When the landlady entered, Arrah immediately turned from the window and advanced towards her. Then, laying her hand upon her arm, she gazed in her face for a moment so intently that the poor woman began to be alarmed. "I am sure I recollect you," said Arrah Neil. "Have you not been here long?" "For twenty years," replied the hostess; "and for five-and-twenty before that in the house next door, from which I married into this." "And don't you recollect me?" asked Arrah Neil. "No," replied the landlady, "I do not; though I think I have seen some one very like you before, but then it was a taller lady--much taller." "So she was," cried Arrah Neil. "What was her name?" "Nay, I can't tell, if you can't," replied the landlady. "I know what I called her, but I know nothing more," answered Arrah Neil. "I called her mother--and perhaps she was my mother. I called her mother as I lay in that bed, with my head aching, my eyes burning, and my lips parched; and then I fell into a long deep sleep, from which I awoke forgetting all that went before, and she was gone." "Ay!" cried the landlady; "and are you that poor little thing?" and she gazed upon her for a moment with a look of sad, deep interest. The next instant she cast her arms round her and kissed her tenderly. "Ah, poor child!" she said at length, with tears in her eyes, "those were sad times--sad times, indeed! 'Twas when the fever was raging the country. Sad work in such days for those who lodged strangers! It cost me my only one. A man came and slept in that bed; he looked ill when he came, and worse when he went. Then came a lady and a child, and an old man, their servant, and the house was full, all but this room and another; and ere they had been here long, my own dear child was taken with the fever. She was near your own age, perhaps a year older; and I told the lady overnight, so she said she would go on the morrow, for she was afraid for her darling. But before the morning came, you too were shaking like a willow in the wind, and then came on the burning fit, and the third day you began to rave, and knew no one. The fifth day my poor girl died, and for a whole day I did not see you; I saw nothing but my dead child. On the next, however, they came to tell me the lady had fallen ill, and I came to watch you, for it seemed to me as if there was something between you and my poor Lucy--I knew not what; you had been sisters in sickness, and I thought you might be sisters in the grave. I cannot help crying when I think of it. Oh, those were terrible days!" And the poor woman wiped her eyes. "But my mother?" cried Arrah Neil--"my mother?" "Some day I will show you where she lies," answered the hostess; and Arrah wept bitterly, for a hope was crushed out to its last spark.