CHAPTER XXX.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XIX, Issue 15, 9 January 1891, Page 21

CHAPTER XXX.

But — in the morning— she was quite surprised to sue the gloom that pervaded the features of the young ladies of the house. There w%g^n expression of dread and bodement and pain that was very noticeable, all the more that they by no spoken words indicated its presence. But there was a feeling, in the air around them, which the beautiful Sassenach could not help attributing in §ome way to the singer <>f the night before. But she spoke not of it to them. There were others, however, who had heard and seen the vision and who were not so re'icent concerning it- some of the numerous servants of the house. For in these times, the mansions of great lords were indeed great establishments, in which the tenantry seemed to have »n t qual share with the masters, and servants, young and old, immensely outbalancing the actual requirements, lived therein. Very few of the farmers on the estate but at one time or another had some one of their family dwelling at " the Master's." From the information given by some of these in the course of the morning's bustle, for no guarded fortress ever saw the dawn break with such chatter and life as this home of the O'Byrne's, Carrie Mordaunt had learnt later on the meaning of the strange apparition and its song of woe ! If ■he had any doubts ot the truth of their story, their frightened and terrified appearances dispelled it. At once her trembling heart connected the vision with some fateful warning concerning Maurice, although the servants impressed upon her the certainty that the appariuon ouly came when danger menaced the ancient house in which they were ; and when he came with the news of his hurried departure, and on such a husiness, tier fear grew intense. "Don't leave me, Maurice," she cried ; " Don't go. I shall go anywhere with you — France, Spain, anywhere. But don't leave me now ; my heart is full of dread." " Carrie, darling, calm your fears. This boding messenger comes not for me. When I return we shall sail for France. I have a mission to discharge there, and we sball waodec together through that sunny land, our hearts as bright as its glowing Bkies." " Nay, nay ; let it be now. Do not go away. lam strong enough to leave now with you any moment." •• It is not possible, Carrie. Dearly as I love you — and no love yet was ever deep and sTong as mme — tlere are things before which even love must give way. A man's pride, a man's courage, a man's honour all theae are things that lie even nearer his heart. But don't fear for me, Carrie, deareßt. I've been before, with death round and about, and no harm has come to me ; nor shall it now with your protecting prayer to guard me. See I Is not that fine \ " They had been sitting at the window where she stood the previous night, when, mounted on a swift horse, magnificently caparisoned, a young fellow came up at a rapid pace round the corner of the castle. His age was about twenty, his face was fair and bright and, save the dark moustache that began to shadow his upper lips, beardless as a girl's It might have been counted effeminate did not the quick, bright flashing eje, and the firm set lips, when he cloted them, betoken strength of purpose and resolution. His eye fell on the horse ridden by Maurice, as it was led up and down by a little boy, and he reined up his at ed sharply, stopping him within a few feet and nearly throwing him on his hauncaes. Tne belt he wore was set eft' with crosses of gold, and the hilt of his sword was yellow and burnished as of the same material. His quick eye caught the strange steed, and was immediately raised to the window above, and brigluened as it fell upon the two sitting there. Doffing his plumed cap in recognition, he Bprang from his saddle threw the rems to one ot the horsemen who, following mm at an equally rapid pace, had reined up, when he reined up and raced up the broad oaken Blairs to wheie they were. " Maurice, I'm so glad to eto you. Are you coming ? Are you going to Louis V " Yee, of course. Who would remain at home with Coote plundering and murdering at will. Did you Bee O'Moores letter?" " Yes ; I saw it. I came here in consequence." '■ WelJ, Miss Mordaunt." said the youth gaily, " you will have to surrender him to us fjr awhile. Nay, never grow so pale, dear lady ; iheie is no fear for him. The banshee is too true to our race to wail for strangers from Connaoght." Maurice rather started at this laughing allusion to the vis'on of the night, told by Carrit* Mordaunt, and which had not beea without its effect upon him. He could not help admiring the airy fearlessness of the handsome jouth for whom, for au^ht one kaew, ibis threnody might have been sung. Whatever forebodings were in other hearts, clearly fear had not entered his, as be said . " I sball wait you below, Maurice. Hugh waits us »t Ballinacorr. The God of love, my dear lady, must sometimes yield to the God of war." And so saying, with a warm shake-hands with the " Saasenacfc lady," as Carrie was called, he descended the Btairs in as blithe and merry humour as though be was proceeding to a hunting party or the hills i! stead of to contend with foes where no quarter should be given or atked, and leaped again into his saddle. Presently, Maurice after a long and tender farewell, cam i downwards too, and with a farewell of the uplifted swords in soldierly fashion to the be»y of fair girls who had joined Miss Mordaunt at the window, the troop movi d off. " You are dreaming of England, Maurice," said the young companion af ier a time as he noticed his absent and preoccupud dir. He thought of Carrie Mordaunt and heaved a sigh. His companion looked at him in some wonder and doubt ; but at qnce a bright smile passed across his cherry face. *• 1 tell you what, Colonel Maurice," he said, " we have been — you have been — treading over the hungry grass." " I beg your pardon," said Maurice, not understanding him. " Perhaps I should rather call it in your case the melancholy grass— for it has both attributes. I thought you were growing a shade downcast. Some," said the gay youth as> he shifted the shoulder knot of bis sword sash, displaying as he did so the diamond ring that •parkled on his finger, " would call it love, Colonel O'Connor ; but

