"Ye're glad I'm home, father?"
He pressed her closely to him for answer.
"I'll never lave ye again," she whispered.
All through the night Peg lay awake, searching through the past and trying to pierce through the future.
Toward morning she slept and, in a whirling dream she saw a body floating down a stream. She stretched out her hand to grasp it when the eyes met hers, and the eyes were those of a dead man—and the man was Jerry.
She woke trembling with fear and she turned on the light and huddled into a chair and sat chattering with terror until she heard her father moving in his room. She went to the door and asked him to let her go in to him. He opened the door and saw his little Peg wild eyed, pale and terror-stricken, standing on the threshold. The look in her eyes terrified him.
"What is it, Peg, me darlin'? What is it?"
She crept in, and looked up into his face with her startling gaze, and she grasped him with both of her small hands, and in a voice dull and hopeless, cried despairingly:
"I dreamt he was dead! Dead! and I couldn't rache him. An' he went on past me—down the stream—with his face up-turned—" The grasp loosened, and just as she slipped from him, O'Connell caught her in his strong arms and placed her gently on the sofa and tended her until her eyes opened again and looked up at him.
It was the first time his Peg had fainted.