But that very night, as I curled up in my narrow bed above the stable, I recalled my prayer.
By the light of a candle I took the book I had found from my pocket to look at it again. My mother’s hand on the cover called back all the old memories of my childhood—how she sang to Tim and me these very ballads, and taught us to say them after her; how she always seemed as much a stranger in Fanad as this little English book seemed on the ledge at Kilgorman. There, too, between the leaves, were a few pressed flowers, and—what was this?
A little piece of thin paper fluttered down to my feet, written over in my mother’s hand, but, oh, so feebly and painfully. With beating heart I held it to the light, and made out these words,—
“If you love God, whoever you are, seek below the great hearth; and what you find there, see to it, as you hope for grace. God send this into the hands of one who loves truth and charity. Amen.”
Chapter Eight.
A race for a life.
My impulse, when I read that sad message from my dead mother, was to rise from my bed and saddle the horse and return, cost what it might, to Kilgorman. Had I done so I might perchance have saved myself months, even years, of trouble.
But in a weak moment I let my fatigue and my irresolution and my fear of the ghost get the better of me, and decided to put off till to-morrow what I should have done to-day. If in after years my worst enemy had to confess that what I did I did quickly, it was due to the lesson which this one act of procrastination taught me.