"I must go now, Aileen; the boys will be home by this time. And when I bring this fine Englishman to see you—he is only half an Englishman after all, for his mother was one of the Blakes of Derry—you'll give him a welcome?"
"That I will, asthore, though it's little the welcome of an old woman will be to him while he has your swate face to look on."
The girl laughs and gathers her fur cape about her as she steps out on to the bog road, for a keen wind blows from the mountains. As she turns to leave the cottage, a man, who has been smoking in the shelter of one of the heaps of turf, straightens himself and walks after her. His steps fall noiselessly on the peaty soil; but some instinct makes Honor turn her head, and at sight of him her face flushes.
"Ah, what brings you here, Power? I thought you were away at Drum with
Launce?"
"I went part of the way but turned back. Sure they'd nothing better to do! I had!"
"And have you done it?" the girl asks shyly.
"I am doing it now," he says, with a smile.
She does not answer him in words, but her eyes are filled with a sudden glow and sweetness.
"You will find your visitor at Donaghmore," he tells her, as they walk together across the yielding bog; "I met him at Garrick Station, and drove him over. Your father could not go, as he had to run off at the last minute to take the deposition of poor Rooney, who is dying, I'm afraid. The Englishman seemed to think nothing of it, when I told him how the poor fellow had been badly hurt in a fight. He evidently imagines it is the custom for one man to shoot another every week or so in the ordinary Irish village."
"Oh, Power, don't talk like that!" the girl says. "Sure, we all know these dreadful things occur only too often. Don't let us talk about them at all. Tell me what he is like."