"Come here!" she called. "Where are you going?"

For an instant the child looked too frightened to speak; then her lips
parted.

"Misther Asshlin--beyant at Carrigmore!" she said inarticulately; and,
turning, she fled onward to the house.

Clodagh stood still for a moment; then she also turned, and recrossed
the gravelled pathway.

She walked forward, scarcely feeling the ground beneath her feet. Her
heart beat fast; a cold premonition ran through her, chilling her
blood. Something was about to happen! The inertia that lay upon her
mind was to be shattered! Something was about to happen!

As she reached the hall door, she saw the child vanish into the
stable-yard by the small latched door in the great wooden gate; and saw
Mick, escaped from confinement, come careering towards her. But for
once she took no heed of his manifestations. Scarcely even noticing
that he followed her, she passed into the hall, and from thence to the
dining-room. There she stood for a long time listening--listening
intently. At last the sound she instinctively waited for reached
her--the sound of a sharp, wailing cry. With a frightened gesture she
put her hands over her face; then let them drop to the back of a chair
that stood beside the centre table.

She stood holding weakly to this chair, her limbs trembling, her face
white, while the wailing sound drew nearer, growing more spasmodic as
it approached. At last the door was thrust wide open, and Hannah burst
into the room, her face blanched, tears streaming from her eyes, her
whole air demoralised.

"Miss Clodagh, Masther Larry!" she muttered inarticulately--"Masther
Larry!"

Clodagh held to the back of the chair.

"What is it?"

"Gone! Drownded!"

Clodagh swayed a little.

"Drowned!" she echoed in a faint voice.

"He nivver went home at all last night. And to-day mornin' they found
the little boat capsized beyant at the head. O God, help the poor
mother! What'll the poor woman do at all?"

"Drowned!" Clodagh said again--"drowned! Larry drowned!"

Hannah stepped forward, as though she expected her to fall; but she
motioned her away.

"How did it happen?" she asked in a vague, thin voice.

"'Twas the storm! Sure, 'twas the storm!"

"But Larry was the best sailor in Carrigmore!"

She said the words involuntarily; but as they left her lips, they
brought into being a new thought. She stood upright, and by a strange,
slow process of suggestion, her eyes travelled to the ma