The World Peril of 1910 | Page 9

and, before he could reply,
slammed it behind her, and went to her room to seek and find a
woman's usual relief from extreme mental tension.
John Castellan went on packing his papers, his face grey, and his
features hard-set. He loved his beautiful sister, but he thought that he
loved his country more. When he had finished he went and knocked at
her door, and said
"Norah, I'm going. Won't you say 'good-bye?'"
The door was swung open, and she faced him, her face wet with tears,
her eyes glistening, and her lips twitching.
"Yes, good-bye, John," she said. "Go to your German friends; but,
when all the horrors that you are going to bring upon this country
through their help come to pass, remember you have no sister left in
Ireland. You've sold yourself, and I have no brother who is a traitor.
Good-bye!"
The door swung to and she locked it. John Castellan hesitated for a
moment or two, and then with a slow shake of his head he went away
down the stairs out into the street, and along to the little jetty where the
German yacht's boat was waiting to take him on board.
Norah had thrown herself on her bed in her locked room shedding the
first but not the last tear that John Castellan's decision was destined to
draw from women's eyes.
About half an hour later the encircling hills of the bay echoed the shriek
of a siren. She got up, looked out of the window, and saw the white
shape of the German yacht moving out towards the fringe of islands
which guard the outward bay.
"And there he goes!" she said in a voice that was almost choked with
sobs, "there he goes, my own brother, it may be taking the fate of the

world with him -- yes, and on a German ship, too. He that knows every
island and creek and cove and harbour from Cape Wrath to Cape Clear
-- he that's got all those inventions in his head, too, and the son of my
own father and mother, sold his country to the foreigner, thinking those
dirty Germans will keep their word with him.
"Not they, John, not they. The saints forgive me for thinking it, but for
Ireland's sake I hope that ship will never reach Germany. If it does,
we'll see the German Eagle floating over Dublin Castle before you'll be
able to haul up the Green Flag. Well, well, there it is; it's done now, I
suppose, and there's no help for it. God forgive you, John, I don't think
man ever will!"
As she said this the white yacht turned the southern point of the inner
bay, and disappeared to the southward. Norah bathed her face, brushed
out her hair, and coiled it up again; then she put on her hat and jacket,
and went out to do a little shopping.
It is perhaps a merciful provision of Providence that in this human life
of ours the course of the greatest events shall be interrupted by the most
trivial necessities of existence. Were it not for that the inevitable might
become the unendurable.
The plain fact was that Norah Castellan had some friends and
acquaintances coming to supper that evening. Her brother had left at a
few hours' notice from his foreign masters, as she called them, and
there would have to be some explanation of his absence, especially as a
friend of his, Arthur Lismore, the owner of the finest salmon streams
for twenty miles round, and a man who was quite hopelessly in love
with herself, was coming to brew the punch after the fashion of his
ancestors, and so, of course, it was necessary that there should be
nothing wanting.
Moreover, she was beginning to feel the want of some hard physical
exercise, and an hour or so in that lovely air of Connemara, which, as
those who know, say, is as soft as silk and as bright as champagne. So
she went out, and as she turned the corner round the head of the
harbour to the left towards the waterfall, almost the first person she met

was Arthur Lismore himself -- a brown-faced, chestnut-haired,
blue-eyed, young giant of twenty-eight or so; as goodly a man as God
ever put His own seal upon.
His cap came off, his head bowed with that peculiar grace of deference
which no one has ever yet been able to copy from an Irishman, and he
said in the strong, and yet curiously mellow tone which you only hear
in the west of Ireland:
"Good afternoon, Miss Norah. I've heard that you're to be left alone for
a time, and that we won't see John to-night."
"Yes," she said, her eyes meeting his, "that