So a day was fixed for their departure, and Eily's eyes regained their old sparkle, her spirits their wonted elasticity.
Without a regret or fear she was leaving the little cabin in which she was born, her whole heart full of rapture that she was going to see him, and of the joy he would experience at the sight of her. Small wonder, then, was it that Dermot sighed as he walked homeward that bleak November day, for his heart was well-nigh broken at the thought of parting from the girl he loved.
As he rounded the shoulder of the mountain the clouds parted, and a shaft of bright sunlight lit up his path. Dermot looked eagerly before him. There was Eily standing outside the cabin door, bare-footed, bare-headed. Cocks and hens strutted in and out of the thatched cottage, a pig was sniffing at a heap of cabbage-leaves that lay on the ground, and a black, three-legged pot, the chief culinary utensil in a peasant's cot, stood just outside the doorway. Eily was busy knitting, and pretended not to see the tall form of her lover until he drew near, then she looked up suddenly and smiled.
"Is it knitting y'are, Eily? Shure it's the lucky fellow he'll be that'll wear the socks those fairy hands have made!"
"Is it flattherin' me y'are, Dermot? because if so ye may go away! Shure, 'tis all the blarney the bhoys does be givin' me is dhrivin' me away from me home. Maybe ye'll get sinse whin I lave ye all, as I will to-morrow!"
"Will ye Stay?"
"Oh, Eily, jewil, don't say that! don't!" he pleaded, his blue eyes looking earnestly into hers. "Whin ye go, you will take all the sunshine out of me poor heart; it's to Ameriky I will go, for nothin' will be the same to me without you, mavourneen! Eily, Eily, will ye stay?"
But Eily was firm.
"Faith, thin, I will not, Dermot! I'm weary of my life here; I want to see London and the world. Shure, I'll come back some day with gold of me own, a rale lady, for all the world like the gintry at the castle below."
He took her hands for a moment and wrung them in his, then, with a look of dumb agony in his blue eyes, turned his back upon her and continued his way down the mountain side.