as if it
was a prayer-meeting. Anything may happen here; Ireland's a woman--very
uncertain."

Dyck flicked some dust from his waistcoat, and dropped his eyes, because
he was thinking of two women he had known; one of them an angel now in
company of her sister angels--his mother; the other a girl he had met
on the hills of Connemara, a wonderfully pretty girl of seventeen. How
should he know that the girl was Erris Boyne's daughter?--although there
were times when some gesture of Boyne, some quick look, some lifting of
the eyebrows, brought back the memory of Sheila Llyn, as it did now.

Since Dyck left his old home he had seen her twice; once at Loyland
Towers, and once at her home in Limerick. The time he had spent with her
had been very brief, but full of life, interest, and character. She was
like some piquant child, bold, beautiful, uncertain, caressing in her
manner one instant, and distant at another.

She had said radiant things, had rallied him, had shown him where a
twenty-nine-pound salmon had been caught in a stream, and had fired
at and brought down a pheasant outside the covert at Loyland Towers.
Whether at Loyland Towers, or at her mother's house in Limerick, there
was no touch of forwardness in her, or in anything she said or did. She
was the most natural being, the freest from affectation, he had ever
known.

As Erris Boyne talked to him, the memory of Sheila flooded his mind,
and on the flood his senses swam like swans. He had not her careful
composure. He was just as real, but he had the wilfulness of man. She
influenced him as no woman had ever yet done; but he saw no happy ending
to the dream. He was too poor to marry; he had no trade or profession;
his father's affairs were in a bad way. He could not bring himself to
join the army or the navy; and yet, as an Irishman moved by political
ideals, with views at once critical and yet devoted to the crown, he was
not in a state to settle down.

He did not know that Erris Boyne was set to capture him for the rebel
cause. How could he know that Boyne was an agent of the most evil forces
in Ireland--an agent of skill and address, prepossessing, with the face
of a Celtic poet and the eye of an assassin?

Boyne's object was to bring about the downfall of Dyck Calhoun--that
is, his downfall as a patriot. At the Breakneck Club this bad business
began. Dyck had seen many people, representing the gaiety and deviltry
of life; but it was as though many doubtf