"Come back, Hannah," said Nora in an imperious voice.

"Presently, darlint; it's the childer I hear calling me. Coming,
Mike asthore, coming."

The squat little figure flew down a side walk which led to a paddock:
beyond the paddock was a turnstile, and at the farther end of an
adjacent field a cabin made of mud, with one tiny window and a
thatched roof. Hannah was making for the cabin with rapid, waddling
strides. Nora stood in the middle of the broad sweep which led up to
the front door of the old house.

Castle O'Shanaghgan was a typical Irish home of the ancient regime.
The house, a great square pile, was roomy and spacious; it had
innumerable staircases, and long passages through which the wind
shrieked on stormy nights, and a great castellated tower at its
north end. This tower was in ruins, and had been given up a long
time ago to the exclusive tenancy of the bats, the owls, and rats so
large and fierce that the very dogs were afraid of them. In the
tower at night the neighbors affirmed that they heard shrieks and
ghostly noises; and Nora, whose bedroom was nearest to it, rejoiced
much in the distinction of having twice heard the O'Shanaghgan
Banshee keening outside her window. Nora was a slender, tall, and
very graceful girl of about seventeen, and her face was as typical
of the true, somewhat wild, Irish beauty as Hannah Croneen's was the
reverse.

In the southwest of Ireland there are traces of Spanish as well as
Celtic blood in many of its women; and Nora's quantities of thick,