At last Hallow Eve arrived. Biddy Prendergast
gave another of her dances, and Peggy
Moran figured at it as the bride of the young
man from America, on whom she had bestowed
herself, her three cows, and her two featherbeds.
But Con Lavelle and his sister Nan were
busy at home, making ready for that wedding of
the morrow which was the subject of eager
discussion at Biddy's tea-table to-night. The
wedding feast was to be spread at Fawnmore,
and many guests had been invited.

It was a rough wild night. If the Bofiners
were less hardy a race, or if the storm had
commenced in its violence an hour or two earlier,
Biddy Prendergast must have had few guests
at her dance that Hallow Eve. About eight
o'clock Nan Lavelle was bending over her
potoven inspecting the browning of her cakes, and
Con was nailing up a fine new curtain on the
kitchen window to make the place look more
snug than usual. The wind bellowed down the
chimney, and its thunders overhead drowned
the noise of the hammer and the sound of some
one knocking for admittance outside. Suddenly
the door was pushed open, and Maureen Lacey
came whirling breathless over the threshold,
with the storm driving in like a troop of fiends
let loose after her heels. Her face, was white
and streamed with rain; her dripping hair and
the soaked hood of her cloak were dragged back
from her head upon her shoulders. Slie tried to
close the door behind her, but could not, and
the yelling wind kept pouring in, dashing everything
about the kitchen as though the place were
invaded by an army of devils.

"God save us!" cried Nan, dropping her
knife, and rushing to shut the door.

"Maureen!" said Con, with a blaze of
surprise on his face, coming eagerly to meet her,
and attempting to draw the wet cloak from her
shoulders. "If ye had any word to say to me,
asthore, ye might have sent wan o' the childher
airly an' let me know. I'd have walked twenty
mile for yer biddin' forbye wan, an' the night
was ten times worse than it is."

Maureen shook off his touch with a shudder,
and retreated a step or two.

"I haven't much to say," she said hoarsely,
"only this. What time o' day have ye settl't
for to-morra?"

"Ten o'clock," said Con, sullenly, his glow all
extinguished, and his face dark.

"Ten!" echoed Maureen. "O, Con," she
cried, clasping her hands, and raising her wild
eyes to his face in a pitiful appeal, "O, Con,
make it twelve!"

Con glanced at her and cast his eyes on the
ground in dogged shame. "Let it be twelve,
thin," he said. "I cannot stan' yer white face,
though the same white face might harden a
man, seein' what's to happen so soon. This
much I'll grant ye, but ye needn't ax no more.
I have stood my chance fair an' honest, an' I'll
not let ye off with yer bargain."

Maureen's supplicating face, at this, was
crossed by a change that made the bridegroom
start.

"You let me off!" she said, scornfully. "If
you, or any man or mortal had it in their power
to let me off, I wouldn't be comin' prayin' to
ye here to-night. But I swore an oath to my
God, an' to Him I must answer for 't. An'
that was the rash swearin' when death wasn't
put in the bargain. For mind ye, Con Lavelle,
there's nothin' on land or say, but death only, 'll
bring me to yer side to-morra in yondher chapel.
Whisht!" she said, as a long thundering gust
roared over the roof, "there's death abroad tonight.
Las' night I saw a ship comin' sailin',
sailin', an' somebody wavin', wavin', an' a big
wave rolled over the ship, an' thin there rose
wan screech. I woke up, an' there was the
storrum keenin', keenin'— Nan Lavelle, will
ye give me a mouthful o' could wather?"

She drank the draught eagerly, and then she
gathered her wet cloak around her.

"Thank ye," she said. "I'll be goin' now.
Good night to ye." Con wakened out of his
black reverie and sprang to the door.
"Maureen!" he cried, grasping her cloak to detain
her. "Ye dar not go out yer lone in the rage
o' yon wind. Stop a bit, an'—"

"Let me go!" said Maureen, fiercely, shaking
him off. "You'd betther let me go, for I will
not answer for all my doin's this night."

Her hands were wrenching at the bar, and
the door flew open as she spoke. Again the
blast poured in with its frightful gambols. Con
Lavelle and his sister fell back, and Maureen's
white face vanished in the darkness. Nan
Lavelle made fast the door again, and returned
to her pot-oven with a weight upon her heart.
Thoroughly matter of fact as was this young
woman, it did not occur to her now for the
first time that to-morrow's wedding would be
an ill-omened event. There was an hour of
silence between the brother and sister, and then
Nan cried, aghast, as the crashing overhead
arose to a horrible pitch:

"God keep us, Con! it's thrue what Maureen
said. There'll be death abroad afore mornin'!"

"Ay!" muttered Con, as he stalked restlessly
up and down with his hands in his pockets.
"But it's thrue as well what she said forbye—
they did not put death in the bargain. Dead or
alive, if he beant here, 'fore Heaven I'll have
my rights!"

The people of Bofin are accustomed to storms.
The tempest is their lullaby, their alarm, their
burly friend, or their treacherous enemy. It
rocks the cradle when they are born, rings the
knell when they die, and keens over them in
their graves. When there is no storm the world
seems to come to a stand-still. Yet the oldest
islander cannot recollect so awful a night as this
eve of Maureen's wedding. Few will understand
all that this means, for few could imagine
the terrors of a Bofin hurricane; how the sad
barren island is scourged by its devastating
rage; how the shrill cries of drowning hundreds
come ringing through its smothering clamour;
how the tigerish Atlantic rushes hungrily over
its cliffs, roaring "Wrecks! wrecks!" and goes
hissing back again to do its deed of destruction.