The next few weeks were full of the bustle of preparation. When I told Winifred she was to leave the convent before the end of the term, and, after a few weeks of travel, to return to Ireland, she seemed fairly dazed at the unexpected news.

"Her education, of course, will have to be continued," I thought; "but hardly in an American convent."

One May morning Winifred took leave of her teachers and school friends, and we set out direct for Niagara. When we reached the Falls, she was for a time wholly lost in wonder. The stupendous mass of falling water seemed to produce upon the little girl a curious impression of bewilderment.

"Oh, it is grand, grand!" she said. "This America is a wonderful place."

Winifred and I had, as it were, a surfeit of beauty; and so by the afternoon our exclamations of wonder and delight became exhausted, and we could only look out upon the lovely and varied panorama in silence. But we were roused to excitement as the afternoon sun began to take a downward slope and we neared the far-famed Rapids. The passengers braced themselves as if for certain danger (though in reality there is comparatively little) as the steamer rushed into the great masses of foaming water with a lurch and a bound that sent a tingle to every nerve. Onward she dashed, the speed seeming to become more terrific as we descended the river in the direction of Montreal. It is a thrilling, though delightful, experience. As for Winifred, she seemed to enjoy the situation thoroughly. Not a shade of alarm crossed her face, while many of the older passengers were visibly agitated. From the steamer's deck we took a last glimpse of the city, lying golden in the sunset, with the figure of Our Lady of Good Help on the tower of Bonsecours church, stretching wide its arms in benediction over the great river which Cartier discovered.

At dawn we were nearing Quebec, and rushed out of our cabins for a first sight of the Gibraltar of America. We flew past Levis, Sillery, and, rounding Cape Diamond, suddenly beheld the ancient walls, the colossal rock crowned by the citadel, with Lower Town, squalid if picturesque, at its feet. Landing, Winifred and I took a calÈche to the Chateau Frontenac, where we breakfasted.

Recrossing the American borders, we made a short trip through the White Mountain region, exulting in those glorious scenes. At New York we rested a day or two in our old quarters, and did a good deal of shopping; for had we not Granny and Niall and Father Owen to think of, not to speak of Barney and Moira, the landlord of the inn, and other Wicklow notables? No one was to be forgotten.

After this we went into Pennsylvania, one of the most wonderful of all the States, and crossed the far-famed Horseshoe bend in the Alleghanies. Winifred looked fearlessly down into the vast chasm and saw with composure the end of our train on the other side of the ravine. It was a sight upon which few could look unmoved. We saw something of the wonders of the mining and coal districts, and the beauty of the Delaware and Lehigh.

We continued our breathless journey to Washington, where we remained a few days to rest. It is a beautiful city, refreshing to mind and body, though somewhat warm at that season of the year; but its noble dwellings, its public monuments, surpassed and overtopped by the Capitol, have a wonderful charm.

One evening we were strolling along in the very shadow of that classic pile when Winifred said:

"Barney and Moira will think I've been in fairyland if I tell them half of all I have seen; but I love dear Ireland best, after all."

"We shall sail from New York by the next White Star liner," I observed presently; and I thought within myself: "Roderick will be sailing by the Cunarder. It will be a race which shall reach Liverpool first."

By an odd coincidence, as I thought thus, Winifred was turning round upon her finger the ring which Roderick had sent her.

"I should like to have seen him," she said, pointing to the ring, "and thanked him for this. I suppose I shall never see him again. I have a strange fancy that I saw him long ago, and that he is—" she hesitated—"that he is the dark gentleman who was angry with the lady in yellow," she concluded, slowly.

"Dreaming again, Winifred!" I said.

"This is not dreaming," she corrected; "for sometimes I am almost sure it is true, and that he is the same one—only I have never seen him angry."

"Perhaps the dark gentleman was not so very angry even then," I suggested, to divert her thoughts from Roderick.

"Perhaps not," she said reflectively; "but I think he was."

"Your father—for the gentleman you speak of was, I suppose, your father—was devotedly attached to your mother."

"Was he?" inquired Winifred, simply.

"Yes, indeed: he thought her the most beautiful creature in the world."

"I'm glad of that," Winifred said; and, in that fashion of hers which so constantly reminded me of her father, she turned away from the subject.

On Saturday morning early we were on board the great steamer, in all the bustle of departure; and after a pleasant voyage we arrived at Liverpool on schedule time, as the guidebooks say, and installed ourselves for the night at a comfortable hotel. Next day we set forth to see whatever this smoky city of industry has to show. We were passing along one of the smokiest and narrowest of streets when Winifred suddenly pulled my arm.

