; WIZARD'S 
 t KNOT I 
 
 WILLIAM 
 BARRY
 
 UNTV. OF CALIF. LIBRARY. LOS ANGELES 
 
 THE WIZARD'S KNOT
 
 THE WIZARD'S KNOT 
 BY WILLIAM BARRY 
 
 AUTHOR OF "THE TWO STANDARDS," "THE 
 NEW ANTIGONE," "ARDEN MASSITER," ETC. 
 
 " Yc shall sing plaintive lays, 
 Hearkening to which men shall dream : 
 In the world shall no music be sweeter." 
 
 The Children ofLir. 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 THE CENTURY CO. 
 1901
 
 Copyright, 1901, by 
 THE CENTURY Co. 
 
 THE OE V1NNE PREM
 
 TO 
 
 DOUGLAS HYDE 
 
 PRESIDENT OF THE GAELIC LEAGUE 
 AND TO 
 
 STANDISH HAYES O'GRADY 
 
 AUTHOR OF "SILVA GADELICA" 
 WITH ADMIRATION AND SYMPATHY 
 
 SAMHAIN, 1900 
 
 2125607
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER PAGE 
 
 i FROM THE HUNTING FIELD 3 
 
 ii HECATE 12 
 
 in THE GRAY TOWER 23 
 
 iv POET AND MAGICIAN 32 
 
 v ON RUMOR'S WINGS 44 
 
 vi SONGS OF OLD TIME 57 
 
 vn A HEDGE-SCHOOL 77 
 
 vin THE MIST AND THE STREAM 94 
 
 ix FANCY PAINTING 113 
 
 x THE FORBIDDEN DOOR 128 
 
 xi CHILDREN OF LIR 143 
 
 xn FREEDOM 162 
 
 xin IUBHDAN'S MINSTRELSIES 176 
 
 xiv CASTING A HOROSCOPE 189 
 
 xv ST. BRANDAN'S KITCHEN 201 
 
 xvi THE LAST MAY DAY 211 
 
 xvn LANDLORD AND TENANT 232 
 
 xvni HAWK OR EAGLE 247
 
 viii CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER PAGE 
 
 xix VARIOUS THREADS 267 
 
 xx IMPERIAL AUGUST 281 
 
 xxi THE COUSINS 294 
 
 XXII BY THE LONNDUBH 308 
 
 xxni STRICKEN 326 
 
 xxiv AFTER MANY DAYS 345 
 
 xxv WIDOW AND WIFE 364 
 
 xxvi THE DEVIL'S CRAG 383 
 
 xxvii HAND IN HAND 392 
 
 xxvin CEANGAIL THE BINDING 403
 
 THE WIZARD'S KNOT
 
 THE WIZARD'S KNOT 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 FROM THE HUNTING FIELD 
 
 KiNMORE was a great old castle down in the 
 country of MacCarthyRiach,on the edge of the 
 Atlantic, its one huge tower dating back to King 
 Richard II ; but landward it had grown into a mod- 
 ern mansion of dark blue limestone, a lawn inter- 
 posed between its front windows and the oak thickets 
 which were its pride, a brook running stealthily 
 along its west wing to the stormy or silent waters of 
 the Fiord. This evening the doors stood wide open, 
 though it was November, and the air was dusk, and 
 rain came up the wind. Arrows of shivering light 
 struck through the hall and made its gloom visible. 
 The curtains fluttered, sparks leaped out of the slum- 
 bering turf, which was piled up on a hearth, broad 
 and deep, where no man sat to warm himself. There 
 was quiet when the wind dropped, when the light 
 had gone out. A curious, dull quiet, not expectant, 
 
 3
 
 4 THE WIZARD'S KNOT 
 
 nor yet without some tinge of apprehension. The 
 castle had its ghosts; the winter's wind seemed to 
 be calling them in a low whisper from their hiding- 
 places, and, as the blast rattled and shook the open 
 doors, a young man, wrapped up to the chin in a 
 riding-cloak, and wearing heavy boots without 
 spurs, passed through hastily from the weather out- 
 side. His boots clattered on the stone floor ; he was 
 clearly in a fierce or an agitated mood. 
 
 "O'Sullivan," he called, when he had reached the 
 foot of the marble staircase a strange piece of ar- 
 chitecture, Italian Renaissance, to find in a southern 
 Irish castle. "O'Sullivan, where are you?" 
 
 A door opened abruptly at the side ; out came an 
 elderly but smart-looking man, whom you would at 
 once have taken for what he was the butler, house- 
 steward, major-domo, of Renmore. He ran forward 
 a step, paused, and broke into a high voice: "God 
 send I may live, Mr. Edmund, is it you?" His 
 throat seemed to shake the words and splinter them. 
 
 "Me, me; of course it is me! Why not, O'Sulli- 
 van? But where 's Sir Philip?" 
 
 O'Sullivan looked thunderstruck. "I was send- 
 ing after you this very minute, sir," he stammered. 
 "You have n't seen him ? My old brain is all in com- 
 motion. Don't you know, Mr. Edmund, what 's 
 happened at all ?"
 
 FROM THE HUNTING FIELD 5 
 
 Edmund Liscarroll looked his astonishment. 
 "I 'm only just back from the village," said he. "I 
 want my cousin immediately. What has happened ?" 
 He took a step forward, then moved back again. 
 "Did you hear it too? Was there ever such mad- 
 ness?" His voice dropped, and he turned and bit 
 his lip viciously. O'Sullivan watched him in be- 
 wilderment. The wind seemed to be driving the 
 light in flakes through the air, as if making game of 
 it, and of them so Edmund thought, after his 
 poet's fashion, which no access of trouble or surprise 
 could beat out of him. 
 
 "You know it?" he repeated with an ashy, eager 
 countenance. "How? Who brought the news?" 
 
 The steward drew back deferentially. He always 
 resented "Master Edmund's" sharp temper, but 
 dared not show it. The young man's rage had often 
 daunted him. "Yerra, what would I know," he an- 
 swered, "but that twenty minutes ago Banba came 
 back to the stable, and she half killed with galloping, 
 the poor beast, the reins cut into shavings, and the 
 saddle gone from her ? " 
 
 "Banba ? the mare Philip took out this morning to 
 the meet? Without her master? Did you say 
 alone, O'Sullivan?" 
 
 Edmund had become a different man on hearing 
 this news. He came up and gripped the steward's
 
 6 THE WIZARD'S KNOT 
 
 hand hard. Now his face was in a flame. The old 
 servant could make him out less than ever. 
 
 "I did, Mr. Edmund," he answered sulkily. "The 
 mare was with herself only, and in a lather of sweat, 
 and wild, like the horse of The O'Donoghue. 
 Where 's Sir Philip ? you ask me. Sure, I was ask- 
 ing you that, sir. I 'm sending boys east and west 
 to get tidings of him. If we don't hear before night, 
 't is dead he is, or as bad, in some bog-hole." 
 
 "He can't be dead. He must n't be dead," replied 
 Edmund, in unsteady tones, while the steward lis- 
 tened, between dislike to the "Tanist," or heir-pre- 
 sumptive a by-word he had for this young man 
 and fear of what might befall himself ere long. If 
 the master had broken his neck, here was Sir Ed- 
 mund; Renmore fell to him; but would O' Sullivan 
 be his major-domo? 
 
 "Come," cried the other, shaking off his deep rev- 
 erie, for, as he stood there, he dreamt with his eyes 
 open. "Come, let us look upstairs everywhere. 
 He may be in the house. Not dead, I tell you;" 
 but as he sprang along the marble steps, and O' Sul- 
 livan followed, a keen ear would have heard him 
 muttering, "Yet, who knows ? dead perhaps would 
 be best!" 
 
 They hurried and scurried over corridors hung 
 with classic pictures, into fine old dusty rooms, and
 
 FROM THE HUNTING FIELD 7 
 
 at last up into the tower, which had its narrow stone 
 steps passing from story to story, its small windows 
 set in masonry ten feet thick, its rat-haunted garrets. 
 A mere solitude! There was not a living man in 
 Renmore but themselves. With terror they looked 
 in each other's faces. 
 
 "We must try the stables; he would go there to 
 inquire after Banba," said Edmund, as they left the 
 topmost rooms. Darkness was falling; the night 
 seemed to make a third in their company, and to 
 grow more palpable with every step they took. 
 
 Their way lay through the hall. It was now in 
 dense shadow, except for a sparkle from the glow of 
 the turf. As they reached the stair-head, a gust 
 more impetuous than before dashed the open doors 
 together. They could see nothing. Next minute 
 the doors swung back; a dim, solid outline, as of 
 some figure interposing, hid the fire from them. 
 "God's life! what 's that?" cried O'SulIivan. 
 
 The figure made no movement. It was seated 
 close to the hearth, and its back was to the men who 
 now, with a certain thrill not dread, nor hope, but 
 mingled of these came down and drew near it. 
 The murky flames flickered and danced with a fan- 
 tastic grace. Edmund was in advance; his hand 
 touched the shoulder of the apparition, and he 
 started back. He had actually been on the point of
 
 8 THE WIZARD'S KNOT 
 
 crying out, "Who are you?" when his eyes antici- 
 pated his speech and gave it a different turn. 
 
 "Phil ! what in the name of wonder has happened 
 to you?" he cried. "Why are you sitting here?" 
 
 Had it been a thing not of flesh and blood, his 
 tones would have expressed equal horror a greater 
 they could not. The seated man answered no word 
 during a moment which gaped with frightful emo- 
 tions, making it seem tragic in its length. 
 
 "Do say something, Phil, for God's sake!" 
 whispered his cousin, steadying himself with a hand 
 on the low-backed chair. "What is it? Are you 
 hurt?" 
 
 Sir Philip since he it was, in cords and pink, as 
 just home from the chase lifted a hand to his fore- 
 head, gave a glance round, and looked into the fire 
 once more. O'Sullivan shook his head ominously. 
 He was beginning to speak when Sir Philip's voice 
 stopped him. 
 
 "I thought I went out hunting to-day," he said in 
 a sleepy tone, addressing nobody in particular. "Did 
 I go?" He was feeling about in search of some 
 object. "Here is my hunting-crop," he continued, 
 after an interval. "How comes it on my knees? 
 Was n't I at the meet?" 
 
 "You were, indeed, Sir Philip," answered O'Sul- 
 livan, with an extraordinarv tenderness in his ex-
 
 FROM THE HUNTING FIELD 9 
 
 pression, quite unlike the sarcastic or sulky tones in 
 which he had spoken to Edmund. "You were that 
 same, sir; and you took Banba with you. Did the 
 mare fall, or how was it?" 
 
 The young baronet appeared not to be listening. 
 "Those Galway horses are the devil for jumping," 
 he said reflectively, in his curious, disengaged way, 
 "but they don't understand hunting in Munster. 
 She just put up her forefeet on the wall, and there 
 I was ! or did I dream it ? lying on the flat of my 
 back! That infernal Banba! She '11 have to be 
 shot to-morrow." 
 
 O' Sullivan had been stirring up the embers, which 
 now burst into a glorious blue and yellow flame. 
 But while Sir Philip was soliloquizing, he motioned 
 to Edmund and drew his finger slowly across his 
 forehead. The young man made a sign of intelli- 
 gence. He took his cousin's arm and helped him, 
 unresisting, to stand up. "My dear Phil." said he 
 entreatingly, "you have had a rough day ; you ought 
 to be in bed. Come, I will help you to your room." 
 
 "No, no," answered the other, shaking himself 
 loose. "I 'm not hurt. I 've had a fall, perhaps. 
 Yes, I must have had. But, then, I walked home. 
 It 's nothing. Don't stare like that, you fellows. 
 How soon is dinner, O'Sullivan Beara?" He smiled, 
 lurched forward, and had nearly tripped himself up.
 
 io THE WIZARD'S KNOT 
 
 All his motions put one in mind of a man who 
 wanted to outface it that he was none the worse for 
 a drop too much. His short, red curls over the pink 
 of his hunting- jacket took on a fiery gleam as he came 
 up to the hearth and bent close to it again. Erect, 
 he stood a head taller than his cousin ; they had some 
 points of resemblance,too,but Philip's habitual ruddi- 
 ness of feature, deepening now to a violet tinge, was 
 in contrast with the delicate, pale, though not con- 
 sumptive look of his cousin, whose quick gestures 
 had a passion in them more subtle, if not more pro- 
 found, than the baronet's heavier movements. 
 
 "Put your hand to him, Mr. Edmund." whispered 
 the major-domo. "If he was n't the soberest man 
 in the barony, 't is overtaken I 'd say he was this 
 night. Won't you go to bed, sir?" he added coax- 
 ingly to the half-sleeping youth, who had sunk 
 down in his chair, the image of fatigue. 
 
 "Send for Dr. Driscoll," said Edmund, and then 
 he struck his forehead in desperation. "No, we 
 must n't send ; the country would ring with it. What 
 in Heaven's name is to be done?" He walked up 
 and down the hall, muttering to himself. "Bad here 
 and worse there ! A day of misfortunes ! Philip, 
 I say," coming to the bright circle of the flame and 
 shaking his cousin rudely, "will you dine or will 
 you sleep? This is no place for you, anyhow. I 
 am going to take you upstairs."
 
 FROM THE HUNTING FIELD n 
 
 The sharp voice, the hands laid on him, appeared 
 to rouse Philip. He thrust Edmund aside. "I told 
 you, O' Sullivan, to get dinner ready; don't you 
 hear?" he said in his throat. "And to-morrow 
 have Banba shot. Eddie, leave me to myself. Are 
 you master in this house ?" 
 
 He staggered along, caught hold of the balus- 
 trade, and clinging to it began to go up the stairs. 
 "I '11 get him into the dining-room," said his cousin. 
 "You put dinner on the table. Send up some brandy 
 first." To which O'Sullivan made no reply, but 
 disappeared, as he had come, through the side door.
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 HECATE 
 
 WHEN Philip, repulsing every offer of help, 
 had groped his way into the dim-lighted room 
 above, he threw himself into an armchair and fell 
 asleep. Edmund watched him in silence. "Not an 
 atom of good sending for Driscoll," he repeated 
 with a sort of exasperation ; "the message would be 
 taken wrong, and Phil, my lad, you would n't have 
 the ghost of a chance. Why did you run your head 
 against a stone wall, this day of all days? Well, 
 whatever comes of it, I shall get the credit I always 
 did. What an unlucky whelp I am !" 
 
 He kept on saying, thinking, this and the like, as 
 more candles were brought in, plates laid, and dinner 
 spread on the big oak table. There was a roaring 
 fire in the chimney. "Will I close the curtains?" 
 asked O'Sullivan; " 't is n't right for the man in the 
 moon to be showing his face at the window." 
 
 Edmund sighed impatiently. "Do as you like, 
 good man. Where 's the brandy? You have it? 
 moisten a napkin with some and lay it on Sir
 
 HECATE 13 
 
 Philip's forehead. We dare not wake him. Dip 
 the cloth well ; that way now ; it is better than pour- 
 ing it down a sick man's throat." 
 
 "Your honor should know, indeed, what would be 
 best," murmured the steward. "Whisky is a fine 
 greatcoat when you Ve lost your clothes, as the song 
 says ; but I never hear tell it would do for a poultice 
 on a man's head. Is it to tie it I would?" 
 
 His cousin had bound this "brandy poultice" 
 about Philip's head as a compress. In a few min- 
 utes it began to affect the patient; he sat up and 
 looked round; then spoke as if coming to himself. 
 "I have had a nasty fall ; but no bones broken ; my 
 head is all right. What is this?" He would have 
 pulled off the bandage. Explanations followed. 
 He was now quite sensible, and grasped Edmund's 
 hand. "You did well not to send for Driscoll," he 
 said, rising and taking his place at the table. "I 
 feel a bit queer, that 's all. I shall be as right as a 
 trivet to-morrow." 
 
 "With God's help," concluded O' Sullivan, look- 
 ing at his master. "With God's help, Sir Phil. 
 You 're young yet ; a little thing would n't hurt you. 
 'T is we ould stagers must be saying to ourselves, like 
 King Cormac MacArt, 'The end of a boat is drown- 
 ing; the end of health is a sigh.' But you will be 
 out with the hounds on Tuesday, please God."
 
 i 4 THE WIZARD'S KNOT 
 
 He had fallen into Gaelic, as almost all, gentle and 
 simple, did in that neighborhood at whiles, the peo- 
 ple using it as their everyday speech, their masters 
 hearing it from them above all, in moments of 
 excited feeling, and so getting acquainted with more 
 phrases than they could readily pronounce. It was 
 the native tongue of Miles O'Sullivan; as for Ed- 
 mund, he not only spoke and wrote in it, but com- 
 posed Irish songs, lyrical, sentimental, facetious; 
 and Sir Philip understood what was said, though he 
 seemed disdainful of its pathos and beauty. The old 
 language was nothing to him. For books he had no 
 turn; he detested reading; and he laughed in his 
 sudden, silent way at Edmund the poet. To-night 
 he found himself in another mood. " The end of 
 health is a sigh/ " he repeated, without looking up. 
 "That 's pretty, O'Sullivan; but you will see me 
 all there to-morrow, no fear." 
 
 The steward began to serve dinner. He was 
 thinking, "Why would n't Sir Phil say 'Plase God/ 
 like the rest of us? That Edmund there is a high 
 young man, and he 's saucy enough to me ; but he 'd 
 say it. Is it because the master was brought up at 
 those English schools across the water? That was 
 his mother's doing, bad scran to her." But of all 
 this Miles's open, half-smiling face betrayed as little 
 as his deferential and affectionate service about the 
 young men.
 
 HECATE 15 
 
 They made a poor meal, without conversation, 
 Philip recovering by degrees from his fit, Edmund 
 glancing at him frequently across the table, and for- 
 getting to empty the silver cup which he raised to 
 his lips. The fire blazed; the misty yellow moon 
 stared in at the long windows; occasional drops of 
 storm whipped the panes and drove on; as the hour 
 went by, and the young master seemed more cheer- 
 ful, his cousin fidgeted, got up and walked about, 
 struck the turf-sods with his heel, and at last told 
 Miles they should want him in a couple of hours, 
 and he had better wait up. He took the hint and 
 retired. 
 
 Still Edmund did not speak. There was silence, 
 which instead of quieting the baronet excited him. 
 He returned the other's sidelong glances with a look 
 into which fever threw some of its wildness. "Do 
 you think me very ill, Eddie?" he said at last. 
 "Your face is as black as thunder." 
 
 "I wish I knew," returned his cousin, "how you 
 do feel. I have something to " he stopped dead 
 and a lump came into his throat. Philip eyed him 
 with amazement. 
 
 "You are not in a fright about me?" he said. 
 "Really, Edmund, I thought you had more pluck. 
 It is all that poetry." 
 
 A curious smile crossed Edmund's lips and van- 
 ished. "Time is running on," he said almost with
 
 16 THE WIZARD'S KNOT 
 
 a groan; "it must be done. Phil, my dear boy, can 
 you bear bad news ? ' I'm sorry cut to the heart 
 but there it is." 
 
 "There is what?" asked Philip. "Out with it, 
 old fellow, and never mind me." But his cousin, 
 like a man paralyzed, sat and glared at him help- 
 lessly. 
 
 "What bad news have you?" insisted the other, 
 getting up as he spoke. A large glass of brandy 
 stood at his elbow ; he took it down at a gulp. "Out 
 with it," he cried again, "my head is splitting." 
 
 At length in a strangled whisper, in a voice that 
 was strange to himself, Edmund let the word loose. 
 "Phil, Lady Liscarroll is back in Ireland." 
 
 It was a blow of stunning force, under which the 
 young man winced. 
 
 "My mother? Back in Ireland? I thought she 
 was a thousand miles away; that she would never 
 come back. Where do you say she is?" 
 
 "In the village, at Dr. Driscoll's. It is all that 
 flighty Mrs. Driscoll's doing, I could take my oath." 
 
 The news had overpowered them, and they sat 
 speechless. The moon stared in, the rain struck 
 heavily on the panes. "How do you know?" said 
 Philip, after many minutes. His mind was all 
 abroad. 
 
 "Because I have seen her. I was coming this
 
 HECATE 17 
 
 afternoon from Cathal O'Dwyer's, and the doctor's 
 wife met me. She beckoned me aside with a smile 
 and a flounce ; there was something to show me if I 
 would step in at Driscoll's. I went, expecting I 
 don't know what. I was taken into the haggard, 
 left to my own thoughts awhile, and then the door 
 opened, and a lady came out to me." 
 
 "You don't tell me that my mother is her own 
 maid's guest, in my village?" The man's shame 
 and anguish were extreme. His eyes filled with hot 
 tears. 
 
 "I tell you no less. In mourning Philip, mark 
 what I say in mourning, but with the air I know 
 so well, with a steady step, she walked up to where 
 I stood and put out her hand. Forgive me I drew 
 back." His cousin winced again, but said nothing. 
 "We had n't much talk. There she was Lady 
 Liscarroll. In a few hours the village people would 
 hear of it our neighbors the whole country." 
 
 "But what brought her ? In mourning, you say ? 
 That should'be a sign of grace. Why is she here?" 
 
 His cousin's embarrassment grew every instant. 
 He got up and went over to a heap of newspapers 
 which were lying on the ground. "Do you never 
 read anything in the Times' but sporting news?" 
 he asked almost savagely. "Phil, I must give you 
 a harder blow than you got from Banba this after-
 
 i8 THE WIZARD'S KNOT 
 
 noon. Here is what I read three weeks ago; you 
 don't know it yet. I was in two minds whether to 
 keep the paper or destroy it, until I said to myself 
 you might be inquiring for it if the devil put it into 
 your head. Look down this list." 
 
 They held the paper up to the light, and Edmund 
 directed his cousin's eye to an announcement among 
 the recent deaths. It was curt enough. Philip 
 recited the words in an undertone, as people read 
 letters on the stage. 
 
 "At Wiesbaden, on 2d November, Henry Lifford, 
 formerly captain in the King's Third Regiment of 
 Dragoon Guards, very suddenly." 
 
 "What does it mean by Very suddenly'?" asked 
 Philip, in the same tone. 
 
 "I think it means he killed himself," answered his 
 cousin. 
 
 "After gambling at Wiesbaden?" 
 
 "After gambling at Wiesbaden. Now you know 
 what you should have known three weeks ago if you 
 had looked into your paper." 
 
 "But did you expect Lady Liscarroll back 
 again? You saw this piece of news and did n't 
 warn me." A dreadful agony came into Philip's 
 voice, though he neither sobbed nor shook. His
 
 HECATE 19 
 
 brain-fever had been scattered by the calamity which 
 tore his heart. 
 
 "I can't say I expected her back. She might not 
 have been with Lifford; we lost sight of her long 
 ago; it was never actually clear that Lifford had a 
 hand in it when she ran. We did n't know what 
 she was doing." 
 
 "My father always believed she went away with 
 Lifford." 
 
 "Put this and that together his death and her 
 coming to Driscoll's it must be Sir Walter was 
 right. There is only one living soul besides that 
 could tell us all the story, and that is Sarah North, 
 now Mrs. Driscoll. But she keeps her thin lips 
 tight. You will get no Queen's evidence from 
 Sarah North." 
 
 "Do I want any? You shake your head and say 
 I do. Have you more news, Eddie?" This stal- 
 wart young huntsman was a sad spectacle. His 
 brain would not work; he felt the lightning was in 
 the cloud, but on which side would it next be flash- 
 ing? His cousin pitied him, yet with a mixture of 
 impatient scorn. 
 
 "The lady gave me a commission," he said slowly; 
 "I brought it to save you a world of talk and scan- 
 dal. She has spent her fortune ; I did n't inquire how, 
 or what amount of it the bank at Wiesbaden has
 
 20 THE WIZARD'S KNOT 
 
 taken over. She calls herself penniless. She asks 
 as a right or a favor, I can hardly tell which, that 
 you will give her a home at Renmore." 
 
 Philip made a mighty effort to restrain himself. 
 "Did you tell Lady Liscarroll," he said passionately, 
 "that my father's grave is at Renmore ? Look, you 
 can see it from this window." 
 
 He flung the glass doors open, walked through, 
 and stood on the balcony. Edmund followed him. 
 The mist was rolling off; a purple-blue sky came 
 out in places, with faint stars, and the moon whiten- 
 ing. Away, but not far, under tall oaks, were lean- 
 ing gravestones. "My father lies there, Eddie," re- 
 peated his cousin. "Would Lady Liscarroll like to 
 live with that full in her view ?" 
 
 The scene was more stormy than peaceful; but 
 Death is the kingdom of peace. They felt somehow 
 quieted. "I hinted as much," said Edmund. 
 
 "And what did she say?" 
 
 "She answered, with the least little smile, which 
 made me harder than I ever felt to her God knows 
 that was hard enough! "I am not afraid of Sir 
 Walter, now he is dead !" 
 
 "She shall never come here!" exclaimed Philip. 
 "This it is to have a mother ! She shall not, Eddie. 
 Do you think she ought?" 
 
 "Let us discuss it indoors," said his companion,
 
 HECATE 21 
 
 turning from the uncanny, troubled night. And 
 when they were seated : "Phil, I owe you my best 
 advice ; but the decision lies with you. Thank God. 
 I have no mother I never knew mine. Sir Walter 
 was a kind father to me " 
 
 "And Renmore would be yours if I died child- 
 less." 
 
 "I don't deny it. Still, who am I that I should 
 come between a son and his mother?" 
 
 Philip groaned. "She has unmothered herself. 
 Why did she leave me? I was but fourteen her 
 only son. Why did she? And my father his 
 heart snapped in two." 
 
 "Blood is thicker than water," replied the heir- 
 presumptive. 
 
 "It is ; I can see it on her hands. Yet you would 
 have me take her in sit at table with her intro- 
 duce, with lies about her long convalescence, my 
 mother to her old friends again?" 
 
 Edmund gave him a piercing look. "I think you 
 will," he said. 
 
 "Why, in the name of all that is bad?" 
 
 "Can you fancy your mother starving outside 
 your gates, the country looking on?" It was a cold 
 voice which uttered these unpalatable truths; Ed- 
 mund hated himself for it; but the tone would not 
 melt or soften.
 
 22 THE WIZARD'S KNOT 
 
 "I can't see my way," said Philip, his head droop- 
 ing on his outstretched hands. "To make her an 
 allowance, the estate being in such a condition, is 
 impossible. She will not go, since Lifford is dead. 
 I am under a curse." 
 
 "What noise is that below?" cried the other, 
 starting to his feet. "I hear voices. There are 
 footsteps on the stairs. And the door is opening. 
 Philip, be a man. Here 's O'Sullivan." 
 
 The steward tumbled into the room, pale as a 
 sheet, all his golden words spent. He could only 
 gasp, "Sir Philip, your mother!" and reel against 
 the wall as a stately person entered behind him, in 
 mourning from head to foot. 
 
 "Yes," said a calm, self-sustained voice, "your 
 mother, Sir Philip. Don't you know me?" 
 
 "You are Lady Liscarroll," said her son, rising 
 and facing her. "My mother died ten years ago."
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 THE GRAY TOWER 
 
 THAT word of Philip's lightened through the 
 room, loosing deep thunders in the imagina- 
 tion; and the lookers-on drew their breath heavily. 
 
 "Did Edmund bring you my message my 
 prayer, if you will?" said her ladyship, recovering 
 as from a sudden blow. Her face was touched with 
 color beneath its dark lace, and the large, clear eyes 
 so like Philip's sparkled for an instant with pain, 
 then were steady. 
 
 "Why do you rise up from the dead to torment 
 us?" interposed her nephew, coming from the win- 
 dow. "Is this your reason?" He held out the 
 newspaper, almost as a challenge; she caught the 
 allusion, and a flood of crimson dyed her face and 
 brow. 
 
 "I have come home to my son," was the reply, 
 tremulous but undaunted. "Did you give him my 
 message?" 
 
 "You never came to my father," cried Philip ; "he 
 23
 
 24 THE WIZARD'S KNOT 
 
 is dead, by your hand. Is that black you wear in 
 his remembrance?" 
 
 Again she put the stinging words aside. "Philip, 
 you are all that is left to me," said this astonishing 
 woman, heedless of the stroke she might bring down 
 by her bold speech, "I am without house or home; 
 I have no money, no friends, every one has turned 
 against me;" her voice sank into a melting key. 
 "Have I done wrong to come here ? Where would 
 you have me go?" 
 
 The steward, who had served her and Sir Walter 
 from their first days together at the castle, saw her 
 now with admiration putting forth her enchant- 
 ments again. He rebelled, and as of old was capti- 
 vated. " 'T is true for you, my lady," said O'Sulli- 
 van. "I beg pardon, Sir Philip; where else would 
 the mother turn if it was n't to her son ?" 
 
 "Silence, Miles," broke in Edmund, sharply. 
 "This is not affair of yours, or of mine. Yes, Lady 
 Liscarroll, I carried your words. You might have 
 waited for the answer till morning." 
 
 Hitherto the tall dark figure with its clear coun- 
 tenance freshened in the night wind, and its bright 
 hair under the widow's weeds, had been standing 
 close to the door. It now moved hastily for- 
 ward. The lady put out her hands to Philip, who 
 recoiled and fell against the dinner-table, stagger-
 
 THE GRAY TOWER 25 
 
 ing with it toward the fire. Edmund caught him, 
 or he would have come down upon the blazing 
 hearth. 
 
 "Go away, don't touch him," cried he in a voice 
 of killing contempt and hatred. "Your son has 
 been struck once to-day. Spare him your presence. 
 Go back to Sarah North." 
 
 He was helping the baronet into a chair, putting 
 water to his lips, doing what he could to keep him 
 from swooning. The lady clasped her hands with a 
 gesture of well-acted pity; but she made no further 
 attempt to approach her son. Philip had not lost 
 consciousness ; he grasped Edmund by the arm and 
 stood up, resolute, though still in a mental haze. 
 "You should have waited till I sent word," he mut- 
 tered with difficulty, not exchanging looks with the 
 strange woman who called herself his mother, and 
 whose voice and features floated slowly up to him 
 out of his childhood's dreams and long-forgotten 
 experiences. 
 
 "I was waiting," said Lady Liscarroll, "though 
 not sure of your cousin you always thought me a 
 stepmother to you, Edmund, don't deny it but a 
 boy from the castle told the doctor you were thrown 
 killed, he said out hunting, and they were 
 searching for the body. Could I wait when I heard 
 such news? Dr. Driscoll brought me; he is in the
 
 26 THE WIZARD'S KNOT 
 
 hall. Won't you let me nurse you, Philip?" No 
 tones could be more persuasive. 
 
 "If you lay your hand on me," said her son, with 
 an icy accent, "though you were ten times my 
 mother I will kill you. Send Dr. Driscoll to his 
 wife. I want no doctors. You shall hear in a 
 minute what I will do with you." 
 
 Her eloquence was no match for his. The mois- 
 ture died off her lips, and she felt a strangling in her 
 throat. Edmund, his nerves astrain, watched lest 
 Philip should get free from him and do some mis- 
 chief beyond retrieving. The steward was aware 
 of a chill sensation running through his old limbs. 
 What was Philip about to say? Did he know it 
 himself? The veins stood out on his forehead, and 
 when he spoke his voice grated harshly on the ears 
 of the listeners. 
 
 "Lady Liscarroll," he began formally, still turned 
 away from her, "you have come late to my father's 
 funeral. Late, but you are here. And my guest! 
 I must give you lodging. O'Sullivan, is the High 
 Room in the tower fit for use?" At these words 
 the air seemed to shiver about them all. 
 
 "I could n't tell you, Sir Philip," stammered 
 Miles, with colorless lips; "the wife would know 
 those things. 'T is long since any person slept in 
 the Gray Tower."
 
 THE GRAY TOWER 27 
 
 "This lady will sleep there to-night perhaps 
 more nights than one. Your wife will be her maid. 
 And you, Miles," with a horrid, unnatural laugh, 
 immediately snapped into the words that followed, 
 "shall be her jailer, seneschal, anything you please 
 to call it. Only you must see the tower is locked." 
 
 "I will go down to the village again," said the 
 lady, all her feathers drooping. She thought Philip 
 out of his mind. There came over her a sickening- 
 apprehension, as of plague suddenly broken out 
 among them. Even Edmund was startled. 
 
 "You will do no such thing, madam," replied her 
 son; "the tower is your place until I decide on a 
 change of air for you. Miles, go down and give my 
 compliments to Dr. Driscoll ; he need not wait. Tell 
 your wife my orders. Now, off with you. Lady 
 Liscarroll, pray be seated until everything is ready." 
 
 "Edmund, take my part," said the unhappy wo- 
 man, turning to him; "don't remember old scores. 
 I can't, I won't be imprisoned. What have I done? 
 Come home, and my son treats me like " 
 
 "Like his father's wife," interrupted Philip. 
 "This is my lookout, not Edmund's. O'Sullivan. 
 must I do my own errands?" 
 
 The steward was fleeing downstairs at that 
 sound, in as great disorder as had marked his en- 
 trance. Edmund gave the lady a chair and stood
 
 2 8 THE WIZARD'S KNOT 
 
 a little way off. In his mind's eye he was scruti- 
 nizing the large, dim chamber which he and O'Sulli- 
 van had peered into that afternoon, with its dream- 
 like air of abandonment, its brown walls, rotting 
 Indian mats on the stone floor, spindle-legged fur- 
 niture in dark woods, and spectral mirrors a room 
 such as Albert Durer would have put into his en- 
 gravings for its ghostliness. No one had slept in 
 it since the riotous old days when Renmore was 
 filled with drinking and card-playing parties, in the 
 prosperous war time, thirty years before this. He 
 fancied the lady alone up there, with no companion 
 or outlook but the sea. A caged eagle ! She would 
 be eating her heart alive. 
 
 The minutes dragged on, restless, yet slow, as 
 when a crowd is waiting to see an execution. No- 
 body spoke. There were stealthy noises in the 
 castle, feet on the stairs, movements heard from a 
 distance. Finally, O' Sullivan threw the doors open. 
 Two women, his wife and daughter, appeared be- 
 hind him, carrying lights in silver sconces. 
 
 "The tower-room is ready, sir," he announced, 
 with a tremble in his voice. 
 
 "I will show her ladyship the way," said Philip, 
 rising and taking one of the candles. "Will you 
 have the goodness to follow me? Edmund, you 
 come too."
 
 THE GRAY TOWER 29 
 
 His mother cast a look of anguish round the 
 room ; but she rose, undecided whether to obey or to 
 attempt fresh argument. She moved in the direc- 
 tion of the window, now ablaze with moonlight. 
 "Not that way," remarked her son, coldly. "You 
 will see ypur husband's tomb out there. I am giv- 
 ing you a chamber from which it is invisible." 
 
 Edmund said to himself, "Why does she not die 
 under these sarcasms? Has she gone through so 
 much that she feels it no longer?" 
 
 For the first time he pitied this faithless woman. 
 who had left husband and son in obedience to 
 passion, and had her reward thus. He was more 
 troubled than Philip, now leading the way from 
 these modern rooms, fitted up in the solid and even 
 majestic style of the later eighteenth century Louis 
 Seize a little travestied to the stern old keep of 
 Renmore. 
 
 The lights wavered, the stairs creaked; Lady 
 Liscarroll, a heavy lace shawl drooping round her 
 in lugubrious contrast to her son's crimson, walked 
 last and alone, with slow steps, as one that means to 
 face death ceremoniously. The silence was almost 
 unbroken. From dark corners a bat flew across the 
 lights now and again ; there was a sough of wind in 
 the higher parts of the castle, a thud as of mounting 
 waves against its walls. The steward's gray-haired
 
 3 o THE WIZARD'S KNOT 
 
 wife muttered prayers in Gaelic; Miles himself 
 would have done as much, but his lips refused to ar- 
 ticulate, and so the procession moved on. 
 
 "This is your room," said Philip, when they had 
 all but reached the highest landing, as he entered a 
 low-ceiled bedchamber. "You will be perfectly 
 safe here. The sea-gate is always locked; and on 
 the side of the house I shall keep the keys. Nora 
 will let us know your wishes. Good-night, Lady 
 Liscarroll." 
 
 He bowed and was going. His mother caught 
 him by the hand convulsively. 
 
 "Woman, you are scorching me !" cried the young 
 man, pulling himself away. "Sleep, if your con- 
 science will let you; better if it kept you awake." 
 
 "But I am heart-broken," she moaned ; "will you 
 never forgive me, Philip?" 
 
 "Never," he said; "don't think it. Good-night." 
 
 The others, except Nora, had not entered the 
 High Room, as it was called. Philip took up his 
 light, closed the door behind him, and descended the 
 stairs, last of the company. In a few minutes Lady 
 Liscarroll heard the lower door slam and the key 
 turn in its rusty lock. Nora was crying and praying 
 at the same time. But her mistress uttered no prayer. 
 
 "How like Sir Walter he is !" she thought, going 
 to the embrasure, in which she could stand upright,
 
 THE GRAY TOWER 31 
 
 while she looked out on the glittering waters. They 
 were tossing, with long manes of white foam on 
 them and dark blue gulfs between, at an immeasur- 
 able depth below. Sign of life there was none; 
 neither boat nor sail in any direction. A prison up 
 in the air, and her life now a memory. "1 must 
 make my escape from Renmore," she thought, "as 
 I did once before. But there 's no Henry now." 
 Her tears fell silently. 
 
 She stayed watching the moon and the waves all 
 that night the captive of her old self as Edmund 
 thought of her, a caged eagle. 
 
 "I have a thing to ask," said the baronet to his 
 cousin, when they were parting on the stairs; "you 
 are not in this affair at all ; but if I should be down 
 with fever, will you promise to keep these keys until 
 I am dead or myself again?" 
 
 "Where shall I find them?" answered Edmund, 
 simply. 
 
 "They will be always under my pillow." 
 
 "There is my hand," said his cousin. "I am not 
 satisfied that you are doing what you ought : you are 
 certainly breaking the law ; but I pledge you my 
 word the tower shall not be opened until you open it 
 yourself, or I am in your place." 
 
 They shook hands upon that agreement, and went 
 their ways to bed.
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 POET AND MAGICIAN 
 
 THE strand -by Renmore is a long, wide reach 
 of silver sand, with sea-weeds golden-green 
 scattered over it like strings of jewels, about which 
 the curlews whistle and the gulls dash in from the 
 great deep, crying like ghosts. There, beside the 
 high castellated rocks overgrown with a fairy forest, 
 flecked with tiny streamlets, Edmund was pacing, 
 meditative, at an early hour next morning. He had 
 left his cousin asleep, the tower locked, and a world 
 of sorrow in the dark house. Now his heart took to 
 itself the joy of these purple seas and the sunshine 
 that filled the little paradises of verdure, which not 
 winter itself could lay quite bare. He was sad and 
 glad, as men of his temperament are always. The 
 tragedy of last night went through him; yet he 
 could study it as a play, and judge it from outside. 
 How would it end ? What was his part in it ? The 
 waves, the sunlight must teach him that, like so 
 many secret things they had revealed before to him. 
 So he walked on the silver sands, meditating. 
 
 32 

 
 POET AND MAGICIAN 33 
 
 He had not been there long when a light, irregular 
 step, crunching the fine dust, drew on behind him 
 and made him turn. 
 
 "Ah, Cathal, what brings you this way ?" he cried 
 cheerily ; "you seldom leave your print on the sands." 
 
 "No, indeed," said the newcomer, with a laugh, 
 " 't is on the memories or the shoulders of the boys 
 of Renmore I am marking those hieroglyphics. But 
 Saturday is a day of rest for my head and my arm. 
 I lave, as the poet says, the impious sons of maledic- 
 tion to their groveling propensities, and I 'm walk- 
 ing in the air, contemplating the sun, like my ould 
 friend Socrates, the son of Sophroniscus, in the 
 comedy." 
 
 "You will be the better for it," said Edmund. 
 "Do I disturb your contemplations, or shall we walk 
 together?" 
 
 "Two against Hercules, says the proverb, Mr. 
 Edmund. But what's on you, sir? I would say 
 you were after having a heavy drame." 
 
 "What sharp eyes you have, O'Dwyer," said 
 young Liscarroll ; but it is no dream, I fear." 
 
 The schoolmaster did not care to question him, 
 and they went a little way in silence. If Edmund, 
 with his slight figure, dark hair, and dark eyes, was 
 the refined and almost Byronic version of the Irish 
 poet, Cathal O'Dwyer was the humorous, the 
 
 3
 
 34 THE WIZARD'S KNOT 
 
 Rabelaisian, the Gargantuesque. Tall and wiry, in 
 his faded blue coat with brass buttons, in his knee- 
 breeches and gray stockings, he threw into his walk 
 a dancing air, subdued but elastic he was one of the 
 best dancers in the country and his long, sallow 
 features, irregular enough, though not vulgar, had 
 a constant trick of seeming to smile when he was 
 most serious. He moved with a spring, quoted by 
 the yard, was merry, and not always wise, but even 
 in his cups an admirable Greek and Latin scholar. 
 Nor had he a friend closer to his heart than young 
 Edmund Liscarroll. His gray eyes twinkled now 
 with fun and curiosity. 
 
 "Well, my dear poet," he began, "if you did n't 
 drame last night, I did. And a quare drame it was. 
 Would you listen to me telling it?" 
 
 "Why not ? It will while away the time." 
 
 "As the Fenian heroes did with story-telling one 
 part of the night in ould tales, one part in singing 
 to the harp, and the rest in the sweetness of sleep 
 and slumber. But this drame I dreamt a second 
 time ; indeed, I could never forget it. 'T was about 
 your uncle, Sir Walter God rest him, poor man !" 
 
 "Last night you dreamt of Sir Walter? What 
 put that into your learned head?" 
 
 "Erudition, sir, is not soothsaying; that 's more 
 than I could tell you, or you me. The drame I 
 dreamt twice was, compendiously, the following. I
 
 POET AND MAGICIAN 35 
 
 thought in my sleep Sir Walter came to me, in his 
 ould scarlet hunting shuit, but he was dead ; I knew 
 him to be departed; and he muttered and mumbled, 
 for the teeth were out of his jaws, talking Irish or 
 English (bad luck to his English 't was that ruined 
 him!) till I lost patience with the man entirely. 
 'Come hither, then/ says he, in a pet, 'and you '11 
 see what I mane.' My dear Mr. Edmund, with 
 Jihat I was standing by his grave, and it gaping like a 
 whale's mouth I 'm telling you no lie and says he, 
 pointing to it with a bony finger, 'When I go back 
 into that, another tenant will be sharing it.' In the 
 deep sleep that was on me, I trembled, and said I, as 
 well as I could in my fright, 'What other, Sir 
 Walter?' Once more he began to mutter and 
 mumble by times I could give a guess at the name, 
 and, high over ! 't was gone from me. I thought to 
 myself he said this or that but," checking his reci- 
 tation, and speaking more seriously, "no matter; 
 does n't Father Falvey tell us we 're a parcel of ould 
 women to be minding drames and pishogues? Let 
 his Reverence make out the rest of it. However, as 
 I 'm an approved man of 'veracity, that was my 
 drame." 
 
 "Sir Walter might well have been out of his grave 
 last night," said Edmund, bitterly. "I wish to God 
 his wife was in it." 
 
 "His wife the lovely, wicked woman that ran
 
 3 6 THE WIZARD'S KNOT 
 
 from him, as my Sheila ran from me ? Is n't she in 
 her own grave this day?" 
 
 "She is not, Cathal. You got one piece of news 
 in your sleep; did you hear no other waking?" 
 
 Cathal shook his head. "I was n't out in the 
 hanging mist after sundown ; and none of the neigh- 
 bors came in. Joan, good girl, spares the rush 
 candles on us and the sod of turf ; we go early to bed 
 often. T is n't like ould times whin we 'd sit up half 
 the night telling stories. So Lady Eleanor is n't 
 dead yet?" 
 
 "You may as well let it be known, Cathal, that my 
 aunt is at Renmore House. Say you had it from 
 me; if the country must talk, let it talk." 
 
 The schoolmaster gave a spring on hearing this 
 intelligence. It stirred him mightily, but he had 
 sense enough to perceive that Edmund was deeply 
 moved by the sudden resurrection of a story which, 
 in its time, had set tongues wagging thirty miles 
 round. As they paused on the edge of the green 
 waves, he soliloquized after his peculiar fashion. 
 
 "So there 's my drame! 'T was his wife Sir 
 Walter was dooming, and well it became him. Ah, 
 Mr. Edmund, my curse upon every woman but my 
 poor fool of a Joan however, she 's young yet 
 and my malediction upon love and them that gave 
 it to us. Would I like Sheila to come home on me,
 
 POET AND MAGICIAN 37 
 
 after she giving the back of her hand to me and the 
 poor child ? I don't think I would, but men are soft 
 and women hard, and that 's the way it is. And did 
 Sir Phil take it kindly?" 
 
 "A bad mother is more shame to a man than a bad 
 wife," said Edmund, scooping up the dry sand, 
 which he flung into the waves as they came dancing 
 before his feet. 
 
 "True for you, sir. 'T is a pity he could n't bind 
 her in bonds till the life was but of her. But how 
 tough they are the vipers ! I '11 engage Lady Elea- 
 nor has as fine a blush on her as the day she first 
 came to Renmore." 
 
 "On her cheek she has," said Edmund, laughing 
 scornfully. "Do you think it goes deeper?" 
 
 "Maybe not. We used to call her the Beautiful 
 Witch. Every one of us would dance to that 
 woman's music, I tell you, like a pack o' seals after 
 a fiddler." 
 
 "Even you, the White Wizard," laughed Edmund 
 again. "More shame for you, O'Dwyer! But if 
 the world ran after her, why did she break loose? 
 I was a lad of ten or eleven at the time, and got no 
 hint of the story, but I whistled and sang on my own 
 account when she flew across the sea to France." 
 
 "Indeed, you were no favorite with your aunt," 
 said Cathal ; "we all knew that. The people used to
 
 3 8 THE WIZARD'S KNOT 
 
 be saying she never forgave her husband for laving 
 the estate to you after Mr. Philip, instead of her own 
 relations." 
 
 "Yes, she hated me, and I gave her as good as I 
 got. We were always falling out; sometimes she 
 would try to make it up again and put little presents 
 in my room, and I broke them and flung the pieces 
 out of the window. Whatever she did, my aunt was 
 to me just a fair-faced, poison-brewing hag. Not 
 like you a harmless, necessary wizard." 
 
 "Harmless? You may say that," cried the other, 
 lifting his conical hat skyward. "What harm would 
 the like of me do to man or baste? If I do be 
 skilled in a few useful incantations, or take a cut o' 
 the cards once in a while, 't is to assist the poor peo- 
 ple I do it. Sure, I never give a cast of my art save 
 and except when Dr. Driscoll's medicines would do 
 them no more benefit than ditch-water. And that 's 
 often, God knows," he said, with a satirical laugh. 
 "But you have a right to call Lady Eleanor a hag. 
 Troth, she was a valiant and formidable beldame 
 the divil's cure to her, saving your presence." 
 
 "Put as many curses on her as you will find in the 
 Black Book of Moling," said her nephew, heartily. 
 "She will be a match for them all. But tell me. 
 Cathal, did you hear, or do you know, the ins and 
 outs of this bad business at the time ?"
 
 POET AND MAGICIAN 39 
 
 "Did I hear ?" echoed the wizard, pausing before a 
 miniature cave in the limestone, wreathed about in 
 withered Virginia creeper and made beautiful by a 
 sheet of falling foam that met the tide and danced 
 upon it. "I believe nothing that I hear, and but the 
 half of what I -see, Mr. Edmund. However, I made 
 a tale of it, aisy enough, to myself." 
 
 "You thought?" 
 
 "I thought young Lifford had good looks, and 
 Lady Eleanor had good eyesight, and 't was 
 Diarmuid and Grainne the second time with 
 them." 
 
 "That is simple. But why did n't my uncle chase 
 them till they were caught? Was Sir Walter only 
 a white-livered cur, after all?" 
 
 "He was not, sir," answered Cathal, flaring up 
 suddenly. "Am I white-livered? Yet I did the 
 same thing. Or less, for your uncle hunted high 
 and low to come at the captain. I could tell you the 
 way it was from myself." 
 
 Edmund let the old man recover his exhausted 
 breath in silence. O'Dwyer caught some of the 
 sparkling water and put it to his lips; then, not 
 without an effort, he continued: "God forbid you 
 should ever have the knowledge of these things ex- 
 perimentally, my dear young friend; but as a poet 
 you could go deep into them. Why was n't I hunt-
 
 40 THE WIZARD'S KNOT 
 
 ing down Sheila when she flew out upon the wind? 
 Tell me that if you can ?" 
 
 "You let the hawk go with her jesses to feed on 
 carrion," said Edmund. 
 
 "I did and I did n't. No, sir, I was broke, and 
 mad, and sick at the tidings. My blood ran red hot, 
 and thin was ice and snow inside me. If I caught 
 her that day, by the great God in heaven, I 'd be 
 pounding her bones till they were a paste, as you 'd 
 pound them in a mortar; I 'd make a corpse of the 
 woman. And, after that, she 'd be lying dead there, 
 laughing at me. Who would get the upper hand 
 thin, I ask you?" 
 
 "That 's a fine bit of soul-history," said Edmund. 
 "You remember the man that drowned his wife in a 
 bog-hole? but still she had the last word. You 
 did n't want to be a second volume of that helpless 
 omadanf" 
 
 "You have it now, sir. Maybe I was obnoxious 
 to reproach, but if you blame me as a fool, don't 
 blame me as a coward. Sir Walter had no manes 
 of striking Lifford, for he was gone out of sight. 
 Would he purshue Lady Eleanor till he brought her 
 down? till he choked and drowned her she screech- 
 ing victory out of the bog-hole? There it is all for 
 you."
 
 POET AND MAGICIAN 41 
 
 "He should never have married her," said the 
 young man. 
 
 Cathal showed his yellow teeth pleasantly. "Take 
 my word for it, 't was she married him. A great 
 catch he was for Miss Ashby, with his ould Irish 
 name, and his castle and his lands to say nothing 
 of his handsome face. I '11 pawn my life she put the 
 banns in herself." 
 
 "No, no, you 're taking the wrong end of the 
 story," said Edmund, laughing but provoked. 
 "Leave my uncle the credit of his infatuation. I 
 grant you Lady Liscarroll twisted him round her 
 little ringer when they were man and wife. The 
 Liscarrolls had always a terrible power of falling 
 in love." 
 
 "Will Miss O'Connor be saying as much on Tues- 
 day, I wonder," remarked O'Dwyer, plucking an 
 ivy-leaf from the face of the rock and chewing it. 
 
 His companion flushed up to the eyes, and his 
 under lip quivered. "Is the Lady of Silverwood 
 coming over on Tuesday as she promised?" he said, 
 with a stammer, affecting to watch the sea-mews 
 turning in the sunlight. 
 
 "To my hedge-school ? She will that, if the rain 
 keeps up in the sky. And you, Mr. Edmund ? But 
 you would n't miss it for a thousand pounds. So
 
 4 2 THE WIZARD'S KNOT 
 
 you lave the mocking word on your family? They 
 are under bonds to Cupid ? He 's cruel and sweet, 
 and his hands raich down to hell, says the Greek 
 poet. Go home, sir, and construe those lines ; then 
 pity Sir Walter, anyhow." 
 
 "It is an idyl of Moschus; I remember," said the 
 youth he was barely one-and-twenty still blush- 
 ing. "We will try how it rings in Irish some of 
 these days. All I say now is that if my uncle had 
 not been under a spell, he never would have brought 
 an English girl, a Protestant, London-bred, and ten 
 years younger than himself, home to Renmore. 
 Hallo!" breaking off with a start, "who conies 
 here?" 
 
 " 'T is the steward, Mr. O'Sullivan," said Cathal ; 
 "he will be wanting you, and I bid you good-morn- 
 ing. Don't mind me, sir ; there 's a goat-path along 
 the rocks I used to scramble upon when a gossoon. 
 Till Tuesday and Miss O'Connor!" 
 
 He began climbing, with no contemptible agility 
 as he would have said himself for a man of his 
 years, and was soon out of sight and call. 
 
 "What is it, Miles?" asked Edmund, in grave 
 disquiet. "Were you looking for me?" 
 
 "I was, sir," answered the steward. "Plaise come 
 up to the house at once. Sir Phil is very quare. 
 He did n't rise this morning ; and I think the fever
 
 POET AND MAGICIAN 43 
 
 is on him; he does n't appear to know any person 
 about his bed." 
 
 "You have not told Lady Liscarroll?" said the 
 other, his trouble increasing. 
 
 "I waited till you saw the master," said O'Sulli- 
 van. "If he was dying, she must know it, surely." 
 
 They almost ran in their eagerness to get to the 
 castle.
 
 CHAPTER V 
 ON RUMOR'S WINGS 
 
 THE wings of a scall-crow seemed to beat upon 
 Edmund's temples when he passed into the 
 great and stately chamber in which Philip was lying. 
 It had been kept dark ; he now let the sunshine pour 
 in upon his cousin's bed, hoping it might kindle some 
 touch of life inside the brain. But to no purpose. 
 The features, suffused and heavy, gave threatenings 
 of a paralytic stroke ; the eyes were closed and would 
 not open. O' Sullivan had roused his master several 
 times, only to be fixed by a glance without meaning, 
 and to hear inarticulate words that died in the throat. 
 No repugnance, such as Edmund felt to calling in 
 Dr. Driscoll which was opening the doors, he 
 argued, to Mrs. Driscoll could avail in a moment 
 so fraught with consequences. The doctor must 
 come at once. 
 
 He was already on the road; so much O' Sullivan 
 had ventured. Edmund saw him into the room on 
 his arrival, and helped him, with a sickening heart, 
 through the operations that followed. He bled his 
 
 44
 
 ON RUMOR'S WINGS 45 
 
 patient copiously; it was the one thing needful and 
 sufficient in the doctor's day, whatever the occasion ; 
 and, right or wrong, it had its effect on Sir Philip. 
 When next he opened his great hazel eyes, he recog- 
 nized his cousin, and was able to speak, faintly but 
 with understanding. 
 
 "I have brought you over the fence in fine style," 
 said Dr. Driscoll, with his slightly rasping accents, 
 turning to wash his large hands. He was an ill- 
 made man, tall but lean, and somehow crooked 
 you could hardly say where with a rather deformed 
 nose, which had suffered in an ancient quarrel with 
 friends or flagstones, and bushy gray eyebrows over 
 cavernous eyes. An ill-dressed man, too, smelling 
 of whisky and stale tobacco. Last night he had 
 been sent away from the castle, as he told his Eng- 
 lish wife, "with a flea in his ear" ; it was no modesty 
 that now held him back from dancing on the bed- 
 room floor; nothing but a remnant of professional 
 decorum, not utterly worn to rags in his five-and- 
 twenty years' campaign as a country doctor. He 
 had a heart by proxy the tender heart of his call- 
 ing; otherwise, he did but know that organ, said 
 Cathal O'Dwyer, "anatomically, as a muscle, and 
 financially, as a source of revenue." The interpre- 
 tation might be that when he married Sarah North 
 she put her savings into his business. He treated
 
 46 THE WIZARD'S KNOT 
 
 his patients like a gentleman as long as they were 
 ill ; but the rest of mankind, and these after recovery, 
 seemed to him again borrowing from the school- 
 master "gross of appetite, crafty, and full of 
 malice." And said Cathal, "How quare a thing it 
 is that we do be taking the world for a cracked six- 
 penny glass to our own coarse faitures! 'T is his 
 reflection the doctor sees and spreads it out." With 
 O'Dwyer the medicine-man had long waged a war 
 of epigrams; but when, on hearing this account of 
 himself, he said blandly to Orbilius another name 
 for the wizard among his grown-up scholars "I 
 fear, sir, you are losing your olden adjectival might," 
 it was felt that victory hovered doubtful on each 
 helm. Driscoll had a tongue as keen as his best 
 lancet, and was a famous hand at drawing blood 
 with either. 
 
 But his "craft and malice" now seemed to com- 
 mand a splendid scope. "Yes, Mr. Edmund," he 
 said, with a consequential air, "the baronet is in for a 
 stiff run, though he 's over the first fence. He will 
 not be himself again yet. And he '11 want good 
 nursing. I '11 send up Mrs. Driscoll ; she knows him 
 from his childhood, though I '11 be missing her sadly 
 at home. But, indeed, I have a congratulatory mes- 
 sage from her to Lady Liscarroll, if I might see her 
 ladyship one moment."
 
 ON RUMOR'S WINGS 47 
 
 This conversation took place in the drawing-room, 
 which had been fenced off from the older hall, and 
 had windows opening on the lawn. 
 
 "I will convey your wife's good wishes to my 
 aunt," said Edmund, keeping down his voice; "you 
 will not be surprised if she sees no visitors at pres- 
 ent. As for the nursing, I have a plan which will 
 not deprive you of Mrs. Driscoll's society. The 
 steward's wife was a kind of foster-mother to him, 
 you know. She will attend on Sir Philip." 
 
 The doctor hummed and hawed. "I would have 
 liked my own nurse in so complicated a case," he 
 said. "The ould woman is good enough to mind 
 a baby; but here is brain fever disclosing itself. 
 Mrs. Driscoll knows the pharmacopoeia almost as 
 consummately as myself." 
 
 "Then she can help us by mixing the medicines," 
 said Edmund, gravely. 
 
 "And she is not it would be no use for her to 
 call on her ould mistress that was so kind to her?" 
 asked the doctor. 
 
 "Not for a while," said young Liscarroll, rising 
 to cut short the argument. 
 
 "By my hand, sir," answered Driscoll, angry but 
 smiling, "they may well call you the Tanist no 
 offense meant but I 'd be calling you Renmore it- 
 self. 'T is you that 's in the saddle."
 
 48 THE WIZARD'S KNOT 
 
 He had neither opened the door nor got the key to 
 this incident; and it ruffled all his feathers. What 
 had overtaken Lady Liscarroll ? She was to be kept 
 out of sight, clearly. Well and good; Mrs. Dris- 
 coll's tongue was as sharp as his own ; and before the 
 day had run out it would set the neighborhood talk- 
 ing. The doctor despised Philip as an ill-bred, 
 high-nosed English churl that never had a word 
 for him and passed by his wife without seeing her. 
 They were enemies by instinct and by fate, doomed 
 to live in one village, like rats in an egg-box. Dr. 
 Driscoll's fancy flew near the ground; of this kind 
 were his metaphors. He could not deny that Ed- 
 mund was what the people thought him a lad of 
 genius that might have been inspired by that most 
 gifted and terrible among the fairy-folk the Lean- 
 nan Sidhe. But while he rather dreaded the poet, 
 he had nothing but contempt for the "Sassenach 
 spawn," who never opened his mouth in public, and 
 seldom in private who was a sportsman in the 
 hunting field, but never invited company to his 
 castle. If he got now the red wound of death," 
 muttered the doctor, driving away, "I would n't shed 
 a tear, unless to see Edmund in the stirrups short- 
 ness of life and hell to the two of them ! But we '11 
 get a grip on the son yet, by manes of the mother, 
 or Sarah is more fool than the day I bought her."
 
 ON RUMOR'S WINGS 49 
 
 Such a venomous fire, as they say in those parts, 
 had Lady Liscarroll set alight by her early and her 
 late coming to Renmore. It was soon blazing 
 merrily. The neighbors had her name in all their 
 mouths by nightfall with questions which no man, 
 no woman even, could answer, and the mystery flam- 
 ing high over shore and mountain. When did she 
 come? Was it true that Lifford killed himself? 
 Did the sight of his mother meeting Sir Philip on 
 horseback strike him out of the saddle ? And where 
 was she this night? Every cabin along the village 
 street felt the warmer for these sparks and splinters 
 of a magic blaze, kindled discreetly, diabolically, by 
 thin-lipped Sarah North. The old people that re- 
 membered Sir Walter's wedding with beautiful Miss 
 Ashby loomed upon younger imaginations like sibyls 
 or scalds, as they crowded round the purple-flaming 
 turf and told their legendary tale. 
 
 The baronet, too, was at death's door; at the last 
 gasp; dying without priest or minister; for was n't 
 he christened a Catholic and reared a Protestant? 
 And did he ever darken chapel or church since he 
 came home, three years ago, from college in Eng- 
 land? So portentous a spectacle, of the son killed 
 by a flash from the mother's eye and she long- since 
 in the power of Satan made their hearts burn 
 strangely. For the world not one of them would 
 
 4
 
 5 o THE WIZARD'S KNOT 
 
 have "faced out" to the big house that night after 
 dark. Yet they had it always before their eyes 
 while they spoke of the dreary, frightening, excit- 
 able old times, which had all at once come to life 
 again. The very house was alive and acted in the 
 story. It was an enchanted cave, the village clus- 
 tering round its horrible mouth, peering into the red 
 fire that leaped out of it at whiles. 
 
 Sir Philip, however, was not dying or dead "but 
 worse," as his cousin said in the inimitable Irish 
 way he was "the suffering dream of a man" while 
 the fever struck inward. He did not rave; his 
 mind peered questioningly out of his tired eyes; 
 some dull thought was consuming his flesh until, as 
 he lay there under the great tester of a bed, he 
 seemed to Nora O'Sullivan "a sketch of bones," or. 
 in Cathal's phrase, "a bare anatomy." O'Dwyer, 
 strange to relate, was to be often now at the big 
 house, by a right of entry such as Edmund still re- 
 fused to Mrs. Driscoll. How would this come to 
 pass ? Simply but fatefully, as the road of life turns 
 and we follow it because there is no other 
 through rough and smooth, over steep and hollow, 
 not guessing what is before us. It was Edmund's 
 little plan of keeping out the doctor's wife that 
 brought in the wizard. 
 
 Driscoll had gone, all tongues and wings, as
 
 ON RUMOR'S WINGS 51 
 
 Rumor is painted, to spread his looking-glass libel 
 on this proud old family far and wide; and the 
 young cousin must act for them, taking no man's 
 counsel but his own. He unlocked the tower, sent 
 Nora, the steward's wife, to wait on her foster-son, 
 and presented himself in Lady Liscarroll's room. 
 She had not slept, her glazed eyes showed it ; but the 
 hot coals of passion would speedily kindle them. 
 No longer the woman of last night, trapped and half 
 subdued, but armed at all points and looking as 
 fierce and high as Queen Meave. 
 
 "You come from Philip," she cried, with some 
 haughtiness, holding out her hand, which the young 
 man touched slightly. "Is he ashamed of himself?" 
 
 "I don't know," said Edmund, "neither do I come 
 from him. / hold the keys of the tower." 
 
 She made him a sweeping curtsey. "You will be 
 my kind jailer," she said. "Allow me an inter- 
 view with my son. I have much to say to him." 
 
 "You cannot say it now. Sir Philip is ill ; he may 
 be dying." 
 
 "Then you are master here," she said in a beaten 
 voice. "Have I come a day too late?" The glazed 
 eyes grew dimmer, a tear fell as she spoke. 
 
 Her nephew marked with astonishment and a 
 thrill of dislike that she passed over Philip's dying 
 to reflect on her own bad fortune. A woman of this
 
 5 2 
 
 THE WIZARD'S KNOT 
 
 make was quite new to him. But while he stood 
 silent in extreme fury, she recovered her natural 
 or was it her artificial ? attitude. 
 
 "Is Philip in such danger, and I not at his bed- 
 side? My dear Edmund, let me go to him; you 
 came to tell me, to break the news I never said you 
 were hard-hearted. When we quarreled worst, I 
 never did. Where is Nora? We will go down 
 together." 
 
