foolish talk you have made me destroy one of my own little daisies; and I always think of them as little children playing in the long grass, hiding from one another, letting the wind blow them about, and loving the sun, as all children do."

The strange man gazed thoughtfully at her as she spoke.

"The same old fancies!" he muttered; "the same turn of mind! But I think the country people are right: she's too wise. She has an old head on young shoulders; too old a head for a child."

It was Winifred's turn to stare at Niall.

"Why are you talking to yourself like that?" she asked. "It isn't polite."

But the old man, who had been suddenly seized with a new idea, clasped his hands as if in desperate anxiety, and bent toward the child, crying:

"You didn't tell her, daughter of the O'Byrnes—you didn't tell her? Oh, say you didn't! For that would mean ruin—utter, blank ruin."

Winifred looked at him with a flash of scorn that darkened her blue eyes into black,—a look of lofty indignation which struck me forcibly.

"So that's all you know of me, Niall," she cried, "after the years that we've walked the glen together, and up the passes of the Croghans and down by the streams! You think[Pg 34] I could betray what I know to the first stranger that crosses my path!"

[Pg 34]

The man was struck dumb by the passionate cadence in the young voice, which went on reproaching, upbraiding, as some spirit of the mountain might have done.

"Oh, you're a nice companion for me when you could say such a thing—you that taught me the secret of the stars, and how they shine down, down just on the spot where that which we seek lies hidden, and after showing me its gleam in the shining waters!"

"Miss Winifred," cried the old man, "forgive me!" And he bent one knee before her. "I was thinking of the ordinary child, with its love of telling news; and not of the young lady, with the old blood in her veins and a mind of uncommon acuteness."

"I don't want you to kneel to me," she said gravely, in her princess-like manner. "You're old and I'm young, and you should not kneel. Neither should I have spoken to you as I did. But you must not doubt me—you must not believe I could betray your secret."

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