--went out, aware, as they
rode down the avenue, and looked back at the old house, that they would
see it no more; that never again except in dreams would they mount from
the horse-block which their grandsires' feet had hollowed, walk through
the coverts which their fathers had planted, or see the faces of the
aged serving-men who had taught their childish fingers to hold the
reins and level the fowling-piece!

But Colonel John was of another kind and another mind. Often in the
Swedish wars had he seen a fair country-side changed in one day into a
waste, from the recesses of which naked creatures with wolfish eyes
stole out at night, maddened by their wrongs, to wreak a horrid
vengeance on the passing soldier. He knew that the fairest parts of
Ireland had undergone such a fate within living memory; and how often
before, God and her dark annals alone could tell! Therefore he was
firmly minded, as firmly minded as one man could be, that not again
should the corner of Kerry under his eyes, the corner he loved, the
corner entrusted to him, suffer that fate.

Yet when he descended to breakfast, his face told no tale of his
thoughts, and he greeted with a smile the unusual brightness of the
morning. As he stood at the door, that looked on the courtyard, he had
a laughing word for the beggars--never were beggars lacking at the door
of Morristown. Nor as he sunned himself and inhaled with enjoyment the
freshness of the air did any sign escape him that he marked a change.

But he was not blind. Among the cripples and vagrants who lounged about
the entrance he detected six or eight ragged fellows whose sunburnt
faces were new to him and who certainly were not cripples. In the
doorway of one of the two towers that fronted him across the court
stood O'Sullivan Og, whittling a stick and chatting with a sturdy idler
in seafaring clothes. The Colonel could not give his reason, but he had
not looked twice at these two before he got a notion that there was
more in that tower this morning than the old ploughs and the broken
boat which commonly filled the ground floor, or the grain which was
stored above. Powder? Treasure? He could not say which or what; but he
felt that the open door was a mask that deceived no one.

And there was a stir, there was a bustle in the court; a sparkle in the
eyes of some as they glanced slyly and under their lashes at the house,
a lilt in the tread of others as they stepped to and fro. He divined
that ha