Murtagh woke next day with a glad feeling that something pleasant was to happen; he sprang out of bed with a shout of—"Hurrah, Bobbo, to-morrow has come, and we'll be all right now!" Careering across the landing, he awoke Rosie and Winnie to remind them of the same fact, and they all rejoiced together, planning what they would say to Theresa's mother, and anticipating how "awfully" pleased she would look when she knew that Theresa wasn't dead, and that the money was all right.

"I'm very glad we met her, after all," reflected Murtagh, as he returned to his own room to put on some garments more suitable to the breakfast table. "Even if the police had got hold of us, it would have been something to have saved her, and this way it's jolly."

They expected to see Mr. Plunkett at ten o'clock. It was his custom to walk through the greenhouses at that hour on Sunday mornings. But alas for their joyful expectations! Ten o'clock struck, and eleven too, and no Mr. Plunkett made his appearance.

Ballyboden fashion was to begin morning service at twelve o'clock, and at half-past eleven the carriage came to the door. Clearly, all hope of seeing Mr. Plunkett before church must be given up, and the mood in which the children started was anything but devotional.

It must be confessed that they were not agreeable companions in church that day.

They meant to be quiet, but they yawned till the tears ran down their cheeks, and not only did they change their position every five minutes, but by a painful fatality they rarely succeeded in effecting the change without administering an unintentional but resounding kick to the woodwork of the old pew. At last came the final prayer, and Winnie went down on her knees with such alacrity that more than one respectable old lady turned her head, and seemed reproachfully to ask an explanation from Nessa. Oh! why are old pews constructed on the principles of a sounding-board?

But it was over; service and sermon had come to an end; and the congregation poured out into the churchyard.

There the children learnt that Mr. Plunkett had been, this morning, unable to leave his bed. "It was likely," said the young doctor, who gave them the news, "that he would be confined to the house for several days."

Nessa was astonished at the faces of dismay with which the children received the information.

"Are you sure?" Rosie ventured to ask. "Are you sure he won't be able to get out for several days?"

"Well, I really can't tell you that, Miss Rose," replied the doctor. "But he's not very bad,—not very bad."

"Would you like to go round by the Red House, and inquire there how he is?" Nessa suggested, feeling quite sorry for the children's needless anxiety.

Murtagh felt doubtful of the utility of that proceeding, but a nudge from Winnie, and an expressive glance from Rosie, made him accept the proposal. Winnie had conceived the bold design of seeing Mr. Plunkett in his own house, and of asking him without more delay; but, arrived at the Red House, she found that her hopes were vain.

"Mr. Plunkett was in his own room," Mrs. Plunkett said, "and did not know when he expected to leave it."

"Mightn't we go up and see him?" suggested Winnie, undauntedly, but Mrs. Plunkett answered in horror: "My dear Winnie, I wouldn't let one of you inside his room for anything in the world. Why, he won't even have one of his own children in except Marion, and she's more like a mouse than a child."

They drove away feeling more than ever puzzled as to what was to be done. Poor Theresa! They scarcely dared to think of going up to her with the news that she must wait again, till they did not know when.

Their heads were so full of Theresa's troubles that dinner was torment to them. They could not eat; they were longing for the meal to be finished in order that they might get away and consult together. What, therefore, was their confusion, when Nessa innocently suggested that they should pay a visit to the poor woman whose little girl had been lost.

"Uncle Blair said it would be kind of us," she said.

"We—we can't," replied Murtagh. "We have to go—I mean," he said, recovering himself, "we have something else to do."

"Look here, Murtagh, I don't see a bit of use all of us going," exclaimed Rosie, gaining a sort of desperate courage from Nessa's presence; "and I'm not, for one."

"Do you mean," exclaimed Murtagh, astonished, "that you're not coming up to—" He stopped short, growing scarlet at the thought of how nearly he had betrayed himself.

Nessa looked at him in surprise, while Rosie answered stoutly, "No, I'm not."

"Couldn't your business wait till to-morrow?" Nessa asked gently.

"No," said Murtagh, with a sort of shutting of himself up that made further questions impossible.

There was a minute's silence; then Nessa asked whether she knew the way to Mrs. Daly's cottage, and if it would be too far for Ellie to walk.

"I tell you what," said Winnie, presently, "if you'll wait for us at the cottage, we'll come there after; that's the way we'll come home. Rosie can go with you if she likes," she added contemptuously.

Dinner over, the children went to prepare for their walk.

"What is to be done, Murtagh?" asked Rosie, as they mounted the little staircase. "Goodness knows when that stupid Mr. Plunkett will get well again! I think much the best plan is to give up the whole thing, and tell Mrs. Daly now all about Theresa. We can't possibly keep her there forever, and we shall be getting into an awful row, for the police always find things out."

"What is the good of talking like that, Rosie?" interrupted Winnie, impatiently. "Just as if we didn't know as well as you that we're getting into an awful row. You keep on telling us the same thing over and over again, as if that would help us out of it."

"Well, but I do tell you a way out of it," replied Rose.

"Yes, just like a sneaking woman's way," said Murtagh. "Of course, you're never to stick to any one when it gets to be any trouble."

"Well, I'm sure I don't see much good sticking to people when you can't do any good by it," returned Rose, reddening; "and besides, you're sure to let it all out before long."

"Come now, Rosie, you're a great deal worse than Murtagh," remarked Bobbo, and a pitched battle of tongues was imminent, when Winnie again interrupted:

"Do hold your tongues, and let's settle what's to be done."

But talking about it was very little use, and soon Nessa's voice was heard at the bottom of the stairs calling out to know if Rosie and Ellie were ready.

