"For your refusal I was prepared," exclaimed the stranger, "but it will not avail you;" and putting a silver whistle to his mouth, he blew it shrilly. It was answered from a distance, and Ellen, looking in the direction from which the sound came, saw two mounted men, each with a led horse, approaching. Ellen now gave way to her fears, and uttered loud shrieks for help. Norah felt all her energies paralysed by the threatened act of violence, and could only cling to Ellen's arm and murmur, "Don't leave me! don't leave me!" A wall rather too high to be leaped over intervened between them and the horsemen. They had to make a circuit to reach a gate which opened into the road before they gained it. The rattle of wheels was heard, and loud shouts of laughter between snatches of song. Just then Ellen saw a line of cars, the horses at full speed, coming along the road; the stranger saw them too, and seizing Norah round the waist, endeavoured to drag her to the wall; but Ellen and she clung frantically to each other, Ellen again and again shrieking loudly for help. On came the cars; some men in seamen's dresses sprang from the first, one of them shouting out, "Shure, it's the young mistress! Be alive, and dale smartly with the outrageous thief of the world who's dared to lay hands on her;" and, joined by a dozen or more men from the other cars, armed with stout shillelaghs, Dan Connor dashed forward at headlong speed. The stranger glanced round to see how far off their horses still were from him, and finding that they had not yet passed through the gate, and that all hope of carrying off Norah must be abandoned, vaulted over the wall and ran towards them. His companions, seeing what had occurred, hurried up to his assistance. Just as the party of seamen had got close upon his heels, he threw himself upon one of the led horses and galloped off, followed by the shouts and execrations of the seamen, who were, fortunately for him, without firearms. "Shure, Miss Norah, jewel, you're all safe now, and that mighty big blackguard, whoever he may be, will do you no harm," exclaimed Dan. "If you and the young lady will just mount on the car, we'll escort you safe into Waterford; and if he and a score of Rapparees like himself were to come back, we'd bate them all off before they could come near you." "Let us get up on the car, as the sailor advises us," said Ellen; and she mounted and helped Norah up, when the seamen running on each side, they set off at a brisk pace, followed by the other cars. "It's at the wake of poor Pat Casey we've been, Miss Norah. He niver was himself after the wound he got when we fought the privateer--and shure, we were coming home at daybreak; but somehow or other, what with the potheen, and the friends we met, and a scrimmage or two, we made a long morning of it; and bedad, good luck it was, or we wouldn't have come up in time to put that fellow to flight."