As he went back through the golden sunset, the violet of the encircling hills deepening to purple, the lake was a blaze of glory. He, too, was glorified, exalted, transfigured by the love that had come suddenly into his life. And, as he rowed mechanically, joyfully, he sang aloud in the golden solitude:

"Like rubies flake on flake

Drips from the drifting oar.
The golden ripples break
Upon a golden shore.
A golden moon above,

And golden stars that shine,
And in thine eyes the light of love,
A golden world is mine."

Yes, he was in a golden world, a world evoked by the magic of love, a world that had grown suddenly, strangely, poignantly beautiful to him. A world in which he walked, a new man, as it were, his soul stirred to hitherto unsuspected depths of delicate, rapturous, holy emotion, having Deirdre as its centre. Emotion that was a kind of religious esctasy, a spiritual awe, tender, virginal, reverential, with Deirdre as its idol, etherialized, exalted above things gross and earthly by the intensity of his devotion.

When he came down to dinner his mother noticed the change, the buoyancy of his step, the exhilaration of voice, his face aglow-from an inner light, as it were.

"You look as if you had seen a vision," she smiled, banteringly.

"I have, mother," he smiled. "I have seen Deirdre French."

"Ah, Deirdre French? She must be a beautiful girl, if she favors her poor dead mother."

"She is very beautiful, mother mine, and-and-I love her."

"Foolish boy! You were ever sentimental," she teased him. But in her heart she thanked God for that declaration of the boy she adored; for well she knew that nothing better can happen to a man, no greater blessing can be be

stowed on him by God, than the love of a good woman. "But does she love you?" teased the delighted mother.

"I do not know," sighed Ulic. "Time will tell. For my part I shall do everything possible to be worthy of her."

"If she is like her mother, she deserves it. Her mother and I were dear friends in the old days."

She sighed, as she went back reminiscently to the happy past. "But I see no one of late-just shut up here like a recluse in this old tower. Some day I hope to see Deirdre."

"You will love her when you see her," assured the boy.

As he sat that night in his room overlooking the moonlit lake his rapture took shape and set itself to music. Thereafter, dwelling in tender retrospect on that first joyous meeting in the meadow, he made this song about

MILKING TIME

I saw her leave her father's door
At milking time, with pail in hand,
And take the winding path before,
And thrid the sweet, enchanted land.
In music, natural as the birds',

A quaint old song of love and sweet
She sang; her heart was in the words,
And all my soul was at her feet.
To peep at her the marigold

Tip-toed upon the marish edge; A honeysuckle, flushed and bold, Came clambering o'er the blossomed hedge.

The crimson clover drooneth down

Along the footpath, velvet-grassed, Just where it leaned to kiss the gown That brushed it when my darling passed. Somehow the languid winds that stir The petals of the dreaming rose Are odorous because of her;

With richer bloom the meadow blows. The very flowers she paused to cull,

Gold buttercups and marguerite, Than others are more beautiful, By reason of her passing feet.

Thereafter he crossed the lake frequently, on the pretty pretense of trying

this fly or that tackle in the Roscommon waters, but always to seek Deirdre in the green wood or dewy meadows. Sometimes he found her, sometimes he did not, and on such occasions he went home filled with a tender melancholy, his heart aching with delicious pain.

And the girl came in turn to look for his coming. Often she would sit under the trees by the water looking out longingly, yearningly, over its blue expanse, scanning its surface eagerly for flash of oar or rise of glittering bow. And if he came not, she, too, was sad and melancholy and went dreamily about her dainty household duties, musing on that first rapturous meeting in the meadow on that golden afternoon.

Sometimes she dissembled her real joy under seeming coldness or indifference; and if, on such occasions, she caught the sadness in Ulic's tone or the despair in his face, she would hide her-, self in the solitude of her room and fling herself down in a passion of reproachful tears. It was the maiden within her, longing for the voice, the face, the smile she loved, yet stubbornly and with virgin pride resisting surrender.

But she could not resist forever nor repress the tender avowal, hide the sweet secret, she whispered and admitted tremblingly in her heart.

