ting a last look round the room, which I now
guessed to be that in which I first saw the light, I hurried back to the
chamber over the porch.

My little mistress was very vexed and put about when she found that
there was no way into the house except the one. Had she been alone, I
suspect she would have been up in a trice, and let dignity go; but my
presence hindered her, and she chose, I think rather harshly, to blame
me as the cause of her disappointment.

"If I were you," said she, with a frown, "and you I, I warrant I could
have found some way to let you in."

"Faith, you wouldn't be sorrier to keep me standing out here than I
was," said I humbly. "And indeed there's little enough to pay you for
the trouble when you're once in. It's a dull, dismal house."

"And how was the ghost?" asked she.

"Whisht, Miss Kit! It wasn't likely any evil spirit could walk abroad
while you're about."

"All very fine," said she. "I'll see Kilgorman before I'm much older,
cost what it may. And I'll be my own groom, what's more. Fall behind,
Barry."

And she set off, looking very mortified and angry.

I don't know if I was more sorry or glad that things had turned out as
they had. I dreaded for her to come across sorrow in any form. And
this house of mourning, with its mysterious air of terror, with its
prison-like bars and bolts, and its time-devoured relics of a life that
had gone out all in one day like the wick of a candle, was no place,
then, for the bright sunflower of Knockowen.

His honour, happily, was away in Derry, and no one was there to question
us as to our expedition. So I put up the horses, and trusted to God
there was an end of Kilgorman.

But that very night, as I curled up in my narrow bed above the stable, I
recalled my prayer.

By the light of a candle I took the book I had found from my pocket to
look at it again. My mother's hand on the cover called back all the old
memories of my childhood--how she sang to Tim and me these very ballads,
and taught us to say them after her; how she always seemed as much a
stranger in Fanad as this little English book seemed on the ledge at
Kilgorman. There, too, between the leaves, were a few pressed flowers,
and--what was this?

A little piece of thin paper fluttered down to my feet, written over in
my mother's hand, but, oh, so feebly and painfully. With beating heart
I held it to the light, and made out these words,--

"If you love God, whoever you a