his country to the foreigner, thinking those
dirty Germans will keep their word with him.

"Not they, John, not they. The saints forgive me for thinking it, but
for Ireland's sake I hope that ship will never reach Germany. If it
does, we'll see the German Eagle floating over Dublin Castle before
you'll be able to haul up the Green Flag. Well, well, there it is; it's
done now, I suppose, and there's no help for it. God forgive you, John,
I don't think man ever will!"

As she said this the white yacht turned the southern point of the inner
bay, and disappeared to the southward. Norah bathed her face, brushed
out her hair, and coiled it up again; then she put on her hat and
jacket, and went out to do a little shopping.

It is perhaps a merciful provision of Providence that in this human life
of ours the course of the greatest events shall be interrupted by the
most trivial necessities of existence. Were it not for that the
inevitable might become the unendurable.

The plain fact was that Norah Castellan had some friends and
acquaintances coming to supper that evening. Her brother had left at a
few hours' notice from his foreign masters, as she called them, and
there would have to be some explanation of his absence, especially as a
friend of his, Arthur Lismore, the owner of the finest salmon streams
for twenty miles round, and a man who was quite hopelessly in love with
herself, was coming to brew the punch after the fashion of his
ancestors, and so, of course, it was necessary that there should be
nothing wanting.

Moreover, she was beginning to feel the want of some hard physical
exercise, and an hour or so in that lovely air of Connemara, which, as
those who know, say, is as soft as silk and as bright as champagne. So
she went out, and as she turned the corner round the head of the harbour
to the left towards the waterfall, almost the first person she met was
Arthur Lismore himself--a brown-faced, chestnut-haired, blue-eyed, young
giant of twenty-eight or so; as goodly a man as God ever put His own
seal upon.

His cap came off, his head bowed with that peculiar grace of deference
which no one has ever yet been able to copy from an Irishman, and he
said in the strong, and yet curiously mellow tone which you only hear in
the west of Ireland:

"Good afternoon, Miss Norah. I've heard that you're to be left alone for
a time, and that we won't see John to-night."

"Yes," she said, her eyes meeting his, "that is tru