"Say not so, my Nellie--say not so," said her mother gently. "Home, after all, is only the place where we garner up our treasures; and, therefore, in the spot where I may rejoin you, however wild and desolate it otherwise shall be, _my_ heart, at all events, will acknowledge it has found its home!" As they thus conferred together, mother and daughter had been moving slowly toward the castle, in absolute forgetfulness of the woman who had originally made a third in the group, and who was still following at a little distance. She stopped, however, on discovering that they had no intention of making her a sharer in their conversation, and, gazing after them with a fearful mingling of hatred and wounded pride on her coarse, handsome features, exclaimed aloud: "The second time you have flouted me, good madam! Well, well, the third is the charm, and then it will be my turn. See if I do not make you rue it!" Shaking her fist, as she spoke, savagely in the air, she turned her back upon Netterville towers, and rushed down a path leading directly to the river. As Mrs. Netterville and her daughter approached the castle-gates, a young man came out to meet them, and, with a look and bearing half-way between that of an intelligent and trusted servant and a petted follower, said hurriedly: {91} "My lord grows impatient, madam. He says he is ready to depart at once, and that the sooner it is done the better. And, in troth, I am much of the same way of thinking my own self," he added, with that sort of grim severity which some men seem almost naturally to assume the moment they feel themselves in danger of giving way to grief, in the womanly fashion of tears. Hamish was of the same age as Nellie, though he looked and felt at least eight years older. He was her foster-brother, as we have already said, and had been her companion in the nursery; but as war and poverty thinned the ranks of followers attached to the house of Netterville, he had been gradually advanced from one post of confidence to another, until, young as he was, he united the various duties of "bailiff" or "steward," as it would be called in Ireland--major-domo or butler, valet, and footman, all in his own proper person. "True," said Mrs. Netterville, in answer to his communication--"too true. Every moment that he lingers now will be but a fresh barbing of the arrow. Come, my Nellie, let us hasten to your grandfather. Would that I could persuade him to take Hamish with him instead of Mat, who has little strength and less wit to help you in such a journey. I should be far more at ease, both on his account and yours, my daughter."