on. She made her harsh, commanding voice sound so sweet and
motherly that the child turned a little, and clasped that large brown
hand, and held it against his lips and his eyes, while he wept and
sobbed, till his heavy heart grew lighter. When Grace drew away her
hand, and found it all wet with tears, she looked at it for a moment,
with a strange tenderness in her imperious eyes. It seemed to her that
those tears of a sinless child, were like the holy water of baptism,
and would purify that hand, so often stained with blood.

Great was the astonishment of the rough mariners and warriors when they
saw their stern mistress, whose name was used by mothers and nurses all
over the kingdom, as a bugbear, with which to frighten naughty
children, now comforting and caressing this stolen child; when she fed
him with her own hands, and then took him in her arms and hushed him to
sleep--singing to him a wild, childish ditty, which she remembered,
because her own long dead mother had sung it to her, when she also was
an innocent babe.

So kind and gentle did the bold vi-queen become, that before many days
the baby-lord became passionately attached to her, and ceased to ask
for his nurse and parents. And he, with all his endearing, infantile
ways, was such brave, grand little fellow--a child so after her own
heart--that Grace, who, in her pride and independence, had never envied
anybody any thing, not even Elizabeth her crown--envied the stout Earl
of Howth his only son and heir, with a bitter, hopeless, lonely envy.
It made her sometimes sad, but it made her better, and gentler, and
even almost humble; and the most harmless, if not the happiest part of
her life, was that in which she retained the child with her, at her
gloomy stronghold in Connaught.

At length, after sending several messengers and agents in vain, the
proud and indolent Earl of Howth came himself, with a large ransom, to
buy back his heir. Grace O'Malley refused the money with scorn, but
offered to restore the child to him, if he would solemnly promise that
the gates of Howth Castle should always be thrown wide open when the
family were at dinner. He readily promised this, and the hospitable
custom has remained in his noble house to this day.

The Earl could scarcely believe his eyes when, as he was about to
leave, he saw the stern chieftainess lift little Tristram in her arms
and embrace him tenderly, while the child clung to her and cried. "By
my soul