On the instant, as she looked out across the open green upon the harbor, the bay, the distant peninsula of Kilcrohane peacefully gathering to itself the shadows of the falling twilight--how it all came back to her! On the day of his departure--that memorable black-letter day in her life--he had turned over this rude little chest to her; he had told her it was his luck, his talisman, and now should be hers. She had carried it, not to her mother’s home, but to the tiny school-room in the old convent, for safekeeping. She recalled now that she had told the nuns, or Mother Agnes, at least, what it was. But then--then there came a blank in her memory. She could not force her mind to remember when she ceased to think about it--when it made its way into the lumber-room where it had apparently lain so long. But, at all events, she had it now again. She bent her head to touch with her lips one of the rough strips of skin nailed irregularly upon it; then, with a shining face, bearing the box, like some sanctified shrine, against her breast, she moved across the village-common toward the wharf and the water. The injunction of quavering old Blanaid to cast it into the bay drifted uppermost in her thoughts, and she smiled to herself. She had been bidden, also, to pray; and reflection upon this chased the smile away. Truly, there was need for prayer. Her perplexed mind called up, one by one, in disheartening array, the miseries of her position, and drew new unhappiness from the confusion of right and wrong which they presented. How could she pray to be delivered from what Mother Agnes held up as the duties of piety? And, on the other hand, what sincerity could there be in any other kind of spiritual petition? She wandered along the shore-sands under the cliffs, the box tightly clasped in her arms, her eyes musingly bent upon the brown reaches of drenched seaweed which lay at play with the receding tide. Her mind conjured up the image of a smiling and ruddy young face, sun-burned and thatched with crisp, curly brown hair--the face of that curious young O’Mahony from Houghton County. His blue eye looked at her half quizzically, half beseeching, but Kate resolutely drove the image away. He was only the merest trifle less mortal than the others. So musing, she strolled onward. Suddenly she stopped, and lifted her head triumphantly; the smile had flashed forth again upon her face, and the dark eyes were all aglow. A thought had come to her--so convincing, so unanswerable, so joyously uplifting, that she paused to marvel at having been blind to it so long. Clear as noon sunlight on Mount Gabriel was it what she should pray for. What _could_ it ever have been, this one crowning object of prayer, but the return of The O’Mahony?