 She was at the door, but Edmund stood in her 
 way, immovable. "I am not master yet " he 
 said significantly. "The master has made me his 
 lieutenant. Lady Liscarroll, you are not to go 
 down. Nora is with Sir Philip. The tower 
 entrance is locked." He held the great iron key in 
 his hand. 
 
 The lady sat down, despairing. "What a fine 
 gentleman you are!" she threw a torrent of spite 
 into her accent. "Is this how you take your revenge ? 
 Was it a crime in me to choose my kith and kin to 
 succeed here before such a Liscarroll as you? If 
 it was, I glory in it." 
 
 "I cannot argue that question," said her nephew; 
 "at present I execute Sir Philip's orders. Why did 
 you break into the lion's den ? You should have had 
 a taste of the Liscarroll temper, enough to warn you 
 that they don't trifle. What tempted you back?"
 
 ON RUMOR'S WINGS 53 
 
 "Sit down, Edmund," she replied eagerly; "take 
 that chair and we will talk about the Liscarroll 
 temper. You have it, too; but with a difference. 
 I can explain my sad story to you." 
 
 He shook his dark ringlets, that gave almost a 
 feminine air to the thoughtful, passionate features. 
 "It is soon told, and can never be explained," he 
 said, yielding so far as to sit down. "You are one 
 of the evil women that blot the sun out of our sky. 
 You had a husband a child you left them. What 
 more?" 
 
 "Oh, but my husband had a wife," she said ve- 
 hemently. "Did he keep his part of the bargain?" 
 
 "Sir Walter ? Why, there never was the shadow 
 of a stain on his life," answered Edmund. "What 
 scoundrel has belied him?" 
 
 "I say he broke the promises on which I married 
 him. He did for twelve years what my son and you 
 are doing to me now. He kept me a prisoner in 
 this tower." 
 
 "It was your home; where else should a wife be 
 but with her husband?" 
 
 "I accepted Walter Liscarroll from ambition. 
 Yes make the most of it from ambition. 
 He had the world at his feet. I thought he would 
 be one of the first Catholics in Parliament, and a 
 leader of men, and that I should have a place by his
 
 S4 THE WIZARD'S KNOT 
 
 side. We were married. In eighteen months all 
 was over. He fell out with O'Connell and gave up 
 his interest in public affairs. He forced me to leave 
 London. We exchanged the best society in the 
 world for hunting squires and their wives; or else 
 we had no company at all. I married one man ; Sir 
 Walter turned out to be another." 
 
 "You took a poet for a politician. Your am- 
 bition fell below my uncle's." 
 
 "I was his widow," she exclaimed, pressing a 
 white hand on her heart. "His widow! What 
 comfort had I in his poems which he never published, 
 or in his long days of silence? He neglected me. 
 Whether for some one else, or for his tags and his 
 musings, what did I care? The man should never 
 have had a wife." 
 
 There was undeniable truth in it; Edmund re- 
 called the abstruse, sauntering, silent man, full of 
 his fancies, who was looking for rhymes as he rode 
 to hounds, or spent mornings and afternoons "under 
 the woods so green" an exquisite Irish phrase that 
 delighted him when he was not down on the 
 strand, watching the seals at play. A musing, mel- 
 ancholy singer of old songs, Art the Lonely come 
 again in the guise of a Munster gentleman marked 
 for solitude of that singular, incomprehensible race 
 which in Ireland from time out of mind has peopled
 
 ON RUMOR'S WINGS 55 
 
 the wild places with monks like St. Kevin of Glen- 
 dalough. What Saxon-bred man or maid could un- 
 ravel their mystery? Edmund looked with com- 
 passion at the lady now. 
 
 "If you had an angel for your husband, I sup- 
 pose," he said, smiling, "you would n't stay long 
 with him?" 
 
 "Angels have no business to be married," was the 
 sharp reply. "Sir Walter did not call himself an 
 angel when we first met in London." 
 
 "I believe he was always the same," answered 
 Edmund; "he only dabbled in politics. Lady Lis- 
 carroll, you should have known but how were you 
 to know? that every real Irishman is at heart a 
 monk." 
 
 She went to the window impatiently and looked 
 long at the great waters, still as sunshine, and as 
 bright. "Oh, if I were on a skiff out there, I would 
 soon leave your monks," she said, without turning. 
 "It was a night like this day for clearness when I 
 ran, the white sails over me, to France. You are 
 right, Edmund. Monks were always my abhor- 
 rence. I sent Philip to Eton, in the hope he would 
 grow up as unlike his father as possible an English 
 gentleman a Protestant I hate your strange re- 
 ligion." 
 
 "But he is not a Protestant he is nothing and
 
 56 THE WIZARD'S KNOT 
 
 all his father's moods and tempers descend on him 
 at times, though he could n't scan a verse to save 
 his life. What have you gained by your step- 
 mother's policy?" 
 
 "Not much," she answered. There was an in- 
 tense silence, into which the endless murmur of the 
 sea came plashing. 
 
 "She has never once named Henry Lifford," said 
 her nephew to himself; "how like a woman!" 
 
 "Give me a day's grace, Edmund," pleaded his 
 aunt, "with Philip. I will come back to my cage. 
 Just one day." 
 
 He rose and uttered the word which had brought 
 him. "You shall have constant news. If he is 
 dying, you shall be there, I promise you that. Now, 
 as Nora is nursing him, I ask your leave to send you 
 another attendant a girl we can depend on from the 
 village. You may remember Joan, the daughter 
 of the schoolmaster, O'Dwyer." 
 
 "I remember Sheila," said Lady Liscarroll, 
 struck; "Sheila left her husband." The coincidence 
 shook her a little. 
 
 "She did. You may take Joan instead of Philip," 
 said her nephew, touching that wound with steel. 
 "They had each a mother and they lost her. Joan 
 will not be hard upon you."
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 SONGS OF OLD TIME 
 
 IT was Sunday morning, mild almost as an Eng- 
 lish April, though December was at hand. Mass 
 had just been celebrated by Father Falvey in the 
 whitewashed village chapel, and crowds of men, 
 with a sprinkling of women, stood outside on the 
 road exchanging a week's gossip between the peo- 
 ple of the town and of the hills, who met only at 
 mass or market. This was the hour fixed for 
 Cathal O'Dwyer and his daughter to set out toward 
 the castle. Many a soft-hearted boy sent longing 
 looks after the damsel in a crimson petticoat and 
 tight blue bodice as she passed along, her gray shawl 
 drawn over "the dark branching tresses" to speak 
 with our Celtic poets and held modestly before her 
 face in the Oriental fashion. She walked with the 
 peculiarly graceful step of the Munster maidens, up- 
 right and rhythmical, as if the heather lifted be- 
 neath her tread, and in her silent mouth there was 
 music, if its sweet lines told no false tale. But 
 
 57
 
 58 THE WIZARD'S KNOT 
 
 neither she nor Cathal spoke to any one a circum- 
 stance which was afterward remarked upon. 
 
 "Felim," said Garret O'Riordan to his "true- 
 brother" that is, being interpreted, son of the same 
 father and mother "I have a riddle for you. What 
 thing is there as red as blood, as white as snow, and 
 as black as the crow's wing?" 
 
 "Aisily tould," answered Felim, laughing, for he 
 had observed the direction of his brother's glances. 
 "But what ails the two of them not to spake to you 
 and me? That Joan of the schoolmaster's is a 
 branch of beauty cheeks, lips, and hair. Mother 
 did well to bring her up in our place whin she lost 
 her own." 
 
 "Had th' ould man even a weeny fortune to give 
 with her 't is n't long she 'd remain without a hus- 
 band," said Garret; "but, sure, they never had a 
 day's luck in that house, and Cathal, in spite of his 
 knowledge, would drink the ocean dry." 
 
 "If I had that much of a fortune," replied Felim, 
 flicking his fingers and a fine fresh lad of his inches 
 he was "or O'Dwyer could give her a cow's grass, 
 I 'd be matchmaking with Joan long ago. But what 
 signifies talking? He has n't a dish o' crab apples 
 to his own cheek. 'T is a lamentable thing he is not 
 able to keep from the full pitcher till empty it is." 
 
 "Well, we have but the one life," said Garret, the
 
 SONGS OF OLD TIME 59 
 
 Epicurean. "He never did a ha'porth of harm to 
 any but his own. My heart is sore for the little 
 girl. Though she has a step like the roe-deer, and a 
 song like the bird's from the billows, I 'm in dread 
 she will die an ould maid. But if she was Davy 
 Roche's daughter, and all the land he sucked to him- 
 self was coming to her," pursued Garret, turning 
 a bright eye on Felim, "let her screech like a hare in 
 a gin, or walk lame of her two legs, I '11 engage 
 she 'd never want for sweethearts." 
 
 "Yerra, let me alone with Davy Roche," answered 
 his brother; "he '11 be purchasing Renmore estate 
 one day of the days, with his firkins of butter and his 
 long laises the miser!" 
 
 "And he has a hould on every man of us that ever 
 borrowed a shilling from him. But I see Maurice 
 Noonan there beckoning to us. Will we step into 
 the haggard and take the sheoch of a dudeen to clear 
 our mouths of Davy Roche? We 're with you, 
 Maurice; don't be running from us that way like a 
 redshank." 
 
 This had long been the tune to which Renmore 
 lads nor they alone would "sing and harp" about 
 Cathal's daughter, who minded them as little as any 
 girl that was ever poor, proud, and pretty. But now 
 she went up with the tender-hearted old wizard till 
 they reached the demesne, which lay about two Irish
 
 60 THE WIZARD'S KNOT 
 
 miles beyond the village. It had tall fences, and 
 within them a tangle of oak and birch and high- 
 shooting firs; but there was little of an open space 
 anywhere round the grim gray castle, except between 
 the reilig or small burying-ground which en- 
 circled some nameless monastic ruins, and the river 
 called Lonndubh, the Blackbird, from its swiftness 
 and its song. Cathal had lost his voice ; he felt that 
 Joan was going from him felt it deeply, and would 
 have said, "There 's no loquacity in great grief," 
 were he not an example of the proverb which rose 
 before his mind. "My drame of Sir Walter is tak- 
 ing her into itself," he thought; for he was nothing 
 if not a creature of omens, forebodings, and secret 
 intimacies with the unseen powers behind us, to 
 which he stretched out a faltering yet curious hand. 
 
 "I '11 do well yet in this house," said Joan, cross- 
 ing herself as they passed in. "Sure the woman, if 
 she was a wolf itself, can't ate me. We '11 be saving 
 the fine white shillings for Mr. Roche ;-and no thanks 
 to him, thin, if we stay in our little cottage." 
 
 "God grant that same, my dear," said Cathal; 
 "but I'd like to set my own eyes on her ladyship be- 
 fore I give up my one lamb to her. Ah, Mr. Ed- 
 mund," seeing him in the hall, "I brought Joan as 
 you desired me." 
 
 "You are bringing the summer with you, though
 
 SONGS OF OLD TIME 61 
 
 we are near midwinter," said Edmund, speaking in 
 Irish. Whenever he was strongly moved, the color 
 and flame of the old language leaped out from his 
 words. "Welcome as the day, Joan and Joan's 
 father ! A sad house you come into. Have you the 
 sun in your heart, Joan ?" taking her hand a moment. 
 
 "I '11 ask the Blessed Mother of God for it, if I 
 have n't," she answered, with a singular pride and 
 modesty. "Is the lady I 'm to wait upon above- 
 stairs ?" 
 
 "She is in the High Room," said their conductor. 
 "Come, I '11 let her know you are here." He turned 
 the rusty key in the wards with a grating sound, and 
 when they were inside, locked the tower door again. 
 
 " 'Bolts on her waist, and a thousand locks from 
 that up,'" quoted the schoolmaster; " 't is so she 
 should be kept and bound." 
 
 "Will I be locked in with her between these four 
 walls ?"asked Joan of her father, a faint blush run- 
 ning over cheek and brow. 
 
 "Till Sir Philip is well and we know his wishes," 
 said Edmund quickly. "You will be his prisoner 
 not mine. That is the condition." 
 
 "And if I 'm in dread of what his mother would 
 do to me," she began, a little frightened, and then, 
 recovering her native spirit, "No, I won't be in 
 dread, Mr. Edmund. There 's a God above all.
 
 62 THE WIZARD'S KNOT 
 
 But you must n't yourself be laving the castle till Sir 
 Philip is cured. I take that promise from you." 
 
 "And I give you my hand and word on it," he 
 cried. "You '11 see my shadow always about the 
 place, if it is n't for an hour I '11 be spending with 
 your father in the school." 
 
 "Let us go up, thin, in God's name," said the girl. 
 "The stairs are dark, but the light is above them." 
 
 "Amin, a Thighearna!" exclaimed Cathal, "say 
 no more; that 's the best word slipped from you to- 
 day." 
 
 Both she and young Liscarroll respected the omen, 
 and held their peace. 
 
 They were standing in the High Room, in nervous 
 expectation of the lady's entrance. She came with 
 a proud step, always her mourning weeds about 
 her strangely dark and fair. Cathal made a most 
 elaborate bow, while Joan rested motionless, fixed, 
 as it would seem, by the wonderful beauty of this 
 woman who bore so unhallowed a reputation. Their 
 eyes met, in scrutiny, in a shy disquiet on one side, 
 on the other in some slight embarrassment, not free 
 from anger. Lady Liscarroll resented the compari- 
 son which she knew they were making between her- 
 self and this girl's low-born mother. Edmund was 
 chastising her with scorpions. 
 
 But she took Joan lightly by the shoulder and
 
 SONGS OF OLD TIME 63 
 
 laughed. "Come to the window," she cried im- 
 petuously; "I want to see if you are as pretty in the 
 light as in the dim recesses of this haunted old room. 
 As pretty? You are the flower of the flock, my 
 dear," she continued, touching her cheek. "She 
 features you, Mr. O'Dwyer. You see, I have n't 
 forgotten your name." 
 
 "Thank you, ma'am," said the schoolmaster, 
 flattered against his good resolutions, and bowing 
 to the ground, "I 'd say welcome home to your 
 ladyship and I do say it but Sir Philip is suffer- 
 ing from a hideous fever that casts a gloom on us by 
 its violence. We 're baring our hearts to God for 
 him night and day till he 's over it." 
 
 "I am told he is very ill," she answered, darting 
 a flash at her nephew. "I remember you were fa- 
 mous for your cures in the country round, Mr. 
 O'Dwyer. Try them now on Philip and bring me 
 word how he is. I am a stranger in my son's 
 house." 
 
 "You won't be long so," answered the impression- 
 able schoolmaster, who came near forgetting, under 
 the spell of words and looks he had never been able 
 to resist, the bitter curses he had poured out on her 
 sex in Edmund's hearing the day before. "The 
 Liscarrolls were noted always for their princely hos- 
 pitality. Their door was never closed but against
 
 64 THE WIZARD'S KNOT 
 
 the wind. And every one that came had new of all 
 mates and ould of all liquors. Sir Phil is not be- 
 hind his ancestors." 
 
 "And that 's how King Cormac judged the race 
 of women," said Edmund, sharply, in Irish, to this 
 backslider. 
 
 Cathal started. "In good works," he said, speak- 
 ing in the same language, discomfited, "I 'm no better 
 than a fool ; in bad I 'm equal to the best. I should 
 be a surly blackthorn to these reptiles since Sheila 
 was taken from my head; and hear now how I am 
 talking." 
 
 Joan flamed up crimson, and Lady Liscarroll, 
 who had no Irish, or only a few words to pass the 
 time of day, caught Sheila's name distinctly. Her 
 spirit could never be broken by what she deemed 
 insult. "You had a fine, active wife, Mr. O'Dwyer," 
 she said, with a straight look toward him, "I hope 
 she is living still." 
 
 "She is living, I believe, but not in God's grace," 
 answered Cathal, instantly, with an air of indiffer- 
 ence. He was as stern as King Cormac now. "If 
 I remimber right, my wife wint North a little bit 
 before your ladyship wint South. The swan loves 
 the tide, and the wild goose flies with the wind, so 
 I 'm tould. And there 's music that makes some 
 weep, and some sleep, and some laugh. I 'm trust-
 
 SONGS OF OLD TIME 65 
 
 ing the laugh will be with yourself, my lady. But 
 Joan having lost her mother so early, I was in hopes 
 you 'd feel for the poor angashore." 
 
 The word touched a fiber not quite dead in the 
 lady's bosom. "I forgive your taunts, O'Dwyer," 
 she said, with more softness than she had displayed 
 during the interview. "Don't let me pretend I 
 will be a mother to your girl it would be affecta- 
 tion; but she shall go back to you as harmless and 
 unharmed as she came. Now, child," to the silent 
 figure "tell me what are your accomplishments. 
 Do you know how to read ?" 
 
 "Read, is it?" interrupted the wizard, with a 
 challenging laugh, "Joan is the finest scholar in 
 English and Irish I ever had in my school. And 
 write ! But all the O'Dwyers that great branch of 
 the race of Heremon wrote a hand like Colum- 
 kille." 
 
 "You are a genius, then, my dear," said Lady Lis- 
 carroll, "and you shall read to me while I stay mewed 
 up in Loch Leven. But you never heard of Mary 
 Stuart," she concluded between a smile and a sigh. 
 
 "I would rather be spinning or knitting, my lady," 
 said Joan, finding her voice at last. "But if it will 
 pass the time away, I can read a little to you. 
 Don't mind my father; he thinks the world of me 
 and my doings." 
 
 s
 
 66 THE WIZARD'S KNOT 
 
 "Why would n't I ?" cried Cathal ; "have I chick 
 or child but the one ? Above all, my lady, make her 
 sing to you. My sorrow, I '11 not be there to listen. 
 She has the most melodious little mouth in Munster, 
 and a hundred ould songs between her lips." 
 
 "Well, she shall sing them all, and spin till she has 
 spun enough to make herself new clothes ; my prison 
 will not be so lonely," said Lady Liscarroll. "Ed- 
 mund, I have never thanked you yet for your kind 
 attentions. I thank you now from my heart." 
 
 He made a slight inclination. "And I thank 
 Joan," he said in his gentlest voice. 
 
 "You '11 not pine and sicken without your ould 
 daddy," said Cathal to her, when he had taken cere- 
 monious leave of the great lady, still in his eyes "a 
 formidable beldame," but even so more human than 
 his Sheila, the wild goose on the wing. 
 
 "I '11 try not, father," she answered in a tender 
 aside ; "but whatever happens to me, we must make 
 up the rent for Davy Roche before the hungry 
 months are upon us. There 's three gales due in 
 May. That will strengthen me against heart-sick- 
 ness, to know I am aiming them." 
 
 He knit his arms round her, and went heavily 
 downstairs with his friend. 
 
 When they were gone, Lady Liscarroll said with 
 an effort, "I suppose you have no recollection of your
 
 SONGS OF OLD TIME 67 
 
 mother, Joan? You were quite a child when all 
 that happened. You don't even know what she was 
 like?" 
 
 "I remember two burning- eyes; and a mournful 
 little song used to be humming in my ears that I 
 thought was mother's. But I don't rightly know. 
 My father never lets a word slip about those times 
 unless he 's in great distress. I strive not to be 
 thinking, myself, when there 's no good in it." 
 
 "You are a wise creature, my dear. Yes, those 
 eyes are burning still in your head " 
 
 "God forbid !" exclaimed Joan, hastily putting her 
 hand before the brilliant, tearful eyes that had been 
 so disparaged for praise she would not think it. 
 "Yet if it was as you say," she added bravely, "the 
 fire could be quenched with fastings and quiet 
 prayers. 'T is the Almighty owns all at low tide 
 and flood, and he turns the heart in aich one of us." 
 
 Her lady was astonished, but kept silence for a 
 little, after which she began once more. "What 
 was the song you used to hear humming about you ? 
 I should like you to sing it now we are alone." 
 
 "Oh, I would n't for the world's wealth," said 
 Joan, shaking with fear. "In the most part of those 
 ould songs there does be enchantment. But, not 
 to offend you, I could give the sense that is in it. 
 They call it, I hear, The Brow of the Red Moun-
 
 68 THE WIZARD'S KNOT 
 
 tain.' 'T is a woman, and she sitting up for I 
 should say the song is in Irish since the moon rose 
 last night; she is putting down a fire on the hearth, 
 while the people are in bed. 'I 'm by myself,' says 
 she, 'the cocks are crowing, and all the land asleep 
 but me.' There is the beginning of it for you." 
 
 " 'All the land asleep but me,' " echoed her mis- 
 tress in a half dream ; "I was that woman last night 
 many a night. Why did she sit up alone ?" 
 
 "Oh, it was I call to mind only a word here and 
 there hate that follows love in every place where 
 beauty is on a woman, the song says. The boy left 
 her, or she left the boy, I don't know which, on the 
 brow of the Red Mountain; but, indeed, he was 
 fond of money, and she had no fortune so I 'd say 
 it was he turned from her. She can't get sleep or 
 drink down her sorrow after that. There is more 
 of it; but mother sang that much often to put me to 
 sleep." 
 
 "I am that woman," repeated the Mary Stuart of 
 Renmore to herself in a melting mood. "This 
 child this innocent is the first human being that 
 has lightened my heart since the day at Wiesbaden. 
 'And all the land asleep but me!' Ah, my little 
 Joan," she said aloud, "songs have their enchant- 
 ments. Pray you may never fall under them. 
 Even your father, the wizard, could not release you.
 
 SONGS OF OLD TIME 69 
 
 'And all the land asleep but me!' That is a won- 
 derful word." 
 
 So began the strangest friendship ever seen inside 
 that Norman-Irish keep a friendship quickened by 
 something which resembled hatred, lifted to heights 
 of greatness by remembrance of the sins and sorrows 
 without which it had never taken form or shape. 
 
 "What is your father's opinion? what do the 
 country-people think? about my son?" she asked 
 of Joan by and by. "Is he much liked or more dis- 
 liked? Speak without fear. To me it is indiffer- 
 ent what they feel, so long as they don't hold him 
 cheap and despicable." 
 
 "Oh, he is not despisable ; no one ever said that of 
 him." 
 
 "But hated? Not worshiped and run after, as 
 Nora O' Sullivan told me Edmund was. You mean 
 he tramples them down and they resent it." 
 
 "My father," answered Joan, with a very musical 
 low laugh, "used to say there was a Firbolg chief 
 somewhere in the pedigree of Liscarroll, and Sir 
 Philip had his red hair and his short temper. And 
 Edmund w r as one of the Tuatha De Danann black 
 and comely, a maker of songs and a true magician. 
 But how would an English lady, the like of yourself, 
 understand the differ between a Firbolg and a De 
 Danann ?"
 
 7 o THE WIZARD'S KNOT 
 
 "No, I don't. However, red hair and short tem- 
 per are intelligible enough. Is Philip a what did 
 you call it? a Firbolg in the eyes of young girls, 
 too, Joan? In your eyes, for example?" 
 
 "I see him flash by on horseback, as if the wind 
 was carrying him, his scarlet coat blazing, my lady 
 and that 's all I see. If I gave a name to him but 
 why should I? 't is Finvarra, king of the fairy 
 horsemen, I 'd be calling Sir Philip. For he 's 
 here this minute, and away with him the next, in a 
 dazzle of white sunshine, or of mist from the moun- 
 tains, the horse's hoofs beating on the road. And 
 inside the house of God no person ever set an eye 
 on him." 
 
 "Then he is strong, and fearless, and lonely. His 
 father to the life! Is there any lady Jn the 
 neighborhood he might marry? Miss Julia 
 Hapgood must be growing into a young woman 
 by now." 
 
 The girl looked up with a roguish smile at her 
 mistress. "Miss Julia is a horsewoman, and there 's 
 no fence would stop her, they say. She is often out 
 hunting with the same pack of hounds that Sir Phil 
 rides after. Would they make a match of it with 
 the brush of the red dog between them? But we 
 would sooner he married the brown-haired lady from 
 Russia, Miss O'Connor, that they call whist now
 
 SONGS OF OLD TIME 71 
 
 till I say it Lisaveta Carlovna. We do be often 
 laughing at the droll name." 
 
 "That wild Charlie O'Connor's daughter? But 
 she was bred and born, as you say, in Russia ; where 
 is she now? Is Charlie dead?" 
 
 "He is, and her mother as well. She came over 
 a year back to Airgead Ross, to Silverwood the 
 ould place of the family; by all accounts, she has 
 millions to her fortune. Moreover, she is of the 
 Liscarrolls' religion; and Miss Julia, as the Hap- 
 goods always, goes to church." 
 
 "Let him take Lisaveta with her millions to the 
 chapel, then, as soon as he leaves his sick-bed," ex- 
 claimed Philip's mother, almost gaily. 
 
 "And if Miss Julia's heart was set on him, what 
 should she do, poor thing?" said Joan, her fancy 
 touched by this picture of love forsaken. 
 
 "She could not take the veil," said her mistress, 
 laughing; "I think she would do well to break her 
 collar-bone in St. Brandan's Gap out hunting. Why 
 do you fix your eyes on me, Joan, so reproachfully? 
 You think me hard-hearted ?" 
 
 "Sure, I know you are not in airnest, my lady. 
 But" speaking as if to her own thoughts "was 
 I fond of a boy and he to lave me, I 'd follow him till 
 water-grass grew in the heart of the fire. How 
 could I let my secret love take up with another
 
 72 THE WIZARD'S KNOT 
 
 woman, had she all the goold from this to Lough 
 Gur?" 
 
 They little knew that the woman with the gold 
 the brown-haired, pale-cheeked Miss O'Connor 
 was not far from them during their talk. Could 
 they have pierced the gray stone walls of their 
 prison, they might have seen her riding up to the 
 hall door that very minute, as the sun was sinking, 
 large, sad, and fiery, into the Atlantic behind her. 
 
 "Miss O'Connor, as I am alive," cried Edmund, 
 when he caught the sound of her troubled voice out- 
 side. "She has heard of Phil's accident." 
 
 He ran into the air, took her bridle, and held the 
 small sorrel from which she leaped down. Ed- 
 mund's eyes were shining; not hard to tell that he 
 was pleased. 
 
 "Ah, Miss Lisaveta, how could you ride over the 
 hills on Sunday, too? Not surely alone?" 
 
 "I left Yegor a mile behind," said the girl, flutter- 
 ing like a tall, brown-winged bird in her riding- 
 habit, and charmingly out of breath. "Oh, how is 
 your poor cousin? They brought such dreadful 
 accounts." 
 
 "Phil is in a bad way," he said, "not given up ; I 
 am sending to Cork for advice. He can see no per- 
 son. But you will come in and rest. Do, now." 
 
 "A few minutes. There is Yegor, grumbling
 
 SONGS OF OLD TIME 73 
 
 along. He will scold me. I never had such a task- 
 master," said Lisaveta; "he is worse than a middle- 
 man to me." Her face, even when she smiled, had a 
 serious cast melancholy under a ripple of sunshine. 
 "You forgive me for rushing down upon you with- 
 out ceremony ? I do like Sir Philip, you know I do, 
 though he terrifies me in his grand, silent way. 
 What a pity ! What a pity ! It was an accident ?" 
 
 He gave her the story as he had heard it from his 
 cousin, but of what had followed hotfoot upon it 
 no word. 
 
 "That is bad his walking home, not knowing 
 how. Had it been you, Mr. Edmund," with an arch 
 smile, "you could never have forgotten. Your brain 
 is the liveliest part of you." 
 
 "I am not without feeling," he said, a little hurt. 
 
 "Mr. Liscarroll ! Did I insinuate ? Why, Cathal 
 O'Dwyer said, the last time I saw that miracle cf 
 learning I was quite delighted and amazed ""T J s 
 God puts the fire in a man's head. When the heart 
 and the brain are one thing, we have a poet like Mr. 
 Edmund.' " 
 
 "Delight and amaze are worth seeing in you," 
 stammered the stricken youngster. "I thank Cathal 
 for his flatteries ; poets live on honey." 
 
 "Well, there 's a hive of honey waiting for you. 
 Publish and you '11 see," said the girl, taking off her
 
 74 THE WIZARD'S KNOT 
 
 hat to cool a flushed forehead, and displaying her 
 brown locks with fine gold threads in them. 
 
 "That is Charlie O'Connor's eager, forward-look- 
 ing gaze," thought Edmund, "but who could fathom 
 a woman's heart?" He felt joyous, bashful, inde- 
 scribably excited. Death was perhaps hovering over 
 Renmore, ready to strike; and here was a dream of 
 possible love and happiness singing at the window 
 a nightingale near his heart. "Cruel and sweet, his 
 hands reach down to hell," said the schoolmaster 
 of the terrible god. Edmund was ashamed. Hap- 
 piness and Phil lying that way upstairs? 
 
 The girl trifled with her hat and whip; sat down 
 and rose up as if she must be going. "How useless 
 we all ar.e when trouble comes!" she said softly. 
 "It is our weakness, according to Cathal, that we 
 women are most in the way when we should be most 
 out of it." 
 
 "You are not in the way here, this evening," said 
 Edmund, under his breath. 
 
 "No? But I am lingering, in spite of Yegor's 
 visible impatience at the window, because be- 
 cause You will not be angry with me ?" 
 
 His face burnt. "What anger are you talking 
 of?" he cried. "Mine? It would turn in, I think, 
 and be a knife in my side here," striking a hard 
 stroke on his breast. 
 
 "I know, I know," she answered kindly. "Well,
 
 SONGS OF OLD TIME 75 
 
 then, is it true that Sir Philip's mother came upon 
 him out riding, and was the cause of his mis- 
 fortune?" 
 
 "It is not true. But she is here. The country is 
 talking, then?" 
 
 "The fear of that, Mr. Edmund am I not a good 
 Irishwoman, now confess it, to be so quick at our 
 people's language? 't was that brought me over. 
 I said to myself, 'There 's no creature in Renmore 
 but those men, and what would they do with Lady 
 Liscarroll ? If they would allow her to stay with me 
 at Airgead Ross, one trouble would be off their 
 shoulders.' Will it help you at all, Mr. Edmund?" 
 
 He could hardly speak. The childlike courage, 
 the dove's innocence the contrast between Lisaveta 
 and his guilty aunt as if a white bird dashed its 
 wings into the furnace ; he had a thousand thoughts, 
 and none of them to be uttered in so sunlit a pres- 
 ence. At length 
 
 "She cannot come to you, and you must not go 
 to her. There is a great gulf fixed." 
 
 Only parables would shadow out these dark things 
 of life. How could they bear allusion? But the 
 girl broke in on his doubts and fears. 
 
 "You dread the country's gossip more than I do. 
 It would be said that I had no sense of propriety? 
 That you and Sir Philip had imposed on a stranger's 
 ignorance, or on a helpless young woman ? Have I
 
 76 THE WIZARD'S KNOT 
 
 a right, as the man said, to be slandered? Help- 
 less? ignorant? well, I give the sense of pro- 
 priety up to them, and welcome." 
 
 "It cannot be," returned the young man, with 
 firmness, but softly as we refuse children something 
 that would hurt them; "you are managing Airgead 
 Ross better than any landlord in the country; you 
 speak more languages than we ever heard tell of; 
 your arithmetic is infallible, and you could plead, 
 like Portia, in the Four Courts of Dublin. But when 
 Lady Liscarroll came in the door you might as well 
 be lost, and Silverwood, too, in a dark Druidic mist 
 forever. You would be in one prison the two of 
 ye," he ended with a quaint turn, to smother the 
 bitterness of his saying. 
 
 "I am not convinced, and my heart is heavy, but 
 yes, Yegor, don't point in such despair to the red 
 sun ; we shall get home by moonlight. Mr. Edmund, 
 my last word. Airgead Ross stands open at all 
 hours I invite Lady Liscarroll. We meet not 
 Tuesday Friday, at the schoolmaster's. Give me 
 your decision then, or before." 
 
 She was away in the dusky sunset, toward the 
 lone, bare hills which overhung the land on that side 
 menacingly, her golden-brown hair sweeping in the 
 wind. Edmund from the avenue looked long into 
 the stormy sky.
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 A HEDGE-SCHOOL 
 
 THE physician from Cork, whose name was up 
 in the world, had met Dr. Driscoll in consulta- 
 tion, examined Philip, pronounced his case danger- 
 ous, put a handsome fee in his pocket, and gone back 
 on the mail-coach to Shandon bells. "Should he 
 recover," said the wise man, gathering up Driscoll's 
 loose but significant threads, "your patient may be 
 subject to melancholia, with or without delusions. 
 His brain is deeply affected." But to Edmund he 
 simply approved of the local practitioner's treatment, 
 and spoke of a long convalescence. Philip wasted; 
 slept little ; never opened his lips except when liquid 
 food or medicine was poured through them. "To 
 be sick and sleepless is to call in Death," said the 
 wizard, in a passing word with Nora O'Sullivan, 
 who tossed her head incredulously. "Oh, if I had 
 the poor gommel between my two hands, 't is in a 
 fine sweat and asleep he would put the night past. I 
 forgot more Latin and Greek than these doctors 
 ever learned; but of God's great store in field and 
 
 77
 
 78 THE WIZARD'S KNOT 
 
 meadow they know as much as the horned cattle 
 grazing on it. But if a man has no sheepskin and 
 sealing-wax, he 's a fool to them." 
 
 So Cathal watched his opportunity, not doubting 
 it would come. Edmund was in and out of the sick- 
 room all day; every evening a sour moment he 
 took such unpromising news as he had to the lady in 
 the tower. She was nearly as yellow in the face as 
 her son. Should he get over his illness, he might 
 be violent with her; he was sure to make her 
 smart by words that carried stings; but Edmund 
 once in possession, she had not even this narrow, 
 sea-beaten cloister, in which her life was daily 
 fretted, to call her own. It seemed certain the bar- 
 onet would not live long. She braced up her nerves 
 for a day more bitter than Wiesbaden. And Joan 
 sang to her little snatches of old love ditties old 
 hunting songs half remembered; jovial, pathetic, in 
 a sort of lullaby over the spinning-wheel ; but what- 
 ever she sang, the burden that Lady Liscarroll heard 
 was like this from "The Coolin," that famous music, 
 "Thou hast found me, and hast bound me, and put 
 grief in my heart." 
 
 His cousin lying in an enchanted sickness, Ed- 
 mund was loath to be from home. Yet. on the Friday 
 which followed the accident, he "rose with a leap," 
 saddled and bridled, and was off to the high hills be-
 
 A HEDGE-SCHOOL 79 
 
 yond the valley in which Renmore lay. There he 
 would be idling when Miss O'Connor rode down to 
 the school, where they ought to meet. This Irish 
 gentleman had all the delicate courtesies of which his 
 kinsfolk are past masters he could be punctilious; 
 he felt shame, but defied it, in forcing on the lady 
 a sort of assignation. What harm was he doing, 
 after all? And the curlews and plovers whistled, 
 screamed, and flew in the golden air; they had the 
 sky and the bald pates of the hills to themselves, for 
 no man but young Liscarroll was there to trouble 
 them. But he, sauntering with loose rein, was fitting 
 his sweet- Celtic syllables to the poem of Moschus 
 a dainty bloom to draw butterflies and he could 
 look up innocently when she came in sight. 
 
 "Here I am out on you, like the Plaided Kern," 
 he said, a trifle confused, his eyes falling on the 
 paper he held in his hand; "shall I guide you this 
 piece of the way?" 
 
 "I know it, though I was never at O'Dwyer's," 
 she answered, with the most natural air in the world. 
 "Go on, please; I will follow." 
 
 He rode in front, shamefaced, silent. What a 
 fool he had made of himself! Master Cupid was 
 laughing at him out of the Greek ; "He 's a demon to 
 play on you," it said in fine mockery. As for Lis- 
 aveta, her thoughts were not sentimental; these
 
 80 THE WIZARD'S KNOT 
 
 scenes, as they opened in the hollow, filled her always 
 with sorrow and astonishment. "We will stay on 
 the hilltop," she cried, and her cavalier halted. 
 
 "There is our village spread out before you," he 
 said; "the schoolhouse is that cabin which turns its 
 shoulder to the wood." 
 
 "How clear the day is after so much rain!" said 
 she, lifting her eyes to the sky-line. 
 
 "Will you make a drawing of it in water-colors?" 
 he asked. 
 
 "I may," she replied absently. 
 
 "What points would you take in the view ?" 
 
 "I will tell you what I see," said Lisaveta, " and if 
 you are blind to it because you have seen it every 
 day of your life, don't blame me." 
 
 "A small dart, but it strikes to the marrow," he 
 returned, still at his Greek. 
 
 "So much the better. Attend now, and say if this 
 is Renmore. First, a long, green glen, bare to the 
 north, beautiful with hanging copse and covert in 
 sheltered places ; all that wood is on your estate ?" 
 
 "On Sir Philip's" he corrected the phrase. 
 
 "Very well, on the Liscarrolls'. Next, a silver 
 snake, glittering as it runs to the sea. That is the 
 Lonndubh. Away beyond yet I could touch it 
 from here the green, foam-flecked Atlantic; it 
 seems a floor we could race over, emerald scattered
 
 A HEDGE-SCHOOL 81 
 
 with snow. Above us, the sky is blue fire ; and here," 
 pointing to it, "your castle sleeps in its forest, has 
 its roots in the rock. Do I see what you see, Mr. 
 Edmund?" 
 
 "You have the eye of a painter; mine looks too 
 often inward to be so bright. Well, imagine me to 
 see all that. What 's after?" 
 
 "Now look inward, downward, as you please; 
 between these everlasting hills you and yours have 
 planted. What 's after? A long, crooked, double 
 row of cabins or are they sties? one story high, 
 not a line straight. Raddled like scabby sheep with 
 red paint; smutched with foul rain out of that clean 
 heaven ! Heaps of foulness about the rickety doors, 
 a stream of filth running by them. An ugly, mean, 
 abominable picture, with God's world to shame it. 
 That is the still life I discover. Am I wrong?" 
 
 He answered with a shrug, "They say it was 
 always so ; there 's no help for these things." 
 
 "Then the still life quickens," she went on, smil- 
 ing. "What do you say of the wonderful Dutch 
 menagerie, Mr. Edmund, in and out of the hovels ?" 
 
 "Cocks and hens, goats and donkeys, swine of all 
 ages and sizes," he said gravely. "Heaven send 
 them increase! It is our natural history, which 
 pays the rent." 
 
 "Too natural. I am often of one mind with Mrs. 
 
 6
 
 82 THE WIZARD'S KNOT 
 
 Cronin about it. Did you ever hear what she said to 
 Father Falvey when he scolded her for not attend- 
 ing mass ?" 
 
 "I did not. But I know Jeremiah Cronin's ac- 
 count of his wife's eloquence to me. 'You see, sir,' 
 said Jerry, 'she has lost all her teeth, and there 's no 
 bounds to her tongue.' And how did she answer 
 the priest?" 
 
 " 'Yerra/ said she, 'lave me 'lone with the chapel. 
 I have divils o' pigs, and divils o' poultry, and divils 
 o' childer to be rearing, and unless I druv 'em into it 
 before me, I could n't be there while I said the full 
 of my beads.' " 
 
 "The divil's o' childer are making a fine Donny- 
 brook Fair of it down below at this moment,''" said 
 the poet, "but they 're the prettiest, wittiest, and most 
 lovable in the world. Their mischief is all inno- 
 cence." 
 
 "If so many of them would n't die young," she 
 answered, her eyes glistening with a certain dew. 
 "Look at the girls on the doorstep, or crossing the 
 filthy puddles with bare feet. Half of them are in 
 decline." 
 
 "And their mothers are wrinkled hags at thirty. 
 It is a world of starved creatures, better dead than 
 alive but who would pay our rents if they were 
 dead?" he concluded sardonically, to keep down his 
 sick heart; "for God's sake, let us go to O'Dwyer's."
 
 A HEDGE-SCHOOL 83 
 
 "Have patience, my dear friend," said Lisaveta, "I 
 must burn this picture into my brain. It is more 
 frightful than our Russian villages, and, God knows, 
 they are not gardens of Eden. Did you ever try to 
 see all these lives at once? As a poet, you should 
 make the experiment." 
 
 "You and I imagine it as it would be to us," he 
 argued. 
 
 "But they feel it. Why are the songs which you 
 call their fairy music so tender and sad? Is it not 
 the moan of despair ?" 
 
 "Oh, there 's the other the rollicking sort : 'Let 
 us be drinking and courting the lasses.' There 's 
 the jig and the reel and they marry young," he 
 added enviously. 
 
 "Reckless because they have no hope," said Lisa- 
 veta. 
 
 "The Celt was born in April; he sees the April 
 clouds and sun over him. I think mine the true 
 story," said Edmund, moving forward. "If 
 O'Dwyer is not at the school door, looking out for 
 us! He will be rehearsing Cormac MacArt's ser- 
 mon about women for your good, Miss O'Con- 
 nor!" 
 
 "What does Cormac MacArt say of us ?" 
 
 "He would be a bold man that should tell you. 
 Ask the Druid himself ; but though Cathal twists his 
 mouth against that fair defect of Nature, when she
 
 84 THE WIZARD'S KNOT 
 
 is out of earshot, I never knew him uncivil in her 
 presence. He will answer with a smig on him, 'the 
 dear knows,' and pay your condescension a compli- 
 ment in six syllables." 
 
 They had reached the mud cabin now a building 
 such as English country-folk call "wattle and dab" 
 the walls of which smoked, a very limekiln, after 
 the night's showers. Cathal, on the sunken steps, 
 made them a graceful congee, worthy of his reputa- 
 tion as master of the country revels. 
 
 "Welcome and long life to the Lady of Silver- 
 wood !" he exclaimed, running out to help her down. 
 "And to you, Mr. Edmund," he continued, "the 
 blessings of all the Liscarrolls love, valor, wit, for- 
 ever, as Tom Moore has it. 'T is a proud school- 
 house ye 're entering this day." 
 
 He soon had two little gossoons "white heads" 
 he called the fair-haired laddies to walk the horses 
 up and down, while Lisaveta and Edmund followed 
 him into the smoky den. A couple of diminutive 
 windows let the sunshine trickle across the blue air, 
 in which the motes danced. There was no other 
 ventilation. A few broken benches, the school- 
 master's high desk, a cupboard which held some 
 torn volumes, and on the grimy wall a map of Ire- 
 land in faded tints. But the benches were crowded 
 with boys and girls, who rose shyly to make their
 
 A HEDGE-SCHOOL 85 
 
 low bow, molded on the master's, as the quality 
 came in, and to cry, "God and Mary with ye!" in 
 answer to their "God bless all here." 
 
 "This, madam, is a hedge-school," said Cathal, 
 handing Miss O'Connor to his desk. "But if 't was 
 one half as great in master and scholar as Andrew 
 Mahony's (God rest him!) that taught me the 
 classics, my Voster, and my Six Books, I would n't 
 exchange it for the groves of Academe." 
 
 "It has an earthen floor," said Lisaveta, mis- 
 chievously, declining with a gesture to ascend the 
 rostrum. 
 
 " 'T is pleasant and warm ; had we the boards, 
 they would be wearing out," said he. 
 
 "Ah, Mr. O'Dwyer," said the serious young lady, 
 "I am learning fast why you clever Irishmen don't 
 get on in the world." 
 
 "The Sassenach, the wet, the Broken Treaty and 
 our sins, God forgive us," said Cathal, taking deep 
 delight in his logical and exhaustive enumeration. 
 
 She shook her curls impatiently. "No, and no, 
 and no, I tell you again. It is your tongue that 
 ruins you all. You have an answer to everything." 
 
 "I believe it is so," he said ; "the Sassenach left us 
 only our tongues. All things else he took from us." 
 
 "Are you answered now ?" said Liscarroll, greatly 
 amused.
 
 86 THE WIZARD'S KNOT 
 
 "He would be a match for Yegor," said Lisaveta, 
 whose eyes had been making acquaintance with the 
 children, and her lip smiling their way, during the 
 argument. "Now," she went on, "schoolmaster, 
 two questions." 
 
 He was bent at once in a formal, yet curiously 
 courteous attitude. "What is the reason," she went 
 on, "that I could part your scholars into the fair and 
 the dark? That boy has pale golden hair, cheeks 
 that would vie with the apple-blossom, a white skin. 
 The girl next him is almost, not quite, as pretty. 
 But she might be a brown-skinned Spanish girl, sell- 
 ing oranges in Seville." 
 
 "And they are first cousins." he replied, with a 
 triumphant laugh. "We ould Irish, including your- 
 self, Miss O'Connor, have Spanish blood in our 
 hearts ; we are Milesians from the valleys of Biscay. 
 The later-comers we don't despise them, Mr. Ed- 
 mund were Normans, fair and chivalrous. But 
 the Saxons, the Cromwellians, they were worse than 
 the sons of Lopus, plebeians to the bone. Look your 
 fill on Richard Fitzgerald there, and his dark cousin, 
 Una Rahilly those children should be in the Irish 
 Book of Gold if we had one. What is your second 
 question, ma'am?" 
 
 "Why have most of the children sore eyes ? Why 
 am I constantly meeting blind old men and wo-
 
 A HEDGE-SCHOOL 87 
 
 men? They sadden me. But they were not born 
 blind?" 
 
 The schoolmaster's eloquence had met with a 
 check. "I never gave a thought to it," he said. 
 
 "Nor did I," said Liscarroll, "more shame for us 
 both. Ah, you would soon find out, Miss O'Connor. 
 Why do you put your handkerchief to those eyes of 
 yours?" He had been watching her closely. 
 
 "It is the smoke," answered Lisaveta, "the sharp 
 smoke of the peat." 
 
 "Live in that smoke, year in, year out, in the dust 
 or mud of a cabin, close as you can creep to the fire 
 during our long winter months," said Edmund to 
 himself in a low tone "my own eyes are getting 
 purged, I think." 
 
 "Then 't is Davy Roche the middleman blinds 
 the people," cried O'Dwyer, striking his desk till 
 it rang again. "Davy and the like of Davy, with 
 their rack-rints on us. Oh" he broke into a tower- 
 ing passion "oh, Davy, may the divil sweep out 
 hell with you and then burn the broom!" 
 
 "Whist, whist, my dear Cathal," said his friend, 
 soothing him, "maxima reverentia debetur pueris 
 et puellis. The children, man alive ! the lady !" 
 
 "I humbly beg her pardon and theirs," he re- 
 turned, wiping his forehead. "But surely, to take 
 the eyes out of our heads with rack-rinting is an
 
 88 THE WIZARD'S KNOT 
 
 atrocity that cries to God for vengeance. Hell's 
 flaming heart would n't be too hot for the man." 
 
 " 'T is after their oaths the women are at their 
 best," said Liscarroll, "now do you be at your best 
 after so mighty an invective." The schoolmaster 
 swelled out his feathers again. "Can you gratify 
 Miss O'Connor in the thing she came for?" 
 
 "Your soul to God ! Is there a thing I would n't 
 do for O'Connor's daughter ?" cried Cathal, hoarsely; 
 "many and many 's the time I had the privilege of 
 your father's company may he never want for the 
 ambrosial cup this day in heaven! Often he said 
 to me, 'O'Dwyer, I '11 be the last of the roving 
 blades; but we '11 have the jug on the ground be- 
 tween us in spite of that.' Wisha, God be with ould 
 times ! No man has more respect for Father Mathew 
 than myself; but still and all " 
 
 "My father was sentimental and impulsive the 
 Irish April," said Lisaveta, glancing not unkindly 
 toward Edmund; "my mother had a pretty name 
 for him she called him 'the wood spirit' ; and our 
 peasants on the Volga were ready to face death if 
 he lifted his ringer. He roved far enough. It was 
 his dying wish that brought me to Ireland, 'to the 
 fair hills of Erinn, O !' " 
 
 "What fun and dancing, wrestling and hurling, 
 there used to be with him and the songs and
 
 A HEDGE-SCHOOL 89 
 
 stories after that at Airgead Ross!" said Cathal, 
 regretfully. 
 
 "My will is good to have them once more," said 
 Miss O'Connor, her eyes kindling, "if it was but 
 for his sake. Come over now at your free times 
 to Silverwood, and help us. That is one thing I 
 am asking, Mr. O'Dwyer." 
 
 "I am not as I was," answered the schoolmaster, 
 with a sigh; "aches, and pains, and penury accom- 
 pany ould age; but surely I '11 do my share." 
 
 "And could we keep the true May Day, Bealtaine, 
 with its dances about the whitethorn and every 
 good custom, thanks to you," Lisaveta continued, 
 "would n't your name and fame be equal to blind 
 Heffernan's, William Ball's, you admire so ?" 
 
 " 'T is a prospect would enrapture the great gods 
 that sat on Ida's hill," answered he, "but one favor 
 and grace I beg Mr. Edmund, you won't see me 
 come short in the finer amenities of the entertain- 
 ment?" 
 
 "I beg it, likewise, Mr. Liscarroll," said the lady ; 
 "you will revive the Feasts and Contests of Bards 
 on my lawn " 
 
 "And under your eyes," said the young man. 
 
 "Brighter eyes shall do the honors of Silverwood 
 I will undertake for that. What says your song ? 
 'There are maidens would be mine, with wealth
 
 9 o THE WIZARD'S KNOT 
 
 of land and kine' those maidens shall look down 
 on the lists, as in the Cour d' Amour. Is it a treaty ?" 
 
 "Poets, wrestlers, dancers, and a fair May Day," 
 said her cavalier, in a taking of pleasure. "Do you 
 call that reforming our bad habits ? I thought you 
 would banish joy and be teaching us the Saxon 
 trades." 
 
 "As if joy were not the life, the crown, of all 
 noble trading !" answered Lisaveta, with enthusiasm. 
 "I would never take from our dear people their 
 merry heart Cathal, you understand the gold they 
 earn must be fairy gold which does not turn to 
 dead leaves." 
 
 "Had they the word of enchantment to the door 
 of the fort!" he answered dejectedly. 
 
 "Mr. Edmund has it. And you the Druid, the 
 teacher ?" 
 
 "Who is neglecting his Trojans," said Cathal, 
 "and they like a crowd of starlings, greedy of beak, 
 sharp of claw, to seize all we 're saying. Go home 
 now with ye, children; I give a holiday in honor 
 of our illustrious visitors. Out with ye, every one." 
 The school emptied in a second. 
 
 "Now till May Day we three are in strict alli- 
 ance," said Miss O'Connor. "Then we will keep it 
 in great style. You shall be our magician, and 
 throw over us the glamour of Tara's high days."
 
 A HEDGE-SCHOOL 91 
 
 "I '11 have the chain of silence shaken, silver and 
 iron, to keep order," said Cathal, dancing a step in 
 his delight; "that 's the drum-step, my lady, and 
 not a man from this to Limerick could dance it as 
 firmly. You tell me I am a Druid. Well, I will bind 
 ye with the wizard's knot, and make ye all turn as 
 it goes round ye." 
 
 "The wizard's knot?" said Miss O'Connor. 
 
 " 'T was an enchantment put into hanks of yarn 
 by the wise man or the wise woman, to keep the 
 place safe and sacred where it would be tied, and 
 to bind under bonds every soul it was laid upon. 
 Not Fionn MacCumhal himself could stand up to 
 it. You never heard tell of the Cave of Keshcorran, 
 and the three hags that 'upon three crooked and 
 wry sticks of holly hung as many bewitched hasps 
 of tow, reeling it off left-handwise' to put on 
 Fionn a deadly tremor when he was caught in it. 
 But I would put on ye a tremor of joy," said he, 
 looking at them significantly. 
 
 "We are in your hands," said she, laughing; "you, 
 Mr. Edmund, bring your poets and poetry." 
 
 "If Philip comes round," he said, hesitating, upon 
 which they felt the morning with its gracious lights 
 was overcast. 
 
 "We '11 cure him yet, with God's help, had he 
 nine times as many doctors," cried O'Dwyer.
 
 92 THE WIZARD'S KNOT 
 
 "Leeches they may well be denominated the blood- 
 suckers. Will they never be taught that the sight 
 of blood is to God and the sun an abomination?" 
 
 It was a fair stroke at the crimson methods of 
 the day in those backward districts, and raised a 
 smile. None there could have told what depths of 
 ancient superstition they were looking into. 
 
 "But a word with you, Mr. Liscarroll," said the 
 girl. "Good morning, schoolmaster. My compli- 
 ments to Joan. Where is your dark cailinf" 
 
 "She is above at the castle," answered O'Dwyer, 
 vaguely, his eye seeking the ground. " 'T is help- 
 ing Nora O'Sullivan she is." 
 
 When they were outside, before mounting, 
 Lisaveta put her query to Edmund. "When does 
 your aunt come to me? I wish it, you know." 
 
 He gave a deep sigh. "I might tell you she can't 
 leave my cousin a falsehood." 
 
 "Which you are not the man to utter. Then 
 she accepts?" 
 
 "I have to think of you, Miss O'Connor, and for 
 you. It is impossible." 
 
 "Say no more," she answered, with some sharp- 
 ness, yet with melancholy in her tone. "You regard 
 me as the young person, who cannot be trusted to 
 brave talk and silliness when there is something 
 to do."
 
 A HEDGE-SCHOOL 93 
 
 "The world's opinion is not silly." 
 
 "I despise it," she said; "so will you, or you are 
 not the man I took you for. But I have done. 
 Good morning, Mr. Worldly Wiseman." 
 
 As he rode home, the youth finished his Irish con- 
 strue of Moschus. The last verse had a sting: 
 "Touch not his wily gifts, for all are hot from the 
 furnace." 
 
 "Aye, that 's true," he said to himself, "but I Ve 
 gripped them hard. Too late !"
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 THE MIST AND THE STREAM 
 
 BUT if Edmund had full confidence that the maid 
 of Airgead Ross cared a bit for him which he 
 had not he would have told her what a Banshee 
 of wailing and ill-presage moaned in the High Room 
 at Renmore. His heart was bruised and broken, 
 like ice on deep waters the rainbow-gleams in which 
 his first youth wandered musing sank into the thun- 
 der-cloud. At such a time, dull in spirit, alive to 
 every stroke of sorrow, he felt sadness in all that the 
 Russian girl had made him see with her clear eyes, 
 while they scanned the village from above aye, even 
 while his words rang against hers. The fine purple 
 of his dreams fell to ashen-gray; Philip weighed 
 heavy on his arms, cold as a corpse. He would have 
 given the succession of Renmore estate to save him, 
 without a second thought. Hardly because he was 
 fond of his cousin he did not know whether to 
 like Phil or let grow up in himself that secret 
 displeasure which the Celt cherishes in silence under 
 civil speeches, where something holds back his affec- 
 
 94
 
 THE MIST AND THE STREAM 95 
 
 tion, as the north wind holds the rain. No, but if 
 he died, the village gossip would come true; Lady 
 Liscarroll's venomous eye would have murdered her 
 son. 
 
 How was Philip to get his quiet sleep, on which 
 recovery depended? The days went over him, 
 always speechless, but with unclosed eyelids; Dr. 
 Driscoll prescribed; the famous Cork physician 
 earned another handsome fee; the patient, speaking 
 once but it might be his delusion that spoke mut- 
 tered to Nora O'Sullivan, "I am looking at a swift 
 stream that broadens and broadens; when it flows 
 into the red mist beyond, I am a dead man." 
 
 The nurse hushed him with tender words, and 
 carried this fine image, or vision, to Edmund. At 
 his evening report in the High Room he whispered 
 it with a fall in his voice, thinking to prepare the 
 woman who walked to and fro incessantly between 
 the seaward-looking window and the door, caged 
 but untamable. "When the mist meets the stream," 
 she said, quivering, "you will suffer me to be there 
 you will, Edmund?" 
 
 "Now you might," he answered; "it is Driscoll 
 warns against a possible shock. Otherwise " 
 
 Her reply was decided. "While there is a chance 
 I will not go down. They would say my looks 
 were poison to him, if anything happened. But
 
 96 THE WIZARD'S KNOT 
 
 the red mist is an old sign in his family" she 
 was careful not to say "in ours." "Have n't you 
 heard Sir Walter talk volumes on the Liscarroll 
 death-tokens? That is one of them." 
 
 "Perhaps Philip heard his father talking, and now 
 fancies it. Then you if I send, you will it will 
 not be too intolerable a pain?" 
 
 She smiled and dropped her lip, with an anguish 
 he had never yet seen on the haughty features. 
 "When my son shut me into this tomb the bitter- 
 ness of death was past." 
 
 No, it was yet in store. Philip began to babble 
 all day of the mist and the stream. Seven weeks af- 
 ter November Eve, when a great fall of snow prom- 
 ised a white Christmas, and no bird sang in the 
 boughs of Renmore, he took a turn from silence to 
 the same words ever "The mist and the stream 
 the mist and the stream." Said Nora, his foster- 
 mother, the tears running down, "Is n't it mourn- 
 ful the case he is in? My long sorrow that no 
 doctor can heal or cure him." And she thought, 
 but refrained from saying, "If I was to tell Cathal 
 O'Dwyer now, what harm would he do to give a 
 cast of his hand over the bed?" 
 
 She let a sly word fall in Joan's hearing, delicately 
 stained with one tint of imagination. "Mr. Ed- 
 mund would be heart-broken not to call for the
 
 THE MIST AND THE STREAM 97 
 
 Druid's skill and knowledge was there good in it," 
 which Joan, meaning no evil, quoted to her father 
 on his next appearance. A victorious light came 
 into his green-gray eyes. 
 
 "Let Nora lave the door to me," he said; "had I 
 five minutes' clinical observation of the symptoms, 
 I 'd brew Sir Philip a potion as miraculous as Hip- 
 pocrates or Galen ever composed. Tell the woman 
 I 'm here in expectation." 
 
 Then his scorn was poured out on Driscoll. 
 "That much," he cried, snapping his fingers, "for 
 the man of medical science, with his sublimates, his 
 steel, his drugs, and the whole of his paraphernalia. 
 Glory be to the Almighty! as long as the fox is 
 running, he 's caught at last. To the poor Druid 
 he must come down, though it sticks in his gizzard. 
 But let me clap eyes on the patient they are mal- 
 treating." 
 
 Nothing loath, Nora left the door as she was 
 bidden, and Cathal stole in on tip-toe. From be- 
 hind the bed-curtains he watched Sir Philip with an 
 eye as bright as a hawk's, while the endless phrase 
 turned on itself "The mist and the stream the 
 mist and the stream." 
 
 "If it was a windmill, his tongue could n't be go- 
 ing faster," said Nora, "and his pulse feel it your- 
 self do be bating, bating, day and night as quick." 
 
 7
 
 98 THE WIZARD'S KNOT 
 
 "I '11 put a stop to both of them," answered Cathal, 
 with supreme assurance. "But hould, woman, till 
 my prognostics are concluded." 
 
 The word was made to silence her. O'Dwyer, 
 charlatan or wizard, continued peering into the open 
 eyes and face of the invalid, felt his pulse and his 
 heart repeatedly, and went through all the rites of 
 the professional artist, solemn as a red Indian. He 
 tasted the physician's draught and shook his head 
 mournfully. "I need n't inquire for a disease but 
 this," he said to Nora, in a tragic aside. "At what 
 hour does Mr. Edmund be visiting her ladyship in 
 the High Room?" he asked, when his long and 
 minute examination was over. 
 
 "Between seven and eight at night," said the 
 nurse. 
 
 "Now, Nora, we 're ould friends and neighbors," 
 said he, "and you would n't see me wronged. What- 
 ever we do for Sir Phil, the doctor must not know 
 it." 
 
 "I '11 take every book, shut or open," said Nora, 
 "to keep it from him." 
 
 " 'T is prudent, also, to lave Mr. Edmund in the 
 dark, so as he would n't be answerable to Driscoll 
 or the Corconian if our medicament failed a thing 
 it will not." 
 
 "Give me your orders, and you need n't fear me,"
 
 THE MIST AND THE STREAM 99 
 
 said the ancient woman, dominated by his fame as a 
 fairy-doctor, but still more by his resolute bearing. 
 
 "I must have twenty-four hours, and be out in the 
 moon, as long as she shines this night, to collect 
 the medicinal herbs and steep them according to the 
 rules o' knowledge. To-morrow night, before 
 seven, do you call down my daughter from the 
 tower, and let her be waiting for me in the clump of 
 hazels near the reilig. The remainder will be my 
 duty. I won't be seen in the business, good or 
 bad, however." 
 
 "But if he was to die in the night?" she asked. 
 "I 'in in dread when he 's tired of talking he '11 get 
 death that minute. Listen to him now." 
 
 "In less than one turn of the sun and one of the 
 moon I could n't heal a sick man, though I got 
 Ireland for it. The fall of sriow is bad for me, too. 
 Don't let him die, nor do you think of it; but put 
 your life itself into him till Joan comes from me to- 
 morrow at the hour appointed." He paused and 
 made the sign of the cross on himself, on her, and 
 over the insensible patient, saying in a deep whisper, 
 "I bind him to life; I bind you to silence; young 
 man, wait for me woman, put seven locks on your 
 tongue. In the name of the strong angel that 
 houlds the sword!" 
 
 He went on tip-toe out of the room, and, after
 
 ioo THE WIZARD'S KNOT 
 
 writing a word to be given in to Joan with her 
 mistress's dinner, betook him to his gaunt old cabin, 
 where he spent some hours alone. A neighbor came 
 to the door, but could not get an entrance; neither 
 was there any that answered her loud and vehement 
 callings. The saucy village gossoons crept round to 
 see what their schoolmaster was doing, with a de- 
 lighted fear that if he opened and ran out upon them 
 they would catch a glimpse of the familiar spirit 
 black cat, or blacker demon which, they made 
 sure, was sitting beside him on the hearthstone. 
 But O'Dwyer gave little heed to the breathings about 
 his threshold or the spurts of smothered laughter; 
 he did not hear them, probably. His whole soul was 
 wrapt in deep cogitation, while his corded hands, 
 brown and withered, were busy in mixing herbs after 
 prescriptions which, as he believed, came down 
 through long centuries from the fairy-doctors of the 
 Tuatha De Danann. In secret bundles, hid under 
 the thatch, he kept these potent herbs, gathered in 
 their season marsh-marigolds, primroses, yarrow, 
 eyebright, vervain, St. John's wort, and many more. 
 They had each their hidden virtues, quickened by 
 prayers sung over them to a weird chant, and in a 
 mixture of Christian language with pagan cere- 
 monies. But, seemingly, this afternoon, the charm 
 was not complete. O'Dwyer sat down, at last, in
 
 THE MIST AND THE STREAM 101 
 
 a silence which not even prayer interrupted, waiting 
 for night and the moon. 
 
 What followed was never clearly ascertained. 
 That he left the fire burning a precaution against 
 wandering ghosts, locked up the house, and sallied 
 forth into the snowy woods, returning no man's 
 salute, those few could avouch who met him. Few 
 they were, since the Irish peasant is convinced that 
 after nightfall, "outside the house is for the dead, 
 inside for the living." It was Cathal, or Cathal's 
 likeness, bent on a dubious errand ; in either case he 
 would not answer their challenge as he was going 
 the road. Whither and what to do ? 
 
