From meditating on this I came to think of my fair hostess. I had seen full many a glorious beauty at the Queen’s Court, and in France when I served King Henry, but none that so bewitched and teased me as this Irish maiden, with her red-gold hair, and her eyes of unsoundable blue, and her coral lips that curled the one above the other when she smiled. And the dulcet fluting of her voice, breathing out pure English with a faint smack of something outlandish and yet most pleasing, remained singing in my ears. Moreover her bold and mettlesome spirit, yet not a whit unmaidenly, liked me well, and I considered within myself that I could be well content to enjoy her society during the few days which I needed for the perfect recovery of my strength. Her converse, methought, would sweeten my confinement until I should make my escape, whereto I was resolved. I remained in that chamber while daylight endured, now ruminating, now reading in the one or two books that my fair jailer had set there for me—some poems of Master Spenser, Tottel’s _Miscellany_, and sundry other volumes which I marvelled to find in that barbarous land; and it chancing that my supper was brought to me by that man that had some smattering of English, I fell on talk with him, to learn somewhat, if I might, of his fair mistress. Her name was Sheila, he told me—quaint and pretty to my ears; she was her father’s sole child, and the apple of his eye. She had dwelt some time in England, her father having been carried there a hostage, but loved Ireland, said the man. He told me also that she was vehemently besought in marriage by a young chieftain of that neighbourhood, one Rory Mac Shane, betwixt whose family and her own there was an ancient feud. ’Twas Mac Shane’s purpose to end the feud by this alliance, but he was looked upon with loathing both by the maiden and by her father, not only because of the inveterate enmity between the two houses, but also because they misliked the man himself, a robustious unlettered fellow, a foul liver, and one that constantly besotted himself with usquebagh, a vile drink of the country. Mac Shane had sworn, so it was told me, to wed the maiden, will she, nill she, for which reason had her father conveyed her to this castle in the lake, as being more easily defended than his greater seat a few miles distant. I had ofttimes heard of the raids made one upon another by these petty Irish chiefs, and my informant did not question but that some time, when occasion served, Mac Shane would seek to attain his end by violence. In this case I could not but marvel that O’Hagan had left his daughter, and withdrawn the main part of his people to assist O’Neill; but reflected that he must know his own business best, and so dismissed the matter. *IV*