'I will try, aunt,' replied Isabel, 'I will do my best!' she added, in a lower tone.

'Then you will probably succeed,' said her aunt kindly, 'at least I do hope you will!'

Mrs Walpole returned to the next room, and Isabel seated herself upon the sofa. Great was her distress and dismay. The thing she had dreaded had come upon her; an appalling disturbance in this most orderly house, brought about by her brother and sister. And who was to prevent a repetition, and who was to set matters right, but herself, who so dreaded and detested the task. Yet anything was better than that her aunt and Grace should come into collision; or worse still, her mother be worried, and her return spoilt by differences between the families. To apply to her father, Isabel instinctively felt would be worse than useless. On herself must lie the duty, because no one but herself had the remotest chance of success. And what had she!

Hitherto these battles-royal had always driven her out of hearing. Now that she was commissioned to stop them, would either Grace or Roger, Grace especially, hear her, or be ruled. Every attempt that Isabel had hitherto made to express her ready affection for her sister had been gruffly repulsed or coldly discredited, and to authority, Grace was certain to oppose rebellion. Roger might listen to reason and persuasion, but with Grace, Isabel felt powerless..

On the other hand there was her mother's comfort at stake; and she accepted the task without hesitation when she thought of her. Perhaps in this love lay one great tie between herself and Mrs Walpole, who had spent her early life in 'taking care of Fanny.'

Isabel was alone, and for an instant she bent over the

arm of her sofa, and resolutely, earnestly accepted her call to work, craving that guidance and aid that her late aunt had taught her always to seek and rely upon.

took her first step, she went to release Roger.

Then she

CHAPTER III.

MOTHER O'NEILL.

'Mak' ready, mak' ready, my merry men a'!

Our gude ship sails the morn;

Now ever alake! my master dear,

I fear a deadly storm.'

Old Ballad.

N the meantime Grace had resorted, after her rapid flight out of the house, to her favourite walk, known as the shrubbery-walk. It skirted the hill, and was hedged on both sides by a double row of thick firs. So that the shade cast by them on the walk within, rendered it very cool in summer, rather damp in winter, and a place handy at all times for retirement or concealment, as the case might require. Both did the child need now, to hide her bitter mortification, and to recover from her cruel fright. In her haste to quit her room, she had not staid to notice her brother's vehement rush upon her persecutor. She had only observed his presence, and had therefore connected him with the offence, not the defence. She fully believed him guilty of bringing Hotspur and his dog to make sport of her in her undignified hiding-place, as in her heart of hearts Grace felt the press had been. And in the turmoil of stormy passions, that

this affair had naturally roused in her mind, it is not perhaps to be wondered at that wrath against her life-long rival, Roger, was the most prominent feeling.

Nor was it unnatural that this wrath took the form of longing for his punishment-if you will, of revenge! It must be remembered that she felt herself powerless by any lawful means to check his career of determined oppression, powerless unless by the infliction of pain or fright she could make him fear her. Nor had there been anything in her education likely to counteract this painful impotent longing. Her ayah, the only soothing influence, had been all in favour of revenging an injury. Grace well remembered one instance, when the woman had been evil spoken of, and had suffered in consequence, with what perseverance and patience she had sought her revenge; how full, not to say cruel, that revenge had been, and how she, Grace herself, had triumphed in the triumph of her coloured friend.

So revenge was now Grace's whole thought, and against Roger. Hotspur was worthy of no more anger than his dog. Both Grace believed to be but instruments in her brother's hand, therefore they were beneath her anger. But against him—what at that moment would she not have done!

She stood at one of the many vistas, which, like windows, were cut through the thick fir hedge, all along this walk. At a vista that commanded a sidelong view of the front of the house, and of the wing that contained her own bed-room and Roger's. She was gazing intently at the old tower, situated at the nearest angle of the house, the only bed-room in which she knew Roger was to occupy in a few days, and she trembled with a fierce longing to pay him off, with something like her own misery.

If the devil finds some mischief still for idle hands to

do, he is none the less watchful for those who, by uncurbed passions, fit themselves to become his instruments.

Grace was not the sole occupant of this shrubbery walk. A strange woman was also there, observing with much surprise and some sympathy, the marks of hurry and anger that Grace exhibited. She was tall, though bent, perhaps more from care than age; her complexion was dark, and her eyes, by turns wistfully and fiery, no one who had once seen could forget. That woman plainly had a history in her past.

And indeed there was a dark history connected with mother O'Neill, which did not tend to remove the startling impression made by her appearance; to uneducated people she was 'half a witch;' to their betters, one connected with villains, if not herself implicated in their villany.

There she stood, clad in the long red cloak she always wore. And now, while she is watching Grace, we may glance at her history, past and present.

At the time of our story she inhabited a solitary cottage in a wooded glen of the valley. She lived alone. Lonely indeed she was in every respect, in heart, circumstances, and objects of desire. And as for companionship! why, she was reputed half a witch; not one of those born healers of human-kind, a white witch ;—but one, whose evil eye might be dangerous, who knew too much of deeds of darkness, who held intercourse at least, at times, with uncanny beings, in uncanny places-yet as a 'dreadful body,' who might neither be mobbed nor ducked, like an ordinary specimen of the species.

Mother O'Neill possessed both husband and sons. But alas! poor woman, all had perforce left her for a distant land. In her youth she had been the erect and hand