"Where in Ireland is your home, maiden? Is it near Ludar's castle on the sea?" "Hard by," said she. "The McDonnells and O'Neills are neighbours and foes." And her brow clouded. "My father, Humphrey, is the bravest of the O'Neills as Ludar's father is the bravest of the McDonnells." "And does your father hold Dunluce?" asked I. "I know not," said she. "I have never seen my father, Turlogh Luinech O'Neill, though I love him as my life. At two years I was sent away to England with my English mother, who was but a hand-fast bride to the O'Neill." "And what may that be?" I asked. "'Tis a custom with us," said she, "for the chiefs to take wives who are theirs only so long as a better does not present herself. My mother, Alice Syngleton, the daughter of my father's English ally and preserver, Captain Syngleton, was thus wedded, and when I was two years old--so my old nurse tells me--he married the great Lady Cantire of the Isles. Wherefore my mother was sent home to England with me, and there we lived till she died three years ago; since when I have pined in a convent, and am now, in obedience to my father's summons, on my way to my unknown home. My father, being, as I understand, allied to the English, who have dispossessed the McDonnells, I was to come over under the escort of an English officer of Sir William Carleton's choosing, who was my mother's kinsman. You know what peril that brought me to, and how, thanks to you, I am now making a safer journey, and a happier. Humphrey," said she, "till I met you and Sir Ludar, I had thought all men base; 'twas the one lesson they taught us at the convent. I have unlearned the lesson since." "Pray Heaven you never have to relearn it," said I, groaning inwardly to think how near I had been to giving her cause. Thus we talked that morning. At every word, what little hope I had once had of her love faded like the stars above our heads. Yet, instead of it came the promise of an almost sisterly friendship, which at the time seemed poor enough exchange, but which was yet a prize worth any man's having. She bade me tell her about myself, and heard me so gently, and concerned herself so honestly in all that touched me, and praised and chid me so prettily for what I had done well and ill, that I would my story had been twice as long and twice as pitiful. The only secret I did not tell her, you may guess. She did not. But she heard me greedily when I came to tell of my meeting with Ludar and of our adventures near Oxford; and for his sake, as much as for my own, she thought kindly of me and promised me her friendship. Our watch was ended, and we were in the act of quitting our post, when the maiden, taking one last look seaward, cried: "Is not that a sail away there?" Sure enough it was, sparkling on the westward horizon, some two leagues to the larboard. "Who cometh?" said I to myself, echoing the maiden's song. CHAPTER TWELVE. HOW WE SAILED INTO LEITH.