we who live and wander in these unfrequented mountain solitudes know better. You have passed over the hungry grass." " And," said Maurice responding to his bright smile, " what is the hungry grass, and what mysterious properties has it? Will you bn good enough to explain, for I am wholly unacquainted with it? " " Maurice O'Connor, you see these hills ?" " Yes." " That sleeping lake ?" " Yes." " That sea white and silver burnished in the distance ?" " Yes." " Our name and race is as old as these hills, as that lake, as that sea — or nearly so. We were on these 'cl ffs, and hills, and gleis ' before an elk trod them, before the tall forests fell and formed theia bogs, before many great rivers that flow through Ireland now had burst from their sources. Our very name in the antique form of the Irish language meaos old. Before Firbolg, Danain, or Milesian trod the land we were here. Race after race came and conquered, exterminated those preceding them, or intermarried and became amalgamated with them ; but we— we kept these hills and valleys free from invader from the first. It is our boast, a high one, though we could hardly prove it to the satisfaction of Black Tom," added the youth, laughingly, " that from the very first of the wandering Arian race that landed on yonder coast from their galleys, they loved this smiling land, settled on it, and kept it. But lam wandering from what 1 had to say, except as an explanation why the story is so old and the legend so hoary." " Touching the hungry grass ? " said Maurice. " That's what lam coming to. The first of our race — so the story runs — that sailed from the Syrian shores and landed here, bore with him a wife. Among the colony that came with him was a young gill, very fair, very beautiful, and very winsome. Even in these early ages men had been attracted by beauty, and a handsome face stole men's hearts after ie, even as is done to-day." Maurice glanced sharply at the speaker, as if be expected some covert allusion to himself, but there was nothing of the kin i evident. The speaker's face was full of the story he was telling, and his eyes had that look into the remote past that made it evident there was no passing reference to things of present date. " Go on, Louis," he said, as the young fellow paused. " Aye, Maurice, even in those early ages men had begun to be led from the ways of honour by sweet faces and witching eyes. It was so in this case, and the Syrian leader, abandoning the princess that bad left her father's halls to fo low him, and forswearing her love for that of her younger rival, sent her back again across the wide sea to her Eastern home, and selected the latter tv rule with him over that island home on the verge of the world to which the breath of fate had wafted their galleys. A storm came, however, and the galley bearing the abandoned princess was driven back and wrecked on the Wicklow coast. The wife, prompted by feelings of love, slighted though they were, sought out her husband among these hills, and, it is said, wandered over those we are now crossing. Her way was I ng and weary, her path strewn with thorns and brambles, and her heart failed her. But the gods who ruled in that land from which she came were beside her, and, in vengeance for her sufferings and for her unrequited love, decreed that wherever a tear fell there should grow the hungry grass which poisons every animal that toucbeb it, and which causes man himself, whea passing over it. to feel a strange weakness which, unless food is quickly at hand, kills him. The agonies which it begets in the human system are untold, an 1 the sufferer dies in great pangs. At other times it creates a feeling of melancholy in him who steps on it for which there is no assuagement. Things of life lose all th^ir attraction, tha e»rth its happiness, the sky Us brightness, until the victim, by sheer illness or by his own hand, is ushered into another world where such things are not.' " Thai's rather an odd story, Louis," remarked Maurice, when he had finished. •' If any. the punishment c^me worse oa the descendants than they deserved, considering it was entirely his own fault, not theirs. What became of the princess ; does the legend say ? " " Failing to find her faithless husband among these trackless hill she drowned herself in that lake, one result of which is that from that day to this, all along the slow descent of the rolling centuries no trout, save one, has ever been known to live therein. A trout is seen there at rare intervals, but ODly o-»e ; but the tortures of the hungry grass exist to the present day." " Well, I think we had better ride on," said Maurice. "I do not care to linger over these treacherously green Bpots. But look yonder 1 " Whose spears are those glancing in the sunlight, above the heath 7" " Thesa are mv brother Hugh's — he is coming to meet us," said Louis, putting spurs to his horse and galloping rapidly forward, in which Maurice and his troop followed him.