"Oh, Naisi, Naisi! why will you not come?" she would sob by the plashy beach, where the little waves broke in foam at her feet.

And when he came, she might receive him coldly or with undisguised joy, and send him away delighted or depressed, according to the mood that was on her; for outwardly she was capricious and changeable as the lake, given to sudden. splendors of joy or cloudy obscurations of gloom; although beneath the surface lay crystalline deeps of love and tenderness and devotion. Indeed, did she once put aside her maiden reserve and allow the veil to be torn from her soul, she might have truly reciprocated

the beautiful sentiment Ulic had written of her:

As is the moon unto the sea,
Thy spirit's splendor is to me.
The tides of all my being go

With thee in endless ebb and flow. For in her gentle, romantic nature she had loved him long before she met him-loved the brave, generous, handsome, courteous youth, whom the fishermen and market-women who came to her were never tired of praising. She had often longed to meet him, to know him. as those women knew him. And when, at last, she did meet him by the caprice of fate, that meeting did but confirm the estimate she had formed of him from the tales of the country folk and mature the romantic love she had woven about an unrealized ideal. And even as in his, so in her heart that love had grown up full-blossomed, burst to richest efflorescence at the first breath of reality.

One day in late September he found her in the wood, the gold leaves dropping about her. He was sad and she was quick to notice it.

"You aren't yourself to-day," she said.

"I am going to leave you," he answered.

"Going to leave me?" she said with a catch in her throat. She did not look at him, but she paled and her heart beat thickly and she was like to cry.

"I am going away."

"Away?" She dared not trust her thoughts to speech, lest her voice betray her emotion, so Ishe let him speak on.

"Yes, I am going to Dublin to study medicine. One cannot live for one's self alone. We are here to do what little good we can for our fellows. And how can one do better than by fighting sickness and pain and helping relieve want and sorrow? It is Christ's own work. He went about healing the sick and raising the dead. The priest and the

doctor are Christ's especial ministers. One cures the soul, the other the body. And so I am going away to fit me for my life's work. At first, when I was younger, I thought I should be a soldier, like my father, but of late I have decided that my work is here at home among my own people. But are you sorry, Deirdre ?"

"Sorry?" she queried, raising her eyes to him.

"Yes. Sorry I'm going away?"

"Why do you ask me?" she whispered.

"Because, Deirdre," he said, taking her hands unresisting in his, "because I love you, and I shall miss you."

There was no longer any reluctance, any repression, any denial of the sweet avowal.

"And I love you-oh, Naisi, I love you," she said softly, simply and unaffectedly.

"Oh, my darling," he smiled, drawing her to himself. "How happy you make me at last! You crown me a king this day. I know now that I cannot fail. You shall be my inspiration to noble things. With you to live for, you to work for, you to dream for, there is no height to which I cannot aspire, no ambition I cannot attain, no purpose I cannot achieve. We will work together, Deirdre, for God and Ireland. Oh, Ireland, Ireland, I have found you at last! I have found her whom my soul loves and I will not let her go!"

It was true, for Deirdre and Ireland were one in his dreams. The girl seemed to him the incarnation of that Erin who had hitherto existed, beautiful but intangible, in his exalted fancy. But now that Erin had taken visible and lovely form. She lived and breathed in palpitant flesh, bodied forth in the maiden grace of the young girl he adored.

"God and country," he went on, "what higher motive could inspire a man? Who loves his God loves his country,

and by serving his countrymen he best serves God. Oh, Deirdre, my own, there is noble work before us, here in this holy Ireland of ours. I see her now as she shall yet be seen as she shall yet shine forth, bright and clothed with her ancient glory, a queen among the nations. Oh, yes, she shall arise again, shall yet break the cerements of death, burst the chains of her bondage and come forth in splendid resurrection." Then he went on in poetic rhapsody prophesying of his

IRELAND

"Once of old, in beauty royal, ruled she o'er the western wave,

Queen of hearts and subjects royal, empress of the true and brave.

