The words filtered through May's ears as she lay on the arm of the good Samaritan. She sat up and wondered how her secret had been found out.

"Deary, don't mind an ould woman!" said Bid. "Sure I love Paul Finiston mysel', an' I have swore, on my knees, that the divil'll never get him. I niver put up a prayer that wasn't answered in the end; an' harm shall not get Paul while his friends has tongues to pray!"

May sat on a stone opposite Bid, who exhorted her thus, with finger uplifted and a sybil-like look on her weather-beaten face.

"The curse is against me," said May, despondingly. "It is creeping closer round him, and I am too weak to save him from it.'

Bid looked frightened. "You won't give him up, avourneen ?" she asked. "Give him up!" said May, and she rose to her feet, glowing with sudden energy. "No, I will not.'

"God love you, my jewel!" said Bid, "for you're fit to have the hope of the country in yer hands. Of course ye'll manage him well, for the quality does know how to deal wid one another; but I'm thinkin' it's mostly the same wid high an' low, an I wanst lost a lover wid floutin' an' poutin' at him. He got tired o' a cross face, an' went off to seek a pleasanter wan; so you just despise yon flauntin' hussy, an' smile at Paul Finiston till ye smile the divil out o' him!"

"You are a kind friend," said May; and she began to think of how strange it was that she should thus give her confidence to a beggar-woman. But she put down her pride with a true instinct. "Ask the people to pray," she said, "for you are right in saying that this is the affair of the country."

"Ay!" said Bid, "it is the affair of the whole counthry; for if Paul Finiston gets into evil hands there'll be another miser o' Tobereevil, an' a star the less in heaven. An' do you keep up yer heart an' smile; for they say the divil does fly away before the smile o' patience."

May went home with the beggar's lesson in her heart, and, coming through the kitchen-garden, she met Katherine tripping along, carrying a large carrot by its green top, which was soiled with clay, having just left the ground. The guest was singing loudly, as if in the highest spirits. She seldom sang except when unable to control the outpouring of her

triumph over some one; and she liked to please, except when she could have her will without the trouble of doing so. Her voice was shrill, and as she sang, coming down the kitchen-garden, there was a cruel harshness in her song which might have made the birds shiver. It was dusk, but the girls could see one another as they met between the ranks of the cabbages, and May wondered greatly at Katherine's fancy for vegetables. The latter stopped her song upon a high, sudden note, while she picked the clay in pieces from her carrot.

"Perhaps you are looking for Paul," she said, with a careless air of superior knowledge. "He is gone home to his farmhouse. He will not be here to-night."

"I dare say he is busy," said May. Katherine shrugged her shoulders and smiled. "I don't think he has much business in his head," she said. "I believe he is not in the humour for our company. He is not happy in his mind. Why don't you make him happy?"

"He has a good deal of care," said May, not noticing the insolence of Katherine's tone. "He will be happier by-and-bye." 'Perhaps he will," said Katherine, and turned her back on May, and went on towards the house.

In Paul's absence conversation was apt to flag of an evening between the ladies at Monasterlea. Since experience had revealed Katherine's character to Miss Martha, the young lady took no longer any trouble to amuse her hostess; who treated her, nevertheless, with all politeness and attention, for hospitality is a tyrant, and the unwelcome guest must be treated like the guest who is most desired.

Katherine knew this, and made herself comfortable accordingly. On this evening, while May sewed and Miss Martha knitted, she yawned over the pages of a novel. Her entertainers were not sorry when she bade them good-night and yawned herself away to her own chamber.

When she had gone, May turned with her sewing to the fire, for she could not bear Miss Martha's eyes. She had known for a long time that her aunt wanted to speak to her, and she felt that she could not endure the things that the old lady would surely say. But now she plied her needle wildly, knowing that the moment had come when she must listen to a lecture with patience; that a conversation was going to take place which it would be very hard for her to forget.

Miss Martha was evidently making a

great struggle to begin. Her knittingneedles flew faster, and pecked at each other wickedly, never heeding dropped stitches. Her mouth twitched, and her chin went up in the air and came down again.

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'May," she said, "is it possible that you have got nothing to say to me; now when we are alone, and not likely to be interrupted ?"

"I, Aunty ?" "Yes, you. Who else? Is it possible that you have nothing to complain of ?" Complain! Why should I complain ?" "We shall not get on very far if you echo every word I speak,' said Miss Martha, testily. "You may as well be frank with me-not look on me as an enemy. I am old and fidgety, but I am not at all sure that you have another friend in the world."

May's lips moved, but no sound came. She tried again and said, "Only one besides, Aunty."

Miss Martha's irritation was soothed away. She drew her chair a little nearer, stretched out her soft wrinkled hand, and laid it on May's shoulder. "Are you sure that you have that one, May? Come, trust the poor old woman! Inward grieving will rot the soundest heart."

May's lips quivered, but her mouth soon steadied itself, and her eyes kept dry and bright.

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Now turn round to me, for I want to see your face. If you have got nothing to tell me, then I must speak out to you; I wish in the name of Heaven that you had never set your eyes on Paul Finiston."

"You must not say that."

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'Yes, I will say it; for I fear he will break your heart. I will say, also, that I thought you had more spirit. If I were in your place I would bid good-bye to him at once, and let him go about his business."

will not make it worse by leaving him when he most wants a friend."

Miss Martha winced. Simon's words, "You who deserted me in my need," came across her ears, as they had many a time done since the day they were spoken. But May's doctrine was not acceptable to Miss Martha's faith. It must lie in people's own will, whether to be bad or good.

