"I have not forgotten that, Nuala; but now I am not going to ask that reward in the same way I had intended."
"How do you mean, Brian?" she asked gravely, though her eyes widened a trifle as if in quick fear.
"This, dear lady," he smiled. "When you answer Captain Peyton, let the commission be made out in the name of Nuala O'Neill—and take my fealty for what is left to me of life, Nuala."
He looked up steadily, knowing that all things hung on that instant.
"Well, to tell the truth, Brian," and for a moment she seemed to hesitate, so that Brian felt a sudden shock, "I—I delayed answering him in—in that hope!"
And her face came down to his.
[Transcriber's Note: The following synopsis originally appeared at the beginning of the second installment.]
The scene is laid in Ireland during Cromwell's time, when the whole country was in arms for or against the various parties. Brian Buidh, or Brian of the Yellow Hair, himself The O'Neill, comes home from Spain, where he had been brought up to fight for his country. After a mysterious warning from the Black Woman, an old hag, he wins forty men from O'Donnell More, the Black Master, by a trick, and wins the friendship of Turlough Wolf and Cathbarr of the Ax. His intention is to gather a storm of men and hold an independent place near Galway. He forms an alliance with Nuala O'Malley, known as the Bird Daughter because of her carrier pigeons, for the purpose of recovering her castle, Bertragh, which O'Donnell had won years before from her parents by black treachery.