Occasionally he visited Paris, that common centre of English, Irish, and Scottish disaffection; and there, when a little past thirty, he married the daughter of another ruined Irish house.  His bride returned with him to the melancholy seclusion of their Munster residence, where she bore him in succession two daughters—­Alice, the elder, dark-eyed and dark-haired, grave and sensible—­Una, four years younger, with large blue eyes and long and beautiful golden hair.

Their poor mother was, I believe, naturally a lighthearted, sociable, high-spirited little creature; and her gay and childish nature pined in the isolation and gloom of her lot.  At all events she died young, and the children were left to the sole care of their melancholy and embittered father.  In process of time the girls grew up, tradition says, beautiful.  The elder was designed for a convent, the younger her father hoped to mate as nobly as her high blood and splendid beauty seemed to promise, if only the great game on which he had resolved to stake all succeeded.

CHAPTER II

The Fairies in the Castle

The Rebellion of ’45 came, and Ultor de Lacy was one of the few Irishmen implicated treasonably in that daring and romantic insurrection.  Of course there were warrants out against him, but he was not to be found.  The young ladies, indeed, remained as heretofore in their father’s lonely house in Clare; but whether he had crossed the water or was still in Ireland was for some time unknown, even to them.  In due course he was attainted, and his little estate forfeited.  It was a miserable catastrophe—­a tremendous and beggarly waking up from a life-long dream of returning principality.

In due course the officers of the crown came down to take possession, and it behoved the young ladies to flit.  Happily for them the ecclesiastic I have mentioned was not quite so confident as their father, of his winning back the magnificent patrimony of his ancestors; and by his advice the daughters had been secured twenty pounds a year each, under the marriage settlement of their parents, which was all that stood between this proud house and literal destitution.

Late one evening, as some little boys from the village were returning from a ramble through the dark and devious glen of Cappercullen, with their pockets laden with nuts and “frahans,” to their amazement and even terror they saw a light streaming redly from the narrow window of one of the towers overhanging the precipice among the ivy and the lofty branches, across the glen, already dim in the shadows of the deepening night.

“Look—­look—­look—­’tis the Phooka’s tower!” was the general cry, in the vernacular Irish, and a universal scamper commenced.