"Fiddle-de-dee," said Miss Martha again. "People walk into crooked ways with their eyes open, and then they rail at fate for not putting their feet into straight ones."

"I don't think Paul is deliberately walking in crooked ways," said May; "and unless he himself throws me off I will hold to him even at the cost of being thought to have no spirit. I know him better than you do, and I believe there are stranger things in the world than you think of."

"You think he is bewitched, so that he doesn't know what he is doing," said Miss Martha in amazement.

"I cannot say what I think. He is under some influence which seems to have changed his whole nature. If he be quite delivered up to it the change will be completed, and he will become- May shuddered and paused.

"You have grown as superstitious as himself," said Aunt Martha. "I really give you up. All I can say is, I wonder you can sit by neglected, and see him prefer another woman.'

May turned pale, and her hands knotted themselves together in a knot of pain. "I cannot say that I have seen that yet, Aunty."

There was something of agony in the young girl's voice, that smote upon Miss Martha's heart, and made her regret her impatient speeches.

Perhaps you are right, love," she said, after a pause. "I am a peppery old woman; but your happiness is the one object of my life."

"I know it, dear Aunty; but listen, and I will tell you about my happiness. It is staked on one person; his welfare is my welfare, his affliction is my affliction; I have no business in the world except to be true to Paul Finiston. His cares, and even his wrong-going, must all be upon my shoulders. I believe it would be a great misfortune to him if he were to love Kathe rine Archbold, therefore I will do all in my power to prevent such a thing happening. If I saw her truer, more loving, more likely to make him good and happy than myself, I think-I think I could give him

up to her; but I do not believe he likes her, and there are other things which I dread for him more than her influence. He is not in a condition at present to meet his enemies; I must fight his battles for him until good times come. So don't be disgusted if I have got no proper pride, but try to have patience with me, and with him for my sake.'

So spoke May, with a brave air; but later, when quite alone, she walked about the room, weeping silently. The cottage was quiet, but the wind moaned loudly round the cloisters, and the owls had begun to hoot in the old belfry. Her thought travelled through the dark night, along the moorland path to the highest window in the gable of the farm-house. There was Paul sitting alone and overwhelmed with strange troubles, as far removed from her as if the sea had rolled between them. Here was an hour in which Katherine could not divide them, and yet that hour was as useless to her as if it had no place in time. She longed to be a cat or a dog, that she might sit beside his foot, and look in his face, or a bird that she might peck at his window and gain admittance. Was he reckoning the miser's hoards, or thinking of Katherine? It seemed long, long since he and she had made their simple plans at this fireside, counting the world a paradise, and all danger of harm and trouble at an end. Now the night wind assured her that these days would come no more.

Faster and faster her tears came down. She despaired when she found herself weeping, thinking her courage quite gone, and flung herself against the old arm-chair in the chimney-corner, burying her face in its leathern lap. The old clock ticked in the hall by the stone angel, and its voice came into the room and grew hoarse with sympathy; the lamp burned low, and the fire glowed in red ashes; and May was tempted for once to think of her aunt's vehement wish, and to doubt whether it would not have been better for her if she had never seen Paul. She might have had placid years in this home safe from the world; have made soups for the sick, and knitted her life into warm petticoats and socks for the poor; have heard the winter howl past her in fearless content, and picked the flowers of the summers, and so travelled without a pang to her grave. Now the turmoil of despair was in her heart, and a prospect lay before her of endless uneasiness and pain. The tranquil little home could not comfort her with its shelter; the

household gods looked down and could not soothe. But it was only for one moment that this cruel doubt was harboured.

"It is well that I have known him," she said; "for I will save him if it cost me my life. When he is old, and the battle won, he will be glad to think that I lived."

She dried her tears, and thought upon Paul's case, acknowledging that the thing that she dreaded most for him was the utter loss of his mind; that the curse and its fascinations, or his horror of the same, would in the end drive him to madness. What if after all it had been only a latent insanity that had wrought through generations of the race of Finiston, making them creatures unhappy and solitary, and shunned by the rest of mankind? If so, then had Paul better fly from this place with its associations, and seek safety in another part of the world. She would send him across the seas, and never look upon his face again, if thus she could secure his perfect welfare.

Katherine at the same moment was also awake and alive, though she had retired to her room so early. The tall wax candles on her chimney stood in candlesticks adorned with crossed and reverend figures which had been taken from the chapel, having been used on the monks' altar. Her woodfire crackled merrily, her arm-chair was drawn up beside it, and she was dressed in a long red flannel dressing-gown, with her hair unbound on her shoulders.

As Katherine sat so she amused herself with a quaint amusement. She held the carrot in her hand which had excited May's wonder in the kitchen-garden; and she had washed it and cut away its delicate green plumes, and was carving it with a penknife into the likeness of a little man. She was making a mandrake in order to keep her word to Tibbie, and she held it aloof, and laughed at it as her work progressed. She had never seen a mandrake, but then neither had Tibbie, and in pleasing the old woman she would follow her own fancy. She was by no means an artist, but contrived to throw a knowing look into the eyes of the little figure, making it as ugly as it was possible that one could make it. She pared, and picked, and notched till its aspect had become sinister enough to content the most superstitious hag in the world. When all was done she stained it a darker hue, so that the carrot might not appear.

But what did Miss Archbold want with Tibbie that she should thus humour her