"No," said Nessa, laughing, "not one single long s, and the pictures were all of robber castles in the mountains, and men fighting, and women fainting, and shipwrecks, and dungeons."
"Oh, I say, how jolly!" exclaimed Bobbo. "That's something like a book. What was it all about?"
"Couldn't you tell us some of it?" said Rosie. "It's so nice being told stories."
"Oh, yes," cried Winnie. "If it's something dreadful, do please tell us. I feel just in the very humor to put out the candles and poke up the fire, and have something—something that'll make our flesh regularly creep and our hair stand up."
Nessa was not accustomed to story-telling, but she acquitted herself wonderfully well. Sure that the subject would charm the children, she was delighted to find something which would take them completely out of their everyday troubles.
Murtagh alone paid little attention. His thoughts were full of his own troubles, and he lay on the hearth-rug brooding over them with a bitterness that excluded every other feeling. Soon, however, some sentences that he overheard aroused his interest. He began to listen, and before she had gone very far, he had rolled himself over and was lying stretched out at her feet, his elbows planted firmly on the ground, his chin resting on his hands, and his burning black eyes fixed upon her face with an expression that might well have startled her had she seen it.
Murtagh's face as she proceeded was a curious study. It seemed at first with restless indignation to reflect every passion she described, but when she began to speak of John of Procida, and entered upon his resolute and devoted efforts for the freedom of his country, there came over it an eager, exalted look, a look of fixed and passionate sympathy, that never faded till she brought the story to its climax.
"I would rather read you the end," she said, pausing to look down at their flushed faces, and eager eyes, and tousled heads, ruddy in the firelight. "The book will tell it better than I can."
The book was still on the sofa; she had only to open it. The children, all wondering what was to come next, were too much interested to speak, and she read:
"In the year 1282, Easter Monday fell on the 30th of March. The people of Palermo, according to their custom on holidays, flocked out in hundreds to the meadows in the direction of the church of Montreal, intending to hear vespers and to witness also the marriage of a beautiful young girl, the daughter of one Roger Mastrangelo.