but made no reply.

"Whose estate is all this here?" said he, pointing with his hand to
either side of the valley.

"'Sorra one o' me knows whose it is," said the woman, in a voice of
evident displeasure. "When I was a child it was the O'Donoghues', but
they are dead and gone now--I don't know whose it is."

"And the O'Donoghues are dead and gone, you say? What became of the last
of them?--what was his fate?"

"Is it the one that turned Protestant you mean?" said the woman, as an
expression of fiendish malignity shot beneath her dark brows: "he was
the only one that ever prospered, because he was a heretic, maybe."

"But how did he prosper?" said the stranger.

"Didn't he marry the daughter of the rich Englishman, that lived there
beyant? and wasn't he a member of Parlimint? and sure they tell me
that he went out beyond the says to be be Judge somewhere in foreign
parts--in India, I believe."

"And who lives in the old castle of the family?"

"The crows and the owls lives in it now," said the woman, with a grating
laugh--"the same way as the weasels and the rats burrow in my own little
place here. Ay, you may stare and wonder, but here, where you see me
sit, among these old stones and black timbers, was my own comfortable
home--the house I was born and reared in--and the hearth I sat by when I
was a child."

The man whispered a few words to his companion in a deep, low voice--she
started, and was about to speak, when he stopped her, saying, "Nay, nay,
it is better not;" then, turning to the woman, asked, "And were there,
then, no others, whose fortunes you remember?"

"It is little worth while remembering them," said the crone, whose own
misfortunes shed bitterness over all the memory of others. "There was an
old Scotchman that lived there long after the others were gone, and when
the niece went back to the nunnery in France he staid there still alone
by himself. The people used to see him settling the room, and putting
books here, and papers there, and making all ready agin she came
back--and that's the way he spent his time to the day of his death.
Don't cry, my lady; he was a hard-hearted old man, and it isn't eyes
like yours should weep tears for him; if you want to pity any one, 'pity
the poor, that's houseless and friendless.'"

"And the Lodge," said the stranger--"is not that the name they gave the
pretty house beside the lake?"

"'Tisn't a pretty house now, then," said the hag, laughing. "It's a ru