He was growing old and frail, and his mind seemed to have gone wholly back to the early years which he had spent in wild adventure and lawless wanderings. The care of his estate he had left to his grandson, who paid little heed to the old man, but went his way with the headstrong and reckless selfishness that was the characteristic of his race. The presence of his grand-daughter seemed to give him pleasure, but companionship between them there was none. He accepted her attentions, not, indeed, with an ill grace, but without any apparent sign of affection, though at times, as he sat watching her moving about his room, her figure appeared to arouse him from his fit of abstraction, and to awaken a chord of memory that was not wholly painful.
So she passed these two years at Castleton--dull enough for a girl of spirit and used to the excitement and life of a great city; and when the news of a great Catholic rising and massacre arrived, it found her alone and unprotected, with a number of panic-stricken domestics and a helpless old man looking to her for assistance and advice. Her brother had gone to Londonderry on business of his own, and there was no one near her on whom she could rely. The servants had remained at their posts for some time, but as the excitement deepened, and the tenantry fled to Enniskillen or to Londonderry for safety and shelter, they refused to remain longer, and while imploring her to join them in their flight, one morning they departed in a body. She herself would willingly have accompanied them, but her grandfather refused to move. It was, he said, mere moonshine. It was only when the Irish army had marched northward, and there came the frequent and alarming reports of robbery and murder, that he was seized with an uncontrollable dread, and insisted on fleeing to Londonderry forthwith. The girl had no one to assist her in their hasty flight but a brave and trusty servant who had served with her father abroad, and who had been since taken into her grandfather´s service. Together they had bundled the old man into the coach, and leaving the great house to its fate, had set out for the city of refuge. How they fared on their way thither we have already seen.