When Bernard O’Mahony found himself outside the convent gateway, he paused to consider matters.

The warm spring sunlight so broadly enveloped the square in which he stood, the shining white cottages and gray old walls behind him and the harbor and pale-blue placid bay beyond, in its grateful radiance, that it was not in nature to think gloomy thoughts. And nothing in the young man’s own nature tended that way, either.

Yet as he stopped short, looked about him, and even took off his hat to the better ponder the situation, he saw that it was even more complicated than he had thought. His plan of campaign had rested upon two bold strategic actions. He had deemed them extremely smart, at the time of their invention. Both had been put into execution, and, lo, the state of affairs was worse than ever!

The problem had been to thwart and overturn O’Daly and to prevent Kate from entering the convent. These two objects were so intimately connected and dependent one upon the other, that it had been impossible to separate them in procedure. He had caused O’Daly to be immured in secrecy in the underground cell, the while he went off to secure episcopal interference in the convent’s plans. His journey had been crowned with entire success. It had involved a trip to Cashel, it is true, but he had obtained an order forbidding the ladies of the Hostage’s Tears to add to their numbers. Returning in triumph with this invincible weapon, he discovered now that O’Daly’s disappearance had been placarded all over Ireland as a murder, that his two allies were in custody as suspected assassins, and that—most puzzling and disturbing feature of it all—Kate herself had vanished.

He did not attach a moment’s credence to the drowning theory. Daughters of the Coast of White Foam did not get drowned. Nor was it likely that other harm had befallen a girl so capable, so selfreliant, so thoroughly at home in all the districts roundabout. Obviously she was in hiding somewhere in the neighborhood. The question was where to look for her. Or, would it be better to take up the other branch of the problem first?

His perplexed gaze, roaming vaguely over the broad space, was all at once arrested by a gleam of flashing light in motion. Concentrating his attention, he saw that it came from the polished barrel of a rifle borne on the arm of a constable at the corner of the square. He put on his hat and walked briskly over to this corner. The constable had gone, and Bernard followed him up the narrow, winding little street to the barracks.

As he walked, he noted knots of villagers clustered about the cottage doors, evidently discussing some topic of popular concern. In the roadway before the barracks were drawn up two outside cars. A policeman in uniform occupied the driver’s seat on each, and a half-dozen others lounged about in the sunshine by the gate-posts, their rifles slung over their backs and their round, visorless caps cocked aggressively over their ears. These gentry bent upon him a general scowl as he walked past them and into the barracks.

A dapper, dark-faced, exquisitely dressed young gentleman, wearing slate-tinted gloves and with a flower in his button-hole, stood in the hall-way—two burly constables assisting him meanwhile to get into a light, silk-lined top-coat.

“Come, you fool! Hold the sleeve lower down, can’t you!” this young gentleman cried, testily, as Bernard entered. The two constables divided the epithet between them humbly, and perfected their task.

“I want to see the officer in charge here,” said Bernard, prepared by this for discourtesy.

The young gentleman glanced him over, and on the instant altered his demeanor.

“I am Major Snaffle, the resident magistrate,” he said, with great politeness. “I’ve only a minute to spare—I’m driving over to Bantry with some prisoners—but if you’ll come this way—” and without further words, he led the other into a room off the hall, the door of which the two constables rushed to obsequiously open.

“I dare say those are the prisoners I have come to talk about,” remarked Bernard, when the door had closed behind them. He noted that this was the first comfortably furnished room he had seen in Ireland, as he took the seat indicated by the major’s gesture.

Major Snaffle lifted his brows slightly at this, and fastened his bright brown eyes in a keen, searching glance upon Bernard’s face.

“Hm-m!” he said. “You are an American, I perceive.”

“Yes—my name’s O’Mahony. I come from Michigan.”

At sound of this Milesian cognomen, the glance of the stipendiary grew keener still, if possible, and the corners of his carefully trimmed little mustache were drawn sharply down. There was less politeness in the manner and tone of his next inquiry.

“Well—what is your business? What do you want to say about them?”

“First of all,” said Bernard, “let’s be sure we’re talking about the same people. You’ve got two men under arrest here—Jerry Higgins of this place, and a cousin of his from—from Boston, I think it is.”

The major nodded, and kept his sharp gaze on the other’s countenance unabated.

“What of that?” he asked, now almost brusquety.

“Well, I only drove in this morning—I’m in the mining business, myself—but I understand they’ve been arrested for the m—— that is, on account of the disappearance of old Mr. O’Daly.”

The resident magistrate did not assent by so much as a word. “Well? What’s that to you?” he queried, coldly.

“It’s this much to me,” Bernard retorted, not with entire good-temper, “that O’Daly isn’t dead at all.”

Major Snaffle’s eyebrows went up still further, with a little jerk. He hesitated for a moment, then said: “I hope you know the importance of what you are saying. We don’y like to be fooled with.”

“The fooling has been done by these who started the story that he was murdered,” remarked Bernard.

“One must always be prepared for that—at some stage of a case—among these Irish,” said the resident magistrate. “I’ve only been in Ireland two years, but I know their lying tricks as well as if I’d been born among them. Service in India helps one to understand all the inferior races.”

“I haven’t been here even two months,” said the young man from Houghton County, “but so far as I can figure it out, the Irishmen who do the bulk of the lying wear uniforms and monkey-caps like paper-collar boxes perched over one ear. The police, I mean.”

“We won’t discuss that,” put in the major, peremptorily. “Do you know where O’Daly is?”

“Yes, sir, I do,” answered Bernard.

“Where?”

“You wouldn’t know if I told you, but I’ll take you to the place—that is, if you’ll let me talk to your prisoners first.”

Major Snaffle turned the proposition over in his mind. “Take me to the place,” he commented at last; “that means that you’ve got him hidden somewhere, I assume.”

Bernard looked into the shrewd, twinkling eyes with a new respect. “That’s about the size of,” he assented.

“Hra-m! Yes. That makes a new offense of it, with you as an accessory, I take it—or ought I to say principal?”

Bernard was not at all dismayed by this shift in the situation.

“Call it what you like,” he answered. “See here, major,” he went on, in a burst of confidence, “this whole thing’s got nothing to do with politics or the potato crop or anything else that need concern you. It’s purely a private family matter. In a day or two, it’ll be in suc............