"But what did he say, father? I don't understand."

"It's this, Nora. Ah, you have a wise little head on your shoulders,
even though you are an Irish colleen. He said that he had sold my
mortgage to another man, and had got money on it; and the other man--he
is an Englishman, curse him!--and he wants the place, Nora, and he'll
take it in lieu of the mortgage if I don't pay up in three months."

"The place," said Nora; "O'Shanaghgan--he wants O'Shanaghgan?"

"Yes, yes; that's it; he wants the land, and the old house."

"But he can't," said Nora. "You have not--oh! you have not mortgaged
the house?"

"Bless you, Nora! it is I that have done it; the house that you were
born in, and that my father, and father before him, and father before
him again, were born in, and that I was born in--it goes, and the
land goes, the lake yonder, all these fields, and the bit of the shore;
all the bonny place goes in three months if we cannot pay the mortgage.
It goes for an old song, and it breaks my heart, Nora."

"I understand," said Nora very gravely. She did not cry out; the
tears pressed close to the back of her eyes, and scalded her with
cruel pain; but she would not allow one of them to flow. She held
her head very erect, and the color returned to her pale cheeks, and
a new light shone in her dark-blue eyes.

"We'll manage somehow; we must," she said.