One day passed, and then another, and the evening of the third day drew near—yet brought no returning Bernard. It is true that on the second day a telegram—the first Jerry had ever received in his life—came bearing the date of Cashel, and containing only the unsigned injunction:


“Don’t be afraid.”


It is all very well to say this, but Jerry and Linsky read over the brief message many scores of times that day, and still felt themselves very much afraid.

Muirisc was stirred by unwonted excitement. In all its history, the village had never resented anything else quite so much as the establishment of a police barrack in its principal street, a dozen years before. The inhabitants had long since grown accustomed to the sight of the sergeant and his four men lounging about the place, and had even admitted them to a kind of conditional friendship, but, none the less, their presence had continued to present itself as an affront to Muirisc. From one year’s end to another, no suspicion of crime had darkened the peaceful fame of the hamlet. They had heard vague stories of grim and violent deeds in other parts of the south and west, as the failure of the potatoes and the greed of the landlords conspired together to drive the peasantry into revolt, but in Muirisc, though she had had her evictions and knew what it was to be hungry, it had occurred to no one to so much as break a window.

Yet now, all at once, here were fresh constables brought in from Bantry, with an inspector at their head, and the amazed villagers saw these newcomers, with rifles slung over their short capes, and little round caps cocked to one side on their close-cropped heads, ransacking every nook and cranny of the ancient town in quest of some mysterious thing, the while others spread their search over the ragged rocks and moorland roundabout. And then the astounding report flew from mouth to mouth that Father Jago had read in a Dublin paper that O’Daly was believed to have been murdered.

Sure enough, now that they had thought of it, O’Daly had not been seen for two or three days, but until this strange story came from without, no one had given this a thought. He was often away, for days together, on mining and other business, but it was said now that his wife, whom Muirisc still thought of as Mrs. Fergus, had given the alarm, on the ground that if her husband had been going away over night, he would have told her. There was less liking for this lady than ever, when this report started on its rounds.

Three or four of the wretched, unwashed and half-fed creatures, who had fled from O’Daly’s evictions to the shelter of the furze-clad ditches outside, had been brought in and sharply questioned at the barracks, on this third day, but of what they had said the villagers knew nothing. And, now, toward evening, the excited groups of gossiping neighbors at the corners saw Jerry Higgins himself, with flushed face and apprehensive eye, being led past with his shambling cousin toward constabulary headquarters by a squad of armed policemen. Close upon the heels of this amazing spectacle came the rumor—whence started, who could tell?—that Jerry had during the day received a telegram clearly implicating him in the crime, At this, Muirisc groaned aloud.

“’Tis wid you alone I want to spake,” said Kate, bluntly, to the mother superior.

The April twilight was deepening the shadows in the corners of the convent’s reception hall, and mellowing into a uniformity of ugliness the faces of the four Misses O’Daly who sat on the long bench before the fireless hearth. These young women were strangers to Muirisc, and had but yesterday arrived from their country homes in Kerry or the Macroom district to enter the convent of which their remote relation was patron. They were plain, small-farmers’ daughters, with flat faces, high cheek-bones and red hands. They had risen in clumsy humility when Kate entered the room, staring in admiration at her beauty, and even more at her hat; they had silently seated themselves again at a sign from the mother superior, still staring in round-eyed wonder at this novel kind of young woman; and they clung now stolidly to their bench, in the face of Kate’s remark. Perhaps they did not comprehend it, But they understood and obeyed the almost contemptuous gesture by which the aged nun bade them leave the room.

“What is it thin, Dubhdeasa?” asked Mother Agnes, with affectionate gravity, seating herself as she spoke. The burden of eighty years rested lightly upon the lean figure and thin, wax-like face of the nun. Only a close glance would have revealed the fine net-work of wrinkles covering this pallid skin, and her shrewd observant eyes flashed still with the keenness of youth. “Tell me, what is it?”

“I’ve a broken heart in me, that’s all!” said the girl.

She had walked to one of the two narrow little windows, and stood looking out, yet seeing nothing for the mist of tears that might not be kept down. Only the affectation of defiance preserved her voice from breaking.

“Here there will be rest and p’ace of mind,” intoned the other. “’T is only a day more, Katie, and thin ye’ll be wan of us, wid all the worriments and throubles of the world lagues behind ye.”

