"Now then, mistress mine," said he, "and thank not this voiceless dabbler in ink for the mercy, that travelling not a week before I reached London, I chanced into the company of a stranger, who fell captive to my wit, and displayed so lively a tooth for the sweets of Parnassus--to wit, my poesy--that, hearing I was about to issue the same imprint, prayed me enrich him with a copy. The which I condescended to promise him. Being thus established in a brotherhood of poetic kinship, we opened our hearts one to another. And in our talk he confessed to me that he was an Irish gentleman in the service of one Turlogh Luinech O'Neill, a notable chieftain in the Isle of the Saints; and that he travelled to London on an errand to no less a man than her Majesty's Secretary of State to report to him the death and burial of one Lady Cantire, an aged servant of her Majesty, and sometime wife to the said Turlogh." This was news indeed; and the maiden's face flushed with many mingled emotions as she heard it. "Can it be true?" said she. "Sir Poet, tell me briefly what else this gentleman had to tell of my father?" "Nay, mistress mine, I can remember little else; for I was thinking not of his master, but his poetic tooth; not of his defunct mistress, but of my living muse. Yet, stay, he told me the old man was desolate, his sons being all established elsewhere, and his one daughter lost. By which I take it, he spoke of thy celestial self. And strange indeed if the loss of such a one were not as blindness itself to one who hath looked in they resplendent face." "Humphrey," said the maiden, turning from the poet to me, and taking Jeannette's little hand in hers, "this news means much to me. If it be true, I must to my father." A cloud that sweeps over the April sun could scarce have cast the gloom which did this little speech on us who heard it. For the maiden, lady as she was, had become a sister to us. Yet she was resolved; and hearing that the poet had remembered where he might hear of this gentleman in London, to deliver to him his poem, she begged me to go with the man of verse and find him out, and if possible bring him to her. Which I did with no great difficulty. For the Irishman--who seemed a sort of steward of Turlogh's household--was still in his lodgings, waiting an audience with the Secretary's secretary. And when he heard who it was had sent me, he fell on his knees and thanked the saints for vouchsafing his master this great mercy; and, never looking twice at the poet, he came with me joyfully to the maiden.