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Title: A little Irish girl

Author: J. M. Callwell

Release date: April 21, 2025 [eBook #75934]

Language: English

Original publication: London: Blackie & Son Limited, 1902

Credits: Al Haines

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A LITTLE IRISH GIRL ***

"THERE'S THIM THAT'LL NOT FORGIT" <i>Page</i> 182
"THERE'S THIM THAT'LL NOT FORGIT" Page 182

A Little Irish Girl

BY

J. M. CALLWELL

Author of "A Champion of the Faith" "Little Curiosity"
"The Squire's Grandson" &c.

BLACKIE & SON LIMITED
LONDON AND GLASGOW

Printed in Great Britain by Blackie & Son, Ltd., Glasgow

CONTENTS

CHAP.

I. THE MISS CLARKSONS' EDUCATIONAL ESTABLISHMENT FOR YOUNG LADIES

II. COUSIN ANSEY'S LEGACY

III. NORAH'S FREAK

IV. WITHIN SOUND OF THE SEA

V. ENGLISH IDEAS AND IRISH WAYS

VI. COUSINS

VII. MOYROSS ABBEY

VIII. BALLINTAGGART CAVE

IX. THE GHOST IN THE MONK'S WALK

X. CAPTAIN LESTER, R.M.

XI. ON DRINANE HEAD

XII. DISCOMFITED

XIII. MALACHY'S ORATION

XIV. MR. O'BRIEN SEES A VISION OF THE PAST

XV. IT WAS ALL NORAH'S IDEA

XVI. PEACE AND HARMONY

A LITTLE IRISH GIRL

CHAPTER I

THE MISS CLARKSONS' EDUCATIONAL ESTABLISHMENT
FOR YOUNG LADIES

A goodly number of years ago there stood in one of the northern suburbs of London a large, old-fashioned red-brick house. In former days, somewhere about the middle of the last century, it had been a stately family mansion. A broad flight of stone steps led up to the hall-door, and in the iron railings on either side there still remained the extinguishers with which the linkboys had been wont to put their torches out, after escorting some fashionable lady home in her sedan-chair from a gay rout or assembly.

Within doors, too, the stone-flagged hall, the wide staircase, and the lofty rooms with their carved mantel-pieces and richly-decorated ceilings, bore witness to the ancient glories of Treherne House. Those glories, however, had long passed away. The original owners, the Trehernes, had sold it many years before, when fashionable people moved to other parts of London; and though the old house retained its high-sounding name, it had known many vicissitudes and changed hands many times since then. For some dozen years or so it had been owned by three middle-aged sisters, the Miss Clarksons, the principals of a large and flourishing school, or—to quote the inscription on the huge brass plate affixed to the hall-door—of an educational establishment for young ladies.

If anyone had chanced to stand in the entrance-hall of Treherne House upon a certain sunny spring morning, he could not have failed to perceive that this work of education was being carried on even more vigorously than usual. A busy hum of voices pervaded the whole house, and burst forth more loudly every now and again with the opening of a class-room door, while somewhere far aloft indefatigable fingers raced up and down the piano over sharps and flats in persevering efforts to master a difficult passage.

Both pupils and teachers, indeed, were working at full pressure, for the Easter holidays were barely three weeks off, and the examinations which marked the conclusion of each school-term were to begin the following week.

To Miss Euphemia, the youngest of the three Miss Clarksons, the care of the juniors of the school was specially confided. She was at present giving a geography lesson to her class, which numbered fourteen or fifteen girls of ages ranging from eleven to thirteen, in a large and dingy room on the ground-floor.

"Turkey in Asia lies between latitudes 30° and 41° North, longitudes 26° and 48° East," a flabby-looking, flaxen-haired girl was drawling out. "It is bounded on the north by the Dardanelles, the Sea of Marmora, the Bosphorus, the Black Sea, and the Caucasus; upon the east by Persia, upon the south by the Persian Gulf and Arabia, and on the west by the Mediterranean."

"Very correctly answered indeed, Louisa, my dear. Constance Lane, which are the principal rivers of Turkey in Asia?"

"The Euphrates and Tigris, falling into the Persian Gulf; the Kizil Irmak, into the Black Sea; the Sihoon, Jihon, and Orontes, into the Mediterranean; and the Jordan into the Dead Sea."

"Quite right also. Norah O'Brien, name the chief towns in the order of their relative importance."

This time there was not the same ready response. Miss Euphemia rapped her desk sharply with her pencil and spoke again.

"Norah O'Brien, be good enough to attend to the lesson instead of staring out of the window! What have I just asked you?"

A well-meant nudge from a neighbour's elbow helped to bring the little girl addressed to herself with a sudden start. She was the youngest in the class, but sat nearly two-thirds up the row of girls; and her eyes, as Miss Euphemia had said, had wandered away from the dismal class-room, with its well-worn school furniture and walls hung with smoke-stained maps, out through the window opposite to her. There was not much to be seen there, only a wilderness of roofs and walls, with the spring sunshine lying bright and hot upon them, and three smutty sparrows chirping with might and main on the solitary plane-tree that grew in the back-garden, and which, notwithstanding London smoke and soot, was sending out fresh green buds all along its grimy branches.

"Chief towns," good-naturedly whispered a big girl who sat beside Norah, the one who had already given her that friendly midge. But Norah, whose thoughts had strayed away far beyond the back-garden and its sparrows, and who had only been brought back to stern reality by the rapping of Miss Euphemia's pencil and the sudden, sharp question fired off at her like a pistol-shot, was too confused and bewildered to profit by the kindly hint. The silence of the class made her aware that a reply of some sort was expected from her, and answering, not Miss Euphemia's question, but the train of thought in which she had herself been engaged, she stammered out:

"Tuesday fortnight, Miss Euphemia."

There was a general titter from all the girls. Tuesday fortnight was the day on which the school was to break up for the Easter holidays, so no one had any difficulty in guessing where Norah's thoughts had drifted to. A frown from Miss Euphemia and another tap of her pencil brought instant silence however.

"Norah O'Brien, go to the bottom of the class! You will not accompany the rest of the school upon their walk this afternoon. You will remain indoors and write out the geography lesson instead. If I have to call you to order again for inattention I shall be compelled to report you to Miss Clarkson."

There was no penalty more dreaded by all the girls in Treherne House than to be reported to Miss Clarkson, the severe and stately ruler of the educational establishment, and to be summoned to appear in her special sanctum for reprimand and admonition. It was with no little dismay, therefore, that Norah gathered up her books and moved down the class to the place assigned to her, seating herself below a little girl with pretty pink cheeks and long silky curls, who till then had occupied the lowest place with all apparent contentment.

