CHAPTER XIV

FILION AND FIONA--ALSO PATSY KERNAGHAN

Patsy Kernaghan was in his element in the garden with which Norah Doyle
had decorated the brown bosom of the prairie. It had verdant shrubs,
green turf, thick fringes of flowers, and one solitary elmtree in the
centre whose branches spread like a cedar of Lebanon. In the moonlight
Patsy had the telling of a wonderful story to such an audience as he had
never had before in his life, and he had had them from Bundoran to
Limerick, from Limerick to the foothills of the Rockies.

The seance of love and legend had been Patsy's own idea. At the supper-
table spread by Norah Doyle, in spite of the protests of her visitors--
the Young Doctor, Louise and Patsy--Nolan Doyle, who had a fine gift for
playful talk, had tried to keep the situation free from melodrama. Yet
Patsy had observed that, in spite of all efforts, Louise's eyes now and
then filled with tears. Also, he saw that her senses seemed alert for
something outside their little circle. It was as though she expected
someone to arrive. She was in that state which is not normal and yet not
abnormal--a kind of trance in which she did ordinary things in a natural
way, yet mechanically, without full consciousness.

There was no one at the table who did not realize what, and for whom,
she was waiting. To her primitive spirit, now that she was in trouble
because of him, it seemed inevitable that Orlando should come. One thing
was fixed in her mind: she would never return to Tralee or to the man
whose odious presence made her feel as though she was in a cage with an