"The paths to a true friend lie direct, though he be far away."

The bright day had clouded over, and come to a wet and windy spring night. It was past eight o\'clock; the darkness had early fallen. There was a sense of comfort in a dry roof and warm shelter, as if it were winter weather, and Master Sullivan and old Margery had drawn close to their warm fireplace. The master was in a gay mood and talkative, and his wife was at her usual business of spinning, stepping to and fro at a large whirring wheel. To spin soft wool was a better trade for evening than the clacking insistence of the little wheel with its more demanding flax. Margery was in her best mood, and made a most receptive and admiring audience.

"Well, may God keep us!" she exclaimed, at the end of a story. "\'T was as big a row as when the galleries fell in Smock Alley theatre. I often heard of that from my poor father."

Master Sullivan was pleased with his success; Margery was not always so easy to amuse, but he was in no mind for a conflict. Something had made his heart ache that day, and now her love and approval easily rescued him from his own thought; so he went on, as if his fortunes depended upon Margery\'s favor and frankly expressed amusement.

"One night there was a long-legged apprentice boy to a French upholsterer; this was in London, and I a lad myself stolen over there from Paris with a message for Charles Radcliffe. He had great leanings toward the stage, this poor boy, and for the pride of his heart got the chance to play the ghost in Hamlet at Covent Garden. Well, it was then indeed you might see him at the heighth of life and parading in his pasteboard armor. \'Mark me!\' says he, with a voice as if you\'d thump the sides of a cask. \'I\'ll mark you!\' cries his master from the pit, and he le\'pt on the stage and was after the boy to kill him; and all the lads were there le\'pt after him to take his part; and they held off the master, and set the ghost in his place again, the poor fellow; and they said he did his part fine, and creeped every skin that was there. He\'d a great night; never mind the beating that fell to him afterward!"

The delighted listener shook with silent laughter.

"\'T was like the time poor Denny Delane was in Dublin. I was there but the one winter myself," continued the master. "He came of a fine family, but got stage-struck, and left Trinity College behind him like a last year\'s bird\'s nest. Every woman in Dublin, old and young, was crazy after him. There were plays bespoke, and the fashion there every night, all sparked with diamonds, and every officer in his fine uniform. There was great dressing with the men as you\'d never see them now: my Lord Howth got a fancy he\'d dress like a coachman, wig and all; and Lord Trimlestown was always in scarlet when he went abroad, and my Lord Gormanstown in blue. Oh, but they were the pictures coming in their coaches! You would n\'t see any officer out of his uniform, or a doctor wanting his lace ruffles! \'T was my foolish young self borrowed all the lace from my poor mother that she\'d lend me, and I but a boy; and then I\'d go help myself out of her boxes, when she\'d gone to mass. She\'d a great deal of beautiful lace, and knew every thread of it by heart. I \'ve a little piece yet that was sewed under a waistcoat. Go get it now, and we \'ll look at it; \'t is laid safe in that second book from the end of the shelf. You may give it to the little lady, when I \'m gone, for a remembrance; \'t is the only—ah, well; I \'ve nothing else in the world but my own poor self that ever belonged to my dear mother!"

The old master\'s voice grew very sad, and all his gayety was gone.

"\'Deed, then, Miss Mary Hamilton \'ll get none of it, and you having a daughter of your own!" scolded Margery, instantly grown as fierce as he was sad. Sometimes the only way to cure the master of his dark sorrows was to make him soothe her own anger. But this night he did not laugh at her, though she quarreled with fine determination.

"Oh me!" groaned the master. "Oh me, the fool I was!" and he struck his knee with a hopeless hand, as he sat before the fire.

"God be good to us!" mourned old Margery, "and I a lone child sent to a strange country without a friend to look to me, and yourself taking notice of me on the ship; \'t was the King I thought you were, and you\'d rob me now of all that. Well, I was no fit wife for a great gentleman; I always said it, too. I loved you as I don\'t know how to love my God, but I must ask for nothing!"

The evening\'s pleasure was broken; the master could bear anything better than her poor whimpering voice.

"You look at a poor man as if he were the front of a cathedral," he chided her, again trying to be merry. But at this moment they were both startled into silence; they both heard the heavy tread of horses before the house.

"Come in, come in, whoever you are!" shouted Master Sullivan, as he threw open the outer door. "Are ye lost on the road, that ye seek light and lodging here?"

The horses would not stand; the night was dark as a dungeon; the heavy rain blew in the old man\'s face. His heart beat fast at the sound of a woman\'s voice.

"By great Jupiter, and all the gods! what has brought you here, Mary Hamilton, my dear child?" he cried. "Is there some attack upon the coast? \'T is the hand of war or death has struck you!"

The firelight shone upon Mary\'s face as she entered, but the wind and rain had left no color there; it was a wan face, that masked some high resolve, and forbade either comment or contradiction. She took the chair to which the master led her, and drew a long breath, as if to assure herself of some steadiness of speech.

A moment later, her faithful friend, Mr. John Lord, opened the door softly, and came in also. His eyes looked troubled, but he said nothing as he stood a little way behind the others in the low room; the rain dropped heavily from his long coat to the floor. The Sullivans stood at either side the fireplace watching the pale lady who was their guest. John Sullivan himself it was who unclasped her wet riding cloak and threw it back upon the chair; within she wore a pretty gown of soft crimson silk with a golden thread in it, that had come home in one of her brother\'s ships from Holland. The rain had stained the breast of it where the riding cloak had blown apart; the strange living dyes of the East were brightened by the wet. The two old people started back, they believed that she had sought them because she was hurt to death. She lifted her hand forbiddingly; her face grew like a child\'s that was striving against tears.

"Dear friends, it is not so bad as you think; it is because I am so full of hope that I have come to you," she said to the anxious, kind old faces. There was such a sweetness in the girl\'............