Halloran's door, and was ushered by the servant into the comfortable
parlor. O'Halloran stood there in the middle of the room. Nora was
standing not far from him. Marion was not there; but O'Halloran and
Nora were both looking at me, as I entered, with strange expressions.

O'Halloran advanced quickly, and caught me by the hand.

"D'ye know what ye've done?" said he, abruptly, without greeting or
salutation of any kind. "D'ye know what ye've done? Ye seeved my loife
at the concert. But are you aweer what you've done be-soides?"

He looked at me earnestly, and with so strange an expression that for a
moment I thought he must be mad.

"Well, really," said I, somewhat confusedly, "Mr. O'Halloran, I must
confess I'm not aware of any thing in particular."

"He doesn't know!" cried O'Halloran. "He doesn't know. 'Tis'n't the
sloightest conception that he has! Will, thin, me boy," said he--and
all this time he held my hand, and kept wringing it hard--"will, thin
--I've another dibt of gratichood, and, what's more, one that I nivir
can raypay. D'ye know what ye've done? D'ye know what re are? No? Will,
thin, I'll tell ye. Ye're the seevior of me Nora, me darlin', me
proide, me own. She was the one that ye seeved on the oice, and riscued
from desthruction. There she stands. Look at her. But for you, she'd be
now lost forivir to the poor owld man whose light an' loife an' trisure
she always was. Nora, jewel, there he is, as sure as a gun, though whoy
he didn't recognoize ye last noight passes moy faible comprayhinsion,
so it docs."

Saying this, he let go my hand and looked toward Nora.

At this astounding announcement I stood simply paralyzed. I stared at
each in succession. To give an idea of my feelings is simply
impossible. I must refer every thing to the imagination of the reader;
and, by way of comparison to assist his imagination, I beg leave to
call his attention to our old friend, the thunder-bolt. "Had a
thunder-bolt burst," and all that sort of thing. Fact, sir.
Dumbfounded. By Jove! that word even does not begin to express the
idea.

Now for about twenty hours, in dreams as well as in waking moments, I
bad been brooding over the identity of the lady of the ice, and had
become convinced that the O'Halloran ladies knew something about it;
yet so obtuse was I that I had not suspected that the lady herself
might be found in this house. In fact, such an event was at once
so romantic and so improbable that it did no