Micah Ward laid down his pen, sprinkled sand on his paper, and looked up. He gazed steadily at his son. The young man’s eyes dropped. He repeated his question in a voice that was nearly trembling. “Can I go out, father?” “Who is it calls you, Neal?” “It is Maurice St. Clair.” “Maurice St. Clair,” repeated Micah Ward. Then, with a note of deep scorn in his voice, “The Hon. Maurice St. Clair, the son of Lord Dun-severic. Are you to do his bidding, to run like a dog when he calls you?” “He is my friend, father.” “Is he a fit friend for you? Have I not told you that his people and our people are enemies the one to the other? That the oppression wherewith they oppress us--but there. Go, since you want to go. You do not understand as yet. Some day you will understand.” Neal left the room without haste, closing the door quietly. Once free of his father’s presence he seized a cap and ran from the house. Half-way between him and the high road, knee deep in meadow grass, stood Maurice St. Clair. “Come along, come along quick,” he shouted. “I had nearly given up hope of getting you out. We’re off for a day’s fishing to Rackle Roy. We’ll bag a pigeon or two at the mouth of the cave before we land. Brown-Eyes is down on the road waiting for us with rods and guns. We’ve all day before us. My lord is off to Ballymoney, and can’t be back till supper-time.” “What takes Lord Dunseveric to Ballymoney to-day?” asked Neal. “There’s no magistrates’ meeting, is there?” “No. He’s gone to meet our aunt, Madame de Tourneville. She’s been coming these five years, ever since she ran away from Paris at the time of the Terror; but it’s only now she has succeeded in arriving.” Together the two young men crossed the field and vaulted the wall which separated the manse land from the road. The girl whom her brother called Brown-Eyes waited for them. The name suited her well, and came naturally from Maurice. He was tall and fair, yellow-haired, blue-eyed, large limbed, a fine type of Antrim Irishman, the heir of the form and face of generations of St. Clairs of Dunseveric. The girl, Una St. Clair, belonged to a different race--came of her mother’s people. She was small, brown-skinned, brown-eyed, dark-haired. She grew as the years went on more and more like what her mother had been. Lord Dunseveric, watching his daughter pass from childhood to womanhood, saw in her the very image of Marie Dillon, the French-Irish girl who had won his heart a quarter of a century before in Paris. “Take the guns, Neal. Here, Brown-Eyes, give me the rods and the basket. There’s no need for you to break your little back carrying them.” “Why should I when I’ve two big men to carry them for me? Indeed, I’m not sure but one of you ought to carry me, too. You’re big enough and strong enough.”