 On this head many spoke many things. The 
 lights and shadows of an hour when the moon sails 
 above thick tree-tops, glancing on a wild torrent 
 like the Lonndubh, catching up gleams from the 
 ocean to scatter them far and wide in endless re- 
 verberations, are full of mystery. Was it O'Dwyer 
 that went stooping by the gnarled roots along the 
 stream, as if in search of fairy plants to compose 
 the healing draught? Not unlikely. Or did he 
 stand colloguing with a crooked old body man or 
 woman; perhaps something worse under the in- 
 violate hawthorn which grew upon the lis of Ren- 
 more, while the moon went into a cloud? Did he, 
 whispered others, shivering yet not without a thrill
 
 102 THE WIZARD'S KNOT 
 
 of admiration at his bold deed, open the Black Book 
 itself? Though Cathal was known to be good- 
 natured a white wizard, famous for extraordinary 
 cures his two hands might be of different colors. 
 Lisaveta, viewing the new world into which destiny 
 had brought her with un jaundiced eye, once uttered 
 this truth : "It is a people secret and suspicious be- 
 yond any God has made." His neighbors liked 
 O'Dwyer and suspected him ; but the latter in their 
 silent hearts. A good man for his convivialities 
 were no sin to their thinking he had power with 
 the fairy- folk and knew their ways ; but were he out 
 now, "in the merriment of the cold wind," some mis- 
 chief devising, they would only like him the less 
 and dread him the more. 
 
 Some, therefore, talked of the spell he had to call 
 Donn Firinne, king of the Munster fairies, from his 
 castle under Lough Gur, into any place, however 
 far off, he might choose. Others among them cer- 
 tain old hags upon whom he had put a caustic word 
 said the Black Man was nearer to him than the 
 Brown "Donn" is that color in Gaelic. But when 
 the event came to pass which startled the country 
 twenty miles round, all were certain they had known 
 of the tremendous and fateful charm wrought that 
 snowy night by Cathal in the moonlit woods. His 
 shadow, single or double, going about till the sun 
 rose and drove him home, flitted through copse
 
 THE MIST AND THE STREAM 103 
 
 and brake years afterward, when he was mingled 
 with the clay. A night of power, the wizard's 
 moon glaring down upon it, malignant, unwhole- 
 some! 
 
 Thus they. And whatever Cathal came out to do, 
 we may be sure he did that thing. If to gather 
 herbs of health, he took them home with him; if 
 on a business more fell and daring, his smile as he 
 undid his cabin door betokened its accomplishment. 
 The rest of the day which followed he spent in 
 school ; but the lessons were sharply given, and boys 
 and girls, hearing his first words, knew with their 
 quick Irish fancy they must let the master alone that 
 morning. He had not broken his fast by so much 
 as a draught from the little still he kept, "unknown 
 to the gager." Nor would he until the potent brew 
 he was putting down at the fire had left his hands; 
 for it was no vile apothecary's concoction, but true 
 aqua vita, into which the fairy-doctor must fling 
 his own soul. 
 
 Joan, the innocent, had her instructions. Dusk 
 fell, and she was waiting among the hazel-trees, 
 cold in a bitter blast. Her father, his patched cloak 
 hiding what he brought, came stealthily along, cau- 
 tious not to break a twig, hardly venturing to crush 
 the freezing, powdered snow. They met without 
 a word. After a while he inquired about Philip. 
 "Is the life in him yet?"
 
 104 THE WIZARD'S KNOT 
 
 "It is, but as a rushlight blowing backward and 
 forward at the door. Nora believes he '11 not put 
 the night past. Father Falvey was there this after- 
 noon to do what he could for him." 
 
 "Does the tongue be ever going to the same 
 tune?" 
 
 She assented hastily. "Let me in again, father. 
 Lady Liscarroll will be asking for me." 
 
 "Don't mind her," he answered. "But now put 
 this under your shawl, in the name of God. Go 
 from me without turning your head or looking 
 back, whatever thing screeches to you; but away 
 with you, Joan; bate up to the sick-room, and with 
 your own hand give the drink in nine sups to Sir 
 Phil. Thin tell Nora to burn what I left yester- 
 day. I '11 come for news to-morrow early." 
 
 With a gesture of command, he put into her hands 
 an ancient flask of gold beaten thin, ornamented with 
 the curious snake-lines, twisted fantastically, which 
 we have admired in Irish illuminations. It was 
 treasure-trove dug out of a bog, not yielded up to 
 Government, and worth far more than its owner sus- 
 pected, but by him unsalable. Showing her how to 
 undo it, "Go before you now," he said, "and for your 
 soul don't look to right or left till you are in the 
 house." With these admonitions, he departed, steal- 
 ing away as he came.
 
 THE MIST AND THE STREAM 105 
 
 The girl's heart throbbed violently; a murmur 
 as of low voices began to sing in her ears. Leaves 
 rustled; snow fell in sparkling and blinding sheets 
 from the branches upon her; a hare ran across her 
 path, and some wild thing flew into her face, as she 
 ran breathless up to the castle. The wind thickened, 
 the woods roared ; a great sound of the sea troubled 
 her, but still she ran. At the hall door she was on 
 the point of stumbling, in such headlong haste did 
 she flee from those voices which muttered low, 
 "Turn back, turn back !" The trees, the wind, the sea, 
 were after her, like hands touching her hair in the 
 stormy blast. But she did not stumble, and once 
 within doors her courage mounted. "Sure, I am a 
 hare myself to be in dread of one," she thought re- 
 proachfully. " 'T is n't that I should be minding, 
 but what I have in my fingers. Good now, Joan, 
 do as you said you would." 
 
 She was standing at the door of the sick-room. 
 A light burned at the stair-head, and she paused in 
 front of it. Her beautiful face, wet from the snow, 
 took a grave expression. "I won't give him a thing 
 I don't take first," she said, opening the flask, which 
 yielded a strange thymy smell, powerful as some 
 Eastern scent, but more natural, as it were. Joan 
 blessed herself devoutly and put the flask to her lips. 
 It held a strong essence, for eyes and mouth re-
 
 106 THE WIZARD'S KNOT 
 
 sented it, as they might smelling-salts, and in not 
 many seconds a pervading warmth, accompanied by 
 profuse perspiration, declared its efficiency, while no 
 symptom of a threatening nature followed. "I can 
 give it now," reasoned the girl ; "if it harms the one 
 of us, the other will be no better." The thought 
 gleamed in her eyes, which had an intense brightness 
 when she entered Philip's room. 
 
 The nurse, expectant but downcast, whispered, 
 "The priest and the doctor have given him up. 
 Make haste now; your lady will be here before 
 long. Mr. Edmund gave orders to be ready for 
 her any minute." 
 
 Philip's voice had sunk, with frequent pauses, but 
 never kept still. When the nurse made him sit up, 
 he turned his unmeaning eyes toward Joan, who 
 was near the bed, her countenance glowing with a 
 life which radiated in pity and tenderness upon the 
 wasted man, stricken to death so mysteriously. Nora 
 O' Sullivan supported him, and the draught was ad- 
 ministered nine times without mishap, its odor fill- 
 ing the room. "Now burn those things my father 
 left with you," said the girl, putting into her bosom 
 the thin gold flask. They were powders or dust 
 of some kind, for they crackled in the fire and a 
 smoke as of incense rose from them. 
 
 No trace was discernible of the thymy odor
 
 THE MIST AND THE STREAM loj 
 
 which characterized the healing draught. "I can 
 say it was incense," remarked Nora. Her companion 
 said nothing. She had become one anxious gaze, 
 forgetful of her mistress, daring the chance of dis- 
 covery; all her mind concentrated on Philip's worn 
 lineaments, which seemed to be working under emo- 
 tions as obscure as they were mighty. A struggle 
 had begun in him ; he tossed and groaned like a man 
 whose pain is intolerable. Her own excitement 
 wrought some fever into the spectacle; she hardly 
 knew whether she was drunk or sober. "He '11 die 
 and I '11 follow him," was a thought that flashed 
 through her brain. 
 
 All at once he began crying, "Oh, mother, the 
 red mist oh, mother, the red mist !" 
 
 "Och, great God o' grace," cried Nora, "the hand 
 of death is upon him! 'T is your father poisoned 
 him the thief o' the world !" 
 
 "Then I '11 die poisoned, too," said Joan, throwing 
 up her hands in momentary despair. "I drank the 
 same drink before giving it." 
 
 The nurse's eyes remained fixed on this strange 
 girl in awe and uneasy admiration. "What made 
 you do that?" she whispered. 
 
 "To prove my father was no poisoner," said Joan 
 O'Dwyer, proudly. 
 
 The struggles of Philip called them to his bedside
 
 io8 THE WIZARD'S KNOT 
 
 again. "Oh, mother, the red mist oh, mother, the 
 red mist !" he cried as at some overpowering vision. 
 
 "Run, Joan, run to the tower, call his mother 
 call Mr. Edmund. Let them be here now, would 
 they see him alive. Oh, Joan, run with ye." 
 
 It needed none of these incitements to set her off. 
 The girl, her limbs trembling, her lips and brain on 
 fire, was flying along the interminable steps, up to 
 the High Room. She flung the door open without 
 knocking and ran to Lady Liscarroll; but, panting 
 like a hunted deer, she could only gasp, "He 's dying 
 dying the red mist is there." 
 
 "Now," said the unhappy mother, nerving herself 
 as for execution, "Edmund, come. I am at last 
 free." 
 
 They rushed down in a tumult of hurrying feet. 
 Joan followed, still clasping the gold vessel which 
 was to prove her crime and bring it home if he died 
 and the mist of doom had begun to fall over him. 
 Entering the sick-chamber, she thought it was full of 
 lights, amid which Philip's ghastly face and staring 
 eyeballs fascinated her as in some sacred picture. 
 His red curls framed it uncannily a face never to 
 be forgotten. Had she poisoned him with her magic 
 golden flask? The heart within her was bursting. 
 
 Philip sat up without assistance, stretching out 
 pallid hands for water. The flame of thirst was
 
 THE MIST AND THE STREAM 109 
 
 consuming his inwards. Lady Liscarroll held a 
 glass to her son's lips, from which he drank eagerly ; 
 but he suffered still. They were all in that horrible 
 agony where the lookers-on are torn with a useless 
 compassion, imbecile in the presence of a pain it can- 
 not relieve. Edmund took his cousin's hand with a 
 firm grip; Nora and Joan dared not exchange 
 glances, but their consternation was so visible that 
 the slightest accident would have betrayed the secret 
 which was rending their conscience. "What have 
 you been burning?" asked Edmund, detecting a sin- 
 gular flavor in the atmosphere. 
 
 "A few small grains o' blessed incense," replied 
 Nora her companion blushed "incense, sir, to 
 sweeten the air." 
 
 It satisfied him as he knelt, watching the waves of 
 suffering mount and fall, every throb appearing so 
 violent that even Lady Liscarroll hoped it would be 
 the last. 
 
 But hour thrust on hour, wearily, and the last was 
 not yet. Philip sat up or bent forward, shaken by 
 a power which held him in unseen bonds, which 
 might have been thought to play with its victim, 
 searching out every nerve with the skill of a prac- 
 tised musician upon the strings. How long could he 
 endure ? 
 
 That question poor Joan addressed to her heart,
 
 no THE WIZARD'S KNOT 
 
 wondering if the deadly mixture would have its 
 effect in her own case, almost angry that she felt 
 nothing but a glow and a quickened circulation 
 hateful in its unlikeness to Philip's agonizing strug- 
 gles. A sense of pity, infinite as her remorse, took 
 hold of the girl ; rather than let him die on these 
 coals of fire, she would confess say it was her do- 
 ing throw down the flask before them as the proof 
 of her guilt. But what would they do to Cathal? 
 The anguish of this doubt sent her tottering across 
 the room to a couch, where she fell prone, her 
 thoughts one lurid tempest; the others, except Nora 
 O' Sullivan, took no notice, absorbed in the death- 
 bed. Nora was making vows to all the saints, and 
 pilgrimages in her own mind to every holy well ; but 
 her tongue was tied. 
 
 A little more, and Joan had certainly confessed, 
 when she heard Sir Philip speaking with a voice new 
 to her, though weak and even yet dreamy. He was 
 calling Edmund. "Do you see the red cloud mov- 
 ing off?" he inquired. 
 
 "Where?" answered his cousin, joyful but in- 
 credulous. 
 
 "That way," said Philip, pointing to the window. 
 
 When the girl heard these words, she sprang up 
 and came toward the bed. There were numerous 
 lights in the sick-chamber, which cast on her, as she
 
 THE MIST AND THE STREAM in 
 
 stood erect, a vivid gleam. The young man's eyes 
 were arrested by an apparition he had never seen, 
 rising out of his fever's red mist. He sat still, ex- 
 amining her face with a grave curiosity, which she 
 could not help feeling too. They might have been 
 alone in the universe, so utterly were the others 
 blotted out. A long, deep gaze from his lately vis- 
 ion-haunted eyes was answered by one as long and as 
 deep, but more uncertain, from hers the supreme 
 moment had arrived. They were all conscious of it, 
 and hung on the sequel. 
 
 "Tell me who that child is?" he said, turning to 
 his cousin. 
 
 "She is Joan O'Dwyer, the schoolmaster's daugh- 
 ter," replied Edmund. 
 
 "I am not dreaming?" he asked. 
 
 "No, thank God! It is Joan you see, and Ed- 
 mund you are talking to." 
 
 "And I am here," said Lady Liscarroll, coming 
 forward, "your mother, Philip." 
 
 A deep sigh broke from his lips. "You yes, it is 
 you," he said despondently. "I remember. Ah, 
 I am not in a dream." 
 
 "Oh, surely not, sir," cried Joan, overcome by joy 
 and thankfulness ; "you have left the red mist behind 
 you, please God." 
 
 "The mist is gone, and you are in its place," he
 
 ii2 THE WIZARD'S KNOT 
 
 said with a childlike simplicity of tone. "I saw it 
 roll away, then I saw you. Will you will you stay 
 till I am all right?" 
 
 "As long as I can do you good, sir," she said fer- 
 vently. 
 
 "I will stay, too," said his mother "stay to nurse 
 my son." 
 
 "Yes," he answered with cutting indifference, 
 "what else could you do? You are my mother. 
 But in the High Room not here. Edmund, I gave 
 you a charge in the High Room, I say." 
 
 He was getting excited again. "I will go," said 
 the lady, her eyes telling what she suffered, but no 
 other sign of emotion visible. "I am satisfied now 
 my son lives." 
 
 "And will live," said Joan, making as to go with 
 her. 
 
 But Philip called to the girl. "Wait, you must 
 not leave me. Keep the red mist away." 
 
 Edmund took his aunt back to her prison. The 
 other women sat up till morning in Philip's room, 
 and saw him sink into a dreamless sleep.
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 
 FANCY PAINTING 
 
 THIS was that amazing cure of Philip Lis- 
 carroll, destined to have such consequences 
 for all concerned. O'Dwyer's "Eleleu" of triumph 
 may be imagined. "And so," he cried, smiting his 
 thigh in ecstasy when his daughter announced it, 
 under the hazel branches where she had taken from 
 him the wonder-working draught "and so the ould 
 wizard can do what the omniscient leviathan of sci- 
 ence from Cork, let alone Driscoll, the horse-doc- 
 tor, could not do they must give it up to him! 
 Rare as the gold is of that serpent-adorned flask 
 but keep it, alanna, 't is better with you than 
 me I 'd bestow it willingly to taunt and gibe at 
 these sons of ^sculapius and make a holy show of 
 the two of them." 
 
 " 'T would not be lawful nor right," answered 
 Joan, tremulously. "Between ourselves and Nora 
 the secret must remain." 
 
 "I 'm not to acquaint Mr. Edmund with my finest 
 
 8 113
 
 ii4 THE WIZARD'S KNOT 
 
 miracle? For a miracle it is all out. What would 
 he do to us?" 
 
 "He 's the red lightning itself if he do be vexed, 
 and Nora bid me warn you he gave no permission for 
 the cure; 't is letting on she was." 
 
 Cathal groaned aloud. "Until hell be heaven, 
 until the sun hide its light, until the stars fall from 
 the sky, women will remain as we have stated ! 
 True for you, Cormac MacArt, true for you. But 
 still, he is cured." 
 
 "Would they allow it was the drink I gave that 
 healed Sir Philip?" said Joan. "They would sooner 
 see him laid out any day I mane the doctors and 
 the quality. You 'd get a bad name, father, and I 'd 
 be driven from the castle and my white shillings, I 
 might go look for them in the Pool a Phouka." 
 
 He rubbed his forehead with a wise finger. "Had 
 I a thumb to bite like Fionn MacCumhal, I 'd know 
 what was to be done next," he said. "But I will 
 maintain against all pill-compounders, mercurial 
 adepts, and blood-suckers, that they never healed a 
 man fairy-struck as I did." 
 
 "Sir Phil came by his hurt that way?" inquired 
 Joan, weaving about the young master a web of 
 romance into which many golden threads were shot. 
 
 Her father nodded his gray head energetically. 
 "Leaping the fence of Rathmorna he got the hurt,"
 
 FANCY PAINTING 115 
 
 said Cathal, "in the first week of November when the 
 fairy-power is strong. There 's not a metal that is 
 dug, nor a plant that grows, would make him all 
 smooth again but the herbs of price and virtue I ad- 
 ministered. Will I hould my tongue on it for your 
 sake, Joan? But if I do, the thing itself will let a 
 screech out of it. For, by rights, the sick man 
 should be under the sod now." 
 
 The schoolmaster guessed shrewdly. Eyes had 
 been watching Renmore Castle, tongues had wagged 
 in many mouths, since the hour which brought 
 Philip home in a trance and was followed by his 
 mother's apparition at dead of night. A compli- 
 cation of events so tragic was not made for silence. 
 Dr. Driscoll and his wife hinted a thousand times 
 more than they spoke. But the legend was growing 
 of a son on his death-bed who rose to lock the tower 
 doors behind which his wicked mother was kept in 
 durance, and from which she had attempted to es- 
 cape, when he thrust her back again. In that law- 
 less fold of the country between hills and sea, such 
 things had taken place the shadowy ruins, caves of 
 ocean, glens concealing deep, murderous lakes, had 
 their stories, a red mark across them, of abductions, 
 imprisonments, disappearances sudden and final. 
 Who could say what Lady Liscarroll had done? or 
 what would now be done to her? Round the cabin
 
 n6 THE WIZARD'S KNOT 
 
 fire strange possibilities were argued by a people in 
 love with the marvelous, who mixed worlds seen 
 and unseen into an alchemist-cloud of many-colored 
 vapor. In mansions where the lady had formerly 
 visited, her guilt and her son's shame were often 
 touched upon in the endless keys of human feeling 
 earnest, light, satirical, sympathetic. Friends 
 inquiring about Philip at Renmore looked up curi- 
 ously toward the High Room, but never set eyes on 
 the supposed captive. That she was living Dr. Dris- 
 coll knew and asserted, with an undercurrent of sug- 
 gestion "How long? The raven might inform us 
 that sits croaking above her head, poor woman !" 
 
 "You don't tell me, doctor," said Mrs. Hapgood 
 of Derryvore, rustling her silks and fingering her 
 massy gold chain, "that her son and his cousin 
 haughty young men both would take the life of 
 that sinful woman?" Mrs. Hapgood was not a 
 sinner herself, and could pile a cairn of stones upon 
 her erring sister's head, in Christian charity. 
 
 "Murder, ma'am, is an actionable word," an- 
 swered Driscoll, sucking his smoky lips ; "I would n't 
 say myself that Lady Liscarroll was under lock and 
 key. But give her a morning call," he went on, 
 laughing boisterously, "and see if they '11 let you in." 
 
 The virtue of this lady, which some call brazen, 
 took alarm. "I shall pay no visits at Renmore till
 
 FANCY PAINTING 117 
 
 that woman quits the house or clears her character," 
 said she. "As soon as I was told of her arrival, I laid 
 my commands on Julia to have no more dealings 
 with Nora O' Sullivan, though she is an old servant 
 of ours, married from Derryvore." 
 
 "And Master Will what is he to do? If Sir 
 Philip had a friend, it was your son," said Driscoll, 
 going on with his joke. 
 
 "Master Will can take care of himself," replied 
 his mother; "a lone woman like me, Dr. Driscoll," 
 sighing pathetically, "has little influence over these 
 wild young men." 
 
 "I think Lady Liscarroll an injured person," said 
 the doctor, rising to leave; "Mrs. Driscoll regards 
 her as I do and always did. Anyhow, she has no 
 right to be in prison without a magistrate's warrant 
 if 't is in prison she is. Now Sir Philip has got the 
 better of his illness thanks to me, you say, ma'am ? 
 Well, we won't boast; maybe such a recovery is 
 creditable to a poor country surgeon but he is 
 nearly over it, and we '11 surely get light on the 
 inside of Renmore." 
 
 "I should wish it for all our sakes," said Mrs. 
 Hapgood. But that she meant Julia to become a 
 virtuous Lady Liscarroll and reduce the impenitent 
 to mere dowagership was no secret to the doctor; 
 on the string of that maternal ambition he had been
 
 n8 THE WIZARD'S KNOT 
 
 playing all the while. He delighted in setting dogs 
 to fight and people by the ears. The baronet was 
 getting well; Driscoll, therefore, felt no scruple in 
 hating him worse than ever. 
 
 As for Master Will Hapgood, he was a powerful 
 young fellow of two-and-twenty, with sparkling 
 black eyes, a black head of bushy hair, a fresh com- 
 plexion and big bones, and he was as wild as a colt. 
 His sister, Julia, the hoyden, took after him she 
 was large, dark, hot-tempered, unmanageable. The 
 lad's voice had a quarrelsome note ; Julia softened it 
 to girlish vivacity, but showed her white teeth a little 
 too often for perfect breeding. Their mother read 
 the Bible, sowed tracts broadcast, was justified in 
 her own eyes, and always spoke as if Derryvore lay 
 in Tongataboo. Her children read nothing what- 
 ever, coaxed and petted their horses, lived in or about 
 the stables half the day, rode at a breakneck pace, 
 and chose their friends on the hunting field. Sport 
 is a passion in Ireland, not a pastime; in Will's case 
 it had its complications of drinking, card-playing, 
 going to fairs and races, and regretting that he could 
 not exchange shots with a neighbor when his blood 
 was up. He would have envied Phil Liscarroll his 
 horsemanship had envy been Will's fault ; he did not 
 grudge him Julia's hand in prospect, though Ren- 
 more was bled white by long leases still to run out,
 
 FANCY PAINTING 119 
 
 and its encumbrances almost broke its back. So they 
 were, Phil and Will, as youths are wont to be; and 
 there did not exist the slightest confidence between 
 them. Phil kept his mind to himself; Will had 
 hitherto none worth keeping. He was a centaur with- 
 out brains, galloping through life in a steeplechase. 
 
 Julia, nettled but obedient, had ridden in the op- 
 posite direction to Renmore since that unlucky 
 November night. Her brother called every week, 
 sat with Edmund, but could not be admitted to Phil's 
 darkened chamber. As he passed in and out, voices 
 crooned their mysterious tale of the lady in the old 
 castle, solitary, with a cloud upon her fair face; the 
 beauty of this woman, injured or injuring, was com- 
 mon talk. Will had. never seen her since child- 
 hood; but he remembered her vividly, and with a 
 boy's gratitude for something she had once done to 
 comfort him in a desperate trouble. He was wait- 
 ing to offer such help as the situation might demand : 
 his sister's future was perhaps at stake, but a witch- 
 ing image of some lovely evil creature floated into 
 his imagination when he glanced at the tower, and 
 came across his rare dreams. Strict bringing up 
 had given him a surfeit of the Catechism yet it was 
 rather his dull fancy that shook itself at the unusual, 
 the dramatic strength of a figure revealed in beauty 
 and loneliness.
 
 120 THE WIZARD'S KNOT 
 
 Of all which Will Hapgood was profoundly un- 
 aware, though it had begun to act upon him, as a 
 slow fire sweetens malt, by imperceptible degrees. 
 His mother's readiness to believe the worst made him 
 incline to welcome that worst as not so bad after 
 all. Driscoll, on the other hand, irritated his curi- 
 osity by hints and surmises in the lady's favor, tend- 
 ing to accuse her late husband of moody indifference 
 toward his wife, and her son of a harshness that 
 seemed not unlike Sir Philip. The High Room with 
 its inmate put on a clear and solid appearance, almost 
 theatrically distinct, in the lad's mind. Had it been 
 a play, he would certainly have taken tickets for it. 
 
 He was fated to get free admission, unless pay- 
 ment should be asked when the curtain came down 
 which happens outside the theater pretty often. 
 "On a day of the days," mild and spring-like, a 
 breeze drawing exquisite patterns on the light-blue 
 surface of ocean, the sun ducking and diving among 
 silver-weed cast about the sky, Will Hapgood was 
 fishing a little way out in the long, indented Firth 
 of Renmore. His boatman, expert at this game, 
 we know already ; he was that Felim O'Riordan who, 
 had poor Joan but a cow's grass, would, in his own 
 opinion, have been matchmaking with her long ago. 
 The salmon-trout were greedily devouring the sweet 
 bait ; these two youths had made their haul and were
 
 FANCY PAINTING 121 
 
 happy under the fair sky, the caressing breeze 
 rightly tuned if Love came down along the strand or 
 leaped into their skiff. They spoke little what 
 need to speak? 
 
 While they were thus fishing happiness to them- 
 selves from the great deep, it chanced that Felim 
 sent his long sight into the air, vacantly, for the 
 pleasure of a spectacle so vast. Suddenly it was ar- 
 rested. "What are you looking at, O'Riordan?" 
 asked Hapgood. 
 
 "Do you see the ould tower of Renmore ?" he an- 
 swered, his eyes still uplifted. 
 
 Will gave a glance that way. "People on the 
 roof," said he ; "surely not strangers." 
 
 "No, indeed," said Felim, "or not all three of 
 them. Two I know, at all events. Look, Mr. W r ill 
 there 's Sir Philip, praise be to God, he is the ould 
 three and fourpence again as well as ever and 
 Joan, the schoolmaster's cailin deas, with her spin- 
 ning-wheel, if you plaise. Is it in her own cabin 
 she is?" 
 
 "But the tall woman in black tall against the 
 sky," exclaimed Will, a shiver going through him, 
 "who is she?" 
 
 "Your line is broke and the fish gone with the 
 bait, on account of her," said Felim, blazing up. 
 "What ails you, sir?"
 
 "Can that be Lady Liscarroll?" said the youth, 
 letting his rod fall into the water. The accident 
 pulled up his thoughts violently ; it was the business 
 of the next five minutes to recover his costly fishing- 
 tackle, floated on by the current. These manoeuvers 
 brought them nearer in, so that the castle, rising 
 above them, was more within sight. Hapgood made 
 believe to go on with his trout-catching; but the 
 dialogue which he kept up all along showed in what 
 direction his fancy had taken wing. 
 
 "No person seen her in the open since she re- 
 turned," said Felim ; "she is under bonds, surely, to 
 God. But 't is better than to make a bloody killing 
 of her, as another son would do the Hag of the 
 Gray Eyes they call her, and a hag she is." 
 
 "See if you can make her out with this glass," 
 answered Will, handing him a telescope, "my sight is 
 cloudy this morning." 
 
 Felim adjusted the instrument, while his master 
 seemed busy about the tackle. " 'T is a powerful 
 glass," said the fisherman; "I could n't see plainer 
 was I by the side of them in the sky above. There 's 
 Joan, seated like a queen, her spinning-wheel in front 
 of her, and the white fingers drawing the thread, as 
 't were playing on the harp." 
 
 "But the other woman the lady?" said Will, not 
 daring to lift his eyes, speaking in an oddly muffled 
 tone.
 
 FANCY PAINTING 123 
 
 "Wait a while now till I see her full in the face. 
 She is moving quick backward and forward, like 
 the shuttle you 'd be throwing. Ah, stand still, if 
 't is yourself, my lady ! She is eying our boat, I '11 
 engage. Widow's weeds and yellow hair, and a 
 shape as straight as a dart." 
 
 "It must be," said Will to himself, all manner of 
 confused but rich emotions taking possession of him 
 he could never have said which was uppermost, 
 but the result appeared to be fascination. 
 
 "Would you look through the spy-glass yourself, 
 sir?" Felim went on. "But what has taken your 
 eyes from you ? There 's the second salmon we lost 
 this day!" 
 
 Will threw him the rod. "Hook him, then," he 
 cried, "and give me the telescope." 
 
 He felt like facing cannon. His eyelids burned, 
 his pulse bounded. Then La Belle Dame Sans 
 Merci swam into his horizon, fair and sad. her long 
 draperies floating, her motions graceful but decided. 
 A mist dimmed the apparition ; Will pitched his spy- 
 glass into the bottom of the boat, and strained his 
 eyes in a long examination of the figures moving to 
 and fro on the castle roof. 
 
 "They are out tasting the blessed air and sun," 
 remarked O'Riordan; "but we are better off, as it is. 
 They '11 catch no salmon from the tower. I have 
 him, sir I have him lind a hand now to the sculls
 
 124 THE WIZARD'S KNOT 
 
 while I play the monster. He weighs sixteen pounds 
 if he 's an ounce." 
 
 For twenty minutes they were hard at it, and the 
 excitement, hot in master and man, gave Will's im- 
 agination a kindling which marked the fatal hour. 
 His blood, not chill at any time, caught heat from 
 the chase, the sense of spring, the acted story above 
 on that embattled height. Love was leaping to the 
 centaur's back and would ride him headlong an 
 insane lad's love for his own fancy. These unread, 
 inarticulate natures take the infection of romance 
 without suspecting it ; they are such children as never 
 look behind the show or dream of rags and tinsel 
 making its splendor. One spark was wanting, and 
 Will's heart would be in the flames. It flew down 
 upon him when their prey was landed and they rest- 
 ing on their oars. 
 
 Joan at the spinning-wheel had begun to sing one 
 of her Irish songs, clear and sweet, which the breeze 
 blew to them in snatches little golden drops, or 
 gleams of sunshine, falling upon their senses, making 
 them drunk with melody. 
 
 "Hark now," said Felim, "did any man hear music 
 in his sleep like that?" They listened in a great 
 stillness. "She is singing, 'O youth of the ring- 
 lets, my false love!' 'T would melt the heart in 
 your bosom with compassion," he whispered.
 
 FANCY PAINTING 125 
 
 His master signed to him to keep quiet. Will did 
 not know much of the words, but the air was fa- 
 miliar, plaintive and enticing in its forlorn sim- 
 plicity. 
 
 Joan sang, "Oh, I used to think, my storeen, you 
 were the sun and moon; and after that I used to 
 think you were the snow on the hill, or the bright 
 light of God, and the star of knowledge, going be- 
 fore and behind me." 
 
 She sang of the youth's broken promises with a 
 trill of sorrowful laughter which died into tears. 
 "Satins and silks you promised me, head-dress and 
 high-heeled shoes; and to follow after me, though 
 you should swim the ocean. Not like that am I 
 now I am a bush in the gap of a wall every noon 
 and morning I do be seeing but this house of my 
 father and I alone." 
 
 With a pathos, with a passion, with the wild heart 
 of her people, Joan sang. The last words, "and I 
 alone," which do not occur in this touching lament, 
 she added, as from a store of grief known to her- 
 self; and only those who have heard in youth the 
 Celtic spoken by their beloved will be capable of 
 feeling what a sweet sadness lurks in this refrain, 
 am aonar! Alone, alone was she hinting at a love 
 unreturned, or showing its bright beam on her youth- 
 ful wings? But Will Hapgood had no eyes except
 
 i 2 6 THE WIZARD'S KNOT 
 
 for the proud lady that stood listening, and to her 
 strange history he fitted the music. In the free air 
 a captive ; by her son's side, yet divided ; if, as the tale 
 ran whether false or true she ever had a lover, 
 he was dead and gone. Alone, alone she seemed, 
 that should be Queen of the World. 
 
 How could he reach her? By what ladder of 
 magic mount to her? Unless strong desire could 
 cleave the air, she was separated from him as by a 
 thousand leagues of fire. Philip, standing apart, in 
 some tired mood of convalescence, rigid as the statue 
 of the Commander, would wake and strike were that 
 prison door attempted, of which he held the keys. 
 No one had broken through his reserve, least of all 
 Will, who knew neither stratagem nor sleight-of- 
 hand, but rode across country, taking bush and bog, 
 stream and stone wall, as they came in his way. But 
 the impossible adventure drew him. While Joan 
 sang, the statue of the Commander stood fixed in 
 silence ; the lady gazed abroad from the battlements, 
 like Sister Anne, seeking deliverance. 
 
 Among the fishing-boats out on the waters, Lady 
 Liscarroll had observed one which, when it had 
 drawn in near the castle, remained motionless, the 
 two figures in it held by Joan's clear singing. She 
 leaned over the edge in an idle humor, and so lean- 
 ing dropped a lace handkerchief from her hand into
 
 FANCY PAINTING 127 
 
 the waves underneath. It floated like some live 
 thing blown by the wind toward Will Hapgood's 
 boat, a white messenger, a question or a signal, such 
 as the shipwrecked send forth on chance. One mo- 
 ment he saw it, the next he was in the water. Felim 
 screamed; was the young master mad? Perhaps; 
 but he had clutched the token, drawn a long breath, 
 and swum, happy as a seal in sunshine, to the strand 
 at no great distance. 
 
 "Pull in and take me off," he shouted merrily to 
 O'Riordan; "I have had a ducking." 
 
 "And you came near drowning," said Felim. 
 
 " 'T is equal to me," answered Will in Irish. 
 "Now row home."
 
 CHAPTER X 
 
 THE FORBIDDEN DOOR 
 
 WHEN a man is mad there is no reasoningwith 
 him, but he has often a way of reasoning 
 with himself an insane logic, yet straight from the 
 premises. Cathal, after this story had run its course, 
 used to say of Will Hapgood that he resembled Fer- 
 gus of the children of Leidhe, who was so smitten 
 and spellbound by the breath of the monstrous 
 woman in Lough Rury that he grew squint-eyed and 
 crook-backed, "his mouth twisted round to his poll," 
 and he, under that glamour, was not aware of it. 
 But while the shapes of things were false about him, 
 Will understood from the first what he intended to 
 do. "Liscarroll shall have fair warning," he mut- 
 tered "once, not twice. Then he may lay the blame 
 where he likes." 
 
 A singular chance, of which he heard from Nora 
 O' Sullivan, struck him as furnishing the happy pro- 
 logue to his entrance on the stage. What was it? 
 
 All in good time, reader. Several days passed after 
 
 128
 
 THE FORBIDDEN DOOR 129 
 
 the fishing expedition, and Will went up to Ren- 
 more, resolute, but outwardly unconcerned, the white 
 token in his pocket. Sir Philip was cleaning a gun 
 in the hall when he arrived. To cut a long story 
 short, young Hapgood brought out the handkerchief, 
 much as he would have taken a fence, with teeth set 
 and a catch in his breath, and explained on what 
 errand he was there. "I found this a few days back 
 down by the strand," said he. "It has the Lis- 
 carroll crest. In fact, I would it be Lady Lis- 
 carroll's?" 
 
 "I will give it to her," said Philip, stuffing it into 
 his belt rather curtly. "Thanks." 
 
 "Please say I found it," continued Will, "and 
 and my mother would be happy to call on yours, 
 now she is at home. She sends her compliments." 
 
 "Thanks again," said the baronet, with freezing 
 politeness, "it is quite unnecessary. My mother 
 does not see visitors." 
 
 "No? My mother will be so sorry. She was 
 told that Miss O'Connor had paid a long visit last 
 week to Lady Liscarroll. So she thought " 
 
 "Who, in the devil's name ?" broke in Phil, his 
 color mounting, but he pulled up short, Will re- 
 garding him closely. "Tush ! it is all old 
 women's chatter. My dear fellow, let us drop the 
 subject." 
 
 9
 
 130 THE WIZARD'S KNOT 
 
 "Then Miss O'Connor did get across the five- 
 barred gate," insisted Will. 
 
 "What do you mean?" said the other, rubbing 
 away at his fowling-piece. 
 
 "To offer you a fool's advice," said Will, clapping 
 him on the shoulder. 
 
 "Consider it offered, and let us talk of something 
 else." 
 
 "Now, Phil, just take an observation of me; did 
 I come here to quarrel with you?" said Hapgood, 
 seating himself where the light fell on his big fair 
 face. 
 
 "It looks damned like it," answered the baronet, 
 grounding his weapon with a clatter. 
 
 "Looks, but is n't. Phil, my lad, had n't you better 
 thank me for talking straight, when the whole 
 country talks behind your back ? I say Miss Lisaveta 
 has given you the very chance you wanted, but could 
 never have made. That 's all right. In your place 
 I would have done the same. But the consign is 
 forced. Let your prisoner out." 
 
 The man in front of him held that fowling-piece 
 dangerously high. Would it come smashing down 
 on Will Hapgood the next minute ? He had spoken 
 rudely and crudely, with intention. There was a 
 frightful dizziness in Phil's mind, hovering like a 
 hawk on the strike, but uncertain, when once more
 
 THE FORBIDDEN DOOR 131 
 
 he let the gun drop and answered, keeping down 
 his temper, "We will say you mean well you speak 
 as a friend. I can't take advice in this matter, that 's 
 all." 
 
 "But you can don't be offended. Phil you must. 
 There 's the law, and county opinion, and suppose 
 Lady Liscarroll were to die up in your old donjon? 
 It would be murder." 
 
 "It would be freedom," said the unhappy -young 
 man, in broken accents. "I tell you, Hapgood, since 
 you force me to talk, one of us will have to die, my 
 mother or myself." 
 
 "No, no, that is your delusion. Quite absurd, 
 my dear lad. Give her liberty and wash your hands 
 of the affair. Who will blame you?" 
 
 The baronet threw a foreboding glance at him. 
 "She will betray more men," he said gloomily. 
 "Edmund has no hand in what I am doing, but he 
 agrees with me. She is a woman not to be trusted 
 out of my sight." 
 
 "You will kill yourself and do her no good," 
 answered Will, standing up. "I came to warn you ; 
 honestly aboveboard. You are not to be warned ? 
 But don't forget I warned you." 
 
 It was uttered with equal heat and insolence 
 which, had Philip not been wrapped up in his own 
 griefs, ought to have given him the alert. He
 
 i 3 2 THE WIZARD'S KNOT 
 
 noticed merely that Will spoke as the fire-eater he 
 would like to be, and let it go by. Hapgood was 
 a bit of a bully ; it did not signify what did, when 
 the world was out of joint? 
 
 "Well, I -have restored the handkerchief, and 
 we 're always friends, eh, old boy?" said Will, as 
 the baronet would not answer. 
 
 "Always friends," replied Phil, not looking up, 
 but holding out his hand by way of farewell. On 
 these terms they parted. "He 's more of a fool than 
 I guessed," thought each of the other, reflecting on 
 their interview. 
 
 Had Liscarroll known everything, he would have 
 called Hapgood a liar into the bargain. The austere 
 mistress of Derryvore had sent no compliments, pro- 
 posed no calling on the gray-eyed witch, her ab- 
 horrence from of old. It was Will who aimed this 
 random shaft, reckoning he could follow it up with 
 a second, and persuade his mother that Lady Lis- 
 carroll was waiting for her on what O'Dwyer termed 
 "The Mount of Subsequent Repentance." 
 
 To unload her stock of tracts Mrs. Hapgood 
 would have gone anywhere, upward or downward. 
 She had pressed those tracts on the wizard himself 
 so vehemently that, between his wrath and his sense 
 of what was due to the weaker vessel, he could only 
 rout her with a Greek quotation, "Far from shame
 
 THE FORBIDDEN DOOR 133 
 
 dwells that cruel goddess." But in his native tongue 
 he growled, "If I had you and your tracts, madam, 
 in my right hand, 't is n't long till I 'd make shivers 
 and shives of what I was carrying." Still, as he 
 said among friends, there was "an element of face- 
 tiousness" in Mrs. Hapgood's Tongataboo mission- 
 ary ways, which puckered his features into a grin, 
 and her irreverent son was now quick to make his 
 profit of that wasted zeal. Could she also abandon 
 Miss O'Connor to the wiles of the enemy? Another 
 brand to snatch from the burning, after that pro- 
 longed visit ! He would let fly his second arrow. 
 
 Lisaveta, with the peculiar obstinacy of the gentle 
 Slav temper, which is that of the fanatic or the saint, 
 had not yielded an inch to Edmund's arguments. 
 "She feared no evil, for she knew no sin." An in- 
 tense pity overcame her when she pictured the lone- 
 some castle, the mother like some forlorn house- 
 haunting spirit, the young man half dead with 
 sorrow and watching. Why should she not strike 
 in to help them ? Mrs. Hapgood's mailed virtue she 
 would have laughed out of countenance ; yet Lisaveta 
 seemed fresh and fragrant as the red rose, of which 
 her Puritan acquaintance gloried in displaying only 
 the sharpest spines. It had fallen out, accordingly 
 since our wishes make our opportunities that Miss 
 O'Connor, driving by Renmore on an afternoon, had
 
 i 3 4 THE WIZARD'S KNOT 
 
 got inside the charmed circle without any one's 
 consent. 
 
 When she had stopped at the castle gate to inquire 
 about Philip's health, the steward, thinking his mas- 
 ter at home, went searching after him. Lisaveta, 
 who had come into the hall, was lingering there in 
 admiration, as often before, of its old oak roof, its 
 trophies of stags' horns, and its romantic chiaros- 
 curo, when a girl came out above on the Floren- 
 tine staircase a girl she had not seen for months. 
 She ran up instantly and took Joan in her arms. The 
 heavy door leading to the tower was open, and there 
 stood the timid warder, shy and affectionate, with 
 its key in her hand. "Now or never," thought Lis- 
 aveta. That old fairy-tale came into her mind of a 
 forbidden room in a lofty turret, a witch at the spin- 
 ning-wheel, a naughty maiden running up the stairs 
 in quest of adventure. "For God's sake, don't!" 
 cried Joan, putting the key in the door. It was too 
 late. The wilful Rosebloom had sprung up two 
 steps at a time. 
 
 Her young friend flew after, arriving just as Lisa- 
 veta had seen the door of the High Room flung wide 
 and a dark figure standing on the threshold. " 'T is 
 Miss O'Connor from Airgead Ross," exclaimed 
 Joan, doing the honors out of breath. Lady Lis- 
 carroll laughed and caught her visitor by the hand.
 
 THE FORBIDDEN DOOR 135 
 
 "Welcome and welcome again," she cried, leading 
 her in. "You come too, my dear child," as her at- 
 tendant was hesitating, "we shall talk no secrets; 
 indeed, I have been solitary so long I may want an 
 interpreter." 
 
 All this was said lightly and airily, persuasive as 
 a lark's trill, yet with the manner of the great 
 world. Miss O'Connor smiled when she saw the 
 spinning-wheel. "Not mine," said Lady Liscarroll. 
 "It is Joan that spins and sings. I do nothing but 
 mope or listen. So you are Charlie O'Connor's 
 daughter. Tell me about him about yourself. 
 Take that chair and talk." 
 
 But she talked the beautiful witch that Lis- 
 aveta might be feeling more at home. They sat by 
 the window, and the dove-like murmurs of the sea 
 filled up the pauses in a conversation so suddenly 
 improvised. On both sides it was a reconnaissance 
 in force. The Russian girl had expected beauty 
 worn by grief; she saw the splendid youth which 
 women artists know how to preserve into middle 
 years. A charm of style, expression, sentiment, 
 which amazed her quite irresistible. And all the 
 graces that come with knowledge of life, with travel, 
 with a certain air of distinction not often English, 
 with dainty French phrases caught on the wing. 
 Lisaveta was the very girl to be spellbound. She
 
 136 THE WIZARD'S KNOT 
 
 had spent her season in Rome and Florence; she 
 knew the Rhine with its castles and its vine-clad 
 hills; like all high Russians, her mother had been 
 everywhere, and O'Connor himself was one of the 
 Irish gentlemen who have a touch of the Parisian, 
 something to the manner born which puts them 
 at ease in all societies. Gaiety is infectious; 
 these two women were soon playing their lively 
 duo, as the sky lights up when night meets the 
 morning. 
 
 They talked of everything but Lady Liscarroll's 
 tragedy. That lay buried beneath twenty Atlantics ; 
 the waves rippled over it, the breezes sang. One in- 
 sinuation crept round Miss O'Connor's heart, a snake 
 drawn thither by such enchanting music what a 
 pity that this bright creature should be cut off from 
 her kind, so abounding in liveliness and joy! Did 
 she talk to Philip as she was talking now ? Then a 
 glance at the spinning-wheel and silent Joan would 
 bring back the admonitory legend of the witch in the 
 tower. But so novel an admixture of sensations 
 tended to throw a young soul off its balance ; she had 
 heard, but never seen with her eyes, how fascinating 
 a woman might be whose goodness was problemati- 
 cal. The child that looked forth in Lisaveta's pale 
 and serious countenance took fright, but would not 
 run away. An hour vanished to nothing; still they 
 kept up the game of hide-and-seek, both amused,
 
 THE FORBIDDEN DOOR 137 
 
 feeling it to be an adventure with unknown issues. 
 The Mary Stuart of Renmore had never been so 
 brilliant in her palmiest days. She was playing for 
 her life. 
 
 "Sorry, but I must go now," said her visitor, ris- 
 ing, "and may I ask it? do come and see me at 
 Silverwood. Come and stay?" 
 
 The captive sighed pensively. "Shall we be al- 
 lowed to fly that far, Joan? What do you think? 
 You look downcast." 
 
 "I would wait a while," answered Joan, "till the 
 weather was settled." 
 
 Her pleasure in the dialogue which she did not 
 share was anything but intense. She had her own 
 thoughts about Lady Liscarroll, and interpreted bet- 
 ter than their visitor what all these fireworks meant. 
 "I see danger, I see destruction," she would have 
 exclaimed, had she spoken out. The red mist was 
 rolling up again. 
 
 "Perhaps you are right," answered the lady, pat- 
 ting her cheek. "In the fair golden weather we will 
 come, my dear young friend. But don't desert us. 
 I am always at home. Your father and I rode many 
 a time after the same pack of hounds the dear old 
 Black-and-Tans ; we have danced to the same tune in 
 many a ballroom. Stay take this miniature; it is 
 said to be like me. I think it has something of 
 Philip in the expression. Do you?"
 
 138 THE WIZARD'S KNOT 
 
 "It has the eyes not the mouth," said Lisaveta, 
 chilled at the name, which reminded her that she was 
 risking his anger and Edmund's. She put the keep- 
 sake away, shook hands, all her timidity now reveng- 
 ing itself on her rashness, and fled downstairs as 
 hastily as she had sprung up them. 
 
 In the hall, not Philip, but his cousin was waiting. 
 The girl had fancied that she could brave the bar- 
 onet ; one sight of Edmund swept the other from her 
 recollection, and oh, this meeting was far worse ! It 
 shook her as the sudden breeze sets the aspen quiver- 
 ing. He would rebuke her as if she had broken a 
 pledge, and she felt defenseless. Some new heaven, 
 undreamt of till then, flashed with all its vistas upon 
 her, and was gone in a moment. 
 
 Edmund drew down his heavy brows. Tender- 
 ness, fear, and rage struggled within him. "Why 
 could n't you believe me ?" he cried abruptly. "Why 
 will you make things hard for us?" 
 
 "But she was so lonely," pleaded Lisaveta, "and 
 I never saw her equal the most charming of wo- 
 men! I confess it was wrong. The door stood 
 open; blame no one but me. Won't you forgive 
 my curiosity ?" 
 
 "Charming, charming!" he echoed. "Woe be- 
 tide such charms ! Yes, I could forgive your curi- 
 osity ; but have I have I thought and dreamt about
 
 THE FORBIDDEN DOOR 139 
 
 you month after month to read you no better? It 
 is not curiosity it is the dreadful passion for self- 
 sacrifice that stirs in you and will ruin you." 
 
 A sort of agony choked him; the table against 
 which he was leaning shook. 
 
 "You scourge me with compliments," said Lis- 
 aveta, endeavoring to smile. 
 
 "Compliments? It is the truth your truth. 
 The Russian in you is what I dread. Remember 
 how much you have told me of your mother, your 
 very peasants the mad love of suffering which has 
 planted itself deep in the Russian heart. Lady Lis- 
 carroll has sinned; you want to take her sin upon 
 you, to be a scapegoat, a sin-offering. I know you, 
 Miss O'Connor." 
 
 The insight of this young man seemed to her pro- 
 digious; it revealed Lisaveta to herself as though a 
 lamp had been lit in her brain and shed its rays over 
 the innermost deeps of the spirit. "You scold me 
 like a saint," she said in defense. "That is what 
 you would do yourself. / was only asking your 
 aunt to Silverwood." 
 
 "And what is she to you?" he cried, striking the 
 table hard ; life is before you to enjoy, not to throw 
 away on the first beggar you meet. Let her suffer. 
 She deserves it." 
 
 Lisaveta smiled at his passion. "I never could
 
 i 4 o THE WIZARD'S KNOT 
 
 see a dog suffer, let alone a woman, my own flesh 
 and blood. Don't ask it now." 
 
 "I tell you she is a creature all flame and poison," 
 he said despairingly. "O'Dwyer, who has seen her 
 from first to last do you know what he calls her ?" 
 
 "He weighs all of us in loaded scales," said Miss 
 O'Connor. 
 
 "He calls her the woman whose heart was a ser- 
 pent's head." 
 
 The girl laughed merrily. "Original, as always. 
 But why the head in the heart ?" 
 
 "Because she has poisoned every good feeling a 
 woman ought to cherish. Look, my dear child, you 
 are taken with her acting, which I admit is wonder- 
 ful. But how did she behave to her son? He was 
 fourteen when she disappeared. How to Sir Wal- 
 ter? In two years he lay in his grave, by that blow 
 from his wife's hand. I say nothing of myself " 
 
 "But do, please. Tell me your story." They 
 were seated now near the hearth, and had forgotten 
 to keep their distance really forgotten. 
 
 "In three words, then. My mother died when I 
 was born. Captain Richard Liscarroll, my father, 
 was sent to India, caught jungle- fever, and, I hope, 
 joined my mother in heaven. Sir Walter adopted 
 me." 
 
 "And Lady Liscarroll?"
 
 THE FORBIDDEN DOOR 141 
 
 "Hated me," concluded Edmund. "Hates me 
 now. Thinks it is I that stiffen Phil's back. Little 
 she knows him !" 
 
 "I can't fancy any one hating you," said she, with 
 a roguish, pensive smile, "but you are very teasing 
 sometimes, and as stern a schoolmaster as old Cathal. 
 I dare say you teased your aunt." 
 
 "My uncle could dispose of his property as he 
 liked ; he put me in his will after Philip and treated 
 me as his younger son. That was all my teasing." 
 
 "Well, bygones are bygones," said Lisaveta; "I 
 can't think of that proud creature up there alive 
 and yet dead but my heart bleeds. Yes, I want to 
 save her." 
 
 Edmund grew desperate. "There is only the one 
 way to save her and not destroy yourself." he ex- 
 claimed, leaping to his feet. 
 
 "Which is that?" she asked, rising, not in the 
 least aware of what he was going to say. 
 
 "Marry Sir Philip," he cried, turning deadly 
 white. 
 
 "You advise me to marry your cousin?" she said 
 in a strangled tone, as she moved toward the door. 
 "You, Edmund?" 
 
 He remarked the Christian name, but took no ad- 
 vantage of it. To his thought, the danger was 
 always that creature of flame and poison whom Lis-
 
 H2 THE WIZARD'S KNOT 
 
 aveta would not shun that rattlesnake. "I advise 
 nothing," he said hoarsely, "except that you will 
 fight against your Russian madness. Let the woman 
 alone, or marry Sir Philip." He meant it to be im- 
 possible. 
 
 "I will think of it," she said coldly, and drove 
 off.
 
 BUT Philip had other shafts in his heart, nor was 
 he meditating of love. His fearful sickness, 
 wasting him to a shadow, seemed to fill with dreams 
 and to trouble a brain that its owner would have 
 called dull, for with his brilliant cousin at his side, 
 how could he imagine himself not so? "I am a 
 leath omadan half a fool," he would laugh bitterly, 
 wounding his pride with the lively Irish phrase. 
 
 He was now such as the children of Lir had been 
 when night and black frost overtook them on the 
 pinnacle of the Rock of Seals, and, "each was chilled 
 in his place as they lay upon the rock, so that their 
 feet, their feathers, and their wings clave to it, and 
 when they strove to get loose they left there the skin 
 of their feet, and the feathers of their breasts, and 
 the tips of their wings." 
 
 Long, long he had drifted solitary upon the cur- 
 rent of this great grief. With the dumb instinct of 
 his dogs or horses, the boy had set his love on father 
 and mother not quick to seize the meaning of those
 
 i 4 4 THE WIZARD'S KNOT 
 
 fiery streaks that once in a while darted through the 
 sky of home perplexed, but not foreboding. On a 
 sudden the mother was gone ; the dark unknown had 
 swallowed up that fair apparition, and Philip, run- 
 ning to the edge of the abyss, cried down it in vain, 
 "Mother, mother !" 
 
 His heart broke within him ; but he could not tell 
 any one, no, not his dear father, who rambled aim- 
 lessly, day and night, by the sea, or disappeared on 
 strange expeditions, to come back with a sallow face 
 and eyes out of which the sparkle had vanished. 
 
 Their souls met in a speechless kiss; but their 
 lips were silent. Shame held their heads bowed to 
 earth; love tore open the wound in the breast and 
 poisoned it. From these dark hours Philip had 
 never issued free; his father died of them. And 
 Lady Liscarroll was dancing her dance on a carpet of 
 flowers, sure, with the incredible lightness that in- 
 toxication brings, of her sanguine creed : "The boy 
 won't miss me, and Sir Walter is tender-hearted 
 when he chooses. Let him look after his son." 
 
 There is an old story of the youth whose features 
 were fair as a girl's, but who from neck to ankles 
 was covered with leprosy, which he hid under silken 
 raiment and fine linen. Yet, one day, the point of a 
 sword rent his sleeve, and he appeared what he had 
 always been a leper. We shall not understand
 
 CHILDREN OF LIR 145 
 
 Philip Liscarroll unless we take this picture in; for 
 he lived it from the age of fourteen he bore the 
 taint, visible to himself, though others did not re- 
 mark it, or let him pass without hearing what they 
 said. Always shy, embarrassed of his person, as 
 the French saying goes, he never went into society 
 but he thought all eyes were fixed on his great shock 
 of red hair, his freckled face, and his long legs. No 
 vanity looked out from his shaving-glass; when 
 Cathal's ruddy epithet of "the Firbolg" got round to 
 him, Philip snorted between disdain and hurt as at 
 a sudden stab. "No doubt I 'm an ugly devil," was 
 his inward speech. He did not know that a painter 
 would have chosen this ugly devil to light up his 
 backgrounds, or how some of the prettiest of those 
 Celtic maidens smiled as he came striding by in the 
 dream which flung about his steps a kind of sadness 
 and mystery. The poison of his mother's brewing 
 had blinded this young giant's eyes. With what 
 face could he ask a girl to marry him, branded like 
 the son of a man that had been hanged? Silence 
 gathering over Lady Liscarroll's name, burying her 
 alive, shut him in one tomb with her. So he must 
 live, so die; Edmund should have the estate; the 
 elder branch of Renmore lay withered. 
 
 To the age of four-and-twenty these sad thoughts 
 had been his escort. At last, the appearance he
 
 146 THE WIZARD'S KNOT 
 
 once adored rose up from the unknown as beautiful 
 as ever, but ghastly with hues of sin and murder, a 
 shining death-light. 
 
 Philip did not use an imagined style; the deep 
 thing within, which was himself, carried on its 
 broodings with slight, broken metaphors and spoke in 
 shorthand. We translate him, but not untruly. 
 One sulphurous flash, a sword and a mirror, had 
 brought back his mother's countenance, smiting him 
 to the sick-bed where he moaned or tossed an inter- 
 minable time, until that tawny mist came down, and 
 with it, as he fancied, the end. But some power 
 scattered it; lights broke on him from this side arid 
 that; again he looked up, and what he saw was a 
 girl's face turned toward his, tender gray eyes over 
 lips parted in expectation and wonder. A second 
 vision had burnt itself into the brain, fresh and sweet 
 as an April morning. 
 
 With Joan came the fairy music too, low and al- 
 most inarticulate, rippling, tinkling, as streams and 
 winds flow for their own pleasure, but full of en- 
 chantments. It was mixed with the hum of the 
 spinning-wheel, and seemed to laugh over it divinely 
 to laugh as the finest sorrow laughs, as the rain 
 holds the sun in its falling drops, and the land 
 brightens where they strike. April this was April 
 Edmund would have made poetry of it all, and
 
 CHILDREN OF LIR 147 
 
 Joan should be the April maiden in his rhymes ; but 
 Philip, whose verses must be feelings and acts 
 prompted by them, went blindly into the flowering, 
 rain-dashed, song-lit spring, not knowing whither, 
 except that the music drew and he followed. Why, 
 it was love already, you will say. Hush, my too- 
 wise reader, let the spell work, be not impatient for 
 the untwisting of these secret harmonies. Philip 
 was a novice in the art, and Joan as little aware of 
 her influence as a wave that dances on the sea of its 
 foam-born beauty. They dreamt they knew not 
 what. How should they know? 
 
 Had Cathal's eyes looked as sharply into his own 
 matters as they did into the adventures of "the great 
 Trojans of Troy," he might have taken fright and 
 recalled Joan to his cabin, though Davy Roche had 
 now begun to threaten him with legal processes, 
 actions for ejectment and recovery, and the other 
 peines fortes et dures known to tenants in Ireland. 
 "There 's many a twist in the Sassenach law," was a 
 favorite among proverbs with O'Dwyer. The rope 
 was getting ready to put round his horns and bring 
 him down. Young ears that hear the grass growing 
 had not been asleep when he let loose at the Cork 
 butterman, in open school, that terrific anathema. 
 The boys, at first thunderstruck, caught up, with 
 infinite relish, so handy a weapon, and in more than
 
 148 THE WIZARD'S KNOT 
 
 one quarrel "the curse of Davy Roche" supplemented 
 for a month or six weeks the curse of Cromwell, 
 hitherto revered as beyond parallel efficacious. 
 "May the divil sweep out hell with you, and thin 
 burn the broom" was so often echoed in Renmore 
 village on market-days that Father Falvey had at 
 last to prohibit from the altar this too picturesque 
 imprecation, adding his belief that curses like chick- 
 ens came home to roost. Henceforth, the village 
 saw the curse of Davy Roche sitting up inside the 
 thatch of the schoolmaster's cottage. 
 
 O'Dwyer smiled proudly, but some dread far 
 within gave him a twinge. "What call had Father 
 Falvey to say that, when I was doing no harm to his 
 reverence?" he muttered to Garret O'Riordan; "and 
 being the village schoolmaster besides." 
 
 "Himself could tell you best," answered Garret, 
 looking away as in thought, "but there 's a thing we 
 all know let the priest o' God say good or bad, 
 't will surely be so. Did Patsy Doyle's mother live 
 long after giving back words to Father Hennessy, 
 and he threatening to read his book over her ? You 
 saw how she wasted and dwined after that ; even his 
 blessing could n't rise her from the flat of her back. 
 I hope it won't be the same with you, O'Dwyer; 
 but indeed 't is the divil's own tongue is in your 
 mouth by times."
 
 CHILDREN OF LIR 149 
 
 "I don't deny the priest has power," answered 
 Cathal, "the more by token that whin St. Patrick 
 bate down the Druids, he took it from them and gave 
 it over to the clergy. However, they should n't be 
 putting it to the back of a man like Davy Roche. 
 I 'd sooner have Beelzebub himself for a landlord 
 the cross of Christ between us and all harm. But 
 don't say I said it, Garret." 
 
 No, her father could only wish that Joan should 
 stay up at the house and earn the white shillings. He 
 was there in his erratic fashion, off and on, but never 
 allowed to enter the tower, and, like the rest of the 
 country-folk, had begun to think of Lady Liscarroll 
 as an invisible witch, or Banshee, not safe to meddle 
 with. "Well, well," he said to his daughter in their 
 moments of talk, "shinn fein, shinn fein ourselves 
 before all. You tell me this great woman is your 
 friend. Does her son come near her now?" 
 
 "I 'm not sure 't is right to be talking of them," 
 answered Joan ; "the master is a strange man, how- 
 ever. Sometimes I 'd fancy 't was the bits of songs 
 I learned from you that brings him listening on the 
 stairs, or creeping like a ghost into the High Room 
 itself. If I was n't spinning always 't is that 
 makes me sing I 'd feel ashamed. But what harm 
 would he do the poor boy ? For he is but a boy to 
 Mr. Edmund."
 
 150 THE WIZARD'S KNOT 
 
 "True for you, Joan; and yet Mr. Edmund is 
 the junior of them. But he sits there and does n't 
 open his mouth ? What does Lady Eleanor say to 
 that?" 
 
 "She says as little till he spakes to her; then she 
 is the honey-mouth and the laughing eye. Any one 
 but Sir Philip would think the day short to be with 
 Lady Liscarroll. Though, indeed, I do be tired and 
 lonesome, father, in those big ould rooms. Is it 
 true," lowering her voice, "that her husband does be 
 showing himself in the castle?" She made the sign 
 of the cross as the words left her lips. 
 
 "Why do you question me?" asked O'Dwyer, his 
 curiosity aroused. 
 
 "Maybe 't is foolishness," answered Joan; "still, 
 when I 'm awake at nights, or between sleeping and 
 waking, I hear whispers and cries, and lamentations, 
 and something that stirs in the thick of the walls, 
 God forgive me." 
 
 "You hear the great sound of the sea, and the ribs 
 of ivy dashed by winds or tempests against the stones 
 they cling to ; and the darkness itself has voices you 
 could n't know in the daytime. The night outside is 
 a ghost; don't be frightened till it walks into the 
 room to you, child of my heart." 
 
 "I 'd sooner be at home," she said, with a shiver, 
 "was it not for the rent tormenting us. Here 's a
 
 CHILDREN OF LIR 151 
 
 few shillings now, father; will you keep them safe 
 till I come?" 
 
 "I will, I will," he said vaguely, making on the 
 spot a resolution which he knew would snap like 
 threads in the fire. "I '11 not be wasteful or extrav- 
 agant. There 's my hand and word on it." 
 
 "We 're trusting to them for that man," she in- 
 sisted, with a trembling affection. "What will you 
 do without them, father?" 
 
 "My word is as good as my bond," he answered, 
 making a great show of courage. It was and no 
 better. 
 
 Happen what might, therefore, Cathal looked 
 away while the wheels drove. In his glorified mo- 
 ments, the punch-bowl creating smoky golden spec- 
 ters that jigged unsteadily in the steaming haze, he 
 might have thought of Joan as the swan-maiden, 
 Fionnghuala the white-shouldered who sang to 
 her brothers when they crept round her, half-dead 
 with the sea-frosts. His own heart swelled and 
 bounded as her voice trilled its low notes what 
 wonder if others felt their grief lessened at the plain- 
 tive music of that swan, or slept sound and easy after 
 it? By their native law, no hurt could be done to 
 birds that sang such sweet melodies; and so Cathal 
 went his way merrily enough and found his cronies 
 in the old chimney corner, where, as long as he could
 
 152 THE WIZARD'S KNOT 
 
 pay, there was "a never-failing supply of roast pig 
 and good liquor." So he soon had made an end 
 in order to spite Davy Roche of his daughter's 
 white shillings. 
 
 Philip did say in his heart a thousand times that to 
 live was to be miserable. The wings of the spirit 
 were frost-bound; all day long storms beat and 
 whistled about his solitude, and the swan-maiden's 
 lay would have served him well ; how much he had 
 to suffer "the cold of that night, the depth of that 
 snow, the hardness of that wind !" His heavy head 
 and drenched feathers betokened the drooping of a 
 courage wild to rashness when he could grapple with 
 an enemy, but here in conflict with the impalpable 
 for one of them must die, as he said to Will Hapgood 
 the way out was suicide or murder. These ever- 
 whirling arguments tore him on their wheel. Then 
 he would creep, as Joan called it the word was apt 
 along the tower staircase and listen outside, stand- 
 ing at a loophole from which the sea was visible, 
 while this mermaid sang. It opened his heart a 
 little. 
 
