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Duallach would often pause to tell how some clan of the wild Irish had descended from an incomparable King of the Blue Belt, or Warrior of the Ozier Wattle, or to tell with many curses how all the strangers and most of the Queen's Irish were the seed of the misshapen and horned People from Under the Sea or of the servile and creeping Ferbolg; but Costello cared only for the love sorrows, and no matter whither the stories wandered, whether to the Isle of the Red Lough, where the blessed are, or to the malign country of the Hag of the East, Oona alone endured their shadowy hardships; for it was she and no king's daughter of old who was hidden in the steel tower under the water with the folds of the Worm of Nine Eyes round and about her prison; and it was she who won by seven years of service the right to deliver from hell all she could carry, and carried away multitudes clinging with worn fingers to the hem of her dress; and it was she who endured dumbness for a year because of the little thorn of enchantment the fairies had thrust into her tongue; and it was a lock of her hair, coiled in a little carved box, which gave so great a light that men threshed by it from sundown to sunrise, and awoke so great a wonder that kings spent years in wandering or fell before unknown armies in seeking to discover her hiding-place; for there was no beauty in the world but hers, no tragedy in the world but hers: and when at last the voice of the piper, grown gentle with the wisdom of old romance, was silent, and his rheumatic steps had toiled upstairs and to bed, and Costello had dipped his fingers into the little delf font of holy water and begun to pray to Mary of the Seven Sorrows, the blue eyes and star-covered dress of the painting in the chapel faded from his imagination, and the brown eyes and homespun dress of Dermott's daughter Winny came in their stead; for there was no tenderness in the passion who keep their hearts pure for love or for hatred as other men for God, for Mary and for the Saints, and who, when the hour of their visitation arrives, come to the Divine Essence by the bitter tumult, the Garden of Gethsemane, and the desolate Rood ordained for immortal passions in mortal hearts.
When they came to Dermott's house they saw before the door an unusually large group of the very poor, dancing about a fire, in the midst of which was a blazing cartwheel, that circular dance which is so ancient that the gods, long dwindled to be but fairies, dance no other in their secret places.
"What's the matter with poor old Dermott?" I retorted. At this moment the much-enduring "machine" jingled up to the door, and Captain Dermott's luggage, together with his gun-cases and a generous bundle of game for the mess-table at Aldershot, was piled in at the back. Their owner followed after, and seeing the glowing end of my cigar in the dark, advanced to say good-bye.
Presently he stopped and asked again whose burying it was, and a man answered: 'We are carrying Dermott's daughter Winny whom you murdered, to be buried in the island of the Holy Trinity, and the man stooped and picked up a stone and cast it at Costello, striking him on the cheek and making the blood flow out over his face.
"Thirty years. Dermott has recently been demanding papers of me. It seems there may be some property in America belonging to my first husband which he can claim for me." A premonition of the truth came to Katrine at the sound of Dermott's name. "And your first husband's name?" she inquired. "Will it pain you to tell it?" "Not at all," the Countess answered, with a sad smile.
During last summer a traveler was found murdered near one of those prairies, but he had been dead so long it was impossible to ascertain who he was. Monday, Nov. 8. Left Dermott's at 7 o'clock. Crossed a prairie five miles wide. Met with a new species of game called prairie hens. They are very much like the pheasant, and I am of the opinion they are the grouse. Plenty of deer and turkeys.
But what she saw was an old garden in Carolina, wind-blown pines, the scarlet creepers around an old bench, and a man with blanched face and restless eyes; what she heard, underneath Dermott's voice, were words from the past: "I might lie to you, but the thing that separates us is family pride, family pride. I am going away to-day, going because I do not dare to stay!"
If he does, well even if he does, the gods are with the Irish!" Instead of entering the drawing-room after Dermott's departure, Frank turned with some abruptness toward Mrs. Ravenel.
But these things assumed a new importance when he thought of Dermott's love for Katrine, for the queer Celtic genius was singularly unattuned to failure in anything, and never, in any matter save that of the railroad, could Frank claim a complete victory. And those who believed the railroad issue still unsettled were not wanting.
He stopped an old man and asked whose burying it was and whose people they were, and the old man answered: 'It is the burying of Oona, Dermott's daughter, and we are the Namaras and the Dermotts and their following, and you are Tumaus Costello who murdered her.
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