“It is only since morning that she is gone,” said the bard. “It was only in the morning that the letter arrived to tell her that her father was lying in a fever at some place where the vessel called on the way home. And now she is gone from us, perhaps for ever.”
“Murrough,” said the young man, laying his hand upon the other's arm, and speaking in a hoarse whisper. “Tell me all about her. Why did they allow her to go? Where is she gone? Not out to where her father was landed?”
“Why not there?” cried the old man, raising his head proudly. “Did a Gerald ever shrink from duty when the hour came? Brave girl she is, worthy to be a Gerald!”
“Tell me all—all.”
“What more is there to tell than what is bound up in those three words 'She is gone'?” said the man. “The letter came to her grandfather and she saw him read it—I was in the hall—she saw his hand tremble. She stood up there beside him and asked him what was in the letter; he looked into her face and put the letter in her hand. I saw her face grow pale as she read it. Then she sat down for a minute, but no word or cry came from her until she looked up to the old man's face; then she clasped her hands and said only, 'I will go to him.' The old people talked to her of the distance, of the danger; they told her how she would be alone for days and nights among strangers; but she only repeated, 'I will go to him.' And now she is gone—gone alone over those waters.”
“Alone!” Standish repeated. “Gone away alone, no friend near her, none to utter a word of comfort in her ears!” He buried his face in his hands as he pictured the girl whom he had loved silently, but with all his soul, since she had come to her home in Ireland from India where she had lived with her father since the death of his wife ten years ago. He pictured her sitting in her loneliness aboard the ship that was bearing her away to, perhaps, the land of her father's grave, and he felt that now at last all the bitterness that could be crowded upon his life had fallen on him. He gazed into the black tarn, and saw within its depths a star glittering as it glittered in the sky above, but it did not relieve his thoughts with any touch of its gold.
He rose after a while and gave his hand to Murrough.
“Thank you,” he said. “You have told me all better than any one else could have done. But did she not speak of me, Murrough—only once perhaps? Did she not send me one little word of farewell?”
“She gave me this for you,” said the old bard, producing a letter which Standish clutched almost wildly.
“Thank God, thank God!” he cried, hurrying away without another word. But after him swept the sound of the bard's lament which he commenced anew, with that query: