"Proof be damned! Look at him and ask him for the proof."

The girl turned and looked down at her lover, who lay there as though the thing did not concern him.

"Tell them they lie," she said quietly, under her breath. "Tell them they have put the bad word on my beautiful boy. Give them the lie in their throats. Do you hear me, alannah? it is Kathleen that is askin' you. The girl you swore to love all your life. Give them the lie!" The man looked at her, but spoke never a word.

Coulahan stood there white and sullen, a little froth, flecked with blood, oozing from the corner of his mouth.

"Arrah, don't be wasting your breath," said the piper, "sure it is he that has his senses all the time, but he knows in his black devil's heart what is coming. Sure it is he that understands that words are now no more than the passing of the wind. "Let him deny this if he can. Wasn't I and Mickey the Rat here making our devotions in the old chapel, praying for the soul of Patrick O'Donovan, as the boys have done every week since his murder, when who should come into the chapel in the darkness but that, with an agent from the castle, and didn't we see him take the blood-money from his hands? the money that was for the life of Con O'Reilly, who was found with the gun hid in his chimney, and who was hanged at the crossroads of Kilgobinet? I can hear him now as he gave out the choking cry before they lifted him by his neck. Can he deny that?"

He went up to the man. 'Blast youwill ye speak?" and he struck him heavily across the mouth.

A thin stream of blood trickled down the man's face and fell on to his white shirt. But he never spoke, though there was a look in his eyes which showed the tempest of passion and fear that was tearing him as though a mad dog were at work in his vitals.

The girl looked at him hard, her face setting white as she came close to him, speaking quickly.

“Ah," said she, "I have the sight clear now. So it was you who put the noose around Con O'Reilly-the pride of his mother. It was you that put the sod over my father, and it was you that put the soldiers on to Patrick. I wish you joy of your work, Dennis," and she laughed a little. "I wish you joy of their company on the road to hell-to the pit that's gaping to swallow you forever."

Still never a word.

"Boys," cried the girl, with the daft light in her eyes, as she stared at the river, "this is my business. It was my father and my Patrick. Bring him down to the bridge. I want to speak with him." One of the men produced a lantern as she led the way down the boreen, which

sloped to the banks of the river. Far below them they could hear the tearing of the water as it rushed over the stones. Now and then came to their ears a dull roar as a wave of extra volume from the hills ran over the stream.

The Blackwater River was at the beginning of flood, and its way, as you know, is to rise half a dozen feet in half as many hours. But at present it was nearly as low as it had ever been, and ran smoothly enough in and out of the dark archesshallow and free.

The last few hundred yards of the way ran steeply down to the bank under the side of the old bridge. There was no moon, but the stars showed faintly overhead through the misty veil which hung over the river.

The little body walked in silence, Dennis Coulahan in the middle of them. They scrambled down over the stones, which showed naked to the eye by the edge of the stream. Yawning near to them were the two arches, under the farther of which the main stream ran deep and swiftly, leaving the other dry.

From the centre of the bridge hung a pillar of stone, with other pillars lying darkly behind it, which supported the whole structure.

"What are ye going to do, alannah?" asked Larry gently; "sure, you are not going to drown him? That would be too easy a death for the likes of him."

The girl did not answer. There was a hard stare in the eye, a twitching of the muscles of the face which worked fearfully.

"Bring him here," said she, pointing to the front of the pillar. "Tie him there."

The men took Coulahan and placed him with his back against the pillar, passing the lengths of rope around and around his chest, arms, and waist, and tying his feet by the ankles to the pillar, to which he was laced as though he were a figure carved from the stone.

When they had finished, the girl motioned them back.

"Leave him to me now."

A light grew in the man's eyes. "No, by God!" said the piper. "If you stay, we stay."

"Oh! is it thinkin' ye are that I would be afther lettin' him go? Well, then, it

"All right, boys. Let you be goin' away. I will see to it that Dennis here is made nice and comfortable, and maybe I will rise him a tune on the pipes to lighten his road."

