It was some solace to the brother and sister to hear around them, when they landed, a language resembling their own. But it was a motley company which gathered round the little captive band, no strange or unwonted sight then in any European seaport. “Prisoners and captives” came into the petitions of every Litany during those tumultuous times. Their ransoms were among the perpetual claims of the alms-giving of every church. “I was in prison, and ye came unto Me,” meant much in days when the prisoners were often no dangerous criminals or idle vagabonds, but innocent children, or high-born youths and maidens such as Baithene and Ethne. As they stood there, a gazing-stock for the idle crowd always loafing about quays and unloading vessels, Ethne felt their rude jests and insolent staring the worst things they had yet experienced; and there was a wonderful comfort for her in the loyal worship in Bran the dog’s eyes, as he nestled his great shaggy head against her knee and looked wistfully up into her face. It brought into her eyes healing tears, which to his surprise fell on his head, and made him lay his paw on her arm with grave, sympathetic remonstrance. Baithene, on the contrary, faced the crowd, feeling every inch a king, in lofty indifference to anything the low rabble could look or say; he had never felt so princely, at least as regarded himself. As he stood thus at bay, two figures, a man and a woman, detached themselves from the crowd, two faces were directed towards him and his sister with absorbing interest. They were of a different type to any Baithene had seen before: the man’s forehead was lofty though somewhat narrow, and further contracted by lines which seemed rather grooves worn by care than fruitful furrows of thought; the eyes were dark and deep-set, with flashes like the flicker of a fire in the depths of a cavern; the lips were prominent and expressive; the nose was aquiline, yet the whole countenance, if in any way eagle-like, was like an eagle’s in the eager intensity of its penetrating gaze, rather than in any look of power and command; and from time to time a pathetic and kindly expression passed over his face, especially when he turned toward the woman beside him, in response to any word or look from her. Her face, though of the same type as his, was softened into a refined beauty: the brow was in proportion wider; the eyes, though deep-set, were full of a gracious and tender light; the mouth, varying in expression, though not moulded into the Greek curves of Cupid’s bow, had in its greater fullness and longer lines a power and sweetness which did not need a smile to make you feel its sympathetic response. She made Baithene think of his own mother, and of the Mother they had learnt to think of as the type of all true maidenhood and motherhood combined. The complexion of both was darker than Baithene had seen, with a darkness that seemed to belong to