t know, but I feel as if I should be
a better man all my life; and those poor people, how well they did
behave! And the Major, he's an angel! And so's that brick of a doctor,
and the mad schoolmistress, and the curate. Everybody, I think, but me.
Hang it, Val! but your words shan't come true! I will be of some use yet
before I die! But I've--" and Valencia went up to him and kissed him,
while he ran on, and Lucia said,--

"You have been of use already, dear Fred. You have sent me and the dear
children to this sweet place, where we have been safer and happier
than--" (she checked herself); "and your generous present too. I feel quite
a girl again, thanks to you. Val and I have done nothing but laugh all day
long;" and she began kissing him too.

"'How happy could I be with either,
Were t'other dear charmer away!'"

broke out Scoutbush. "What a pity it is now, that I should have two such
sweet creatures making love to me, and can't marry either of them? Why
did ye go and be my father's daughters, mavourneen? I'd have made a
peeress of the one of ye, if ye'd had the sense to be anybody else's
sisters."

At which they all laughed, and laughed, and chattered broad Irish
together as they used to do for fun in old Kilanbaggan Castle, before
Lucia was a weary wife, and Valencia a worldly fine lady, and Scoutbush
a rackety guardsman, breaking half of the ten commandments every week,
rather from ignorance than vice.

"Well, I'm glad ye're pleased with me, asthore," said he at last to
Lucia; "but I've done another little good deed, I flatter myself; for
I've brought away the poor spalpeen of a priest, and have got him safe
in the house."

Valencia stopped short in her fun.

"Why, what have ye to say against that, Miss Val?"

"Why, won't he be a little in the way?" said Valencia, not knowing what
to say.

"Faith, he needn't trouble you; and I shall take very good care--I
wonder when the supper is coming--that neither he nor any else troubles
me. But really," said he, in his natural voice, and with some feeling,
"I was ashamed to go away and leave him there. He would have died if we
had. He worked day and night. Talk of saints and martyrs! Campbell
himself said he was an idler by the side of him."

"Oh! I hope Major Campbell has not over-exerted himself!"

"He? nothing hurts him. He's as hard as his own sword. But the poor
curate worked on till he got the cholera himself. He always expected it,
longed for it; Camp