The bard opened his lips to reply. Then the gleam of enjoyment in the woman’s words which shone from all the faces roundabout, dismayed him. He shook his head, and walked away in silence. Meanwhile The O’Mahony, after a comfortable breakfast, and a brief consultation with Jerry, had put on his hat and strolled out through the pretentious arched doorway of his tumble-down abode. From the outer gate he saw the clustered villagers upon the wharf, and guessed what they were saying and thinking about him and his boat. He smiled contentedly to himself, and lighted a cigar. Then, sucking this with gravity, hands in pockets and hat well back on head, he turned and sauntered across the turreted corner of his castle into the ancient church-yard, which lay between it and the convent. The place was one crowded area of mortuary wreckage--flat tombstones sunken deep into the earth; monumental tablets, once erect, now tipping at every crazy angle; pre-historic, weather-beaten runic crosses lying broken and prone; more modern and ambitious sarcophagi of brick and stone, from which sides or ends had fallen away, revealing to every eye their ghostly contents; the ground covered thickly with nettles and umbrageous weeds, under which the unguided foot continually encountered old skulls and human bones--a grave-yard such as can be seen nowhere in the world save in western Ireland. The O’Mahony picked his way across this village Golgotha, past the ruins of the ancient church, and into the grounds to the rear of the convent buildings, clambering as he went over whole series of tumbled masonry heaped in weed-grown ridges, until he stood upon the edge of the havoc wrought by this latest storm. No rapt antiquary ever gazed with more eagerness upon the remains of a pre-Aryan habitation than The O’Mahony now displayed in his scrutiny of the destruction worked by last night’s storm, and of the group of buildings its fury had left unscathed. He took a paper from his pocket, and compared a rude drawing upon it with various points in the architecture about him which he indicated with nods of the head. People watching him might have differed as to whether he was a student of antiquities, a builder or an insurance agent. Probably none would have guessed that he was striving to identify some one of the numerous chimneys-before him with a certain fireplace which he knew of, five-and-twenty feet underground. As he stood thus, absorbed in calculation, he felt a little hand steal into his big palm, and nestle there confidingly. His face put on a pleased smile, even before he bent it toward the intruder. “Hello, Skeezucks, is that you?” he said, gently. “Well, they’ve gone an’ busted your ole convent up the back, here, in great shape, ain’t they?”