The O’Mahony looked wistfully down upon the village and the bay, patting the child’s shoulder in silent token of sympathy. Then an idea occurred to him. With his finger under her chin, he lifted Kate’s face till her glance met his. “Oh, by the way,” he said, with animation, “have you got so you can write pritty good?” The girl nodded her head, and looked away. “Why, then, look here,” he exclaimed, heartily, “what’s the matter with your writin’ me real letters, say every few weeks, tellin’ me all that’s goin’ on, an’ keepin’ me posted right up to date? Why, that’s jest splendid! It’ll be almost the same as if I wasn’t away at all. Eh, won’t it, skeezucks, eh?” He playfully put his arm around her shoulder, and they began the descent of the path. The suggestion had visibly helped to lighten her little heart, though she had said not a word. “Oh, yes,” he went on, “an’ another thing I wanted to say: It ain’t a thing that you must ever ask about--or ought to know anything about it--but we went out yisterday an’ made fools of ourselves, an’ if I hadn’t had the luck of a brindled heifer, we’d all been in jail to-day. Of course, I don’t know for certain, but I shouldn’t wonder if my luck had something to do with a--what d’ye call it?--yes, _cathach_--that we toted along with us. Well, I’m goin’ to turn that box over for you to keep, when we git down to the house. I wouldn’t open if it I was you--it ain’t a pritty sight for a little gal--just a few dead men’s bones--but the box itself is all right, an’ it can’t do you no harm, to say the least. An’, moreover--why, here it is in my pocket--here’s a ring we found on his thumb--cur’ous enough--that you must keep for me, too. That makes it like what we read about in the story-books, eh? A ring that the beauteous damsel, with the hay-colored hair, sends to Alonzo when she gets in trouble, eh, sis?” The child took the ring--a quaintly shaped thin band of gold, with a carved precious stone of golden-brownish hue--and put it in her pocket. Still she said nothing. At ten in the forenoon, in the presence of all Muirisc, The O’Mahony at last gently pushed his way through the throng of keening old women and excited younger friends, and stepped over the gunwale upon the deck, and Jerry and O’Daly restrained those who would have followed him. He had forced his face into a half-smile, to which he clung resolutely almost to the end. He had offered many parting injunctions: to work hard and drink little; to send the children to school; to keep an absolute silence to all outsiders, whether from Skull, Goleen, Crookhaven, or elsewhere, concerning him and his departure--and many other things. He had shaken hands a hundred times across the narrow bar of water between the boat and pier; and now the men in the dingey out in front had the hawser taut, and the _Hen Hawk_ was moving under its strain, when a shrill cry raised itself above the general clamor of lamentation and farewells.