"Look at that old gray tower to the right. If the man whom we met this morning among the hills spoke truth, we have reached the end of our weary journey, and yonder is our future home. It is not like our own dear Netterville, indeed, and yet it seems a goodly enough mansion. So goodly," she added, stealing a glance beneath her long lashes to see how he took the insinuation, "that I almost wonder they should have dealt thus kindly by us; for I know that many of the first of the 'transplanted' have had their lots assigned them in places where there was not even the hut of a peasant to shelter them from the weather."
"Tush, child! talk not to me of houses," the old man answered querulously, too much occupied with the actual disadvantages of his position to catch the hidden drift of Nellie's observation. "What boots a goodly mansion, if starvation be at its portal? And what, I pray you, but starvation are they condemned to, who have been sent to make themselves a home among these barren mountains?"
Nellie suffered her eyes to roam once more over the bright waters of the bay, and then, with a quick sense of beauty kindling up in her soul, she turned them hopefully upon Lord Netterville.
"Nay, dear grandfather, it is, after all, a country fair and pleasant to the eye, and once my dear mother rejoins us with the cows and 'garrans,' there can be no lack of plenty, even in these wilds."
"Cows and garrans! And where are we to feed them, girl? Do you expect to find the pleasant grazing-lands of Meath on the tops of these barren hills? or are we to fatten our flocks on the sea-drift, which, I have heard say, the natives of these wilds are in the habit of gathering on the shore and boiling down into food, not for their cattle, (they have none, poor wretches!) but themselves?"
"Some of these hills certainly look black and bare enough, but still I doubt not that among their glens and hollow places we shall find many a good acre of green grass for the grazing of our cattle," the girl answered patiently, and with an evident determination to look, for the present at least, only on the bright side of the question. "And now, dear sir," she added gently, "had we not best move onward? for if yonder tower is really to be our home, the sooner we are there the better."
She glanced toward the castle as she spoke, and the old man saw that she started violently as she did so. She said not another word, however; but he fancied that her cheek grew a shade paler—if that were possible—than it had been before, as she continued to gaze silently in that direction.
"What is it, Nellie?" he cried at last, frightened by her strange looks and silence. "What do you see, child, that you look so white and scared?"
"See!" she answered slowly and reluctantly, "there seems to be a party of many people gathering in the court-yard; the house, therefore, must be inhabited already!"