Lily Allardyce was the next youngest girl in the school to Norah, and they were close friends and companions. She gave Norah's hand a little consolatory squeeze as she moved up to make room for her, and whispered:

"Never mind, Norah, it's ever so much nicer when we're together than when you're up near the top of the class. It's Fräulein's turn to go out with us to-day, and I'll coax her to let me buy something to bring home to you."

Lily was the little heiress of the school, and always more abundantly provided with pocket-money than anybody else. Her parents were wealthy people, who delighted in heaping presents of clothes, of books, of playthings, and of expensive trifles of every kind upon their only child. It was strange that she and Norah should have come to be such allies, for not only in their appearance, but in their tastes and dispositions, and in all other respects, they were as great a contrast as two children nearly of an age could possibly be.

Lily, as already said, was a soft, fair, pink and white little thing, always beautifully dressed in the daintiest of frocks. No one had ever seen Lily flushed, or tossed, or untidy. She was always well-behaved too; a quiet, plodding little maiden who was not brilliant in any way, but who learned her lessons steadily and never got into scrapes, except when she was led into them by her more venturesome companion.

One of her brothers had once teasingly, but not at all inaptly, described Norah as "short and dark, like a winter's day". She was so small as to look much less than her eleven years, and she had a thick shock of short black hair which resembled a pony's shaggy mane more than anything else. With her turned-up nose and rather wide mouth Norah would have been undeniably plain, if not absolutely ugly, if it had not been for her dark-blue eyes—Irish eyes, Norah loved to have them called. In general those eyes of Norah's were brimful of fun and mischief, but on this particular morning they looked as though tears were much nearer to them than laughter, for together with her Irish eyes Norah had inherited the quick Irish temperament with all its April-day changes of mood. Usually she was the ringleader in every frolic and in every piece of mischief that was set on foot, and at once the torment and the delight of her teachers. She was so bright and intelligent that when she gave her mind to her lessons she could master them in half the time that it took the rest of the class to plod through them, and girls considerably her seniors were wont to consult her about difficulties in their sums and exercises. Unhappily, however, there were very frequent occasions when Norah's mind was not given to her lessons, but was running on all sorts of other things, so that it was no uncommon experience to her to find herself, as at present, sent to the bottom of the class with a punishment in prospect. Not even the strictest of her governesses, however, could retain their displeasure against her very long, and as for the girls, they one and all adored little Norah. The elder ones petted and made much of her, and amongst the juniors, youngest of all though she was, she had constituted herself the leading spirit, the originator of freaks and schemes of daring which would never have occurred to any of them except herself.

"I'm Irish, you know, it all comes of that," Norah would say modestly when complimented on her fertility of invention.

There was nothing indeed of which she was so proud as of her Irish name and her Irish descent, although she herself had never set foot in Ireland in all her life. She did her best—not very successfully—to cultivate an Irish brogue, and no one could have displeased her more than by spelling her Christian name without the concluding h, which marked it as distinctively Irish. The shabby black frock which Norah wore, adorned by more than one unscientifically-cobbled rent, with cuffs and collar of frayed-out crape, betokened that she must be in mourning for someone near to her, not long dead; and there were times, as all her companions knew, when even in her wildest and merriest moods some chance word carelessly uttered would call up old memories and send Norah in floods of tears into some dark corner to sob her heart out in passionate grief and fruitless longings.

Poor Norah's troubles were weighing very heavily upon her on this first morning of our making her acquaintance. It was her first term at school, and as has been seen, the holidays were close at hand. Already the forty girls at Treherne House talked of little else but what each of them hoped and intended to do during those happy weeks; Norah alone, out of the whole forty, had no home to go to, no plans or projects to make. Lily Allardyce, however, had promised to ask leave to bring her down with her to her home in Hampshire, and Norah knew that Lily's parents were not the least likely to refuse her anything which she might ask.

On this very morning, however, Lily had had a letter from her mother, to tell her that she and her father were so pleased by Miss Clarkson's report of her conduct and progress during the term, that they had determined, as a reward for her diligence, to take her to Paris in the holidays, and to let her have her first glimpse of foreign life.

"You shall come to us in summer instead, Norah," Lily had said consolingly. "We shall have six weeks' holidays then instead of three, and there will be picnics and boating parties, and ever so much more fun than we'd have had now."

To poor Norah, however, the prospect of a longer and pleasanter visit several months off seemed but meagre compensation for three weeks of loneliness and desertion in the immediate future. Even the Miss Clarksons themselves were going to the sea-side for the holidays, and she would be left to inhabit the gaunt, empty rooms, with no other company than Fräulein Glock, the German governess. She had loyally done her best to conceal her disappointment and to enter into Lily's delight at the promised trip, but it was hardly to be wondered at if her eyes strayed wistfully out of the prison-like school-room to the sunshine outside, or if her thoughts wandered away from Turkey in Asia and its towns and rivers back to her old home on Hampstead Heath, and to the joyous, untroubled home life which had been interrupted so rudely by her father's death six months before.

It had been a very easy-going, harum-scarum household in which Norah had grown up, almost as Irish in its ways as if it had been situated amongst the old ancestral possessions of the O'Briens on the wild west coast of Ireland instead of in an eminently orderly and respectable suburb of London. Norah's father, Piers O'Brien, with his cheery, genial manner, his unfailing spirits, and the soft Irish accent which he had never lost, had been the life and soul of the little home on the green heights of Hampstead. He had been its mainstay and support too, for it was the brilliant, racy articles for newspapers and magazines, which flowed so freely from his pen, that furnished the means for providing for the wants of the household. But coming out from London one wet night in the previous autumn Piers O'Brien had caught a severe chill. A sudden and serious illness followed. There were a few days of agonized anxiety and distress, and then all was over, and the young O'Briens found themselves left, orphaned and well-nigh penniless, to face the world as best they could.

Their mother had died long before, quite beyond Norah's memory; but Norah had never felt the want of a mother's love, her elder sister Anstace, with her sweet womanly ways, had filled the vacant place so completely. Anstace was the second of the family; the eldest was Roderick, the tall brother of whom they were all so proud, who had just finished his college career with honours and distinction, and who was to have gone to the bar. He was twenty-one, and Anstace was two years younger, and after her there had been a stretch of seven years before the next brother, Manus, the special object of Norah's devotion, had made his appearance. Norah herself, the fourth and youngest, made the little family circle complete.