 No more did Philip dream of what we call love, in 
 these early hours, than does a child that harkens to 
 the nightingale. His wings had yet to be loosened 
 from the rock, else for him there would be no flying 
 over the bright waves, in spring, with his mate.
 
 CHILDREN OF LIR 153 
 
 Like a child he wove insensibly into the snatches of 
 old Irish song all that he saw, hoped, feared, longed 
 after. The strange mystery of ocean round his 
 castle walls made the deeps and the horizons of that 
 music ; the billows rolled over it ; the foam flew with 
 it; the lights innumerable and all their splendors 
 colored it ; the secret or sudden voices of the vision- 
 ary birds came as a chorus to swell and heighten it ; 
 an immense yearning for peace, for comfort, took 
 hold of the simple chant, which was pure as a 
 throstle's note, and interpreted its message on a scale 
 known to the heart that has loved but now finds it- 
 self alone. I do not say that another, different from 
 Philip, less feeling and less tortured, would have 
 taken this music for a cup into which he might pour 
 an infinite sweetness. All I say is that he did so, in 
 his wild tower of the winds, fixing his tired eyes 
 upon the pale blue waters, which, as the breeze smote 
 them, broke into gleams of sunshine. The salt of 
 life was in them and in the swan-maiden's thrilling 
 tones. But she, too, could understand, as he came 
 softly up day after day, what it was that brought him. 
 " 'T is a long time to be in pain," she remarked to his 
 mother, seeing how downcast he went to and fro. 
 
 "Yes, my dear, I have gone through a great deal," 
 answered the lady, with a quick glance toward her 
 son; "but I can throw it off otherwise, I should
 
 154 THE WIZARD'S KNOT 
 
 have been in my grave years ago. Philip took all 
 his baby-complaints hard. He has not corrected 
 that fault." 
 
 A flush, light as the sparkle of dew, came and went 
 over Joan's features. This mother of Philip's had 
 turned for the instant to a venomous hag. She said 
 nothing, however. Though untrained in the ways 
 of the great world, her mind had long been made up 
 that to take the young man's side would be severe 
 upon Lady Liscarroll and no help to him. "Bad 
 was the beginning,"she thought, "and worse is to 
 come. I won't draw it down with foolish talk." 
 
 In this forlorn existence what talk could there be ? 
 Philip, leaving the concerns of his place and property 
 to his agent a hard man of business, Mr. Colegrave 
 from the County Wicklow turning over to Ed- 
 mund the few visitors that were bold enough to ap- 
 pear at Castle Dangerous, either passed the hours in 
 his room or went up to these silent sessions, bitter 
 and sad, as if he dreaded to leave his mother out of 
 sight. He pitied, hated, even loved her all in the 
 same despairing way; could he have known her 
 thoughts, it seemed to him that their lives must 
 change for the better ; but no, behind her smooth and 
 delicate speeches some one lay hid whom he should 
 never see. The woman's art baffled him, that instan- 
 taneous acting which is second nature, too subtle and
 
 CHILDREN OF LIR 155 
 
 too finished for a rude, direct temper like his own. 
 When he considered how she had none to speak with 
 but this untaught child, how she must count the 
 hours as they fell wearily into the sand-glass no 
 future, no hope he was tempted to fling the doors 
 wide and risk the consequences. Then he would go 
 up, death in his looks, and sit there in the High 
 Room, or on the roof of the tower, face to face with 
 this guilty, this pitiable mother; and their hands 
 would be locked, and no word said, but only the 
 voices of the air would come whispering round them, 
 until the lady called for those ballads and the girl's 
 accents answered. 
 
 Thus all three were falling into a profound dis- 
 quietude, to which perhaps Lady Liscarroll, as a 
 woman of the world, was more refractory than these 
 children of nature. Shadows over them, abysses 
 beneath them ; the gate of every day, "with dreadful 
 faces thronged and fiery arms" ; why should they 
 pass down to it, pass through it? Oh, could that 
 enemy of a universe be annihilated for them then 
 Philip would not grudge to live here, in prison or on 
 the tower, till death struck them all. He forgot 
 how men and women looked, what they did or said, 
 away from his sentry-guard ; it was nothing to him 
 now. More and more he plunged into the still life 
 around, which neither accused nor could be drawn
 
 156 THE WIZARD'S KNOT 
 
 to evil, but spread before him, above and below 
 an immeasurable air sown with stars, a mighty water 
 full of strange, not human, things "the lovely wet 
 plain," as our Irish poet says beautiful in its un- 
 concern for what vexed these mortals sucking in 
 the light and spouting it again in sheets of sunny 
 foam. Thus he felt, and by some magic the girl at 
 his side comprehended. Her eyes, limpid and 
 grave, told him as much. Yet, if they reflected, 
 they did not reveal, the glances that in this mute 
 ecstasy he flung her way. Had his wings begun to 
 sprout ? 
 
 But now Lisaveta, the Russian saint, as people 
 called her, had come and torn aside the pale roses 
 into which the young man's blood was secretly dis- 
 tilling, drop by drop; his castle in the air shook to 
 its base, the crystal of his dream shivered ominously. 
 Will Hapgood's tall form rose on the drawbridge, 
 challenging admission. Who had done this thing? 
 As soon as Will had taken himself off, Philip flung 
 down his fowling-piece so violently on the floor that 
 he broke one of the tiles across a memento of his 
 rage and perplexity which he was to tramp over 
 often. With masterful strides he sprang upstairs, 
 undid the tower door, and ran, like the madman he 
 felt, in search of Joan, whom he found by the loop- 
 hole window, telling her beads. The girl, at his
 
 CHILDREN OF LIR 157 
 
 appearance with flushed cheeks and eyes ablaze, 
 knew that a storm was bearing straight upon the 
 house. She trembled her nerves were finely 
 strung but plucked up a brave heart against its 
 advance. When their eyes met in a long and dubi- 
 ous encounter not a syllable breaking the charm 
 they were both suddenly aware that they had never 
 looked at each other in so lone a world, with such 
 direct glances, till that moment. Joan's eyes fell 
 first ; and eager to check some strong emotion which 
 was wholly new to her, she said, coloring like the 
 tender sky of the dawn, "Is it my lady you would be 
 wanting? I '11 go tell her." 
 
 Philip stretched out his hand to keep her motion- 
 less. "Not yet, not yet," was all he could get out ; he 
 did not dare to overstep the short space between 
 them. "What have I done?" muttered an un- 
 known, a pleading, passionate voice in Joan's ears, 
 "that you should bring this upon me?" 
 
 "This, Sir Philip," she answered; "this what? 
 Ah, Miss O'Connor !" 
 
 "Yes, and this," he said hoarsely, signing that she 
 should come to a window opposite him. "Look 
 here." 
 
 She saw Will Hapgood riding along the avenue, 
 his errand accomplished. 
 
 "To-day, Hapgood. To-morrow, the county will
 
 158 THE WIZARD'S KNOT 
 
 be here. Disgrace on disgrace, and I shall die, as 
 my father did, like a badger in a hole. Your 
 doing, Joan !" 
 
 Again the questioning eyes met in a strange com- 
 passion, wrath, tenderness a thousand feelings 
 fused into one, and that supreme. The next instant 
 they had taken each other's hands, to drop them as 
 suddenly, in an atmosphere which was all flame. 
 
 "Never mind; you could n't help it," said Philip, 
 when he saw her eyes wet. "But, anyhow, you are 
 sorry for me. Any person would be," he ended 
 almost in a boyish tone, complaining and asking 
 comfort. Joan's tears fell on her beads as she held 
 them before her. 
 
 "Oh, Sir Philip, I had a mother as well as you," 
 she said, her bosom heaving. "We don't know 
 where she is ; and I 'd give the world to hear tell of 
 her. Is it a girl like me that would n't feel for 
 you?" 
 
 "I remember," he said, with a deep sigh ; "forgive 
 me; trouble makes a man selfish. Do you always 
 feel the pain the the shame of it as I do?" 
 
 "God knows, 't is never far from me," she an- 
 swered ; "rising up and lying down, I used to be sor- 
 rowful, with the red spot on my forehead, that I 
 thought Renmore was looking at. Whin I 'd hear 
 the people talking, I could go under the ground or
 
 CHILDREN OF LIR 159 
 
 into the lonesomest water that ever the .sea covered. 
 'T was that very thing brought me hither. Surely, 
 my heart was broke at the sight of Lady Eleanor; 
 but I held to it, and I 'm here this day." 
 
 "Could you forgive your mother, Joan, if she came 
 back?" he asked. 
 
 "I could," she answered simply. "But I would n't 
 say my father could. The men are not like us." 
 Her meditative look was beautiful as she said 
 this. 
 
 "Your father is living, mine is dead. It makes a 
 difference," said Philip. "Besides, I can't see into 
 her heart. Can you ?" 
 
 Joan paused before she would touch so inflam- 
 mable a tinder. 
 
 "She is proud, her breast is full up of grief, and 
 her head is light with trouble. I don't believe she 
 knows half the time what she is doing." 
 
 "Nor what she has done," he said despairingly. 
 "It is nothing in her eyes." 
 
 " 'T is the drunkenness of sin," answered Joan, 
 gravely, "and that 's a hard, but a true word. 
 There 's often a black head on a white body, but the 
 head won't see itself." 
 
 "And the fool of a world runs to see it," said 
 Philip. "Why did you let Miss O'Connor in ? Ah, 
 why?"
 
 i6o THE WIZARD'S KNOT 
 
 "She ran past me," said the girl, sobbing; "would 
 a lady be stopped by a poor thing like myself? But, 
 indeed, Sir Philip," she continued, "Lady Liscarroll 
 is too fine a bird to be kept in the cage. I 'd advise 
 but who would be said by me?" She broke off 
 in confusion. 
 
 "Let me hear your advice," he answered eagerly ; 
 "it will be honest I can see to the bottom of your 
 heart, Joan. Clear as a well, can't I ?" 
 
 "You 'd be the wise man," she said, laughing 
 under her breath. "My advice, thin, is to let your 
 mother go to Miss O'Connor's, as she is invited, 
 where the air is fine, and everything of the best; 
 and she 's the lovable woman, Miss Lisaveta. 
 She begged and prayed Lady Eleanor to go to 
 her." 
 
 "Would you go, too, Joan?" he said, after a long 
 fit of musing on the proposal. 
 
 "If it was put upon me, I would, though my poor 
 ould father is the worse that I 'm not with him." 
 
 "Whatever I do, harm is sure to come of it," he 
 concluded, the bitter drop infecting his tongue; 
 "when the hawk is a linnet, you may trust this kind 
 of woman." 
 
 "And that won't be till the starlings lose their 
 bills," said Joan; "but a woman that 's not good is 
 worse left to herself. I 'd put a keeper upon her.
 
 CHILDREN OF LIR 161 
 
 and it should be the finest in the barony, and that 's 
 
 Miss O'Connor." 
 
 "Is it, indeed?" answered Philip, his eyes smiling. 
 
 "Is there none nearer than Airgead Ross ?" 
 
 It seemed to him he was in his beloved solitude 
 
 again, hearing the voices of the sea.
 
 CHAPTER XII 
 
 FREEDOM 
 
 VOICES of the sea can be loud and turbulent 
 about an old Munster castle which faces, or 
 even breasts, the Atlantic ; and when the air at night- 
 time, under a raging moon, sends out its volleying 
 cries, the wild waters leaping to them, the clouds all 
 tongues of fire and charges of tempest, Renmore 
 seems to reel in a headlong dance, bewitched like 
 the world around. 
 
 It was a fearful night. Nothing had come so far 
 of Joan's counsel to her master ; and she sat in the 
 dim obscurity with Lady Liscarroll, watching how 
 the clouds flew, fire and thunder on their wings, 
 chasing like eagles over a sky all in movement. 
 The dinner-hour was past ; but no candles gave light 
 in the room; her lady would have it so. "I don't 
 know what ails me," said Joan at last ; " 't is n't 
 drowsy I am, but heavy as lead falling, falling be- 
 fore me and frightened! The sky comes at me 
 like a mouth roaring. God help any one at sea 
 
 this night." 
 
 162
 
 FREEDOM 163 
 
 "Go to bed, my child," said her mistress, "go and 
 sleep in your little chamber in the wall; I shall not 
 be far off. What makes you afraid?" 
 
 "The great lightnings and this thunder," said 
 Joan. "Oh, Mother of God, who sent it? Hear to 
 the screeching of the winds ! But I '11 be fast asleep 
 this minute. Good-night, my lady the power that 
 is in fire, and in water, and in the blessed ground it- 
 self, be between us and all harm. Amen ! My dear 
 lady, for your husband's and your father's soul say 
 Amen!" 
 
 Her fear was contagious, if not her piety, and the 
 strong woman without imagination shuddered. "I 
 do say Amen, you silly child," she replied, "but- what 
 are those strange powers you call on?" 
 
 "The power that goes up in fire, and falls in 
 water, and lies straight in the earth there 's the 
 living and the dead in it," answered the girl, "but 
 I 'm asleep while I 'm talking. Oh, good-night." 
 
 With uncertain steps, as of a sleep-walker, she 
 passed slowly from the room, which was Lady Lis- 
 carroll's bedchamber, into her own. Joan's little 
 cabin it was hardly more had been taken out of 
 the thickness of the wall. Its old panelings were 
 concealed by a worm-eaten tapestry, and it contained 
 one small window, before which the insane moon ap- 
 peared to be playing pranks, its rays darting across
 
 164 THE WIZARD'S KNOT 
 
 the barred panes fantastically, to be quenched in the 
 awful clouds that pursued them, as wolves on the 
 track of a herd of flying fawns. 
 
 The girl, like most Celtic natures, was keenly alive 
 to the terror and the magnificence of storms in which 
 the wheeled lightning flashed through heaven. But 
 to-night her uneasiness grew, as in obedience to some 
 warning voice within her ; and, as she lay cowering, 
 her face turned from the glare which nevertheless 
 enveloped her from time to time, she fell into a sleep 
 that shook and tossed her as on the boiling sea. 
 How long the nightmare lasted she could never have 
 told; its duration was not to be reckoned on our 
 earthly timepieces ; but the effect was to mingle out- 
 side and inside, light and dark, in a whirlwind, a 
 tumult, that deafened reason and excited fear more 
 heart-shaking than she had ever known. Sleep was 
 taken by the throat, hurled out upon the ocean with 
 its seething, hungry waves. A host of conflicting 
 sounds came rushing about her ears, and she sat up 
 awake, so terrified that she would have called to 
 Lady Liscarroll had she dared. Shame at her cow- 
 ardice would not let her ; but the poor child rose and 
 dressed herself, in frightful expectation of what 
 must befall Renmore if the storm did not cease. 
 
 Then she lay down and waited, for her mind 
 would not consent that the night should pass without
 
 FREEDOM 165 
 
 misfortune. And on the enormous castle wall at 
 which she kept staring, at length a ray glittered 
 which came neither from moon nor storm ; she heard 
 the door creak, a ghost of a footfall draw near, and 
 some one was at her bedside looking down upon her. 
 Not an unknown, or she must have screamed; but 
 even with eyes turned away she felt it was the pris- 
 oner of the High Room. In kindness, no doubt, 
 anxious that Joan should sleep during the fearful 
 hurricane which had gathered strength, hour after 
 hour, until the castle began to throb as with a beat- 
 ing heart. The girl, her eyes closed, made no sign. 
 Then she knew that Lady Liscarroll had moved away 
 by the motion of the light she carried; but instead 
 of returning to her chamber, she was, it would seem, 
 examining the tapestry below Joan's bed, for it 
 flapped backward and forward as if shaken. 
 
 Gazing round furtively, what the astonished girl 
 beheld was a bare space on the wall, her mistress 
 putting a small key into an invisible lock, and part 
 of the tower yielding outwardly, as if into another 
 room. The lady wore a long mantle, and she had 
 just laid from her a shaded light. Before two sec- 
 onds Joan was up, had seized her by the wrist, and 
 was peering by turns into her frowning face and 
 down a flight of stone steps which led to darkness. 
 "God's sake, my lady, where are you going on such a
 
 166 THE WIZARD'S KNOT 
 
 night?" she tried to say; but the words came in 
 stifled whispers. 
 
 "Why did n't you stay asleep, Joan? It would 
 have been better for you," answered the lady, her 
 brow still dark. "I have got the key of the gate 
 below. Where am I going ? Into the storm. This 
 place strangles me." 
 
 "But you must not lave Sir Philip ? you 're run- 
 ning from him what will he say when he sees 
 you 're gone? On a night like this? He '11 think 
 you threw yourself into the water and I did n't 
 hinder it. You must not go." 
 
 "Who will keep me back? Mind, I never hinted 
 I was leaving Renmore. But what if I chose to do 
 it?" 
 
 "I '11 follow you to the world's end," answered 
 Joan, striving to get in front of her on the dark 
 stairs. "I '11 rise the place on you," and that thought 
 made her glance toward the door by which Lady 
 Liscarroll had entered, but it was shut; moreover, 
 she dreaded to move back, lest this opening should 
 be barred against her. "Take me with you, or go to 
 your bed," she repeated. "Oh" a fearful thought 
 striking her "is it to meet some man below you are 
 fleeing out of the castle?" 
 
 Her mistress laughed loud and scornfully. "How 
 wise these babes are ! Yes, Joan, there is a man at
 
 FREEDOM 167 
 
 the sea-gate; can't you hear him knocking? Come 
 down with me, since you will have it so, and witness 
 our tete-a-tete in the driving rain. You little fool," 
 she continued, her foot on the stairs, "you shall take 
 my son a message, if you think it worth while, but 
 first let us get our meeting over." 
 
 The fierce playfulness of the woman, under a tem- 
 pest which flung lightnings about them, would have 
 scared Joan, but something held her up, though she 
 thought herself dying. Down the crooked, broken 
 stairs they huddled together, the light rushing fan- 
 tastically with them and making the gloom terrible, 
 until they arrived at a heavy door which was already 
 swung open and admitted violent gusts from the sea. 
 A figure stood on the threshold motionless. 
 
 When the lantern revealed him, Joan saw Will 
 Hapgood. But Lady Liscarroll's face indicated 
 neither fear nor astonishment. "Ah, it is my un- 
 known correspondent," she muttered; "even on a 
 night like this he keeps his promise," and speaking 
 louder, "but who are you, then ?" 
 
 So swiftly did the color hunt across his face that 
 by turns it shone crimson and dulled to an ashy pale- 
 ness. Baring his head, he whispered violently, "At 
 last you have come. I wrote and wrote had n't 
 you my letters ?" 
 
 All his blood was tingling. The lady drew back
 
 1 68 THE WIZARD'S KNOT 
 
 upon the stairs as if a scorched wind beat upon 
 her. 
 
 "You got my letters?" he insisted. 
 
 Joan tried to throw herself between them. "For 
 the love of Heaven," she cried, the storm choking 
 off her sentences, "go back, my lady, shut the gate on 
 him. Mr. Hapgood, return the way you came. Are 
 you an honest woman's son ? Out of this, I tell you, 
 though 't was into the sea itself. Will I screech the 
 house down?" 
 
 "Be quiet, Joan," said Lady Liscarroll, "quiet, girl ! 
 I so you are Mr. Hapgood, and you wrote?" with 
 an enigmatic expression turning to the young man. 
 vSome unconquerable passion in his eyes leaped 
 through the air and staggered her, as if she had re- 
 ceived a blow from his right arm, raised in entreaty 
 and protestation. 
 
 "I am Will Hapgood, of Derryvore ; you don't re- 
 member me. I have never forgotten you. I saw 
 you on this tower, the day you let your handkerchief 
 fall into the water. I got it out, sent it you by 
 Philip, and letters by O' Sullivan. He never gave 
 them ? Oh, I am unlucky !" 
 
 The whirlwind could not drown that cry. But 
 the fair woman, on whose face the light was con- 
 centrated where she stood above in the narrow en- 
 trance, looked him up and down with admiration.
 
 FREEDOM 169 
 
 "So you are Will Hapgood? A foolish, bold young 
 man. It was your boat I flew my signal to ? Yours, 
 Will Hapgood ? I recognize your boy's features as 
 on the day you ran here from your mother, and I 
 did you a good turn with her. Yes. it is the same 
 lad." 
 
 Her dwelling on his name the depth of some 
 passion (it could not be any in which he shared, but 
 it was real and intense) betrayed by her speaking 
 eyes, the opposition visible in her maid's attitude, 
 wrought such a ferment in Will's brain that he went 
 clean out of himself. 
 
 "Yes, my boat," he exclaimed; "it is behind the 
 rock here, and good men to manage it. Come, you 
 are free. Now, at once, no delay ! You don't fear 
 the thunder? not you!" 
 
 A second time Joan struggled to pull back Lady 
 Liscarroll. "I will raise the place," she cried pas- 
 sionately ; "don't heed this crazy boy ; he is wild with 
 the love you gave him, and 't is the worst sin you 
 ever laid to your soul." 
 
 "As sure as you wake the castle." said her mis- 
 tress, holding her, "I will go with Mr. Hapgood. 
 See if that will profit them." 
 
 In sore bewilderment the girl stood irresolute. 
 Hapgood urged his plea. "This way, then," he said. 
 His hand was grasping her shoulder, when the lady
 
 i yo THE WIZARD'S KNOT 
 
 put it firmly aside. "You are a high-spirited fel- 
 low," she answered, "but where would you take me? 
 We can't go on the winds, like the Flying Dutch- 
 man." 
 
 "Everything is settled," was the impatient reply; 
 "you come with me. There 's a cottage." He looked 
 at Joan, shook his head and continued. "Must n't 
 tell you here. I will carry you wherever you please ; 
 the world is wide ; I am here to live and die for you." 
 
 None of this impassioned talk but was cut and 
 slashed by the storm-winds, devoured by thunders 
 falling on it out of a rain-darkened sky. It had 
 pauses of deep and dangerous meaning; but now a 
 red stain appeared in it, more dreadful than the 
 gloom of that night. 
 
 "By the great God above, I will tell Sir Philip," 
 cried Joan, her nerves quivering. "My lady, I never 
 yet spied on your doings, nor was I watching to tell 
 on you. That door I never saw open till this minute. 
 But I say to you and this man from the mad waters, 
 don't trust me. Go, and your son will hear from me 
 the road ye took, and who 't was that opened the 
 castle with the keys he stole. 'T is n't you will 
 silence or soften me," turning to Hapgood. And to 
 her mistress, "Do now, woman kill your son as 
 you killed your husband. Can you deny it ?" 
 
 These wicked creatures, charged home, are not
 
 FREEDOM 171 
 
 invulnerable. For the first time during the inter- 
 view Lady Liscarroll's blood mounted to her brow. 
 
 "My dear squire," she -said, recovering, "I cannot 
 let you be hurt. Who talked of injury to my son?" 
 she continued, with a haughty glance toward Joan. 
 "When I was first mewed up here, I might have 
 taken your offer. But now, these doors are un- 
 bolted, and I will not pass them lest Philip should 
 think me unkind. We shall meet again, Will Hap- 
 good Ah, what is that awful noise ?" she shrieked. 
 
 More than a noise the resounding clatter of great 
 masses torn from above, which fell past them in 
 thunder on the strand. "Good God, you will be 
 killed," she cried, thrusting him from her; "get to 
 your boat; leave this doomed house." For other 
 huge fragments came down, and at the door of the 
 High Room they could hear violent blows, and the 
 confused cry of men broke on their ears from out- 
 side. "Let me alone, girl," as Joan still hung upon 
 her skirts, "I am not escaping. To your boat, 
 Will, for my sake." 
 
 She had shut the gate and turned hastily upstairs, 
 her attendant at her heels. Tearing aside the tapes- 
 try, which now hung in rags, she passed into the 
 High Room, where the hammering at the door con- 
 tinued and a tumult of voices, Philip's loud above 
 the rest : "Open, open ; it is I your son, Philip !"
 
 172 THE WIZARD'S KNOT 
 
 On throwing the door wide she saw him, with Ed- 
 mund and O' Sullivan, who entered in violent agi- 
 tation. "You must leave this immediately," cried 
 Philip, "the tower is falling. Are you safe, mother ? 
 Thank God, thank God! Is Joan? ah, you are 
 up no wonder !" 
 
 "Huge pieces of the battlements have come down," 
 said his cousin, "and the floor shakes. Come," as 
 Lady Liscarroll seemed to hesitate. 
 
 Her significant looks had drawn the steward to her 
 side. "Shut the stair door," she whispered. But 
 the young men had gone into Joan's cabin and re- 
 marked the open door with the tapestry fluttering 
 around it. 
 
 "See how the wind has shaken that panel loose," 
 said Philip. 
 
 "No matter ; the stairs have long been broken and 
 unsafe. But why do we linger?" returned Ed- 
 mund. "Hear to that, Phil !" And they ran back 
 to the central room as a monstrous weight of stone 
 shot across the window, eclipsing the moon in its 
 descent and plunging madly into the waves. 
 
 "The ridge of the roof will be in on us," cried 
 O' Sullivan, as they fled; "'t is the last night of the 
 Gray Tower," and his singular expression of horror 
 and dislike seemed to settle on Joan, who was be- 
 hind her mistress. "Some enchantment is loosen-
 
 FREEDOM 173 
 
 ing the stones, throwing them to Manannan to build 
 a castle under the waters. Is it your doing, Joan 
 O'Dwyer?" 
 
 So virulent was his tone that she turned to look 
 him full in the face, and then a suspicion made her 
 ask, "What did you put in the broth I had at sup- 
 per?*' But she was sorry the minute after she had 
 spoken. 
 
 "Och, nothing but slanlus and a pinch of lusmor," 
 said he, with a grim smile; "your dada would tell 
 you there 's no herbs wholesomer." 
 
 She knew the villain was lying, but made no re- 
 ply. Her imagination and her lady's, as she 
 guessed was abroad on the sea, watching Will 
 Hapgood's boat in an agony of presentiment that 
 from the tower some fatal mass should be hurled 
 and sink it in the Atlantic. 
 
 But they were quitting the prison which so many 
 forlorn days haunted; and, on the stairs, the lights 
 flickered, the wings of hurricane rustled ominously 
 round them; while crash after crash the thunder 
 rolled, announcing some great event in heaven. 
 "Where do I sleep to-night?" asked the lady of her 
 son, on whose arm she leaned occasionally. Had 
 Mrs. Driscoll, who knew all her ways of old, been 
 there, she would have discovered in her looks a mix- 
 ture of fear and triumph such as the shipwrecked
 
 174 THE WIZARD'S KNOT 
 
 may feel whose vessel has gone down but themselves 
 have escaped. 
 
 "You sleep in the large guest-room," he answered. 
 
 "It will serve," she said, with a curious smile. 
 "Has it always the furniture of Marie Antoinette 
 from the Grand Trianon?" 
 
 "Nothing has been altered since you saw it," said 
 he. 
 
 "That is more than ten years ago," she murmured ; 
 and Edmund, who caught the remark, was aston- 
 ished that she should touch that red-hot iron. Was 
 it repentance or remorse? 
 
 The tower door closed behind them; they were 
 on the marble Florentine staircase, when an appal- 
 ling tumult proclaimed that, after centuries of 
 wrestling, the night winds had conquered the proud 
 keep of Renmore. An earthquake passed under 
 their feet. They could hear the masonry rushing 
 down, floor descending upon floor, the wall at their 
 back straining and groaning, as if it must fall with 
 the rest. All stood listening, an icy dread about 
 their hearts, so pierced with horror and gaping on 
 the next moment, which they might not outlive, that 
 the women forgot to scream, the men did not stir 
 from their place. Sounds as of enormous masses 
 settling down followed the chief explosion. It was 
 a risk to stay in the house, an adventure to go forth
 
 FREEDOM 175 
 
 into the howling night. They decided to stay, 
 and spent the miserable hours awake, attending to 
 the irregular thuds and hollow grumblings of the 
 stones, which gave way in the darkness, until day 
 broke. 
 
 Then it was seen that more than half the tower 
 had fallen, carrying with it the High Room, and 
 strewing with its wreck the silver sands. O' Sulli- 
 van's foreboding was accomplished. But the sea 
 chanted its eternal music, and the winds flew joy- 
 ously about the ruins which they had made.
 
 CHAPTER XIII 
 IUBHDAN'S MINSTRELSIES 
 
 EVENTS have a face for the world, but a heart 
 for those who are implicated in their conse- 
 quences. And these are not always alike. His 
 neighbors condoled with Sir Philip, who had lost the 
 jewel of his inheritance, thanks to a storm which 
 figured long afterward in men's talk. His own 
 feeling was deeper and different. As soon as he 
 could get speech of his cousin they were naturally 
 in a whirl of business for days after the destruction 
 of the tower he said without preface, "Edmund, 
 my mother must not stay here." 
 
 "I thought you would tell me so," replied the 
 other; "you fancy " 
 
 "I don't fancy I am certain. My father will not 
 have her in the house with him. Rather, he would 
 pull it down to the last stone." 
 
 "With him?" inquired the poet, taken aback. 
 "/ might argue on this kind of. supposition, and 
 people would say it was the Leannan Sidhe over- 
 
 176
 
 lUBHDAN'S MINSTRELSIES 177 
 
 shadowed me. Where, in God's name, did you come 
 by it?" 
 
 "Laugh at me if you please. Well, you don't 
 so much the better. I tell you my father has come 
 to me in dreams, night after night, his face flushed 
 with an angry blood above all, when my heart was 
 softening toward her. As I went about these rooms, 
 I felt he was in them close to me. I could almost 
 put out my hand to touch him. Something without 
 a voice do you understand, Eddie, not a voice, but a 
 thought that lays hold of you ? said I was torturing 
 him in his grave by letting her stay here. Then, 
 as I would n't be guided, did he call up the winds 
 and sweep the High Room into space. You wise 
 men can't teach us fools anything we want to 
 know." 
 
 His cousin answered, "I am really not super- 
 stitious, though I talk so, especially when Cathal 
 O'Dwyer is about. Don't ask me to explain. What 
 will you do?" Frankly had he spoken, he would 
 have told Philip it was all insane; the ghost was 
 Lady Liscarroll, not Sir Walter, that had driven the 
 young man mad. 
 
 "Joan O'Dwyer said there was an invitation to 
 Silverwood that day Miss O'Connor made her way 
 in. Is there ?" 
 
 No question could have been more unwelcome to
 
 178 THE WIZARD'S KNOT 
 
 Edmund, better by far acquainted with Lisaveta's 
 idealizing temper than was Philip. But evasion 
 would not mend matters; he was compelled to 
 answer. 
 
 "Then she shall accept. Once there, I need not 
 see her often ; I can get thoroughly round when this 
 sore in my heart is gone." 
 
 "And who will see that it does not spread disease 
 at Silverwood ?" 
 
 "Oh, Joan will go with her. That girl has char- 
 acter, I tell you steady as a rock. She will do any- 
 thing for me. I '11 make her keep a sharp lookout 
 and tell me all that goes on." 
 
 "Well, perhaps it is the best bad thing to be done. 
 I can't say I like it, Phil. There 's Miss O'Connor 
 to be thought of." 
 
 "Think of her yourself," replied his cousin, testily, 
 with the peevish air of convalescence. "Take her 
 and Airgead Ross, too, and be happier than you '11 
 ever see me, old boy." 
 
 "We will do everything to help you," said the 
 younger man, softening. "I have a good excuse to 
 be over there these days. Miss O'Connor wants my 
 advice such as it is how to manage her tenants. 
 We have begun a regular confabulation, herself, the 
 agent, and I. Then she has old Irish customs on the 
 brain that is my doing, the other is n't; we are
 
 lUBHDAN'S MINSTRELSIES 179 
 
 getting ready for such a May Day as was never seen 
 since the Battle of Gebhra. But don't stay away 
 altogether, Philip. It will put us in the wrong." 
 
 "It kills me to see my mother," answered Philip, 
 with a groan, "and not seeing her is as bad. I don't 
 know what I will do. Tell her from me to accept 
 your friend's invitation." 
 
 "Your friend too," said his cousin; but the other 
 was not heeding. 
 
 "It is my turn to be on the spit," thought Edmund ; 
 "how will this poison act on a nature like Lisaveta's ? 
 Will it shatter the Venetian glass? or strike on its 
 fine edge and be cast back? Saint and sinner don't 
 match. Then that Russian frenzy ! I can't see the 
 road before me." 
 
 HOWEVER, it was done. On a sunshiny morning 
 at the end of March, under skies of misty blue, they 
 drove across the hills into a wide and winding glen, 
 fringed on both sides with silver birch, that gave a 
 name to Airgead Ross. 
 
 The hazel, rowan, and willow stood or stooped 
 about these glittering water-courses, and the Spanish 
 chestnuts grew in noble clumps, making a delightful 
 shade. Underwoods of fresh and fairy green, con- 
 spicuous among them the tall Osmunda, came almost 
 up to the carriage wheels; little pools, cups of sun-
 
 i8o THE WIZARD'S KNOT 
 
 light, spilt their brimming treasures on a rich brown 
 earth, in places thick with leaf-mold, out of which 
 the crocus and the violet peeped. Blackbirds sang 
 loud above a thousand warblers, busy on branch, 
 flitting saucily across the over-arching fretwork that 
 made a screen against the vaporous heaven. And 
 as the side-car which Philip drove turned up toward 
 a long white mansion nestling close into the hill, 
 they could see the golden-gray waves of the creek 
 laughing back to them through a tracery of fine 
 sweeping boughs, fragrant as with apple-blossom. 
 The land, the ocean, seemed to sparkle in a powder 
 of gold, scattered over all things from the mild early 
 sun, which was warm and not fierce. Joan felt 
 almost light of heart now they were leaving Ren- 
 more. But as she glanced at Philip, and thought 
 of Will Hapgood on that unspeakable night, a say- 
 ing of her father's darkened the air : "No man's life, 
 however bold, is more than an eyelid's twinkle." 
 What a secret she carried in her bosom ! 
 
 Lisaveta met them on the mountain lawn, serious 
 though smiling. She kissed Lady Liscarroll's 
 cheek, and caught Joan to her heart, too shy for 
 words, throwing toward Edmund a look of saintly, 
 yet girlish defiance. After all his talk, she had her 
 way; trial or expiation, the second act was begin- 
 ning. "This might be in the Swiss country," said
 
 lUBHDAN'S MINSTRELSIES 181 
 
 Lady Liscarroll, breathing free; "how beautiful is 
 your green Alp!" 
 
 "Edmund says it is the true fairyland, the King- 
 dom of Donn Firinne," answered her hostess. "We 
 have the yellowest of sands, the greenest of trees, 
 the tiniest of silver fountains, all shut in by yonder 
 bareheaded hills. Don't you call it, Edmund, the 
 glen of the Luchra ? and those are the chief of the 
 good people, are n't they?" 
 
 "Where the branches of the wood play, as you 
 are hearing, like stringed instruments," answered the 
 poet, "their undertones in soft accord with the harp 
 of lubhdan, king and musician, who sets them going, 
 if the old story is true, with a touch of his finger." 
 
 The intense purity, thrice bathed in sea and sun, 
 of all things about them made this fanciful dialogue 
 seem in keeping; a wave of joy swept over their 
 sadder thoughts. "Come in first, and get posses- 
 sion," said Lisaveta; "we will share bread and salt 
 and fire, then out into these little dells ; I '11 show you 
 where I spend every hour I am at liberty." 
 
 In they went, to a house not so large as Renmore, 
 and far from as old, bright instead of melancholy, 
 modern in its appointments, yet strange enough to 
 announce that O'Connor's daughter knew how to 
 fashion a world in her own likeness. The rooms 
 had no crowding of ill-assorted styles; they w r ere
 
 i8 2 THE WIZARD'S KNOT 
 
 almost Greek in their severity, with woods in the 
 natural grain for wall-papers, tiger- and wolf-skins 
 for carpets, no gilding anywhere, and but religious 
 pictures, icons on a gold or silver ground, in lucid 
 colors, stately and slender, which made of the house 
 a shrine. 
 
 One exquisite piece of marble shone white among 
 these grave Eastern saints a girl in royal raiment, 
 its border crimson with serpents interlaced, a thin 
 yellow fillet binding her hair, which flowed loose 
 behind, her face lifted as though she sang, her hands 
 clasped over a throbbing heart. You looked down, 
 and at the girl's feet a young warrior lay dead, the 
 bronze spear by his side, the shield with its golden 
 knobs held in a grasp that would never relax again ; 
 he was clad in scale armor, and his face had the 
 maiden's beauty, boldly rendered. On seeing a 
 group so lifelike, Joan started back. Her air of as- 
 tonishment made Edmund smile. "Don't you guess 
 who these are?" he inquired of her. 
 
 "They 're alive and they 're dead," she answered, 
 wondering more and more. "Poor girl, her heart 
 is broke ; 't is that puts the song on her lips. Indeed, 
 Mr. Edmund, I 'd cry myself was I long looking at 
 the two of them." 
 
 "It is the saddest, the tenderest of the Three 
 Sorrows of Story-telling/ Joan," he said. "Deirdre
 
 lUBHDAN'S MINSTRELSIES 183 
 
 lamenting over the death of Naesi, her youngest 
 brother. When her song is done, she will lie in 
 the grave by his side. An Irish sculptor carved it." 
 
 "Yes, Owen O'Reilly, that neglected youth of 
 genius," cried Lisaveta. "It was his last work. 
 My father found him starving in Petersburg, and 
 gave him this commission. He lived just long 
 enough to finish all but a little of the ornaments ; we 
 would not have them touched. There was to have 
 been a jeweled torque round the neck of Deirdre." 
 
 Philip had been silently inspecting the features 
 of the marble maid. "Where did O'Reilly get that 
 face?" he inquired. "Look at it, Miss O'Connor. 
 Is it like any person you ever saw?" 
 
 She considered the statue fixedly, gave a slight 
 start, and turned to Joan. "My dear, how was it 
 I waited until now to see what was before my eyes ? 
 Do you look it is yourself !" 
 
 "Oh, not for the wide world!" exclaimed Joan; 
 "don't believe it; don't say it ever." She was 
 shaking from head to foot. 
 
 "Why, what makes you all of a tremble?" asked 
 the Russian girl. "Another of your endless Mun- 
 ster pishogues? Edmund, can you explain?" as 
 Joan refused obstinately to say a syllable. 
 
 " 'T is a relic of superstitions so ancient," he re- 
 plied somewhat uneasily, "that I know of them only
 
 184 THE WIZARD'S KNOT 
 
 by hearsay. The people used to think if an image 
 was made of man or woman, their life would sink 
 into it, be swallowed up in the clay of the thing. 
 Old witchcraft used to practise on these fears." 
 
 "Well, it was not from you O'Reilly got the like- 
 ness," said Lisaveta, putting her arm round the 
 frightened girl. "He traveled the country and saw 
 some cousin of yours don't mind it any more, Joan, 
 dear. We will go up now to your rooms." 
 
 But Joan kept her terrified gaze on the statue for 
 several minutes, while the rest moved off. "I 'm 
 there in the white stone, singing," she thought to 
 herself, "and that is buachal in his grave at my feet. 
 'T is no use to be talking; half the life is gone out of 
 me already. I '11 never have a day's health after 
 this." 
 
 An inconceivable feeling of dislike and affection 
 for this marble counterfeit of herself sprang up in 
 the child; she was, or would surely pass into, the 
 figure of Deirdre alone and not alone killed with 
 consuming grief. 
 
 Henceforth, Airgead Ross, for Joan O'Dwyer, 
 was the place of the statue, haunted day and night by 
 her silent image, her ghost or double. 
 
 But the day, as they tramped on the golden sea- 
 weed and crunched under foot the white sand, was 
 too glorious for the weeping strain ; men have these
 
 lUBHDAN'S MINSTRELSIES 185 
 
 felicities between hours of torment. "My heart is 
 like a sieve, holed by some sharp-toothed beast," 
 said Joan, by whom Sir Phil was walking, "since I 
 set eyes on that Deirdre, yet I could n't be miserable 
 here in the sun." 
 
 They had fallen into a sort of confidence, unspoken 
 but assured; this fairyland was their own a soft, 
 transparent brightness, in which they moved to the 
 sound of lubhdan's minstrelsies, shaking out sweet 
 laughter from the branches, echoing down the rills 
 that shivered with delight as they were churned into 
 white water. Purple as evening clouds, the hills 
 hung in a sky now fancifully brushed with rainy 
 outlines, which were dark and then light as the wind 
 swept them away toward the east. "You will be hap- 
 pier than at the castle," answered Philip. "I shall 
 miss your little songs, Joan," he went on abruptly, 
 "but there is a thing I want to ask before I leave." 
 
 "Wisha, don't, Sir Philip," said the girl, her 
 temples flushing; "don't now bring sorrow into the 
 day. Ask me no questions and I '11 tell you no lies," 
 she concluded merrily, stooping to pull some quiet 
 gray water-blossom and holding it out for him to 
 see. "Look, there 's a creature of God was living 
 with itself happy in the nest of the rock, and I 
 killed it," she said ; "let me be, Sir Philip, or you '11 
 have me destroyed the same way."
 
 i86 THE WIZARD'S KNOT 
 
 He snatched the sea-bloom out of her hand. 
 "You 're brighter than that," he said hastily, "nor 
 was I meaning to hurt you. My request was that 
 you would let me hear if she if my mother they're 
 gone on ahead, I must take the chance while I have 
 it should be doing what I don't want." 
 
 It was on the tip of her tongue to reply, "Put 
 your commands on Miss O'Connor," had she not 
 looked up at his glowing eyes, stern and passionate. 
 The words shriveled as before a hot coal. 
 
 "You promise me," he reiterated, while they 
 paused without a motion, feeling how grave the sit- 
 uation was between them. Joan sighed, and shook 
 her head. "I '11 wrong nayther you nor her," she 
 replied, with sorrowful determination. "An in- 
 former is what I never yet was, nor could be. I 'd 
 die first. They say women are false and sly. If 
 't is so, I 'm no woman of them at all." 
 
 "You are a provoking little fairy," cried Phil, not 
 knowing what a heat he threw into the words be- 
 tween his temper and his admiration ; "I did n't ask 
 you to do mischief, but to hinder it." 
 
 "I 'm fond of your mother in spite of all she has 
 done," said his companion, slowly. "I could not be 
 the black spider, spinning a web to take her, though 
 it was to lighten your own heart, sir. God knows, I 
 think worse of all that 's on you than if the trouble
 
 lUBHDAN'S MINSTRELSIES 187 
 
 struck in here," smiting her breast unconsciously, 
 "and I gave myself a promise" she was thinking of 
 the outcry she had made to prevent the lady's flight 
 with Will Hapgood "but 't is my secret. I '11 not 
 tell it nor go from it. Will that satisfy you?" 
 
 The word was more than she meant. It shot 
 beyond one mark and went straight to another. 
 
 There is an hour in the wonder-working spell 
 Nature's supreme enchantment with man and maid 
 when trust is all in all, faith lives in the music of 
 a voice, the miraculous blossoms. It stood shining 
 above them. That day seas and skies, sun and 
 clouds and spring, in its white glory, conspired 
 against these two. Their souls melted into unknown 
 tenderness, belief, worship of one another ; and lubh- 
 dan, the fairy minstrel, laughed and sang delicately, 
 mockingly, as if to every note they must throb and 
 shiver. He, the hero, not beautiful on vulgar lines, 
 but a man that had sprung through fire, its ruddy 
 light still on his brows, savagely earnest, his word 
 a pulsing vein that would bleed were it cut into. 
 Quite unsmirched by the world's dusty ways; shy 
 and bold and passion-wrought to the highest he 
 should ever attain; at this magnetic moment fault- 
 less. And she, not more innocent (believe it, though 
 incredible), a flower like the Dark Roseen, some 
 strange rich light streaming along every fiber, dew
 
 i88 THE WIZARD'S KNOT 
 
 on every petal sparkling, the life within one radiant 
 blush, confessed and unashamed. "Will that sat- 
 isfy you, Sir Philip?" said the lips, harmlessly, tell- 
 ing the whole tale. 
 
 They laughed; they were sad; they knew each 
 other's heart ; the hour had come of divine melan- 
 choly and rapture. In the shadow of death they 
 laughed. Had she been a woman of his degree, 
 Philip would have caught her hand, flung forth the 
 decisive word and they were pledged. But the 
 most exquisite chivalry kept him at his distance. 
 Faultless, and in love; such is heroic youth in the 
 noblest. 
 
 "I am satisfied now, Joan." His tongue could 
 never be eloquent. Their eyes made up for it. 
 "Here is my mother; I must say good-by." The 
 fairy harper's finest string was all a-tremble as their 
 hands met and parted.
 
 CHAPTER XIV 
 
 CASTING A HOROSCOPE 
 
 MISS O'CONNOR was seated at a table covered 
 with piles of documents, Edmund Liscarroll 
 turning them over in moody discontent, and the 
 suave Mr. Nagle, agent at Silverwood, identifying 
 with a pair of compasses the holdings on his map of 
 the estate. A clear morning threw its ray on the 
 marble group of Deirdre and her dead brother not 
 far from them. 
 
 "The more you explain the less I perceive any end 
 but one to it," said Lisaveta, musing and unhappy. 
 
 "What end do you see?" asked Edmund. "I see 
 none." 
 
 "Let us take a view of the whole dismal prospect," 
 she replied. "From your maps, plans, leases, rent- 
 rolls, lists of tenants, sub-tenants and their tenants 
 again, Mr. Nagle, I conclude that on my seven thou- 
 sand acres I, the landlady, must be answerable for 
 five thousand human creatures, all poor, most of 
 them wretched, numbers famishing." 
 
 "You take a very high standard of obligation, very 
 189
 
 190 
 
 THE WIZARD'S KNOT 
 
 high indeed, madam," replied Mr. Nagle, a quiet, 
 gray-haired man, of medium height, polished and 
 agreeable in his manners, which bore the stamp of 
 the old school in their marked deference to the per- 
 son he was addressing. "The landlord has his cov- 
 enants with the middlemen, beyond which, in law 
 certainly, he is not bound. Subletting has done the 
 harm and multiplied this unproductive population; 
 but as no jury would have enforced the clauses 
 against it, I am of opinion that the landlord is not 
 to blame." 
 
 "But, Mr. Nagle, it is my land; I get rent from 
 every yard of it." 
 
 "The middleman used to get five times as much," 
 said Liscarroll, "and the man under him more again. 
 We know that, to our cost, on the Renmore prop- 
 erty." 
 
 "You have every reason to say so," answered Mr. 
 Nagle. "These estates, and I could mention a score 
 besides, have all been let on one system. The head 
 landlord gave leases for lives, to increase his 
 political importance. Then the middleman exacted 
 the highest rent, and did well during the war with 
 France, which made money plentiful. Now we have 
 peace prices but war rents; interminable under- 
 letting " 
 
 "And the throngs of beggars round this door
 
 CASTING A HOROSCOPE 191 
 
 every morning, hungry as fieldfares in the snow," 
 concluded Miss O'Connor. "But we still get our 
 rents. How can I take them with a clear con- 
 science? What return do I, Elizabeth Charlotte 
 O'Connor, make to the five thousand wretches that 
 earn them?" 
 
 "More than your absentee neighbors," said the 
 agent, smiling, "not that I yield to the popular fallacy 
 regarding absentees. Many of the great English 
 noblemen's estates are exceedingly well managed. 
 Over-population is the national scourge." 
 
 "Let me, as a fool and a poet, throw in my 
 bauble," said Edmund. "After all, did you ever 
 meet a happier, brighter, kinder people than you live 
 among, Miss O'Connor ? Don't they sing and dance 
 as they '11 do here on your lawn at May Day? 
 Their hearts are like a feather, though they have n't 
 a sixpence in the thatch. What more would you 
 want?" 
 
 The girl eyed him questioningly. "Your talk is 
 harder than your heart, Edmund, or I should tell you 
 to go down and taste the fever in these streets of 
 cabins, with hunger to give it an edge. Like a true- 
 born Irishman, as you can't cure the disease, you 
 play jigs to it. Now, does n't Renmore cut you to 
 the quick? Be candid." 
 
 "What can't be cured must be endured," he said;
 
 192 THE WIZARD'S KNOT 
 
 "there 's an old song for you we have sung time out 
 of mind. Candid should I be? Well, then, Miss 
 Lisaveta, the fortune of Ireland is before you in 
 O'Reilly's piece of statuary. The soldier will be 
 killed out, as you see him there poor, proud, im- 
 provident boy and the woman will raise a keen over 
 his corpse till one grave swallows them both. The 
 country is doomed." 
 
 "Oh, you have watched the shadow growing larger 
 as I have watched it. The end it is the end 
 of our nation, if not of our race," she exclaimed, 
 heart-stricken. "We are all to blame; none of 
 us can get off. But the people, who have sinned 
 a thousand times less than ourselves, will suffer 
 most." 
 
 "There is every hope of an excellent crop this year, 
 at any rate," said Mr. Nagle; "from all parts I am 
 told the potatoes were never looking better." 
 
 "They failed last season, and the season before, 
 did they not?" inquired Lisaveta, turning on the 
 polite man almost savagely. He bowed. 
 
 "To a lamentable extent they did. Our peasants' 
 farming is, I regret to say, ignorant and careless. 
 The land is burnt up, overrun with weeds, exhausted 
 by bad cropping, against every rule in short, a good 
 harvest is a miracle, for which we must thank the 
 mercy of God."
 
 CASTING A HOROSCOPE 193 
 
 "Suppose that miracle did not happen this year? 
 What would be the consequence, Mr. Nagle?" 
 
 "God forbid, madam. The consequence would be 
 too awful for human language to describe." 
 
 "You, Edmund, with your vivid imagination, 
 could at least picture it in outline. Would it not be 
 famine, wide as the land, deep as the depth of those 
 numbers living from hand to mouth? I had some 
 trial of it in the year past, among these woods and 
 lawns of Eden. To you stay-at-home Irishmen it 
 is familiar as your changeable sky; a matter of 
 course. Not so to me. I have lain awake, night 
 after night, in fancy traveling over the land smitten 
 with the plague its crops lying in pestilential heaps, 
 the people dying above them ; fathers, mothers, chil- 
 dren ghastly in their nakedness the country a 
 stricken battle-field, its dead unburied. The dream 
 or is it real? will not leave me. I walk in it 
 even as I say these words to you. Tell me, in God's 
 name, you men, what am I to do?" 
 
 "An exaggerated and improbable supposition, I 
 trust," answered Mr. Nagle, with his not unkindly 
 smile. "It is against the calculus of chances is it. 
 not, Mr. Liscarroll ? Two failures in succession we 
 may conceive, but not three." 
 
 "The moment I look into that cloud we call the 
 future," replied Edmund, "I dread, as you do, what 
 
 13
 
 194 THE WIZARD'S KNOT 
 
 it may bring, Miss Lisaveta. Our people have staked 
 all on a gambling crop; chance is no god I would 
 trust. More as Mr. Nagle says the land, the 
 plants, the handling are equally bad. And the most 
 of our tenants have nothing to fall back upon but the 
 mealmen God help them !" 
 
 "Nothing to be done nothing to be done," mur- 
 mured Lisaveta, rising and walking about the room 
 in strong agitation. "We landlords can take our 
 pound of flesh, with the blood in it, no Portia to 
 say us nay ; you poets can improvise a keen along the 
 mountain roads, as you follow the coffin to its last 
 home. Would there even be coffins for the people ?" 
 she cried suddenly, so that the agent turned pale, 
 and Edmund looked at her in wonder not unmixed 
 with fear. His quick thoughts had leaped with hers 
 to the horrible consummation. He saw the Famine 
 slaying its thousands on a heap, with fierce delight, 
 and thousands more tumbling before it. "Your eyes 
 pierce the cloud," he whispered, in a voice unlike his 
 own, to the girl. She answered emphatically: 
 
 "My mother had strange notions. I was taught 
 by her that I never could do anything as I ought 
 until I saw it in visible shape before my mind's eye. 
 The habit is formed in me; you will not think it 
 hallucination; it is your own gift when you choose 
 to exercise it. Set these millions in their wasted
 
 CASTING A HOROSCOPE 195 
 
 fields, and say what do you see? That is the thing 
 they will do, that will be done to them, in the day of 
 their hunger. They will feed upon nettles and 
 weeds; the mist of fever will rise about them; they 
 will creep into the ditches and die there, by the 
 visitation of God upon the crime and folly of man. 
 Such a white death is my dream, which this very 
 autumn may crown king of our millions our 
 millions ! I see him coming up from the South, pass- 
 ing the rivers; neither stop nor stay does he make 
 on the mountain-crest; he is lord of the Golden 
 Vale, and away with him over plain and pasture until 
 he reaches the Northern Sea. It will be the famine 
 of the century." 
 
 "An excellent crop," murmured Mr. Nagle, "the 
 calculus of probabilities ! By Christmas " 
 
 "The crowded mountain-sides may be a ceme- 
 tery," said Miss O'Connor. 
 
 "Or you may be laughing at your own gloomy 
 presentiments," said he. 
 
 "Why do the Irish gentry fulfil no part of their 
 contract?" she insisted. 
 
 "It is not they but the farmers themselves that 
 drag the life and soul out of the ground, as well as 
 stocking it with a loose population, till it is no better 
 than a snipe-bog," said the agent, severely. 
 
 "Can they help it if their boys and girls marry at
 
 196 THE WIZARD'S KNOT 
 
 seventeen?" threw in Liscarroll; "what else is a man 
 to do with his lads but divide the holding among 
 them?" 
 
 "No coercive enactment is palatable to those peo- 
 ple," answered Mr. Nagle, almost showing signs of 
 temper. "They will neither be said nor led by their 
 superiors. They murder the good soil ; they lament 
 here that we don't permit them to appropriate the 
 sea-rack and burn up the fine land with it." 
 
 "You know they call it the 'running weed that 
 God sends in to them'; why should it be mine in- 
 stead of theirs?" cried Lisaveta. "I declare to you, 
 Mr. Nagle, when those boys clifted the cows over 
 the rocks at Glenmasson, cruel as I thought them, 
 I felt they did it more from exasperation than 
 villainy." 
 
 "For God's sake, madam, keep that opinion to 
 yourself," said the agent, alarmed, "or we will be 
 having the revels of the Rockites as they had in 
 Tipperary. Don't you see them now pulling the 
 heath for sale, and 'stealing mountain,' so they term 
 it, by the furlong? And there 's the bog-stuff they 
 use for manure, to say nothing of the pernicious sea- 
 sand, the burning itself of the soil, and " 
 
 "But I see here," interrupted Lisaveta, "that we do 
 what Cathal O'Dwyer charged upon us landlords in 
 my hearing, and I would not believe it. We set the
 
 CASTING A HOROSCOPE 197 
 
 wild, sunken rocks in with the land, to get a rent 
 from them." 
 
 "Land is land, whether at sea or on shore," an- 
 swered the agent ; " 'he owns all at low tide and at 
 flood,' says their own proverb of the landlord. If 
 the natural indolence of our farmers, big and little, 
 did not encourage them to waste five good months of 
 the year, it is long since they would be independent 
 of a thing that one tide brings in and another may 
 carry out." 
 
 "Well, but, Mr. Nagle, as we should not be trust- 
 ing, like our rude ancestors, to the acorns that hang 
 on the oak and the wild honey in crevices of the trees, 
 surely you can tell us how to begin our improve- 
 ments," said Liscarroll, taking up the sketch-map. 
 "Look at these colors," he went on, pointing them 
 out to Miss O'Connor; "much of your estate is held 
 in rundale, and it is striped like the coat of the roving- 
 Kern a plaid would n't be more so." 
 
 "Take a patch of it from any one of them," re- 
 joined Nagle, "and they '11 get demoralized, and sav- 
 age, and wild. The man would be every day watch- 
 ing it, though he lost it twenty years back." 
 
 "But if you gave him as good a patch elsewhere?" 
 said Edmund. 
 
 "He will not be satisfied but with his own. 
 Double the quantity would n't pacify him. Still, I
 
 198 THE WIZARD'S KNOT 
 
 say to Miss O'Connor, in this way we will have to 
 begin. Improvement and ejectment but without 
 violence or hardship must go together. Money 
 will be demanded, and that not trifling." 
 
 "I have the money," said Lisaveta; "don't let that 
 stand in our way." 
 
 "You are happy to say it," returned Edmund, with 
 a certain bitterness; "at Renmore we shall improve 
 when we are rich and not till then. Our interests 
 were mortgaged, encumbered I don't know what 
 all ages ago." 
 
 To the cautious agent, who had thoughts of a pos- 
 sible alliance between the two houses, talk of this 
 kind appeared no less youthful than ill-timed. Miss 
 O'Connor was wealthy enough to choose her hus- 
 band ; the Liscarrolls dated back to Richard I, and it 
 was in Mr. Nagle's blood, as in that of every genuine 
 Irishman, to respect a family which had struck its 
 roots deep in the soil. Why dilate upon mortgages 
 and encumbrances ? They could be paid off. 
 
 "My plan would be this," he said aloud ; "emigrate 
 the cottiers that have no hold on the land. It will 
 cost a few pounds a head, but will repay you. Get 
 possession of the small broken farms ; square them to 
 a reasonable shape; plant the houses convenient but 
 not too near to each other; let six acres be the least 
 size of a farm, or maybe seven, so that a man will
 
 CASTING A HOROSCOPE 199 
 
 have enough to sustain his family in comfort. But 
 I have it all down in black and white for your inspec- 
 tion and approbation, Miss O'Connor." 
 
 "Emigrate, eject, clear off the land I don't fancy 
 the sound of it," said Lisaveta; "what think you, 
 Edmund?" 
 
 "I should n't bless the hand that turned me out on 
 the Atlantic," he answered. "By the crook of Saint 
 Finbarr, it is a queer country altogether. The land- 
 lords won't live in it the tenants can't. Who has 
 bewitched us?" 
 
 "Thank you for your great trouble," she said to 
 the agent, as he began to arrange his papers ; "leave 
 these for me to think over them." 
 
 "No hurry at all," said he ; "till harvest we can stir 
 not a step. It is an operation will be spread over 
 several years; but a beginning might be tried upon 
 the most impoverished tenants and hangers-on that 
 now disgrace the property. I would not advise an 
 immediate or exuberant expenditure." 
 
 Edmund, in his half-serious, half- jesting way, 
 turned to the lady of Airgead Ross. "My heart 
 bleeds for these paupers they are the old Irish, Fir- 
 bolgs, Fomorians, Milesians the antique world of 
 tale and song, fighting and love-making; but if they 
 must go, I declare to God a short, sharp famine 
 would be my choice for them."
 
 200 THE WIZARD'S KNOT 
 
 On his lips the young man had a doubtful smile; 
 but his voice choked. i 
 
 "You would see them die of hunger ?" asked Lis- 
 aveta, reproachfully. 
 
 "I am taking your advice, trying to follow them 
 across the ocean into cities where they are strangers 
 among nations of the modern style. They scatter, 
 sink, fall, forget the old legends, the old virtues. 
 What will their grandchildren be like? Will they 
 keep the Celtic heart of religion and poetry? Who 
 shall dare to say? Let them die at home in God's 
 grace." 
 
 "I want them to live, not to die our kith and 
 kin," answered Lisaveta, running up and kissing the 
 cold, marble cheek of Deirdre, on which she left 
 the sign of a tear, "my own people and yours, Ed- 
 mund ! How shall we save them?" 
 
 "God knows," he said mournfully; "I fear we 
 don't."
 
 CHAPTER XV 
 ST. BRANDAN'S KITCHEN 
 
 A* the poet was riding thoughtfully home that 
 afternoon, in the lengthening shadows, he saw 
 before him a horseman on a powerful bay horse 
 which went slowly, as if tired out. Coming nearer, 
 he recognized the steed and its rider, whom he soon 
 overtook. "Why, Will Hapgood," he exclaimed, 
 drawing rein, your animal seems no better than a 
 foundered nag. Have you been racing with Fin- 
 varra?" 
 
 "He 's gone a certain number of miles, over 
 deuced stony roads," answered Will, rather sullenly, 
 "up Killarney way." 
 
 "Come in and put up at the castle," urged Ed- 
 mund ; "you will never get to Derryvore at that rate. 
 Come and dine with Phil. We have not seen you 
 for a dog's age. Give your horse a rest, and stay 
 the night." 
 
 "Thanks, I '11 push on. Expected at home, you 
 know. Promised must n't disappoint. We shall
 
 202 . THE WIZARD'S KNOT 
 
 meet at Silverwood, May Day, if not before. Ta-ta. 
 Regards to Phil." 
 
 He stumbled along hastily, as warned by the fall- 
 ing night; but it was a good while ere the fagged 
 hunter vanished among the hills. Edmund diverted 
 his thoughts from the encounter to a fancy which 
 had ridden all the way with him, excited by Miss 
 O'Connor's prophecy of misfortune to the harvest. 
 Like her, but in a different key of imagination, he 
 possessed a creative eye, which bodied forth the 
 forms of things unseen by his neighbors. And now 
 he was brooding over the agent's denunciation of 
 early marriages, the doom of famine which might be 
 at their gates, the dispersion of his beloved people 
 into all lands across the "stammering sea" thus 
 happily named by a Celtic bard. The vision dis- 
 missed Will Hapgood lightly. So blind are we at 
 our best ! 
 
 But he thought, "How if 'Time the Shadow 
 Death the Skeleton,' reaping their black harvest to- 
 gether, came upon my rosy Cupid, the curly-headed, 
 the bold-faced, flying low with his wings all sunny, 
 through the bright air, his golden dart almost loos- 
 ened from the string? They strike him to the mar- 
 row with rusty iron swords, and he falls like a bird 
 that has been shot-r-one sudden gleam lighting round 
 him where he tumbles on a heap of dead. His eyes,
 
 ST. BRANDAN'S KITCHEN 203 
 
 aflame, laugh indignantly yet; his hand grasps the 
 magic bow ; he is smiling for the last, last time ; but 
 the sky is one cloud, the earth an open grave. Sup- 
 pose this be our last May Day, merry and glad, but 
 the crimson heaven descending upon it, I would write 
 'Love's Farewell to Erinn' a keen over the mur- 
 dered god. Should it not be in the measure of Mac- 
 Liag's 'Lament at Kincora'?" 
 
 Thus he, with a poet's second sight for it came 
 to pass even as the vision foreboded ; the last days of 
 that Ireland, careless, jovial, amorous, with all its 
 high spirit, were running into the lees; it was an 
 hour of sunset, bloody as though some battle of gods 
 and giants were fought on the ramparts of heaven. 
 The young Irish Cupid had not long to live ; he must 
 make haste with the dance, the melody, the symbolic 
 play bequeathed from of old, when the land decked 
 herself as a bride for La Lughnasadh, the wedding- 
 day of a nation that took its pleasure in love and war. 
 Henceforth his fires would be quenched, his shining 
 arrows broken; young men and maidens would flee 
 their native land in despair, or die at home un- 
 wedded. The mighty Famine was now to claim 
 Erinn as his bride. 
 
 While this general sorrow hung almost visible 
 in the air, long foreseen by the wise, heralded in 
 more than one famine to little purpose, misfortune
 
 204 THE WIZARD'S KNOT 
 
 of another kind was menacing the House of Ren- 
 more. Its evil genius had been cast out to Airgead 
 Ross; and the reader feels certain that when Will 
 Hapgood talked of having ridden "Killarney way" 
 he was lying. Early in the morning he had set out 
 on a roundabout journey; before noon he was face to 
 face with Lady Liscarroll in the woods that came 
 down to a wild seashore, marked by St. Brandan's 
 Kitchen, a ruin of great age and medieval masonry, 
 said to be infested by demons ; a terror to landsman 
 as well as seaman, who left it to the unearthly tenants 
 no power could evict. 
 
