“It's all that girl--that Daireen of the Geralds,” said The Macnamara. “I found a paper with poetry on it for her this morning, and when I forced him he confessed that he was in love with her.” “D'ye tell me that? And what more did ye do, Mac?” “I'll tell you,” said the hereditary prince, leaning over the table. And he gave his guest all the details of the visit to the Geralds at length. But poor Standish had rushed up the crumbling staircase and was lying on his bed with his face in his hands. It was only now he seemed to feel all the shame that had caused his face to be red and pale by turns in the drawing-room at Suanmara. He lay there in a passion of tears, while the great owls kept moaning and hooting in the tower just outside his window, making sympathetic melody to his ears. At last he arose and went over to the window and stood gazing out through the break in the ivy armour of the wall. He gazed over the tops of the trees growing in a straggling way down the slope to the water's edge. He could see far away the ocean, whose voice he now and again heard as the wind bore it around the tower. Thousands of stars glittered above the water and trembled upon its moving surface. He felt strong now. He felt that he might never weep again in the world as he had just wept. Then he turned to another window and sent his eyes out to where that great peak of Slieve Docas stood out dark and terrible among the stars. He could not see the house at the base of the hill, but he clenched his hands as he looked out, saying “Hope.” It was late before he got into his bed, and it was still later when he awoke and heard, mingling with the cries of the night-birds, the sound of hoarse singing that floated upward from the room where he had left his father and The Randal. The prince and the chief were joining their voices in a native melody, Standish knew; and he was well aware that he would not be disturbed by the ascent of either during the night. The dormitory arrangements of the prince and the chief when they had dined in company were of the simplest nature. Standish went to sleep again, and the ancient rafters, that had heard the tones of many generations of Macnamaras' voices, trembled for some hours with the echoes from the room below, while outside the ancient owls hooted and the ancient sea murmured in its sleep. CHAPTER VI. What imports this song? The wind sits in the shoulder of your sail And you are stay'd for. There; my blessing with thee. Hamlet. I do not set my life at a pin's fee... It waves me forth again: I'll follow it. Horatio. What if it tempt you toward the flood?... Look whether he has not changed his colour. --Hamlet.