When she first went on board, she gave the boy to one of her women, telling her to tend him and give him food and playthings. But when they had been at sea some time, the woman came to her mistress, and said that the child would neither eat, nor play; that he gave no heed to any one, but stood apart, sullen and silent, looking back over the sea toward Howth. Then Grace, whose quick anger had cooled down in the fresh evening breeze, went to him, laid her hand on his shoulder and spoke his name. He did not start, or answer, but kept his sad, wistful eyes fixed on the distant towers of his father's castle. So she stood over him, watching, and so he stood gazing, till the ship rounded a point which hid the castle from sight. Then, for the first time, the child burst into tears; but, flinging himself on the deck, he covered his face with his hands, as though to conceal his crying, and seemed to try to check the sobs which shook his little breast. So much proud and delicate feeling in one so young--a mere baby--appealed strongly to the Lady Grace. She felt her heart soften and yearn over the noble child, in his grief and loneliness. She knelt at his side and slid her hand under his head, and speaking his name more tenderly than before, she told him not to be afraid, not to grieve any more, and he should go home soon. She made her harsh, commanding voice sound so sweet and motherly that the child turned a little, and clasped that large brown hand, and held it against his lips and his eyes, while he wept and sobbed, till his heavy heart grew lighter. When Grace drew away her hand, and found it all wet with tears, she looked at it for a moment, with a strange tenderness in her imperious eyes. It seemed to her that those tears of a sinless child, were like the holy water of baptism, and would purify that hand, so often stained with blood. Great was the astonishment of the rough mariners and warriors when they saw their stern mistress, whose name was used by mothers and nurses all over the kingdom, as a bugbear, with which to frighten naughty children, now comforting and caressing this stolen child; when she fed him with her own hands, and then took him in her arms and hushed him to sleep--singing to him a wild, childish ditty, which she remembered, because her own long dead mother had sung it to her, when she also was an innocent babe.