 Will's horse was tethered to a broken pillar, and 
 the young man, palpitating as if he had ridden a 
 steeplechase, entered the inclosure which long weeds 
 and grasses made almost inaccessible. Tearing them 
 aside, he pushed on to where a small window gave 
 light, and a woman, veiled and cloaked, came for- 
 ward to meet him. Their hands touched. In his 
 the fever of a terrible infatuation might be felt. 
 The perspiration stood on his forehead. 
 
 "We are both mad to be meeting here," said Lady 
 Liscarroll. "I shall be missed at the house. And 
 you?" 
 
 "Never mind me," answered the Wild Huntsman; 
 "I had to see you once, to make sure you were not 
 a prisoner still. That awful night! The crash of
 
 ST. BRANDAN'S KITCHEN 205 
 
 the Gray Tower ! We heard it ; we saw the battle- 
 ments falling in the moon standing over them. 
 Were you dead or alive we did not know. Pity me 
 I had to bear that doubt how long? An eter- 
 nity, I thought." 
 
 "Better had the night finished me," she said. 
 "But no, I am thankless to you. And was I not 
 anxious? In an open boat the sea raging had 
 you gone down, I should have been your murderess." 
 
 "No, no," he replied, almost gaily. "Who could 
 blame you? The adventure was mine, only mine. 
 But you should have sent me an answer to my letters 
 by O'Sullivan. I had to act in the dark." 
 
 "I put no trust in him," was her answer; "he is 
 devoted to Sir Philip, and has always made mis- 
 chief. But let us move into the open; this place 
 stifles me." 
 
 They traversed the wet grass, and halted out- 
 side, under the shadow of a high sandstone rock 
 from which the waters of the bay were seen 
 glistening. 
 
 "Did n't you run a frightful risk on that lee 
 shore in such a wind?" began Lady Liscarroll the 
 second time. 
 
 "Felim O'Riordan knows every inch of it. We 
 had our hands full, no doubt. However, you would 
 have been safe," he rejoined, with a fierce touch of
 
 2 o6 THE WIZARD'S KNOT 
 
 disappointment. "What kept you back? Not 
 cowardice, I know." 
 
 "That girl Joan threatened us with Philip." 
 
 "What do I care for Philip?" he was bursting out. 
 "I beg your pardon. He is your son; but why 
 did n't he take your part against the world ?" 
 
 She eyed the curious young squire with curiosity. 
 "I shall manage Philip," said she; "that is my reason 
 for staying with Miss O'Connor. Don't cross my 
 plans, Mr. Hapgood. I want you to know them. 
 But first tell me what put you on that chivalrous 
 notion of a rescue?" 
 
 He could not unravel the character of the woman ; 
 was she playing with him, the hook in his gills, as 
 he would have played with a salmon out in the bay ? 
 No matter, the perplexity threw more sparks into 
 his passion. 
 
 "What I intended you can read in my face," he 
 answered hotly. "Of course you hardly remember 
 a lad you were once kind to ; he had got into a scrape 
 at home, ran away to Renmore, to Nora O' Sullivan, 
 would n't go back; talked of throwing himself into 
 the creek sooner; you heard him sobbing, the little 
 fool, and yes, you forget! I don't." 
 
 "Neither do I," said the lady ; "that lad looked so 
 desperate it became him very well," she continued, 
 with a smile; "I was not too happy myself. We
 
 ST. BRANDAN'S KITCHEN 207 
 
 kept you the night made you sleep in Phil's room 
 next day got your mother to send her forgiveness. 
 A small thing to be remembered !" 
 
 "I would have done something to myself but for 
 you," he said ; "always was a hot blood. And you 
 spoke there was that in your voice like no one 
 I ever heard. Oh, how sorry I felt when the country 
 talked, after you " 
 
 "After I took to flying with the wild geese that 
 was O'Dwyer's word to me," she concluded, slightly 
 blushing. "I see the rest. You could n't bear the 
 thought of me in that horrible Gray Tower the 
 O'Sullivans were at your beck and call you wrote, 
 you waited " 
 
 "Every night for over a week I was prowling 
 about the rocks, expecting a signal. I had got the 
 tower door to open, put up a long ladder ; even tried 
 the panel at the head of the stairs. But you gave no 
 sign; at last, I had to venture. How could you 
 refuse ?" 
 
 "My dear Will," she answered, giving him the 
 frankest of smiles, "now I know all this, my heart re- 
 joices that I did hold back. I have enough on my 
 conscience. Why destroy every one who comes near 
 me ? Shall I tell you what my life has been ?" Her 
 voice sank. 
 
 "Not to me," he said, his face and eyes one glow ;
 
 208 THE WIZARD'S KNOT 
 
 "to me that is nothing. Don't turn those pages 
 tear them out. I ask are you free ? you stay at Air- 
 gead Ross willingly? Otherwise, come. I will 
 put you on my horse, and take you wherever you 
 choose. Say the word. There is the sea and lib- 
 erty," pointing before him. 
 
 "All I wanted was a friend ; now I have one," she 
 replied, darting a ray of sunshine into Will's brain. 
 "Yes, I am as free as I can ever be in this detestable 
 country. Take my thought in a sentence Miss 
 O'Connor must marry Sir Philip. In that way I 
 make up to him for the past." 
 
 Will's countenance fell. What signified to them 
 Sir Philip and his fortunes? A fire such as now 
 kindled his deepest being put out all lesser lights; 
 besides, he hated the young master of Renmore, see- 
 ing in him only an executioner. 
 
 "They say Edmund is the favorite," he answered 
 at length, sulkily. 
 
 "Do they ? All the more reason why I should not 
 leave this house. Edmund, indeed ! A charity brat, 
 penniless like his father taken up by Sir Walter to 
 spite me one that always behaved as if I were worse 
 than a stepmother to him. No, I will see that he 
 does n't get the broad acres of Silverwood." 
 
 "Nor the purse of Miss Lisaveta," said Will, en- 
 tering into her humor.
 
 ST. BRANDAN'S KITCHEN 209 
 
 "Not a farthing, if I can help it," she rejoined, 
 vehemently. "Now I will never ask a quick-tem- 
 pered boy like you to interfere," she went on, partly 
 to provoke him, but as much by way of trying how 
 far she could venture. "However, if you must 
 quarrel, let it be with Edmund." 
 
 "Fight him? With pleasure. Shall I pick a 
 quarrel with him at once ?" 
 
 "La you now, what a spitfire !" she said, laughing. 
 "Wait a bit. He is in requisition for May Day." 
 
 "Well, after May Day," replied Will, seriously. 
 And then the lady took him by the arm. "I was 
 only joking," she said, looking him straight in the 
 eyes. "Duels have gone out of fashion. But Phil, 
 not Edmund, is to get the great heiress; if you, or 
 anybody, can put a spoke in my nephew's wheel, I 
 sha'n't break my heart." 
 
 "It is always the simplest to fight a man," argued 
 her cavalier. "I 'm not much good at anything else." 
 
 "In this case, I forbid fighting," said Lady Lis- 
 carroll. "But you must leave me now. I reckon 
 you my champion always that night of storm you 
 went through death for me. Will you wear this ?" 
 
 It was a long thin chain of Indian gold, such as 
 men attached to their watches and wore about their 
 necks half a century ago, finely wrought and of some 
 value. Will took it then hesitated. 
 
 14
 
 210 THE WIZARD'S KNOT 
 
 "Had I any other trinket, I would offer you that, 
 but I am a pauper," she said bitterly. "Nay, you 
 shall not give it back. Some one it matters not who 
 left it with me. He is dead. I make you his 
 heir." 
 
 Will Hapgood was startled. He wondered if she 
 meant the English soldier Henry Lifford whose 
 name was darkly associated with hers in a story often 
 told but never cleared up to his satisfaction. The 
 chain had perhaps been his; and he was a suicide, 
 the whisper went. Impossible to thrust it into the 
 lady's hand again. But he wished the token had 
 been something else. 
 
 With a sad feeling he put it to his lips and hid it 
 within his breast pocket. Then he pulled himself 
 together valiantly. "We are not to allow this mar- 
 riage between Edmund and Miss O'Connor," he said 
 at parting. 
 
 "It must never take place," she answered firmly. 
 
 "Even if I have to challenge him," rejoined 
 Hapgood. 
 
 "It will not be required," was her answer. 
 
 "Leave that to me," said Will, and he rode away.
 
 CHAPTER XVI 
 
 THE LAST MAY DAY 
 
 ON May Eve there was a fall of clouds at sunset, 
 threatening wind and rain over the glens, the 
 green lawns, and the high barren hills about Airgead 
 Ross. The sky was checkered with many doubtful 
 lights, peering between banks of storm and the scud- 
 ding rack. And more than one said to Cathal 
 O'Dwyer, setting out that way late, "We '11 have 
 Kerry rain for our drink to-morrow. What will 
 you do thin, Cathal ? Your great festival will be the 
 haven roaring, and the flood under and over you." 
 
 "Bate no hound without his fault," answered the 
 wizard, confidently, "nor be putting your skian into 
 the hollow of your own side. That wind will be 
 met by a second, red from the north, and more fero- 
 cious. 'T is not rain I 'm in dread of, but last 
 year's blight on the crops, should it return. And 
 God forbid!" 
 
 "God forbid, indeed," said Garret O'Riordan, who 
 was within earshot. " 'T would be the most unfor- 
 tunate thing ever happened to us." 
 
 211
 
 212 THE WIZARD'S KNOT 
 
 " 'T would sweep up the whole world's valuables 
 into the hands of the malemen, bad cess to them," 
 said his brother. "But anyhow, Cathal, knock a 
 fine May Day out of it for us, and 't is unknownst 
 what '11 you get." 
 
 "Never trust me if I don't ; call me a scoldg to my 
 face, and strike me with sledge-hammers," he re- 
 plied, gripping their hands heartily, "if I 'm wanting 
 in power when ye meet me on the meadow at Airgead 
 Ross. Merriment shall increase in ye young men, 
 kindness in the women (God knows they '11 be the 
 better for that same), audacity in the hurlers and 
 jumpers, and grace, vivacity, and spirit in every 
 dancer that leaps off the ground. Good-night, and 
 joy be with ye all," he concluded, turning his face 
 to the mountain road. 
 
 His prophecy came true. "The shining god that 
 made heaven with its clouds" had brought up one 
 wind to chase it away with a mightier, headlong from 
 the north. May Day wore a bright face, dashed at 
 morning with cold drops, then tranquil and sun- 
 flushed. Its colors, exceedingly pure, faded out 
 toward the ocean in a tinge of melting blue, but else- 
 where displayed the spring favors of an intense green 
 and blossoming white; for in these sheltered spots 
 the season moved happily onward. "A goldsmith's 
 fire" up in the sky threw off its yellow sparks all
 
 THE LAST MAY DAY 213 
 
 round, playfully scattered on the laughing waves or 
 shooting down through the branches into a dimmer 
 atmosphere. 
 
 There was not one that came to Airgead Ross that 
 May Day and hundreds traveled from villages far 
 and near but saw the place with Cathal the wizard's 
 eyes. He had made a cast of his art ; the magic held 
 them. Yet perhaps it was not needed. Singular 
 indeed was the spell of those wide-branching, airy 
 woods, their little white rills musically plashing, the 
 ground decked with ferns, asphodels, shyly peeping, 
 sweet-scented flowers, that flung on the breeze a balm 
 of paradise. The birds were not silent, but their 
 music made a subdued accompaniment to the voices 
 and the shouting, to the laughter of young girls, and 
 the high-pitched tones of Kerry, clear as a thrush's 
 call. And the softly undulating fringe of purple sea 
 ran round these woodland recesses, or became dis- 
 cernible unexpectedly in their depths, giving to the 
 landscape a strange aerial brightness, as though be- 
 held in a dream. 
 
 "This is the land of youth, the country under the 
 waves," said Edmund to Lisaveta, where they stood 
 on the green mound, conspicuous by its May bush, 
 the hawthorn in blossom, round which the dancers 
 were to move before long. "Do you know that ex- 
 cept in Ireland there never was a true Fairy Queen ?
 
 2i 4 THE WIZARD'S KNOT 
 
 The poets have lied about it charmingly, but so it is. 
 To-day will you choose to be Queen Mab or Queen 
 Aine, or Cliona of Glandor? I believe the O'Con- 
 nors are related to the Good People." 
 
 " 'T is a clear pedigree, extant yet for constant rec- 
 itation," said Cathal, overhearing the remark as he 
 bustled past. "I could give three parts of it now, 
 was not Lucifer at my heels in the shape of fiddlers 
 and dancers approaching. Your pardon, madam." 
 With a bow and a flourish he was off. 
 
 "Our Druid is like the magpie," said Edmund, 
 looking after O'Dwyer, "one half of him is white, 
 the other half black. Full of wisdom, not empty of 
 liquor ; to use his own words, 'at times, your honor, 
 greatly bibulous.' He cuts deep with his tongue, I 
 am afraid. He is too fond of satire, but the days 
 of Aitherne are past. He will pay for his 'jocose 
 banterings and imprecations' that is Dr. Driscoll's 
 word sooner than he thinks. As I came along this 
 morning I met the doctor." 
 
 "His very sight sickens me," interrupted Lis- 
 aveta. "I never could, as the people say here, cotton 
 to him." 
 
 "You are not the only one. But, however, he 
 shouted to me across the gap that yesterday Mr. 
 Davy Roche, the butterman from Cork " 
 
 "With his coat buttoned behind him," exclaimed
 
 THE LAST MAY DAY 215 
 
 Cathal, emerging on them of a sudden round the 
 other side of the hill. "Mr. Edmund, a thousand 
 pardons, but I caught the name that sticks in my 
 gizzard always. Don't mention it this day, for your 
 mother's soul! Favete linguis! To that land- 
 sucker a man better endowed with miserliness you 
 never clapped eyes on I make a present of every 
 curse I have to spare from the rest of his family. 
 May he live to want tin times every pound he never 
 spent nor squandered !" 
 
 With a grim smile he went down to the meadow, 
 now fast filling as the bands of country-folk, their 
 fiddlers playing before them, came out from the 
 glens, or up from the thickset hovels along the shore. 
 Voices swelled in a confused, not unmusical clamor 
 above the shrill violins, which seemed to march upon 
 the wind in a straggling and interrupted procession. 
 Stewards, wearing the O'Connor badge a seal in 
 silver on a blue ground met them at the gates of 
 the demesne, marshaled the lads by themselves in 
 long columns, and sent the lasses on, with more 
 laughing and joking, to their own side. "In a few 
 minutes/' remarked Edmund, "these lines of young 
 men and maids will join hands in the great snake- 
 dance, following the course of the sun from east to 
 west. It is well he is shining bright to-day." 
 
 "Who leads the girls off ?" inquired Sir Philip he
 
 216 THE WIZARD'S KNOT 
 
 had arrived later than Edmund, and was now stand- 
 ing by his mother's side, intent on the scene, his eyes 
 not so fatigued as usual. 
 
 "Out of regard for Cathal O'Dwyer, who is mas- 
 ter of the revels, they have chosen his daughter 
 Joan," answered Edmund. "There she is with the 
 old man. Find me a prettier Irish girl among them," 
 he continued, turning to Lady Liscarroll, who sat a 
 little apart, busy with her memories of former times. 
 
 She shook her head and smiled. "Voice, step,, 
 figure, there is none to equal Joan," was her candid 
 reply. "A little too spirited, perhaps. She is lively 
 as a bird on the willow." 
 
 "The captain of the lads will match her in good 
 looks," said Lisaveta. "Look at him, Edmund, with 
 his high crest ! What a splendid piece of a boy !" 
 
 "It is Felim O'Riordan," answered Philip, hastily. 
 "Is he to dance with Joan?" The warmth which 
 ran like a spark along these words might have drawn 
 attention; but carriages were arriving, with ladies 
 and their squires, who dismounted at a little distance 
 from the May bush and came up the hill on foot. 
 Among them, as Lady Liscarroll anticipated, were 
 Will Hapgood and his tall sister Julia. 
 
 Not the widow of Derryvore. She had been 
 asked, but frostily declined; had her authority 
 equaled her remonstrances, she would have kept the
 
 THE LAST MAY DAY 217 
 
 young people at home. But it was labor lost arguing 
 with her son, and Julia, who had lately taken to call- 
 ing pretty often on Nora O'Sullivan at Renmore, was 
 resolved, though she did not say so, to get one 
 glimpse of Philip's famous mother, the witch of the 
 gray eyes. As well put a spancel, O'Dwyer would 
 say, on the mallard and wild duck, as on young crea- 
 tures in love. 
 
 The widow was left lonely. Julia felt the sting 
 of a suspicion that Sir Philip's frequent absences 
 from home, and his rides to Silverwood, gave Miss 
 O'Connor a chance which she might take. This day 
 would throw light on it all. Unhappy Julia ! There 
 is a touch of the bitter as well as the comic when 
 "Apollo flies, and Daphne holds the chase." Could 
 she have seen Philip as he uttered his angry question 
 about the lad Felim, what a blaze might have struck 
 into her eyes! Only Edmund recalled that little 
 incident afterward. 
 
 By this the elderly men and women were seated 
 on the grass ; the musicians, stationed at the foot of 
 the May mound, were preparing to strike up, and the 
 youths and maidens in a great circle had taken 
 hands, according to the immemorial rules of the 
 dance. But to those who looked on, familiar with 
 old stories, the sight, however gay and frolicsome, 
 brought melancholy thoughts; for what a contrast
 
 2i8 THE WIZARD'S KNOT 
 
 between the ancient splendor of prince and chieftain, 
 Druid and Ollamh, in their many-colored plaids, 
 their crimson and saffron and purple, their fillets of 
 bronze, and torques of gold, and this dark-vestured 
 throng, where the women's blue cloaks and white 
 caps gave the only vivid note, all else lost in a gen- 
 eral grayness ! 
 
 Edmund could have been sorry that they called 
 out into the sun a spectacle so moving and so 
 strangely desolate. The music with which the dance 
 opened, mournful in its curious intensity, added to 
 his pain. Nothing there was altogether beautiful 
 except the sunlit world of the elements and that spirit 
 of youth which sprang to love and joy. Forebod- 
 ings whispered still, "It is the last May Day the 
 last!" 
 
 But the fifes and the fiddles quickened their time ; 
 the great serpent wreathed his living coils round the 
 hill; snatches of melody rang from the lips of the 
 dancers; a universal excitement awoke, seizing on 
 spectators, actors, gentle and simple, to Cathal's 
 unbounded delight, where he stood on the summit 
 of the hill, watching them. 
 
 "Dance," he cried aloud, mimicking the steps, 
 "dance along, follow the sun 't is the true wizard's 
 knot I have bound ye in every youth with a maid in 
 his right hand the dance of life all Ireland should
 
 THE LAST MAY DAY 219 
 
 be dancing this May Day ! I call ye, and I bind ye, 
 and I put my spell upon ye ! Here now, the Skelligs 
 this very morning came out half-way to meet the 
 rocks opposite them; the sun itself is dancing over 
 your heads ; to it and take the life into your blood as 
 ye twist and turn. The true wizard's knot the 
 serpent that curls round into himself, following the 
 sun, his great god. Dance, my people, dance !" 
 
 His incantations were partly drowned in the tu- 
 multuous sounds of the music, and died out in a long 
 half-savage scream. Cathal was beside himself an 
 Obi man intoxicated with the charm of his own pow- 
 er, caught up in a whirl wind with the hurrying crowd, 
 master and victim of a magic that spread its influ- 
 ence like a contagion. The lookers-on, above and 
 below the hill, sprang to their feet, took hands, be- 
 gan, almost without knowing what they did, to beat 
 time to the instruments, and were soon no less wild 
 than the snake-dancers themselves, who kept up their 
 interminable and tortuous rounds as if the day could 
 not wear them out. 
 
 When O'Dwyer saw the movement beginning, 
 he sprang toward Edmund. "Will you lead off? 
 You and Miss O'Connor?" he said in mighty 
 jubilation. 
 
 The young man pointed to Sir Philip. "Ask 
 him," he whispered. But the baronet waved his
 
 220 THE WIZARD'S KNOT 
 
 hand disdainfully. With eyes and heart he was 
 chasing Joan through the intricate waltz which went 
 forward, ever turning with the sun; there danced, 
 unseen, by her side, his ghost or phantom, and on 
 the May mound he was insensible to all that hap- 
 pened. When, however, Edmund, smiling at the 
 fit which came over his neighbors, offered Lisaveta 
 the hand she just touched, Philip was in honor bound 
 to do no less by Julia Hapgood. Irish girls, of 
 every rank, dance like gipsies, and are never put out 
 by a little wildness ; they were soon tripping it to the 
 lively measure; some in riding-habits which they 
 managed with a charming grace; and the May 
 mound, as if it could stand still no longer, seemed to 
 be whirling about its hawthorn-bush in a paroxysm 
 of delight. 
 
 Will Hapgood bowed to Lady Liscarroll. "A 
 few steps, to keep up the spirit of the thing!" he 
 said. "Come look how they are all at it. You 
 must not be the one woman sitting still." 
 
 "A mad pleasure," she replied, without stirring, 
 "but it is not for me. What have I to do with their 
 May Days their love-makings and wizard's knots ? 
 Go, Will, ask a younger woman my May is past." 
 
 "Never for me," he answered in a tone which was 
 scarcely audible with passion. "If you will not 
 dance, my post is here."
 
 THE LAST MAY DAY 221 
 
 But Cathal now appeared, triumphant as never 
 bard before. "Your ladyship has a right to dance 
 with the best of them," he said, bending graciously 
 low ; "I must entreat you. Not one here present but 
 't is their duty to follow the course of that sun, the 
 Bright-Faced, who commands on this hill. I am 
 now putting into the hands of ye all this hank of 
 yarn, to bind ye more surely with the wizard's 
 knot." 
 
 He seized Edmund, thrust one end of the magic 
 twine between his fingers, and, running with the 
 other, in no long while had brought the dancing 
 circle round the way they were to go, until every 
 man and woman there held the chain. Still, the 
 fifes continued their ear-piercing notes in an occa- 
 sional pause, contrived not without skill, the violins 
 alone were heard, sweet and plaintive, to be abruptly 
 lifted on a deep wave of sound made by all the in- 
 struments and sent back from the hills around in 
 echoing volleys. The double files of revelers were 
 now intermingled ; the immense serpent of the mea- 
 dow had caught in its spirals the dancers on the hill ; 
 partners were lost, exchanged, found again; the 
 music never ceasing. And in one of these ceilings 
 and uncoilings, where all seemed confusion but 
 flowed out into orderly and even exquisite arrange- 
 ment, Philip held Joan in his right hand, their eyes
 
 222 THE WIZARD'S KNOT 
 
 meeting, their tongues mute. Neither could have 
 spoken. The next instant, they had been carried in 
 opposite directions; and while she danced back to 
 her place, the young man broke out of the ranks, 
 ascended the hill with a swift, unsteady motion, and 
 sought Lady Liscarroll. His mother, who had 
 moved two or three steps in the knotted dance to 
 please Will Hapgood, was seated with her cavalier 
 at no great distance from her. "You are tired, 
 Phil," she said kindly; "why don't you manage 
 your strength? You forget how weak you have 
 been." 
 
 He was near fainting, and threw himself at full 
 length on the grass. But was it fatigue, jealousy, 
 or the wizard's knot, in the folds of which he 
 and Joan O'Dwyer had entangled themselves? For 
 young Hapgood the baronet had no eyes; he was 
 thinking of Felim O'Riordan and a remark more 
 than once dropped in his hearing since the dance 
 began. "What a purty couple they 'd make !" said 
 the people, and that word was taken up by their bet- 
 ters, in admiration of Joan and the fisher lad of Ren- 
 more. It struck a blow on Philip's heart. Were 
 they lovers? According to the strict law of the 
 dance, lovers they ought to be. But no, he would 
 not have it the thing was monstrous. While he 
 lay, breathing heavily, on the grass, Philip saw what
 
 THE LAST MAY DAY 223 
 
 he had been doing not at all so clearly what he 
 must do. 
 
 After this heralds went about, shaking their iron 
 chains of silence, as the old order prescribed; the 
 snake-dance melted into air amid rounds of applause, 
 and the games succeeded all the sports of the 
 country, hurling, leaping, and wrestling, while their 
 late partners sat and looked on eagerly at the rival 
 champions. 
 
 So long as the youths contended in their sight, 
 Lisaveta and her gay little court sat watching them 
 from the festal mound. Calling up the wizard, she 
 gave him such praise as made his old eyes water. 
 "You have enchanted us all," she said; "sit down 
 now, and tell me the names of those young men. 
 Who is the champion wrestler of your own village ?" 
 
 "Ask my daughter Joan that," he answered, with a 
 twinkle and a roguish smile. "Joan, dear, who was 
 it danced the sun-dance with you? Miss O'Connor 
 would like to know." 
 
 The girl, who had been seated on the grass at Lady 
 Liscarroll's feet, in a dreamy silence, looked toward 
 her father, blushed prettily, and with some hesitation 
 replied, "Did n't the whole world see it was Felim 
 O'Riordan?" 
 
 "He dances like the roebuck," said Cathal, "and 
 I 'd be surprised if there 's one wrestles with half
 
 224 THE WIZARD'S KNOT 
 
 his strength and agility from this to Tralee. Look 
 now at the way he is lepping, and God bless you." 
 
 "Is he a great friend of yours, Joan?" inquired 
 Lisaveta, bending down to lay an affectionate hand 
 on her shoulder and speaking low. Philip was near 
 enough to catch the words ; his heart seemed to stand 
 still before Joan gave a reply. Tell-tale, it might 
 be fancied, was the flush of color that dyed her brow ; 
 but in these ambiguous tokens there is often a re- 
 serve, and no girl could be more delicately shy than 
 the wizard's daughter. 
 
 "It was the mother of Felim and Garret reared 
 me," she said at last in a pensive undertone. "The 
 two boys were always good to me ; why would n't I 
 be as good to them?" An answer which sounded 
 in Philip's ears worse than none at all. 
 
 "Your Felim has a brave look and a fine manly 
 figure," said Lisaveta. "I see no one to match him 
 among our boys. Happy is the woman that will 
 get him." 
 
 "You may say that, ma'am," cried O'Dwyer; 
 "there is n't a girl in Renmore but was out before 
 sunrise this morning to gather herbs for love- 
 charms, and many a one will be putting her spell 
 on Felim." 
 
 "I '11 engage you know a charm as strong again," 
 said Lisaveta, exchanging a merry glance with the
 
 THE LAST MAY DAY 225 
 
 old jester, whose eye had been fixed tenderly on 
 Joan. 
 
 "Maybe I do, and maybe I don't," he said eva- 
 sively, warned by the girl's growing confusion ; "any- 
 how, Felim must try a fall this day with that big 
 giant, Darby Fitzmaurice from Glenmasson; 't will 
 be luck enough for him to bring the tall fellow 
 under." 
 
 During this talk Hapgood was saying in Lady 
 Liscarroll's ear, "The fisher lad and his brother came 
 with me that night. They will never let on perfect 
 gentlemen, you.may be sure." 
 
 "He is remarkably handsome," she answered, a 
 little wearily. "Joan has had the pick of them. 
 But she deserves a husband as rare as herself." 
 
 The day went forward without mishap; between 
 every bout of the games, music played and sober 
 drink was handed round; for the great, the extra- 
 ordinary movement of temperance had banished 
 from public gatherings the old fire-water, yet their 
 liveliness was more than it had ever been. All the 
 matches led up by consent to the struggle for the 
 champion's silver-studded belt between Glenmasson 
 and Renmore. Felim had beaten every competitor 
 on his own side, Darby the giant on his; they were 
 now to be pitted against each other in a ring formed 
 by the crowd, under a transparent but mild sun- 
 is
 
 226 THE WIZARD'S KNOT 
 
 shine. "You want O'Riordan to win?" said Philip, 
 in a husky, quarrelsome voice to Joan O'Dwyer, 
 who heard and saw him with astonishment. The 
 master was a different man from her friend in the 
 gloomy old castle fierce and almost rude. 
 
 "I 'd be the strange girl if I desired harm to my 
 foster-brother," she answered, throwing back her 
 head proudly. Philip gnawed his* under lip, and 
 drew away in silence. He could have seen the fisher 
 lad flung over the nearest crags with pleasure. It 
 was insane to be so moved ; but the demon had got on 
 his back and was now driving him at the whirl- 
 wind's pace gleefully. 
 
 Had O'Dwyer suspected the meaning of those 
 glowering, half-maddened looks with which Sir 
 Philip scrutinized the ups and downs of a match 
 long memorable in the neighborhood, he would have 
 been at no loss to explain what followed. An eye 
 so charged with jealousy could not but overlook the 
 innocent Felim, as he stripped to his shirt-sleeves 
 and put on the leather belt which was then used in 
 wrestling. It was not Darby Fitzmaurice he need 
 fear. The giant, though taller by a head than young 
 O'Riordan, had neither his muscle, swelling bravely 
 on the huge brown arm, nor his suppleness and quick 
 turns when borne backward. In the swaying hither 
 and thither, the rushing to this side and that, which
 
 THE LAST MAY DAY 227 
 
 every glance pursued with breathless emotion, the 
 Renmore champion was seen to advantage, and his 
 fine play met with cheers from Darby's own people. 
 But Philip kept a murderous feeling of envy which 
 he hated, yet could not throw off. It was as 
 though he had staked on this paltry wrestling match 
 between two peasants his life, his fortune, good or 
 evil. O'Riord*i must lose. Why? Superstition 
 reads in the meanest omens what concerns itself, 
 choosing them with a fatal folly. The young man 
 fixed on this and saw the wheel turn as at a gam- 
 bling-table. 
 
 Not without incidents, dramatic and heart-stirring, 
 did the match proceed. The victor was to give his 
 opponent three falls. Once O'Riordan had been 
 thrown, or so the judges decided, though he was up 
 before he had fairly touched the grass. Nerving 
 himself for a tremendous effort, but with a smile on 
 his lips, the lad now took Fitzmaurice round the 
 waist, made an admirable feint, and lifting him with 
 easy, bird-like motion, stretched him his full length 
 before them all. "What a grace and lightness !" cried 
 Miss O'Connor to Julia Hapgood. "It is not mere 
 weight I could fancy the lad riding on a great wave 
 and curbing it." 
 
 Julia was remarking Philip's continued absorption 
 in his own thoughts, and made no answer.
 
 228 THE WIZARD'S KNOT 
 
 "By Heaven, he is down !" exclaimed the baronet, 
 leaping to the front. "That is two falls in Darby's 
 favor." 
 
 No, he was not down. Quick as an eel, O'Riordan 
 had twisted round, got the purchase he was looking 
 for, and sent his man with a mighty shock to earth. 
 Immense shouting seemed to declare the contest 
 over. "Darby is killed; he '11 never rise again," 
 cried a score of voices; now it was Joan's turn to 
 exult, to peer over the heads of the crowd, to hope 
 Felim had made sure of the silver-studded belt. 
 Again expectation underwent defeat. The burly 
 giant shook himself loose of friend and second, 
 wiped the cloud from his eyes, and grappled with 
 Felim as a man seizes on a plank in shipwreck. All 
 sounds died, so fierce did the struggle appear, so 
 deadly were the looks of the combatants. O'Riordan 
 smiled no more; Fitzmaurice had the air of a wild 
 cat o' the mountain, its claws in a living body. To 
 and fro they struggled, almost touching the ground 
 in quick succession, breathless both, hardly aware 
 that the sun was over their heads. This could not 
 last. A few minutes palpitating with the interest, 
 the horror, which now transformed play to a battle 
 for life, and they fell together. The ring was in- 
 vaded immediately. After a short pause, the Glen- 
 masson warrior sprang to his feet. But his antag-
 
 THE LAST MAY DAY 229 
 
 onist did not rise or move. "O'Riordan is dead!" 
 shrieked the crowd; and Joan fainted in Lisaveta's 
 arms. 
 
 Imagine the hurly-burly Sir Philip, ashamed of 
 his late cruel thoughts, broke in to where Felim lay 
 prostrate, thundered to the people that they must 
 give way, and, with Edmund's assistance, was lift- 
 ing the unhappy lad, when Dr. Driscoll, who had 
 joined them on the mound not long before, took the 
 matter into his own hands. He knelt and examined 
 the body. 
 
 "Is he dead, doctor?" inquired a hundred voices, 
 while Fitzmaurice was led away by his triumphant 
 villagers to a neighboring tent. "Surely the bua- 
 chaleen is killed." 
 
 "He is not killed," answered Driscoll, savagely, in 
 a voice that drowned all others, "but his collar-bone 
 is broke. Bring me water, and don't be staring at 
 me like a flock of sheep." 
 
 The water was handed to him ; after a while Felim 
 came round and sat up. He was in great agony, 
 but "I '11 go home," said the courageous lad, en- 
 deavoring to stand on his feet. 
 
 Driscoll forbade him to rise. "He must be trans- 
 ported to some place nearer than Renmore," said the 
 doctor. 
 
 By this time Joan had recovered her senses and
 
 230 THE WIZARD'S KNOT 
 
 came flying down the hill, followed by Miss O'Con- 
 nor and the rest of their company. 
 
 "You won't let him die here," she said with 
 streaming eyes. "Oh, Felim, don't die on us !" and 
 her face was turned to the lady, wild and pale. 
 
 "Take him up to the house without delay," an- 
 swered Lisaveta. "Edmund, Philip, get the ser- 
 vants ; make something to carry him on. Trust me, 
 Joan," clasping her hand warmly ; "he sha'n't die if 
 I can help it." 
 
 They were already putting their arms under the 
 lad as Dr. Driscoll ordered, with infinite gentleness 
 conveying him toward the mansion. He was hardly 
 sensible, and like a sick child, with his arms round 
 Philip's neck, a contrast, which many felt, to the 
 figure he had made on the wrestling-ground, the 
 young fisherman was carried slowly across the lawn 
 into the house, where they laid him on the first bed 
 available. The sports had come to this untimely 
 end, but far as the people might have to travel that 
 night, they lingered until word was sent out from the 
 doctor that Felim would not die. His collar-bone 
 had been set without trouble, for, as a surgeon, 
 Driscoll undoubtedly knew his business. The con- 
 sequences he did not pretend to forecast, but there 
 was no reason to suppose they would be fatal. On 
 this assurance, with a hearty "Thanks be to God,"
 
 THE LAST MAY DAY 231 
 
 the revelers, now sad at heart, their music silenced, 
 went home. 
 
 Much as she abhorred Dr. Driscoll the word is 
 not too strong Lisaveta could not suffer him to 
 leave the house that night. By her entreaty the gen- 
 tlemen from Renmore and old Cathal stayed like- 
 wise. "How should I feel if anything happened," 
 she said to Edmund, "and I alone with the doctor 
 and a dead man ?" 
 
 But O'Dwyer refused all comfort. "Oh, Mr. 
 Edmund, if ever a comb was cut, 't is mine cut to 
 the roots. This day should see me up in the stir- 
 rups, and I 'm bate down like corn in a high wind. 
 Where 's the poems now your own would be su- 
 preme in grace and melody that those bards should 
 recite to crown the day? Go, ask Darby Fitz- 
 maurice, with a wanion to him! No contest of 
 songs and musicians but a broken collar-bone, God 
 save us, on the best of boys and May Day ruined !" 
 
 "I always thought the day unlucky," said his 
 friend, with significance. "Was there any person 
 in your own house at Renmore to keep the fire in 
 while you were here?" 
 
 " T would keep in of itself," said the wizard, un- 
 easily. 
 
 "Let us hope so," was the dark reply; "but do you 
 get "home and see to it."
 
 CHAPTER XVII 
 
 LANDLORD AND TENANT 
 
 FELIM was almost himself again next morning; 
 and despite what the old schoolmaster called 
 "remonstrances and objurgations" on Miss O'Con- 
 nor's part, he made up his mind to walk over the 
 hills with Cathal to Renmore. 
 
 "Better the end of a feast than the beginning of a 
 fray," said the latter, delighted. "Happy and glad 
 will your poor mother be to get tidings of you from 
 yourself. So, in God's name, let us go the road, 
 like honest highwaymen." 
 
 Joan, who saw them off, not without a sinking at 
 heart, would have agreed with Edmund in calling 
 May Day unlucky. It had brought mishap to young 
 O'Riordan, and somehow through him, a shadow 
 between herself and Sir Philip. The impalpable was 
 oppressive ; she had never felt more ill at ease, and, 
 as she turned from the door and passed up by Deir- 
 dre's figure of lamenting, superstition gripped her 
 once again. "The life is gone out of me into that 
 
 white stone," she thought. "I could fall into a de- 
 
 232
 
 LANDLORD AND TENANT 233 
 
 cline if I was to be long near it." Everything tried 
 her simple and direct nature. Yesterday she had 
 seen Will Hapgood offering a devotion to Lady Lis- 
 carroll that no one else seemed to remark. What 
 would come of it? Surely no good. And Philip's 
 wrath or moodiness was he out of temper with 
 Joan? But on what account? She thought of 
 her father kind and bright and unsteady not to be 
 trusted alone. "I must give up this place, go home 
 with myself, and never lave him any more," she 
 said at last. "Dada has no right to be without 
 wife or child many is the thing, indeed, where 
 a child would have more sense, God help his poor 
 head!" 
 
 Meanwhile the day was changing from light to 
 dark, a cold rain began to come down, and the sky, 
 putting off its colors, turned to an inky sable. The 
 travelers hastened their steps. They talked cozily 
 of the blazing peat fire and the welcome that was 
 waiting at Mrs. O'Riordan's, not far from which 
 stood the schoolmaster's cottage. But the rain 
 caught them in a sudden sheet ; they were drenched ; 
 and, as they came over the ridge down toward the 
 village, a thick mist hid the world from them. 
 "Here 's Kerry law for poor pilgrims," said Cathal, 
 on whose lips the rain was beating, "but, however, 
 we '11 soon be under a solid roof, not like the crim-
 
 234 THE WIZARD'S KNOT 
 
 son-red feathers in the ould tale that every wind 
 would scatter." 
 
 "Under yon thatch we '11 do finely," said his com- 
 panion, smiling, as the rain-cloud lifted. " 'T is 
 mother's. She won't be expecting me with this 
 neck. Dr. Driscoll was to lave word early that she 
 should not torment herself I was in good hands." 
 
 The mist cleared suddenly, and Cathal stopped 
 dead. 
 
 "What 's on you?" asked Felim, pulled up like- 
 wise with a jerk. "Oh, God in Heaven !" cried the 
 youth, overcome by the same spectacle, "is it your 
 house I see in that condition ? Cathal, man, what is 
 come to the place?" 
 
 Cathal made no answer. His lips were dry, his 
 tongue refused utterance. With a wild, irregular 
 run he plunged down the hill, tore like a mad crea- 
 ture through the puddles and the unclean garbage 
 heaped in his path, and, as if helpless or drunk, 
 clasped with quivering fingers the post, against 
 which he stumbled, of the cabin entrance. But door 
 there was none. The entrance gaped like an empty 
 eye-socket. Above, within, the sky glimmered 
 through clouds the roof of the cottage had been 
 chucked off, broken to splinters, and in huge wet 
 pieces the thatch, discolored with vegetation, lay in- 
 side and outside the wrecked cabin. Its mud walls
 
 LANDLORD AND TENANT 235 
 
 had been pulled down within a few feet of the 
 ground. Where the fireplace had blazed not forty- 
 eight hours ago, a blackened patch was visible. 
 Empty, silent, under the spouting rain, stood 
 Cathal's home, or lay in mud and smut and mol- 
 dered straw all about, the corpse of a home, torn 
 to bleeding pieces by some vile enchanter. And 
 the old man embraced the dumb wood, kissed it pas- 
 sionately, and cried, with miserable tears, like an 
 imbecile, saying he knew not what. 
 
 "Where 's the few sticks I had, anyhow?" 
 he shrieked furiously. "Did he take them for the 
 rint ? Where 's my books, my Greek and my Latin, 
 that I had from my young days? Would they be 
 any good to Davy Roche? Oh!" falling on his 
 knees and lifting his hands "short life and hell to 
 him this hour! God above, let him be without a 
 bed, unless in the pit of damnation! Look at that 
 flagstone, my poor boy; 't is all the fire that 's left 
 me. May hell's could flagstone receive and welcome 
 him that quinched the hearth on me and mine ! Oh, 
 Felim, was this the May Day I left behind me !" 
 
 "Whisht, Cathal, whisht, my dear soul," said 
 O'Riordan; "don't be kneeling in the wet and curs- 
 ing that way. We '11 go to my mother's." 
 
 "I '11 die where I lived," shrieked the old man, 
 tearing at his gray hairs. "House and home are
 
 236 THE WIZARD'S KNOT 
 
 gone from me. The poor tugurium I had these 
 thirty years mea paupera regna open now to all 
 the winds of heaven ! Trusting to the showers and 
 the storms it is without roof, without door! My 
 own hands put in that door ; how many times, sitting 
 up on the ridge, did I thatch the place and get no 
 allowance or compensation for it! God! is there 
 justice at all to be had in this world?" 
 
 His loud cries and lamentations, borne on the 
 wind, brought women to their doors; children, 
 paddling like ducks in the stream, barefoot and 
 lively, began to gather round; while the school- 
 master knelt, his every second word a prayer, which, 
 as Felim said afterward, turned black in the face. 
 That young hero was knocking violently at his 
 mother's door, but could get no answer until his 
 voice made him known. At that the door opened; 
 Mrs. O'Riordan appeared, her pale face wrapped in 
 a shawl. She gave a wild cry on seeing him, and 
 hugged the great fellow to her breast. 
 
 "Praise be to the Mother of God, I have you once 
 more!" she exclaimed. "Come in out of the rain." 
 
 "But Cathal, mother the schoolmaster," he said, 
 resisting. "Don't you hear him screeching inside 
 those four walls ? What happened yesterday to his 
 place? Sure, I need n't ask; but he is out of his 
 mind with the grief and desperation. Come and 
 spake a soothing word to him."
 
 LANDLORD AND TENANT 237 
 
 Reluctant, with a scare in her kind eyes, the 
 woman was led by her son across the threshold of 
 the ruin. A larger crowd was collecting every 
 moment; but they stood aloof, in silence, curious to 
 see what would come of all this, held back as by 
 an invisible hand from approaching. When Mrs. 
 O'Riordan went up to Cathal, there were significant 
 shrugs and whispers. 
 
 "I am sorry, indeed, for you, poor man," she said, 
 wiping her eyes. "But to think of Joan breaks my 
 heart. 'T is a lamentable thing for both of ye." 
 
 "Don't name that name, or I '11 lose my raison 
 entirely," answere4 Cathal, stretching out his hands 
 in tremulous agitation. "Was there ever a man 
 look on me this day, Cauth O'Riordan, and say was 
 any man ever like me? Without a wife, without a 
 roof over my ould head, at the mercy of a scall-crow, 
 gray of coat, sharp of beak, ready to rip the eyes out 
 of every skull." 
 
 He was a pitiable sight, stained with mud, rain, 
 and tears; his poor old garments draggled in tem- 
 pest, his lips muttering incoherently. 
 
 "We '11 get nothing by staying here," said Mrs. 
 O'Riordan, who had looked away as if she did not 
 hear his last speech. "Come, Felim, dear," and she 
 was retreating, when the lad took O'Dwyer's hand. 
 
 "Lave this and come along," he insisted; "what 
 use is there in these broken-down walls?"
 
 238 THE WIZARD'S KNOT 
 
 "He must not come into my house," said the 
 woman, with a resolution that made her voice sound 
 cold. "You won't complain of me, Mr. O'Dwyer; 
 but we have all to look to ourselves." 
 
 "What do you mean, mother ?" asked Felim ; "he 
 shall not come with us ? What, the friend we always 
 knew Joan's father not to get shelter in our 
 house, and he thrown out on a day like this ?" 
 
 "Have your own way, Felim," she answered, with 
 a burst of tears; "there is n't one standing outside 
 but will tell you what orders Mr. Roche gave yester- 
 day, on the very spot where you are this minute, 
 tapping his boot with his cane. Would I begrudge 
 Cathal O'Dwyer the half of what we have?" 
 
 "What orders did he give?" inquired her son, 
 twitching as if Mr. Roche's cane had struck a smart 
 blow on his collar-bone. 
 
 "When the roof was pulled in pieces as you 'd 
 pluck a goose, and the sods of turf kicked hither and 
 thither, he gave notice that any one of his tenants 
 should not give shelter to this man, or they 'd be 
 turned on the roadside. 'I mane,' said he, 'to 
 sweep O'Dwyer out of the place. I '11 now destroy 
 the school on him as I destroyed the house he 
 thought his own. I will let him know which of us 
 burns the broom and tell him that from me, with 
 my compliments.' '
 
 LANDLORD AND TENANT 239 
 
 "But this one night can do no harm," said the 
 fisher lad, wincing, yet resolute. "The divil himself 
 would n't drive an ould man from his door in the 
 weather we 're having." 
 
 "There 's worse than the divil," answered his 
 mother, with a sour smile. "He 's a bad landlord, 
 maybe, but 't is n't house room he denies to the peo- 
 ple, nor the sod o' turf nayther. I never hear tell 
 that he evicted a poor sowl. Do you go in, darlin', 
 and not be filling your young bones with aches and 
 agues in the wet." 
 
 "God direct me," whispered old Cathal; "I 'm 
 down, if ever a man was. Gray hairs, look for no 
 respect; don't think to have friends unless there 's 
 money with you." 
 
 "Never say it," exclaimed Felim, cut to the in- 
 wards by Cathal's taunt. "Let a thousand Davy 
 Roches come at us, 't is not in this miserable way we 
 will abandon a friend. Be the same curse to me 
 that you put on him, O'Dwyer, but I will keep the 
 door open for you. Man, don't deny me." 
 
 The shawled woman was crying quietly in her 
 distress and affection; the lookers-on, frightened as 
 hares, began to moan with that peculiar soughing 
 which rises suddenly to a shrill blast of lament from 
 Celtic lips; it was a dirge, an ulagbn, over Cathal 
 and his ruined walls pitiable, ineffective; and the
 
 240 THE WIZARD'S KNOT 
 
 rain fell, the wind whistled, the crowd of women 
 and children seemed like desolate sparrows piping 
 in the cold. They were all in rags and tatters, with a 
 lack-luster expression in many eyes which betrayed 
 hunger. All dreaded the power that, when it chose, 
 could fling them naked on the world, as it had flung 
 the schoolmaster without so much as his "two soles' 
 breadth" of land to call his own. But of resistance 
 they did not dream. Young O'Riordan's defiant 
 cry found no echo in these women's hearts; they 
 pitied his mother; they would have done what she 
 did. "If O'Dwyer made a better hand of his 
 tongue," said one tall virago, " 't is n't that would 
 be happening to him now." 
 
 But the wizard was buttoning his old blue coat, 
 and grasping the blackthorn he carried. Again he 
 pressed a burning kiss on the posts of his deserted 
 hovel. "Felim, you have my thanks and my bless- 
 ing," he said, with a certain grave dignity. "Cauth, 
 I am not vexed don't believe it that you kept the 
 door against me. Tell me only what was done to 
 my things the little peculium of furniture and 
 books I had, where are they?" 
 
 "Locked up in the bailiff's barn till you redeem 
 them," she said more cheerfully, feeling that he 
 would not now take her boy's offer. "You will 
 surely get help from friends for that same."
 
 LANDLORD AND TENANT 241 
 
 "He that sent us pigs will send us sheep," an- 
 swered Cathal, with pious, satirical double-meaning; 
 and then, the tears running down his furrowed vis- 
 age, "God knows I would n't be sorry were Joan 
 and myself lying in the one grave." 
 
 "Yerra, man," cried Mrs. O'Riordan, "time 
 enough, time enough! 'T is many a day in the 
 churchyard we '11 be. Have patience, and trust 
 in God." 
 
 "But since Joan is the only one belonging to me," 
 he went on, "I will go back as I came to Airgead 
 Ross. If I was a pig or a dog itself, I would be sure 
 of some place to sleep in. Worse than die I can't." 
 
 He waved his hand mournfully to the crowd, and 
 with strangely vacant face was stepping toward the 
 hill he had lately descended when Felim, with a loud 
 cry, joined him. 
 
 "You will not travel the road alone I '11 go with 
 you," he said. The old man declined his company, 
 almost in anger; a painful dispute was threatening, 
 when Frank Hurley "a gossoon the height of my 
 knee," O'Riordan would have called him, and, in 
 fact, a sharp little lad, freckle-faced and fair-haired, 
 with more brains than length of limb ran up saying 
 he had a load of turf to carry within three miles of 
 Silverwood, and he was willing to drive Mr. 
 O'Dwyer the rest of the way. 
 
 16
 
 242 THE WIZARD'S KNOT 
 
 In blinding storm they set out ; their poor rags of 
 clothes were soaked; yet before they moved down 
 into the valley sunshine was breaking through on 
 every side, the clouds rolled off in brilliant masses, 
 leaving a deep blue sky visible, and the song of birds 
 was lively in copse and hollow. But neither for wet 
 nor dry did Cathal unclose his lips. 
 
 Frank Hurley drove his cart up to the front door 
 of the big house with a flourish and a clatter. He 
 enjoyed taking part in a tragedy like this. From 
 the window Lisaveta had seen with astonishment 
 the wizard's return, and she ran out, in her impulsive 
 way, to make inquiries, the two young men from 
 Renmore, who were not yet gone, following her. 
 But though she could ask, O'Dwyer could not an- 
 swer. He was dead beat. 
 
 " 'T is evicted he is, and his house thrown down," 
 cried the sharp little boy, full of his story. "Mr. 
 Davy Roche, ma'am, said he 'd make an example of 
 the schoolmaster for a curse he put on him. 'T was 
 yesterday he made it, while ye were dancing and 
 lepping." 
 
 "But, my poor man, you could n't be evicted with- 
 out notice," said Miss O'Connor. "Had n't you 
 warning?" 
 
 " 'Deed and he had," answered Frank, as Cathal 
 would not speak. "Last November every man in
 
 LANDLORD AND TENANT 243 
 
 the place had notice to quit if their rint was not 
 paid." 
 
 "We were always noticed," said the old man, with 
 difficulty, as if dreaming aloud, "always a gale, or 
 two gales, of rint behind, and ejectment hanging 
 over our heads. So customary a thing was it, we 
 never used to mind till the bailiff stood at the door. 
 Thin we paid what we had." 
 
 "That is our bad policy," said Edmund : "one side 
 threatens, the other delays till the last moment. I 
 knew Roche had his hand ready to strike. Driscoll 
 shouted the word to me yesterday as I came along." 
 
 "So he threw down the house and the school," 
 continued little Hurley. "The bailiff never let his 
 eyes off you, Cathal, till you had your back turned. 
 Thin in with him." 
 
 O'Dwyer started. "I did n't hear the school was 
 down," he said piteously. 
 
 "Sure, Mrs. O'Riordan said so, but you were on 
 your knees baring your heart to God, and wishing 
 bad luck to Roche," answered the boy. "Faith, they 
 made smithereens of the school too. The divils o' 
 childer gave a hand to it, and why would n't they? 
 'T is n't schooling they want, but plenty o' praties 
 and buttermilk." At which the audience laughed, 
 and Hurley felt elated ; he was a born comedian. 
 
 "Let it all go," exclaimed Cathal, in despair ; "my
 
 244 THE WIZARD'S KNOT 
 
 books are in pound, my ferule is in pieces, and my 
 scholars take part with the Cork butterman. I 
 must beg the wide world now. Where 's Joan this 
 minute? She is all I have,'' looking round without 
 addressing any one in particular. His mind was 
 grievously shaken. 
 
 "He said if there was a place for a pig or a dog 
 at Airgead Ross, he 'd be sure of one half of it," 
 Frank resumed confidently ; "I brought him to your 
 ladyship on that account." 
 
 "You did well, my boy," answered Lisaveta, lay- 
 ing a kind hand upon the wizard's sleeve. "I will 
 find shelter for you, my friend," she went on, "and 
 here is Joan to comfort you." 
 
 The girl was entering from the woods when she 
 caught sight of her father and ran to him. A 
 second time the story had to be told the more 
 hideous the longer it was dwelt upon. Philip, who 
 all this while stood silent, not greatly attending to 
 O'Dwyer, now felt a strange uneasiness. With 
 the management of his own property he had never 
 interfered. Evictions were so common that a single 
 instance had no power to move him ; like most Irish 
 landlords, he was neither a profound economist nor 
 a man of large imagination, and if Cathal had been 
 childless, his misfortune would have sounded in deaf 
 ears to Philip. But Joan's bitter, though controlled, 
 agony was too much for him.
 
 LANDLORD AND TENANT 245 
 
 "We can't let this go on," he said in an undertone 
 to his cousin, who eyed him with some obscure 
 meaning. "Miss O'Connor, I think between us we 
 should be a match for this butterman. He is a 
 tenant of one of my tenants, very wealthy I be- 
 lieve he holds a mortgage on the Renmore estate 
 but that is no reason why its owner should stand 
 aside in a bad business." 
 
 "God bless you, sir," said Joan; "help us now and 
 there is nothing we won't do for you." 
 
 "What would you think of doing?" inquired the 
 mistress of Silverwood. 
 
 "There is that lodge in the park, Edmund," said 
 the baronet; "it stands empty since our keeper, Mau- 
 rice Griffin, emigrated. I will have it repaired. 
 O'Dwyer can live in it till we put him back in the 
 village." 
 
 "And I will go with you, father," said Joan, her 
 arms around Cathal's neck; "I should never leave 
 you as I did." 
 
 "I spint the money you earned, my poor girl. 
 Can you forgive a foolish ould drunkard?" whis- 
 pered the schoolmaster, clinging to her like a child 
 as he was, in spite of his learning and his flashes of 
 genius. 
 
 "God go with it," she answered; "as long as we 
 have ourselves we '11 not complain." 
 
 Philip had drawn close to them, while Lisaveta
 
 246 THE WIZARD'S KNOT 
 
 put more questions to Frank Hurley. The lad was 
 narrating how Davy Roche, with his green-coated 
 soldiers, the police force sent to protect him, had 
 invaded the village, served fresh notices on the ten- 
 ants who held under him, warned every house that 
 none must give shelter to the man he was turning 
 out, and, after wrecking school and cabin, had de- 
 parted, leaving his terror on this free and indepen- 
 dent population. "If he was king of all Ireland, he 
 could n't do more," concluded Frank. 
 
 "Nor a hundredth part as much," replied Miss 
 O'Connor. "He passed a sentence of death with- 
 out judge or jury." 
 
 "But will you go from my mother, Joan ?" Philip 
 was asking, divided between his wishes and his fears. 
 "I felt easy as long as you were with her." 
 
 "My father is more to me than all the world," 
 she said passionately. 
 
 "Well, you are coming to Renmore. It will be 
 like coming home," he answered. "The old place 
 won't look so gloomy. I will see you have a lodg- 
 ing fit for you. No what could be fit for you? 
 But I expect you both this time to-morrow evening. 
 Now let us break the news to my mother." 
 
 His joy was unmistakable in eye and voice a 
 strange ardor in one so reserved, and very unlike 
 him.
 
 CHAPTER XVIII 
 
 HAWK OR EAGLE 
 
 THE tale now takes on a mingled hue high 
 saffron lights showing uncannily between 
 clouds pitch dark a spectral appearance we never 
 see without astonishment on days when storms are 
 abroad. 
 
 In the old keeper's lodge around it thick brush- 
 wood, below it the sparkling Lonndubh, silent or 
 singing Cathal the wizard sat, his spells broken, his 
 mind unhinged. The occupation was gone which 
 made him first man in the village after Father Fal- 
 vey for he held himself more than equal to the il- 
 literate Driscoll. Where now could he pluck up a 
 spirit to dance the long steps, or short, which had 
 made him famous ? What would provoke the song, 
 the merry word, in one who was ashamed to be seen 
 in the street of Renmore, whose scholars had helped 
 to pull down his school, and whose cronies were 
 banished by Joan's presence from the hearth she 
 kept ablaze? 
 
 Do not laugh at Cathal; his temperament, with 
 247
 
 248 THE WIZARD'S KNOT 
 
 its fitful changes, was that of the poet or the actor, 
 ill adapted to the meridian of vulgar day ; but given 
 the opportunities he never enjoyed, this poor wreck 
 of a man might have done brilliant things. "I am 
 not as I was, I am not as I was," he would whimper. 
 "A great worm is gnawing inside my brain, as bad 
 as Connor MacNessa's. I 'm vanquished and struck 
 by a diabolical being of evil aspect; but don't fear, 
 Joan, I give the back of my hand to maledictions. 
 They pulled the thatch on me, as Father Falvey gave 
 out from the altar they would. Now I will be like 
 Saint Mochta, that never ate a bite was fat, I '11 curse 
 nayther man nor demon, though Davy Roche would 
 exhaust the vocabulary of every satirist on Ireland's 
 ground." 
 
 He kept his pledge, perhaps not wisely. "Give 
 sorrow words" is good counsel; being hindered 
 of his peculiar, not to say piquant, imprecations, 
 O'Dwyer sat brooding when he should have been up 
 and alert. To his daughter he resigned the task of 
 life ; he had done with it. 
 
 " 'T is an April fool's tale," he would mutter, as 
 Edmund attempted to comfort him the young 
 man liked, on rainy days, to while away an hour 
 in fanciful and dreamy talk with his friend, who 
 stirred out as seldom as he could help "an April 
 fool's tale it is, and I am the fool telling it."
 
 HAWK OR EAGLE 249 
 
 "You won't be always so," answered Edmund, 
 humoring the old man. "My cousin will find you 
 a schoolroom yet; and when Joan is married " 
 
 "Live horse and you '11 get grass," was the fretful 
 rejoinder. "Who would marry the poor oinseach, 
 that has n't a guinea to her fortune ?" 
 
 "Sure, Felim O'Riordan would. He is a sober, 
 steady boy, never in drink, and as good as a son to 
 you. What else brings him this way so often?" 
 
 "I have nayther a cow's grass nor a quarter of 
 red bog to give with Joan." said Cathal, despon- 
 dently. "Bate and broke is her father, and the girl 
 has but her spinning-wheel." 
 
 "For all that, she would do welt to marry Felim," 
 returned the poet, "and do you encourage him, 
 Cathal." 
 
 The old man fell into his listless ways again, 
 letting the world drift. But Edmund, who was 
 soon leaving Renmore on a visit to some Galway 
 acquaintances the Stauntons of Altamira had in- 
 tended a real, though vague, warning against he 
 could hardly tell what perhaps it was the lonely 
 situation of a girl who charmed his own fancy not 
 a little, or pity akin to fear; nay, it might be the 
 secret influence of a thought which had crossed his 
 mind on hearing Philip exclaim against Felim's 
 opening the snake-dance with Joan. It was all this,
 
 250 THE WIZARD'S KNOT 
 
 and more; he scented danger, but could do noth- 
 ing except alarm Cathal, who would not take the 
 hint. 
 
 "How long will you be away from us, sir?" asked 
 the schoolmaster. "Those Connacht people talk a 
 strange Irish, short and sharp like the yelping of a 
 greyhound. You will be sorry to lose the soft, musi- 
 cal Munster speech." 
 
 "I don't know when my errand will be finished." 
 said the young man. "It is on Miss O'Connor's 
 account I am going more than my own." 
 
 "Joy be with the two of ye/' said Cathal. "I 
 would not wish a rake of the world to have Charlie 
 O'Connor's daughter women are bad, but herself 
 and my Joan are the best of them. We '11 see you 
 get the Squire of Airgead Ross." 
 
 "But, my dear O'Dwyer," said the other, laugh- 
 ing, "I have n't a cow's grass either. Is it for a 
 poor man like me to be courting a great fortune? 
 Would you respect me if I did ?" 
 
 "Ayther yourself or Sir Philip must have her, if 
 all I used to hear is true," said the wizard, "and 
 though he gave me this bit of a cot, and his hand 
 is open to me always, I 'd sooner it was you, Mr. 
 Edmund." 
 
 "The devil take gossip," cried his visitor, impa- 
 tiently. "How easily it settles everything! My
 
 HAWK OR EAGLE 251 
 
 cousin and I have some right to do all Miss O'Con- 
 nor asks, after what she has done for us. All her 
 striving is to improve her property and the thou- 
 sands upon it. My friends, the Stauntons, have 
 done wonders with their own; she requests me to 
 bring back a report of the land. Why should n't I ?" 
 "No raison in life, sir. Go, and Heaven's grace 
 be your guide! But if we don't see the day when 
 Renmore and Airgead Ross give a hand to aich 
 other, we '11 think there is no answer to our daily 
 prayers. Slan leat!" 
 
 THEY parted, and another little drama swept this 
 from the boards. Joan was separated from the vil- 
 lage her large world with its gossip for its con- 
 science; she had no duty now to Lady Liscarroll, 
 honorably detained at Silverwood. She was left 
 to herself; but the experiences of the last months 
 had brought her in contact with violent passions, 
 new feelings, difficult turns of life ; her father's suf- 
 fering made the girl long to be happy. She could be 
 very patient; but resigned she was not. 
 
 Her spinning, her small patch of garden, the 
 dappled, fawn-like kerry of which Sir Philip had 
 made them a present, took up many hours of the 
 day. She was in and out, getting a livelihood for 
 them both in a singularly primitive fashion like the
 
 252 THE WIZARD'S KNOT 
 
 birds silent in the summer woods or driving along 
 the seashore. But thoughts, fancies, regrets, long- 
 ings, how could she not indulge them at her age? 
 Edmund was right; peril hovered near. Had it 
 shown as a hawk, she would have run in from it. 
 No hawk, but a wounded golden eagle seemed to 
 drop at her feet. 
 
 Philip, too, had his world, into which he went less 
 and less. The country houses complained that he 
 was following Sir Walter's misanthropic ways, be- 
 coming an eccentric young man, who would end by 
 doing some foolish thing, but would marry none of 
 their eligible damsels. True, he was known to be 
 embarrassed in his money matters ; but so were they 
 all, in spite of their getting large rents; for a pre- 
 vious generation had mortgaged Ireland in its fine, 
 careless rapture. 
 
 And there was Lady Liscarroll! With a start 
 and a laugh they heard the tale of her dancing on 
 May Day those few reluctant steps which she had 
 taken with Will Hapgood were multiplied to a per- 
 formance that challenged opinion. The Irish light- 
 ness of temper allows a good deal; it is not strait- 
 laced; it would dance without distinguishing ranks 
 on a holiday, and to-morrow all would be in their 
 place. Yet who can marvel that Philip shrank from 
 meeting the widow of Derryvore and adepts like her
 
 HAWK OR EAGLE 253 
 
 in the art of stabbing with questions? Thus the 
 Lord of Renmore was abandoned to influences old 
 and irresistible as Nature. 
 
 The wizard, if cross-examined at this juncture, 
 would have explained all by a strong Celtic belief 
 Sir Philip was "under bonds." Not the vow which 
 we take, but the burden which is laid upon us a 
 doom, a handicapping in the race against fortune 
 that is how we must render this deep, barbaric 
 thought, corresponding to ideas now not so much 
 clarified as translated into another speech by our 
 men of knowledge. 
 
