“It’s a strange new fit of piety ye’ve on yeh, O’Mahony,” she said, with the familiarity of a spoiled pet. “Sure, when I tell the nuns, they’ll be lookin’ to see you build up a whole foine new convint for ‘em without delay.” “No; I’m savin’ that till you git to be the boss nun,” said The O’Mahony, dryly, and with a grin. “’Tis older than Methusalem ye’ll be thin!” asked the child, laughingly. And with that she seized his hand once more and dragged him forward to a closer inspection of the ruins. Some hours later, having been driven across country to Dunmanway by Malachy, and thence taken the local train onward, The O’Mahony found himself in the station at Ballineen, with barely time enough to hurry across the tracks and leap into the train which was already starting westward. In this he was borne back over the road he had just traversed, until a stop was made at Manch station. The O’Mahony alighted here, much pleased with the strategy which made him appear to have come from the east. He took an outside car, and was driven some two miles into the bleak, mountainous country beyond Toome, to a wayside inn known as Kearney’s Retreat. Here he dismounted, bidding the carman solace himself with drink, and wait. Entering the tavern, he paused at the bar and asked for two small bottles of porter to be poured in one glass. Two or three men were loitering about the room, and he spoke just loud enough to make sure that all might hear him. Then, having drained the glass, and stood idly conversing for a minute or two with the woman at the bar, he made his way through a side door into the adjoining ball alley, where some young fellows of the neighborhood chanced to be engaged in a game. He stood apart, watching their play, for only a few moments. Then one of the men whom he had seen but not looked closely at in the bar, came up to him, and said from behind, in an interrogative whisper: “Captain Harrier, I believe?” “Yes,” said The O’Mahony, “Captain Harrier--” with a vague notion of having heard that voice before. Then he turned, and in the straggling roof-light of the alley beheld the other’s face. It taxed to the utmost every element of self-possession in him to choke down the exclamation which sprang to his lips. The man before him was Linsky!--Linsky risen from the dead, with the scarred gash visible on his throat, and the shifty blue-green eyes still bloodshot, and set with reddened eyelids in a freckled face. “Yes--Captain--Harrier,” he repeated, lingering upon each word, as his brain fiercely strove to assert mastery over amazement, apprehension and perplexity. The new-comer looked full into the The O’Mahony’s face without any sign whatever of recognition.