Publisher's Synopsis
This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1913 edition. Excerpt: ... CHAPTER X THE GRACE CARD KATHLEEN sat on a fallen log at the mouth of Carrigdroghid Glen and looked out over the moonlit lough. The shadows of young birch trees flickered about her, delicate as fairy lace; little waves, silver-fringed and silent, stole in endless, hushed procession to the rocks at her feet. She watched them absently, her hands toying with four white roses that lay in her lap, her whole being steeped in the apple-sweet scent of the gorse bushes and the great peace of an Irish midsummer night. They were like the years of a quiet life, those little shining waves, each rippling unmarked out of the great waters into oblivion, and to her they seemed symbolic of Glenshelane. Now and again a stronger current would rush in with a faint hiss and leave a streak of surf behind it; just as now and again some event ruffled their placid existence, just as the news of Fontenoy had come to-day, with its train of melancholy. There was mourning that July night in many a whitewashed cabin of Munster and Desmond and Connacht. To this day the Clare legend tells how the spirits of the Clare men, who played so gallant a part in the battle, came over the sea--came "--singing from the fight Home to Corca Bascinn in the morning light." Only that forenoon Kathleen had seen an old couple from the mountain behind Carrigdroghid, wending their slow way to the church to pray for the son who lay on that red field beyond Tournay. Her own foster-brother was among the slain, the boy she had played with in babyhood, the last and youngest recruit sent by Glenshelane to feed the cannon of France's enemies. Kathleen, while she listened to his mother's lament that Morty would never "rest in peace" in foreign earth, away from his dear native land, had wept, not...