sudden unlooked-for dignity; "and that I would lay down this hour to
see him free and safe once more."

"Then you will help us?" she says eagerly.

"Shure I'm the most helpless of ould creatures, but I'll do what I
can," he answers guardedly, and with so swift a change of voice and
manner that Honor almost loses hope.

However, there is no choice left her now, nothing to be done but to
give the man her poor little bribe and go home, leaving Power Magill to
his mercy.

Little does the girl dream, as she walks sadly back to Donaghmore
through the waning light, that she has formed a protecting barrier
round the old home and its inmates that will outlast the storms of
years.

CHAPTER VIII.

Very slowly the days pass at Donaghmore; a detachment of the
constabulary keeps strict guard over the old house, the master of which
lies sick unto death.

It seems as if the old man's life is fading with the year. The shot
that entered his arm shattered the bone immediately below the elbow,
and, the wound not healing, this, together with the shock and
excitement of that night's work, is telling on him.

Honor goes about like a ghost; she looks pitifully changed; but there
is only faithful old Aileen to be troubled by her looks. Launce has
gone back to Dublin and Horace has joined his regiment at Aldershot.

One care has been lifted off the girl's heart; Power Magill is no
longer a prisoner.

The first thing that Honor heard on her return from Scanlan's cottage
was that Power Magill and two others had got away, having given their
guards the slip on the mountain road between Glen Doyle and Drum.

The body of the man who was shot on the moss that terrible night has
been taken to Dublin by his friends, to be buried among his own people;
and, if he was Kate Dundas's lover, as Launce in his jealous rage
declared, the widow has certainly taken his loss very coolly.

But there is one thing that she is not taking quite so coolly, and that
is the desertion of her admirers. Rose Mount is no longer the center of
attraction to the neighborhood--its pretty drawing-room is deserted.
Men do not care to visit at a house about which such ugly reports are
circulated. They even fight shy of its beautiful mistress in public,
and this is perhaps the cruelest form which punishment could assume for
such a woman as Mrs. Dundas. She knows nothing of friendship and very
little of love, but her desire for admiration is boundless, and her
chan