Roderick and Anstace were both very young to have such a heavy load of anxiety and responsibility thrust suddenly upon them. Careless and easy-going in money matters as in everything else, their father had not troubled himself about laying up any provision for the future, and when once the expenses of his illness and the funeral had been paid, there was but little left. The brother and sister, however, set themselves to bear their burden bravely. They decided with all promptitude that what little money remained, together with all that they could spare from their own scanty earnings, must be devoted to the two children and to their education, whilst they made shift to provide for themselves as best they could.

Anstace in former days had been a favourite pupil in the Miss Clarksons' educational establishment, and she had always kept up friendly relations with its principals. They now offered to take Norah into Treherne House on very much reduced terms, an offer which Roderick and Anstace most gratefully accepted. A cheap school, too, was, after some trouble, found for Manus in Kent. Roderick, relinquishing his hopes of the bar, accepted employment as a lawyer's clerk with as much apparent cheerfulness as if he had never looked forward to any other career, while Anstace became governess in the family of the doctor who had attended their father in his last illness, who had come to know their circumstances and was anxious to befriend them.

CHAPTER II

COUSIN ANSEY'S LEGACY

Norah did not let her mind wander again during the rest of the geography lesson. At its conclusion Miss Euphemia gave three taps of her pencil on her desk and said in her sharp, determined tones, "Dictation!"

In a moment, with the precision of an infantry battalion going through its drill, each girl had her exercise-book open before her and her pen dipped in the ink, ready to begin to write at the first word which should fall from Miss Euphemia's lips. Before that word had been spoken, however, the door opened and the neat parlour-maid appeared.

"If you please, m'm, Miss O'Brien is in the drawing-room, and she hopes you'll excuse her, but she wishes to see Miss Norah most particular if you'd kindly give her leave for a few minutes."

Miss Euphemia hesitated.

"Really, Norah, your conduct this morning has not been such as to entitle you to any indulgence—" she was beginning, when she caught the imploring glance fixed on her by Norah, who had sprung to her feet at the first words of the parlour-maid's message.

She paused involuntarily. There was something pathetic about the little figure in its well-worn mourning, and in the pleading blue eyes, and Miss Euphemia, strict disciplinarian though she was, had yet a kindly heart.

"As, however, your sister wishes so very specially to see you, I suppose you may be allowed to go to her. I hope you will show your gratitude by increased application to your studies afterwards," was the manner in which, after a moment's hesitation, she ended her speech.

It was doubtful if Norah heard the concluding words at all. She let her pen fall with a clatter from her fingers, dropped a jerky little curtsey, and gasping out "Thank you, Miss Euphemia, thank you so much!" she whisked out of the room and raced upstairs to the drawing-room, where Anstace stood awaiting her, a slight graceful figure in her simple black gown, with coils of shining hair wound round beneath her hat.

Norah crossed the room in one bound and flung her arms round her sister.

"Oh, Anstace, Anstace, darling!" with a hug between each word. "It's such an age since I've seen you, I began to think you weren't ever coming again."

"I couldn't get away last Sunday afternoon: two of the children were not well, and so I did not like to leave Mrs. Trafford alone," Anstace said, seating herself in an arm-chair and lifting her little sister on her knee, where she held her closely folded in her arms. "Why, Norah, you are as wild a little Irishwoman as ever; school has not tamed you in the least. And oh, my dear child," as her eye fell on the roughly-darned rents in the front of Norah's frock, "look at the state your dress is in. How could you have got it so torn?"

"I can't help it, Anstace, I can't indeed; it will hook on to things and tear. It's getting ever so much too short for me, too. See!" and Norah slipped off Anstace's knee and stood up before her with her feet in the first position, to show what a very little way the scanty black skirt reached below her knees.

"So it is indeed," Anstace said with a sigh, as she turned up the hem and examined it critically to see if any letting down was possible. "Norah dear, I do wish you would try to be more careful of your things; you know how difficult it is for Roderick and me to buy new ones for you."

"I do try my very best," Norah protested, with a threatened return of the tears that had been so near to her all morning, "but it's no use; I do think nails and spikes stick themselves out on purpose to catch me. There's Lily Allardyce, who might have a new frock every week if she liked, and her clothes never tear or have things spilt over them. Oh dear, wouldn't it be nice if we were rich like the Allardyces?—but I don't know either; they're only city people, and her father made his money selling chemicals or something of that sort, and we're the old, old O'Briens, no matter how poor we are.

"And one of the old, old O'Briens is a goose to talk such nonsense," said Anstace gravely; then, as her quick eyes took in the signs of recent trouble on the little girl's face, she asked solicitously, drawing her close to her side: "What is the matter, dearie? Have you been in difficulties over your lessons this morning?"

"Well, yes, but it wasn't that altogether," and Norah hid her face against Anstace's shoulder. "You know that Lily promised to ask leave for me to go home with her to Heron's Court for the holidays, but she's heard from her mother that they're all going to Paris for Easter; and I do feel horrid and mean, for of course it's splendid for Lily, and I ought to be glad that she's going to have such fun, but I can't. It's so miserable to think that I'll have to spend all these weeks here alone with Fräulein. And hearing all the others talk about going home, and all that they're going to do in the holidays, makes it worse." And the tears which had been kept back with such difficulty hitherto were coming in real earnest now.

Anstace stroked the little rough head that lay upon her shoulder tenderly.

"Do you remember, Norah," she said, "when I used to teach you at home, and you came to the heading in your copy-book, 'Never cross a bridge till you come to it', that you said it was the most ridiculous nonsense you had ever heard, for no one could possibly go over a bridge till they got there?"

"Yes," said Norah, dully, not understanding where this was going to lead to.

"Well, Norah, you have just been doing that very thing to-day in fretting about something that is not going to happen. You are not in the least likely to spend the holidays at Treherne House."

"Anstace! why, what do you mean?" Norah started upright and brushed the tumbled hair back behind her ears, whilst the tears still hung from her eyelashes. A strange light was shining in her sister's eyes.

"A very wonderful and unexpected thing has happened. We have come into a fortune, Norah."

Norah clapped her hands and whisked wildly round the room.

"Oh, I know, I know, Anstace! It's Uncle Nicholas! He's forgiven us and made up the feud, and we're all going over to live with him at Moyross Abbey, and Roderick's to be the heir. Is that it?"

"No, dear," Anstace returned a little sadly, "that is not it, nor is it at all likely to happen, as far as I know. It is only a little property which has been left to us—a very small one which I dare say a great many people would despise, but we are only too thankful for it. Did you ever hear Father speak of his old relation Anstace O'Brien, who was my godmother, and whom I was called after—Cousin Ansey he used to call her?"

