crossing himself;
and then, without a word more, and as if angry at his own delay, he
pressed his horse forward to follow her.

It was in vain Hankes cried to him to wait,--to stop for only an
instant,--that he, too, was ready to go,--not to leave him and desert
him there,--that he knew not where to turn him, nor could ever retrace
his way,--already the man was lost to view and hearing, and all the
vain entreaties were uttered to the winds. As for Sybella, her perilous
pathway gave her quite enough to do not to bestow a thought upon her
companion; nor, indeed, had she much recollection of him till the old
groom overtook her on the sandy beach, and recounted to her, not without
a certain touch of humor, Mr. Hankes's terror and despair.

"It was cruel to leave him, Ned," said she, trying to repress a smile
at the old man's narrative. "I think you must go back, and leave me to
pursue my way alone."

"Sorra one o' me will go back to the likes of him. 'T is for your own
self, and ne'er another, I'd be riskin' my neck in the same spot," said
he, resolutely.

"But what's to become of him, Ned? He knows nothing of the country; he
'll not find his way back to Glengariff."

"Let him alone; devil a harm he 'll come to. 'T is chaps like that never
comes to mischief. He 'll wander about there till day breaks, and
maybe find his way to Duffs Mill, or, at all events, the boy with the
letter-bag from Caherclough is sure to see him."

Even had this last assurance failed to satisfy Sybella, it was so
utterly hopeless a task to overrule old Ned's resolve that she said
no more, but rode on in silence. Not so Ned; the theme afforded him an
opportunity for reflecting on English character and habits which was not
to be lost.

"I 'd like to see your brother John turn back and leave a young lady
that way," said he, recurring to the youth whose earliest years he had
watched over.

No matter how impatiently, even angrily, Bella replied to the old man's
bigoted preference of his countrymen, Ned persisted in deploring the
unhappy accident by which fate had subjected the finer and more gifted
race to the control and dominion of an inferior people. To withdraw
him effectually from a subject which to an Irish peasant has special
attraction, she began to tell him of the war in the East and of
her brother Jack, the old man listening with eager delight to the
achievements of one he had carried about in his arms as a child. Her
mind filled wit