 Under bonds to his dead father, not yet avenged 
 in the grave to which a wife had hurried him ; under 
 bonds to that sin-possessed mother, mighty in her 
 hardness of heart and blind obstinacy; under bonds 
 to Cathal himself, whose magic draught had rolled 
 away the mist from the stream on which Philip was 
 floating out to sea. Who can escape his fate ? This 
 it was to be under bonds. In the stories which 
 framed his philosophy and that of his countrymen, 
 the schoolmaster would recall how every effort to 
 baffle destiny led straight to its fulfilment. Perhaps 
 he was himself to witness a new version of that 
 wonderful saga, "The Death of Diarmuid, Son of 
 Fergus," which he had often told on a winter's night 
 round the hearth, not without applause and shudder-
 
 254 THE WIZARD'S KNOT 
 
 ing. "This is your road," said Black Hugh, stand- 
 ing in the doorway, and he struck a spear in the 
 king's breast that broke his spine. 
 
 THEY could meet in these woods, at the lodge, down 
 among* the copses by the river, in the hollow clefts 
 of that ridge of rocks, even at the castle, and who 
 gave them a second thought? With his fowling- 
 piece or his fishing-rod the master might be out all 
 day; unless he turned up toward the village, he was 
 in a solitary land, open-eyed to the sun, gloomed over 
 by the clouds, with an empty sea view before him. 
 Joan would persuade her father to sit in front of his 
 door on the fine days; and there the baronet could 
 stand or pace with hasty strides, talking to his dogs, 
 watching the sky in silence. 
 
 This might have been accident; it persisted in 
 the pretence of a mere chance wandering about the 
 banks of the Lonndubh; and neither of them was 
 taken in, though both argued the point with a certain 
 unwelcome disputant in their own hearts. Did Joan 
 long for that highest berry on the rowan tree which 
 the song warned her was bitter? Not even in her 
 dreams; yet she should have partly guessed how it 
 was with Philip. And he, in the most hidden folds 
 of his self-knowledge, did he mean more than he 
 said, differently from what he would have called a 
 man's plain duty? The effect of all overpowering
 
 HAWK OR EAGLE 255 
 
 emotion is to forget the past, not to look beyond 
 the moment. These are its bonds. He was in them 
 irretrievably. 
 
 Another hint must be thrown out, in the most 
 delicate shadow, just where the sun darkens and 
 brightens again; impossible to say how instanta- 
 neously. With all her graces and refinements, Joan 
 was of the people, bred up in a submission to the 
 ruling class which Miss O'Connor declared no 
 Russian peasant could rival. It was in her blood. 
 Other feelings, and the example of a marvelous inno- 
 cence all round, would temper the consequences 
 of this dread, which seized every man, woman, and 
 child in Renmore at the bare apprehension that their 
 gods of the land were angry with them. But the 
 terror could not be overcome, much less rooted out. 
 Had Philip been a tyrant bent on evil, neither Joan 
 nor her father would have thought it advisable to 
 withstand him to his face. They would fear and 
 tremble while they sought to creep away from the 
 danger, like beaten hounds. Whoever chooses may 
 still track the remembrance of these things up and 
 down the wilder parts of Ireland. When the squire 
 took notice of a girl in Joan's position she had the 
 alternatives of finessing or surrendering, seldom of 
 boldly resisting. The droit du seigneur had not 
 utterly died away. 
 
 But let this be a shadow, no more enough to
 
 256 THE WIZARD'S KNOT 
 
 make the beginning easier than it might have been. 
 Joan had the temper of steel ; she was now to be tried 
 in the fire. And Philip how could he mean harm, 
 or ask himself whether he meant it, fascinated as he 
 was under a rush of feeling the like to which he 
 had never imagined ? His difficult, vexed, untamed 
 nature was melting into ecstasy. Asleep or awake, 
 this image he had before him, and all the pent-up 
 tenderness of an affection which no one suspected, 
 which not even his father had thought of ascribing to 
 so inarticulate a creature, flowed out toward it. 
 He was transformed or bewitched. Not all the ar- 
 guments suggested by difference of rank, education, 
 manners; not the perils ahead, nor the uncertainty 
 which, for some good while, he had felt as to the 
 girl's own disposition, cast a feather-weight in the 
 scale. That magnet drew him and he went to it joy- 
 fully, with a wild delight. 
 
 NOTHING of all this could he describe or analyze; 
 w r hat cared he ? As often as he might, he was stroll- 
 ing down by the magic stream, beating with a bold 
 hand upon the door of the lodge, or, best of all, walk- 
 ing in a reverie which made the world an enchant- 
 ment, among those rocks where, in a little time, she 
 would be found alone. They made no plans to es- 
 cape prying eyes ; it may be questioned if he gave a
 
 HAWK OR EAGLE 257 
 
 moment's reflection to what he was doing. And 
 she dared not. This whirlwind was carrying them 
 toward a darkness her vision could never pierce. 
 
 The chief blame was, undoubtedly, Philip's. His 
 love had all the selfishness that attends on desire 
 long thwarted ; but the lonely, the doomed, as he had 
 been, to a solitude made for them by the crime of 
 their nearest, are apt to claim this satisfaction. He 
 had lost father and mother; his days were torment, 
 whether Lady Liscarroll sat a prisoner in the Gray 
 Tower, or was out of sight at Airgead Ross. Who 
 could prove to him that he must give up the fairy 
 bride ? 
 
 He would not no, though the something un- 
 speakable which was in the dark should make an 
 end of him. The delusion gathered upon his eye- 
 balls, which, it must be said, he was inviting. To 
 sacrifice himself, in a way not yet traced out, he was 
 prepared, might he die with this delectable passion 
 consuming his flesh and his spirit. He would have 
 his love; none should take an atom of it; therefore 
 he would be loved, at all costs even to Joan 
 O'Dwyer. 
 
 If not an insanity, it was a possession, so deep, 
 so strange, that to talk of a power which held and 
 spurred him on would be true to the letter. 
 
 Was it Philip driving himself? then we are to im- 
 
 17
 
 258 THE WIZARD'S KNOT 
 
 agine him suddenly endowed with genius, his flesh 
 all eyes and wings, his inner man rapt to some 
 height never before ascended. What he saw in Joan 
 was, to the cool eye of reason, a beautiful, childlike 
 creature, very fair to look upon; what he fancied, 
 in this kindling of all his faculties, those alone will 
 comprehend who have a gift like his. It was a tran- 
 scendent miracle, and never did a poet excel him in 
 reading with love's eyes the wonder of the world. 
 
 No verses did he scribble ; he could not have spent 
 five minutes over the most charming sonnets that 
 were ever wreathed in roses. But he walked on air, 
 drank in the sun ; his nights he passed in trampling 
 through the heather, if he did not prefer an endless 
 meandering over the smooth, white sand of the 
 beach ; when morning broke, he went up to the castle, 
 a great numbness in his limbs, the one madness in 
 his heart. If not insane, possessed ! 
 
 What defense had Joan against those ardors ? It 
 is well ascertained that love can compel love, where 
 no counter-attraction exists to make a stand. Days 
 passed; the face with glowing, masterful eyes, 
 framed in its fiery locks, was burnt into her memory ; 
 the figure, tall and proud, was always at her side; 
 the voice pleaded, though broken syllables, not sen- 
 tences, dropped from those lips on fire. She had 
 long pitied him ; soon she was forgetting to pity her-
 
 HAWK OR EAGLE 259 
 
 self. The wound that could not be stanched of his 
 great shame gave to his wishes a persuasiveness, 
 such as we yield to when the strong are struck down 
 and ask us whether we are going to forsake them. 
 Pity not far from love then the terrible joy which 
 casts out pity ; instead of air, flame, and oblivion of 
 all that used to seem worth while. Lo, the god is 
 here, chasing the past with golden arrows. 
 
 Who saw them? More than one pair of eyes, 
 though silence fell over their steps. It was not 
 really so long, measured by days and nights; but 
 when every hour is quivering with bright gleams, 
 the minutes stand out boldly, the torrent expands 
 into a sea. Could they have had the world to them- 
 selves! and why not? To all others they spoke 
 hastily, in passing, eager to get rid of them, as the 
 poet scrawls a business letter and has done with it. 
 All along they never knew what people said ; yet, of 
 course, talk there was, in secret channels, first one, 
 then another the serving men and women who, in 
 those times of cheap wages, "coshered and col- 
 logued" about the Big House. And then 
 
 IT was little Frank Hurley, the laughing villain, that 
 told it, to begin with. Creeping on hands and knees 
 through the brush, to lay snares for any wild thing, 
 rabbit, hare, or bird, that he could poach, the gossoon
 
 2 6o THE WIZARD'S KNOT 
 
 perked up a sharp ear, an amused eye, and took in 
 the meaning of certain tones, attitudes, what not, as 
 the pair moved slowly in front of his ambush. He had 
 the play to himself half a dozen times, after which he 
 shared his knowledge and his roast hare with Felim 
 O'Riordan. "We thought you were to marry her 
 always," said the grinning Frank, with a glance at 
 him sideways; "would I get a willow-branch ready 
 for you, Felim ?" 
 
 The fisher lad took him by the two ears, and gave 
 him a shake which left Hurley breathless. "If you 
 dar' say a word to any person but me." growled 
 O'Riordan, "I '11 smather you. Swear now you '11 
 be as dumb as Patsy Regan if not, so help me " 
 
 "I 'm not a balbhan like Patsy," cried Frank, "nor 
 blind nayther, as you 've been and you 're hurting 
 me. But, big as you are, here 's my advice. Go to 
 Cathal this minute; tell him you must marry Joan: 
 and let him ask Sir Philip" smiling mischievously 
 "to give a fortune with her. Do that now." 
 
 "The hammer and sledge will be your fate," an- 
 swered his tall companion, thumping the lad as if 
 in a mighty rage ; but he acted on the advice before 
 nightfall. "Anyway, I '11 get knowledge w r hat 
 they 're doing," he thought. 
 
 "I would n't require a crooked sixpence with the 
 cailin," he said, when his business was opened with
 
 HAWK OR EAGLE 261 
 
 the schoolmaster; "but, sure, 't is no compliment 
 you 're asking; the whole country knows 't was you 
 that cured Sir Philip after the doctors giving him 
 up." 
 
 Cathal's answer was prompt. "If I did that same, 
 I could not take the price of it, or something would 
 happen to me. 'Give all, sell none,' said the master 
 who taught me my knowledge. But, indeed, Felim, 
 you 're the one boy that I 'd like Joan to marry. 
 And I '11 face the squire, but never a word that I 
 cured him! 'T would be worse than swapping 
 prayers for praties a thing I could never bring my 
 mind to, or maybe I 'd be a different man this day, 
 for long ago I had the offer, if I would take it, from 
 ould Father Lenihan, God rest him." 
 
 No, it should be a simple matter of business. 
 "The one half of my torment," he said, with genuine 
 emotion, next day to Sir Philip, as they lingered in 
 the sunshine, "is Joan to be without a husband whin 
 I 'm gone. Had we the bit of land as well as the 
 cottage, Felim O'Riordan would marry her." 
 
 "But would she marry him?" answered the bar- 
 onet, in a blind access of feeling which almost made 
 him brutal, "that is the question." 
 
 "I gave the boy my hand upon it," said the school- 
 master, calmly ; "Joan is a good daughter that never 
 contradicted me yet. The O'Riordans are like our-
 
 262 THE WIZARD'S KNOT 
 
 selves. She was reared with them. Garret is no 
 worse than Felim; if the one did n't suit her, the 
 other would." 
 
 "He is a sulky, cross-built fellow," said the gen- 
 tleman; "can't you wait awhile?" 
 
 "Sulky, is it? Och, Sir Philip, you never saw 
 boys better tempered. And handsome! No son 
 would I wish but Felim was I buying them at the 
 fair." 
 
 An obstinate silence followed. The sun burnt 
 into Philip's brain; he thought the air was parched, 
 and began to moisten his dry lips, imitating the dog's 
 gesture when it feels wretched. "I must speak to 
 the agent," he said at length, and Cathal's hopes lost 
 their brilliancy. 
 
 "Mr. Colegrave, sir ? Och, he '11 not give a perch 
 of land to a young couple. Often he said the estate 
 should be cleared, but your father may he never 
 want prayers ! would not allow it. From yourself 
 we will get it or not at all." 
 
 "The agent shall decide," answered Philip, evad- 
 ing Cathal's astonished eyes. "Wait and see wait 
 and see. Let the young man clearly understand 
 that I make no promise." 
 
 "God's will be done," said the schoolmaster, 
 humbly; "we are in his holy hands and in yours." 
 
 "Yes, in mine," thought Philip, ashamed but de-
 
 HAWK OR EAGLE 263 
 
 termined. He was not fighting his equal, and does 
 your gentleman parry a lout's quarter-staff with a 
 battle-ax ? Yet, give up Joan ? Impossible ! 
 
 "Have you dangled this bait before O'Riordan? 
 Does your girl know ?" he asked. 
 
 "I am spaking for the boy," said Cathal, "but to 
 your honor alone. Till we get the few furlongs, I 
 would n't vex her." 
 
 "Quite right. There is plenty of time; but re- 
 member I promise nothing." The baronet, always 
 brief and peremptory, had a terrible way with him. 
 None of his people but knew it. He was most- 
 ly silent, and a landlord who neither joked, nor 
 laughed, nor drank heavily, while he hunted and shot 
 with the best of them, left a dark impression, as of 
 one whom it was better not to thwart. This kind of 
 man always has the peasants' good word ; if they dis- 
 like him, the feeling never passes their lips. Dislike 
 Sir Philip perhaps no one did ; but his fear was upon 
 them. O'Dwyer took the baronet's unwillingness 
 in the way he took all other misfortunes; to resist 
 but how could he ? Unless the landlord gave con- 
 sent, there was no bridal for Joan. 
 
 She, unhappy girl, was knitting, some distance off, 
 in the shade of a great rock topped with hanging 
 bushes. Her voice, subdued to a dreamy softness, 
 went over the lines of a half-remembered song, but
 
 264 THE WIZARD'S KNOT 
 
 her thoughts had flitted far from their meaning; it 
 was a lover's adieu old and artless 
 
 " For what 's allotted, it can't be blotted, 
 So farewell, darling, I must away." 
 
 The sound came to Philip's ears sweet and con- 
 fused "like the buzzing of bees on a fine day," then 
 he caught it more distinctly, and, instead of daunt- 
 ing him, there was something in the words that put 
 this headstrong youth on his mettle. "Be it so; I 
 will try what is allotted to us both," he said to him- 
 self. And there stood the one man in all the world 
 before Joan O'Dwyer, glowing as a sunbeam. Her 
 lips grew white, her singing fell silent. 
 
 How could he bind this fair creature to his will ? 
 Alas ! she was already bound. As in the fairy-tales of 
 all nations it is written, these two had exchanged 
 hearts; he was sure of her without speaking; the 
 air seemed to thrill to his voiceless demand. 
 
 A little wheeling and returning, as the plover 
 about its nest, away and to it again; talk that said 
 nothing, but signified everything, not gay, not sad. 
 Before long he was whispering, his eyes fixed on 
 her face cast down, "You must never marry Felim 
 O'Riordan." 
 
 She looked up now, oh, how wistfully ! "Never ; I 
 know it well," she answered. "He is here often ; my
 
 t 
 
 HAWK OR EAGLE 265 
 
 father is fond of the boy, and a good boy he is. But 
 true for you, I '11 never put my hand in his." 
 
 "Why do you look so down when you say 
 that?" he asked, and his breath went and came 
 in sudden throbs. Her eyes were inexpressibly 
 mournful. 
 
 "Yerra, who would marry the like of me?" she 
 said, curling her ruddy lip with a mixture of self- 
 contempt and sorrow. 
 
 "Who would?" he exclaimed, grasping the hand 
 she drew back. "I would." He took the desperate 
 leap. "As God sees me, I will." 
 
 They were in each other's arms these children of 
 the woods and the sea, forgetting how easy to for- 
 get the thunder-cloud which lay far on the world's 
 edge, almost believing that its fire was the light of 
 their love. 
 
 An hour swept by. 
 
 In token of this fatal covenant, they bound them- 
 selves by the strongest oaths never to change; they 
 would not give or take affection; Joan not from 
 Felim, and he from no woman, however rich or 
 high. Under this frenzy, which had seized them 
 both, they did as country-folks do, exchanged locks 
 of hair, dark and ruddy, which should never quit 
 them. 
 
 "This will be buried with me," said Joan, kissing
 
 266 THE WIZARD'S KNOT 
 
 the love-lock she had clipped from Philip's bent 
 head. 
 
 "And this with me," was his cry; "but we will 
 keep the thing to ourselves yet awhile. Your 
 father must not know it." 
 
 Joan gave her consent, and so they began to whirl 
 round in the magic dance.
 
 CHAPTER XIX 
 
 VARIOUS THREADS 
 
 IN Irish poetry "my love" and "my secret" are the 
 same word. Charmingly so; but here was one 
 of those secrets known to many that brew death- 
 dealing poison unless they are snatched off the fire. 
 Joan herself went to and fro in a day-dream, not 
 happy, nor looking for happiness ; she was within the 
 fairy-hill, and a voice sounded in her ear, "Touch no 
 food, put from you the bright drink, or you will 
 never go back to your people." When, in a flash, 
 the girl saw her image up at Renmore its mistress 
 and Lady Liscarroll she felt a sharp pain in her 
 side. "I 'd look well in my silks and satins," was 
 the sarcasm with which she scourged vanity. "My 
 lady Joan, is it? Good morrow to your lady- 
 ship! Now if I whispered it to Nora O'Sullivan, 
 she 'd choke laughing. God direct me ! I '11 surely 
 wither away and die. But I have his hand and word 
 to it, you '11 say. I have, indeed, Nora. And I see 
 her giving her head a toss. 'There 's a hundred 
 
 267
 
 268 THE WIZARD'S KNOT 
 
 twists in a young man's heart,' says Nora. What 
 made me listen to him at all ?" 
 
 Joan could not believe, or even trust ; the thing was 
 too great, as if God had promised her the sun. It 
 dazzled her. Philip was there, to be sure, and all 
 day long he talked of love and liking; but when he 
 was gone hope went with him ; then she called her- 
 self "a branch that hangs down to the stream, and its 
 blossoms drop into it one by one." She took the 
 world's part against this unequal match. "Would n't 
 I shame him?" significantly, not in her own 
 thoughts did she say "Philip" "and I 'd see the 
 blush on his cheek at every meeting of friends. He 
 has no right to marry except a lady." Well, could 
 she answer the world ? 
 
 Philip did not think of marrying yet. This de- 
 lightful, romantic play out of doors was enough for 
 him. Without knowing it, he was twisting the cord 
 his own way, beginning one of the most dangerous 
 and subtle of the tricks they tell of Munster youths, 
 who, with a great air of simplicity, are sly as foxes 
 in love, business, and sport. "Wine is sweet, its 
 price is bitter," said Cathal, rich in proverbs. What 
 need he be thinking of the price? It is wonderful 
 how the man lingers out his courtship, while the 
 maid looks on to marriage. Here she did not urge 
 the claim, being over-modest, frightened, and even
 
 VARIOUS THREADS 269 
 
 sorry for Philip. Probably, in her heart of hearts, 
 she could not hold the vision to be real. He would 
 be only "letting on," after all. Something warned 
 her that she must be on her guard, if she did but 
 know how, against his innocent wiles and strata- 
 gems. For these are the very men that swear as 
 many oaths as they speak words, yet afterward break 
 them in the sweet face of Heaven, and mean no 
 harm. 
 
 But " 't is what they say" that carries good and 
 evil with it. This pretty scene was far from hidden. 
 The O'Sullivans marked it, and though neither 
 would be severe if the girl did as many a one, no 
 worse than Joan O'Dwyer, had done before her, not 
 a suspicion that marriage could be in question crossed 
 their minds. They thought, "So the master is like 
 other young men, only he fancies we don't see him." 
 No doubt they said as much in confidence. Had 
 they caught the word which terrified poor Joan, yet 
 served as a plank over this roaring torrent, no 
 tongues would have wagged against her so bitterly 
 as theirs. But they looked on with singular indiffer- 
 ence at a mere love-making. 
 
 Not so Felim the fisher lad. As time ran by, and 
 neither the agent spoke nor Sir Philip, he grew des- 
 perate, wasted away, lost his lively colors; a great 
 dread fell upon him. The girl, who had never owned
 
 270 THE WIZARD'S KNOT 
 
 him as a sweetheart, repelled his slight attempts 
 to establish some confidence between them. "She is 
 civil and strange to me and I her foster-brother," 
 he thought in his vexation; but unless prepared to 
 take her without a fortune, which he could not do, 
 there was no courting possible. The schoolmaster 
 set his face against it. "Till we have the farm," he 
 said, "my daughter is for no man. I '11 not sentence 
 ye both to the pangs of poverty. 'T is Mr. Cole- 
 grave must put in the banns ; but strive to pull him 
 toward you, and he '11 snap and bite like a dog's head. 
 Patience is the best hound we have in the pack, 
 Felim." 
 
 It seemed likely to be the surviving and only 
 hound. The Lord of Renmore has as good as for- 
 gotten O'Riordan; nor did he mention in Mr. Cole- 
 grave's office his name or Cathal O'Dwyer's. He 
 was in the seventh heaven let that be what apology 
 it may. But rumor on this side, and the O'Sulli- 
 vans on that, were getting a fresh act ready; there 
 came to Will Hapgood's ears the most surprising 
 tale that his friend and favorite boatman had been 
 wanting to marry this bewitching damsel ; that her 
 father had consented, but the event hung fire, and, it 
 was lightly whispered, because of Philip Liscarroll. 
 He took Felim unawares, bantered him on his pale 
 cheeks and loss of interest in manly games, and got
 
 VARIOUS THREADS 271 
 
 his version of the story. " 'T is my belief, sir," 
 concluded O'Riordan, "that the squire is a very dark 
 man. Joan would n't be desaved by him if he did n't 
 promise more than he will perform. He '11 talk the 
 world of marrying her, and the smooth word is all 
 she will get. We seen that many a time before, 
 though not from him or his father. I 'd be sorry to 
 belie them." 
 
 Master Will's principles were easy-going; and 
 as he cared little about the maid, and less about the 
 baronet, his interference could not have been reck- 
 oned upon, except in one contingency. Sir Philip 
 was a character; he never behaved like the rest of 
 the world; suppose him, in this tangle, to undo the 
 knot in his peculiar way quixotically what would 
 come of it? "You believe she may be a fool; but 
 that he is sure to be a rogue is that it, Felim?" he 
 said, slapping his young man on the shoulder. "He 
 would on no account marry a girl he wronged." 
 
 "Plaise God, she won't be wronged," answered 
 the other in a tremulous but deeply earnest tone. 
 "Was Mr. Edmund Liscarroll at Renmore, he would 
 prevent it, or I don't know him." 
 
 "What, the cousin would cut in and snap up the 
 prize? Shall we send him news that his chieftain 
 is in love ? Eh, old man ?" 
 
 "You should not joke with them things, sir," an-
 
 272 THE WIZARD'S KNOT 
 
 swered O'Riordan, gravely; "we never thought the 
 two Liscarrolls were great with each other, though 
 living under one roof. The Tanist, as we call him, 
 should be looking some day to get the ould place; 
 't is n't likely Sir Philip would take kindly to his own 
 tombstone, as I may say. To be sure, Mr. Edmund 
 is in all our good books." 
 
 "And how comes he to be this Joan's protector? 
 Is he that way given ? He writes poetry and stuff ; 
 I guess he would be the mischief among the lasses. 
 I don't take to the fellow; but he is not so ugly as 
 Sir Phil." 
 
 " 'Deed then, sir, you 'd guess wrong. He has 
 the name of a harmless buachal, with his bits of 
 pomes and blackthorn verses. But when he used to 
 be coming to the ould schoolmaster's, learning his 
 Latin and his Six Books and the Irish they 'd be 
 talking together not as we talk, but ancient we 
 could make nayther a fist nor a foot of that same 
 he 'd be coaxing Joan and she him." 
 
 "And she him, as they always do," repeated Will, 
 in high delight. 
 
 "Well, we were all gossoons of one age, and if the 
 two of them gave love to one another, what harm in 
 it?" said the boatman. 
 
 "Not a hap'orth of harm," replied the light-headed 
 Will. "Thank you, O'Riordan. Now let us turn
 
 VARIOUS THREADS 273 
 
 this point. Land me just below St. Brandan's 
 Kitchen." 
 
 They had been wasting the early hours, as Will 
 often did now, under pretense of fishing in the bay 
 of Airgead Ross, where Felim was to wait until the 
 young madcap returned from his expedition on 
 shore. Its object was perfectly well known to both 
 of them, though never a syllable passed concerning 
 it. "Don't be down-hearted, man," said his master, 
 as he sprang on the beach. "We will rescue your 
 bride, Edmund or no Edmund. She is too dainty 
 a morsel for such a kill-joy as Sir Philip. Leave it 
 to me. Keep a sharp lookout on the doings at 
 O'Dwyer's cottage; but say nothing to the old man. 
 I shall be here again in two hours." 
 
 He was as good as his word, and gay and jubilant 
 he appeared when leaping into the boat once more. 
 "You have fine news to-day, sir," said O'Riordan, 
 "or else you been running, to judge by your color." 
 
 "Both, my dear Felim, "he cried, giving the other's 
 hand a fierce grip. "Wish me good luck yourself 
 too. Now home ! Do you remember the night we 
 were all but drowned when Renmore Castle fell in 
 as we drove under the lee of it ?" 
 
 "Would I ever lose the thought of it, sir ? Often 
 in my drames I do be hearing the big crack it gave, 
 and the lightning over it wakes me." 
 
 18
 
 274 THE WIZARD'S KNOT 
 
 "There will be a greater crack yet; but to-day 
 pays for that night." 
 
 "And will Joan be saved when it comes, sir on 
 whoever it comes?" 
 
 "She will. Let me tell you now what share you 
 shall have in the rescue." He launched out volubly. 
 This young man, whose spirit a year ago would have 
 been pronounced dull, though violent, seemed to 
 have undergone the influence of a loftier mind. He 
 spoke according to his cue, but admirably, though 
 not as one who sees a crystal sky overhead. There 
 were storms coming. The plan which he unfolded 
 as far as he thought it judicious would not have met 
 with the moralist's approbation; but he had learned 
 it from one who scrupled at no means which would 
 compass her object. As for O'Riordan, though but 
 a novice in this world, he saw that the quality had 
 ways of their own, good or bad, which, like the winds 
 and tides, were governed by unknown laws. All he 
 wanted was to get his dove (and even if not his) out 
 of the hawk's talons. That Sir Philip could be any- 
 thing but a hawk to the poor innocent he did not 
 credit. The specimen he judged by the species; in 
 his own Shaksperian language, the squire was "cat 
 after kind." Well they knew the kind in those 
 parts. 
 
 St. Brandan's Kitchen, from which Will had re-
 
 VARIOUS THREADS 275 
 
 turned in such high spirits, was overgrown now with 
 flowers, purple and red, among its long grasses; 
 sunlight sifted in; butterflies darted like iridescent 
 jewels or snowflakes through the vacant windows; 
 and Lady Liscarroll, with her shining hair, was no 
 less brilliant than they a gem which had in it 
 the glow of rich blood, of unextinguished passion. 
 While her cavalier told the tale, himself amused, 
 heedless where a spark might fall and sting, she 
 remained immovable, most attentive. "You put 
 in my hand the thread I was looking for," she 
 said when he had finished; "a jesting matter, you 
 think, Will Hapgood! What a great baby you 
 are!" 
 
 Her glove touched his cheek, which burnt sud- 
 denly. "Well, is n't it a game to see your fine Philip 
 stark mad?" he answered, laughing, but not at his 
 ease. "There 's no doubt about the madness. Crazy, 
 if ever man was !" 
 
 "Better fight shy of him, then. I know the Lis- 
 carroll craze to my cost. Let me think awhile. 
 You say Edmund had a fancy for this girl." 
 
 "Felim says so. That makes the play up ; we can 
 set the whole pack tearing. But I'm not to laugh? 
 How can I help it?" 
 
 "You may laugh the wrong side of your rnouth, 
 Will. If my son has made up his mind to have Joan
 
 276 THE WIZARD'S KNOT 
 
 she is a wonderful girl, much more than pretty 
 angels and saints won't stand in his way." 
 
 "The other gentry might, though," said he, with 
 a grin. ''Shall we call them up?" 
 
 "One thing is clear," pursued Lady Liscarroll, 
 "he must not marry her." 
 
 "My sister used to hunt on that trail," said the 
 young man, "but we are so devilish poor, and Philip 
 is no better off. Besides, he does n't throw her a 
 look now. Julia must make a meal of her own heart, 
 poor wench." 
 
 "You know I am determined he shall marry here," 
 said the lady, indicating Silverwood; "from this 
 pivot we must work out our plan." 
 
 "Edmund is the favorite; I back him against the 
 field," said Will. 
 
 "Yes, but not against me. Wait, and let me fol- 
 low this up. Edmund to be disposed of somehow 
 Philip to come here Joan O'Dwyer " 
 
 "Felim to get her if he can, Lucifer if he can't. 
 But you are leaving me out, my dear lady." 
 
 "Be quiet," she said, and smiled. A heavy 
 thought nevertheless clouded her expression. "After 
 all," she sighed, "no one can accuse me of breaking 
 my promise. As long as Joan was under my care, 
 she fell neither into mischief nor danger. She must 
 look to herself. Only a double-dyed idiot would ex- 
 pect marriage from a gentleman."
 
 VARIOUS THREADS 277 
 
 "She will go the way her mother went" Will 
 took up the story now. "Young Macklin, you re- 
 member ? Of course there was a difference ; Macklin 
 could n't marry another man's wife." There his 
 chatter was arrested by the lady's intense paleness 
 and her sudden half-fainting against the chapel wall. 
 "Good heavens ! what has come over you ?" he cried, 
 endeavoring to support her ; but she waved him back, 
 and with a strong effort recovered. 
 
 "I always said you were a fool," she exclaimed 
 sharply; "how can you talk so to me to me, Will 
 Hapgood?" 
 
 "I humbly beg your pardon," was the crestfallen 
 reply. "But let the girl go to blazes that 's all I 
 meant. She is not to spoil your sport." 
 
 "She shall not, depend upon it. At the worst, her 
 fisherman, if he gets a few acres, will be glad to 
 compound, and Joan has plenty of sense anyhow, 
 Philip is bespoke. That settles it. Now the first 
 step " 
 
 After much musing and beating with her hand 
 upon the broken window-sill, as if she counted the 
 numbers in some complicated puzzle, the lady re- 
 sumed. "First, I am to be ill. These meetings end 
 for some time." 
 
 With clearness, yet with subtlety, she drew the 
 fine threads of her cobweb out before him. a crossing 
 of lines in which all were to be entangled but them-
 
 278 THE WIZARD'S KNOT 
 
 selves. "Is it not well contrived?" she asked ex- 
 ultingly, when the meshes had been hung up in his 
 sight. 
 
 "You are a witch," answered Hapgood, enthusi- 
 astic, but keen on his own purpose. "If they all 
 behave like saints, caught they are still ; and if like 
 sinners, God help them ! But," coming up boldly to 
 where, she stood, "as you hold the threads, I hold 
 you." 
 
 "What mad speech is this?" she said dauntlessly. 
 "Do you intend to turn informer ?" 
 
 His eyes were very bright. "Not unless you com- 
 pel me to. I do intend, though, to have my price, 
 and from you. The day Philip's marriage comes 
 off with Miss O'Connor, I will claim it. You are 
 a free woman, are n't you? Now pledge me your 
 sacred word that you will be my wife when Airgead 
 Ross falls to Renmore." 
 
 "I thought you said Philip was out of his mind," 
 she answered, mocking him, yet her color betrayed 
 some emotion. "What would your mother say? 
 She is about my age." 
 
 "That laugh becomes you well," said Hapgood, 
 not to be fobbed off in this fashion. "I know your 
 age, knew it before you spoke. Now choose to 
 promise me, or have this talk carried in six hours 
 to your son. You see I play him off against my
 
 VARIOUS THREADS 279 
 
 mother. Why did you give me this chain ? I have 
 worn it ever since," pulling out the thin gold links 
 from the breast of his jacket. "Mad you call me, as 
 if that would put me to the blush ! I talk time flies 
 speak, or I tell Sir Philip." 
 
 In her countenance a strange terror showed itself. 
 "There was Walter, then Henry," she muttered, re- 
 flecting on a thousand past scenes, "now this wild 
 slip of a youth, sprung up across my path when I did 
 not ask for him." Yet she triumphed in the fasci- 
 nation which brought the lad to her feet even while 
 she could have pitied his folly in challenging the 
 future. His rude touch was endangering the web 
 she had craftily woven such an obstinate, super- 
 fluous passion when it took this form. "If you are 
 determined not to be generous," she began. 
 
 "Don't expect it of me," replied Will. "I am 
 master now; generosity is the last thing I think of." 
 
 "You are a fine, exasperating fellow," she said, 
 still at heart terror-stricken. "If I must, I must; 
 but we shall live to repent it." 
 
 "Give me your hand, Eleanor," he said, calling her 
 for the first time by her name. "God do so and so 
 to me and more also if I let this hand loose until 
 my own falls shattered from the wrist. What say 
 you?" 
 
 Now they were handfast in the old fatal thral-
 
 2 8o THE WIZARD'S KNOT 
 
 dom. "I will not let yours drop, yet if you pull it 
 away I shall not hold you guilty," she said with a 
 faint smile, her spirit sinking. 
 
 "Never," he said. "And now, Edmund and 
 Philip, my lads, look to your guard. We are going 
 to take you in the rear." 
 
 This interview it was which sent him away like a 
 conqueror; but Lady Liscarroll, who had witnessed 
 battles, knew the day was dawning in a crimson 
 cloud.
 
 CHAPTER XX 
 
 IMPERIAL AUGUST 
 
 OF one born under a happy star it has been said, 
 "the very dice obey him," but Philip was not 
 the man. No sudden alarm startled him into glanc- 
 ing toward the clock, where his chance was running 
 out. Music, the moody food of love, had so deaf- 
 ened him to what people might whisper that every 
 morning he slipped into his secret garden, from 
 which even Lady Liscarroll appeared a figure far 
 off, and almost charmed into quietness. Against 
 him, therefore, the dice, loaded when he looked 
 away, could not choose but fall. 
 
 On an afternoon about the end of July came a 
 note, brief and colorless, from Edmund, to say he 
 should be leaving Altamira immediately, and hoped 
 to reach home within the next three days. 
 
 "My honeymoon is over," thought Philip, tearing 
 the paper to shreds. "How the devil comes it that 
 I can't have my house to myself?" 
 
 The cry was instinctive, not grudging ; it betrayed 
 
 a deep wound as well as dread of the surgeon's knife. 
 
 281
 
 2 8 2 THE WIZARD'S KNOT 
 
 With Edmund enter "the world, a hoary cynic," and 
 "conscience, a bit of steel in his grasp" neither 
 backward at cutting through nerve and sinew. 
 Powers of heaven would league with demons from 
 hell to put them asunder. But could they not 
 marry at once ? A bold stroke but a final ! Re- 
 pentance would be out of court then. Yes, but 
 Philip, in the unsteady motions of his brain, saw his 
 wild rose transplanted, withering under the sharp 
 east wind scorn and sneers, and lonely days killing 
 her; old Cathal shambling not quite sober about 
 Renmore ridicule sketching the two mothers of 
 them, a scandalous pair himself stabbed as with 
 icicles. Or could he not marry and take wing? but 
 that was cowardice. No, he must school Joan, for 
 the present, to play one scene of excellent dissem- 
 bling ; perhaps his cousin, a singer of amorous songs, 
 would come over to their side. Edmund was, no 
 doubt, a nature too abstruse for his comprehension ; 
 or perhaps too airy and volatile ? In their snatches 
 of argument he seemed hard ; if Philip was the ham- 
 mer, his cousin was the anvil, and bore no marks of 
 the assault. 
 
 "If he would stand by me, we two could face the 
 worst. But will he? Does n't the man keep his 
 poetry for hot-pressed vellum two hundred and 
 forty sheets to the half-ream?"
 
 IMPERIAL AUGUST 283 
 
 So he reasoned, not altogether selfishly. The 
 danger pressing close, he might have taken Edmund 
 into his confidence, had not the ivory cubes rattled 
 in his ears a second time. On the day his cousin 
 was expected, Yegor, the factotum at Airgead Ross, 
 came riding over with a note from his mistress, in 
 terms of singular agitation. Lady Liscarroll was 
 ill, perhaps seriously would he return with the 
 messenger? His mother felt unable to write. She 
 could not leave her room, and had sent for Dr. 
 Driscoll, whose wife would undertake the nursing 
 that might be required. 
 
 His heart knocked against his ribs with a sick 
 sorrow; was it bad news or good? Was the long 
 task ending that had been too much for him? 
 Would his mother die ? What a horrid prayer was 
 that he put up to the dark powers in whose chain 
 he lay fettered? A kind of matricide! He could 
 not think of her in pain of the body without com- 
 passion; cruelty was most foreign to his feeling, 
 always had been; but the sight of her in a shroud, 
 he confessed and loathed himself for it, would bring 
 everlasting peace. Let her die without anguish 
 soon after he had pardoned her in his father's 
 name. Aye, it was best. 
 
 Yegor could tell him little except that the lady 
 seemed to pass from one fainting fit into another.
 
 284 THE WIZARD'S KNOT 
 
 He had left her unconscious. There was no time to 
 look in at O'Dwyer's cottage, or take leave of Joan; 
 she would hear that he was gone to Silverwood; 
 that his mother had sent for him; but perhaps she 
 would have got a like message ? Or no, Mrs. Dris- 
 coll did not want assistance on Joan's terms. This 
 name, coupled with the doctor's, sounded a death- 
 knell but to whom? The raven and the screech- 
 owl were flying round that house, called thither by 
 the dying patient. An obscure intimation that the 
 illness had some enigmatic character floated up to 
 his mind's surface, and disappeared. It must have 
 been very sudden. He reproached himself that his 
 visits during the last month were less frequent than 
 he had intended. "She has no one but me, after all," 
 he thought, "and I have neglected her." 
 
 On arriving he found Dr. Driscoll installed, busy 
 and triumphant. The lady's maid was in attendance 
 on the sick-chamber, but could let no one pass. 
 
 "I had a right to be called in many months ago," 
 said the doctor, huskily, breathing out wrath and 
 spirits ; "her ladyship is in a rapid decline." 
 
 "Good God ! A decline, doctor ? At her time of 
 life, and in this pure air? She appeared in perfect 
 health; I remarked her high color at our last 
 meeting." 
 
 "When was that, Sir Philip?" inquired Driscoll,
 
 IMPERIAL AUGUST 285 
 
 rudely; "a week since? a fortnight? maybe it was 
 a month ?" 
 
 "Whenever it was," said Sir Philip, stung to the 
 quick, "my mother looked the picture of health." At 
 which the surgeon groaned. 
 
 "It was but a picture, my dear sir; a deceptive 
 blush the hectic hue of consumption. While im- 
 prisoned at Renmore " 
 
 "What is that you say?" cried the baronet, in a 
 fury; "measure your language, sir!" 
 
 "I say imprisoned," was the cool retort; "your 
 mother had little fresh air, no exercise, not a friend 
 about her; you see the consequence. I don't hope 
 for her recovery." 
 
 All else was forgotten in this news. "She is dy- 
 ing, then?" said her son, with an overpowering sense 
 of grief, almost of remorse. "I will see her this 
 instant." 
 
 But Driscoll put his hand on the lock. "I never 
 said she was at the last gasp. Hours, even days, 
 may pass before the critical time is upon Lady Lis- 
 carroll. She has her senses, though greatly en- 
 feebled; but she would do well to be left to sleep. 
 What I have to tell you, sir, is that, as a son, you 
 should stay within call, night and day, until we see 
 what turn the sickness will take. It will be a com- 
 fort and a vital support to the poor lady; and she
 
 286 THE WIZARD'S KNOT 
 
 begged and prayed me to ask the favor from you. 
 Yes, indeed, favor was her very word." 
 
 "For God's sake, send in to my mother ; tell her I 
 will not go away," cried Philip, agonizing. "Let 
 Mrs. Driscoll say so. I can be put up somewhere 
 about the place, I suppose." 
 
 "That Russian spalpeen they call Yegor has a 
 nice snug house a dale too good for the likes of 
 him," answered Driscoll, "convenient to the man- 
 sion. Miss O'Connor is out there now seeing it put 
 to rights for you." 
 
 "But as soon as I can speak to Lady Liscarroll, 
 you will allow me?" said Philip. "Otherwise, I 
 shall exercise my authority, doctor, and send for my 
 own physician." 
 
 "On my word and honor you will be the first after 
 myself," said Driscoll. "As long as she could she 
 kept it from you, and great was her suffering the 
 mind more than the body, bad as that was. I never 
 saw a woman so spirited; but now she is down en- 
 tirely; a feather's weight would finish her." 
 
 MEANWHILE, as the master's wheels hurried from 
 Renmore, his cousin's might be heard approaching. 
 The day shone splendidly, for it was imperial Au- 
 gust, clad in gold tissue woven of clear sunbeams; 
 and as the poet drove through the land, he thought
 
 IMPERIAL AUGUST 287 
 
 himself traveling in light, so radiant were the skies, 
 so free from every speck of damp was the air. 
 Happy, therefore, according to the law of winged 
 creatures? Ah, no this translucent atmosphere 
 hid in its brightness death. For three days Edmund 
 had been moving southward; he was delayed by an 
 incident most singular and unforeseen at Kilmallock, 
 where he had turned aside to dine in the mansion- 
 house of the Sarsfields with some old acquaintance; 
 and, under such a heaven as he never had beheld, 
 the fire of a yellow wine poured out to its extreme 
 bounds he sat behind the horses, too broken for 
 words, stupefied as with laudanum. What did his 
 eyes announce that had such terror in it ? This, and 
 this only imperial August, in cloth of gold, blazing 
 with the summer fires, was he sickened in its pres- 
 ence the Famine ! 
 
 For beneath an enchanted sky, while the winds 
 blew warm, and it seemed that every flower should 
 glow with beauty, every herb yield a sweet savor, 
 up from the fields on both sides came to his nostrils 
 the stench of the blight, a vivid, yet intangible pu- 
 trescence, that left the air transparent, but loaded the 
 breeze with horror. Mile after mile, behind and 
 before, the plague spread out, reveled in the crops 
 which stood luxuriating amid their leaves, and made 
 the thousands of acres the dark-green vegetation
 
 288 THE WIZARD'S KNOT 
 
 of a week ago one mighty marsh. A foul odor of 
 decay, unmistakable, indescribable, as of heaps al- 
 ready rotting. It was not a patch of leprosy here 
 and there, not a field blasted by the side of one that 
 flourished; the whole world, far as he could see, 
 fast as he could travel, was an infection, sparing, 
 strangely enough, the occasional perch of oats or 
 barley, as these rose and floated on their stalks with 
 the puffs of wind, among the leagues and leagues of 
 potatoes, doomed, like the people that had sown and 
 tended them, to wither away. 
 
 The heavy, rich, maleficent breath swept up to 
 him, as off a battle-field. He had tasted it with loath- 
 ing the year before ; too well he knew it ; and, as im- 
 agination fled forward, the harbinger of famine, 
 fever, death, in shapes beyond counting, but each of 
 them ghastlier than its fellow, tears ran down his 
 cheeks. That a whole nation should be laid waste, 
 not at the trampling of wars, or in a struggle for 
 some high banner raised over them, but because a 
 miserable, weed-like thing had failed! In the con- 
 trast between that smile of the heavens and that 
 stricken earth he felt there was an awful mockery, 
 as at a crime, no less foul than contemptible, now to 
 meet its reward in the face of the sun. These were 
 God's tokens of displeasure upon them. He wept 
 and could think nothing but this thought : "We have
 
 IMPERIAL AUGUST 289 
 
 broken some law of life, which now stoops to break 
 us. In what have our fathers sinned? And we 
 after them ?" 
 
 More than once the car in which he drove was 
 stopped by Edmund's desire, and he leaped down to 
 walk among the decaying plants, lush with their un- 
 wholesome abundance. Everywhere he scented an 
 open grave. At intervals he stepped close to the 
 crouching forms of women with shawls thrown over 
 their heads, some of them crying with a long, child- 
 ish lament, the hardly intelligible words making a 
 litany of despair, always the same, always unavail- 
 ing. Others sat motionless, their eyes fixed on the 
 landscape, as if they saw hunger and disease coming 
 toward them with quickening strides. These silent 
 mourners were the terror itself; and, as Edmund 
 passed, the looks which they exchanged with him set 
 up a nausea in his mouth, compelling him to spit 
 as if it were poison. To be so resigned! could 
 human nature fall into a swoon at the mere wind 
 and rumor of calamity, struck by a horrible enchant- 
 ment ? He did not know that it was stealing on him 
 as well ; that his own class, haughty and arrogant in 
 earlier days, but brainless, improvident, unused to 
 look things in the face, would succumb to this panic 
 fear, and sink, like the peasant, beneath it. His eyes 
 were already taken; his heart fluttered. When the 
 
 19
 
 290 THE WIZARD'S KNOT 
 
 country still showed its festering heaps, one desire 
 laid hold of him, to rush on and on, until he could get 
 away from the plague, and come to a land where 
 its vile odor would not stifle him. 
 
 It was with a deep sigh of relief that he turned 
 into the demesne of Renmore, which as yet seemed 
 free from the blight. Another trouble began to 
 occupy his thoughts, or, rather, it insisted on taking 
 the foreground, out of which this new misfortune 
 had chased it. He inquired after Philip at once, and 
 was told that a message from Silverwood, arriving 
 not many hours ago, had called him to Lady Lis- 
 carroll, who was suddenly taken ill. "Thank God !" 
 exclaimed Edmund. The steward gave him an 
 amazed look, but went off in silence, thinking, "That 
 fellow would ate her without salt, and small blame 
 to him." 
 
 But her nephew was not concerned about the lady 
 just then. Philip's absence gave him the breathing 
 space he wanted. He despatched a line to Airgead 
 Ross, making old Cathal his messenger, with orders 
 to stay the night unless some accident should oblige 
 him to return immediately. "I shall get to-morrow 
 clear," he argued. "When the schoolmaster is 
 away" he smiled bitterly at the nursery jingle. 
 "Anyhow, I shall see Joan face to face, and, let her
 
 IMPERIAL AUGUST 291 
 
 talk what she will with her lips, her looks will not 
 deceive me." 
 
 Pacing the great hall, after his lonely dinner, he 
 tried to map out the situation. In his pocket lay a 
 dirty piece of ill-written paper, how conveyed to him 
 in Galway he could not guess find out, if possible, 
 he must the rude, ungrammatical terms of which 
 he knew by heart, having studied them until his head 
 went round. They did not mince matters. Philip 
 was a tempter, if not a villain ; the schoolmaster's 
 daughter would soon be hunted out of the parish ; it 
 was time Edmund came between her and destruction, 
 if he was ever fond of Joan O'Dwyer. "What does 
 the thief who wrote it mean by that?" he asked him- 
 self. "Or has some woman her hand in it? But 
 there 's no woman about the place except Nora 
 O'Sullivan, and she would n't be jealous of poor 
 Joan." Might it all be a lie? He began to piece to- 
 gether this and that, Philip's ways and the world's 
 way, little things which were either of no conse- 
 quence or danger-signals; infinite conjecture, and 
 the detestable anonymous scrawl, firing possibilities 
 like a match. At length he came to a series of con- 
 clusions. 
 
 "Suppose Philip slandered in this rag of a letter ? 
 I speak ; naturally he blazes up the thing admits of
 
 292 
 
 THE WIZARD'S KNOT 
 
 no apology and, for me, good-by to Renmore. 
 Impossible that we should live under one roof when 
 I have flung a tumbler of dirty water in his face. 
 How is that, Edmund Liscarroll ? 
 
 "But he is not innocent, and I come in to the cue 
 of Old Morality, late and smug, with my sermon- 
 izing? How then? He would n't, could n't marry 
 a girl out of his own village daughter of my friend, 
 Cathal ! Should he ? And I recommend him to do 
 it? No, he will never make a clean breast of it to 
 me. The end as before. Edmund, there is your 
 road, follow it. 
 
 "I burn the informer's scrap, wink hard, say no 
 more than I did in his mother's case, where I warned 
 him and sat still. The devil drives; we have all 
 taken seats in his car; Joan tumbles out, the wheels 
 go over her, and we wash them at the journey's end. 
 Who will be the assassin? Philip the driver or 
 myself? Let me see." 
 
 At this point Edmund was lost in his reflections. 
 The hall grew dark, and still he paced it with slow 
 steps. "So far as I can judge," he thought, after a 
 long half-hour, "I may risk Joan's life she will 
 surely die if her innocence takes a stain I have not 
 watched her these ten years to doubt it or I put my 
 own happiness my everything, perhaps to the 
 hazard. She or I which is it to be ? A charming
 
 IMPERIAL AUGUST 293 
 
 situation, if I had a poem in hand ! But the poetry, 
 this time, will be carved in flesh and blood acted, 
 not scrawled. Were I in love with the creature! 
 What does he, or she, mean by saying I was fond of 
 Joan? I am not; all the same, I will get her away 
 from Sir Phil and what must be, must be. A 
 night's rest then up goes the curtain."
 
 CHAPTER XXI 
 
 THE COUSINS 
 
 A STEP along the gravel, where it is loosely 
 flung aside by the Lonndubh, and any ear but 
 Joan's might have signaled "Philip," as she sat 
 watching. But it was not he the quick, light tread 
 announced some one more impetuous; in it sounded 
 less of the musing footfall that deep passion loves. 
 She rose up to salute Edmund, whose eye, looking 
 for change in the girl's features, discovered a pale 
 anxiety, a thought overshadowing the brow with its 
 wavy dark hair. Had he not been forewarned, 
 doubtful it is whether he would have seen. The 
 clue is everything. 
 
 Like her lover, Joan was saying under her breath, 
 "The mi na media is past with me," at sight of this 
 once welcome friend; so truly is love the mother 
 of strife. Her honeymoon came before the wed- 
 ding-day, as she dreamt, when he began talking 
 with his old kindness, but, as an Irish gentle- 
 man knows how to do, in the tone of command 
 
 habitual to his class. He soon mentioned Philip, 
 
 294
 
 THE COUSINS 295 
 
 and the poor thing winced ever so little ; he followed 
 up the stroke adroitly ; brought in Lady Liscarroll's 
 illness, of which, by a passing messenger, some wild 
 and distorted account had reached him in the morn- 
 ing. "No one would wish her to get well," he con- 
 cluded, "not even you, Joan. When the breath is 
 out of her body my cousin will be free to take a wife, 
 and live happy ever after." 
 
 "He deserves no less," she answered at random, 
 looking away. 
 
 "And who do you think he would marry, now? 
 They say he is fond of a gossip with your father I 
 am the same, myself and seldom a day passes that 
 he is not coming this way. Maybe you 'd hear him 
 let slip the name of some great lady he has in his 
 eye." 
 
 "I don't be listening to them," said Joan. "Talk 
 is like the wind that comes and goes." 
 
 "True for you, my girl. But did you never catch 
 up out of it the name now for a wager would it be 
 any one not far fromus?" she flashed a strange 
 look at him, and had to keep down a cry "if it was 
 Miss O'Connor, you could n't but remark it." 
 
 "If I hear, I don't heed. Sure it was always said 
 yourself, Mr. Edmund, would be looking to get Miss 
 O'Connor." 
 
 Now it was the poet's turn to feel hot and cold.
 
 296 THE WIZARD'S KNOT 
 
 "We won't recite the 'wooings' of Edmund, but of 
 Philip," he answered with a laugh, though not so 
 soon as he could have wished. "The long and the 
 short of it is, my dear Joan, that Sir Phil is now at 
 Airgead Ross, and Miss O'Connor will be as kind to 
 the son " 
 
 "She will not," cried the girl, overcome by this 
 skilful torture. "Why would she lave you for him ? 
 My father often said you had only to rise your hand, 
 she would follow you. I could swear to it myself 
 too." 
 
 "But my cousin has a better right," said he. 
 "Troth he has, Joan. And if he stays long over 
 there, or his mother was to die in the place, it is 
 my conviction they would make a match of it, un- 
 less" an idea seeming to pluck at his sleeve "un- 
 less he was bound before to some other girl. But 
 that is nonsense entirely." 
 
 "I could n't tell you, sir," said Joan, who had been 
 erect all this time, in a whirl of confusion and fear. 
 She had just found these words, but her purse was 
 empty if he demanded more of the kind. "I '11 go in 
 now," she said feebly. 
 
 "Don't hurry yet, my dear child ; I have a thing to 
 ask." The young man barred her escape. "Is Sir 
 Philip free or not ? Tell me that." 
 
 "Why don't you ask himself?" she demanded in
 
 THE COUSINS 297 
 
 turn, fierce as a falcon and with as bright an eye. 
 "Ask him, if you dar' not, not me." 
 
 "My intention is to do so when he comes home," 
 said the other, touched by her growing distress. "I 
 thought you might know, that is all. But, Joan," 
 he continued mildly, "should you be acquainted with 
 a girl maybe of your own age, I won't say as good- 
 looking that any gentleman about here is courting 
 't is a way with some of them do you give her 
 good advice." 
 
 "What advice would I give her?" was the smoth- 
 ered question. 
 
 "Say that young men are dangerous beasts, wolves 
 in sheep's clothing, full of soft talk and roguery; 
 tell her not to trust them farther than she can throw 
 them. Will you do that, Joan?" 
 
 "Do it yourself; I never will," she replied, but the 
 heart died within her. "What kind of speech is this 
 you 're putting on me ?" 
 
 "To that girl I wish luck and happiness," said 
 Edmund, dropping into the native tongue, "and she 
 should know it. Let her leave the gentlefolks to 
 themselves, but, above all, the boys of them. When 
 the hounds pull the hare in pieces, would n't you pity 
 her, Joan? That is my last word to the girl; and 
 now I hand her to you." 
 
 There was no more to be got by talking with a
 
 298 THE WIZARD'S KNOT 
 
 creature so racked; she would not confide in him; 
 but every syllable bore unsuspecting witness to the 
 letter in his pocket. The hare was fleeing, the 
 hounds in full cry, no musical sound as he walked 
 through the woods of Renmore, his talk being ended. 
 
 He looked up after a while, and saw on the fair 
 sands a young fisherman drying his nets by the sea. 
 "I wonder would Felim be spying on this pretty, 
 tragic business," he thought. "My anonymous let- 
 ter was no distant cast." 
 
 Before long they were seated together, the waves 
 running up within a yard of them, and falling back 
 over the white pebbles with a swish most delightful 
 to hear. They talked a bit, were silent, felt the 
 world above their own troubles to be great and beau- 
 tiful. But the famine was coming down behind. 
 
 "We 're in dread it will be worse than last saison, 
 bad as we were pinched," said Felim ; "if so, half the 
 village will be thrown down and the people beggars 
 on the road. But 't is n't that is tormenting me, sir. 
 I waited here till you done spaking with Joan 
 O'Dwyer." He would have said more, but Edmund 
 cut in. 
 
 "Ah, that is it! Wait a while, Felim. Who 
 taught you to write?" 
 
 "I 'm not able to write a stroke," answered the lad, 
 wondering. "Ould Cathal could never hould me to
 
 THE COUSINS 299 
 
 it, nor Garret nayther. More shame for us! We 
 are as ignorant as a hound of all but getting the bit 
 to ate, and that is going from us." 
 
 "What of Joan, then? Is it a match between 
 you?" 
 
 "It is not, sir; indeed, I might as well whistle to 
 the curlews or the sea-gulls and hope to bring them to 
 me, as be sweethearting Joan," he answered, with 
 the melancholy tenderness of his people, which any 
 disappointment calls up. "She is the woman that is 
 most for destroying me. But let it go; the man 
 away there at the castle is more to her than a shoal 
 of Felims. I wanted you to know that." 
 
 Confirmation strong, since he could not write, and 
 looked the image of simple truth! O'Riordan was 
 not slack in unfolding the mixed skein of what he 
 knew and what he fancied the meetings, the mas- 
 ter's distracted yet not unhappy looks, but, above all, 
 his own failure to get, though Cathal had been most 
 eloquent, the promise of a farm. "He would n't give 
 as much as the palm of your hand," said the 
 boy, bitter and sad. "Why so, unless he was snap- 
 ping up Joan for his own supper? He is to have 
 her, and not me; is n't that the commencement of 
 a sorrowful tale, Mr. Edmund? I lave it to your 
 honor." 
 
 "The schoolmaster lets his tongue run with all
 
 300 THE WIZARD'S KNOT 
 
 this to the neighbors. I '11 go bail," said Edmund. 
 "It is the common talk." 
 
 "I frightened him from that," answered Felim; 
 "though his mind is no closer than a sieve, he 'd fear 
 to lose the cot a second time; but surely, whin the 
 divil puts down his foot, he laves the mark of a hoof 
 God bless us and save us !" 
 
 An ugly hoof it was. That Philip should be tus- 
 sling with a raw fisher lad about this peasant girl so 
 the cousin argued, and the poet in him was half dis- 
 posed to agree proved the worst his enemies could 
 allege; moreover, what enemies had the baronet? 
 No the print was too plain, and everybody saw it. 
 
 "You will spake a word for me," said O'Riordan, 
 softly. "I did n't tell you this to make bad blood ; 
 let me have the bit of mountain itself, and I would 
 be content with Joan we 'd battle it out together." 
 
 Edmund laid his hand on the boy's arm it could 
 give a hard blow, he said to himself and, "Never 
 blame me, if you don't get your wish," he answered, 
 "but Renmore is not mine. Till I have spoken to 
 Sir Philip, let Joan and her father alone ; keep away 
 from their cottage; and, should I want a service 
 from you, would you do it?" 
 
 "I 'd go to the world's end if you beckoned me," 
 said Felim. "Will I swear it to you on that book in 
 your hand ?"
 
 THE COUSINS 301 
 
 "Your word is enough," said Liscarroll ; "be ready 
 at call." He gave some directions, and on this un- 
 derstanding they separated. 
 
 Not that any lines could be set nor did they need 
 setting while the master was stretched like a dog at 
 his mother's door, idle but held fast. He had not 
 got inside for several days after Edmund's return; 
 and the suspense, doubled by the strangeness, gave 
 his feelings a wrench that dislocated sentiment, or 
 would have swept it from his heart had it been less 
 powerful. The figure in his secret garden now ap- 
 peared remote and a little clouded over. Attraction 
 as the square of the distance holds in the spirit-world 
 no doubt ; his unseen mother came close, and because 
 she was, or might be, dying, threw upon love and its 
 light graces a kind of scorn. Philip chafed, grew 
 restive, gave in to the spectral fascination; "by and 
 by" would do for his courtship, when the black pall 
 had covered this last act. Then then what? he 
 asked himself with discomfort. Then should the 
 world set eyes on a new Lady Liscarroll ? 
 
 By Driscoll's report it seemed that the invalid slept 
 most of her time. Once in a way she inquired, as in 
 a half-doze, whether Philip had gone home, begging 
 that he would wait till she spoke to him. At length 
 he was admitted. In a chamber darkened artifi- 
 cially, between white curtains which gave her a look
 
 302 THE WIZARD'S KNOT 
 
 of ashen-gray, and with large draperies about her, 
 the young man saw, but indistinctly, as through 
 a mist, his ailing mother. She made an effort to use 
 her voice and broke down. All she could manage 
 was a sentence or two, interrupted by severe cough- 
 ing ; however, with a smile just perceptible, she hoped 
 he was not worn out, said she was herself on the 
 mending hand ; if he desired to see how things were 
 going at Renmore, let him fly there and be back 
 again as soon as he might. Philip had question upon 
 question to ask; but the doctor sat near, measuring 
 the seconds, and after this unsatisfactory interview 
 the baronet was compelled to retire. 
 
 "How do you explain the transparent gleam which 
 I noticed in my mother's eyes?" he said to Driscoll. 
 
 "It is a bad sign," the surgeon replied, shaking his 
 head; "consumptive patients have it, and opium- 
 eaters. However, I don't give her up yet. You 
 may safely take a couple of days." 
 
 He took them, and the first sight he had of the 
 Renmore country showed him acres and acres of the 
 potato steaming under a hot sun, all the tokens of the 
 plague visible. The nearer home he came the more 
 frightful was the devastation ! ruin made no choice, 
 every part of the crop yielded the same intolerable 
 stench; and the people were out in crowds like 
 swarming bees some crying aloud, others praying,
 
 THE COUSINS 303 
 
 more not capable of anything but a stupid, speechless 
 attitude, as of men, dead drunk, lying prone upon the 
 soil. Women called on God with loud cries ; terrified 
 children clung to their skirts and, after a pause of 
 consternation, lifted up their voices, thin and clear, 
 lamenting they knew not what. Here was a second 
 shock which threw Philip into a state of discourage- 
 ment, yet of dumb rage, and pulled his nerves as with 
 red-hot pincers. He pitied and hated himself, his 
 tenants, every soul of man. Life was a horror and 
 a fraud. He loathed it. 
 
 "My rents are rotting in the ground," said he that 
 evening to his cousin, as they sat after dinner at the 
 open window, smoking cigars. "You '11 see no more 
 of your next allowance than you can hold on the tip 
 of your Havana. We owe the Munster Bank al- 
 ready. Colegrave knows how much; I don't. Sell 
 a few of your rhymes and tags, Eddie, to some pub- 
 lisher. Won't they fetch a few coppers?" 
 
 "They are mostly love-songs, and I 'm not in 
 love," replied the other, carelessly. "The public 
 don't take to sentiment served up cold. Try you, 
 my lad." 
 
 "What, cold sentiment ! Thank you, I shall have 
 enough on my hands with this accursed potato-rot. 
 No time for sentiment, hot or cold." 
 
 "I meant scalding. But you never said a wiser
 
 3 o 4 THE WIZARD'S KNOT 
 
 word, Phil. It is a sharp notice to the two of us. I 
 must drop my sonneteering, you your love-making. 
 All on account of diseased potatoes ! What a sub- 
 ject for the epic poet ! Now, if the Dean were alive, 
 here would be his pickle-herring tragedy, which he 
 calls the sorriest of farces." 
 
 Philip, you may be sure, had no ears for this tom- 
 foolery, under cover of which Edmund had leveled 
 his piece, and shot straight. 
 
 "You said my love-making. Will you give it a 
 name?" growled the low voice, while Philip leaned 
 forward in his chair, no peony more scarlet. 
 
 "Soon done. The first two letters of its name 
 are Joan O'Dwyer," said his cousin, returning the 
 murderous look. 
 
 "It is a damned lie !" the sound startled like thun- 
 der inside the room; "whoever told you that I have 
 that she " 
 
 "Is it a lie that joins your names together ? Tush, 
 I am wasting my breath. Don't be mad with me, 
 Phil. There is just one thing for you to say and 
 me to hear; then I pitch the whole business to 
 Halifax." 
 
 "Well?" inquired the baronet, still leaning for- 
 ward, his cigar between his fingers. "Well," reiter- 
 ated Philip, as the other sighed heavily, like those 
 who are mounting a steep ascent.
 
 THE COUSINS 305 
 
 "Have you made up your mind to marry the 
 girl?" 
 
 After that neither of them could speak. They 
 heard the ticking of the clock, the whir of evening 
 bats with their ghostly cry in the air outside; min- 
 utes passed. 
 
 "What concern is that of yours ?" said the baronet, 
 slowly. 
 
