After waiting impatiently all day, and beguiling the time in various ways, the hour at length came when I could go to O'Halloran's. I confess, my feelings were of rather a tumultuous description. I would see the ladies again. I would renew my endeavors to find out the great mystery of the ice. Such were my intentions, and I had firmly resolved to make direct questions to Nora and Marion, and see if I couldn't force them, or coax them, or argue them, into an explanation of their strange agitation. Such an explanation, I felt, would be a discovery of the object of my search. Full of these thoughts, intentions, and determinations, I knocked at O'Halloran's door, and was ushered by the servant into the comfortable parlor. O'Halloran stood there in the middle of the room. Nora was standing not far from him. Marion was not there; but O'Halloran and Nora were both looking at me, as I entered, with strange expressions. O'Halloran advanced quickly, and caught me by the hand. "D'ye know what ye've done?" said he, abruptly, without greeting or salutation of any kind. "D'ye know what ye've done? Ye seeved my loife at the concert. But are you aweer what you've done be-soides?" He looked at me earnestly, and with so strange an expression that for a moment I thought he must be mad. "Well, really," said I, somewhat confusedly, "Mr. O'Halloran, I must confess I'm not aware of any thing in particular." "He doesn't know!" cried O'Halloran. "He doesn't know. 'Tis'n't the sloightest conception that he has! Will, thin, me boy," said he--and all this time he held my hand, and kept wringing it hard--"will, thin --I've another dibt of gratichood, and, what's more, one that I nivir can raypay. D'ye know what ye've done? D'ye know what re are? No? Will, thin, I'll tell ye. Ye're the seevior of me Nora, me darlin', me proide, me own. She was the one that ye seeved on the oice, and riscued from desthruction. There she stands. Look at her. But for you, she'd be now lost forivir to the poor owld man whose light an' loife an' trisure she always was. Nora, jewel, there he is, as sure as a gun, though whoy he didn't recognoize ye last noight passes moy faible comprayhinsion, so it docs." Saying this, he let go my hand and looked toward Nora. At this astounding announcement I stood simply paralyzed. I stared at each in succession. To give an idea of my feelings is simply impossible. I must refer every thing to the imagination of the reader; and, by way of comparison to assist his imagination, I beg leave to call his attention to our old friend, the thunder-bolt. "Had a thunder-bolt burst," and all that sort of thing. Fact, sir. Dumbfounded. By Jove! that word even does not begin to express the idea.