A new light broke across Jocelyn Thew's face as he listened, and the tears stood in his eyes. The man was reciting Gaelic verses, verses familiar to him from childhood. The whole desolate picture seemed to envisage thoughts which he had never been able to drive from his mind, seemed in the person of this old man to breathe such incomparable, unalterable fidelity that he felt himself suddenly a traitor who had slipped unworthily away and hidden from a righteous doom. Better that his blood had been spilt and his bones buried in the soil of the land than to have become a fugitive, to have placed an ocean between himself and the voices to which this old man had listened, day by day and night by night, through the years! Jocelyn Thew stole softly out of the shadows. "Timothy," he called quietly. The old man paused in his walk. Then he came forward towards the speaker and dropped on one knee. His face showed no surprise, though his eyes were strange and almost terribly brilliant. "The Cathley!" he exclaimed. "God is good!" He kissed his master's hand, which he had seized with almost frantic joy. Jocelyn Thew raised him to his feet. "You recognised me then, Timothy?" "There is no Cathley in the world," the old man answered passionately, "would ever rise up before me and call himself by any other name." "Am I safe here, Timothy, for a day or two?" The old man's scorn was a wonderful thing. "Safe!" he repeated. "Safe! There is just a dozen miles or so of the Kingdom of Ireland where the stranger who came on evil business would disappear, and it's our pride that we are the centre of it." "They've held on, then, in these parts?" "Hold on? Why, the fire that smouldered has become a blaze," was the eager response. "Ireland is our country here. Why--you know?" "Know what?" Jocelyn Thew demanded. "You must treat me as a stranger, Timothy, I have been living under a false name. News has failed me for years." "Don't you know," the old man went on eagerly, "that they meet here in the castle, the men who count--Hagen, the poet, Matlaske, the lawyer, Indewick, Michael Dilwyn, Harrison, and the great O'Clory himself?" "I thought O'Clory was in prison since the Sinn Fein rising." "In prison, aye, but they daren't keep him there!" was the fierce reply. "They had a taste then of the things that are ablaze through the country. The O'Clory and the others will be here to-night, under your own roof. Aye, and the guard will be out, and there'll be no Englishman dare come within a dozen miles!" Jocelyn Thew walked away to one of the great windows and looked out seaward. The old servant limped over to his side. "Your honour," he said, his voice shaking even as the hands which clasped his stick, "this is a wonderful day--sure, a wonderful day!" "For me, too, Timothy!" "You've been a weary time gone. Maybe you've lain hidden across the seas there--you've heard nothing."