I dreaded for her to come across sorrow in any form.

And this house of mourning, with its mysterious air of terror, with its prison-like bars and bolts, and its time-devoured relics of a life that had gone out all in one day like the wick of a candle, was no place, then, for the bright sunflower of Knockowen.
His honour, happily, was away in Derry, and no one was there to question us as to our expedition.

So I put up the horses, and trusted to God there was an end of Kilgorman.
But that very night, as I curled up in my narrow bed above the stable, I recalled my prayer.
By the light of a candle I took the book I had found from my pocket to look at it again.

My mother's hand on the cover called back all the old memories of my childhood--how she sang to Tim and me these very ballads, and taught us to say them after her; how she always seemed as much a stranger in Fanad as this little English book seemed on the ledge at Kilgorman.

There, too, between the leaves, were a few pressed flowers, and--what was this?
A little piece of thin paper fluttered down to my feet, written over in my mother's hand, but, oh, so feebly and painfully.