“I said it belonged to Amos Scott, who had left it at my place the previous night, and that I was going to take it to the Castle Farm.
“‘They have fever there,’ she remarked.
“‘Yes, and a very bad fever too,’ I said. ‘Every word we spoke that night is printed on my heart.’
“‘Poor people, how they have suffered!’ she murmured, in a sort of whisper. ‘Ah! they have felt what it is to be in his power as well as I.’”
“As I had come through the gardens, I returned by them. It was a quiet beautiful night, and not a sound, not even the flight of a night-bird broke the stillness.
“I went by the fields to Scott’s house, and had got as far as the gate leading into the orchard, when I heard some one shout ‘Halloa!’ and a minute after a man came up panting to where I stood.
“It was Brady.
“‘I want to have five minutes’ talk with you, sir,’ he began, when he had recovered his breath a little, ‘but not here. Walk on with me a bit down the road, where we shall be out of the way of eaves-dropping.’
“He had been so lately engaged in the same business that the word came naturally to him.
“To cut a long tale short, Miss Moffat, his journey to Dublin had been all a blind. He wanted, he said, to know if the stories he was told of what went on in his absence were true, and he had returned to learn more than he bargained for.