o the Dawsons, Aghadoe Abbey
would shut its door in their faces."

"It shall shut its door," Mary Champion said indignantly. "He is
frightening them because they are old and have no son to lean upon.
Garret Dawson is an evil plotter and schemer, and there is blood and
tears on his money. Aghadoe shall be safe from him."

"How can he have frightened them?" I asked. "They have never borrowed
money from him."

The cloud deepened on my godmother's face.

"It must be something about Luke," she said. "But whatever it is, I will
swear it is not true. Luke never did anything that would put his old
father and mother in the power of Garret Dawson. He has frightened them
because I was not there to protect them. I shall tear through his web of
lies."

As she said it the light came to her eyes and the colour to her lips,
and I wondered that any one could ever have thought her plain.

"So you see, Bawn," she said, as she took the letter from me and folded
it up, "there was cause for our return. You know I would not take you
away from your enjoyment without cause."

"Yes, I knew that," I said.

Indeed, when we reached Aghadoe my grandmother was so tremulous in her
joy at seeing us, and she clung so to Mary Champion, that we might have
been away two years instead of two weeks.

It was late when we arrived, and there was supper prepared for us; and
while we ate it my grandfather sat in his chair by the window, where we
could not see his face, and was silent. There was a gloom over the meal,
a sense of trouble impending. It was not at all a joyful occasion as it
ought to have been, since we had come back. My grandmother hovered about
us uneasily, pressing this and that thing upon us, for she had bidden
Neil Doherty to lock up and go to bed, saying that we could wait on
ourselves, to his manifest indignation. And presently my grandfather got
up, excused himself for being tired, and, having kissed my godmother and
me on our cheeks, went away with a tired and uncertain step.

Something had happened. It was obvious that there was a sense of it in
the faces of the old servants. Even Dido whimpered uneasily under my
caressing hand.

My grandmother remembered to ask me if I had heard from Theobald, and it
was only then, with a sense of shame, that I realized the absence of
Theobald's letters and the fact that I had not noticed their absence.
Why, I had not written to Theobald for several weeks past; but I did not
dare to tell my g