Norah was doubtful, but thought she remembered having heard of such a personage.

"She died last week. Poor old woman, she had had a very sad life. Years ago, when she was quite young, she was engaged to be married, and her lover went out to America to make his fortune and then come home and marry her. Perhaps he died out there, or perhaps he forgot poor Cousin Ansey and married someone else, but at any rate no one ever heard of him again, and Cousin Ansey kept waiting and watching for him for years and years, till she had grown to be an old woman. She lived on in the place that had been her father's, and where her lover had known her, so that when he came home he might have no difficulty in finding her, but come there straight. Her mind gave way at last, and they had to take her away and shut her up in an asylum in Dublin, and she lived twelve years there. I only saw her once; she came to see us when I was quite a little girl, but she would only stay a day or two. 'I must go home, Piers,' I remember her saying to Father, 'I cannot tell what day Hugh might walk in', and so back she went. It was soon afterwards that she went out of her mind."

"And about the fortune; oh quick, quick, Anstace!" Norah cried eagerly, and then hung her head with some shamefacedness as she caught her sister's reproving look. "Oh yes, I know, Anstace, but you can't expect me to be sorry for someone just because she was my cousin, when I never even saw her, and she was mad before I was born. I think if she was shut up all those years she must have been rather glad to die."

"Perhaps she was, poor thing!" said Anstace, with feeling in her voice. "She certainly had not much to live for. However, Norah, she had always been very fond of our father, and so when her will was opened—it had been made long ago when she knew what she was doing—it was found that she had left everything she had to him and to his children, if Hugh Masters, the man she was to have married, should not have been heard of before her death."

"And he hasn't been; so of course we get it," said Norah promptly.

"Yes, dear. The little property is only worth about a hundred a year, but there is a small old-fashioned house upon it with a garden and a few fields belonging to it. It is called Kilshane, and is about two miles from Moyross Abbey. It was part of the O'Brien estate, and was sliced off to be a younger son's portion for Cousin Ansey's father."

"And we're all going to live there in that little old house, and be together again, and be done with school, and London, and everything that's horrid?" cried Norah, skipping gleefully about.

Anstace could not help laughing. "I hope so, Norah. Roderick came to have a long talk with me last night. He has been over at Moyross Abbey attending poor Cousin Ansey's funeral."

"At Moyross Abbey? Oh, Anstace, why didn't you tell me sooner? Did he see Uncle Nicholas? And what is he like? And is he going to be friends?"

"My dear child, how could I possibly answer so many questions all at once? He only went to Moyross Abbey because all the O'Briens for generations have been buried there; the old abbey is close to the house. Don't you remember how Father used to describe it all to us? He himself is the only one not buried there." And Anstace's eyes filled with tears as she thought of the crowded cemetery where her father's last resting-place had been made. "Uncle Nicholas was at the funeral; he is an old gray-haired man, Roderick says. He evidently noticed Roderick and asked who he was, for he turned quite white when he was told, but he never spoke to him, or took any notice of him. Roderick felt it a good deal, I think; it was so sad for him to be actually at Father's old home and not to be asked even to come inside the door. If it had not been for Mr. Lynch, the old clergyman, who knew Father long ago, and who made Roderick come to the rectory with him, Roderick would have had to drive straight back to the railway station. As it was, he walked over with Mr. and Mrs. Lynch the next day to see Kilshane. He says the house stands almost on the edge of the cliffs, and looks out right over the Atlantic. It is small, and rather out of repair, but that cannot be wondered at, for no one has lived in it since poor Cousin Ansey was taken away. Still, it is quite habitable, and the furniture and everything remains in it just as it was in her time. Roderick thinks he could farm the land that belongs to it. And he wants to know if we would be satisfied to go over and live there with him."

"Satisfied? I should think so! How can he ask anything so silly, the dear old delightful donkey? Why, Anstace, it's almost too wonderful to believe;—we four all living together again in a lovely old house of our own; no more London streets, and school-rooms and lessons, and going out two and two—"

"Yes, Norah, but it is just about all that I want to speak to you," Anstace interposed gravely. "If we go over to live at Kilshane we shall not be at all well off. As I told you already, the little property is not worth much; and though Roderick thinks he could make a little by writing—he has had one or two articles accepted by magazines lately—I don't suppose it would bring him in a very large sum. We must try to keep Manus at school whatever happens, but we could not possibly pay for his schooling and yours too. We should be obliged to take you away from this—

"Oh, but I shouldn't mind that in the least," Norah hastened to assure her sister.

"I dare say not, dear, but Roderick and I would mind your growing up a wild little ignoramus very much indeed. However, I am quite willing to teach you if you will only try to be steady and attentive. Will you promise to do your best, Norah?"

"Oh yes, Anstace, I will, I will indeed! It's so glorious to think of, and then to have heard of it to-day just when I was so miserable!" And Norah once more spun madly about the room in a manner that argued none too well for the promised steadiness, till she came into violent contact with the grand piano, and subsided, panting, on to the sofa.

"I cannot tell you what a weight it has lifted off my mind, our coming in for this little property," Anstace went on, speaking more to herself than to her little sister. "I have been so anxious about Roderick of late; he has grown so pale and thin, poor fellow, and has had that nasty hacking cough ever since the winter. Dr. Trafford examined him two or three weeks ago, and told me afterwards that it was the close confinement and long hours of desk work which were telling upon him, and that though his lungs were not actually affected, there was an undoubted delicacy which might develop into something serious if it were not checked. But at the time it was impossible to see how he could give up his employment, and I have been so wretched and so worried about it! We shall find it hard work, I dare say, to make both ends meet over in Ireland, but that will be a trifle if Roderick gets well and strong again; and Dr. Trafford says that nothing could possibly be better for him than the outdoor life that he will lead there, on the very edge of the Atlantic."

"Of course there couldn't; it would be enough to make anyone ill to be shut up in an odious poky office all day," said Norah, with as much decision as if she were an authority on medical matters. She sat silent for a minute or two, and then asked suddenly, "Anstace, why does Uncle Nicholas hate us all so? What did Father or any of us ever do to him?"

