speed that seemed perilous in such a place,
a creature clad in the most tattered rags, but with naked legs and bare
head, came springing towards him.

"I knew you from the top of Goorhaun dhub--I knew you well, Master Mark.
There's not many with a good coat on their back could venture over the
way you came, and I said to myself it was you," cried Terry the Woods,
as with his pale features lit up his smiles, he welcomed the young
O'Donoghue to his native hills.

"How are they all yonder?" asked Mark, in a voice scarcely above a
whisper, pointing with his finger up the glen in the direction of
Car-rig-na-curra, but which was not visible from where they were.

"I saw the master yesterday," replied Terry, who applied to the
O'Donoghue the respected title by which he was known in his own
household. "He was sitting on a big chair at the window, and the young
girl with the black eyes was reading to him out of a book--but sorra
much he was mindin' it, for when he seen me he beckoned this way, and
says he, 'Terry, you villain, why don't you ever come up here now and
talk to me?' 'Faix,' says I, 'I haven't the heart to do it. Since
Master Mark was gone, I didn't like the place,' and the master wiped his
eyes, and the young girl made a sign to me not to speak about that any
more."

"And who is at 'the Lodge' now?" asked Mark, endeavouring tore-strain
any semblance of emotion, even before Terry.

"There's nobody but the agent. The family is over in England till the
house is ready for them. Oh, then, but you'll wonder to see the illigant
place it is now, wid towers and spires all over it--the ground all
gardens, with grass walks as fine as a carpet, and the beautifullest
flowers growin' against the walls and up against the windows, and a
fountain, as they call it, of cool water spouting up in the air, and
coming down like rain."

"And my brother--where is he?"

"He's over in England with the family from 'the Lodge;' the black-eyed
girl, Miss Kate, wouldn't go. They say--but there's no knowing if it's
true--they say she likes Hemsworth better than the Captain--and troth,
if she does, its a dhroll choice."

"Like Hemsworth! Do they say that my cousin likes Hemsworth?" said Mark,
whose anger was only kept down by gazing on the tranquil features of the
poor witless object before him.

"They do," said Terry quietly, "and it's razonable, too, seein' that
he's never out of the house from morning till night."

"What house?--whe