Peebles, returning home to the Castle after his midnight interview with Moya Macartney in the churchyard, passed a sleepless and troubled night, revolving in his mind all the events of the sad history in which the unfortunate woman had played so strange a part, and canvassing all that her mysterious and unexpected return to life might mean to herself and others. More than once he determined to disregard Moya’s strenuous injunction to silence, and at once break to Lord Kilpatrick the news of her existence, and of her presence in the district; but again and again the memory of the solemn promise of secrecy he had given, and the thought that so sudden and heavy a shock might be fatal to one of his lordship’s age and feeble health, dissipated that intention.

‘Eh!’ he murmured to himself as he tossed and tumbled in vain effort to discover a way out of the labyrinth of difficulties the business presented, ‘it’s a troublous affair. I’d like to do justice, if I could see my way clear to the doing o’t. I’d like fine to bowl out that smugfaced hypocrite Conseltine, and that lump o’ malignity his son. ’Twould be the grandest day’s work I ever did. But I promised, like an old fool, and I must keep my promise, and just await the decrees o’ Providence.’

He rose long before his usual hour, early as that was, and went out into the fresh breeze of early morning. Dawn was faintly glimmering on the mountain-tops, and the dew was heavy on the grasses of the lawn. He looked up at the light which shone faintly in his master’s window.

‘’Twill be but a poor night’s rest he’s had, I’m thinkin’, poor old heathen, found out by his sin at last. Eh, but the lad’s curses will lie heavy on his heart! Mine’s wae for him, and for the callant I’ve seen grow up from a bairn, and for the lonely woman out yonder.’

A sudden idea struck him; he drew out his watch and consulted it eagerly.

‘Near hand to four o’clock,’ he murmured. ‘The mill’s but four miles awa’. I can do it in an hour, and anither hour to come back. I’ll gang and see Moya, and persuade her to hear reason.’

He took his hat and stick, and set out at the briskest pace he could attain towards Moya’s lodging place. It was a rough and stony track, and by the time he came in sight of the mill the old man was fain to sit upon a chance boulder and pant his breath back. Caution was necessary; he wished to do nothing that could by any chance give gossip or conjecture a handle, and he walked cautiously round the mill, glad of the babble of the stream which covered the sound of his footsteps on turf and gravel. Nobody was stirring; the place and all the countryside lay still and gray under the morning mist, now faintly touched here and there with threads of opalescent colour by the yet invisible sun. He threw a small pebble cautiously at the window shutter of Moya’s sleeping place, and a minute later it opened and revealed her pale, lined face. He made a gesture, cautioning her to silence, and then by another invited her to join him. She nodded to show comprehension of his pantomime, and a minute later stood beside him.

They walked on side by side in silence till they reached a little glen between two hills which hid them from all chance of observation, and then Peebles spoke.

‘Moya, woman,’ he said, ‘tell me why, after all these years, you come here now?’

‘I came to see my son,’ she answered.

‘Ay,’ he said, ‘that’s natural eneuch, na doubt. But is that all you came for?’

She darted a keen look at him—a look in which question and surprise were both expressed.

‘Moya,’ he went on, ‘since I saw you last night I’ve no’ closed my eyes for thinking o’ you and the lad your son. Eh, woman, but it’s clear impossible that after that one glimpse o’ his bonny face, and that one sound o’ his voice, ye should be content to gang back to solitude—it’s clear impossible! Let me tell him you’re alive and near him. He’s alone, too, noo! His place is by your side; your duty is to comfort him under the trouble he’s suffering, ye ken that weel?’

‘Mr. Peebles,’ said Moya steadily, ‘the path of duty is not always plain; but I’m going to clear mine if I can, by your help. God knows my very bones are full of desire for the child I love; I was near crying out who I was last night when I kissed him; but I’ve borne the bitter pain of solitude now for eighteen years, and sure my time here will not be so long. I’ll bear it to the end rather than disgrace and shame my child!’

‘But, Moya, he kens!’ cried Peebles. ‘He kens you were not married to his father. I winna say but, if he had never learned that, ye wad no’ be in the right to keep apart from him; but he knows it. He’s cast off his father; he has barely a friend in the world, barring me, and how can I help him. He has need o’ ye! Ye’ll heal his sair heart, and he’ll love ye and cherish ye and comfort your declining years.’

Moya shook her head.

‘He’s young,’ she replied, with a world of meaning in her tone. ‘A heart as young as his won’t break for such a trouble as he’s suffering now. He’ll go out into the big world, where the shame’s not known, and win his way. What would I be to him—a nameless vagabond, a poor, ignorant ould woman! I should only kape him down and disgrace him. No; ye must tell Desmond nothing—yet. Ye asked me just now,’ she went on after a pause, ‘if I had no other reason to come here afther all these years but just to see my boy?’

‘Weel?’ asked Peebles.

‘I had—I had another reason, or I’d have resisted the temptation now as I have fought it down all that long, dreary time. I’ve a question to ask ye, Mr. Peebles?’ She paused there for so long a time that the old man snapped out suddenly, with excusable irritation:

‘Weel, weel, lassie! What is’t?’

‘There’s so much depends on the answer that I hardly dare to ask,’ said Moya, with a voice suddenly gone tremulous. ‘Tell me,’ she continued, after another pause, ‘if ye know a gintleman in this part of the counthry that calls himself Blake—one Patrick Blake, of Blake’s Hall?’

‘Do I know him?’ echoed Peebles. ‘Ay, I know him fine, the drunken scoundrel! A’body kens him for miles round. But what depends on my knowing Patrick Blake, lassie?’

