sat on deck with eyes fixed on the land of their love, scarcely able
to speak, and unwilling to eat, in spite of Arthur's coaxing. Half the
night they sat there, mostly silent, talking reverently, every one
touched and afraid to disturb them; after a short sleep they were on
deck again to see the ship enter the harbor in the gray dawn. The sun
was still behind the brown hills. Arthur saw a silver bay, a mournful
shore with a few houses huddled miserably in the distance, and bare
hills without verdure or life. It was an indifferent part of the earth
to him; but revealed in the hearts of Owen Ledwith and his daughter, no
jewel of the mines could have shone more resplendent. He did not
understand the love called patriotism, any more than the love of a
parent for his child. These affections have to be experienced to be
known. He loved his country and was ready to die for it; but to have
bled for it, to have writhed under tortures for it, to have groaned in
unison with its mortal anguish, to have passed through the fire of death
and yet lived for it, these were not his glories.

In the cool, sad morning the father and daughter stood glorified in his
eyes, for if they loved each other much, they loved this strange land
more. The white lady, whiter now than lilies, stood with her arm about
her father, her eyes shining; and he, poor man, trembled in an ague of
love and pity and despair and triumph, with a rapt, grief-stricken face,
his shoulders heaving to the repressed sob, as if nature would there
make an end of him under this torrent of delight and pain. Arthur
writhed in secret humiliation. To love like this was of the gods, and he
had never loved anything so but Agrippina. As the ship glided to her
anchorage the crew stood about the deck in absolute silence, every man's
heart in his face, the watch at its post, the others leaning on the
bulwarks. Like statues they gazed on the shore. It seemed a phantom
ship, blown from ghostly shores by the strength of hatred against the
enemy, and love for the land of Eire; for no hope shone in their eyes,
or in the eyes of Ledwith and his daughter, only triumph at their own
light success. What a pity, thought Dillon, that at this hour of time
men should have reason to look so at the power of England. He knew there
were millions of them scattered over the earth, studying in just hate to
shake the English grip on stolen lands, to pay back the robberies of
years in English blood.

The sh