'They were gone to the Castle,' responded Sara, beginning to be frightened, 'where they would doubtless be quite safe. What was this about Croppies along the quays? Oh! would they please tell her something? People seemed all agreed to keep things back, as if she were a child. Croppies, did he say? Were not Croppies put down long since? Who was their leader?' 'Croppies 'tis,' grunted Cassidy. 'They'll be at it by this time, the fools! Who's their leader? That young donkey Emmett, who'll swing for it--the idiot!' Sara clung to a heavy piece of furniture. Like cold steel the certainty cut through her brain that her edifice of cards, erected in simple faith, would fall--had tumbled ere this perhaps; that the tender intercourse of years was not to be; that she was destined to bear her portion of the common cross. She was all at once convinced that Robert and she would never meet upon this globe again. She essayed to speak, but her head whirled; lights danced with shifting colours before her eyes; the floor seemed to heave and rise in billows--yet she did not faint. The servants had brought candles which burned blue and dim and danced up and down, changing to red and green and violet a long way off. She was aware somehow that after a brief consultation Shane had countermanded the claret--that his obsequious friends had received new orders--that the party, donning cloaks again, had mounted and gone clattering away by the unused by-road. The hall-door--wide open--admitted a chill gust which set the candles guttering, but revived her perturbed faculties. Staggering against the doorpost, the girl watched the beacons on the hills, as, fed with furze, they flared up and glowed awhile, then dwindled and died out one by one. She looked across the bay towards Dublin, which was like an anthill possessed by glow-worms, beyond a black abyss. With straining eyes she looked. What would she not have given to know what was passing there? Was Cassidy merely playing off an untimely jest on her by saying what he did? No. Her sick heart whispered that it was all true. Robert's mysterious parable of good things in store clung cold about her heart like a dead hand. Perhaps at this very instant he was being slain--better even that than that he should be taken and undergo the mockery of justice, and pass as others passed--upon the scaffold. Oh! that ardent face--transfigured and inspired by his pure enthusiasm--was she indeed no more to look on it? Was she--see! what was that! A rocket soared into the air from the glow-worms' hill, turning the deep blue to sable, and bursting, vanished in a shower of sparks. What could that mean? It must be a signal. What did it portend? Sara swung-to the heavy door, and, drooping on a sofa, sat down and waited. CHAPTER XI. ATÉ.