Anstace hesitated before she answered. "It's a very old story, Norah, and Father never cared to talk much about it, so I only know it in a vague sort of way from things he once or twice said to me. Uncle Nicholas was only Father's half-brother, you know, and years older than he. They didn't see very much of each other either, for Uncle Nicholas lived at Moyross Abbey always, and Father came to London and took to writing when he was quite a young man. However, Uncle Nicholas became engaged to a girl whom he met when he was over in England once on some business. I don't believe she cared much about him.—she was quite young, and Uncle Nicholas must have been a man of forty or more at the time. It was more to please her father than for any other reason that she promised to marry Uncle Nicholas. Her father was very ill—dying, and he was anxious to see her provided for, and of course Uncle Nicholas was a rich man and a great match for her. So it was all settled, and the day for the wedding fixed, and Uncle Nicholas wrote to Father to come down and make his future sister-in-law's acquaintance, and be present at his marriage. I don't know how it all came about after that, Norah, but Father and she were thrown a good deal together, and they found out that they loved each other. It was all very wrong, no doubt, and not straightforward, but they stole away together and came up to London, and were married the very day before her wedding with Uncle Nicholas was to have been."

"Then that girl was our mother?" Norah cried, with her eyes open to their widest.

"Yes, dear; Marion Belthorpe her name was, and that was the way in which she and Father were married. It was a very unhappy business altogether, for the shock killed her father—he was in bad health, I told you,—and she never saw him again. Uncle Nicholas never got over the blow either; he had been really and truly fond of our mother, and he was a changed man from that time out, so everyone who knew him said. Father and Mother tried more than once to make it up with him, but he would take nothing to do with them. Perhaps it was hardly to be expected that he would."

"He must be a horrid, mean, unforgiving old thing!" Norah said indignantly. "And does he live at Moyross Abbey all by himself?"

"No; the children of a niece of his live there with him. She and her husband died out in India some years ago, and Uncle Nicholas brought the children home and adopted them. There are two of them, a boy and a girl; so Mr. Lynch told Roderick. I don't quite know how old they are, but I suppose that Harry Wyndham will be owner of Moyross Abbey some day."

Norah stared at her sister in angry amazement, as if she could hardly believe that she had heard aright.

"But he has no right to it—he's not an O'Brien, and Moyross Abbey has belonged to O'Briens for hundreds and hundreds of years! Harry Wyndham! why, he might as well be called Smith, or Robinson, or anything else," she burst out vehemently.

Anstace could not forbear smiling a little at her impetuosity, but she sighed too.

"It is hard upon Roderick that the old O'Brien estate should pass away from him, for however our father wronged Uncle Nicholas, Roderick had no share in it. But then, Norah, you must remember that the Wyndhams' mother was Uncle Nicholas' own niece, while our father was only his half-brother; so that though they are not O'Briens they are really nearer to him than we are. Besides, I am afraid that our father and Uncle Nicholas did not get on very well together, even before that last quarrel. Uncle Nicholas was always very prudent and careful himself, and he thought Father reckless and extravagant—it never was Father's way to be careful of money."

And Anstace gave another sigh.

"I'm sure Uncle Nicholas is an old curmudgeon," said Norah decisively.

"If he is, he has something to show for it; and if it had not been for him Moyross Abbey would most likely have passed away from the O'Briens long before this. The property was loaded with debt when it came to him, and the house was falling to ruin. Father has often told me so. Uncle Nicholas was quite a young man then, but he set himself steadily to redeem the estate, and worked hard and economized, and denied himself in every way till he had paid the mortgages off, bit by bit, and rebuilt the house. Then a vein of copper was discovered on the property, and he managed to raise money enough to begin mining, and was his own engineer and manager, and now that mine brings him in a very large income. I don't wonder that he looks upon Moyross Abbey as absolutely his own, and considers that he has a right to leave it to anyone he pleases."

"He has not, then! He has no right to leave one half-quarter of a yard of the O'Brien land to anyone except an O'Brien. Oh, Anstace, how can you sit there and talk of it all so quietly? One wouldn't think that you cared the very least bit."

The look of pain which crossed Anstace's face might have told a keener observer than Norah that her brother's exclusion from the old family inheritance, which should have been his by rights, was by no means a matter of indifference to her. She only said, however, in her wonted quiet way, as she rose to go:

"It seems to me, Norah, that it is wisest for us to make the best of things as they are, instead of fretting over what they are not, and to be thankful that at least one little bit of O'Brien land has come to us. You had better run back to your lessons now. I hope Miss Euphemia will not be annoyed at my having kept you so long. I must speak to Miss Clarkson and tell her of the change in our plans, and that you will be leaving at the end of the term."

The sisters parted at the foot of the first flight of stairs. A door upon the landing gave access to the eldest Miss Clarkson's sanctum, a small room where she transacted the general business of the school and had interviews with the parents of present or future pupils. No girl in Treherne House, even if not summoned into that room to receive reproof and admonition, ever approached it without some trepidation, and Norah, as she continued her way down to her class-room, felt a sort of wondering admiration at the smiling unconcern with which Anstace, having first tapped at the door and received permission to enter, disappeared within the dreaded precinct.

CHAPTER III

NORAH'S FREAK

Perhaps no little girl ever underwent punishment with so light a heart as Norah did that afternoon. She was quite cheerful as she watched the long train of girls file out two and two through the hall, Fräulein Glock and Miss Euphemia bringing up the rear, and when they were gone she shut herself up in the empty school-room, and whilst she got out pen and copy-paper she hummed gaily:

"St. Patrick was a gentleman
    And come of decent people,
He built a church in Dublin town
    And on it put a steeple".

Miss Euphemia might not have approved very highly of the song if she had heard it, but it is to be feared that Norah did not trouble herself very much about that.

She did not make very rapid progress with Turkey in Asia and its latitudes and longitudes. Her pen was laid aside very frequently, and Norah either sprang from her seat and capered round the room as if the spirit of gladness had got into her very feet, or else leaning back against the form she gave herself up to long and delicious daydreams. She pictured to herself the happy life which they would all lead in that little old house of which Anstace had spoken, and how she and Manus would wander by the sea-shore and climb the rocks and crags of that wild, western coast upon which her father's boyhood had been spent, and of which he had told them so many stories.

The click of a latch-key in the lock of the hall-door brought her back to sober reality again, and warned her that the walking party had returned. Worse and more dire disgrace would await her if her allotted task were not accomplished.

Scratch, scratch, scratch. Norah's pen absolutely raced over the paper in her efforts to make up for lost time, whilst she could hear the girls laughing and chattering as they trooped upstairs to take off their outdoor things. The blotting-paper had just been passed over the last page of copy, and Norah with a huge sigh of relief had laid down her pen, when the door opened and Miss Euphemia sailed in. She had laid aside her bonnet and mantle and resumed the high white cap, which within doors lent severity and classic dignity to her features.

