underwent a final eclipse.

The De Lacy of that day retired to France, and held a brief command in
the Irish Brigade, interrupted by sickness. He retired, became a poor
hanger-on of the Court of St. Germains, and died early in the eighteenth
century--as well as I remember, 1705--leaving an only son, hardly twelve
years old, called by the strange but significant name of Ultor.

At this point commences the marvellous ingredient of my tale.

When his father was dying, he had him to his bedside, with no one by
except his confessor; and having told him, first, that on reaching the
age of twenty-one, he was to lay claim to a certain small estate in the
county of Clare, in Ireland, in right of his mother--the title-deeds of
which he gave him--and next, having enjoined him not to marry before the
age of thirty, on the ground that earlier marriages destroyed the spirit
and the power of enterprise, and would incapacitate him from the
accomplishment of his destiny--the restoration of his family--he then
went on to open to the child a matter which so terrified him that he
cried lamentably, trembling all over, clinging to the priest's gown with
one hand and to his father's cold wrist with the other, and imploring
him, with screams of horror, to desist from his communication.

But the priest, impressed, no doubt, himself, with its necessity,
compelled him to listen. And then his father showed him a small picture,
from which also the child turned with shrieks, until similarly
constrained to look. They did not let him go until he had carefully
conned the features, and was able to tell them, from memory, the colour
of the eyes and hair, and the fashion and hues of the dress. Then his
father gave him a black box containing this portrait, which was a