More than an hour passes before she hears her father's step in the hall.

"Where are the boys?" he says, as she comes out of the drawing-room to
speak to him.

"They have not come from the colonel's yet. They said they might be
late."

"A man has been shot on Keif Moss--shot dead, and by mistake for some
one else, they tell me."

She reads the fear that is blanching the strong man's face, and making
his voice sound low and husky in the empty hall.

"Not Launce, father! Don't tell me that it is Launce!"

"Heaven only knows! It was some one who was coming from that hateful
Rose Mount; and, let Launce go east or west, he ends there before the
day is out."

She knows it is too true; and suddenly her composure gives way, her
strength with it, and, throwing her arms about her father's neck, she
bursts into tears.

Very drearily the hours pass to the old man and the girl waiting and
listening in the large lonely house.

It is twelve o'clock before Horace comes home. He has seen nothing of
his brother since they met for lunch at the colonel's. He would ride
off then and there to make inquiries if his father would let him; but
the squire will not hear of such a thing. He sends them to their own
rooms, and sees to the fastening of doors and windows--a thing Honor
has never known him to do in all his life before--and then he sits down
in the large empty dining-room--the scene of many a jovial feast--to
wait for the morning light, and the news that must come with it!

But this is fated to be a night long remembered at Donaghmore. All her
life long Honor will look back upon it with dread--will remember the
deep anxiety, amounting to despair, that makes its black hours as they
creep by seem like days in ordinary life.

It is a moonless night, and the wind, which has risen to a gale, fills
the air with noises--the rattling of loosely-fastened shutters, the
sough of the pine trees behind the house, the thousand-and-one eerie
sounds that a high wind and night bring into empty rooms and corridors.

It is useless to go to bed--she could not sleep. Even if there was no
storm, the horrible doubt--which grows less a doubt every hour--that
the man who has met his death on Keif Moss is her brother Launce would
be enough to banish sleep from her eyes.

And then Aileen's dream of the grave cut deep in the moss, and hidden
from sight by green branches--it all comes back vividly now, and adds
to the girl's torture. She has no l