Presently he must go and fetch O’Daly and Kate from the vessel--or no, when Jerry came in he would send him on that errand. After his long journey The O’Mahony was tired and sleepy--all the more as he had sat up most of the night, out on deck, talking with O’Daly. What a journey it had been! Post-haste from far away, barbarous Armenia, where the faithful Malachy had found him in command of a Turkish battalion, resting after the task of suppressing a provincial rebellion. Home they had wended their tireless way by Constantinople and Malta and mistral-swept Marseilles, and thence by land across to Havre. Here, oddly enough, he had fallen in with the French merchant to whom he had sold the _Hen Hawk_ twelve years before--the merchant’s son had served with him in the Army of the Loire three years later, and was his friend--and he had been able to gratify the sudden fantastic whim of returning as he had departed in the quaint, flush-decked, yawl-rigged old craft. It all seemed like a dream! “If your honor plazes, there’s a young gintleman at the dure--a Misther O’Mahony, from America--w’u’d be afther having a word wid ye.” It was the soft voice of good old Mrs. Sullivan that spoke. The O’Mahony woke with a start from his complacent day-dream. He drew his feet in, sat upright, and bit hard on his cigar for a minute in scowling reflection. “Show him in,” he said, at last, and then straightened himself truculently to receive this meddling new-comer. He fastened a stern and hostile gaze upon the door. Bernard seemed to miss entirely the frosty element in his reception. He advanced with a light step, hat in hand, to the side of the hearth, and held one hand with familiar nonchalance over the blaze, while he nodded amiably at his frowning host. “I skipped off rather suddenly this morning,” he said, with a pleasant half-smile, “because I didn’t seem altogether needful to the party for the minute, and I had something else to do. I’ve dropped in now to say that I’m as glad as anybody here to see you back again. I’ve only been about Muirisc a few weeks, but I already feel as if I’d been born and brought up here. And so I’ve come around to do my share of the welcoming.” “You _seem_ to have made yourself pretty much at home, sir,” commented The O’Mahony, icily. “You mean putting O’Daly down in the family vault?” queried the young man. “Yes, perhaps it was making a little free, but, you see, time pressed. I couldn’t be in two places at once, now, could I? And while I went off to settle the convent business, there was no telling what O’Daly mightn’t be up to if we left him loose; so I thought it was best to take the liberty of shutting him up. You found him there, I judge, and took him out.” The O’Mahony nodded curtly, and eyed his visitor with cool disfavor.