"Is the lesson written out, Norah?" she enquired.

"Yes, Miss Euphemia," Norah replied, handing over the written pages, though not without some anxiety that in the haste with which the last portion had been copied out, errors and omissions might have crept in. Miss Euphemia's scrutiny seemed to satisfy her, however, and she gave the paper back to Norah, saying only: "Very well, my dear, put everything away tidily before you go upstairs. I trust I shall not be again driven to such a painful necessity as keeping you indoors."

Norah reddened and fidgeted uncomfortably.

"I hope not, Miss Euphemia," she said awkwardly. In the overflowing spirits which she was in, it was not possible to her to speak in a tone of proper penitence, and perhaps Miss Euphemia had expected a greater appearance of contrition and was disappointed.

"If I had mentioned the matter to Miss Clarkson she would have been very gravely displeased," she began, as she moved towards the door, "and if you should show yourself so inattentive again, I shall feel obliged to do so; but I hope it will not occur again, Norah."

"I hope not, Miss Euphemia," once more responded Norah; and Miss Euphemia quitted the room, closing the door rather sharply behind her.

It was opened again a minute later, and this time it was Lily Allardyce who appeared, her pink cheeks pinker than ever, after her walk in the spring wind, holding something very closely clasped in both her hands.

"Poor Norah," she said, in her pretty, cooing way. "I took my things off ever so fast, and ran down before any of the others were ready. I kept thinking of you, shut up here by yourself and writing that horrid punishment lesson, all the time that we were out. See what I've got for you! A woman was selling a whole basketful of them in the street, and Miss Euphemia let me stop and buy one." And opening her hands, Lily disclosed a large pincushion shaped like a sunflower, with rays of yellow calico all round it, and the centre stuck, hedgehog fashion, with pins.

Norah rewarded her by a boisterous hug, more perhaps as an outlet to her feelings than from any special delight in the pin-cushion.

"Lily, Lily! I'm the luckiest girl in the whole world!" she cried. "I couldn't get a chance before of telling you why Anstace—that's my sister, you know—came to see me this morning."

"Anstace, yes," said Lily meditatively. "It's such a funny name, Norah. I never heard of anyone called that before."

"It's Irish; all our names are Irish," Norah answered, with a touch of pride in her voice; "there have always been Anstaces and Norahs among the O'Briens. And we're all going over to Ireland, Lily; going to live there for ever, and never come back to London any more. What do you think of that?"

Lily's eyes grew big with wonder and dismay.

"Going away for ever, and we're never to see each other again? And you're glad?" This last with much reproach and a sound as of gathering tears.

Norah bestowed another hug by way of comfort.

"I wish you could come and live in Ireland too, but you can't; and you're going to Paris, that's luck enough for you; though I wouldn't take fifty thousand Parises for Kilshane, that's what our own place that we are going to live in is called;" and Norah drew her small stature up to its tallest. "Come along now," as she flung geography-book and paper into her locker with a reckless air; "I shall only just have time to get ready for tea."

As the two children crossed the hall, hand in hand, Norah's attention was arrested by the large wooden tray, in which the cups and saucers for the school tea had been carried up from below stairs. It stood empty now on its trestles outside the dining-room door, and from within could be heard the clatter of china as the servants moved about, laying the table. Norah, in her present mood, was ready for any freak, no matter how daring.

"Lily," she exclaimed under her breath, "did you ever toboggan down the stairs upon a tea-tray?"

"Did I ever do what?" questioned Lily in perplexity.

"Toboggan down the stairs—slide down, you know. It's the most awful fun. Manus and I used to do it at home sometimes, but it was such a poky little staircase it wasn't much good. The stairs here would be splendid, and that tray would hold us both most beautifully."

"Oh, Norah, just think how angry the Miss Clarksons would be!" gasped Lily.

"They won't know anything about it. Everybody is upstairs in the dormitories, and it always takes the other girls half an hour to take their boots off and wash their hands. We'll just have one go, not down this flight, the one above. No one will see us there, and if Jane and Ellen miss the tray they won't know where it's gone, so they can't tell tales."

Grasping the heavy tray in both hands, Norah was already half-way up the stairs. Lily followed in much alarm, but too timid to resist Norah's stronger will. As Norah had said, the fine staircase in Treherne House, with its broad shallow steps and long flights of stairs, was eminently suited for a toboggan slide, though it was hardly likely that it had ever been put to that use before.

She set her burden down with a triumphant air at the top of the flight which led down from the drawing-room. "Get in quick, Lily, while I hold the tray to prevent it slipping down," she whispered imperatively.

"Oh, Norah, I couldn't," faltered poor Lily nervously. "Just think if Miss Clarkson happened to be in her sitting-room and heard us!" And Lily cast a terrified glance at the closed door on the landing below.

"You little goose! Did you ever know Miss Clarkson to be down here at this hour? The tea-bell will ring directly, and she'll come sailing from upstairs with her evening cap on and her handkerchief in her hand." And Norah lowered her eyelids in imitation of the air of serene self-importance with which the head of Treherne House was wont to lead the procession into the dining-room. Then, breaking into her brusque tone once more, "Now, Lily, pack yourself in, and sit tight."

"I couldn't, Norah, I couldn't indeed; I'd be too frightened," protested Lily more tremulously than before.

"Nonsense, you've no idea how jolly it is! I'll go in front, and then if we do get spilt you can't be hurt, you'll only fall on the top of me. Now then, are you in? Hold on by the bannisters till I get in too, and then catch me by the shoulders."

Lily obeyed trembling, her powers of resistance as usual not being proof against Norah's determination.

"Tally ho!" cried Norah joyously, as the improvised sledge flew downwards on its mad career.

At that very moment, however, the door upon the landing opened, and out came Miss Clarkson with evening cap and handkerchief, just as Norah had described her. She stopped, absolutely rigid with amazement, as she beheld the two youngest of her pupils seated in the tea-tray and shooting down the stairs. The sudden appearance of her school-mistress was too much for Lily, whose nerves were already overstrained by the headlong speed with which they were rushing through the air. She uttered a piercing shriek, and clutched desperately at the bannisters. The sledge, thus suddenly arrested on its downward course, slewed to one side and tilted over. Both its occupants rolled out, bumped down the remaining steps, and fell in a heap upon the landing, the big wooden tray tumbling over on the top of them.