Kings and princes wooed and sought her, knelt in homage at her feetFreedom's best beloved daughter, virginal and pure and sweet.

Chiefs and warriors undaunted for her smile drew sword and died;

Golden harps her praises chanted; minstrels sang her fame with pride.

And the vestal lamp of learning, flaming star-like in her hand,

Like a beacon, brightly burning, 'kindled Europe's darkened land,

Now she sitteth wan and hoary, with her tresses in the dust,

And departed is her glory, and her sword consumed with rust.

Darling! with the sea for cincture and the mantle in whose green

April set the royal tincture that doth robe her like a queen,

Tho' her enemies discrowned her, broke the sceptre of her power,

In the bonds of hatred bound her, robbed her of her ancient dower,

Yet shall Peace and Freedom find her in the plenitude of time;

And a brighter crown shall bind her from the hand of God sublime.

And a richer dawn shall kindle round her in that hour supreme,

When the shadows melt and dwindle in her noon's resplendent beam."

"Beautiful," she sighed, when his voice had fallen to a whisper. "Oh,

Naisi, beautiful! And I shall be the bride of a patriot!"

"Ah," said he, "the patriot's path is often beset with thorns. It is in Ireland a 'Via Dolorosa,' a road that too often leads to Calvary and the Cross."

"I will walk it with you, even to crucifixion," smiled the brave girl. "I will be one of the holy women."

"My own! My own," he smiled, stroking the fair head on his breast. "But now I must say good-bye, for I leave to-morrow and I must pass this evening with my mother."

In a little while he was gone and Deirdre was weeping in the wood, the gold leaves dropping about her in the deepening twilight.

He did not see her again until Christmas, and then he met her, radiant and lovely, at the annual Christmas ball given by Colonel Plunkett.

"This is Deirdre, mother," he said, presenting the blushing girl to the grave, sweet-faced woman in a corner of the drawing-room, where the candles. made a rosy twilight under their silken shades.

"My dear, I am delighted to see you," beamed the good heart, affectionately kissing the girl. "Dear me! How like your mother, God rest her soul! How the years do slip by! You are just as she was on her wedding-day. It seems such a little while since; but ah, there have been such changes since! And to think that all this time we have been looking at each other across the lake, yet never seeing each other! But Deirdre, my darling, we must be more neighborly in the future. You must come and spend a day with us in our old tower. It needs brightening up sadly, my dear, and your young smile will banish the cobwebs. And here is your father," as Colonel French entered. "Dear me, it seems like old times again! How are you, Colonel?"

"Katherine Costello! Why 'tis a sight for sore eyes to see you," rumbled

Deirdre's father under his grizzled mustache, bowing low and kissing her hand. in his courtly way. "And you're not a day older than when last I saw you. Yet we must be aging, judging by the way the young folks are shooting up. You must lend the light of your presence to Kingsland," he went on, "for Eily's sake. Ah me! the good old days!" And he sighed reminiscently, thinking of his dear Eily. "You must. bring the boy with you. Dear, oh dear, how he grows! More and more like his father! His very image! Are you going to make a soldier of him?"

"No, he prefers medicine," smiled. the fond mother.

"Ah, I thought he might wear the uniform. But perhaps 'tis better-less hazardous for certain than the service. But epaulettes would become him-become him vastly, and I know he'd honor them, like his brave father."

"Youth will have its way," smiled the mother, proud of her manly son. "For me, I've had enough of the service," she sighed.

"Poor Edmond! Poor Edmond!" band. "He was a dashing soldier and mused the Colonel, referring to her husa gallant gentleman."

And so they rambled on, these two seared hearts who had so much in commond of pathetic reminiscence; while their children, building their dreams of love, went forward in fancy to the golden future that fate had in store for them. For hope is the heritage of youth, while memory is the solace of age.

So sped the happy Christmas days, Ulic and Deirdre visiting at each other's homes and meeting each other in rav ishing commune at the various country houses to which, in common with their circle, they were invited. All too soon for the lovers they sped, and then Ulic went back to his studies at the capital. (To be continued.)