him
understand what was afoot. It was only when his honour came in and
spoke to him that he seemed to come to his senses.

The coffin was closed. The crowd stepped out with a shiver into the
cold morning air. The priest took out his book and began to read aloud;
and slowly, with Tim and me beside her, and my father in a daze walking
in front, we bore her from the cabin down to the boats. There, in our
own boat, we laid the coffin, and hoisting sail, shoved off and made for
the opposite shore. Father and we two and his honour and the priest
sailed together; and after us, in a long straggling procession of boats,
came the rest. The light wind was not enough to fill our sail, and we
were forced to put out the oars and row. I think the exercise did us
good, and warmed our hearts as well as our bodies.

As we came under Kilgorman, I could see the mast of the _Cigale_ peeping
over the rocks, and wondered if she would be discovered by all the
company. His honour, to my surprise, steered straight for the creek.

The _Cigale_ flew the English flag, and very smart and trim she looked
in the morning light, with her white sails bleaching on the deck and the
brass nozzles of her guns gleaming at the port-holes. We loitered a
little to admire her, and, seaman-like, to discuss her points. Then,
when our followers began to crowd after us into the creek, we pulled to
the landing and disburdened our boat of her precious freight.

The burying-ground of Kilgorman was a little enclosure on the edge of
the cliff surrounding the ruin of the old church, of which only a few
weed-covered piles of stone remained. The graves in it were scarcely to
be distinguished in the long rank grass. The only one of note was that
in which lay Terence Gorman with his wife and child--all dead twelve
years since, within a week of one another.

With much labour we bore the coffin up the steep path, and in a shallow
grave at the very cliff's edge deposited all that remained of our
English mother.

As his reverence had said, she never took root in Donegal. She had been
a loyal servant to her master, a loyal wife to her husband, and a loyal
mother to us her sons. Yet she always pined for her old Yorkshire
village home; a cloud of trouble, ever since we remembered her, had
hovered on her brow. She had wept much in secret, and had lived, as it
were, in a sort of dread of unseen evil.

Folks said the shock of the tragedy at Kilgorman, at the time