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196 you do. See, your clothes are in bags about you. What has happened to him, Poll?"

"He has just got over a fever,—health and life where it is told!" said Poll.

"A fever!" said Sive. "Save us! Why, what sort of man are you, or what mischief was upon you, that you went and put that sickness on yourself without need or necessity? It is a strange thing that one couldn't go from home for a little while and leave you in charge of the place without your going and putting a fever upon yourself with your fretting and foolishness. Just see what you look like now!"—And with that she began to cry.

Cormac walked in after her.

"By the deer, Dermot," said he, "but you have come out of it well. You have come out of it exceedingly well, I can tell you. I had no fears about you, nor any serious doubt of your recovery, but all the same I did not think you would come out of it so well. It must be that your heart is very sound and strong, for you to be so sturdy after all you have put over you."

"You don't know the half of it, Cormac," said Dermot. "A woman walked in here to me some days ago, and you never saw such a start as she gave me. I never got such a start since the day I was born, even counting the night of the fair. She almost said to me, up to my face, that Sive had been killed on the road somewhere to the north, and that she had seen her dead. But that the priest came in, and that he persuaded me that there was no meaning in her talk, I think my heart would have been injured by it."

"But who was she, though?" said Cormac.