Great indeed, as the children expected, was poor Theresa's trouble when she heard the news they brought; it was impossible to console her. Nothing but the terror of going home, which grew in proportion with the efforts made to save her from that dreaded contingency, kept her upon the island.

In answer to her tears the children could say nothing but promise to make it all right somehow, if only she would wait patiently; and after they had done their little best to comfort her they went away promising to come up the very first thing before breakfast and bring with them news of her mother.

The hour they had spent with her had made them more than ever downspirited. They had exhausted all their courage in trying to comfort her, and the three little hearts were very heavy as they walked along the road that led to the cottage. It was Winnie as usual who brightened up a little at last.

"Never mind, Myrrh," she said, as they reached the cottage door. "We'll do it somehow, you know, if we hold out long enough." And she seemed so sure that the boys felt surer too.

Nessa's voice within, speaking to Rose, emboldened them to lift the latch. The cottage was much like many another, but bare and neglected-looking. It felt cold, like an uninhabited place. A mud floor; at one end a cupboard; at the other a bed; a table, a couple of broken chairs; and in the smoke-stained fireplace a newly lit fire trying to burn; that was what the children saw. Rose, at the fire, was stirring something in a saucepan; Nessa was sitting beside the bed with her back turned to the door. There seemed at first to be no one else in the cottage except little Ellie, who was leaning against Nessa's knees; but as the children's eyes became used to the obscurity they distinguished on the pillow the white, wasted face of a sick woman.

Rosie looked up as they entered.

"There you are!" she exclaimed in a half-whisper. "Oh, it was such a good thing we came. Do you know she had nothing to eat, and there was no fire, and the door was open, and the pig had got in, and the chickens were pecking her oatmeal, and oh! everything was so miserably uncomfortable; but we've settled her bed, and now we're making some gruel."

Nessa looked round at the sound of their entry. Her face wore a saddened expression not usual to it.

"These are my little cousins," she said to Mrs. Daly; "but we did not know how ill you were when we agreed to come all together."

"They're very welcome, Ma'am," replied the poor woman, with a trace of cordial hospitality still left in her faint voice. "Ye're kindly welcome, my dears; will yez please to sit down?"

"Thank you," said Murtagh, and they sat down at once round the fire.

"Isn't there anything we can do?" whispered Murtagh, after a time.

"Oh, no," replied Rose. "We've done everything. We made the room tidy, and we lit the fire, and there was scarcely any wood, and she has hardly any covering on her bed, and there isn't a single thing to eat except a little oatmeal and some scraps of hard bread."

"What's in the saucepan?" asked Winnie.

"Gruel," replied Rosie. "It's got to be stirred all the time, and then Nessa's going to toast the scraps of bread when the fire gets brighter."

After that the children employed themselves with poking bits of wood into the blaze, and listened at first almost mechanically to what Mrs. Daly was saying.

"He was as kind as a body could want yesterday morning," she said, "and went up to Mr. Plunkett's to tell about the child being gone; but now I suppose it's in with some of his bad companions he is, for he's never been back since. And then, Ma'am, it's not like as if Theresa was his own child. Of course, he hasn't the feelings for her that a father might have, an' she makes him mad with her flighty ways, till what with the drink an' the anger he beats her sometimes till she can scarce stan' up on her legs.

"She lost the goat up on the mountains, an' he nearly murthered her entirely. She lay moanin' there on the straw all night fit to make your heart bleed. But for all that he's a very kind man; by nature I mean, Ma'am. It's all for her good he thinks he's doing it, and with the drink—"

All this was said in detached sentences, interrupted often by a cough, or a few words from Nessa.

The children scarcely dared even to look at one another. They strained their ears to catch every word. Poor Theresa! it seemed to them that she might almost as well live with a wild beast as with such a stepfather. No wonder she was afraid to come home.

But talking exhausted Mrs. Daly, and Nessa came soon to the fire to see if the gruel were ready. Then the bread had to be toasted, and a cup and plate and spoon had to be found and washed. In a very few minutes Mrs. Daly, propped up in her bed, was partaking of the most comfortable meal she had tasted for days.

Nessa would not let her speak any more, but in order that she might not feel hurried over her gruel began to talk herself, and amuse the children as much as Mrs. Daly by an account of her journey from Brittany to Ballyboden.

Mrs. Daly was cheered by the pleasant chatter, and the children were quite sorry when the gruel was finished. But it was time to go home, and after asking if Mrs. Daly would like her to come again to-morrow, Nessa took her leave.

As they passed out of the gate a man evidently the worse for drink rolled in, and staggering up the little path noisily entered the cottage.

Nessa turned quite white.

"Are you afraid?" asked Bobbo.

"I—I can't bear people who drink," she replied, recovering herself.

"Mustn't it be dreadful to live with him?" said Rosie, as they walked on.

No one answered her. The children were inclined to be very silent. This life of Theresa's seemed to them something that could not be true. They had often been in and out of cottages; they had seen men tipsy in the village; but they had never realized before what it meant.

"How kind you are!" said Rosie, gently, coming close to Nessa, after they walked about half a mile. "Mustn't Mrs. Daly be very glad we went?"

"Poor woman!" said Nessa, her eyes filling suddenly with tears. "She is very good. I wonder why God made us so happy."

"Yes," said Murtagh, who had been considering Rosie's words. "I think you're very kind; I think you like helping people."

"When I was little," replied Nessa, turning to him with a smile, and falling into the children's train of thought, "I had a nurse called AimÉe. She used to be very unhappy because I could not go to her church, and on Sunday afternoons she always took me to try and help some one. She used to tell me that that was my way to heaven. Wasn't it a pretty thought?"

"I think you must have been quite a different sort of girl from us," said Winnie. "We never thought about helping people, and that kind of thing."