indignation; she would have done something wherein might be detected, through a veil, the old imperious ways of the chatelaine of Strogue. But this utter breakdown--this abject wreck--and all about one for whom she could not pretend to care! Here was an enigma which puzzled Miss Wolfe more and more, serving to abstract her somewhat from her own private woes. The same motive, singularly enough, had wrought the change in both the ladies--Terence, the hapless councillor, who lay now under shadow of the gallows. At the time of the discovery of the pikes, when his mother's careless words had suggested to the high-spirited damsel that her cousin had sold the cause for gold, she had had a glimmering suspicion that her heart was no longer fancy free--that it had gone forth without the asking to one whom it was now her duty to contemn. At least there was a vague whisper (thrust aside at once) within her of the fact, which had caused her to comport herself in a way which at a calmer moment her judgment would have rejected. Then, many causes coalescing into one, she had devoted herself to birds and boating, under a delusion which she strove hard to accept as truth, that because they were beyond her helping she cared no more for her ill-used people, or for the champions who in their weak way would have defended them. It has been shown that she sank into a condition of apathy--of mental numbness--which had about it a sort of negative enjoyment. Then came news of events in the south--garbled offensive news sent up from Letterkenny barracks--news which filled Shane's animal soul with glee, and caused him, abandoning the ladies, to rush off on his own account to emulate the antics of his class. This intelligence struck on the maiden's heart like so many reiterated blows, and, breaking the charm, produced a queer kind of hope. Was it possible after all that Terence could have behaved so shamefully? If not, then how was the matter of the pikes to be explained? Possibly this was another mesh in the net which Judas had been weaving--the many-headed Judas--to catch the tripping feet of all the patriots. The maiden had been too hot to ask for an explanation. Had she wronged her cousin, or not? A strange bubbling of joy welled up within her at the thought that a doubt was possible; but this she repressed with guilty vehemence. It was no time for joy or hope. Then the news dribbled in of Wexford and Scullabogue--the awful crimes committed by the Catholics, without so much as a whisper of the Protestant outrages at Carlow and the Gibbet-Rath; and she longed with a wild longing to go south once more. Was it possible that these reports were true? At the worst, they must be much exaggerated. But men are only human. Drive them too hard, and they inevitably turn to beasts. It is only the purest metal which comes improved out of the crucible; and how rare that metal! If the reports were true, how the men of Wexford must have