The crash of their fall reverberated through the house, doors opened above stairs, exclamations and questioning voices were heard, and the whole school came trooping down to find out what had happened, while the servants left their work and ran up from below. Norah had fallen undermost, but she was on her feet again in a moment, her hands clenched, and her small white teeth set tight. Her head had come in violent contact with the floor of the landing, and a bump had already started out upon her forehead, which was swelling visibly and promised before long to display a variety of shades of blue and green. She was conscious besides of a bruised knee and sundry smaller injuries, but Norah was a heroic little soul, and she deemed it beneath her to cry merely for pain; so whilst poor Lily, after struggling out from under the tray, could only sit in a forlorn little heap and sob pitifully, Norah boldly faced Miss Clarkson, who had not yet recovered sufficiently from the shock she had received to utter a syllable.

"It was my fault, Miss Clarkson, it was indeed. I made Lily come with me, and she didn't want to. I knew it was naughty, but the tray was standing in the hall as we came out, and I couldn't help it. I haven't known what to do all day, I've been so glad since Anstace told me that we were all going over to live in Ireland. I've been very happy here," she added with sudden recollection, for Norah possessed a share of Irish politeness with all her other Irish qualities, "but it's school, you know, it's not home; and if you had thought that you weren't ever going to have a home of your own again, or at least not for years and years, and then heard all at once that you had got the dearest, most delightful old house in Ireland to live in—oh, Miss Clarkson, if you'd been me, and you had seen that tray standing in the hall, you'd have wanted to toboggan down-stairs too!"

The whole of the school had flocked down-stairs by this time. Miss Susan, the second Miss Clarkson, had been foremost to reach the scene of the disaster. She had picked poor disconsolate Lily up, and was examining into the extent of her injuries, whilst Miss Euphemia stood with the fallen tray in her hand, and the girls and the French and German teachers crowded upon each other on the stairs in their efforts to get a view of what was passing.

An absolute shiver went through the close-pressed ranks at Norah's audacious speech, which called up a vision of Miss Clarkson seated in the tea-tray and careering madly down-stairs with her cap ends streaming behind her. In awe-struck silence the whole throng waited for the thunder of Miss Clarkson's wrath to fall on the daring offender's head. There was a momentary pause, and then Miss Clarkson, as if prompted by some overmastering impulse, stooped and kissed, yes, actually—a thing which, in the memory of the oldest girl present, she had never been known to do before—she kissed the little upturned face that gazed so earnestly at her.

"I scarcely think that, my dear," she said in answer to Norah's venturesome suggestion, "but I was truly rejoiced to hear of your good fortune from Anstace this morning, even though it means that we shall lose you from amongst us very soon. Under such exceptional circumstances I can make a certain allowance for your feelings having carried you beyond yourself, especially considering what a little wild Irishwoman you are. Your behaviour was of course most reprehensible," she went on, straightening herself and resuming her wonted scholastic manner, as she remembered her audience and the effect that might be produced upon them by such unexampled lenity. "Nothing would induce me to pass over a repetition of it, but for this once, considering the circumstances as I have said, and that you and Lily have already suffered from the consequences of your very silly and unladylike freak, I will take no further notice of it. Jane, carry the tray back to the pantry at once. Euphemia, be good enough to take Lily upstairs and put some sticking plaster on her face. We will now proceed to the dining-room, girls. When Norah and Lily have made themselves tidy and fit to appear at table, they will join us there."

And Miss Clarkson swept down-stairs with her most stately air, the girls exchanging wondering glances and whispered comments as they followed, two and two, to take their places at the long table in the dining-room.

CHAPTER IV

WITHIN SOUND OF THE SEA

The remainder of the school term passed quickly over. To Norah's credit it must be recorded that she bore in mind what pleasure it would give Roderick and Anstace if she were proved to have made good progress during her stay at Treherne House, and notwithstanding the intoxication of delight that she was in, she worked away assiduously at her lessons during the time which still remained to her. Accordingly, when the examinations were over, she was found to have won a place very near the top of her class for herself.

The great day of the breaking up of the school arrived at length. The hall was filled with boxes, and cabs drove away from the door with luggage piled upon the roof and happy faces inside. From earliest morning Norah had been the busiest of the busy, helping to carry handbags, and rugs, and parcels of all kinds down-stairs, and receiving the affectionate farewells of the girls as they departed. It was quite wonderful how sorry they all seemed to say good-bye to her, and innumerable parting tokens in the shape of pencil-cases, purses, and such small articles were showered upon her. As for Lily Allardyce, whose parents arrived early in a brougham to carry their darling off to the station from which they were to start for Paris, her joy at seeing them again was quite swallowed up by her grief at parting from Norah. Her eyes were swelled almost past recognition, and her little frame was shaken by sobs when she was at last induced, most unwillingly, to quit her hold of Norah, and to follow her parents to the carriage which waited for them.

Norah was after all to remain at Treherne House and to share Fräulein Glock's solitude for a week, as Roderick and Anstace had been unable to complete their preparations for leaving London any sooner. This appeared a very trifling hardship to her now, however, and in the evening, when she had seen the three Miss Clarksons, who had been the last to leave, drive away in their turn, she settled herself down quite cheerfully by the fire in the empty school-room to keep Fräulein company till bed-time.

Fräulein Glock, for her part, seemed amply contented whilst she had her days to herself and was not required to give her usual dreary round of lessons in German grammar and translation. She was engaged upon a crochet antimacassar of most intricate design, which required an incessant counting of stitches. She had, besides, a friend, a German teacher like herself, who was also spending her holidays in solitude in another school a few streets away, and the two were wont to pass many hours together, exchanging low-voiced confidences with each other. They were very kind to the little girl, who had perforce to make a third in their party, and strove spasmodically to entertain and amuse her. Norah could not but feel, however, that she was more or less an encumbrance to them, and she generally preferred to steal away to a sunny window on the stairs, where she curled herself up on the wide window seat, and let her imagination run riot in happy visions of the future.

Norah had counted on her fingers the number of days that she would have to remain at Treherne House. Beginning with the little finger of her right hand, they reached as far as the forefinger of her left; and each morning when she woke she dug the finger representing the day just begun into her pillow, saying to herself, "We've got as far as you now". And each evening when she went to bed she made another dig with the same finger, saying triumphantly, "There, you're over". Thus the days went by till the forefinger of her left hand was ticked off like the rest; and in the evening Roderick, her tall, dark-haired, dark-eyed brother, arrived to carry her off to Euston station, where Anstace was to meet them. And so the doors of Treherne House closed behind little Norah for good and all.

