Wayward Winifred

by Anna T. Sadlier

"And did you think all this of me?" he asked at last—"that I would forget home and kindred, forget the wife who lies sleeping in Irish soil, and, taking away my child, abandon you all forever? Ah, Niall, you little knew me, after all!"

"But I had suffered, Roderick; sometimes my mind wandered, perhaps, a little," pleaded the old man, pathetically. "There was a confusion there; and I only knew that if Winifred went away, you were both lost to me forever."

Roderick's face softened. His great generous heart touched by that appeal, he cried out:

"Uncle, dear uncle, let us not talk of forgiveness, but only of your long years of devotion to us all! We will speak no more of what is painful. Now all is peace and joy."

Father Owen entered just at that moment, full of genial sympathy and heartfelt, simple delight; and with his coming the reconciliation was perfect. It took Winifred some time indeed to understand her new relation to Niall; but she said that in any case she could not love him any better, though she was glad he belonged to the old castle and the old race.

The ornaments from Niall's cavern were disposed of to advantage, and it was a great day when we all went with Roderick to the cavern of the Phoul-a-Phooka to examine them. The gold was removed to a bank; and, as Roderick had brought some considerable savings from America, the work of restoration on the castle was begun. It was not, of course, necessary or desirable that the whole edifice should be restored to its pristine splendor; and some of the ruin remained in all its picturesqueness as a show place for travelers. But the main building was made both habitable and imposing. By some strange convulsion of nature, the cavern in which Niall had concealed his treasures, and where he had spent many a lonely night, was destroyed. The rocks fell in, and then the mountain stream gushed through it, sweeping away all trace of that singular abode.

Roderick's return, Winifred's identity as heiress of the O'Byrnes, and Niall's kinship with the family, were publicly announced to the village, all mysteries being at last cleared up. But the landlord voiced public sentiment in confiding to me that the "good people" were surely mixed up in the affair, and that it was the removal of the fairy spell bewitching Niall, and perhaps Winifred, which had made all come right.

Roderick was from the first the idol of the peasantry, to whom he endeared himself in every possible manner. His warm Irish nature had never grown cold by change or vicissitude, and he labored in a hundred ways to improve the position of his people. He was still in their eyes the handsome and high-spirited lad who had galloped over the country on his white horse.

I became a fixture at the inn; though most of my time was spent at the castle, where our little circle was often cheered by the presence of Father Owen. Niall at times unbent into positive geniality; and as we sat occasionally in homely fashion around the kitchen hearth, that Granny might not be excluded from our conferences, and that Barney and Moira might draw near unchecked, he told us many a strange tale of his adventures as a gold-seeker. Sometimes he brought us to the Far East, relating his inquiries into the occult arts or the researches of alchemists; and again he led us, by many a devious path, through the hills of his native Wicklow and along the banks of its streams. Many of his accounts sounded like some fabulous tale, a page from an old enchanter's book. Roderick, who knew that gold, even to the amount of ten thousand pounds, had been in former years found in Wicklow, and that mines under government control had been established there, was far less surprised than the rest of us had been that Niall had succeeded in wresting a certain amount of treasure from the earth.

And Winifred was never again sent away to school. She had a governess, and she had Niall to direct her studies, Roderick himself taking an interest in them. Her pranks are still told as of yore; for—pious, good, exemplary as she is in the main, and ruled absolutely by her father, whose will to her is law—she has her outbursts of petulance, and her old delight in playing a trick now and again on the unwary; or she will mystify her nearest and dearest by indulging in the unexpected; so that many there are who still know and love her as Wayward Winifred.