“But sure you are not goin' to ride back to Kilkieran to-day?” “That am I, Catty, and up to Kyle's Wood and the new plantations before I go. Why, it's only fifteen miles, old lady!” “Faix, you 're your father's daughter all over,” said Catty, with a look first at _her_, and then at a water-colored sketch which occupied a place over the chimney, and represented a fair-haired, handsome boy of about ten years of age. “Was that ever like papa?” asked the girl. “'Tis his born image, it is,” said Catty; and her eyes swam with tears as she turned away. “Well, to _my_ thinking he is far better-looking in that picture!” said Mary, pointing with her whip to a colored drawing of a showily dressed dragoon officer, reining in his charger, and seeming to eye with considerable disdain the open mouth of a cannon in front of him. “Ah, then, the other was more himself!” sighed Catty; “and more nat'ral too, with the long hair on his neck and that roguish laugh in his eye.” “And neither are very like that!” said Mary, pointing to a third portrait, which represented a swarthy horseman with a wide sombrero and a jacket all braided and buttoned in Mexican fashion, a rifle at his back, and a long lance in his hand, with the heavy coil of a lasso at his saddle-peak. “Arrah, that ain't a bit like him,” said the old woman, querulously, “for all that he said that it was.” Mary arose at the words, and perused aloud some lines which were written at the foot of the picture, and which many and many a time before she had conned over and repeated. They ran thus: “Aye, Catty, though you won't believe it, that rough-looking old rider, all bearded and sunburned, is your own wild Barry of former days; and for all that the world has done, wonderfully little altered in the core, though the crust is not very like that cherry-cheeked boy that used to, and mayhap still may, hang over your fireplace.--Guastalla, May, 1808.” “And has he not written since that?” sighed the girl, over whom the dark shadow of orphanhood passed as she spoke. “Twice only: the first of the two spoke of his coming home again; but somehow he seemed to be put off it, and the next letter was all about you, as if he did n't mean to come back! My Lady and Master Barry never was fond of each other,” muttered the old woman, after a pause, and as though giving an explanation to some problem that she was working within her own head. “But my uncle loved him,” broke in Mary. “And why wouldn't he? War n't they twins? There was only a few minutes between them,--long enough to make one a rich man, and leave the other only his own wits and the wide world for a fortune! Ayeh, ayeh!” grumbled out the old crone, “if they were both born poor, they 'd be livin' together like brothers now, under the one roof,--happy and comfortable; and you and your cousin, Master Dick, would be playfellows and companions, instead of his being away in Ingia, or America, or wherever it is!”