“Back there wid ye, Biddy Quinn! Now thin, ould deludherer, will ye hould yer pace! Come along out o’ that, Pether’s Mag! Lave his honor a free path, will ye!” Thus, with stern remonstrance, backed by cuffs and pushes, O’Daly cleared the way, and The O’Mahony found himself half-forced, half-guided away from the fire and toward a tall and sculptured archway, which stood, alone, quite independent of any adjoining wall, upon the nearest edge of what he took to be the barnyard. Passing under this impressive mediæval gateway, he confronted a strange pile of buildings, gray and hoar in the moonlight where their surface was not covered thick with ivy. There were high pinnacles thrusting their jagged points into the sky line, which might be either chimneys or watch-towers; there were lofty gabled walls, from which the roofs had fallen; there were arched window-holes, through which vines twisted their umbrageous growth unmolested; and side by side with these signs of bygone ruin, there were puzzling tokens of present occupation. A stout, elderly woman, in the white, frilled cap of her district, with a shawl about her shoulders and a bright-red skirt, stood upon the steps of what seemed the doorway of a church, bowing to the new-comer. Behind her, in the hall, glowed the light of a hospitable, homelike fire. “It is his honor come back to his own, Mrs. Sullivan,” the stranger heard O’Daly’s voice call out. “And it’s kindly welcome ye are, sir,” said the woman, bowing again. “Yer honor doen’t remimber me, perhaps. I was Nora O’Mara, thin, in the day whin ye were a wee bit of a lad, before your father and mother--God rest their sowls!--crossed the say.” “I’m afraid I doen’t jest place you,” said The O’Mahony. “I’m the worst hand in the world at rememberin’ faces.” The woman smiled. “Molare! It’s not be me face that anny boy of thirty years back ’ud recognize me now,” she said, as she led the way for the party into the house. “There were thim that had a dale of soft-sawderin’ words to spake about it thin; but they’ve left off this manny years ago.” “It’s your cooking and your fine housekeeping that we do be praising now with every breath, Mrs. Sullivan; and sure that’s far more complimintary to you than mere eulojums on skin-deep beauty, that’s here to-day and gone to-morrow, and that was none o’ your choosing at best,” said O’Daly, as they entered the room at the end of the passage. “Thrue for you, Cormac O’Daly,” the housekeeper responded, with twinkling eyes; “and I’m thinkin’, if we’d all of us the choosin’ of new faces, what an altered appearance you’d presint, without delay.” A bright, glowing bank of peat on the hearth filled the room with cozy comfort.