She spoke hesitatingly, and in broken sentences, as if she were following out a train of thought in her own mind, rather than addressing her companion. He listened anxiously, and a cloud gathered on his brow as he gradually took in her meaning. "It may be only some of the natives," he said at last, in a low voice. "The original owners, perhaps, of the tower, who have waited our arrival before giving up possession." "Owners!" said Nellie quickly. "They told us at Loughrea that the owner had perished in the war, and that therefore we should find it empty." "They may have been mistaken, Nellie. They know little enough, I think, those high and mighty commissioners at Loughrea, of the land of which they are so liberally disposing; and still less, I doubt me, of its original possessors." "And if they are mistaken, we shall take the place of the rightful owners, and so deal out to others the very measure which our enemies have dealt to us. Grandfather, if we are guilty of this thing, we shall have a twofold sin upon our souls--their iniquity and our own." "What would you have, child?" he answered pettishly; for, truth to say, he had yet quite enough of the Englishman about him, not to be over-particular as to the rights of the native Irish. "What would you have? Did you not know already that, in the acceptation of these lands, we were taking that which it was neither in the Cromwellians' right to give or in ours to receive? And what if an old tumble-down tower be thrown into the bargain? Trust me, Nellie, the business is so black already that, like the face of his Satanic majesty, who is the author of it, a little more or less of smutch will hardly make it blacker or uglier than it is." "I never thought of this before," said Nellie sadly; "I thought only--fool that I was, so selfishly intent on my own misfortunes--I thought only of tracts of land left barren for want of inhabitants to till them, and of houses emptied by the fate of war. I never dreamed of men and women and little children turned out of their pleasant homes to make room for us--us who have as little right to their possessions as the English soldiers have to ours!" {190} "Nevertheless it has been done in almost every other case of transplantation which I have heard of," the old man answered restlessly. "And the iniquity--for it _is_ an iniquity--is theirs who have driven us to such spoliation, not ours who have been compelled in our own despite to do it." But Nellie was far too noble, and too clear-sighted in her nobleness, to shelter her actions behind such a subterfuge, and she answered vehemently: "But it must not be in ours, sir--it must not be in ours! We will go down at once, and if the persons whom we see yonder be the rightful owners of that tower, we will merely crave rest and hospitality at their hands, until such a time as we have found a place, however humble, in which, without injury to honor or conscience, we can make ourselves a home."