Seated on the little window-stool—the same spot where he had often sat silent for hours—he fell into a train of melancholy thought. His poor father—the broken-down, crushed man, without a companion or a friend—rose before his mind, and filled each spot he turned to, and it was with a feeling of deep self-reproach he recalled how he himself had left him—deserted him, he called it now—to live on in sorrow and die forlorn. Out of this dreamy half-stupor he was roused by the woman hurriedly telling him that her mistress was, coming up the path to the house, and entreating him to go away before she entered.
He arose at once, and, passing through the kitchen, issued forth by the back of the Abbey at the very instant that Kate crossed the door.
“Who has been here, Jane? Whose cane is this?” said she, taking up a stick, Harry had forgotten in his haste..
The woman explained it was the young gentleman to whom her mistress gave permission that morning to see the Abbey, and who had only just taken his departure.
“The whole day here!” exclaimed Kate.
“True enough, Miss. He was two hours, and more in the Abbey, and I thought he was asleep, for he was lying on the masters, grave with his face hid; but when I spoke he answered me. It was what he wished, Miss, was to be let go up in the tower and have a view from the top; but I told him your own rooms was there, and nobody ever got leave to see them.”
“I mean to go to the Murra Glen to-morrow, Molly,” said Kate, turning to her old and faithful servant, “and you may let this stranger go over the Abbey in every part; so that he be away before nightfall, the whole is at his disposal. Go-down this evening to the inn, and take his stick to him, with this, message.”
Seated at her tea, Kate was thinking over the long sea voyage that lay before her, and the new land in which she was to seek her fortune, when a wild shrill scream startled her, and, at the same instant, Molly rushed into the room, and when she had reached the middle of it, staggered back, and leaned, half fainting, against the wall.
