's the Silver Fork. Here's the Way-Home River. Ye've the right, I
discover, to the land marked R. It's, as you know, of small value to
you, and I'm wanting it. It's a vagary of mine. I may be going to raise
eagles on it."

[Illustration]

At the words, Katrine, who had been retuning an old guitar, took alarm
and was alert on the instant. Striking it quickly, insistently, she came
to the door of the dining-room, which framed her beauty like a picture.

"I'm going to sing you an Irish song, a real Irish song!" she cried,
gayly, touching the strings. The men turned, and Francis, with the land
on the other side of the Silver Fork clear out of his mind at sight of
her, came near the doorway where she stood.

"Come all ye men and fair maids
And listen to my song,
I'll sing of Bloomin' Caroline,
Who never did a wrong.

SHE

Beats the fragrant roses,
She's admired by all aroun'.
They call her Bloomin' Caroline,
Of Edinboro Town."

She played an interlude carelessly.

"Young Henry, being a Highland lad,
A-courting her he came,
And when her parents heard of it
They did not like the same.

so

She bundled up her costly robes,
The stairs came tripping down,
And away went Bloomin' Caroline
From Edinboro Town."

Dermott had risen and stood by the far window, looking into the night.
Unseen by him, she touched Frank on the sleeve.

"Do not do anything he asks you to do to-night," she whispered, with
great intensity, and in a minute more was back at the singing.

"They had not been in London
For scarcely half a year--"

and before the song ended the two men were joining the refrain, taken
out of themselves by her beauty and charm.

For nearly a week after this she saw neither of them again, but her
honest soul was fretted by the word she had given against a true
friend; so, when she saw Dermott riding along the river-bank, she called
to him from the rocks upon which she sat.

"Dermott McDermott," she cried, "come here!"

He rode through the ferns and undergrowth toward her, as she stood
looking up at him with fearless eyes.

"I've done something I want to tell you, something you won't like, for
it was going against you; and it makes me feel that I've not been quite
loyal to you, you that's always been so good to me, too." The quick
tears filled her eyes as she spoke.

He dismou