‘Much may depend on it,’ said Moya. ‘Desmond’s own future may depend on it.’

‘Desmond’s future? Why, what in the name of a’ that’s meaning can Pat Blake hae to do wi’ Desmond’s future?’

‘Was Mr. Blake,’ asked Moya slowly, and with an amount of effort which helped the old man to understand the importance she attached to the answer—‘was Mr. Blake ever a clerk in holy orders?’

Peebles stared at her in sheer bewilderment. Had she asked if he himself had ever been Pope of Rome, the question could hardly have seemed more ludicrous; but there was a painful solemnity in her manner which would have stayed a man less grave than he from laughter.

‘Holy orders!’ he muttered. ‘Holy orders! Patrick Blake! By my soul, but it’s an odd question!’

‘Not under that name, I mane, but another—Ryan O’Connor.’

‘He’s borne no name but Patrick Blake that I ever kenned o’,’ said Peebles, still groping painfully for any meaning in Moya’s queries. ‘She’s haverin’,’ he muttered to himself; but the calm intentness of Moya’s glance, though contradicted by the heaving bosom and irregular breath with which she spoke, did not accord with the explanation. ‘What if he ever was a priest under that or any other name?’ he asked at last.

‘I was married to Lord Kilpatrick,’ said Moya, ‘by a man calling himself the Reverend Father Ryan O’Connor.’

‘Lord guide us!’ ejaculated the old Scot. ‘And do ye think ’Twas Patrick Blake?’

‘I know it was Patrick Blake,’ replied Moya. ‘That much I’m sure of.’

‘But how do you ken it?’ asked the bewildered Peebles.

‘Sure ‘twould be too long a story to tell ye now. ’Twas only lately that an accident put me on the track. It took time and trouble to get Ryan O’Connor and Patrick Blake into the same skin, but I did it. And now, all that remains to be learned is just whether Blake was ever a priest, or whether his office was as false as his name. Will ye do that for me, Mr. Peebles? ’Tis not for my sake I ask it, but for my son’s—for Desmond’s!’

Peebles had fallen into a sitting posture on a low stone dyke, and sat staring at her like a man bewitched.

‘Moya! Moya Macartney! D’ye ken what ye’re sayin’? Oh! my head will rive with the dingin’ ye’ve started in my brains. Blake married ye! Blake a priest! Why, woman!’ he cried, suddenly straightening himself, ‘if that’s so, ye’re Lady Kilpatrick!’

‘Desmond would be Lord Kilpatrick,’ Moya answered simply. ‘’Tis for his sake, Mr. Peebles, that I ask you for help; not for mine, God knows. There were times,’ she went on, after another long pause, ‘long, long ago, when I’d have given my life to hold him—Henry Kilpatrick—in my arms for just one minute—times when all the shame and sorrow he’d brought on the poor ignorant girl who’d loved him seemed nothing—when, if the broad sea had not been betwixt us, I’d have gone to him and said, “Take me as your misthress, your servant, anything—let me see your face and hear your voice now and then, one day in the year, and I’ll follow ye barefoot through the world.” But they’ve gone, long since, and all my love and all my anger are gone with them. As to bein’ Lady Kilpatrick,’ she went on, with a short and mirthless laugh, ‘’tis not the chance of that that brings me here. A fine lady I’d make for any lord, wouldn’t I? and much at me aise I’d be among the grand folk he’d introduce me to? But Desmond’s a gintleman—as good a gintleman as any in Ireland, as Henry himself—and if the title’s his by rights, he shall have it. I shan’t trouble him. I shall go as I came, when I’ve seen him happy and honoured in his place. The thought has been food and drink, fire and shelter, to me these months past, since God sent the message that it might be so. Will you help me, Mr. Peebles?’

‘Will I help ye?’ cried Peebles, springing to his feet with the vivacity of a young man. ‘Deil hae me, but I’ll know the truth in four-and-twenty hours. But, eh, lass, if ye’re mistaken? If it’s not sae? I’d just gang clean daft in the disappointment. But it must—it must be true, eh, lass? To see the faces o’ they two Conseltines! To see the bonny lad, that they denounced as a beggar and a bastard, established wi’ title and estates! To see Lady Dulcie Lady Kilpatrick and Desmond’s wife! Oh! if it’s no’ true there’ll be a braw end o’ one good Scot, for I’ll just gang neck and crop into Limbo for sheer vexation. Dawm it! that I should say so—it must be true! It shall be true, if I squeeze it oot o’ yon scoundrel Blake wi’ my ain old hands, and his worthless life along wi’ it! But I maun awa’, lass—I maun awa’. There’s a hantle o’ things to be done at the Castle, and the lazy loons o’ servants are at sixes and sevens if they haven’t me about their lugs. I’ll see yon drunken ne’er-do-weel this day, and I’ll hae news for ye the morn’s morn. Keep a good heart, woman. The king shall enjoy his ain again. Eh, I’m just daft!’ Indeed, anybody who had witnessed the scene might have thought so,—he was so topful of excitement.

‘God bless ye, Mr. Peebles,’ said Moya. ‘Ye’re a true friend to me and the boy.’

‘Ay, am I,’ returned Peebles, ‘and that ye shall see ere long. Gang hame, lass, and pray for Desmond.’

‘Pray for him!’ cried Moya. ‘Has there been a day this eighteen years I’ve not prayed for him? No, nor a waking hour. God go with ye, sir, but——’

She checked him with an outstretched hand as he turned to go, and laid her finger on her lips as a signal for absolute silence.

‘Don’t fear me,’ said the old man; ‘I’m nae chatterbox, wi’ business like this afoot.’