"Oh! I am as strong as a giant now," said I, "thanks to your good care, Mrs. O'Toole; and if I look like a ghost it will fit me the better for the society in which you know I am to pass the night." "Holy Mary! Captin agrah, don't spake that away of the dead!" "Good night," said Kate. "From the weird and woeful power Of midnight's awful hour; May the Holy Cross preserve thee, At thy need may Heaven serve thee!" "After your benediction, Miss Vernon, I am equal to any ghostly encounter! good night." My first waking thought was the delightful certainty of meeting Kate at breakfast, and my second, that one day of my sojourn had already flown. With what terrible rapidity these precious last days made themselves wings and fled away into the past! I cannot dwell upon the memory of them. I examined with great delight and loud eulogiums, the really admirable picture on which Winter was now engaged, and acknowledged that Cyclops was a first-rate subject. "I have another here, not quite finished either," said he, "which you may perhaps think equally interesting," and he turned round a water-colour drawing. I started as it met my sight; it was Kate Vernon, sitting as was her custom, at the open window of the cottage, her cheek resting on her left hand, showing the graceful contour of her throat, and her right playing as she was wont to do, when lost in thought, with Cormac's ear; while the old hound sat gazing at her as though he would fain ask what vision engrossed her fancy. It was a most lovely picture; the lovelier for its admirable likeness to the original. How well I knew that pensive and abstracted air; the large eyes gazing dreamily into some imaginary world; the delicate, but rosy lips slightly apart; you almost expected to hear them breathe the gentle sigh with which she used to rouse herself from her reverie, and turn to tell you its subject, so truthfully and naturally. "Oh! Winter," I exclaimed, "can love or money induce you to let me take the faintest sketch of this most exquisite picture?" He looked sharply at me, "No! no! most noble Captain, it was a labour of love, and I'll not have my beautiful pupil's lofty brow, decking the wall of a barrack room. Keep the portrait in your own heart; it may prove a talisman, but I fear the colours will fade as fast as one of Turner's most glowing pictures." I hardly heard him as I stood; my eyes fixed on the face I was so soon to lose, as if I would stamp its lineaments indelibly on my memory; he went on--"What business would you have with Miss Vernon's likeness?" "True, true, oh! hard of heart; yet with me it would be a sacred thing. No, do not put it away yet. Oh! skill in portrait painting is the only talent really worth cultivating. I wish to Heaven I had it! Winter, in the whole category of human ills, is there one can surpass the wretchedness of saying good bye?"