"Niall has said 'Yes'!" she repeated, drawing a sharp breath and speaking as one in a dream. Her lip quivered; two tears shone in her eyes, but she would not let them fall. Turning on me instead, with a curious tone of command, she asked:
"Who are you?"
"A friend."
"An enemy, I think!" said Winifred, and with that she turned sharply away and was soon hidden in the brushwood. But I heard her only a few moments afterward, sobbing aloud and calling, as Niall had done, on Nature:
"I can't leave the hills and the streams and the valleys! I can't leave Wicklow and the Dargle and the castle, and dear Granny and Moira and Barney and Niall! Oh, it would break my heart!"
She sobbed again for a few moments; then her voice rang out defiantly:
"I will not go! I will hide in the hills, as the O'Byrnes did in the wars. I will live in a cave like them and not go to that hateful America."
I went back to the inn, resolving to try to win the child over to my ideas as I had done her uncle. I foresaw many difficulties in the way; and as I sat down on the wooden bench outside the door I began to wonder if my idea was, after all, a mistaken one. The air was very fresh and pure after the storm; the verdure of that Emerald Isle, so fondly remembered by its exiled sons and daughters, was rich and glowing after the rain; and the hills were shrouded in a golden haze, darkening into purple near the summit. I sat and listened to a thrush singing in the lilac bush near which I had seen Winifred sitting on the morning of our visit to the castle, till a strange peace stole over me and I lost all my fears.