"You know my grandfather, then?" cried Nellie joyously, feeling as if the stranger must have been sent by Providence especially to help her in the hour of her utmost need. "You know my grandfather?"
"I ought, at any rate," he answered, with a sad smile, as he took Lord Netterville's proffered hand. "For we fought together and were beaten at Kilrush; my first battle, and, as I suppose, his last."
"Ha!" cried the old man, "Kilrush! Kilrush! who speaks to me of Kilrush? Were you there, sir? Time must have played sad tricks upon my memory then, for, truth to say, I do not recognize you."
"Nay, my good lord," said the stranger soothingly, "it would be stranger still if you had done so, for I was but a beardless boy in those days. Nevertheless, I remember you, Lord Netterville, and surely you cannot have altogether forgotten the cheer we gave when you, a tried and veteran soldier, rode up to serve with us as a volunteer in the regiment of your gallant son."
"I remember! I remember!" cried the old man eagerly. "It was a bright and glorious morning, and we charged them gallantly—a bright and glorious morning, but with a sad and bloody ending. Alas! alas!" he added, his voice falling suddenly from its trumpet-like tone of exultation to an old man's wail of sorrow. "Alas! alas! how many of the best and bravest that we had among us lay dead and trampled in the dust, as we withdrew from that fatal field."
He bowed his head upon his breast, and remained for a little while absorbed in thought, and Nellie took advantage of the pause to say:
"You knew my father, sir? You must have known him if you were near Lord Netterville at Kilrush; for father and son charged side by side, and were seldom, as I have since been told, ten minutes out of each other's sight during the whole of that bloody battle."
"Knew your father? Yes, dear lady—if your father was, as I suppose, Colonel Netterville—I knew him well. He was the bosom friend of my uncle and namesake, Roger Moore of Leix, who placed me in his regiment when I joined the Irish army."
"Roger Moore of Leix," cried Nellie, a flash of enthusiasm lighting up her face; "Roger Moore—the brave—the gifted—the first leader in a noble cause, whose very name was a battle-cry, and whose followers rushed into fight, shouting for 'God—our Lady—and Roger Moore!' Yes, yes; he was my father's friend. I remember even when I was a child how he used to talk about him. And you," she added, with a sudden change of voice and manner, and placing both her hands in his, "you, then, are that Roger Moore, the younger, in whose arms my poor father died."