"Did you see him?" she cried excitedly.

"Who?" I inquired, though I partly guessed—being fully prepared to see Roderick O'Byrne in Liverpool.

Winifred touched the ring on her finger to show whom she meant.

"It may have been only a chance resemblance," I observed evasively.

"It was he," she declared decisively, and her eyes sparkled with excitement. "Oh, I am so glad!" she went on. "We must find him. I want to thank him for the ring."

"It will be impossible to find him in this crowd," I answered.

She pointed to a shop.

"He is in there," she cried, "and I must see him! If you do not come with me, I will go myself."

She was full of her old impetuosity, urging on my reluctant steps.

"One thing that I want to ask him," she went on, "is whether he knew the beautiful lady in yellow."

When we reached the shop door, Roderick stood just inside; and I almost fancied he had stepped in there to avoid us, knowing that I did not wish for a premature dÉnouement of the little plot. However, his face also wore an eager expression, and it lighted as Winifred confronted him. He opened the door and came out onto the pavement, looking at me for directions. I put my finger to my lips, signifying that he must not as yet disclose himself.

"I want to thank you for this ring, with its lovely green stone," she said.

"It's only a trifle, little one," Roderick replied lightly.

"I was so sorry when I thought I should never see you again," Winifred cried, impetuously.

"Were you?" asked Roderick, with an unsteadiness in his voice which caused me to give him a warning look.

"Yes, because I was leaving America forever. And one thing I wanted to ask you so much was, if you remembered the beautiful lady in yellow. I have been so anxious to know."

She looked up into his face with her great, starlike eyes; and he gazed at her in return.

"Do I remember the beautiful lady in yellow?" he repeated. "As I hope for heaven, yes, and never shall I forget her while I live!"

The answer, however, was given in an undertone, which she did not catch.

"Because if you knew her," went on Winifred, "I was going to ask if you were the dark gentleman who slammed the door?"

"I'm afraid I was," he whispered in my ear. "How our misdeeds do follow us, and what a memory the little one has! I had had a dispute with some one very dear to me about going to the old place in Wicklow. She, poor girl, had no wish to see the 'ruin,' as she called it. I lost my temper, and so came about the little scene Winifred remembers and describes."

Turning to Winifred, he asked:

"Now, why do you think I could do such a naughty thing as slam a door?"

Winifred was confused. Her natural politeness prevented her from replying.

"Am I so very fierce-looking or so violent?" Roderick resumed; for he was in high spirits and ready to carry the mystery further.

"It isn't that," answered Winifred; "only you look like him."

"Look like a gentleman that got angry and slammed a door?" he said in the same jesting tone. "Now, that is too bad of you altogether."

His bright, laughing face and sunny manner mystified the child even more than his words.

"Never mind," he went on; "I forgive you this time, but you must really try to get up a better opinion of me. I must go now, but we shall meet again, and it won't be over the seas either. I am going to hear more about that uncivil dark gentleman who frightened a dear little girl."

"He was cross, too, to the lady," said Winifred, rather defiantly; for she was vexed somewhat by his jesting.

"Well, I am sure he was sorry enough for that afterward," said Roderick, with a sudden clouding of his face—"as we are always sorry for our fits of ill-temper. Remember that, my child."

He waved his hand in farewell, and Winifred stood looking after him.

"I am glad we are going to see him again," she observed; though, with the implicit faith of childhood, she did not ask when or where.

When we had got back to the hotel she talked chiefly of Granny and Niall, of Father Owen, and of her humble friends Barney and Moira; and could scarcely wait for the night to be over and morning to come that we might set out for the scenes of her childhood.

The most impatiently longed-for morrow comes at last. It was a gray, lowering day when we left Liverpool. Before quitting the hotel, a box of candy was handed to Winifred. When she opened it there was a card upon which was written:

"From the man that looks like the naughty dark gentleman who slammed the door."

It seemed as if it must be a dream when we drove in a hired car from Dublin once more to the Glen of the Dargle. I had written to the landlord of the neighboring inn to have our rooms in readiness. And there he was at his door, stony-visaged and reticent; but the stone was furrowed by a broad smile as he helped us from the car.

"Welcome back, ma'am! And welcome to you too, Miss Winifred alanna!"

Winifred shook him cordially by the hand; and turned with a cry of joy to where Moira stood, red in the redness of the dying sun which shone out through a mist—for the weather had been uncertain all that day; and red, too, with a new shyness, which caused her to stand plucking at her apron. Barney kept urging her forward, but was not much more confident himself.

Winifred's greeting to them was good to hear. And she wound up by the flattering assurance:

"You'll think I'm a real fairy this time when you see my trunks open to-morrow."

