seasons of county excitement--such as an election or an
unusually weighty assizes--it was not deemed perfectly safe to visit the
village, and even the police would not have adventured on the step except
with a responsible force. At other periods, the most marked feature of the
place would be that of utter vacuity and desolation. A single inhabitant
here and there smoking listlessly at his door--a group of women, with their
arms concealed beneath their aprons, crouching under a ruined wall--or a
few ragged children, too miserable and dispirited even for play, would be
all that would be seen.

At a spot where the stream was fordable for a horse, the page Larry had
already stationed himself, and now walked into the river, which rose over
his knees, to show the road to his mistress.

'The bailiffs is on them to-day,' said he, with a gleeful look in his
eye; for any excitement, no matter at what cost to others, was intensely
pleasurable to him.

'What is he saying?' asked Nina.

'They are executing some process of law against these people,' muttered
Donogan. 'It's an old story in Ireland; but I had as soon you had been
spared the sight.'

'Is it quite safe for yourself?' whispered she. 'Is there not some danger
in being seen here?'

'Oh, if I could but think that you cared--I mean ever so slightly,' cried
he, with fervour, 'I'd call this moment of my danger the proudest of my
life!'

Though declarations of this sort--more or less sincere as chance might make
them--were things Nina was well used to, she could not help marking the
impassioned manner of him who now spoke, and bent her eyes steadily on him.

'It is true,' said he, as if answering the interrogation in her gaze. 'A
poor outcast as I am--a rebel--a felon--anything you like to call me--the
slightest show of your interest in me gives my life a value, and my hope a
purpose I never knew till now.'

'Such interest would be but ill-bestowed if it only served to heighten your
danger. Are you known here?'

'He who has stood in the dock, as I have, is sure to be known by some one.
Not that the people would betray me. There is poverty and misery enough in
that wretched village, and yet there's not one so hungry or so ragged that
he would hand me over to the law to make himself rich for life.'

'Then what do you mean to do?' asked she hurriedly.

'Walk boldly through the village at the head of your pony, as I am
now--your guide to Croghan Castle.'

'But we wer