on foot, a whisper of which were enough to
curdle the blood and make the heart turn sick.
People seemed fixed in a sort of living death,
during that fearful pause. They spoke in
whispers, and their eyes were riveted in a
horrible fascination on the future of every hour
that approached. What was about to happen?
When must it happen? The North men did
not delay from mere sluggishness. They waited
the signal of their leader. Antrim and Down
had the knee bent, the bow strained. When
would the awful oracle speak?

Loyal men put their heads together, and said,
with bated breath, "They have not, risen yet—
they shall not rise." Lord O'Neal summoned
a meeting of magistrates in his ancient town of
Antrim, to be held on the seventh sunny day
of that glorious glowing June. Then out spoke
the oracle, and the flag of war was hoisted.
The leader lifted his voice, and gave the signal
to waiting thousands.

"To-morrow we march on Antrim," said his
mandate; "drive the garrison of Randalstown
before you, and haste to form a junction with
the commander-in-chief. Dated, First day of
Liberty, Sixth day of June, Seventeen hundred
and ninety-eight."

Up rose the rebels. The fisherman left his boat,
the smith his forge, the gardener left his roses
to wither in the fierce sun, the farmer thought
it little that his fields should be laid waste and
his crops trampled down. What was a man, or
what were his acres, to the future of the country?
Oppression was to be grappled with, and driven
out of the land. Men and men were to meet,
and settle this old grudge. Who feared death,
or cared for pain? The supreme moment of a
life-long tragedy had arrived. Let the husband
bid farewell to the wife, and the wife give up
the husband. Let the women become strong
as men, and the men patient as women. Let
the God of nations, the God of armies, the long-
enduring God of peace, judge this day between
the weak and the strong.

Down they poured from glen and mountain,
up they started from field and bog, those out-
raged long-suffering men. They grouped them-
selves into bands, and they massed themselves
into columns. Their wrongs were in their hearts;
desperation in their faces. Soon from high
country and low country they were marching
upon Antrim.

On the evening of the seventh of June dire
tidings came flying through the glens. All day
long the mountains had basked in the hot sun,
and the golden clouds had brooded over them
as luxuriously as if the world had entered into
a long truce with evil—as if there were nothing
to be thought of for futurity but the splendour
and perfection of creation. An air of holiday
repose sat smiling on the hills and the fields.
There was no sound of labour, no sturdy steps
tramping to and fro. It might have been a
Sabbath, only there were no staid groups round
the door of the little church, no laughing lingerers
by the river, no neat-shod lasses stepping
over the stiles. It was as if the valleys had
opened and swallowed the inhabitants, leaving
solitude and nature face to face.

ln the gardens at the castle there were long
hot yellow paths, and beds that were blazing
heaps of colour, with here and there intense
brown shadows huddled out of the way under a
stooping frowsy bush, or a tree with sprawling
branches. It was only June, but the roses had
been born early this year, and already they
thronged in full-blown multitudes, laying their
hot cheeks together in the fiery air, or bearing
down their branches, seeking moisture on the
burning earth. And the gardener was not at
hand, to give drink to the thirsty, to prop, nor
to bind. There was no relief to be had for the
most pampered blossom; no hand even to gather
up her leaves when she fell. So it was not because
of human bloodshed that the flowers faded
and shrivelled as in fear. They merely sickened
and drooped of individual neglect and ill-treatment.
Neither when the throstles and the blackbirds
were all mute the livelong day, was it because
they could see horrid sights from their
perch in the highest boughs. It was only that
they were too faint and hot to sing.

Lady Helen had taken to her bed several
days ago, and erected a strong wall of novels
and smelling-bottles between herself and an
unsympathising and most inconsiderate world.
Her dogs lay on a cushion at her feet, and to
these she made her moan; who could offer no
irritating words of comfort in reply. Miss
Golden was unwell, and there was not the
slightest doubt but her disease was pure panic.
She did not go to bed, however, nor did she
make complaints. She held by her former
assertion that she was not a coward. Her own
particular woes relating to the lost Pierce and
Hester's audacity, made some distraction for her
thoughts, and divided her mind with the terror
of the moment. It diverted her a little to annoy
Hester. She could not forgive her for having
possessed that well-known ring, still less for
having so heartlessly returned it. She also held
her guilty for having attracted the grave Sir
Archie, and it piqued her curiosity that Hester's
sentiments were secret on this subject. She
could not even discover if the girl were
conscious of the conquest she had made. At all
events, it was a nice safe course to annoy the
little minx. And in pursuance of this idea she
kept Hester hard at work on the trousseau for
an imaginary wedding.

So Hester sat in her tower-room sewing a
bridal dress. The scanty curtains of tapestry
—with their faces no longer nodding, in the
absence of all breeze—were looped back far
away from the window, the sash of which was
open, vainly gaping for a draught of air. Hester,
very pale, maybe with the heat, a little sick,
maybe with the fright, sat puckering crisp
white satin and fingering sumptuous lace. Her
head was full of a strange mixture, enough to
make a brain reel, of a wedding and finery,
and flaming towns; of agonised wives and
mothers, and strong men dying in their blood.
And if sometimes tears would well up straight