“Oh, bless you--not at all!” he protested. “Only I was afraid I was keeping _you_. You see, time hangs pretty heavy on my hands just now, and I’m tickled to death to have anybody to talk to. Of course, I like to go around looking at the castles here, because the chances are that some of my people some time or other helped build ’em. I know my father was born somewhere in this part of County Cork.” Kate sniffed at him. “Manny thousands of people have been born here,” she said, with dignity, “but it doesn’t follow that they had annything to do with these castles.” The young man attached less importance to the point. “Oh, of course not,” he said, carelessly. “All I go by is the probability that, way back somewhere, all of us O’Mahonys were related to one another. But for that matter, so were all the Irish who--” “And are _you_ an O’Mahony, thin?” Kate was looking at him with shining eyes--and he saw now that she was much taller and more beautiful than he had thought before. “That’s my name,” he said, simply. “An O’Mahony of County Cork?” “Well--personally I’m an O’Mahony of Houghton County, Michigan, but my father was from around here, somewhere.” “Do you hear that, Murphy?” she said, instinctively turning to the faithful companion of all her out-of-door life. But there was no Murphy in sight. Kate stared blankly about her for an instant, before she remembered that Murphy had never rejoined her at the lakeside. And now she thought she could hear some vague sound of calling in the distance, rising above the continuous crash of the breakers down below. “Oh, something has happened to him!” she cried, and started running wildly back again. The young man followed close enough to keep her in sight, and at a distance of some three hundred yards came up to her, as she knelt beside the figure of an old peasant seated with his back against a rock. Something had happened to Murphy. His ankle had turned on a stone, and he could not walk a step. CHAPTER XVII--HOW THE OLD BOATMAN KEPT HIS VOW. Oh, what’s to be done _now?_” asked Kate, rising to her feet and casting a puzzled look about her. “Sure, me wits are abroad entirely.”