Page:The Father Confessor, Stories of Danger and Death.djvu/336

326 was afraid! But I am not, now that you are here to avert the evil eyes!"

"Trust me," he said, looking into her face, and seeing that she was afraid. "Nonsense!" he laughed. "After all this time!" He spoke to her, cheering her, to turn her thoughts from herself. He became nervous, thinking of her great jump through the air.

"I don't know what it is to-night," she said, smiling, "I feel as if something were going to happen."

The rope was lowered, and she clung to it till it left her almost out of sight of the audience, up under the sparkling roof-lights.

Malachy O'Dermod swung in his place, his soul in his eyes. "O little figure, so lonely," he said through his teeth, "God protect you!" and he kept clenching and unclenching his hands, while she prepared for her spring into the air, saying all the time, as if he did not know he was speaking aloud, "God help me! God help me! God help me!" He turned over in his swing, holding on by his feet. He was to catch her. The terror of his position overcame him as it never had before. In a minute he would know if the precious