py priest devolved the duty of
doing whatever must be done. The police at the neighbouring barracks
were told that the young lord had perished by a fall from the cliffs,
and by them search was made for the body. No real attempt was set on
foot to screen the woman who had done the deed by any concealment of the
facts. She herself was not alive to the necessity of making any such
attempt. "An eye for an eye!" she said to the head-constable when the
man interrogated her. It soon became known to all Liscannor, to
Ennistimon, to the ladies at Castle Quin, and to all the barony of
Corcomroe that Mrs. O'Hara had thrust the Earl of Scroope over the
cliffs of Moher, and that she was now detained at the house of Father
Marty in the custody of a policeman. Before the day was over it was
declared also that she was mad,--and that her daughter was dying.

The deed which the woman had done and the death of the young lord were
both terrible to Father Marty; but there was a duty thrown upon him more
awful to his mind even than these. Kate O'Hara, when her mother
appeared at the priest's house, had been alone at the cottage. By
degrees Father Marty learned from the wretched woman something of the
circumstances of that morning's work. Kate had not seen her lover that
day, but had been left in the cottage while her mother went out to meet
the man, and if possible to persuade him to do her child justice. The
priest understood that she would be waiting for them,--or more probably
searching for them on the cliffs. He got upon his horse and rode up the
hill with a heavy heart. What should he tell her; and how should he tell
it?

Before he reached the cottage she came running down the hillside to him.
"Father Marty, where is mother? Where is Mr. Neville? You know. I see
that you know. Where are they?" He got off his horse and put his arm
round her body and seated her beside himself on the rising bank by the
wayside. "Why don't you speak?" she said.

"I cannot speak," he murmured. "I cannot tell you."

"Is he--dead?" He only buried his face in his hands. "She has killed
him! Mother--mother!" Then, with one loud long wailing shriek, she fell
upon the ground.

Not for a month after that did she know anything of what happened around
her. But yet it seemed that during that time her mind had not been
altogether vacant, for when she awoke to self-consciousness, she knew at
least that her lover was dead. She had been taken into Ennistimon and
the