shook her head mournfully.

"My child, we could do him no good at all--none whatever. Besides, I
can't afford to visit Dublin now. It's an expensive journey, and the
repairs we've been doing here have run me close."

A look of indignation, almost of scorn, came into the girl's face.

"Well, if I were being tried for my life, as Dyck Calhoun is going to
be, and if I knew that friends of mine were standing off because of a
few pounds, shillings, and pence, I think I'd be a real murderer!"

The mother took her daughter's hand. She found it cold.

"My dear," she said, clasping it gently, "you never saw him but three
times, and I've never seen him but twice except in the distance; but I
would do anything in my power to help him, if I could, for I like him.
The thing for us to do--"

"Yes, I know--sit here, twist our thumbs, and do nothing!"

"What more could we do if we went to Dublin, except listen to gossip,
read the papers and be jarred every moment? My dear, our best place is
here. If the spending of money could be of any use to him, I'd spend
it--indeed I would; but since it can't be of any use, we must stay in
our own home. Of one thing I'm sure--if Dyck Calhoun killed Erris Boyne,
Boyne deserved it. Of one thing I'm certain beyond all else--it was
no murder. Mr. Calhoun wasn't a man to murder any one. I don't
believe"--her voice became passionate--"he murdered, and I don't believe
he will be hanged."

The girl looked at her mother with surprise. "Oh, dearest, dearest!" she
said. "I believe you do care for him. Is it because he has no mother,
and you have no son."

"It may be so, beloved."

Sheila swept her arms around her mother's neck and drew the fine head to
her breast.

At that moment they heard the clatter of hoofs, and presently they saw a
horse and rider pass the window.

"It's a government messenger, mother," Sheila said.

As Sheila said, it was a government messenger, bearing a packet to Mrs.
Llyn--a letter from her brother in America, whom she had not seen for
many years.

The brother, Bryan Llyn, had gone out there as a young man before the
Revolutionary War. He had prospered, taking sides against England in the
war, and become a man of importance in the schemes of the new republican
government. Only occasionally had letters come from him to his sister,
and for nearly eleven years she had not had a single word from him.

When she opened the packet now, she felt it would help to solve--she