“Yes, of all things. What can you give me?”
He returned to the house, and brought out about a dozen books. There were odd volumes of the press, O’Callaghan’s “Celts and Saxons,” and the Milesian Magazine, profusely illustrated with wood-cuts of English cruelty in every imaginable shape that human ingenuity could impart to torture.
“That will show you how we were civilised, and why it takes so long to do it,” said O’Rorke, pointing to an infamous print, where a celebrated drummer named Hempenstall, a man of gigantic stature, was represented in the act of hanging another over his shoulder, the artist having given to the suffering wretch an expression of such agony as no mere words would convey.
“This fellow is intolerable,” muttered Vyner, as he turned away, and descended the rocky path. Grenfell, too, appeared to have had enough of his patriotic host, for he stretched himself out on the green sward, drawing his hat over his eyes, and giving it to be seen that he would not be disturbed.
O’Rorke now retreated to the kitchen to prepare for his guest’s entertainment, but he started with astonishment as he entered. “What, Kitty, is this you?” cried he; “when did you come?”
The question was addressed to a little girl of some ten or eleven years old, who, with her long golden hair loose on her shoulders, and her cheeks flushed with exercise, looked even handsomer than when first we saw her in the ruined Abbey at Arran, for it was the same child who had stood forward to claim the amber necklace as her right.
“My grandfather sent me home,” said she, calmly, as she threw the long locks back from her forehead, “for he had to stay a day at Murranmore, and if he’s not here to-morrow morning I’m to go on by myself.”
“And was that all you got by your grand relation, Kitty?” said he, pointing to the necklace that she still wore.
“And isn’t it enough?” answered she, proudly; “they said at the funeral that it was worth a king’s ransom.”
“Then they told you a lie, child, that’s all; it wouldn’t bring forty shillings—if it would thirty—to-morrow.”