She was inexhaustible in her anecdotes of my ancestors, all tending to the honour and glory of the family; she had also an excellent memory for all the insults, or traditions of insults, which the Glenthorns had received for many ages back, even to the times of the old kings of Ireland; long and long before they stooped to be _lorded_; when their “names, which it was a pity and a murder, and moreover a burning shame, to change, was, O’Shaughnessy.” She was well-stored with histories of Irish and Scotish chiefs. The story of O’Neill, the Irish blackbeard, I am sure I ought to remember, for Ellinor told it to me at least six times. Then she had a large assortment of fairies and _shadowless_ witches, and _banshees_; and besides, she had legions of spirits and ghosts, and haunted castles without end, my own castle of Glenthorn not excepted, in the description of which she was extremely eloquent; she absolutely excited in my mind some desire to see it. For many a long year, she said, it had been her nightly prayer, that she might live to see me in my own castle; and often and often she was coming over to England to tell me so, only her husband, as long as he lived, would not let her set out on what he called a fool’s errand: but it pleased God to take him to himself last fair day, and then she resolved that nothing should hinder her to be with her own child against his birthday: and now, could she see me in my own Castle Glenthorn, she would die _contint_--and what a pity but I should be in it! I was only a lord, as she said, in England; but I could be all as one as a king in Ireland. Ellinor impressed me with the idea of the sort of feudal power I should possess in my vast territory, over tenants who were almost vassals, and amongst a numerous train of dependents. We resist the efforts made by those who, we think, exert authority or employ artifice to change our determinations; whilst the perverse mind insensibly yields to those who appear not to have power, or reason, or address, sufficient to obtain a victory. I should not have heard any human being with patience try to persuade me to go to Ireland, except this ignorant poor nurse, who spoke, as I thought, merely from the instinct of affection to me and to her native country. I promised her that I would, _some time or other_, visit Glenthorn Castle: but this was only a vague promise, and it was but little likely that it should be accomplished. As I regained my strength, my mind turned, or rather was turned, to other thoughts. CHAPTER IV.