at all to be greeting for," and he set her
on her horse gently, and they rode on by the burnside, and watched the
brown trout flash in below the boulders, and darting across the amber
pools, just as they do to-day.

CHAPTER XXIV.

THE HALFLIN'S MESSAGE.

I mind that there was a good back-end that year, as we say, with plenty
of keep for the beasts, and the stacks under thatch of sprits by the
end of September, and I would be standing in the stackyard as a man
will, just pleased to be seeing things as they were, and swithering if
I should be taking a step to the Quay Inn, when the halflin lad from
Bryde's place came up to me.

"He is not yonder," said he, in a daft-like way. "He will not be in
his own place any more."

And then I got at him with the questions.

"The mother will be sitting all day and not greeting terrible," says
he, "and Betty will be oching and seching like a daith in the house;
and I came to be telling you--and he will have the thin sword with him."

And the lad lisped and boggled at the English, till I shook the Gaelic
into him--and there was the story.

It would be two nights ago that Bryde McBride came into the loft where
the halflin was sleeping, and bade him dress.

"He would be all in his good claes," said the lad, "and the sword on
him," and he told me how the two of them had carried a kist through the
hill and down behind the Big House--"there would still be a light in
the young leddy's chamber," for Bryde McBride had stood looking at it,
and talking in the Gaelic. "And," said the lad, looking over his
shoulder half fearfully, "he said, 'If ever there is a word comes out
of your mouth about this, Homish, I will be ramming three feet o' blue
steel through your gizzard,' and we would be carrying the kist down to
the herrin' slap (Bealach an agadan) and to the shore. There was a
skiff lying there all quiet and three men waiting, and when we would be
among them they took the kist, and wan of the sailors wass saying they
would be in Fowey soon, but the master turned on me, and he had money
for me.

"'You will be minding the place until I come back to you,' he said, 'or
I'll reive the skin from you for a bridle,' and he made me go away from
the rocks and to be going back, but I lay among the trees, and I would
be seeing the men put the kist on board, and then they rowed away with
the master sitting at the stern and looking back, for I would be seeing
his face white in the moon,