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“‘This must end here. I think you guess I have no coward’s blood; but I am sick to the teeth of fightin’. I do not wish to shock you, but I swear, unless you turn and ride away to the left towards the priest’s house, I shall save those fellows further trouble by killin’ myself here; and there,’ said he, ‘would be a pleasant place to die–at the feet of a woman who trusted you.’

“I knew by the look in his eye he would keep his word. “‘Oh, is this so?’ I said.

“‘It is so,’ he replied, ‘and it shall be done quickly, for the courage to death is on me.’

“‘But if I go, you will still try to escape?’ I said. And he answered that he would. Then I spoke a God-bless-you, at which he smiled and shook his head, and leanin’ over, touched my hand, and spoke low: ‘When you see Shon McGann, tell him what I did, and say that we are even now. Say also that you called Heaven to bless me.’ Then we swung away from each other, and the troopers followed after him, but let me go my way; from which, I guessed, they saw I was a woman. And as I rode I heard shots, and turned to see; but my horse stumbled on a hole and we fell together, and when I waked, I saw that the poor beast’s legs were broken. So I ended its misery, and made my way as best I could by the stars to your house; but I turned sick and fainted at the door, and knew no more until this hour. … You thought me dead, father?”

The priest bowed his head, and said: “These are strange, sad things, my child; and they shall seem stranger to you when you hear all.”

“When I hear all! Ah, tell me, father, do you know Shon McGann? Can you take me to him?”

“I know him, but I do not know where he is. He left the Pipi Valley eighteen months ago, and I never saw him afterwards; still I doubt not he is somewhere on the plains, and we shall find him–we shall find him, please Heaven.”

“Is he a good lad, father?”

“He is brave, and he was always kind. He came to me before he left the valley–for he had trouble–and said to me: ‘Father, I am going away, and to what place is far from me to know, but wherever it is, I’ll live a life that’s fit for men, and not like a loafer on God’s world;’ and he gave me money for masses to be said–for the dead.”

The girl put out her hand. “Hush! hush!” she said. “Let me think. Masses for the dead…. What dead? Not for me; he thought me dead long, long ago.”

“No; not for you,” was the slow reply.

She noticed his hesitation, and said: “Speak. I know that there is sorrow on him. Someone–someone–he loved?”

“Someone he loved,” was the reply.

“And she died?” The priest bowed his head.

“She was his wife–Shon’s wife”? and Mary Callen could not hide from her words the hurt she felt.

“I married her to him, but yet she was not his wife.” There was a keen distress in the girl’s voice. “Father, tell me, tell me what you mean.”

“Hush, and I will tell you all. He married her, thinking, and she thinking, that she was a widowed woman. But her husband came back. A terrible thing happened. The woman believing, at a painful time, that he who came back was about to take Shon’s life, fired at him, and wounded him, and then killed herself.”

Mary Callen raised herself upon her elbow, and looked at the priest in piteous bewilderment. “It is dreadful,” she said…. “Poor woman!… And he had forgotten–forgotten me. I was dead to him, and am dead to him now. There’s nothing left but to draw the cold sheet of the grave over me. Better for me if I had never come–if I had never come, and instead were lyin’ by his father and mother beneath the rowan.”