There was a crackle of laughter as the men moved off, for none of them dared to give the wrong word to Larry.

Their voices came back from the boreen as they scrambled through the darkness, until they died away, and there was a great silence, save for the rush of the water, which had the queer note in it. It was a terrible little place, the only house near being that of the O'Sheas'

mass, with the starshine gleaming like fairy silver on the face of it, and then, as by magic, when it was about to sweep over them, turned and ran into the channel at the side.

The piper walked in under the arch, and crouched against the wall, his elbow pipes cradled in his arms, as Kathleen sat on a big stone at the foot of Dennis.

"Listen, alannah," said she and her voice was crooning soft as though a mother were speaking to her child"sure I want to have a talk with you. And we have the night before us, and as it will not be the top of the flood for some

hours yet, you will have time to hear all.

"Do ye remember the day you came to me afther Patrick's death-and the beautiful things you said to me? Do ye remember how, when I cried for the first time since they put him against the wall, you gave me the soft word? Do ye remember how you told me you would have given the life for him to save him to me -how without me the light of your life would go out? How, with the summer's sun striking into your room over Slieve Bloom of a morning, it awakened you to another day of misery-because I had not the glance of love for ye?

"Do ye remember how you said you tried to save my father? How ye went to Fermoy to see the colonel about him? Do ye remember?"

Steady as death itself, the voice went on. "Do ye remember how you struck under me how you told me you would take me away and make me an honest, woman-how you took away my pride? Do ye remember? Think." And the girl stared at him.

The man never opened his lips, but looked at her, the gleam of his eyes coming and going under the starlight.

The water began to leap uneasily under the arch like a young horse on the curb. Away through the dark curve the stars were framed. The silence hung over them like the cloth on a coffin.

All at once something rose on the night wind. It was like the struggle of a giant bee. It came and went soft and velvety to the ear.

It was the pipes. The darling pipes of

Ireland.

Soft and low the strains stole on the air. In haunting cadence they rippled and swelled, and then died away, coming again and again, until from the tanglement of sounds crept the beautiful "Grierna of the Waters."

The notes echoed in the dark spaces of the bridge, and ever, as they echoed, the waters crept higher and higher, fretting now in their narrow channel as the flood

blue eyes, who used to be mindin' his sheep by the side of the Brideen? Do ye remember Jim Dillon and Michael McGrath and James O'Leary? Do ye remember Norah O'Connor, that the madness struck afther they took her man from her? Do ye remember?”

The water was rising quickly. It commenced to overrun the stones of the dry arch, and almost reached the feet of Coulahan.

The man stared around him like a man on a cross. At last the voice came to him.

"Oh, Christ! what are you doin' to me! Sure you are not goin' to drown me here by inches. Cut the ropes from me quick. Don't let me die. I am too young-too young. I swear I had no hand in your father's death-nor in the death of Patrick O'Donovan. I swear it by the Blessed Sacrament."

A shadow stood close by him. Larry had crept out of the arch, hearing the cries.

"Arrah! hould your whisht, darlin'," said he. "Don't be wastin' the breath of you-you'll want it all. Sure what is a little dyin' by the side of the others? I will play to lighten the heart of you. What will ye have? 'Modderideroo'? 'Sheela na guira'? 'The Pigs Are in the Clover'? Planxty Kelly's Reel'? Give the word and I will rise it for you, my bouckaleen!"

The man's head had fallen a little forward, the death sweat glistening on his forehead.

"Well, by this and by that!" said Larry, "ye'll have to have a tune." And without another word he broke into "The Wild Tune," as it is called, which came down from the time of the Flood. The wildest tune, surely, that ever came from the heart of a mortal, with the sound of the wind, and the rushing of the waters, and the song of the birds, and the warchant of the men of the old, ancient times

rose.

"Do ye remember little Con O'Reilly -with the child face and the beautiful

in the reeds.

Madly it rose, Larry working the bellows as though possessed.