diers is all under arms since nine o'clock, then
came news that the French was in the Bay, and the army was sent for to
Cork."

"No, 'tis Limerick I heerd say," cried another.

"Limerick indeed! sorra bit, 'tis from Dublin they're comin wid cannons;
but it's no use, for the French is sailed off again as quick as they
come."

"The French fleet gone!--left the Bay--surely you must mistake," said
Kate, eagerly.

"Faix, I won't be sure, my lady; but here's Tom McCarthy seen them going
away, a little after twelve o'clock."

The man thus appealed to, seemed in nowise satisfied with the allusions
to him, and threw a quick distrustful look around, as though far from
feeling content with the party before whom he should explain, a feeling
that increased considerably as every eye was now turned towards him.

Kate, with a ready tact that never failed her, saw his difficulty, and
approaching close to where he stood, said, in a voice only audible by
himself----

"Tell me what you saw in the Bay, do not have any fear of _me_."

M'Carthy, who was dressed in the coarse blue jacket of a fisherman!
possessed that sharp intelligence so often found among those of his
calling, and seemed at once to have his mind relieved by this mark of
confidence.

"I was in the boat, my lady," said he, "that rowed Master Mark out to
the French frigate, and waited for him alongside to bring him back. He
was more than an hour on board talking with the officers, sometimes down
in the cabin, and more times up on the quarter-deck, where there was a
fierce-looking man, with a blue uniform, lying on a white skin--a white
bear, Master Mark tould me it was. The officer was wounded in the leg
before he left France, and the sea voyage made it bad again, but, for
all that, he laughed and joked away like the others."

"And they were laughing then, and in good spirits?" said Kate.

"'Tis that you may call it. I never heerd such pleasant gentlemen
before, and the sailors too was just the same--sorra bit would
sarve them, but making us drink a bottle of rum apiece, for luck,
I suppose--devil a one had a sorrowful face on him but Master Mark,
whatever was the matter with him, he wouldn' eat anything either, and
the only glass of wine he drank, you'd think it was poison, the face he
made at it--more by token he flung the glass overboard when he finished
it. And to be sure the Frenchmen weren't in fault, they treated him like
a brother--one would be shaking han