During the months that elapsed between my marriage and the autumn when Mr. Desmond was expected to revisit the "old country", Hugh and Donald worked quietly but indefatigably to fit themselves for anything that might turn up in the life of a new continent. They were already expert riders, and could handle a gun, as they could an oar, with absolute dexterity. They had grown to be big, sunburnt, handsome lads in their free and wholesome life, and never knew an ache or a pain, so they were made of the fine raw stuff of pioneers. But in the last months, acting on my Lance's advice, they set themselves to learn the rough-and-ready rudiments of the simpler trades, to shoe a horse with Teddy Murphy at the forge, to cobble a shoe or mend a joint in a horse's harness with Farrell the brogue-maker and Byrne the harness-maker, and many such useful arts. They were full of the joy of the new life that was coming to them, scenting the battle of the world far off like the horse in the Scriptures, and yet preparing for it with a gravity and responsibility which came of their deep-rooted conviction that they were going to redeem Brandon. They had time now to make their own and their family's fortunes, now that the gray old wolf was no longer at Castle Angry waiting upon our need. "If Sir Rupert had lived," Hugh said to me once, "one or other of us must have stayed to watch him, but now we shall go with minds at rest." Poor Aline watched their quiet preparations with unprotesting pain. In her heart I think she was proud that they had asserted their manhood, though that heart bled all the time with fear of how that dragon, the world, might overcome them. We were always trying to console her, pointing out to her how this and that mother's son went and conquered and returned in safety. "Ah!" she would say, "is it easier for me because other women suffer? I shall be glad when they return, but let me have my grief now that they must go." Then the time came when we heard that Mr. Desmond had come back, and was staying in the Brandon Arms, as he had done six years ago before he took away our Pierce. And when we heard he was there Lance suggested that we should go and call on him and ask him to take up his quarters at Rose Hill, seeing that he had been Pierce's friend. Lance was keen also to see the man of whom he had heard so much, whose qualities of all others were those that appealed to him. But when we arrived at the rough little place they call the Brandon Arms we found that Mr. Desmond had gone out. As we turned away rather disappointed, the landlady, Mrs. Fahy, came hurrying after us.