“It is the Hostage,” whispered the mother-superior, glancing impressively around, and striving to dissemble the tremor which forced itself upon her lips. “For wan-and-fifty years I’ve been waiting to hear the sound of him. My praydecessor, Mother Ellen, rest her sowl, heard him wance, and nixt day the roof of the church fell in. Be the same token, some new disasther is on fut for us, now.” Cormac O’Daly was as frightened as the rest, but, as an antiquarian, he could not combat the temptation to talk. “’Tis now just six hundred and seventy years,” he began, in a husky voice, “since Diarmid of the Fine Steeds founded this convint, in expiation of his wrong to young Donal, Prince of Connaught. ’Twas the custom thin for the kings and great princes in Ireland to sind their sons as hostages to the palaces of their rivals, to live there as security, so to spake, for their fathers’ good behavior and peaceable intintions. ’Twas in this capacity that young Donal O’Connor came here, but Diarmid thrated him badly--not like his father’s son at all--and immured him in a dungeon convanient in the rocks. His mother’s milk was in the lad, and he wept for being parted from her till his tears filled the earth, and a living well sprung from thim the day he died. So thin Diarmid repinted and built a convint; and the well bubbled forth healing wathers so that all the people roundabout made pilgrimages to it, and with their offerings the O’Mahonys built new edifices till ’twas wan of the grandest convints in Desmond; and none but fay-males of the O’Mahony blood saying prayers for the sowl of the Hostage.” The nuns were busy with their beads, and even Mrs. Fergus bent her head. At last it was Mother Agnes who spoke, letting her rosary drop. “’Twas whin they allowed the holy well to be choked up and lost sight of among fallen stones that throuble first come to the O’Mahonys,” she said solemnly. “’Tis mesilf will beg The O’Mahony, on binded knees, to dig it open again. Worse luck, he’s away to Cork or Waterford with his boat, and this storm’ll keep him from returning, till, perhaps, the final disasther falls on us and our house, and he still absinting himsilf. Wirra! What’s that?” The mother-superior had been forced to lift her voice, in concluding, to make it distinct above the hoarse roar of the elements outside. Even as she spoke, a loud crackling noise was heard, followed by a crash of masonry which deafened the listeners’ ears and shook the walls of the room they sat in. With a despairing groan, the three nuns fell to their knees and bowed their vailed heads over their beads. CHAPTER X--HOW THE “HEN HAWK” WAS BROUGHT IN.