“Well, you’ll open _your_ eyes!” predicted Bernard, all animation once again; and then he related the details of his journey to Skibbereen and Cashel, of his interviews with the prelates and of the manner in which he had, so to speak, wound up the career of the convent of the Hostage’s Tears. “It hadn’t had any real, rightdown legitimate title to existence, you know,” he concluded, “these last five hundred years. All it needed was somebody to call attention to this fact, you see, and, bang, the whole thing collapsed like a circus-tent in a cyclone!” The girl had moved over to the gunwale, and now leaning over the rail, looked meditatively into the water below. “And so,” she said, with a pensive note in her voice, “there’s an end to the historic convent of the O’Mahonys! No other family in Ireland had one--’t was the last glory of our poor, hunted and plundered and poverty-striken race; and now even that must depart from us.” “Well--hang it all!” remonstrated Bernard--“it’s better that way than to have _you_ locked up all your life. I feel a little blue myself about closing up the old convent, but there’s something else I feel a thousand times more strongly about still.” “Yes--isn’t it wonderful?--the return of The O’Mahony!” said Kate. “Oh, I hardly know still if I’m waking or not. ’T was all like a blessid vision, and ’t _was_ supernatural in its way; I’ll never believe otherwise. There was I on the strand yonder, with the talisman he’d given me in me arms, praying for his return--and, behold you there was this boat of his forninst me! Oh! Never tell me the age of miracles is past?” “I won’t--I promise you!” said Bernard, with fervor. “I’ve seen one myself since I’ve been here. It was at the Three Castles. I had my gun raised to shoot a heron, when an enchanted fairy--” “Nothing to do but he’d bring me on board,” Kate put in, hastily. “Old Murphy swam out to him ahead of us, screaming wid delight like one possessed. And we sat and talked for hours--he telling strange stories of the war’s he’d been in wid the French, and thin wid Don Carlos, and thin the Turks, and thin wid some outlandish people in a Turkish province--until night fell, and he wint ashore. And whin he came back he brought O’Daly wid him--where in the Lord’s name he found him passes my understanding, and thin we up sail and beat down till we stood off Three Castle Head. There we lay all night--O’Mahony gave up his cabin to me--and this morning back we came again. And now--the Lord be praised!--there’s an ind to all our throubles!” “Well,” said Bernard, with deliberation, “I’m glad. I really _am_ glad. Although, of course, it’s plain enough to see, there’s an end to me, too.” A brief time of silence passed, as the two, leaning side by side on the rail, watched the slow rise and sinking of the dull-green wavelets. “You’re off to Ameriky, thin?” Kate finally asked, without looking up. The young man hesitated.