assailants and mine, but who now stood with downcast faces, I said,--

"Boys, I don't doubt that ye are both acting from what ye consider to be
a sense of duty to old Ireland, and maybe even to your Maker, in all
this terrible bloodshed and unhappiness. To my thinking it's a sadly
mistaken sense of duty, and will only land you and the dear country in
shame and misery. But that is not here or there. Let us part without
hatred. You will find a passage here to the sea," said I, showing them
the opening by the fireplace through which I had entered the room; "and
in a cave at the end of the passage you will find a boat. Carry your
dead to it, and see them taken to their places."

Both men said gravely, as in a chorus, "God save Ireland!" to which I
could utter, though in a different sense from theirs, "Amen!"

Then they did as I bade them, and laboriously carried away their dead
comrades.

I turned to Tim. He was stirring slowly and feebly. I took off my coat
and rolled it into a pillow for his head. Presently he opened his eyes,
and a