The girl shook her head with vehemence and paced the stone floor restlessly.

“’T is I who’ll be opening the dure to ’em and bringing ’em all in here, instead. No fear, Mother Agnes, they’ll folly me wherever I go.”

The other smiled gently, and shook her vailed head in turn.

“’T is little a child like you drames of the rale throubles of me,” she murmured. “Whin ye’re older, ye’ll bless the good day that gave ye this holy refuge, and saved ye from thim all. Oh, Katie, darlin’, when I see you standing be me side in your habit—’t is mesilf had it made be the Miss Maguires in Skibbereen, the same that sews the vestmints for the bishop himself—I can lay me down, and say me nunc dimittis wid a thankful heart!”

Kate sighed deeply and turned away. It was the trusting sweetness of affection with which old Mother Agnes had enveloped her ever since the promise to take vows had been wrung from her reluctant tongue that rose most effectually always to restrain her from reconsidering that promise. It was clear enough that the venerable O’Mahony nuns found in the speedy prospect of her joining them the one great controlling joy of their lives. Thinking upon this now, it was natural enough for her to say:

“Can thim O’Daly girls rade and write, I wonder?”

“Oh, they’ve had schooling, all of them. ’T is not what you had here, be anny manes, but ’t will do.”

“Just think, Mother Agnes,” Kate burst forth, “what it ‘ll be like to be shut with such craytures as thim afther—afther you l’ave us!”

“They’re very humble,” said the nun, hesitatingly. “’T is more of that same spirit I’d fain be seeing in yourself, Katie! And in that they’ve small enough resimblance to Cormac O’Daly, who’s raked ’em up from the highways and byways to make their profession here. And oh—tell me now—old Ellen that brings the milk mintioned to Sister Blanaid that O’Daly was gone somewhere, and that there was talk about it.”

“Talk, is it!” exclaimed Kate, whose introspective mood had driven this subject from her mind, but who now spoke with eagerness. “That’s the word for it, ‘talk.’ ’T is me mother, for pure want of something to say, that putt the notion into Sergeant O’Flaherty’s thick skull, and, w’u’d ye belave it, they’ve brought more poliss to the town, and they’re worriting the loives out of the people wid questions and suspicions. I’m told they’ve even gone out to the bog and arrested some of thim poor wretches of O’Driscolls that Cormac putt out of their cottages last winter. The idea of it!”

“Where there’s so much smoke there’s some bit of fire,” said the older woman. “Where is O’Daly?” The girl shrugged her shoulders.

“’T is not my affair!” she said, curtly. “I know where he’d be, if I’d my will.”

“Katie,” chanted the nun, in tender reproof, “what spirit d’ye call that for a woman who’s within four-an’-twinty hours of making her profession! Pray for yourself, child, that these worldly feelings may be taken from ye!”

“Mother Agnes,” said the girl, “if I’m to pretind to love Cormac O’Daly, thin, wance for all, ’t is no use!”

“We’re bidden to love all thim that despite—” The nun broke off her quotation abruptly. A low wailing sound from the bowels of the earth beneath them rose through the flags of the floor, and filled the chamber with a wierd and ghostly dying away echo. Mother Agnes sprang to her feet.

“’T is the Hostage again!” she cried. “Sister Ellen vowed to me she heard him through the night. Did you hear him just now?”

“I heard it,” said Kate, simply.

The mother superior, upon reflection, seated herself again.

“’T is a strange business,” she said, at last. Her shrewd eyes, wandering in a meditative gaze about the chamber, avoided Katie’s face. “’T is twelve years since last we heard him,” she mused aloud, “and that was the night of the storm. ’T is a sign of misfortune to hear him, they say—and the blowing down of the walls that toime was taken be us to fulfill that same. But sure, within the week, The O’Mahoney had gone on his thravels, and pious Cormac O’Daly had taken his place, and the convint prospered more than ever. At laste that was no misfortune.”

“Hark to me, Mother Agnes,” said Kate, with emphasis. “You never used to favor the O’Mahonys as well I remimber, but you’re a fair-minded woman and a holy woman, and I challenge ye now to tell me honest: Wasn’t anny wan hair on The O’Mahony’s head worth the w............