a' dawn she was down at Father Ryan's tellin'
him she was converted. An' not a drop of drink on her. An' the whole
parish is callogueing wid her now. But she houlds to it that King
William's a great saint in glory."

CHAPTER II

UNDER THE SHADOW OF THE MOUNTAINS

Rowallan was an old, rambling house that stood in a wilderness of weeds
and trees under the shadow of the Mourne Mountains. It was a house
with a strange name; people said it was never free from sorrow. Others
went so far as to say there was a curse on the place, and many went
miles out of their way rather than pass the big gates after dark, and
crossed themselves when they passed them in broad daylight. There was
not a man or woman in the countryside who could not have given you the
reason for this feeling about Rowallan. Anyone could have told you
that the master had been murdered not five years ago at his own gates.
Most of them could have told how his father before him had died on the
same spot--died cursing a son and daughter who had turned to be Roman
Catholics. And in some of the cottages there still lived a man or a
woman old enough to remember the master before that: a bad man, for he
had believed in neither God nor devil, and had broken his neck, riding
home one night full of drink, at the gates. God save us! was it any
wonder people were afraid to pass them? The present, too, had its own
share of sorrow. The children, they would tell you, lived almost
alone; there was no one to take care of them but two old servants, both
over sixty, for the mistress, though still alive, was a broken-hearted
woman, who had never left her room since her husband's death. This
they might have told a stranger, but no one would have dreamt of
telling the children these tales about their home. They, though they
had friends in every cottage, had never heard one word of either
haunting sorrow or curse. It is true that sometimes, coming home in
the evening from a long day's expedition across the mountains, they
felt a strange sense of depression when they came to the big iron
gates. For no reason, it seemed, a foreboding of calamity chilled
their spirits, and sent them, at a run, up the avenue into the house to
the warm shelter of the kitchen, to be assured by Lull's cheerful
presence that their mother had not died in their absence, and life was
still happy.

There were five of them: Mick, Jane, Fly, Patsy, and Honeybird. The
tales people told of th