It was some time, however, before that pair of rustic tongues were unloosed and they began to chatter away like magpies. After a little while Winifred proposed a run; and off they all flew, the young traveler, in spite of the fatigue of her journey, leading in the race. Her curls, which had grown longer in her absence, formed a cloud about her head.

"Father Owen bid me tell you he was off for a sick-call, down to Enniskerry below there; but he'd be back in an hour's time, and you'll see him as quick as he comes," said the landlord.

"It's good to get back again," I said, seating myself on the familiar bench at the door, and letting my eyes wander over the lovely scenes—the blossoming trees, the gold of the laburnum, and the whole sweetened by the pervading fragrance of the hawthorn.

"We're proud to have you with us, ma'am," the landlord declared. "We thought the time long since you left."

The "we" referred to his better half, who, however, rarely left the kitchen, and with whom I had not exchanged half a dozen words.

"I don't think I'll ever go away, again," I said; "so you may just as well arrange my rooms accordingly. And now what of the schoolmaster?"

"They tell me," he said, speaking in a confidential undertone, "that Father Owen exorcised him—took off of him some spell that the 'good people' had laid upon him, forcing him to wander night and day—and scatterin' his wits."

"At any rate, Niall of the hills has changed his ways, I hear," said I.

"Well, so they tell me; though there are them that met him wanderin' still on the hills. But sure mebbe the poor daft crathure was only takin' the air by moonlight."

"And Granny Meehan?" I inquired.

"Oh, she's to the fore! And it's her ould heart that'll be rejoiced entirely by your return, not to speak of her colleen."

At that moment Winifred entered, with Barney and Moira thrown into the background by Father Owen himself, who held his little favorite by the hand.

"A hundred thousand welcomes!" cried the priest, extending his unoccupied hand to me. "So you have brought us back the old Winifred, with a new varnish upon her that shines from afar. God be praised that we're all here to greet you!"

The landlord, with an exclamation at their dilatoriness in serving supper, entered the inn, while Father Owen and I moved apart for a few moments. I wanted to tell him that Roderick would arrive in a day or two.

"Thanks be to God!" he ejaculated. "Oh, what joy you have brought upon the old house—you, under God! It is a privilege thus to make others happy—the sweetest left us since the fall of Adam. But now I mustn't keep you from your supper. We'll have many a long chat in the days to come, and I just wanted to welcome you. I suppose you'll go up this evening to Granny and Niall?"

"Indeed I will. But is Niall at the castle?" I asked.

"He is. Granny will tell you all," he answered.

And what a supper that was in the pleasant inn parlor, with the blossoming trees peeping in at the windows and the Irish robins singing our welcome! How savory tasted the trout from the stream, fresh-caught; and the rasher of bacon, with snow-white oaten cake, the freshest of fresh butter, and thick cream for our tea! What a walk we had up through the hills that lovely evening! Winifred's eyes were full of tears as I recalled to her memory the first time she had brought me to the castle.

"Isn't it strange to think of all that has passed since then!" she whispered, in a voice full of emotion.

But though changes there had been, there were none in the hills. They preserved their immortal beauty, and the Glen of the Dargle was as fairy-like as ever in its loveliness. At the castle, too, all was the same. Granny sat calm and motionless by the great hearth, as though she were under a spell; and Brown Peter mewed and purred about her as of old. When we entered the room she rose uncertainly from her chair. Her voice was plaintive and tremulous with the depth of emotion as she cried out:

"Winifred alanna, is it yourself that's in it?"

Presently the child was clasped in her arms; and I stood by, content to be forgotten. At last I asked:

"Where is Niall?"

"Barney will bring you to him," said the blind woman.

After a moment he led us to that very hall where the game of chess had been played on the silver chessboard for the hand of a fair lady. Here Niall had established himself, and I caught a glimpse of his tall figure walking up and down. I remained without, and sent Winifred in alone. I heard one inarticulate cry of joy, and then I walked away to a distant end of the corridor, leaving the two together for a while. When I returned and entered the hall, I found Niall seated in a high-backed armchair, like some king of olden days. Winifred was upon her knees beside him, leaning her head on his arm. He held out his hand to me, and I was struck by his altered expression. Scarce a trace of its former wildness remained; and his face shone with a deep content, a radiating joy.

"Daughter of the stranger," he said, "you are one of us forever! Whether your home be here amongst our hills or the stormy sea divides us, it matters nothing."

"It is my intention to stay here," I announced, "amongst your lovely scenes, and with you all, who have come so intimately into my lonely life."