of the night?"

"No matter what he was driving for, he was there to good purpose," said
my godmother.

"True for you, Miss Mary," Neil responded placidly.

And I, too, I wondered how it was that Richard Dawson had been abroad at
such an hour of the night. But I did not wait to think of that. I was
proud and glad of the thing he had done, and I remembered how I had said
to him that he was brave and how pleased he had been.

CHAPTER XXXVIII

CONFESSION

Christmas passed and the dark days turned round to New Year, and New
Year came and there were great clumps of snowdrops pushing up their
delicate, drooping heads in all the shrubberies, neighbouring the
patches of snow, for we had had a white Christmas and a white New Year.

We had settled down to the new ways of life as though the old had not
been. There was perfect peace and happiness at Aghadoe. In the spring
the workmen were to set to work at the task of renovating the Abbey.
Uncle Luke and my godmother were to be married before Lent, quietly. As
for me, I waited, till my whole life had become one expectation.

After the funeral at Damerstown was over I had gone to see Mrs. Dawson,
having ascertained first that her son was absent for a few days. The
poor woman had wept over me and forgiven me.

"Rick told me all," she said. "Sure, I wish you could have cared for him
for himself. Only his mother knows how much good there is in him. And,
dear, you must try to forgive him that's gone."

"We have forgiven him," I said, "as we hope for forgiveness."

Then she wept again softly, and poured out to me her hopes and fears for
her boy.

"It's gone deep with him, dear," she said: "it's gone very deep with
him. But, sure, we must trust to God to bring good out of the trouble.
He'd never have done you that wrong to marry you and you fond of some
one else. You don't mind my knowing, dear? My boy tells me everything.
Sure, I'd have known it, for if there was no one else you must have
cared for Rick."

"Some one else will care for him," I said.

"Indeed, I wouldn't mind who he married if she was good and fond of him
and would keep him at home. He won't leave me now, not for a bit--till
I'm happier; but he says it's best he should go, that he has a reason
for going. Ah, well; he'll settle down some time, when he's got over
this."

It might have been three weeks later when we heard that Richard Dawson
had taken the small-pox and was lying ill at the Cottage. T