ng up saw
by the light of the log which still blazed on the hearth, the figure of
poor mad Kathleen sitting before her.

"You are sad, widow--you are sad," exclaimed the mad girl; "it is
waiting for your son you are; and do you think that he will ever return?
It may be he will, but you will have many weary years to wait until
then."

"What do you know of my boy?" exclaimed the widow. "Tell me, Kathleen,
tell me, girl, has any harm happened to him?"

"No; the harm is that he was weary of home, and has gone far away, so I
understand, if my poor brain has not misled me. Here, see, he gave me
this, and told me to bring it to you. It will tell you far more than I
can; it speaks words, though I cannot understand them."

"No more can I," cried the widow in a tone of grief. "Oh, that he
should have gone away and left his poor mother; but maybe in these lines
he will have told me why he has gone and when he will come back. Still
I do not know that I could have borne the parting from him even had he
gone with my consent. But those lines, girl, let me have them; there
are others can read them though I cannot. I wish it were the day, that
I might go forth and find some one to help me."

The widow took the paper which the mad girl gave her; it was a letter of
considerable length. As Dermot knew that his mother could not have read
it herself, he must have trusted to her finding some person to perform
that office for her.

The widow begged Kathleen to rest in her hut that night, hoping that she
might, during the time, gather some more information from her about her
son. All she could learn, however, was, that she had met Dermot on the
way to the south, some distance beyond the castle, and that he had given
her that letter, which he intended otherwise to have sent by the post.
Poor Kathleen then launched out in his praises, and declared that she
had never seen a lord his equal in these parts. The widow's first
impulse was to go and seek for Father O'Rourke, the person to whom the
peasantry, whenever they had any document to be read, generally
resorted. She remembered, however, his dislike to Dermot and the words
of anger with which they had parted from each other, and she therefore
felt a repugnance to let him see what her Dermot might have said to her.
"Then there is the blind lady," she thought to herself; "she cannot see
to read, however. Then there is the sweet young lady who came here from
the castle one day, an