‘Do, by all means, Kate, for Mr. Walpole is very anxious to learn if he be admitted legitimately into this brotherhood--whatever it be; he has just asked me if we were really all rebels here.’ ‘I trust he does not suppose I would deceive him,’ said Kate gravely. ‘And when he hears you sing “The blackened hearth--the fallen roof,” he’ll not question _you_, Nina.--Do you know that song, Mr. Walpole?’ He smiled as he said ‘No.’ ‘Won’t it be so nice,’ said she, ‘to catch a fresh ingenuous Saxon wandering innocently over the Bog of Allen, and send him back to his friends a Fenian!’ ‘Make me what you please, but don’t send me away.’ ‘Tell me, really, what would you do if we made you take the oath?’ ‘Betray you, of course, the moment I got up to Dublin.’ Nina’s eyes flashed angrily, as though such jesting was an offence. ‘No, no, the shame of such treason would be intolerable; but you’d go your way and behave as though you never saw us.’ ‘Oh, he could do that without the inducement of a perjury,’ said Nina, in Italian; and then added aloud, ‘Let’s go and make some music. Mr. Walpole sings charmingly, Kate, and is very obliging about it--at least he used to be.’ [Illustration: ‘How that song makes me wish we were back again where I heard it first’] ‘I am all that I used to be--towards that,’ whispered he, as she passed him to take Kate’s arm and walk away. ‘You don’t mean to have a thick neighbourhood about you,’ said Walpole. ‘Have you any people living near?’ ‘Yes, we have a dear old friend--a Miss O’Shea, a maiden lady, who lives a few miles off. By the way, there’s something to show you--an old maid who hunts her own harriers.’ ‘What! are you in earnest?’ ‘On my word, it is true! Nina can’t endure her; but Nina doesn’t care for hare-hunting, and, I’m afraid to say, never saw a badger drawn in her life.’ ‘And have you?’ asked he, almost with horror in his tone. ‘I’ll show you three regular little turnspit dogs to-morrow that will answer that question.’ ‘How I wish Lockwood had come out here with me,’ said Walpole, almost uttering a thought. ‘That is, you wish he had seen a bit of barbarous Ireland he’d scarcely credit from mere description. But perhaps I’d have been better behaved before him. I’m treating you with all the freedom of an old friend of my cousin’s.’ Nina had meanwhile opened the piano, and was letting her hands stray over the instrument in occasional chords; and then in a low voice, that barely blended its tones with the accompaniment, she sang one of those little popular songs of Italy, called ‘Stornelli’---wild, fanciful melodies, with that blended gaiety and sadness which the songs of a people are so often marked by. ‘That is a very old favourite of mine,’ said Walpole, approaching the piano as noiselessly as though he feared to disturb the singer; and now he stole into a chair at her side. ‘How that song makes me wish we were back again, where I heard it first,’ whispered he gently.