The wild paroxysm past, she got up and returned with trailing feet towards the Abbey. Her limbs were aching from contact with dank herbage: her brogues and stockings soiled with clinging mud. A drizzling veil was settling on the earth, which looked, as far as ken might reach, dun-toned and colourless. Raising dazed eyes, she beheld a slim figure moving with rapid strides, and recognised young Robert from afar. What could he be doing? Was he also crushed in spirit, as weary of the world as she; wandering in search of peace? or on one of his many missions of private charity? He had been to the Abbey in quest of her; was told by a garden-lad that she had passed through the wooden postern, and had tracked her wanderings from hut to hut. 'They are going too far!' he said abruptly, with bent brows, as he turned to walk back with her. 'Already the squireens are abroad, imitating their fellows in the north. Dublin's in a ferment. It needs but the coming of the French to settle the affair at a blow. Every magistrate has received orders to raise twenty men to preserve the peace in place of the militia, should these be ordered to the coast. But they overreach themselves. Decent people are so furious at the tactics of Lord Clare, that even the militia are dying to turn against the Government. Cassidy says so, who should know, seeing that he keeps up a friendship with the Castle. I speak to-night at the Debating Club. Look at these notes,' he added, smiling. '"Recipe to make a Rebel! Take one loyal subject uninfluenced by pension; burn his house over his head; murder his wife and babes before his eyes; march away with such plunder as you choose to save from the flames----" But what is the matter? You look ill!' 'I am leaving Dublin almost at once,' Doreen said, 'and am glad of it. If there is one power which has the gift of withering up the soul, it is treachery! I am sick of the world. Go to your brother. Tell him the cause is lost. One who held all their secrets has betrayed them--for five hundred guineas; that is their value in his eyes.' Here the girl broke into wild laughter--she who never laughed; and Robert looked at her in surprise, with a sense of coldness, creeping. Then, with a hectic spot upon each cheek, she eased her breast with words; recounted all she knew, and much more which was conjecture, though in her perturbed state she was not aware of it. Explained that they were all dupes of Terence's false _bonhomie_--that he had coldly and deliberately played a part; had, as it were, eaten their bread and salt, and then stabbed them in the back. In the midst of the hideous recital, her voice choked in a great gulp, and clasping her hot face with her hands, she burst into a flood of tears.