"Yes, it was very strange," went on Roderick. "I was standing at the corner of Twenty-third Street, waiting to cross, and it must be owned that I was thinking of anything else than Ireland and my past life there. You know what a crowd there is at that particular place. Suddenly a carriage stood still an instant, delayed by the traffic; and out of it looked that exquisite child-face, full of wonder, of curiosity, and, I thought, of sadness."
I concealed my emotion by an effort; and had he not been so occupied with his subject he might have perceived at once that the story had an unusual interest for me.
"Would you believe," he said, "that New York faded from before me, and instead I saw the Dargle, the glen and the river, with all their lovely surroundings—yes, I saw them as distinctly as I see you now? The Dargle and—other places about there," he concluded, after a brief pause.
I wondered if he were thinking of the castle.
"By the way," he asked of a sudden, "were you in that part of Ireland at all—I mean Wicklow?"
"Oh, yes!" I said, trying to speak indifferently. "I saw most of the show places there."
"Did you meet any people thereabouts?" he inquired, speaking very slowly and playing with a paper-knife which he had taken up from a neighboring davenport.
It was my turn to hesitate a moment before I replied:
"I met the parish priest, Father Owen, as he is popularly called."
"Father Owen Farley!" exclaimed Roderick, apparently carried away by a sudden burst of enthusiasm; "the dearest, the best, the kindest of men!"