ot whisky and water down his throat. As I left the
castle, I took the precaution of putting a flask into my pocket."
Saying this, the kind old man mixed a mug of spirits and water, which he
at once applied to the sailor's lips. It slipped without difficulty
down his throat. The effect was almost instantaneous; he opened his
eyes and looked around with astonishment.

"Dermot, speak to me, my boy, my own boy," exclaimed the widow in Irish,
as she threw her arms around his neck.

"What does she say?" he asked, in a faint voice.

"Dermot, Dermot, speak to me," she again exclaimed, but this time she
spoke in English.

"That is not my name, good mother," answered the seaman; "you must be
mistaken; I am not your son. I never was in these parts before except
once, when I came with my captain, though I have often enough been off
the coast with him and others."

"Not my son--not my son," ejaculated the widow, gazing at him, and
putting back his hair, and again looking at his countenance. "Oh, how
have I been deceived, and do you again say that your name is not Dermot
O'Neil?" exclaimed the widow, wringing her hands, "and I thought I had
brought my boy safe on shore, and that he was to be folded once more in
his mother's arms. Oh, Dermot O'Neil--Dermot O'Neil, why are you thus
keeping so long, long away from the mother who loves you more than her
own life?"

The young officer, who by this time had been revived by the application
of the good lawyer's remedies, now wildly gazed around him.

"That voice," he exclaimed, as if to himself; "I believed that she was
long ago numbered with the dead, and yet it must be. Oh! mother,
mother, I am Dermot O'Neil," he cried out to her, "your long absent
son."

The widow rushed across the room, and patting aside those who kneeled
around him, she threw herself by his side.

"You Dermot, you my son Dermot?" she exclaimed, looking at him. "Oh,
how could I for a moment have been deceived?" She bent over him, and
pressed many a kiss upon his brow. "Yes, those eyes, I know them now,
and those features, too; I cannot again be deceived. No, no, see here
is the sign by which I should have known him, even though he had been
given back to me as I dreaded, a lifeless corpse. But my Dermot is
alive, my Dermot has come back to me." As she spoke she drew back the
sleeve of his shirt, and there upon his arm she exhibited the blood-red
cross with which her son had been born.

During this