 "Ha! you are fencing," retorted his cousin, now 
 sure that villainy was on foot. "Can you not be a 
 man ? Speak and shame the devil. I put it as plain 
 as two and two before you. Do you, Sir Philip 
 Liscarroll, etcetera, etcetera, see yourself bringing 
 that girl into this room as Lady of Renmore? No, 
 you don't dare say it. Then what is your meaning?" 
 
 "That is my meaning," cried the young madman, 
 dashing his lighted cigar into Edmund's face. It 
 seemed to strike out sparks from his cousin's eyes, 
 as they sprang to their feet and confronted one 
 another. In an instant they were grappling, suf- 
 focated. "Let me go, or I will strangle you," mut- 
 tered Philip, his great hands on the other's throat. 
 They were unequally matched, and Edmund fell 
 back, panting; his head would have struck the floor 
 had not his wild assailant caught him. 
 
 "I '11 teach you to interfere," said Philip, as he 
 released him. The poet made no answer at first;
 
 306 THE WIZARD'S KNOT 
 
 he was collecting himself for a strong effort, not to 
 try conclusions with his hands, but to act on the 
 whole situation. In a singularly strained accent he 
 said after some internal conflict, "I want your prom- 
 ise that you will marry Joan O'Dwyer or let her 
 alone." 
 
 "And I will break your neck if you say another 
 word about it," cried Philip. Had Joan herself, 
 there and then, begged him on her knees to answer, 
 he would not have done it. 
 
 There was a burning on Edmund's cheek, where 
 the cigar had struck, just below the left eye. It 
 smarted and made him blink. He appeared to be 
 considering deeply. "Poor girl, poor girl," he said 
 at last, "I did hope to save you. Now it is over. 
 Lost, both of us no chance for either." Then he 
 laughed excitedly, and, turning to Philip, continued. 
 "If we were nothing to each other this would end 
 you know how." 
 
 "As you please, and where you please," answered 
 the baronet; "suit yourself." 
 
 "I will don't fear. But I shall not send you a 
 challenge," replied his cousin. 
 
 Philip walked off to the window, and gazed out 
 on the flushed evening. 
 
 "I leave Renmore; whatever happens to you, I 
 have done with it. Good-by, Philip," said the other.
 
 THE COUSINS 307 
 
 "We were at no time very thick; but I could have 
 helped any one who was not a fool." 
 
 "Go," answered the baronet. 
 
 He heard Edmund's retreating steps and in not 
 many minutes saw him, cloaked and hatted, pass 
 out from the hall door and disappear in the woods.
 
 CHAPTER XXII 
 
 BY THE LONNDUBH 
 
 BETWEEN that and midnight, the steward came 
 three or four times, on divers pretenses, into 
 the room, but always found his master smoking and 
 immovable at the window, not to be disturbed by 
 questions. The late moon waned into a white sheet, 
 and still he sat there. Dawn unclosed its purple eye- 
 lids; he was mute, wakeful, deep in thought. His 
 naked spirit shivered in its loneliness. When he 
 looked to one side, as if seeking counsel, his eyes 
 rested on Sir Walter's grave. In the other direction, 
 unseen but felt, was Joan O'Dwyer's cottage. A 
 strange, inarticulate dialogue seemed to pass in the 
 air between them, warning him how he ventured 
 to match himself with one he might lose or leave 
 his father's doom over again. But the sweetness 
 of love tasted was also on his lips. That made the 
 soul faint within him. 
 
 He would act before the morrow ended. Mr. 
 Colegrave was to be in his office at ten an appoint- 
 ment which could not now be put off. That dealt with 
 
 308
 
 BY THE LONNDUBH 309 
 
 he must go down to the schoolmaster's. Had he 
 caught a decisive word in the night's colloquy be- 
 tween Love and Death, Philip might have hurled the 
 estate and the agent into the bottomless pit, or, with 
 a terrific pang, cut through the wizard's knot which 
 bound him. The case was too hard. Meditation 
 showed it in a thousand varying shades of guilt or 
 misery. A few hours would, perhaps, clear the sand, 
 reveal the crystal. Though he had struck Edmund 
 that horrid, indefensible blow as in cooler moments 
 he was not unwilling to grant he knew his cousin, 
 and trusted in his honor. 
 
 The man whom he had insulted was not far off. 
 While one of these cousins sat staring at the moon, 
 the other was wandering in the sea-kirtled woods of 
 that ancient house, or had thrown himself drowsily 
 on great heaps of dry heather, close to the waves, 
 and was arguing this debatable cause. His first plan 
 had been dashed against a blind reef ; "but I may still 
 rouse the sense of danger; and that other move is 
 left," he reflected, meaning he knew what. 
 
 Shame and weariness overcame him toward the 
 early hours ; he slept, to wake with a start under the 
 broad, warm day, resolved not to violate the finest 
 demands of his own punctilious temper, yet hoping 
 the end would reward him. "In token that I am 
 honest, I give up my tanistry," was his half-smiling
 
 310 THE WIZARD'S KNOT 
 
 thought as he sprang from the heather. "I give up," 
 he continued, biting his pale lips, and with a sigh, 
 "Lisaveta if it was not done before. Pretty well 
 for an effeminate amorist, who had endured what I 
 did last night, never striking back. And I would 
 have struck had he not looked so wretched, poor 
 devil ! Now he calls me coward, no doubt." 
 
 Walking with a certain carefulness, Edmund 
 turned up the side of the Lonndubh, refreshing his 
 eyesight with its morning splendors of light under 
 the thick branches. He came upon Joan as she 
 moved toward her cottage from the spring where she 
 had drawn a pitcher of water. So early an en- 
 counter boded no good; she set down her burden, 
 paused near a tall oak, now in all its glory of russet 
 and green, and waited until he should open the dia- 
 logue. 
 
 "I have seen Philip," were his first words, in a 
 tone so friendly that she looked at him with astonish- 
 ment. "Ah, you wonder how I got this mark," he 
 went on, touching his cheek lightly and coloring: 
 "it is your mark, Joan set on me by my cousin as 
 soon as I mentioned your name." 
 
 "You '11 break the heart in me," she cried, trem- 
 bling all over. "What call had you to come be- 
 tween us ? Oh, sir, is it the way with love and affec- 
 tion to ruin us all ?"
 
 BY THE LONNDUBH 3 n 
 
 "It is, Joan, dear," replied the poet; "you should 
 have known that same when you gave love to the 
 master. For myself, I am leaving Renmore from 
 this out." 
 
 "On account of me?" she inquired, her breast 
 heaving. 
 
 "On your account alone, my child. It is right I 
 should tell you so." 
 
 "But I would n't marry the best man that trod on 
 shoe leather till he let you back into your own home," 
 she said, "and I ask you to forgive me." 
 
 "Did he ever promise to make you Lady Lis- 
 carroll ?" began Edmund, but he broke off suddenly. 
 "Don't answer me what signifies Philip's promise, 
 good or bad. It is yourself must say the word." 
 
 "Long ago I was telling my own mind what you 
 are telling me now," she answered proudly. "The 
 thing that is a hundred times too good for me is not 
 good enough for the like of him. My heaven would 
 be his hell." 
 
 "Joan, I have news for you," said he, with great 
 gentleness; she looked and listened as to a doom or 
 an oracle. "When I was in the County Galway, 
 some one you should think of now rose up before 
 me." 
 
 "Oh, you have seen my mother," cried the poor 
 girl, running to him. "She is not dead yet. Thanks
 
 3 i2 THE WIZARD'S KNOT 
 
 be to God ! But surely sick, or sore, or sorry. Did 
 she not ask was my father living? You told her I 
 do be praying for her night and morning ?" 
 
 " 'T was this way, my child. Mr. Staunton has a 
 great estate Altamira it is called and in the stoni- 
 est parts of it do be living the squatters he won't turn 
 off to the workhouse they are so miserable outside 
 it, what would they be inside?" 
 
 "God bless him for that," said Joan. 
 
 "Well, he used to be showing me those squatters 
 and the cabins they put over their heads low bits of 
 sheilings you must stoop to go into, the naked stones 
 on one another, as a child would make a house of 
 them. And on the doorstep of the worst there I 
 caught a woman looking hard at me ; and I seemed to 
 have a sketch of her face. Indeed I had, Joan ; and 
 my eye is on it now," he said, regarding her pitifully, 
 "but when Mr. Staunton spoke my name, what did 
 she do but let a screech out of her you 'd hear across 
 Galway Bay, and fall dead at my feet?" 
 
 "Oh, Mother of God, and was she dead entirely?" 
 cried Joan, her hands lifted in the suppliant attitude 
 of Irish despair. 
 
 "God did not give her the grace to die," he an- 
 swered, "yet who knows ? Perhaps she lives to fulfil 
 a good purpose that no other could. I '11 not tear 
 your heart with a long story. Macklin is dead
 
 BY THE LONNDUBH 313 
 
 this many a day; 't was he played the mischief 
 here we will forget that; and she is a lone 
 woman, withered, gray, and broken, ashamed to be 
 seen." 
 
 "Let her come back to us had we but a meal of 
 stirabout we will share it with her. Oh, let her 
 come back to her own," said the girl, and fell voice- 
 less from sheer emotion. 
 
 "Listen to me, and you will know if I did right. 
 That was the very word I put upon her. 'Go back, 
 Sheila,' said I, 'to the place you came from. Your 
 poor old man will take you in ; and Joan ' I need n't 
 say what my talk was of Joan. The few shillings to 
 pay her way she would not take, however." 
 
 "And you left her among the stones of Galway?" 
 asked the girl, with a strong sense of rebuke hardly 
 kept down. 
 
 Edmund smiled. "That is your reckoning of me, 
 is it? Now, my girl, whatever happens after this, 
 believe I could n't do more for you if you were my 
 own sister." 
 
 "That I '11 never be," she murmured, adding in 
 her heart, "Nor any man's wife." 
 
 "I persuaded your mother to leave that place and 
 come home. She gave me her oath upon it. 'But,' 
 said she, 'for my penance and my poverty I '11 walk 
 every step of the road.' She took a start that same
 
 3H THE WIZARD'S KNOT 
 
 day, by herself, barefoot, carrying her poor little 
 duds in a parcel on her back." 
 
 "But is n't it a miracle her not to be here by this ? 
 How long would she be going the road?" inquired 
 her daughter, anxiously. 
 
 "Here 's the second chapter of my tale," answered 
 Edmund ; "I had my own reasons for turning home 
 two or three days after Sheila going. At Kilmal- 
 lock I was to take dinner with the Quinns old 
 friends of our family and there 's a holy well 't is 
 but a cupful of water on the roadside, before you 
 turn into the main street. At that spot your mother 
 was seated, footsore and half killed with her travel- 
 ing. She could not raise a limb from the ground 
 was it a stroke of the Almighty, or the great misery 
 she had gone through? I am not able to tell you. 
 But her journey came to an end at the holy well." 
 
 "I am sure you never left her in that state; your 
 heart would be in your mouth seeing a woman so 
 wasted." 
 
 "It was, Joan. But by that time I had news 
 which when we first met was unknown to me 
 news concerning yourself. My friend Quinn is a 
 doctor; I explained the case to him, and your 
 mother I left under his charge at Kilmallock, where 
 you" 
 
 She would not let him finish. "Where I will go
 
 BY THE LONNDUBH 315 
 
 to her I and my father we will lave this place 
 see how God does everything for the best! Is not 
 the man above wiser than all of us ?" said Joan, with 
 tears, not unhappy. 
 
 "My knowledge of you was not less than my con- 
 fidence," replied Edmund. "When will you turn 
 your face to the road? And could I lend your 
 father what would pay the car driver ?" 
 
 "You could not, sir;" she waved a decisive hand, 
 her eyes bright with the tender drops. "They must 
 never have it to say we were paid to lave Renmore. 
 I have what will clear some part of the road ; the rest 
 we will take as my mother did." 
 
 "Sir Philip will be hurrying after you," said the 
 young man, "if he gets the least hint. Can you start 
 without delay?" 
 
 Her breath stopped. The air seemed to quiver 
 with passion, as the waves beneath an intense sun- 
 shine. It was impossible that Edmund should say 
 one word more, and he stood passive in this moment 
 of their fate, when the scales swung to and fro un- 
 decided. 
 
 "I have no right to run from him and no talk 
 between us," she said convulsively. 
 
 "Your mother," whispered Edmund, "your 
 mother, Joan!" 
 
 "Was she the best of mothers, he has my hand and
 
 316 THE WIZARD'S KNOT 
 
 word; I can, I must, go back from them; but I '11 
 do it to his face." 
 
 "With bare hands you will pluck your heart out 
 of the burning coals ? He is a devil to have his own 
 way; are you able for him? I can see you tremble 
 from here." 
 
 "Through fire and hell itself I will go to have my 
 heart again," she said, flushing up ; "if I am wake, I 
 am honest. He shall be told I am taking the road to 
 my mother, but not where she is. Thin he won't 
 say it is putting a lie on him I was." 
 
 "You will go to-morrow, if you stay this day," in- 
 sisted Edmund. 
 
 "We will go after seeing him. That 's the bond 
 is upon me." 
 
 Edmund came up and took her hand. "God be 
 with you, Joan. I have done. I will let the Quinns 
 know you are coming. If you want to get away 
 easily, put your trust in Felim O'Riordan, and don't 
 see Sir Philip. Shall we meet again ? God knows. 
 I have made up my mind to go to England ; it is far 
 from Renmore. You will risk yourself with the 
 master ?" 
 
 "If you wint and I wint on the one day, every 
 tongue of the neighbors would have the same story," 
 she said, with a child's innocent malice. "But you 
 scorn to be thinking what they 'd say."
 
 BY THE LONNDUBH 317 
 
 "My thought is that when you hear Philip's 
 whisper, like the breeze in the branches over our 
 heads, you will despise the whole world too. Rather 
 than that I would carry you myself to Kilmallock." 
 
 Her hands were clenched with fierce determination 
 across her breast. "One word is as good as a thou- 
 sand," she said. "If the blow kills me, I must let 
 him strike it here. May the angels of God pick every 
 stone from before your feet as you go, Mr. Edmund, 
 and may the ocean be a soft pillow to your head! 
 Was it not for you I would be still in the dark. 
 Whether I live or die, I '11 never forget that." 
 
 He turned, and while she stood as if to watch him, 
 but full of her own great distracting thoughts, his 
 bent figure was absorbed into the waving woods, 
 sucked down into life's past. "When I set eyes 
 on him again, I '11 be a widow," she said to herself, 
 repeatedly, "a widow that was never a wife. 'T is 
 my pity and my portion." The sweet Celtic laments, 
 with their pretty words of moan, sounded within her, 
 softly and sadly, like the women beginning to keen at 
 a burial. "Is truagh!" and "mo bhron!" echoed the 
 refrain, heart-rending, untranslatable. Already she 
 listened for the steps of tempest rushing down from 
 the castle. 
 
 And in the sultry languor of afternoon Philip was 
 at her door. The wise, hard agent had kept him,
 
 3i8 THE WIZARD'S KNOT 
 
 grinding sparks out of a millstone, with reports of 
 gales not paid, nor likely to be paid at Martinmas 
 next, of mortgages demanding their interest, of loans 
 from the bank which must be renewed at higher 
 terms, all the deadly symptoms, in short, that, break- 
 ing out over encumbered estates like a disease, 
 prophesied of woes more formidable. Above all, the 
 famine was throwing itself on these broad acres. 
 Would Sir Philip join with other gentlemen in a 
 strong resolution at the forthcoming sessions he 
 was, of course, on the Grand Jury which might 
 strike and stir public opinion in England? This, 
 that, and the other a man with the plague in all his 
 limbs making his will ! At last he flung away, ran 
 out into the open, and directed his steps toward the 
 cottage. Edmund was nowhere to be seen; he had 
 apparently stuck to his word and absconded. But 
 had he spoken ? and with what result ? 
 
 Yes, yes, a single glance told him; Joan was an- 
 other woman. "You have been talking with Ed- 
 mund," he said, astonished at the exceeding beauty 
 of her paleness, the luminous depths of her purple- 
 gray eyes, and touched almost to fainting when 
 he saw her tremble. "But don't believe him," 
 pursued the ardent lover, his hand stretched to 
 seize hers and convey a thrilling assurance from his 
 heart. "Never a word, my beloved. Why do you
 
 BY THE LONNDUBH 319 
 
 draw away from me ? I must not touch you ? But 
 why?" 
 
 They were outside in the thick, whispering reeds, 
 at that time half asleep, and the Lonndubh stretched 
 glassy and still along their path. Not that they 
 walked as in the old days, dreamily sauntering ; their 
 steps were few and they came back upon them, so 
 overweighted with passion that their limbs refused 
 very soon to move. Joan wanted to be out of her 
 father's view, and avoided the open spaces where he 
 might have caught sight of them from the cabin 
 door. 
 
 "Give me time, Sir Philip," she said humbly; in 
 that word he felt a cloud all about him. 
 
 "Don't think me changed," he was urging; "last 
 night Edmund drove me crazy. I am not different. 
 What did he say of me ?" 
 
 "He said it was no matter what you said," she 
 answered this was the surgeon opening his case of 
 instruments "but that is not it help me now a 
 little no, don't look at me that way " she fixed 
 her own eyes resolutely on the ground. "You gave 
 me a promise one time," she continued, then her 
 breath failed. 
 
 "Did he say I would n't keep it ?" asked Philip, in 
 accents as shattered as her own. She shook her 
 head and moved down toward the stream.
 
 320 THE WIZARD'S KNOT 
 
 "Lave Mr. Edmund out of it," was the reply ; "he 
 would n't ask me was there a binding word between 
 us. Indeed, I thought you out of your mind to give 
 it, and here it is for you again." 
 
 She turned and was holding out the ruddy curl, 
 tied with silk, which in their hour of ecstasy she had 
 cut from his temples. Philip snatched it with vio- 
 lence and flung it into the idle water, where it loi- 
 tered, was blown about, drifted this way and that, 
 until a sudden gust sent it floating seaward. 
 
 "But I don't give back mine !" he exclaimed, and a 
 red rain of tears, as he thought, fell from his burning 
 eyes. "Will you break your oath, Joan ? What was 
 it we swore? That cousin God confound him! 
 so angered me, I would not answer his insolent ques- 
 tions. Now you punish me with whips of steel. But 
 I mean to marry you; I never meant anything 
 else." 
 
 "If I took an oath, I will take another to equal it," 
 she said, always as if the next sentence must break 
 her in pieces. "I gave you back the lock of hair. 
 Oh, 't is gone from me !" and that cry of a sick child 
 brought him to her heart, but she ran to escape him, 
 wildly, as though her leap would be into the river. 
 "I '11 die before it is done," she whispered, "but it 
 must be done. You have your promise again; let 
 me have my oath we will never Did I tell you
 
 BY THE LONNDUBH 321 
 
 my father and myself should be laving this place 
 to-morrow ?" 
 
 "Come, I won't harm you," said Philip, seeing her 
 desperate, his love at odds with a horrible sense of 
 freedom. Joan was the most beautiful of God's 
 creatures now, struggling toward some great height, 
 some nobleness that rayed out splendor as she faced 
 it. Oh, lose this soul of his soul, this unparalleled, 
 before whom he was smitten with light, not for all 
 he ever had, or should forfeit ! 
 
 "I hold you to your promise," he broke out, and 
 then tried to be calm. "Why leave me and this 
 place, you foolish child ? It is your home ; I am your 
 husband." That pleading in his voice, which melted 
 them both, was very dangerous. For a moment the 
 girl stood vanquished. But her eyes followed the 
 floating curl, as it was borne out to sea ; and even so 
 slight a thing done gave her support. 
 
 "Relaise me," she said quietly, "from my bonds. 
 When that curl left me, my heart went with it. 
 Philip, from this out, I am a dead woman to 
 you." 
 
 In his bloodshot, brilliant eyes you might have 
 read the madness of love and murder, such a mixed 
 passion as fills the streets of populous cities with the 
 cry of tragedy hawked as evening news. Murder, 
 hiding them both under its dusky wings the Love-
 
 322 THE WIZARD'S KNOT 
 
 Raven, black as midnight, a blot on the sultry Au- 
 gust weather a breathless flame which, in another 
 moment, would spurt its venom. Joan felt the dark 
 bird flapping noiseless pinions; she sank as it 
 hovered. 
 
 "Oh, for God's sake," she gasped in pity and 
 terror, "Philip, take your eyes from me! I did n't 
 think to hurt you so bad. Whist, dear, I said the 
 heart was out of me, and 't is true; you have it 
 always. I found my mother at last my mother that 
 strayed away, Philip, dear 't is to her we are going. 
 Ah, dear God above, what a 'stroke to the man you 
 gave me !" 
 
 With fire, as in the Arabian tale, she had fought 
 fire, though it should make ashes of herself. The 
 Love-Raven drooped, split with a dart tempered 
 at the forge of hell ; it tumbled, clearing the sky 
 in its descent, and Philip was a mere man again. 
 No apparition could be half so dreadful as this 
 haggard, ludicrous mother, that "strayed away," and 
 was now bleating after her lamb in some frowsy 
 thicket. At this supreme moment, his hopes all 
 broken glass, splinters from which the naked foot 
 recoils, he laughed a loud, blaspheming laugh, that 
 smote the heavens as with a fist and railed upon the 
 gods. 
 
 "I forgot you had a mother, Joan," he said dryly;
 
 BY THE LONNDUBH 323 
 
 "that alters the case. Fine things, mothers are n't 
 they? But we can't get loose from them till they 
 die, and how long some of them are about it! 
 Tough yes immortal ; is it fresh air and traveling 
 that keeps them up? Birds pitch their young out 
 of the nest; mothers yours and mine leave the 
 nest to bring up the birds, but they always fly back, 
 don't they?" His voice changed without warning. 
 "Oh, my girl, I think I shall go mad." 
 
 For the last time their arms were round each 
 other's necks, and they had forgotten oaths and 
 counter-oaths in a clinging embrace. "Will you 
 go from me, mavourneen ?" he whispered. Her 
 tears ran softly. 
 
 "I would die, if 't was any good to you," she said, 
 breathing the words into his bosom; "but I am not 
 fit to live with you. Now let me take the one fare- 
 well in this world. Beyond it there is nothing but 
 blackness and death." 
 
 "You never loved me," he said, releasing her with 
 a wild cry. 
 
 She stood still, in the very attitude of that marble 
 Deirdre, her hands lifted appealingly. "As God is 
 my judge, you were the one desire of my heart, and 
 ever will be," she answered, in tones that had all the 
 music of her singing. "Did I think worse of myself 
 than of you oh, man, are n't you nine times sweeter
 
 324 THE WIZARD'S KNOT 
 
 to me than the honey on my lips, and more to me 
 than father and mother ? but 't is when the soul in me 
 cries out for you, hungry and thirsty, that I swear to 
 God I won't disgrace you with a thing like this. 
 There 's the lock of hair you gave me away with 
 the strame and out to the ocean ; but as far as it goes, 
 't will be a piece of yourself. Oh, Philip, I am that 
 lock of hair ; and if you never see me the second time, 
 don't say I was strange to you." 
 
 At those words Joan fled into the cottage and 
 barred it against him. He dared not beat on the 
 door. But as he passed, she heard a dreadful sob- 
 bing ; then the woods and the stream held their peace, 
 and a great silence fell. 
 
 Four-and-twenty hours later Philip went down 
 to the cabin once more. It stood open. He entered 
 and saw bare walls, a cold hearth; the nest was 
 empty. Loud in the thatch the swallows twittered ; 
 a wild rose hung down, straggling across the small 
 window, and it showed crimson against the sun. 
 Creatures of the wood had drawn closer, even in that 
 brief space, encouraged by the absence of human 
 footsteps. A torn leaf of some Greek author lay 
 trampled in the moist clay, where the schoolmaster 
 had let it fall. 
 
 She was gone the free, brave spirit could not 
 be held in, even by pity for himself. A greater pity
 
 BY THE LONNDUBH 325 
 
 had driven her out; and Philip, with such despair as 
 when Antony fell on his sword, never asked to which 
 point of the compass she was fleeing. The tragic 
 end carried off stage and all. From the treasure of 
 love that yesterday was his, unhappy ! nothing did he 
 keep but a ringlet of blue-black hair. He felt that, 
 like the forsaken home, he was cold and dark. 
 
 "These mothers, these mothers," he said to him- 
 self, in no melting mood. "Why can we not burn 
 away the nerve that thrills when they call ? I must go 
 and see mine now. She will ask me about " He 
 could not name her; could he bear that any one 
 should touch that string ? From the cabin he strode 
 into the copse, walked for miles along the lonely 
 beach, mounted the hills and gaped for air when the 
 vision of the sea broke on him below their furrowed 
 crests. The August night would not lose its in- 
 sufferable brightness; but Renmore Castle appeared 
 to him as an unquiet grave; he shrank from going 
 home. An old saying of the schoolmaster's would 
 not leave him : "Bad is the night, and many a one like 
 it will ye feel from this out." When sunrise filled 
 the clouds with color, and the sky had become a 
 burning jewel above his head, Philip was standing at 
 the gates of Airgead Ross.
 
 CHAPTER XXIII 
 
 STRICKEN 
 
 MARCH had come, and the hungry months, in a 
 procession of gray-vestured hags, each more 
 grim and gaunt than she that went before, were 
 climbing up the steep of heaven, which sometimes 
 threw over them a gleam of mocking sunshine, and 
 afterward drenched them in rain for days together. 
 The monstrous famine lay stretched out full length 
 from sea to sea. He had taken the land in his 
 grasp. To Lisaveta, watching in her tower at Silver- 
 wood, a more frightful dream yet real as horror 
 could make it was ever present. She saw the 
 nation on a raft, far out in the Atlantic; and of 
 the miserable food it had snatched from the wreck, 
 three-fourths were washed overboard in a wild tor- 
 nado; the days might be counted when what was 
 left should fail, after which the castaways must eat 
 up one another. "Death is the only god that gets 
 no gifts," she thought, calling to mind a verse from 
 some Greek poet that was often on Edmund's lips, 
 
 when they prophesied of the coming evil. "Why 
 
 326
 
 STRICKEN 327 
 
 does he get none but because he takes all?" she 
 argued, ending with a sigh. "Where is Edmund 
 now? And Joan, the ill-starred child? Together 
 then they are wretched; or apart she had better 
 be in her grave." 
 
 Seven months, and no tidings had reached them 
 of the O'Dwyers, concerning whom a legend was 
 already growing. Why had they flitted suddenly 
 within not many hours of the younger Liscarroll's 
 disappearance? O'Sullivan, the steward, invented, 
 or set others upon sketching, a little fancy piece, 
 which might have been placarded on walls as "The 
 Two Gentlemen of Renmore," but in it Sir Philip 
 played the honorable part. The event showed Joan's 
 perverse taste, and sealed her doom. "But would 
 the old schoolmaster go along with her?" it was ob- 
 jected. "Cathal is a poor crathachan" said the 
 steward; "you would entice him to the jaws of hell 
 with the smell of whisky. Often I heard his boast : 
 "I scorn to have sinse whin I 'm drinking." Let 
 who will find the drop, O'Dwyer will let the cailin go 
 to him. However, mark this, my man; I am not 
 paid to tell on Mr. Edmund, whatever he done, and 
 I '11 thank you to lave me aside from your gossip." 
 
 In this shape, but with uncertain outlines, the 
 story floated round Miss O'Connor. She could not 
 question Philip closely, or at all, after his disheveled
 
 328 THE WIZARD'S KNOT 
 
 appearance at her gates on that August morning. 
 Yet they had been constantly together since, and a 
 legend was binding them also as man and wife to be, 
 when the hunger should slacken and life run in 
 its pleasant channels again. No wonder. What 
 could be the meaning of Lady Liscarroll's long stay 
 at Airgead Ross, if not her son's marriage with the 
 great heiress ? Once the cry went on Edmund ; but 
 he was flown to foreign parts, and Sir Philip had 
 made almost a home for himself of Yegor's cottage; 
 surely with intention. 
 
 His mother's illness kept him there, you will say. 
 It was lingering, painful, and mysterious. The doc- 
 tor still named it a decline, but gentle, as of sleep 
 stealing on imperceptibly. "She can't recover," he 
 told Philip in so many words ; "it is like fine old lace 
 wasting into mold, thin as a spider's web," said he. 
 "and I believe the Gray Tower did it. Don't attempt 
 to take her back with you. If the people saw her 
 ladyship, they 'd say she was not there at all, but 
 some fairy woman from Rathmorna." 
 
 "I got my hurt at Rathmorna," said the baronet, 
 gloomily smiling, "and the same night my mother 
 came to me. So that is how they talk, Driscoll?" 
 
 "Foolishly, indeed," said the surgeon, "but they 
 would be for putting her on the fire to bring home 
 the rale Lady Liscarroll. She is safe here, and here 
 she should be left."
 
 STRICKEN 329 
 
 Some conversation followed between the young 
 man and Miss O'Connor. "I make Yegor's cottage 
 over to you freehold," she said with her serious 
 smile. "Your mother shall not be moved. She has 
 won my heart. No, not a syllable on that subject. 
 You and I, Philip, are friends ; there can be no ques- 
 tion of money between us." 
 
 "But you have lost other friends. They don't 
 call since " 
 
 "Let them stay at home, then. Ihave made your 
 mother less unhappy ; is n't that enough ? The ways 
 of county families are nothing to me; I leave my 
 character in their hands better fling that to the 
 wolves than one's self. Such is my Russian code of 
 honor, Philip." 
 
 "It is like you," he could not help saying; and 
 his sincerity, unconquerable sadness giving it so deep 
 a tone, made them intimate without lessening the 
 reserve which had always hung about him. Lis- 
 aveta would have talked of his cousin; she thought 
 so, at least, in spite of a warning shiver, but there 
 was no way into the black marble tomb where his 
 secret lay unsunned. Moreover, the invalid had 
 dropped a caution in time. 
 
 "Philip is the unluckiest of men," said Lady Lis- 
 carroll, with pauses of faintness to punctuate her 
 admonitions. "I can't be sure what is the real state 
 of things. It would be cruel to ask him; but his
 
 330 THE WIZARD'S KNOT 
 
 cousin has quitted Renmore Joan, my innocent 
 maid, is not there either. One distrusts young men 
 that write love-songs and young women that sing 
 them. So inflammable is not safe, is it? Promise 
 me you will refrain from inquiries." 
 
 "I will not trouble Philip, certainly," answered the 
 girl. "His cousin " she stopped, and was glad in 
 the dim chamber not to be seen blushing. "I have 
 had a letter from Edmund." 
 
 "Really," murmured the sick woman, "has he the 
 face to write? In what terms? Humbly or de- 
 fiantly? He begs your forgiveness?" 
 
 "No; it is rather a formal note I could wish 
 it otherwise dated London; and he sends me 
 the papers I wanted, about those Stauntons how 
 they manage their property, you know. But in 
 a couple of words he concludes by saying that he 
 has left Ireland for a long while, and he bids me 
 good-by." 
 
 "I call that underhand," said Lady Liscarroll; 
 "depend upon it there is a rat behind the arras. To 
 go in a hurry then the vague address, London no 
 farewell even to you, my dear, generous girl ! Why, 
 it is unpardonable !" 
 
 "I wish we could get news of Joan," answered the 
 tender-hearted Lisaveta; "but no one seems to have 
 been on the road when she went. At least, so Yegor
 
 STRICKEN 
 
 33 1 
 
 tells me. To push inquiries would set more tongues 
 in motion perhaps do harm." 
 
 "My son, I can feel, is desperately hurt. Fancy it. 
 an elopement, a moonlight flitting anything bad 
 you please from within his gates, as if he had de- 
 coyed the girl and the old man, to let Master Ed- 
 mund work his wicked will ! Spare him the allu- 
 sion. I am only thankful it did not come to pass 
 while Joan was attending on me." 
 
 "You say, then, she has gone with with your 
 nephew?" 
 
 The lady replied in a feeble tone, "I say nothing, 
 for I know nothing, but appearances are black 
 against him." 
 
 They were, and would be, whatever followed, un- 
 less the baronet should explain. But if he had been 
 of a seldom-speaking nature in times past, he was the 
 image of silence now. The land itself had fallen 
 under a kind of amazement; stupor was in all eyes; 
 and Philip seemed less peculiar than in the bright old 
 chatty season when a people that delight in talk, 
 and can talk admirably, had captivated tourists with 
 their humorous eccentricities, their lambent wit, their 
 inexhaustible fun and not unkindly satire. A still- 
 ness that might be felt settled down over Ireland. 
 Fiddling and dancing stopped dead; there was no 
 sound of the old fairy music from rath or hillside;
 
 332 THE WIZARD'S KNOT 
 
 sports fell extinct among the myriads who looked, 
 in a fever-dream of despair, upon the fields which 
 had turned to plague-spots. Rooted in their sorrow 
 to the soil, what could they do but shroud their heads 
 at last and die speechless? The silence of the cast- 
 aways on their raft a world of waters around them ! 
 
 At such a time, the customary bonds were loos- 
 ened ; in so huge an eclipse, what mattered social con- 
 vention ? There was leisure too much, where every 
 minute should have been precious but no tempta- 
 tion to blame the Russian girl, in whose house a 
 young man, single and marriageable, had become a 
 daily inmate. Lady Liscarroll ceased to be a theme 
 of indignation or surprise. Will Hapgood might 
 now ride openly every other day, if he chose to 
 Silverwood ; his cronies had something else to think 
 of than the fiend which sat on his crupper. 
 
 Yet they did not think to any purpose. Nor 
 did their more sapient elders. The Famine, which 
 starved a million of the governed, proved in letters 
 of blood and shame in cottages that were burnt 
 over the corpses within them by way of funeral pyre ; 
 in pits choked with the dead ; in a miasma of sickness 
 spreading until the very air was diseased with it 
 that the governing classes did not know how to gov- 
 ern. Shall we say that the Famine created this an- 
 archy ? no, but everywhere it brought anarchy to the
 
 STRICKEN 333 
 
 face of day such a day as men call the Last Judg- 
 ment. That judgment had now fallen upon the 
 Irish peasant, a slave during centuries, and on the 
 Irish gentleman, who held his land by the tenure of 
 making life possible to his serfs and dependants. 
 
 Behold, he had made it impossible even for him- 
 self! 
 
 In the same room where Miss O'Connor had 
 talked with Edmund and her agent of the coming 
 disaster, she was seated again, on this wild March 
 morning. Mr. Nagle, his maps outspread, was 
 marking the fields and farms on which the death-rate 
 had mounted highest. Sir Philip, at the window, 
 listened or looked out, and sometimes threw a word 
 over his shoulder. 
 
 "We can do no more," said the agent; "relief 
 works are in progress ; the people get soup once a day 
 by your orders " 
 
 "If they are able to fetch or send for it," said 
 Lisaveta. "How about the others that can't 
 stir?" 
 
 "Well, we want an army of relieving-officers," 
 said Mr. Nagle. "I don't know where they are to 
 come from. It is a new idea that giving money 
 leaves the distress as great as ever." 
 
 "But it is true," she said. "People can't eat shil- 
 lings and sixpences. There should be a regular mil-
 
 334 THE WIZARD'S KNOT 
 
 itary service as in a besieged city. And oh, Mr. 
 Nagle, how few soldiers of charity we have! 
 There 's Glenmasson five or six hundred people 
 dying, and only the couple of clergymen and a single 
 doctor to see they get nourishment." 
 
 "Renmore is as bad," flung in Philip; "it is my 
 own place, but I can do next to nothing. Every other 
 house has some one in it at the last gasp. Have you 
 a dead cart here to go round and collect the corpses 
 they find on the street every morning? We hired 
 one in our village not before it was time. It never 
 comes back empty." 
 
 "The people die off like sheep," said Mr. Nagle. 
 
 "They die like angels," answered Lisaveta. "Did 
 you ever see patience so beautiful ? When they can 
 hardly speak from hunger, still they say 'God is 
 good.' And not one of them will steal the food he 
 wants so sorely they go down into the deep, 
 praying." 
 
 "I saw ten doors shut fast in Glenmasson yester- 
 day," observed the agent, in a subdued voice. "The 
 families within had all died since our last meeting 
 here. Three of those cottages would have to be 
 burnt, and the bodies within them ; coffins could not 
 be had, nor was the place safe from infection." 
 
 "Yes, I know. They were telling me this morn- 
 ing that Darby Fitzmaurice, the big wrestler you
 
 STRICKEN 335 
 
 remember him, Philip, last May Day was dead 
 with the hunger, and his- wife and her sister." 
 
 "When I was driving hither from the castle yes- 
 terday," said Philip, "I could count at least twenty 
 heaps of ashes that were cabins, and inside them 
 faugh ! what is the use of talking ? The country is 
 one great burying-place." 
 
 "And yet we hear no keen raised by the women; 
 the friends and relations don't follow as they used 
 when the funeral is seen on the road," observed Mr. 
 Nagle. "I had to call strangers to help me, not five 
 days ago, after getting poor Tom Bresnahan into the 
 coffin itself." 
 
 "Worse than that. Did you hear of the dogs in 
 St. Colman's Churchyard, and the thing Frank Hur- 
 ley took out of their mouths?" said the lady, pale- 
 faced. 
 
 "No wonder, if we can't dig the pits deep enough 
 to hold thousands," replied her adviser. "But 
 we 're like an army struck with the plague. Every 
 person is down with it." 
 
 "Those men you see trying to make roads God 
 save the mark!" exclaimed Philip, "they have no 
 strength left in them. Yet they must work before 
 the soup is ladled out ; and they struggle against one 
 another like famished lepers." 
 
 "But the children have you noticed that the chil-
 
 336 THE WIZARD'S KNOT 
 
 dren no longer play in the street? Not a sound of 
 their voices," cried Lisaveta; "something has clean 
 swept them away." 
 
 "They are lying huddled on top of one another by 
 the smokeless hearth and in dark corners; we know 
 that," returned Philip. "Aye, thousands of them." 
 
 "Yet we gentlefolks, rent-receivers, set over them 
 to guide and to guard, if necessary, to feed this peo- 
 ple, are impotent as painted idols," she said, with 
 uncontrollable emotion. 
 
 The agent answered her. "My dear lady, it is 
 the English landlord refuses to abolish the Corn 
 Laws ; our Irish estates are mortgaged up to the hilt. 
 Let us not blame ourselves too harshly. You are 
 doing all in your power; so is Sir Philip." 
 
 "Perhaps," she replied with a sigh; "to my 
 thought we are drones, suddenly commissioned to 
 make honey for the working-bees. The hive is 
 crammed with their dead bodies. Don't let us 
 boast. Tried and found wanting. Write that on 
 our gravestones." 
 
 "Well, we pay for it," said Philip, turning round, 
 so as to exhibit a wasted countenance and eyes 
 deep sunken in their sockets. "I am not the only 
 one by scores. But I may tell you, Miss O'Connor, 
 and you, Mr. Nagle, as an old friend of our house, 
 that the mortgages on my property have been bought
 
 STRICKEN 337 
 
 up by some unknown person, who threatens to fore- 
 close within six months. I shall not be able to settle 
 with him; and I see the end. Our family will part 
 from Renmore, which they have held since the time 
 of Richard I." 
 
 Lisaveta cried out, and would have clasped the 
 hand that Philip withdrew. The agent, who was 
 not less moved, said, with an attempt at calmness, 
 "Your unknown person is no mystery, or I have a 
 couple of blind eyes. He is our old acquaintance, 
 Davy Roche." 
 
 "Who will evict me, as he did Cathal O'Dwyer," 
 exclaimed the baronet, laughing unpleasantly. "The 
 fortune of war! But now, Miss Lisaveta, you un- 
 derstand that I can take no share in your plans of 
 relief, and why, if I am an idol, Roche is the idol- 
 breaker; he means to pull me down. The estate is 
 entailed on my cousin," he continued with embar- 
 rassment, "but Edmund has " he stopped. "That 
 will make no difference in the end." 
 
 "Is Lady Liscarroll aware that you are threat- 
 ened?" said Miss O'Connor, looking at the wan-faced 
 young man with an unquiet glance. 
 
 "I have told her," said he, turning to the window 
 again. 
 
 "Ah," said the lady, under her breath; and she fell 
 into a deep study, across which a smile darted. "We
 
 338 THE WIZARD'S KNOT 
 
 will break off now, I think," was the conclusion of 
 her musing. "But you should have told me first, 
 Philip," she added, in the full rich tones that made 
 her sympathy a balm to wounded spirits. "I don't 
 agree in Mr. Roche taking Renmore estate to him- 
 self. He is not wanted there, and the Liscarrolls 
 are." 
 
 "We have had notice to quit," replied he; "unless 
 we could find a crock of gold at Rathmorna, out we 
 go at Michaelmas. We shall not find one." 
 
 "Who knows? Who knows?" she answered 
 soothingly. The agent marveled that his young 
 friend did not speak on this broad hint; but as if a 
 demon held him speechless, Philip declined to unlock 
 his lips, and Mr. Nagle was angered. "The man's 
 blood has turned to water," he thought. 
 
 Was it so? Lisaveta, her face shining, appeared 
 to have caught up a sudden light, which dazzled, yet 
 did not displease her. 
 
 Walking on the edge of her exquisite fairy-water, 
 over dry golden weeds, by and by, she pieced the 
 matter out. And a long skein it seemed, with many 
 twists and tangles. For nearly twelve months Lady 
 Liscarroll had been her guest. A charming guest, 
 though half the time an invalid, and only now con- 
 valescent. That charm was not in the woman alone, 
 with her bright talk and airy reminiscences of a
 
 STRICKEN 339 
 
 world so much more brilliant than the neighborhood 
 of Airgead Ross. Unknown to Lisaveta, this doubt- 
 ful situation kept alive in her the sentiment of living 
 for another, without which she would have con- 
 demned herself as eating an idle bread. She longed 
 after romance, but of a profound, a tragic color ; and 
 the sting of social martyrdom awoke within her some 
 strange melody, like a chant of austere joy. 
 
 Lady Liscarroll was not faultless; the girl knew 
 it, but she felt drawn to serve those who would try 
 her, even to the utmost ; and what that woman of the 
 world set down as an effect of her own witcheries 
 was due to an instinct, not rare, though difficult to 
 account for, that dedicates itself to pain lest it be 
 overcome by the glamour of life. This young girl, 
 with her beauty, wealth and health, her equable tem- 
 per and warm heart, would have summed up her 
 views in the wise man's dictum : "He that looks on 
 existence as aught save an illusion which in course 
 of time breaks its own spell, is always its fool." She 
 did not put faith in the things which she saw: she 
 was on her guard not to be taken in by them. Per- 
 haps the French expression would best interpret Lis- 
 aveta : Elle avail le besoin de souffrir. But religion 
 came to the support of her temperament, and this 
 singularly unmodern feeling appeared in the girl's 
 meditations to be a virtue.
 
 346 THE WIZARD'S KNOT 
 
 Thus, if Lady Liscarroll played on the nerves of 
 her hostess with fingers designing mischief, she 
 awoke other chords than she knew, inaudible to her 
 dainty yet unspiritual ear. They might seem to 
 make Lisaveta the merest slave, since all she asked 
 was to suffer. But this kind of victim has secret 
 forces and a depth of character, for which no world- 
 liness in the long run will be a match. That her 
 guest was scheming she did not imagine until some 
 odd and scattered tokens fixed themselves on her at- 
 tention. So long an illness, without lapse or re- 
 covery, was a strange thing. The Driscolls hardly 
 improved on acquaintance. And Yegor's keen little 
 Tartar eyes, which were everywhere, had seen as 
 in cat's light a phantom outside the house resem- 
 bling Lady Liscarroll, when the afflicted woman was 
 shut up in- her chamber. Had this disquieting news 
 any background? Even so, Lisaveta was loth to 
 act upon it. She needed only the sight of Sir Philip's 
 overcast features to kindle her enthusiasm for self- 
 sacrifice ; a grief which he could not master was con- 
 suming his youth ; what would be the added burden 
 if his mother went back to Renmore? 
 
 Then Miss O'Connor was in love with the red- 
 haired Firbolg of Cathal.'s description? "I love 
 him," she thought, smiling gravely, as her eyes took 
 in the glory of the afternoon, spread out on the sea,
 
 STRICKEN 341 
 
 "and I am sorry for him; perhaps I could marry 
 him; but the love they talk of is something else. 
 Why did he blurt out in that abrupt fashion, before 
 Mr. Nagle, the story of his mortgages ? his death- 
 wounds, I might call them. It was a warning, and a 
 defiance. Very noble, all the same. Now had Lady 
 Liscarroll been weaving her fine nets about him, as I 
 feel their threads when I attempt to move ? I know 
 what she would like? Does Philip?" 
 
 Her innocence, though flawless, could not be the 
 schoolgirl's unripe fancy. Lisaveta was well up in 
 the language of women; she caught, and sometimes 
 practised, its half-tones; the shade, the innuendo 
 of an accent, rarely escaped her; and when 
 Philip's mother associated her son and lifelong 
 gratitude in the same breath, it was much as if 
 she handed to her friend a declaration signed with 
 his name. 
 
 Of mortgages, foreclosures, money, she had never 
 spoken; perhaps she was ignorant, but he said she 
 knew ; her sentiment, then, rang hard and metallic ; 
 but, after all, Renmore cleared of its encumbrances 
 would be a great estate, especially if Airgead Ross 
 were thrown in. "No, I do not blame Eleanor" 
 they had long ago reached the stage of Christian- 
 naming each other "it is right she should drive the 
 best bargain for her son she has hurt him enough ;
 
 342 THE WIZARD'S KNOT 
 
 and is it I mean would it be a bad one for the 
 bride?" 
 
 Not if she loved that other way with a pulse 
 that made one music in two hearts. "I wish I knew 
 what had come to Edmund !" she said, and the words 
 were scarcely thought when she colored violently. 
 The transparent water, Venus's looking-glass, over 
 which she bent down, seemed to blush; it was her 
 eyes that created a vision of fire. "But he has not 
 written; he is cold and stern; or something some- 
 one keeps him silent. Did he take poor Joan 
 away? 'You can't trust these ballad-singers,' said 
 Eleanor. 'Can you ?' ' 
 
 The voice to which Lisaveta had always given ear 
 with its eternal refrain, "Thou shalt not please 
 thyself" had gained strength from pride, and it in- 
 sisted now, "Why not Philip ? It is a made match, 
 in the public rumor ; Edmund foresaw it ; this morn- 
 ing's announcement was a declaration not Valen- 
 tine's, with pretty speeches on one knee, but Orson's, 
 in a bearskin. Honest, supremely frank, and fair. 
 He is unhappy, poor and valiant ; who is there to be 
 fond of the lad? What better could a woman do 
 than comfort him?" 
 
 A faint, vanishing echo of hours once heavenly 
 seemed to flash out "Edmund" from a dark corner, 
 and Lisaveta shook. "I might be sorry," she an-
 
 STRICKEN 343 
 
 swered out loud. The sudden hint terrified her. 
 For a minute or two she stood, watching the clouds 
 at sundown a high mountain-meadow, sprinkled 
 with pansies, yellow, violet, creamy-golden and the 
 sad sea-music repeated some formidable word which 
 she strove in vain to understand. No, not wholly 
 in vain ! 
 
 "I could give myself, were that all," she said at 
 last ; "our friends here think it is done already. But 
 I must be clear. In that disappearance of Edmund 
 and Joan so unlike them both there is a riddle to 
 be seen through ; till I know the answer, I am not a 
 free woman. To my own feeling I am not. How 
 did I let the child slip into darkness ? Seven months ! 
 Our troubles all came together ; the spirit died within 
 us. And their secret has been kept, as secrets are in 
 Ireland that is the chain of silence we find people 
 can never break. Well, I mean to break it. Let 
 me think how." 
 
 In the same falling twilight, his mother was re- 
 buking Sir Philip, where they sat in her room. "You 
 should have proposed first, and explained afterward, 
 you silly boy," she murmured languidly, yet in an 
 undertone of decision: "if Lisaveta consents, what 
 signifies the mortgage? It will be paid off." 
 
 "I. explained, because I shall not propose," replied 
 he ; "don't let it worry you, mother. You say I am
 
 344 THE WIZARD'S KNOT 
 
 bound. I don't see it." He was gentle with her, 
 and worn out. 
 
 "In honor, in gratitude," she answered eagerly; 
 "if you spoke French, I could tell it you in a word." 
 
 "Say it in English. You want us to marry be- 
 cause Mrs. Hapgood chatters." 
 
 It was a random shot, aimed at nothing in par- 
 ticular; but the curtains shivered about Lady Lis- 
 carroll. "In French, people Mrs. Hapgood, if you 
 like would say the dear child's reputation was 
 compromised." 
 
 "Byrne?" 
 
 "By you and me. By the situation by all that 
 has taken place. Philip, you really should try to 
 see it with the eyes of the world. You are bound to 
 make the offer; then, if she declines, we have done 
 our duty. Too shy, my dear? Give me leave, and 
 I will speak for you. The way is paved." 
 
 "I can't," he said with a groan. "Why did we 
 come to this house?" 
 
 "All my fault," was the contrite answer, in a voice 
 he never could resist. 
 
 "Three days I must have three days' reprieve," 
 said Philip, struggling; "you don't guess what you 
 are doing to a man. Compromised, you call it. 
 Ruined, I call it. No, you shall not speak a word to 
 her. I will put the cord round my neck with these 
 hands."
 
 CHAPTER XXIV 
 
 AFTER MANY DAYS 
 
 NO condemned man thinks the time long between 
 sentence and execution. Philip's reprieve had 
 run out; he was fixing the rope and taking his last 
 free look at the world, conscious of the trapdoor 
 underneath, which would suddenly give way. "I 
 shall speak this morning," he thought, and felt glad 
 it was pouring rain, as he walked up from his her- 
 mit's lodge to the front terrace of Silverwood. He 
 was a wreck drifting with the tide, on what iron 
 coast? "Well, she can have me," said his cheerless 
 meditation. "I have told her no lies. But it 's hard 
 on the girl; why did n't I foresee that?" 
 
 Rain in the woods, veiling the hills in gray, soak- 
 ing the spirit too, until it felt limp and downcast 
 hopeless rain; but when Philip came up to the en- 
 trance he beheld a carriage and pair, Lisaveta's 
 coachman on the box, and the lady herself, cloaked 
 against the weather, giving directions. 
 
 "Driving on a day like this?" he ejaculated; 
 345
 
 346 THE WIZARD'S KNOT 
 
 "surely not far." His eyes lightened ; the rope about 
 his neck fell into a looser coil. 
 
 She answered him steadily. "You afraid of rain, 
 Sir Philip? No? Neither am I. A journey I 
 can't say when I return. In a week or less." 
 
 "My mother will miss you." He could not bring 
 himself to say anything else. 
 
 "Take good care of her; the place is at your dis- 
 posal," she replied, as he helped her into the carriage. 
 "I have left a note to explain." 
 
 Her silence on the purpose or destination which 
 called her out in this atrocious weather made it im- 
 possible to ask questions. They shook hands ; Jack 
 Dennehy flourished his whip; the horses went away 
 at a smart trot. 
 
 Philip leaped down from the scaffold, and flung 
 the hangman's rope to Lucifer. "I will not do it," 
 he said to himself again and again. "What an es- 
 cape! Now I mean to take a day off at Renmore. 
 Back on Wednesday." 
 
 Calling for Miss O'Connor's Russian servant, he 
 announced his intention, and inquired if Lady Lis- 
 carroll could see him before he went. In a few min- 
 utes Yegor brought him a pencilled note. His 
 mother was going on well ; let him get a change of 
 scene three or four days at home. 
 
 "Tell her ladyship I will be here on Saturday," he 
 said, and so left it.
 
 AFTER MANY DAYS 347 
 
 Before noon he was marching on Renmore strand, 
 the ruins of the Gray Tower on the rock above him, 
 Joan's deserted cottage almost within sight. And ah, 
 the bitterness of it all ! 
 
 He had made no attempt at pumping Yegor; 
 that hydraulic process would never yield a draught. 
 Doubtless the Kalmuck knew on what business Lis- 
 aveta was traveling; he ruled the house, held his 
 tongue, and was impenetrable. A word from Yegor 
 at this moment would have astonished Sir Philip. 
 Still more, could he have overheard the little con- 
 versation between Miss O'Connor and her body- 
 guard two days previously. 
 
 "If your Excellence will tell me whether you are to 
 marry this Irish gentleman," Yegor had said to his 
 mistress, "I shall know my duty. Every one says so, 
 except you, Lisaveta Carlovna, and I am bewildered." 
 
 He was studying her serious eyes. "Yegor/' she 
 answered, not flinching, "it may turn out as every- 
 body says. But until I have found Joan O'Dwyer, 
 dead or alive, I cannot decide." 
 
 "She must be found?" asked the man, "must, you 
 say, Excellence? And how if the other gentleman, 
 Mr. Edmund, had run away with her?" 
 
 "Even then, I have to be sure of it," said Lisaveta, 
 putting a hand to her side. 
 
 He reflected. "I thought, as you were going to
 
 348 THE WIZARD'S KNOT 
 
 take Sir Philip, the best thing was to let this girl 
 drop out of the dance. There is one man who may 
 know where she went her lover, Felim, the fisher 
 lad. I will go down to Renmore and see what can 
 be discovered." 
 
 He took his own means with Felim that night 
 made him drunk, and got all the lad knew, which 
 was not a great deal. Next day he informed Miss 
 O'Connor: "The old Cathal and his daughter said 
 they were going to a place named Kilmallock. 
 Whether they did, O'Riordan knows no more than 
 the man that is dead. But he says Joan never told a 
 lie in her life." 
 
 "I will go to Kilmallock, then," answered his mis- 
 tress. "Get everything ready. I start in the morn- 
 ing." 
 
 She was now on the road alone, separated after 
 many months from Lady Liscarroll, with a sense of 
 deliverance and a growing clearness of mind, which 
 boded ill for the Renmore marriage. Edmund's 
 figure revived; his gay and tender musings aloud, 
 his touches of poetry lighting up the dull everyday, 
 pleaded for him in undertones. Would a nature so 
 passionate and chivalrous belie itself, delude an old 
 comrade like the schoolmaster, and entrap a harmless 
 child? Men, indeed, were strange beasts, "but he 
 is not proved guilty yet," she concluded.
 
 AFTER MANY DAYS 349 
 
 The journey lay through scenes of desolation un- 
 speakable. Blinding rain; but men like skeletons 
 at work on the high roads; and wherever the car- 
 riage stopped, women gathered round it, clamoring, 
 with children half dead in their arms. When the 
 rain cleared, a sickly sunshine fell upon the cabins; 
 hundreds of them were half thrown down, or burnt, 
 and long rows of others silent as the grave, their 
 doors shut, no sound from within ; but Lisaveta well 
 knew that their inmates were starving in blank des- 
 pair. It seemed as though she were driving be- 
 tween the beds of an immense hospital. Sick chil- 
 dren she saw wherever a cottage door was open, but 
 on those miles and miles of road none were playing 
 about. Long before the day was done, she had given 
 away all her free money; nothing but the severest 
 resolution held her from scattering the rest among 
 these miserable crowds. "I have to find Joan," she 
 murmured, "it is my vow; too much time has been 
 lost already." But her eyes and heart were full. 
 
 On the second day a bright, rather chill, weather 
 made the roads less tedious; she was moving over 
 the gentle green slopes of a land even then devoted 
 to pasture, and the people appeared to be less miser- 
 able; but at every half mile a funeral met her, or 
 was visible across the meadows, and the silence ap- 
 palled with its suggestions of universal famine. Her
 
 350 THE WIZARD'S KNOT 
 
 carriage was drawing near Kilmallock. She could 
 see the fine old ruins of church and castle a little be- 
 yond the town, their delicate tracery and lofty walls 
 showing against a sky of great purity, blue and cold. 
 All at once her voice startled the driver. He turned 
 on his seat and perceived that Lisaveta was stand- 
 ing up, pale and tremulous. "Stop, stop," she cried, 
 "no further ! Oh ! I have seen him !" 
 
 Jack Dennehy pulled up, while the lady sank, al- 
 most fainting, on her cushions. What had she seen 
 to give her that fright? He looked. "God sind 
 I may live!" he cried, blessing himself, "if 't is not 
 ould O'Dwyer breaking stones on the road ! Wisha, 
 wisha! did you ever hear tell of the like of that? 
 And he the finest scholar in Munster! Oh, God 
 help us!" 
 
 "Miss O'Connor made but two leps of it," said 
 Jack afterward, and was holding Cathal's wrists, in 
 a bewilderment of joy and grief. "Oh, you wicked 
 man, why did n't you write to me?" she cried; "you 
 dreadful But where is Joan? Take me to Joan 
 at once." 
 
 There came no answer a warm tear fell on the 
 schoolmaster's hand ; he wiped it shyly away. 
 
 "Merciful Father, she is not dead !" exclaimed the 
 girl; "don't tell me that bright, loving creature is 
 dead. Cathal, won't you speak to me?"
 
 AFTER MANY DAYS 351 
 
 A number of the gaunt shadows had come round 
 them, leaving their work, if work it could be called ; 
 they were bloodless and faint, as beings from the dim 
 under-world, so starved that they showed only a 
 slight curiosity, while every one of them held out a 
 bony hand for alms. 
 
 "Speak, my dear O'Dwyer," she insisted; "don't 
 leave me in this agony. What has become of Joan ? 
 You know me; surely you have not forgotten Air- 
 gead Ross?" 
 
 At that he pulled himself together, staggered to a 
 heap of stones by the roadside, and sat down on it, 
 wiping his forehead. 
 
 "I 'm ashamed to be seen by one that knows me," 
 he said, his face downward. "This year and last we 
 had Beg's bad world 't was a prognosis of these 
 very times that ancient wizard made to King Diar- 
 muid at Tara men in bonds, women free," with a 
 glint of his old satirical manner, looking up at her, 
 but subdued immediately; "winds many, wet sum- 
 mer, green corn; lean cattle, scant milk; the poor 
 burdensome in every place; you may say, indeed, a 
 world withered." 
 
 "But Joan let me hear about Joan. Why did 
 you hide yourselves from us ?" 
 
 "It was my girl's desire. She would not permit 
 me to address your ladyship. 'We gave the back of
 
 352 THE WIZARD'S KNOT 
 
 our hand to Renmore,' she said always. Kilmallock 
 is a poor place, ma'am. All the Latin and Greek 
 you ever put your tongue to would n't buy a piggin 
 of buttermilk. 'T is that sent me breaking stones; 
 and look now at my hands. How could I form a 
 letter with those welts on my fingers ?" 
 
 "You could not, poor man," she answered, "how 
 indeed ? But where can I meet Joan ?" 
 
 "We came hither," he said, following his own re- 
 flections, heedless that he was torturing her, "to find 
 Sheila a woman I married to my own discomfiture 
 no credit to us at all. We found her without 
 searching, like the stitch in your side. The wake- 
 ness took her limbs from under her, and now she is 
 as gray as a badger, and her good looks gone. In- 
 deed, I would n't be surprised was she to die on us. 
 I forgive her what she did. He 's in Erebus that did 
 it or lower, maybe. Well, we must all die." 
 
 "Joan is nursing her inside there," said one of the 
 bystanders, pointing to a hovel down the road ; "you 
 won't get a sinsible word from him, my lady. He is 
 like that half the time, and the other half he is cry- 
 ing; but the tears, I think, come aisy to all of us, 
 we 're as wake as kittens. Would you have a penny 
 about you, my lady, you could spare a poor boy?" 
 
 "A rose noble, a mark, or an angel ?" Cathal took 
 him up. "An angel, above all ? How much was it ?
 
 AFTER MANY DAYS 353 
 
 I forget entirely. 'T is long since we have seen or 
 felt those coins. Soup is what we get when our pile 
 of stones is broke small; but sometimes I think hot 
 water with grase in it would give more nourish- 
 ment." 
 
 "Leave the stone-breaking, and show me into your 
 little place," said Miss O'Connor; "every minute is 
 an hour till I see Joan." 
 
 "Fugit irreparabile tempus how often I made 
 the boys construe that and we hear and don't heed 
 till the agent is at the door," answered Cathal, put- 
 ting on his tattered blue coat. "Joan, my dear 
 madam, is not as well as I could like; she has food 
 enough, would she ate it, but she does be always 
 giving it from her. Unless my eyes desave me, she 
 has a poor color, and little flesh on her bones. I 'm 
 not strong myself." 
 
 His step was sd uncertain that Lisaveta made 
 him get into the carriage, and took her place beside 
 him. 
 
 "What had you to eat this day ?" she asked. 
 
 "It is not ateing but drinking I 'd call it," he said, 
 with the flicker of a smile ; "we have the soup, as thin 
 as it can be made; it houlds out longer that way. 
 Ateing is gone out of fashion with us ; our digestive 
 apparatus would not be able for it." 
 
 The cabin was sunk several feet below the road, 
 23
 
 354 THE WIZARD'S KNOT 
 
 and its damp thatch garlanded with long green weeds 
 made it like a bee-hive to look at. 
 
 "Mother and daughter, mother and daughter," 
 said Cathal, as he got down ; "you may enter without 
 knocking, ma'am; they won't hear you." 
 
 So it seemed, for when Lisaveta stood in the 
 gloom, almost touching her, Joan gave no sign of 
 life. She was seated on a chair without a back, be- 
 side a press-bed, on which lay a moaning but not 
 restless figure. 
 
 "Don't you know me, dear?" said her visitor; "you 
 can't see me in this light. But my voice my voice 
 is not strange to you, Joan?" 
 
 Putting out her arms, she took the girl tenderly 
 and lifted her up. Joan gave a low cry, such as you 
 might hear from some wounded creature in the 
 brush, not loud or piercing, but pitiful exceedingly. 
 And then she let herself be caught to Miss O'Con- 
 nor's bosom. 
 
 They were silent, except for the sound of tears, a 
 long while. 
 
 "Give your mother a drink," said Cathal, quietly. 
 "She is thirsting for it." 
 
 "I will give it; do you sit down, Joan," said the 
 young lady, taking the coarse white mug and putting 
 it to the patient's lips as well as she could in that 
 position. A pair of intense gray eyes, blazing with
 
 AFTER MANY DAYS 355 
 
 fever, unciosed, and seemed to inquire who it was. 
 Lights under snow-white hair, in a transparent, still 
 handsome face, which had long been drained of its 
 vitality. She must once have walked in all the pride 
 of strength and comeliness it was Joan rapt into old 
 age, the ghost of herself, not utterly undone, though 
 death's hand lay upon her. 
 
 "How long have you been nursing here? Ah, 
 but, Joan," her friend broke out, "it was cruel to run 
 from us why did you ?" 
 
 With an effort, clearing some painful mist from 
 her eyes, the girl, in a singularly thin voice, man- 
 aged to say, "Are you by yourself, traveling?" 
 
 "All by myself," replied Lisaveta ; "I thought you 
 would like it better. No one knows. Trust me. 
 Oh, you can. There are some questions should 
 you feel strong enough to take a drive with me ?" 
 
 "I could n't be far from mother," she said. "He 
 is always asleep if I lave her to him ; and the neigh- 
 bors have their own sick." 
 
 "Well, the coachman shall take your father a drive. 
 Come, Mr. O'Dwyer," shaking him gently, "if Den- 
 nehy you know Dennehy has the money, will you 
 show him where to buy food and drink ? And will 
 you bring the doctor back with you?" 
 
