id Neal. "You know well enough, Peg, that
there never was much the matter with it."

They shouldered their loads again, walked up the street, and then,
quickening their pace, tramped along the Shore Road for about three
miles.

"Now," said Hope, "turn to the left up that loaning, and we'll strike
for the hill."

They crossed the fields round the homesteads which lay between the hill
and the road, reached uncultivated and stony ground, and then commenced
their climb. Neal was strong, active, and accustomed to fatigue, but he
began to feel the weight of his sack of cartridge cases before he had
climbed five hundred feet. When Hope bade him halt he was glad enough to
lie panting on the springy heather.

"We're safe now," said Hope, "but we've got further to go before night.
We must make the place I named so that the men will be able to find me
and the cartridges to-morrow morn."

Neal, ashamed of his weariness, bade Hope lead on.

"I might have trysted with them for Mac Art's Fort," said Hope. "It was
there that Neilson and Tone and M'Cracken swore the oath. That would
have been a brave romantic spot for you and me to spend the night. We
might have thought of great things there with the stars over us and
nothing else between us and God's heaven. But it's a draughty place,
lad." The laughter came into his eyes as he spoke. "A draughty place and
a stony, like Luz, where Jacob lay, and maybe the angels wouldn't come
near the likes of us. The place I have in my mind is warmer."

They reached it at last--a little heathery hollow, lying under the
shelter of great rocks.

"You might sleep in a worse place, Neal. It was here that Wolfe Tone and
the men I told you of dined three years ago--and a merry day they had
of it. I could wish we had a few of the scraps they left. It's cold work
sleeping in the open on an empty stomach, but we must just cheer each
other with Tone's byword--

"''Tis but in vain
For soldiers to complain.'"

Neal, lying full length on the heather in the warmth of the afternoon
sun, dropped off to sleep. He had undergone severe physical exertion,
which told on him. He had been through an hour and more of great
excitement, which exhausted him far more than the exertion. When he woke
the sun had sunk behind the hill, and the air was pleasantly cool. Hope
sat beside him, gazing out across the Lough and the town which lay below
them.

"I've been thinking, Neal, of that man Finlay. He was fri