ker turned attention towards him.

"'T is her husband," whispered the woman of the house, courtesying
respectfully to the youth, who, in all the torn disorder of his dress,
looked the gentleman; and with that she drew him into an inner room,
where upon a low settle lay the pale and scarce breathing form of Lady
Kilgoff.

"Don't be afeared, yer honer, she 'll be betther in a minute or two. She
has more courage than her father there," and she pointed to the outside
room where Lord Kilgoff sat. "Indeed, the first word she spoke was about
yerself."

Cashel made a gesture to be silent, and sat down beside the settle, his
gaze fixed on the features, which, in their calm loveliness, had never
seemed more beautiful.

The stillness that now reigned in the little cabin, only broken by the
low whisperings without, the calm tranquillity so suddenly succeeding to
the terrible convulsion, the crowd of sensations pressing on the brain,
and, above all, the immense fatigue he had gone through, brought on such
a sense of stupor that Cashel fell heavily on the floor, and with his
head leaning against the settle, fell into a sound sleep.

Before evening had closed in most of the party had recovered from their
fatigues, and sat grouped in various attitudes round the blazing fire of
the cabin. In a deep, old-fashioned straw chair, reclined, rather than
sat, Lady Kilgoff; a slightly feverish flush lent a brilliancy to her
otherwise pale features, deepening the expression of her full soft eyes,
and giving a more animated character to the placid beauty of her face.
Her hair, in all the loose freedom of its uncared for state, fell in
great voluptuous masses along her neck and shoulders, while part of a
finely-turned arm peeped out beneath the folds of the wide scarlet
cloak which the fisherman's wife had lent her in lieu of her own costly
"Cashmere."

[Illustration: 374]

Next to her sat Roland; and although dressed in the rough jacket of a
sailor, his throat encircled by a rude cravat of colored worsted,
he seemed in the very costume to have regained some of his long-lost
joyousness, and, notwithstanding the sad event of the night, to be in
a very ecstasy of high spirits. Sickleton, too, seemed like one who
regarded the whole adventure as a circumstance too common-place for
much thought, and busied himself writing letters to various persons at
Cashel's dictation, sorely puzzled from time to time to follow out the
thread of an intention