CHAPTER XXVI--THE RESIDENT MAGISTRATE When Bernard O’Mahony found himself outside the convent gateway, he paused to consider matters. The warm spring sunlight so broadly enveloped the square in which he stood, the shining white cottages and gray old walls behind him and the harbor and pale-blue placid bay beyond, in its grateful radiance, that it was not in nature to think gloomy thoughts. And nothing in the young man’s own nature tended that way, either. Yet as he stopped short, looked about him, and even took off his hat to the better ponder the situation, he saw that it was even more complicated than he had thought. His plan of campaign had rested upon two bold strategic actions. He had deemed them extremely smart, at the time of their invention. Both had been put into execution, and, lo, the state of affairs was worse than ever! The problem had been to thwart and overturn O’Daly and to prevent Kate from entering the convent. These two objects were so intimately connected and dependent one upon the other, that it had been impossible to separate them in procedure. He had caused O’Daly to be immured in secrecy in the underground cell, the while he went off to secure episcopal interference in the convent’s plans. His journey had been crowned with entire success. It had involved a trip to Cashel, it is true, but he had obtained an order forbidding the ladies of the Hostage’s Tears to add to their numbers. Returning in triumph with this invincible weapon, he discovered now that O’Daly’s disappearance had been placarded all over Ireland as a murder, that his two allies were in custody as suspected assassins, and that--most puzzling and disturbing feature of it all--Kate herself had vanished. He did not attach a moment’s credence to the drowning theory. Daughters of the Coast of White Foam did not get drowned. Nor was it likely that other harm had befallen a girl so capable, so selfreliant, so thoroughly at home in all the districts roundabout. Obviously she was in hiding somewhere in the neighborhood. The question was where to look for her. Or, would it be better to take up the other branch of the problem first? His perplexed gaze, roaming vaguely over the broad space, was all at once arrested by a gleam of flashing light in motion. Concentrating his attention, he saw that it came from the polished barrel of a rifle borne on the arm of a constable at the corner of the square. He put on his hat and walked briskly over to this corner. The constable had gone, and Bernard followed him up the narrow, winding little street to the barracks.