"’T was like the time poor Denny Delane was in Dublin. I was there but the one winter myself," continued the master. "He came of a fine family, but got stage-struck, and left Trinity College behind him like a last year’s bird’s nest. Every woman in Dublin, old and young, was crazy after him. There were plays bespoke, and the fashion there every night, all sparked with diamonds, and every officer in his fine uniform. There was great dressing with the men as you’d never see them now: my Lord Howth got a fancy he’d dress like a coachman, wig and all; and Lord Trimlestown was always in scarlet when he went abroad, and my Lord Gormanstown in blue. Oh, but they were the pictures coming in their coaches! You would n’t see any officer out of his uniform, or a doctor wanting his lace ruffles! ’T was my foolish young self borrowed all the lace from my poor mother that she’d lend me, and I but a boy; and then I’d go help myself out of her boxes, when she’d gone to mass. She’d a great deal of beautiful lace, and knew every thread of it by heart. I ’ve a little piece yet that was sewed under a waistcoat. Go get it now, and we ’ll look at it; ’t is laid safe in that second book from the end of the shelf. You may give it to the little lady, when I ’m gone, for a remembrance; ’t is the only—ah, well; I ’ve nothing else in the world but my own poor self that ever belonged to my dear mother!" The old master’s voice grew very sad, and all his gayety was gone. "’Deed, then, Miss Mary Hamilton ’ll get none of it, and you having a daughter of your own!" scolded Margery, instantly grown as fierce as he was sad. Sometimes the only way to cure the master of his dark sorrows was to make him soothe her own anger. But this night he did not laugh at her, though she quarreled with fine determination. "Oh me!" groaned the master. "Oh me, the fool I was!" and he struck his knee with a hopeless hand, as he sat before the fire. "God be good to us!" mourned old Margery, "and I a lone child sent to a strange country without a friend to look to me, and yourself taking notice of me on the ship; ’t was the King I thought you were, and you’d rob me now of all that. Well, I was no fit wife for a great gentleman; I always said it, too. I loved you as I don’t know how to love my God, but I must ask for nothing!" The evening’s pleasure was broken; the master could bear anything better than her poor whimpering voice. "You look at a poor man as if he were the front of a cathedral," he chided her, again trying to be merry. But at this moment they were both startled into silence; they both heard the heavy tread of horses before the house. "Come in, come in, whoever you are!" shouted Master Sullivan, as he threw open the outer door. "Are ye lost on the road, that ye seek light and lodging here?" The horses would not stand; the night was dark as a dungeon; the heavy rain blew in the old man’s face. His heart beat fast at the sound of a woman’s voice.