on the fatal night that left Kilgorman desolate no one was
able rightly to tell; for, except Biddy and Maurice Gorman, who chanced
that night to have come over to see his brother, the sole occupants of
the house had been Mrs Gorman and her child and my mother and her two
infants.

Terence Gorman at nightfall had taken the gig, with my father, to drive
to Carndonagh, where next day he was to inquire into some poaching
affray. That was at seven o'clock. About midnight my father, half
crazy with fright, brought the gig back, and in it the dead body of his
master. They had reached the gap in Ballinthere Hill, he said, going by
the lower road, when a shot was suddenly fired from the roadside,
grazing my father's arm and lodging in the neck of Mr Gorman. It was
so suddenly done, and the horse bolted so wildly forward at the report,
that before my father could even look round the assassin had vanished.

Mr Gorman was already dead. My father did what he could to stanch the
wound, but without avail; and, in a daze, he turned the horse's head and
drove back as fast as he could to Kilgorman. My lady, whose bedroom was
over the hall-door, was the first to hear the sound of the wheels, and
she seemed to have guessed at a flash of the mind what had happened.
Weak as she was, she succeeded in dragging herself from the bed and
looking out of the window; and the first sight that met her eyes, by the
gleam of the lanterns, was the lifeless body of her husband being lifted
from the gig.

The shock was too much for her. She was found soon after in a dead
swoon on the floor, and before morning her spirit had joined that of her
husband. And not only hers--the little hope of the house shared the
fate of her parents. And when the day of burial came, Terence Gorman
and his wife and daughter were all laid in one grave.

My mother, to whom the shock of the news had been more gently broken,
and whose husband had at least escaped with his life, recovered; and
with her twin boys, Tim and me, was able in due time to remove to the
cabin on Fanad across the lough which Maurice Gorman (who by this sad
tragedy had unexpectedly become the heir to his brother's estate) gave
him for a home.

That was all I knew, except this: ever since that night Kilgorman House
had remained empty, and people said that its only tenant was the
wandering spirit of the distracted mother crying in the night for her
husband and baby.

These sombre recollections w