 "Dr. Quinn, is it?" answered Cathal. "He has, 
 at the lowest computation, two thousand five hun-
 
 356 THE WIZARD'S KNOT 
 
 dred patients; and he knows no more 01 healing- 
 herbs than the child died yesterday. Potions, pills 
 and drugs is what he lives by ; I wish I could say as 
 much of his sick the poor gommels! However, I 
 will do your bidding. Tell me, before I go, has Joan 
 the fine blush on her she used to have when every 
 boy in Renmore " 
 
 "Joan will be herself soon never fear," said Lis- 
 aveta, hastily, "but do you go without delay." 
 
 Leading him out, she gave Dennehy his orders, 
 saw Cathal on the box by his side, and came back 
 into the stifling cottage. 
 
 "May we sit with the door open?" she asked. 
 "The air is close." 
 
 "It makes her cough," answered the girl. "I sit 
 here and I do be drowsy. We can open it once in 
 a while." 
 
 "How thin you are !" said Miss O'Connor, kneel- 
 ing and putting an affectionate arm about the frail 
 creature. "Is it true you give away the food you 
 should be taking?" 
 
 "We are not so badly provided as most," she said. 
 "When I came here, seven months ago, I had my 
 strength, and I could earn. Dr. Quinn was like 
 an angel guardian to us till I found where the 
 money came from. Then, indeed, we could not 
 take it."
 
 AFTER MANY DAYS 357 
 
 "Whose money was it, Joan? Believe me, I am 
 not asking from idle curiosity. The happiness of 
 more than one depends on your answer." 
 
 "I would be the last to make mischief; won't I 
 soon be gone out of this myself?" she said. Her 
 eyes smiled even in that gloom. "And surely he 
 meant neither hurt nor harm to us." 
 
 "Who meant no harm? Who was it sent money 
 you refused?" 
 
 "I never thought but his heart was to your- 
 self, Miss O'Connor," she returned. "What else 
 would it be? Don't trust a word from their lips if 
 they say different. Many 's the tale is told, and 
 never a true one." 
 
 "He, and he, and he! Can't you put a name on 
 the man?" said her friend, more and more agitated. 
 "Let us stand in the light where I may see your face, 
 dear." 
 
 She drew the girl across that mean threshold, and 
 a flood of dazzling white radiance fell upon her 
 threadbare gown and her features above it, framed 
 in dark ringlets. Lisaveta repressed a cry. The 
 beauty she had known was still there, but ghastly, 
 spectral, subdued to a paleness of death as if an 
 outline sketched on thin paper, just purple where the 
 lips should be. A fixed languor weighed upon the 
 eyelids. Joan seemed unable to stand.
 
 358 THE WIZARD'S KNOT 
 
 "Oh, you are dying like the rest oh, dying !" was 
 her friend's word, and they clung together. 
 
 "Please God !" answered the girl, not much moved. 
 
 An exclamation reached them from within. "I 'm 
 here, mother," replied Joan. "What is it?" 
 
 They turned in again. The figure on the press- 
 bed muttered something inarticulate, and drank 
 eagerly of the water Joan held down to her. "Dra- 
 ming, draming," said the woman in her sleep. 
 "Cathal, would you strike your wife would you?" 
 
 "I must stay here," said Joan faintly, "but why 
 should you, Miss O'Connor? 'T is plain now that 
 the three of us won't be troubling the neighbors long. 
 Go, in God's name; the sickness is taking." 
 
 "Without you, Joan, I will never go. They must 
 come with us, of course. What do I care if the sick- 
 ness is catching ?" 
 
 "I 'd think worse of you did you take harm, than 
 of all the world," cried the poor girl; "no, indeed, 
 we could not return to Renmore. Lave us to God, 
 and yourself go out of this." 
 
 "Cruel you are, dear unkind to me," said Lis- 
 aveta, with tears in her voice. "My own sister, let 
 us bare our hearts to each other," she continued in 
 Irish, "I know our troubles are the same. Tell me 
 who made you leave the place." 
 
 "If I put the blame on Mr. Edmund Liscarroll, 
 would you think I was shaping lies?"
 
 AFTER MANY DAYS 359 
 
 "You were always truth itself," answered the 
 lady, breathing fast; "he got you to run away then 
 and he sent you money afterward? Don't mind 
 me, it is nothing I want air." She threw the door 
 open, and was going out, when the other caught hold 
 of her dress. 
 
 "No, no, you have n't half the story ! Mother of 
 God, will I be always in this grief and my heart 
 split ? I do blame Mr. Edmund ; he ran a knife into 
 my breast. But you I see you never got a true 
 word from that coaxer, with all his songs and 
 speeches." 
 
 "He was in love with you," said Miss O'Connor, 
 steadying herself to bear the blow which was coming 
 at last. 
 
 "With me?" Joan laughed incredulously. "They 
 say women are looking-glasses, and every lover's 
 face is seen in their eyes, shining bright. You will 
 not find Mr. Edmund in mine." 
 
 "Then how? Then why? You are tying the 
 wizard's knot about me, Joan; do you call to mind 
 last May, when your father bound us all in one coil ? 
 But what brought Edmund into your story?" 
 
 Joan pointed to the sleeping woman. "He met 
 my mother, and gave us the news. I persuaded my 
 father to let bygones be bygones, to come and do 
 the best we could for her." 
 
 "Well, but do you think he did wrong in telling
 
 360 THE WIZARD'S KNOT 
 
 you? Was that all? Joan, you are hiding some 
 secret from me. How can I get you to trust me? 
 I will keep nothing back myself no, not the deepest 
 fold in my heart. Where shall I begin? Shall I 
 say that Lady Liscarroll wants me to take Sir 
 Philip?" 
 
 The pale white mask flushed crimson in her sight ; 
 Joan held to the press-bed, which shook violently. 
 It was impossible for the other to continue her nar- 
 rative, and she stopped, certain confused lights strug- 
 gling within her. 
 
 "Did he ask you himself?" inquired Joan, a bitter 
 taste in her mouth. 
 
 "Not up till now. He appears to have lost all 
 courage; that makes me feel for him. But if he 
 does my dear, I could not say it except to you 
 convince me that that the other is unworthy " 
 
 "You would take Philip?" interrupted the girl. 
 
 "I would ; not because I am fond of him ; I can't 
 explain all that ; nor does it matter. See now, Joan, 
 you must be sincere open as the day I have been 
 so to you." 
 
 At this moment a quavering voice came from the 
 bed. "Lies God forgive me I tould Cathal many 
 a one. What good was it to me? My dear girl, 
 spit it out, and God will be thankful to you." 
 
 So unearthly was the admonition, as from inside
 
 AFTER MANY DAYS 361 
 
 a sepulchral vault, that they exchanged looks of 
 amazement. "She is right," whispered Lisaveta, "I 
 must know all." 
 
 "Much or little, I will let it go from me," said 
 Joan, her mind made up. "If you will take the man 
 you gave love to, 't is Edmund Liscarroll. He never 
 did a thing you need be ashamed to hear." 
 
 "And Philip?" insisted the other, striving in a 
 dim and cloudy dawn to catch the true outlines of 
 a landscape now unrolled at her feet. 
 
 "I gave him back his promise," said the girl, weep- 
 ing; "he would not give me mine. But he is free." 
 
 As though clouds and stars had vanished together 
 and all the heavens were pearly white, the revelation 
 came. "Oh, you wonder!" cried her friend; "you 
 gave back Philip's promise? Here you have fled to 
 escape him? But do you know that this is to die a 
 hundred deaths for his sake ?" 
 
 "He could never take a poor oinseach like me up 
 to his castle; Mr. Edmund burnt that into me. 
 'T was foolishness in the two of us. I returned the 
 lock of hair, and he threw it upon the running 
 water. Maybe he did well." She could say no 
 more then. 
 
 "Your heart is bleeding ever since," was Lisa- 
 veta's comment, to which no reply came. But old 
 Sheila was dreaming aloud, and her broken sentences
 
 362 THE WIZARD'S KNOT 
 
 mingled the names of Cathal and the man Macklin 
 with whom she strayed from her duty. "Macklin 
 Macklin," repeated the ghostly voice, "I have no 
 right to him, nor he to me. There 's a poor sowl we 
 are tearing between us. The red dogs could n't do 
 more to it." 
 
 Her daughter, overpowered by all she had gone 
 through in the last hour, sat leaning against the mud 
 wall, Lisaveta's arms round her. 
 
 "Was I the stone image of the girl they thought 
 like me, in your house," she said after several min- 
 utes, "I would n't be suffering; but under the sod 
 I '11 have peace. I have spun every thread of it now 
 for you. Take it, and don't be hard to Mr. Ed- 
 mund." 
 
 "We have lost him, I fear ; it is not known where 
 he is gone," replied Miss O'Connor, despondently; 
 but, plucking up a spirit, she added : "Your courage 
 puts me to the blush. I see my way now. As for 
 Philip yes, he ought to make you his wife. He 
 ought, Joan. He shall. I take you and yours with 
 me to Airgead Ross. We will start as soon as your 
 mother can be removed. No murmuring ; it is right 
 you should go back, under my protection. Who 
 can hurt you, silly child ? This has made us sisters. 
 Not? We two poor things with our lost lovers," 
 she ended, attempting gaiety ; "I say we are a pair of
 
 AFTER MANY DAYS 363 
 
 widows, and we will keep house together. I hear 
 the carriage ; your father has come back." 
 
 Cathal was at the door, a little brighter than he 
 went, with packages too heavy for his trembling 
 hands. Dennehy would have helped to carry them 
 in; but that was Miss O'Connor's share, bringing 
 a crowd off the highway as soon as they caught sight 
 of this large relief. She had to steel her heart 
 against the poor shadows. "There is a woman 
 dying within," she said, and they dispersed silently. 
 O'Dwyer had brought a message from the doctor's 
 wife. Mr. Quinn was miles away, distributing food 
 and medicine to his innumerable sick ; but would the 
 lady put up at Sarsfield House while staying in Kil- 
 mallock ? It seemed the wisest thing to do. 
 
 "Yes, I will drive there," she answered, pressing 
 his cold hand. "We have been chattering like mag- 
 pies, Cathal, while you were out, and to-morrow, or 
 the day after, if Dr. Quinn allows, I take you all with 
 me to Airgead Ross." 
 
 "God be with my shovel and pick-axe, then !" he 
 cried, looking hard at her. "You are in airnest, I 
 hope. I could wield a ferule with any scholar, from 
 Quintilian down, but at breaking stones I'm no prod- 
 igy. My daughter will revive in her native air. But 
 what is come to her now?" he cried, aghast, for 
 Joan had fallen in a faint across her mother's bed.
 
 CHAPTER XXV 
 
 WIDOW AND WIFE 
 
 ASilverwood no one had the least guess why Miss 
 O'Connor was gone, nor how long she would 
 be away. Even Yegor did not know. "Perhaps a 
 week or ten days. My orders were to tell Lady Lis- 
 carroll at least a week;" such was the message he 
 sent in by Dr. Driscoll to the invalid. Sir Philip 
 was always at his castle ; and on the Thursday a note 
 reached him in his mother's handwriting, to the 
 effect that she felt much better, though still feeble, 
 and she hoped he would enjoy and prolong the 
 change of air he was taking. In the lines of this 
 epistle no stranger would have detected a tremulous 
 pen; they ran evenly; the letters were formed with 
 as much rapidity as elegance. 
 
 "She has an undaunted spirit," observed her son, 
 laying it down; "after an illness which would have 
 finished any other woman, her pulse must be less ir- 
 regular than mine." 
 
 Enjoyment for this vexed and tempest-driven soul 
 his mother could not have expected, if her studies 
 
 364
 
 WIDOW AND WIFE 365 
 
 had been as close of all that regarded his temper as 
 during the far past days when they sat in the High 
 Room, captives of one great crime. But all she saw 
 was the near success of plans she had obstinately 
 cherished ; and Philip was the unlikeliest of mortals 
 to wear his heart upon his sleeve. Miss O'Connor's 
 departure seemed to him life from the dead. In im- 
 agination he was always lying on the grave of his 
 murdered love weeping the inward tears that distil 
 from the soul when he thought how Joan had cut 
 with a single stroke the ties that bound them. "I 
 might search high and low till we stood face to face, 
 yet she would still want this braid of hair from 
 me," he thought, clutching it fiercely. "I should 
 have to kill what is best in her; otherwise, I get 
 no consent to our marriage. Would I win her at 
 the cost?" 
 
 Tragic arguments these, leading him away from 
 the one he chose out of all women to Lisaveta's feet. 
 He laughed when this troubadour's phrase flitted 
 across his fancy. "I 'm not quite the man to strike 
 an attitude," he thought; and then, "In fairness, 
 should I not make her the judge whether I am free? 
 Tell her what we were to each other, and how it 
 ended there, down by the reeds and rushes of the 
 Lonndubh? Have I any business to be keeping 
 this ?" the wisp of dark hair was still twined about
 
 366 THE WIZARD'S KNOT 
 
 his fingers. He concluded impetuously, "She ought 
 to know." 
 
 This seemed a way out, for they would both be 
 acting in daylight ; and his mind was at length made 
 up, though not until he had ridden leagues and 
 leagues, sorry that he could get no ckance of break- 
 ing his neck over a fence. In his country the hunt- 
 ing season had come to an abrupt close. Masters of 
 hounds were unable to keep their packs ; the gentle- 
 men had mostly sold their hunters and did not know 
 how to feed their stable-boys. It was the last stroke. 
 So Philip had his riding to himself. 
 
 He was the most solitary of mortals. Since Lady 
 Liscarroll's illness, the castle, deserted by its master, 
 had fallen into a dismal silence; no visitor came up 
 the avenue where the grass invaded and mosses grew 
 thick, and the young men who used to meet Philip 
 in the hunting field went their ways, forgetful of a 
 comrade they had never understood. Was it his 
 fault? He would soon pay for it. 
 
 He had just reached the conclusion of so much 
 debating when Mr. Colegrave wrote to him' from 
 Cork, telling him that his efforts to raise money and 
 save the foreclosure of the mortgage had some pros- 
 pect of success, but "We shall do little unless you 
 can see the principals yourself," he added; "could 
 not you give us a few days here, even at the risk of 
 leaving Lady Liscarroll ?"
 
 WIDOW AND WIFE 367 
 
 The young man smiled not pleasantly and an- 
 swered that he would come. At Silverwood his in- 
 tended expedition was speedily known messages 
 passing continually backward and forward between 
 the houses but he warned his mother that disagree- 
 able business, such as this, which he did not expect to 
 turn out well, was always slow ; he could not name a 
 day for his next visit. 
 
 Slow enough the business proved. Every inter- 
 view ripped up fresh wounds in the body of the es- 
 tate, which was loaded with old charges, with tenants 
 on the edge of bankruptcy, and the disorder of years. 
 Mr. Colegrave tried hard to make up for his own 
 methods, at once severe and neglectful, of managing 
 the land; but it was too late. Several days passed 
 in bitter and unavailing discussion with the cautious 
 bankers to whom, in this extremity, he had applied ; 
 the upshot was that they declined to advance any 
 sum which would satisfy the unknown mortgagee. 
 Philip never mentioned Miss O'Connor. When his 
 agent hazarded the name, he said merely, "If you 
 were acting on her side, could you advise so bad a 
 bargain ?" 
 
 "There might be a way to mend it," answered 
 Colegrave, not choosing to meet Sir Philip's eye. 
 "Wealthy ladies can indulge their tastes; it is a 
 property with with romantic associations, and 
 would give splendor to any woman."
 
 368 THE WIZARD'S KNOT 
 
 The baronet turned away, thinking, "We are cer- 
 tainly man and wife to this fool of a public. She 
 never supposed that, when she opened her doors to 
 my mother; nor did I." 
 
 All this parleying ended in smoke, except for the 
 tongue of fire that leaped out from it, the mar- 
 riage inevitable, brought about by accident ; and the 
 burning scar sent Philip home again. "She shall be 
 told everything; then let her say the word," he re- 
 solved, as he left behind him the bright streams and 
 hanging gardens of the fair city. After a night at 
 Renmore he felt the time had gone by for trifling. 
 He would ride at once to Airgead Ross, get tidings 
 of Lisaveta's movements, and put himself into direct 
 communication with her, if she were still away. 
 But, most likely, she would be at home. Twelve 
 days had elapsed since her departure ; it was now the 
 third Monday in March. 
 
 And a beautiful day, glittering like a gold ring 
 which had been dropped into the lap of winter by the 
 advancing year, rich in tone, windless and dewy, 
 kind to the spirit and the sense. Philip started in 
 good time, with such a tumultuous heart as the man 
 who hears the rifles sing ; but he recovered somewhat 
 under the physical excitement of air and motion. 
 When he arrived at the house and asked for Miss 
 O'Connor, Yegor informed him she had not yet 
 returned.
 
 WIDOW AND WIFE 369 
 
 "Then I will go up to Lady Liscarroll," he said; 
 "please let her know I am here," and he made a step 
 toward the stairs. 
 
 Yegor hesitated; a certain embarrassment came 
 over him; he muttered something in his native lan- 
 guage, the import of which naturally escaped his 
 hearer. "I think, sir," he resumed after a long 
 pause, "her ladyship is not you will not find her 
 upstairs." 
 
 "Where, then in the drawing-room?" 
 
 "No, she has gone out." 
 
 "Out? My mother gone out? Driving? It is 
 rather cold for an invalid ; but how comes she to be 
 so much better? You amaze me." 
 
 "The lady is not driving, sir," answered Yegor; 
 "about two hours ago she left the house, in company 
 with her maid and the doctor. He Mr. Driscoll 
 said the day was so fine, his patient could get some 
 exercise in our woods. They are not back yet." 
 
 Here was a piece of news! It sounded heavy 
 and strange. Lady Liscarroll had given a more 
 cheering account of herself lately; but this staggered 
 him. "Has my mother taken this sort of exercise 
 before? Gone into the woods? I can't credit my 
 ears." 
 
 "Her ladyship used to walk down by the beach 
 
 when she first came to Silverwood," thus Yegor an- 
 24
 
 370 THE WIZARD'S KNOT 
 
 swered, but in his accent a sharp ear would have de- 
 tected some reserve. Philip noticed it. 
 
 "Well, I may stroll down that way on the chance 
 of meeting them," he said, conscious for the hun- 
 dredth time that this woman never would keep still, 
 but, as soon as his back was turned, gave signs of a 
 life altogether estranged from him. To discuss 
 with servants a matter so intolerable! he quitted 
 Yegor on the steps, and went along the winding 
 path which led toward the little inlet, or cove; but 
 arriving, saw no one. The beach was deserted. 
 "They cannot have gone far," he reasoned; "walk- 
 ing, too, and in the last stage of consumption? 
 What does it mean ?" 
 
 His long sorrow had filled with presentiments a 
 mind originally perhaps superstitious. Every touch 
 on the strings set him quivering. "She might guess 
 how I feel ; but she has never never cared," he went 
 on to himself. "It is like a wild creature in your 
 hands; kindness, severity, nothing will make it un- 
 derstand you." Miserable, he continued his ram- 
 blings along by the beach, but some distance above 
 it, in tracks through the crowded evergreens. But 
 he saw no signs of her. Was it possible she had 
 taken her chance and run ? 
 
 Anything was to be expected which would bring 
 shame upon them.
 
 WIDOW AND WIFE 371 
 
 While he argued, Philip had reached a hollow in 
 the rocks, from which another turn in the long bay 
 was visible. Just below him rose the walls of St. 
 Brandan's Kitchen, but his position did not enable 
 him to see into the thick covert which surrounded it. 
 Nor had he the wish. What his eyes announced was 
 remarkable enough, not to say disquieting. Some- 
 what west of the chapel a boat was grounding on the 
 dry sand; in it sat Felim O'Riordan; two other men 
 had come down and were just stepping across the 
 gunwale. He did not recognize the first, a cloaked 
 personage. But the second was Mr. Will Hapgood 
 of Derryvore. 
 
 No sooner were they on board than Felim and his 
 master plied the oars vigorously, making for the 
 open. It was clear they would not land at Airgead 
 Ross. Where then? That he could not conjecture; 
 but he stayed watching them from his hollow in the 
 rocks, until they had rounded the point southward 
 and passed out of his view. Thoughts fearful and 
 obscure besieged Philip. He did not hesitate a mo- 
 ment in connecting this extraordinary apparition of 
 the three men on a desolate coast with his mother's 
 sudden taste for a morning excursion in the woods. 
 To read the whole purport of this writing he must, 
 however, find out a little more. 
 
 Fortune threw the trumps into his hands. Not
 
 372 THE WIZARD'S KNOT 
 
 long after the boat dipped under, a sound of low 
 voices and footsteps on the brushwood apprised him 
 that others were in the copse, moving away from his 
 place of concealment. He could not see them, but 
 Driscoll's harsh tones traveled to his ear, and it was 
 perhaps Lady Liscarroll that answered. He let them 
 go on before him. By and by, when they could no 
 longer be heard, Philip stood up, sprang from the 
 crag into the covert, and running hastily round 
 through bypaths well known to him, contrived that 
 he should enter the road which led up to the house, 
 just as his mother was resting on the gnarled roots 
 of an enormous oak, the two Driscolls beside her. 
 
 She looked pale, and was, or affected to be, tired 
 out. When Philip, flushed and nervous, came up, a 
 smile crinkled her bloodless lips and died off them in 
 the effort. "Welcome back," she said, and lifted 
 her forehead, which he touched slightly, but could 
 not bring himself to kiss. "We hardly expected you 
 so soon. I hope you have brought good news from 
 Cork." 
 
 "We will talk of it," he replied, the sweat standing 
 on his ruddy skin. "But you look tired. Is n't it 
 imprudent to be sitting here? What say you, 
 doctor?" 
 
 "The morning was delicious, and her Iad3 r ship 
 thought a little walk would do her all the good in the
 
 WIDOW AND WIFE 373 
 
 world," answered Driscoll. "You see, sir, she had 
 her medical adviser. But we overestimated her 
 strength. Now, my lady, will you take Sir Philip's 
 arm?" 
 
 He gave it in silence, and they moved on toward 
 the house. "You found your walk pleasant?" he 
 said after a while, fixing his eyes on her. 
 
 "Very," said she, letting her own rest on the 
 ground. 
 
 "How far did you get?" he pursued, still eyeing 
 this strange woman whose blood ran in his veins, 
 while her heart was the most dismal of secrets to 
 him. 
 
 "I hardly know," she said, "one path is so like 
 another; we went down by the sea." 
 
 "Did you ever hear of St. Brandan's Kitchen ?" 
 
 The arm which was leaning on his fell by the 
 lady's side. "Where is it?" she inquired, her face 
 toward the doctor's. 
 
 "Oh, it is an old ruin by the seashore," said 
 Driscoll; "they give those places quare names en- 
 tirely. 'T is not a kitchen it is, but a church with 
 no roof to it." 
 
 "There 's a better kitchen in the house yonder," 
 said Mrs. Driscoll, showing her false teeth, "and Mr. 
 Yegor is the finest cook I ever saw out of London." 
 
 Some shadow of a laugh which fell on them had a
 
 374 THE WIZARD'S KNOT 
 
 coldness in it; they said no more while this horrible 
 walk lasted. "I must lie down till the evening," re- 
 marked Lady Liscarroll, her weakness perceptible in 
 a sudden languor. 
 
 "Take your rest at once," answered Philip, "you 
 will require it." 
 
 When she was shut into her room with Mrs. Dris- 
 coll, and the doctor had driven off, the baronet sent 
 for Yegor, who came unwillingly, to judge by his 
 countenance. 
 
 "How often has Lady Liscarroll taken private 
 walks since her illness began?" he asked, and on the 
 man's hesitating, he added, "Nothing but the truth 
 will do; out with it." 
 
 Yegor considered a little. "Why should I screen 
 her?" he said, with a look in which you might have 
 discerned the pity we give to a wounded animal. 
 "Sir, you have a bad mother, and they say you will 
 soon be master in this house. Here is my duty, then. 
 How often has the lady met someone in our woods ? 
 I cannot say; it is very often." 
 
 "Good God !" muttered the unhappy man. "But 
 she has been ill since last summer in a decline, ac- 
 cording to the physician." 
 
 "That, if true, has not kept her in. False I do not 
 say it is altogether. I believe she has put on her 
 maid's dress and slipped out, when we thought her a
 
 WIDOW AND WIFE 375 
 
 sick woman on her bed. We stay not up late; the 
 doors are not fast, and they are many." 
 
 "Can you say of your own knowledge that this has 
 happened? Did you ever see her, Yegor?" 
 
 "It was perhaps a roussalka in the twilight you 
 call them ghosts if not, it was Lady Liscarroll. 
 For you to choose, sir." 
 
 "How came you not to let your mistress know ?" 
 
 "My mistress had her bad dreams, but she dis- 
 liked them; she wanted to make the other good by 
 trusting her." 
 
 "In which you think she failed ?" 
 
 "Had you not the name given you by all the world 
 of Lisaveta Carlovna's betrothed, I would never pre- 
 sume to have an opinion, sir, but now yes, I believe 
 it is no use. What will you do, sir?" 
 
 "Can you have a carriage at the door by four 
 o'clock?" said Philip in reply. "Your best pair of 
 horses; they must go to Renmore Castle and come 
 back this night." 
 
 "Certainly, sir. At four they shall be here. But, 
 pardon me, sir, you are bleeding; let me call 
 assistance." Philip's handkerchief was, in fact, 
 suddenly drenched with blood as he put it to his 
 mouth. 
 
 "It is nothing," he said; "I have broken a small 
 blood-vessel somewhere inside. Don't alarm people.
 
 376 THE WIZARD'S KNOT 
 
 I will go to your room and put it right with cold 
 water." 
 
 The bleeding stopped before many minutes, but 
 Philip's eyes appeared to be suffused with crimson. 
 "Call me at half-past three," he said, throwing him- 
 self back in an armchair. "The carriage at four 
 tell nobody where it is going." 
 
 He fell dead asleep, as under some overpowering 
 weight. Yegor, who spoke and thought in French 
 from long custom, said as he went out of the cham- 
 ber, // dort sur la roue, like the criminals whom the 
 law once tortured before killing them. Philip 
 slumbered while the wheel was under him. 
 
 At half-past three he awoke, dipped his head in 
 cold water, and with a shake and a stride mounted 
 to his mother's room. He knocked and went in. 
 She was lying on a couch, the curtains at the win- 
 dows drawn together. Pulling them aside, the 
 young man let in a brilliant sky upon the lady's face 
 and figure. To his astonishment she wore a dress 
 of floating white, trimmed exquisitely, and set in 
 relief by her yellow hair about a countenance which 
 was certainly almost waxen, but otherwise more 
 youthful than his own. 
 
 The abrupt movement startled her. "I can't bear 
 so much light," she remonstrated, and was answered 
 with a laugh.
 
 WIDOW AND WIFE 377 
 
 "No doubt, but we must all bear it some time. 
 Are you rested now ?" 
 
 "Fairly, though I am always weak." 
 
 "You need not tell me that. A little more ex- 
 ercise may strengthen you." 
 
 "How?" she said, springing up in alarm. "I 
 want my maid," but before she could touch the bell, 
 he had planted himself in front of it. 
 
 "Your maid will come presently. She will put 
 together what things you require; and we shall be 
 leaving at four." 
 
 "But, Philip, you are raving. Where do we go 
 at four?" 
 
 "Home," he cr;ed, in a voice which rilled her like 
 a blow. "Home to your home and mine to the 
 place of torment you have made for me. We have 
 done with Airgead Ross." 
 
 "Can't you let me die here in peace?" she en- 
 treated. 
 
 "You must die at home. Put off that white 
 flummery. It makes you look like a bride shame- 
 ful at your age. Tell Sarah North to pack up." 
 
 "Is she coming with us ?" 
 
 "Let her go to her husband. Married women 
 ought not to be living in strangers' houses. Be 
 ready at four." 
 
 "If I look like a bride, you are the image of your
 
 378 THE WIZARD'S KNOT 
 
 father," said the lady, giving him scorn for scorn. 
 "Oh, you will repent it, Philip; you will be sorry 
 yet." 
 
 "At four," he said, and walked out of the room. 
 
 IT was done, to the amazement of the household, 
 which, somehow, got wind of the thing, and saw 
 them off in a portentous silence. The long journey 
 was accomplished without a syllable to break its 
 weariness. Philip and his mother now grappled in 
 a speechless conflict soul to soul; but the man's 
 appeared to prevail. He had wound all his forces 
 up until they were like a spring which, when it 
 uncoils, will strike furiously against whatever op- 
 poses it. No talk could make things different. They 
 had passed beyond words; these fleet horses were 
 bearing mother and son to a field of battle. 
 
 It was dark when they arrived, and Philip led his 
 mother at once, with grave courtesy, to the room she 
 had last occupied. So completely had the events 
 of the day thrown them off their balance that when 
 Lady Liscarroll walked upstairs without help, tread- 
 ing firmly as though she never felt a moment's 
 illness, he paid no heed to the transformation. 
 
 "This is the Marie Antoinette room," she said, 
 looking round on its choice appointments. Then, 
 not touching him, but erect, "Philip, do you mean to 
 murder me ?"
 
 WIDOW AND WIFE 379 
 
 "I don't know yet," he answered grimly. "Yes, 
 I give you the best I have. You understand that 
 when O'Sullivan has brought your dinner, I shall 
 lock you in ; and you will do without a maid." 
 
 "I want nothing but my freedom," she answered 
 disdainfully, flinging her wraps on a chair. She 
 still wore the splendid white lace, over which the 
 lights danced in the wind of the open door. Philip 
 had never seen his mother look so magnificent ; even 
 her color revived, and the sense of danger made her 
 eyes sparkle. He felt madness was in the air. 
 
 "I send up O'Sullivan, and afterward I lock the 
 door," he repeated, going away. 
 
 "Your master is insane," she said to the 1 steward 
 when he arrived. "Who is in the castle besides you 
 and Nora?" 
 
 "Her sister's two daughters, my lady," answered 
 he. "There is no man at all but myself." 
 
 "Promise me you will not go to bed until after 
 Sir Philip," she said uneasily. "He is quite out of 
 his mind. And in the morning you will get a note 
 off from me to I need n't mention names." 
 
 "I will do the best I can," he replied. "But 't is 
 unlucky to fly back when you have left the nest. 
 Why did n't you go the night the Gray Tower fell 
 in? 'T would have been the saving of us all. I 
 wanted you out of this place, for Sir Philip's sake. 
 Now you are here again. What brought you?"
 
 380 THE WIZARD'S KNOT 
 
 "I had no choice ; who has ?" she answered. "Keep 
 a watch on my son; I shall be awake sleep in this 
 awful room with those things of the murdered Queen 
 about me I never can. Oh, if the night were past!" 
 
 It lengthened with the silent hours. Philip came, 
 said good-night as to a stranger, shot the key in the 
 lock, and retreated with heavy footsteps. He had 
 refused to dine, but ordered a great fire in the hall, 
 and sat before it, sunk in wild thoughts. O'Sulli- 
 van, alarmed, but no coward, brought rugs which he 
 laid in front of the locked room, and lying there in 
 dog-like fashion, kept vigil. He could hear nothing 
 for several hours but the wood burning downstairs 
 on the hearth, and Philip's occasional stride, falling 
 irregularly, as of an unquiet visitant where men 
 slept. 
 
 But, in the dead vast and middle of the night, a 
 curious sound smote on his ears. Creeping to the 
 head of the great staircase, he looked over it and saw 
 his master, with a waxlight in his hand, passing 
 slowly round the hall, from portrait to portrait, ex- 
 amining with close attention, as it seemed, the fea- 
 tures of his ancestors, while he talked aloud to some 
 invisible companion, whose steps determined his own. 
 But the phrases were cut and fragmentary, often as 
 replying to another's observations; and who could 
 that other be? O'Sullivan dreaded lest it should
 
 WIDOW AND WIFE 381 
 
 break out suddenly upon his sight. The baronet 
 was approaching, candle in hand ; it was time for the 
 steward to draw back, and then a more terrible fear 
 assailed him. How if this madman should be com- 
 ing up to his mother's room ? 
 
 Philip, still talking, ascended half-way, stopped, 
 and covered his eyes, leaning against the balustrade 
 in a profound meditation. "You see, father, I can- 
 not keep her out," he said softly; "she has blood in 
 her veins, you have none, that is why you shrink 
 when she comes. I know I am talking with a shade. 
 But do not put thoughts into me which I will never 
 oh, I must not !" He shook himself with a violent 
 effort, such as one makes who is half asleep and feels 
 he should be up and doing against some evil dream. 
 The light dropped from his hand. 
 
 "God forgive us," whispered O'Sullivan, making 
 the sign of the cross, " 't is Sir Walter that is walk- 
 ing the house, showing his son those pictures of men 
 as dead as himself. Is he timpting the poor boy to 
 kill that woman above? I '11 go spake to him at any 
 rate." 
 
 He moved quietly to Philip, laid a gentle hand 
 upon him, and said, "Won't you try a little sleep now 
 sir? Come to your own room, 't is ready for you 
 and comfortable." 
 
 "Did you see my father?" said Philip. "He was
 
 382 THE WIZARD'S KNOT 
 
 there you are standing on the spot. He gave me 
 a command I can't fulfil you heard him ?" 
 
 "For God's sake, and his, come to bed !" exclaimed 
 the steward, his blood frozen. "Come, you have no 
 right to be up alone with yourself at these unholy 
 hours." He drew the young man on, without re- 
 sistance; and step by step, as if teaching a child to 
 walk, got him inside his room. Philip tumbled on 
 the.bed, dressed as he was, and after some minutes of 
 vague muttering, slept heavily, upon which O'Sulli- 
 van, still tremulous, put out the lights, locked the 
 door, and lay down on his rugs again in front of the 
 Marie Antoinette chamber. A voice from within 
 whispered, "Where is Sir Philip?" 
 
 "The house is full of voices to-night," he said, 
 turning faint, "but that is my lady's. I have locked 
 him in his room," he continued aloud. "You may 
 sleep now; he will not trouble you, with the grace 
 of God."
 
 CHAPTER XXVI 
 THE DEVIL'S CRAG 
 
 NIGHT with its terrors was past, but the day, how 
 would it wear to an end? Philip had come 
 down, pale as any sheet, his eyes full of the bad 
 dream in which murder stood at his elbow; and he 
 touched no food, nor did he go near his mother's 
 room. Toward eleven he said to the steward, "Tell 
 that lady I am going out; she is to come with me." 
 
 When she appeared, he passed on through a side 
 door to the open strand, where a boat was lying, 
 helped her into it silently, and took the oars. 
 
 "Shall we be alone ?" asked his mother, frightened, 
 but trying to show a little courage. 
 
 "By ourselves," was the short answer; and he 
 drove the boat on, making for a reef of rocks which 
 closed in the long Sound of Renmore. 
 
 It was tranquil weather, serried lines of cloud 
 barring the sky with bright battalions, under which 
 the water shone. The castle, now to such a lament- 
 able extent in ruins, might have been a Venetian 
 palace by the side of a desolate canal ; it looked its 
 
 383
 
 384 THE WIZARD'S KNOT 
 
 age, and the waves lapping on the sands were monot- 
 onously repeating a psalm of death, not unlovely, 
 though formidable. Along the rocks in front cor- 
 morants stood ranged, sentinels of solitude ; and the 
 crimson growth of some wild vegetation showed dis- 
 tinctly upon them at that distance. 
 
 "Why do we come this way?" inquired Lady Lis- 
 carroll. "Have you an appointment at Carraig na 
 Diabhail?" The Devil's Rock was ahead of them. 
 
 "You will see," was all he said. 
 
 Nearly an hour's rowing, and they arrived at the 
 reef, where Philip, leaping on the narrow ledge, 
 made his boat fast, motioned that his mother must 
 follow, and led the way up a winding track until 
 they came to the summit, from which an immeasur- 
 able gray-green sea stretched out in their sight. A 
 lonelier spot it would be hard to imagine. They 
 rested. Philip's gaze was turned to his castle, shat- 
 tered by storms, a wreck on land, with dark woods 
 seeming to grow over it. His mother looked sea- 
 ward, fear pouring cold into her veins and prophe- 
 sying evil. "It is very chill up here," she said at 
 length. 
 
 "Mother," he began, but stopped; "mother, we 
 are alone. I have brought you here, where the cliff 
 is steepest look down, a pebble would drop straight 
 into the water. You know what is to do ?"
 
 THE DEVIL'S CRAG 385 
 
 "I know you are vexed with me," she said. "I 
 can't help that." 
 
 "Vexed I am mad with you," he cried. "My 
 brain is on fire. We must come to a clear under- 
 standing. Either you will tell me the whole truth 
 what you are, and what you mean or " 
 
 "Or you will fling me down the rocks ?" she con- 
 cluded, still between fear and bravado, thinking how 
 she could get back to the boat and escape him. 
 
 "It has been the fate of better women," he said in 
 his low tones, "but have no dread. One of us must 
 die; surely that was plain when you set foot in the 
 castle a second time. I cannot kill you. Last night 
 in a dream I was near doing it. Not now ; but 
 I can kill myself. Unless I hear the truth from your 
 lips, you go back alone." 
 
 She sighed the sudden deliverance, the new ap- 
 prehension, were too much. "What if I make a 
 clean breast of it? Will you forgive me?" she 
 began. 
 
 "No conditions," he said angrily. "I look in your 
 eyes and I insist on knowing." 
 
 Thereupon she held out her left hand. "Do you 
 see that, Philip?" 
 
 "Your wedding-ring? I never denied you were 
 my father's wife." 
 
 "I am neither his wife nor his widow," she an- 
 as
 
 386 THE WIZARD'S KNOT 
 
 swered. "Yesterday you called me a bride. When 
 we met on the way from St. Brandan's Kitchen, I 
 had just been married." The ring shot out a gleam, 
 but she would not hide it. 
 
 "I was too late for the wedding," he answered 
 sarcastically, "but I caught a glimpse of the bride- 
 groom. Will Hapgood, was it not?" 
 
 "Ay, Will Hapgood, the bravest young fellow 
 alive." 
 
 "And you you love him ?" 
 
 With a passionate cry she rose to her feet. "You 
 asked for the truth you shall have it! I never 
 loved but one man, and his wife I never was nor 
 can be. Henry Lifford is dead. Now you know." 
 
 "He wronged my father; dragged you about the 
 gaming-tables of Europe at his heels; would not 
 share his name with you that was Henry Lifford." 
 
 "I don't care; go, study a woman's heart, Philip, 
 before you give me lessons. Do you think Joan 
 O'Dwyer and she but a country girl would have 
 acted otherwise, had she felt for you as I did for 
 him?" 
 
 "Oh, so you have heard about Joan!" he ex- 
 claimed, seizing her hands. "Where is she? Is she 
 dead ? How came you to be informed ?" 
 
 "Where is your cousin Edmund?" she asked 
 sneeringly.
 
 THE DEVIL'S CRAG 387 
 
 Her cruel joy was monstrous. The heart of the 
 woman lay bare. He could not endure it. A dead 
 woman floating on the waves would have been less 
 horrible. "Why did you let Hapgood take you for 
 a wife, since you had no liking to him?" he insisted; 
 ''the lad was not your enemy." 
 
 Then she told him all, glorying in it. "Mind, I 
 could have fled the night your Gray Tower fell. 
 Why did I stay? Because I wanted the match be- 
 tween you and Miss O'Connor to come off. What 
 reason had I to practise these long months of sick- 
 ness, except that there was no other way to bring 
 you out of your shell? It is as good as done; and 
 you reward me with this ! For shame, Philip !" 
 
 "The illness you have now quite put off," he said, 
 not heeding her indignation. "You are a bride and 
 begin your honeymoon when?" 
 
 "I wrote to Mr. Hapgood this morning. He will 
 be at the castle, I feel sure, before the day is out." 
 
 "Who took your letter?" 
 
 "O' Sullivan saw to that. I am perfectly candid 
 with you. Last night I was terrified; but I made 
 a vow that if it passed in safety, I would send for 
 Will and demand my freedom. We are married in 
 the eyes of the law ; you have no right to detain me." 
 
 "I shall not do so," he answered. "Have you any- 
 thing more to say?" His tone had quite changed.
 
 3 88 THE WIZARD'S KNOT 
 
 The lady thought that, after all, he was giad some 
 one should have wrought this deliverance for them, 
 and her spirits danced. 
 
 "The cliff has lost its fascination," she dared to 
 whisper; "but, Phil, it is all turning out happily. 
 You see I acted for the best." 
 
 His answer was silence. The plashing of oars 
 broke upon it, and induced them to glance up the 
 creek. A small boat was approaching from the 
 castle, O' Sullivan and another in it. Lady Liscar- 
 roll held her breath. "My God," she gasped after a 
 moment, "it is Will himself !" 
 
 And Will appeared on the beach, ran swiftly up 
 the rugged path, and in a few minutes was standing 
 beside them. He saluted the lady by taking off his 
 hat; then turned to Philip. "Has she told you?" 
 were his first words. 
 
 The stern, dark young man was in a passion of 
 joy and excitement. "I thought I should be too 
 late," he muttered. "You know everything, Sir 
 Philip" as the baronet made no answer. 
 
 "My mother tells me she is your wife," he said 
 coldly. 
 
 "I regret the circumstances could n't be helped 
 it was Lady Liscarroll herself who stood out so long 
 that I had, in a manner, to compel her."
 
 THE DEVIL'S CRAG 389 
 
 Philip interrupted him with a gesture. "Allow 
 me," he said, and turning to his mother, "let me see 
 you into the boat. O'Sullivan shall row you back to 
 Renmore ; please wait there till I return. This con- 
 versation between your husband and myself can have 
 no charm for you." 
 
 Her expostulations did not avail; Hapgood felt 
 it was impossible for him to second them. "My 
 son and my husband will be friends," she said, with 
 despairing sweetness, as Philip gave her his hand 
 down the rocks. With the steward he was per- 
 emptory; and Lady Liscarroll sat, as in Charon's 
 skiff, ferried over the waters of the dead, while the 
 forms of the two young men dwindled to black 
 points on the Devil's Crag. 
 
 "I will offer my apologies," said Hapgood. "No 
 one else is to blame; although, as I hinted at the 
 outset, you were rather severe on " 
 
 "Sir !" replied Philip. The sentence was left un- 
 finished. 
 
 "Anyhow, you accept my apology," resumed Will, 
 his eyes smarting. This kind of situation was 
 unendurable; he could only hope it would soon be 
 over. "In saying that I apologize and really, Phil, 
 I admit you have a right to be offended I do all that 
 can be expected of a gentleman."
 
 39 o THE WIZARD'S KNOT 
 
 "Don't talk," cried the other, hotly. "Must I 
 throw you headlong over the cliff?" 
 
 Hapgood reared like a war-horse. "You refuse 
 my apology you insult me!" 
 
 The baronet was musing. "I have n't a friend in 
 the world," he said under his breath. "How is it 
 to be managed ?" 
 
 "Of course, if you want satisfaction," said Hap- 
 good, sullenly; "mind, I don't challenge yon I am 
 in the wrong, I own it but we cannot fight now." 
 
 Philip replied in a collected manner, as if he saw 
 his way clear: "In such a time as this, who would 
 act as our seconds? I can ask no person yet we 
 must meet." 
 
 "Why must?" remonstrated Will. The other 
 looked out over the wide sea. 
 
 "I have the choice," Philip went on. "I appoint 
 Rathmorna as the place; the arms, pistols. Bring 
 that lad, Felim O'Riordan; I .will bring O'Sullivan. 
 What happens must seem an accident." 
 
 "Since you will have it so," replied Hapgood, 
 shrugging his shoulders. 
 
 "To be sure," said his antagonist ; "otherwise, you 
 would not leave this but dead." 
 
 "All the same, I call it murder." 
 
 "Call it how you please. To-morrow morning 
 at seven. I put it on your honor to keep these ar-
 
 THE DEVIL'S CRAG 391 
 
 rangements from Lady Liscarroll. You know how 
 to do it." He was turning to go, when Hapgood 
 held his arm. 
 
 "For the last time, Philip, I offer to take all the 
 blame on myself." 
 
 "Who else? You will scarcely blame me. I 
 have told you what remains." 
 
 Hapgood threw up his arms, swore a silent oath, 
 and followed his challenger down to the boat, which 
 Philip turned in the direction of Renmore. The 
 lady was waiting outside the house, shaken to a real 
 sickness, enraged that men should act and decide as 
 if it mattered nothing to women what they did. But 
 she had still to put on a pleasant face and make trial 
 of her witcheries. "You are both satisfied at last,"she 
 pleaded, when they came up. "Philip, will Mr. 
 Hapgood not lunch with us, in token of friendship ?" 
 
 "Another time, my dear Eleanor," said the new 
 husband, clasping her fingers; "I must n't stay." 
 He bent and kissed her hand, flushed up to the eyes 
 of a sudden, and walked swiftly into the avenue, 
 where a lad was holding his horse. 
 
 When he had disappeared, "You are friends, 
 Philip ?" repeated the anxious voice. 
 
 "More than friends relations," answered her 
 son; "you have given me a stepfather."
 
 CHAPTER XXVII 
 
 HAND IN HAND 
 
 INTO the long, low, wainscoted parlor of Sars- 
 field House the afternoon sun was darting a fur- 
 tive ray which lit up Miss O'Connor's face where she 
 rested meditatively, tired of all she had lately gone 
 through. Visitors were announced; she did not 
 catch the names, but on turning to receive them, what 
 was her surprise when Yegor came forward, lead- 
 ing in his wake the shy Felim O'Riordan. 
 
 "I wrote for news you fetch it yourself; is it 
 bad news? Why do you bring this young man?" 
 she said to him in alarm. 
 
 She pointed to chairs, but the two heralds of the 
 unknown stood silent, as if uncertain where to 
 begin. 
 
 "Is Lady Liscarroll worse?" inquired Miss 
 O'Connor. 
 
 "She has left Silverwood," answered Yegor; "I 
 cannot say how she is ; this youth will tell you, since 
 he saw her last" 
 
 It was now Felim's place to speak. "Oh, ma'am," 
 392
 
 HAND IN HAND 393 
 
 he burst out, "never mind in what state that wicked 
 creature is; but return home. Sir Philip will not 
 put the week through, and 't is I was the cause of it." 
 He broke down like a child. 
 
 "Has Philip met with an accident?" cried Miss 
 O'Connor, a dreadful suspicion breaking into her 
 mind. "You, Felim? you were jealous? you 
 guessed something was wrong and you have " 
 
 " 'T is not that way at all," replied the fisher lad, 
 tremulously. "Jealous I was, and well I knew where 
 he pitched his love. I must say no more" his 
 glance lighted on her and then fell "but if I did n't 
 let out the name of Kilmallock, this day he would be 
 in his full strength as ever. When you came in 
 search of Joan, bad began and worse followed." 
 
 "I am still in the dark. Yegor, I know you got 
 the poor girl's address from this boy," she said. 
 
 "From me, when I was under the influence of the 
 cursed drink and I broke Father Mathew's pledge. 
 I 'm well chastised now." 
 
 "Then Philip quarreled with you ?" 
 
 "It is a short story, ma'am. No sooner did I 
 recover from my sinful condition than I was in a 
 fright, dreading you would bring the two of them 
 together Sir Philip and Joan, I mane, for I don't 
 deny they were sweethearting. So I up and tould 
 Mr. Hapgood."
 
 394 THE WIZARD'S KNOT 
 
 "But how comes he into it? I am more bewil- 
 dered than I was." 
 
 Yegor interposed. "I gave warning to your Ex- 
 cellence months ago that our guest, or her phantom, 
 was seen in the woods about your mansion talking 
 with a stranger. You did not wish to believe it. 
 The stranger was Mr. Hapgood." 
 
 "So, when he knew his time was short, and the tide 
 maybe turning against him," said O'Riordan, "he 
 was always mad with love for the witch I beg your 
 pardon once more, nothing will plaise him but to 
 get a clergyman, and the Driscolls to be witnesses, 
 and he must marry Lady Liscarroll; bad luck to 
 every one that had a hand in it ! I '11 never get the 
 taste of St. Brandan's leeks out of my mouth." 
 
 "Sir Philip came unexpectedly the same day ; saw 
 them returning from the ruined church; took his 
 mother home," said the Russian. 
 
 "And challenged Hapgood," Felim concluded 
 with a scream. "They met in the field of Rath- 
 morna, where Sir Philip near broke his neck out 
 hunting. What seconds had they? Faith, 't was 
 no time to be looking for grand gentlemen, you may 
 take the book on that. But I was attending on Mr. 
 Hapgood, and that double-faced O'Sullivan on the 
 master he desaved and chated since her ladyship 
 flew back to the ould Gray Tower. Pistols they had
 
 HAND IN HAND 395 
 
 to it, if you plaise ; and they swore us by every book 
 to maintain that whatever should be done was an 
 accident. I 'm breaking that oath this minute, but 
 I '11 never reckon it a sin." 
 
 "Let me know the end of all this," she entreated ; 
 "but I can guess Sir Philip " 
 
 "They tossed a guinea to have first shot, and it fell 
 to him. I never saw a man stand like Mr. Hapgood, 
 his face turned half-way from Sir Philip, but his 
 body stiff as a poker. Flash and whiz ! the shot flew 
 by his head, and he never winked. Thin he took his 
 pistol, and with a bow and a smile, he fired into the 
 sky above him. 'I apologize, Sir Philip,' he cried in 
 a voice you could hear at Bantry ; and he was walk- 
 ing off the ground." 
 
 "Good Will Hapgood, brave Will Hapgood !" ex- 
 claimed Lisaveta ; "and so the duel ended. But how 
 came Philip by his accident?" 
 
 "Wait a while; we thought as you do, O'Sullivan 
 and myself, but there was one thought different. 
 'Hapgood,' called the baronet to him as he was lep- 
 ping the fince, 'you will not lave the field so aisy; 
 you broke the conditions; come back and deliver 
 your fire, or as I am a living man, I will shoot you 
 as I would a hound. To your place, sir !' ' 
 
 "And he obeyed? He had to commit this mur- 
 der? What men will do!"
 
 396 THE WIZARD'S KNOT 
 
 "No less than that. I saw the tears in his eyes a 
 thing I never saw before. You 'd think he was to 
 be hanged, and Sir Philip the hangman. The two 
 placed themselves the second time. I could n't be 
 looking at it ; I turned and shut my eyes ; but when I 
 opened them, Sir Philip was on the turf and blood 
 spouting from him. Driscoll says 't is a mortal 
 wound, and he cannot recover. He gave one turn of 
 his hand to Hapgood, but after that no sign of life 
 in him." 
 
 "Still he is not dead he was not when you left 
 Renmore Castle," she said in her agony. 
 
 "No, but surely dying; and now he has his sinses 
 or I don't know if he has them but night and 
 day he is calling, calling on Joan O'Dwyer. And his 
 mother I think she will die of his grief she 'd give 
 her new wedding-ring to have Joan back. I could 
 not but travel the world till I found her, and, with 
 Mr. Yegor's assistance, here I am for you," looking 
 on the ground and breathing heavily. 
 
 Even in that hour of most painful emotion, Lis- 
 aveta marveled at the lad. "But you were in love 
 with her, Felim? And do you come?" 
 
 "That is the raison I have," he said, and turned 
 away. 
 
 In what words could she praise such a spirit? 
 
 But when the great wave was spent which lifted
 
 HAND IN HAND 397 
 
 them, she said, "We were resting to-day after 
 Sheila's funeral. The poor old creature has gone to 
 her long home. Cathal you know his soft heart 
 cries after her as if she was the best of wives; and 
 she died with Joan's arms round her neck. But Joan 
 is not strong ; give her this night's rest ; we will set 
 out early to-morrow." 
 
 But Felim dissented vehemently. "For the souls 
 of all belonging to you, let us go this day," he cried. 
 "How would I face Joan if the master was gone be- 
 fore her ? Mr. Yegor and myself will take the girl ; 
 follow you, ma'am, when you are able." His hands 
 were out to her. 
 
 "No, Felim, I am wrong," said Lisaveta, wonder- 
 ing at him more and more. "We will make the most 
 of our time ; we will start without delay. But I must 
 break the news to her," she added, quivering; "it is 
 the house opposite ; we brought them there out of the 
 cabin where I found Sheila." And with that the 
 girl left them. 
 
 Over the next minutes we may fling the white 
 sheet of the dead. 
 
 THEY journeyed as on wings, swiftly, silently. 
 Once Miss O'Connor asked in an aside what had be- 
 come of Will Hapgood. Felim made a sweeping 
 gesture; he was out of the wide world. The faint,
 
 398 THE WIZARD'S KNOT 
 
 fearful voice of her friend startled Joan, though she 
 caught none of Lisaveta's words. By and by she 
 put a question. "Will his mother live after him?" 
 she meant Philip, could think of none but Philip. 
 
 "The heart is broke in her," said O'Riordan. 
 
 "And in me," said the girl, with a strange glance 
 at him; "but you are the best boy that ever walked 
 the ground." 
 
 " 'T is enough for me if you see him alive," was 
 all he could reply. 
 
 Lady Liscarroll met them on the threshold, her 
 face astonishingly altered, thin and gray as if the sun 
 had never shone where she came. She kissed Joan 
 and whispered, "He is living yet," with a sudden 
 burst of tears; but when she would have done the 
 like to Lisaveta, the girl drew back, and they ex- 
 changed looks in which there was no intelligence. 
 The greatness of her crime smote on the elder wo- 
 man out of so pure a countenance ; but with a slight 
 movement of the lips she passed on and up the mar- 
 ble stairs, followed by her visitors. "I must prepare 
 him," she said, speaking to Joan. "Be ready when 
 I send for you." 
 
 It was perhaps half an hour before they entered 
 the chamber which Joan had first seen on a night 
 never to be forgotten. She might, indeed, never 
 have quitted it, for the hangings and ornaments were 
 the same; a spectral silence reigned; the light was
 
 HAND IN HAND 399 
 
 subdued; and on the pillow she saw the face which 
 had haunted her with its melancholy and its passion- 
 ate fire. 
 
 Their eyes were meeting now, and time had ceased 
 for them. "You will understand, Philip," said his 
 mother, bending low to his ear, "that I sent and 
 brought her. It was my doing." His great eyes 
 stared upon the lady. 
 
 "Do the rest," he answered. As his mother with- 
 drew, he put forth a wasted hand to show what it 
 held. "Your promise, Joan," he breathed, a smile 
 changing his features to one radiance. "I kept 
 yours where is mine?" It was the token. "But 
 there is some of my blood on it now," he continued 
 after a little; "the shot took me on that side where 
 I kept it always." 
 
 She sat down by him and clasped the hand. 
 "What will I do for you?" said Joan; "you are sore 
 hurt, my dear. And are n't you sorry for all the sin 
 that was committed ?" He made a gesture of assent. 
 "If it was the red wound of death and God forbid ! 
 whatever you ask of me is done already." 
 
 "How should I ask any one thing but your prom- 
 ise?" he answered, as the sound of feet was heard 
 outside, and the door opened. 
 
 " 'T is Father Falvey," said her lover, his eyes 
 lighting up again. "Now you will do as you are 
 told. You never would before; but that is all over."
 
 400 THE WIZARD'S KNOT 
 
 The clergyman came in, vested, and behind him 
 Lady Liscarroll, Miss O'Connor, and old Cathal, 
 who fell on his knees in a corner, sobbing. While 
 the others ranged themselves about the bed, Father 
 Falvey spoke. "I call you here present to witness 
 the marriage of Sir Philip Liscarroll and Joanna 
 O'Dwyer. Cathal, will you give away your 
 daughter?" 
 
 "If I had twinty I 'd give them to Sir Philip," he 
 exclaimed, rising from his knees. "Joan, dear, take 
 that hand in your own, and never let it go from you." 
 
 Lady Liscarroll made a sign to the priest. "Be 
 quick," her lips motioned : the bridegroom had not 
 many minutes to live. 
 
 They hastened through the marriage service, 
 Philip whispering his answers and Joan giving hers 
 in tones of clear, low music. "Till death do us part," 
 said each of them, casting an instantaneous gloom 
 upon the air. His mother thought, "We should 
 have waited; the joy will be too much for him." 
 Since his bride's arrival, the last remnant of life had 
 been spent prodigally. But the priest was giving 
 them his benediction, full of good wishes and bright 
 hopes not in their case to be fulfilled. "Ye are man 
 and wife now," he said. "May this be the first day 
 of a better life ! In God's hand I leave ye." 
 
 "If I could hold on till Edmund gets here," said
 
 HAND IN HAND 401 
 
 Philip, sinking back, "I would go then, since go I 
 must, Joan; don't cry like that, my dear wife; per- 
 haps I have been a son of bad luck, but I am a happy 
 husband." 
 
 "Edmund will be here to-night," said his mother. 
 "I have a letter from him. He read in the 'Times' an 
 account of your your accident that you were ill ; 
 and he follows his letter. Can you rest till he 
 comes ?" 
 
 "I want Joan to sing to me one of those old 
 songs," he replied, whether awake or dreaming it 
 was difficult to be sure; then he rallied. "If you 
 would sing The Brow of Nefin,' dear. I used to 
 like it more than all, and your father gave me the 
 meaning of the Irish. Often I thought of it after 
 you went away, and 'the blossoms fell from the 
 branches.' They did, Joan, for me ; will you sing it ? 
 I would go to sleep then." 
 
 She looked at her dying husband at those in the 
 room and with a heaving bosom tried to take up 
 the ballad. Her voice broke, recovered, grew sweet 
 and tender as a cradle-song or a light breeze among 
 the rushes : a music that had in it all their life 
 delight and sorrow and separation and longing 
 blossoms cut by the winds of March falling on the 
 bridal-bed the bed of death. She sang like a 
 
 stream that slips with murmuring and a wreath of 
 26
 
 402 THE WIZARD'S KNOT 
 
 foam into the great sea, into the unfathomable deep. 
 His dream was on Philip, and he saw no more of 
 this world; but perhaps the beloved voice sang in 
 his ears still as he went down. 
 
 The girl paused suddenly, and watched his lips; 
 then she arose, put her arms about him, and laid her 
 face on his face. The women came to take her 
 away. 
 
 "I had him to myself this one minute ; now I give 
 him back to you," she said, rising erect. "Let me 
 go home out of this. But I have no home." She 
 paused and looked up. "Well, God's will be done. 
 Come, father." Cathal yielded his hand meekly, and 
 they were at the door. 
 
 There was no entreating her, it seemed, until Lis- 
 aveta said, "But you are his widow, Joan; at least 
 wait until the last rites are over." 
 
 "Wait this one day," said Lady Liscarroll, "for 
 his sake, not for mine oh, not for mine. I know 
 even you could not. Till to-morrow, he would 
 surely wish that." 
 
 "I will stay till he is out there with his father," 
 said Joan at last, pointing in the direction of the 
 cemetery. "Then I lave this place to you, Lady 
 Liscarroll." 
 
 With that they were obliged to be content.
 
 CHAPTER XXVIII 
 
 CEANGAIL THE BINDING 
 
 EDMUND reached the castle at nightfall, and 
 Renmore gave a sad welcome to its new master. 
 From Lisaveta he learned the tidings of death and 
 marriage, even in that strange order, which seemed 
 natural where all things had been rapt to a sphere so 
 real as to make the common day imaginary. 
 
 "I have had a severe struggle in London no more 
 of that," he said when the story was at an end. "As 
 usual, I come too late. Here is the volume of Sir 
 Walter's poems which, after years of neglect, a great 
 publisher is bringing out with every hope that they 
 will be celebrated. If my cousin could have known ! 
 Where is his mother ?" 
 
 "She retired early. In the room which you call, 
 I believe, Marie Antoinette's. You will not show 
 her the poems? I would not, were I you." 
 
 "Certainly; I agree; no use in ripping up old 
 wounds. And Joan the new Lady Liscarroll 
 where is she?" 
 
 "Praying by her husband's bedside. We go in 
 403
 
 404 THE WIZARD'S KNOT 
 
 and out quietly; she will not die of it; her troubles 
 have given her strength." 
 
 "It is the best they can do for any of us," he said, 
 and in a moment they were the friends of last year, 
 their thoughts in perfect unison. 
 
 It was well the young man came on the heels of his 
 letter. A' shock awaited them all next morning. 
 When Nora O'Sullivan went to call her mistress in 
 the Queen's chamber, she found Lady Liscarroll 
 apparently sleeping ; but it was something else. On 
 the floor lay a broken vial, and the pillows were 
 stained with brown spots, as if some liquid had 
 spurted over them. Dr. Driscoll, sent for in haste, 
 declared that the lady must have expired many hours 
 previously. 
 
 "It is a sad misadventure," he observed to Ed- 
 mund, who had gone with him into the room. "But 
 I can vouch it to be no more. Your aunt was under 
 my charge, in extremely critical health, and I pre- 
 scribed opium for her several times, though always 
 to be administered by myself. No doubt she felt the 
 need of it last night and took an overdose. I am 
 ready to certify the case under my hand." 
 
 "But where did she get that quantity?" insisted 
 his hearer. 
 
 The doctor almost smiled. "Some women always 
 carry laudanum with them," he said. "I can give 
 you no information on the subject."
 
 CEANGAIL THE BINDING 405 
 
 There was a formal inquest ; but the dead lips kept 
 their secret, in which none had shared, or else the 
 doctor's wife had confidences even from Driscoll. 
 Mother and son were buried in one grave next to 
 Sir Walter's ; and Cathal, who saw it filled in, spoke 
 the lady's epitaph. "He has her now, at long last, 
 after all her wanderings as I saw in my drame. 
 Kindness would not cure her, and the living had no 
 hould upon her ; but the hand of a corpse could bring 
 her down. God rest them and ourselves !" 
 
 Of Will Hapgood for many months nothing was 
 ascertained. He had left the country in what di- 
 rection who could say? But his mother knew that 
 he had been given a commission in the Austrian 
 service, and during the furious insurrection which 
 stained with blood the streets of Vienna, in March, 
 1848, he was struck down fighting in defense of his 
 new flag. 
 
 Events had now shaped themselves to foreseen 
 issues. It was inevitable that the heir of Renmore 
 should offer himself to Lisaveta, and how could she 
 refuse what her heart and her judgment approved? 
 But they would not stay in the terrible old house, nor 
 even keep it up; and its ruins are less forbidding 
 than were those haunted chambers and staircases 
 which saw .this drama played to the end. Airgead 
 Ross belongs to a more lightsome world, yet the vil- 
 lages far and wide have disappeared, or long lines of
 
 4 o6 THE WIZARD'S KNOT 
 
 moldering cabins lead up to what is left of them ; the 
 populous country has grown a wilderness, beautiful 
 and sad, under the silence that followed the Famine 
 and that still broods over Glenmasson and Renmore. 
 The past, with its dim association, had no future. 
 It is hardly now remembered. 
 
 ON a rich warm evening, flushed with sun and 
 cloud, the sea a yellow mist, dreamy as fairyland, 
 you might have watched Edmund and his wife where 
 they stood on the terrace, waiting until a white- 
 headed, ancient man came slowly up the steps, lean- 
 ing on the arm of a dark beauty, who was very ten- 
 der to him. "I am not long for this world," said 
 Cathal, when he had reached his friends ; "and if this 
 was the Wizard's Knot I made between ye, I am sat- 
 isfied; but I 'd like to see another twist of it." 
 
 Lisaveta shook her head. "So would I, perhaps. 
 Felim is a fine, brave lad ; but Joan our Joan, as the 
 people call her has other thoughts. Will it never 
 come to pass, my dear ?" 
 
 The dark beauty touched a locket on her breast 
 which she always wore. It held a tress of hair, 
 steeped in crimson. "Those are my marriage lines," 
 she said, with her strange smile, not altogether of 
 our world. "And, father this is my share in the 
 WIZARD'S KNOT."
 
 t 
 
 A 000 071 272 9