me, and I won't forget either of ye. If ever I can do ye a good turn,
I'll do it."

"No, we're not going to leave you until you're inside your home," said
Dyck.

The old man looked at Sheila in meditation. He knew her name and her
history. Behind the girl's life was a long prospect of mystery. Llyn
was her mother's maiden name. Sheila had never known her father. Never
to her knowledge had she seen him, because when she was yet an infant her
mother had divorced him by Act of Parliament, against the wishes of her
church, and had resumed her maiden name.

Sheila's father's name was Erris Boyne, and he had been debauched,
drunken, and faithless; so at a time of unendurable hurt his wife had
freed herself. Then, under her maiden name, she had brought up her
daughter without any knowledge of her father; had made her believe
he was dead; had hidden her tragedy with a skilful hand.

Only now, when Sheila was released from a governess, had she moved out of
the little wild area of the County Limerick where she lived; only now had
she come to visit an uncle whose hospitality she had for so many years
denied herself. Sheila was two years old when her father disappeared,
and fifteen years had gone since then.

One on either side of the old man, they went with him up the hillside for
about three hundred yards, to the door of his house, which was little
more than a cave in a sudden lift of the hill. He swayed as he walked,
but by the time they reached his cave-house he was alert again.