She was so wild with glee and in such boisterous spirits that Anstace had some difficulty in keeping her within the bounds of due decorum during the quarter of an hour that they had to wait for the departure of their train. More than once indeed Anstace had occasion to remind her of the ancient nursery adage, that "too much laughing ends in crying". The saying was to prove true enough, for a few hours later poor Norah, tossed to and fro in her berth, and enduring all the agonies of sea-sickness, was in truth a vast deal nearer to tears than to laughter, and both she and Anstace presented a very limp and woebegone appearance when they landed next morning in a drizzling rain upon the wharf in Dublin.

Their surroundings were not calculated to raise their spirits. A raw wind blew cheerlessly in their faces, and the tall dark buildings that lined the quays, the forest of masts on either hand, and the air, all seemed dripping with moisture. Roderick alone maintained a cheerful demeanour; the rough crossing appeared to have had rather an exhilarating effect upon him. He had been on deck since daylight, pacing up and down with his cap drawn over his eyes and the skirts of his ulster flapping about his legs, quite regardless how the steamer lurched and rolled under him, whilst he watched the Irish coast coming gradually into view. He exerted himself to the utmost for his sisters' comfort, and carried them off to an hotel, where, however, neither Anstace nor Norah was able to taste the breakfast set before them. Then came long hours of railway travelling, diversified by wearisome delays at junction stations, and at last, in the dusk, they alighted at Ballyfin, the terminus of the railway, and its nearest approach to the wild coast region where their future home was situated.

The drizzle of the morning had developed by this time into a heavy and continuous downpour, and poor Norah, cold, hungry, and tired out, felt more wretched than she had ever done in all her life before, and in her secret soul, I believe, would have been rejoiced could she have found herself back in the deserted school-room of Treherne House, where Fräulein Glock counted her interminable crochet patterns. At any other time she would have been in transports of delight at the novel sights and sounds which greeted her on every side—at the strange, guttural utterances of a group of frieze-coated men and blue-cloaked women, who, regardless of the rain, were talking volubly in Irish; at the scent of peat-smoke, which hung in the air; above all, at the outside-car which, on issuing from the station, they found waiting to carry them the twelve Irish miles which had still to be traversed. Now, however, Norah could only rouse herself to a very faint interest in all these things, and in silence she allowed Roderick to lift her on to the seat beside Anstace.

The little town of Ballyfin, with its market-place and its one long, straggling street, was soon left behind, and they emerged upon a level tract of dreary bog-land, the monotony of which was only broken here and there by a squalid cabin streaked green with damp, or by a few fields fenced in from the road and from each other by walls of loosely-piled gray stones. The leaden sky hung low above their heads, and the mountains were wrapped in mist down to their very base. It was impossible to hold up an umbrella, so fierce and wild were the gusts that swept across the bog. Anstace and Norah sat close to each other, a shawl drawn over their heads and held together in front, while Roderick, on the other side of the car, with the collar of his ulster turned up about his ears and a travelling-rug wrapped round his knees, shielded himself from the weather as best he could. On and on the car sped through the seemingly interminable waste, till at last Norah, who had hardly spoken since they had started on their drive, said, with something that sounded suspiciously like a sob:

"Anstace, I didn't think Ireland was one bit like this. I thought it was the nicest place to live in in the whole world; and ugh! it is so ugly and so miserable."

"You could not expect any place to look well on such a night as this, dear. If it were a beautiful sunny evening it would all have seemed quite different to us," Anstace returned as cheerfully as she could, though her own heart sank within her as she looked out from under the fringe of the shawl at the sodden, treeless plain stretching away till it was lost in the fast-gathering twilight, and wondered if it was indeed in this desolate region that their future home was to be made.

Nine miles were laid behind them thus, and it had become wholly dark, when the car made a sudden bend, branching off apparently upon a cross-road, and a sound which hitherto had mingled indistinctly with the wind and rain—a hoarse, deep murmur, now falling, now swelling out louder—seemed of a sudden to fill all the air. Even Norah roused herself to ask what it was.

"You'll never have that noise out of your ears, little one, while you live here," Roderick answered good-naturedly from the other side of the car. "That's the Atlantic, Norah, two hundred feet below us, singing a song to itself. If it were daylight you would see that the road comes out here just above the cliffs. Another mile will bring us home now."

"Troth, an' if 'twasn't that the wind is off ov the shore, it's not sing-songin' that fashion the say wud be, 'twud be thundher and fury wid it, and dashin' agin the racks as if 'twud swape the whole mortial airth away," the driver struck in. "Whin yer honours has been a winter at Kilshane ye'll have no need to be axin' what sort the roar of th' Atlantic is."

A few minutes more, as Roderick had said, and they turned in at a gate left open in evident anticipation of their coming. With a "Hurroo! stir yerself now!" and a cracking of his whip, the driver urged his steed on to its utmost pace, and they tore up the avenue at such a frantic gallop that Norah, desirous though she was to prove herself a true Irishwoman, and therefore able to sit upon an outside-car as to the manner born, could not refrain from clutching the iron rail beside her with all her might. The trees and shrubs on either hand flitted past like shapeless black phantoms. One long straggling branch which stretched itself out into the roadway struck Anstace and Norah a sudden stinging blow in their faces, sending a shower of cold spray over them from its rain-laden leaves. Before they had recovered themselves and had had time to dash the water out of their eyes, the car rounded a corner and pulled up with a jerk before the house, of which only a vague outline could be distinguished in the darkness.

At the same instant the hall-door was flung wide open, letting a flood of light stream out into the night, and two black figures came hurrying out. One held a sod of blazing turf aloft in a pair of tongs, to light the travellers, and waved it in wild whirls of welcome, regardless how the primitive torch hissed and sputtered as the rain-drops fell on it, while the other, springing forward with an uncouth yell, caught Norah in his arms and bore her in triumph into the hall, exclaiming as he set her down:

"Begorra, an' it's meself that'll carry one of the O'Briens in over the thrashel of their own dure. 'Tis the great day that sees the ould shtock back in Kilshane, an' God an' His saints give them luck an' prosperity, an' blessin's airly an' late—"

"Arrah, whisht wid ye, Tom," commanded the torch-bearer, whom Norah now perceived to be an elderly woman clad in the rough red skirt and cotton bodice common to the country, with a wisp of gray hair coiled up closely at the back of her head; "there's no ind to ye, so there isn't, an' it's frightenin' the little darlint ye'll be wid yer goin's on."

"Not a bit of him, Biddy; only delighting her heart with such a right Irish welcome," said Roderick, as he came into the hall and shook Biddy and Tom heartily by the hand. "And here's a new Miss Anstace for you," he added, drawing forward his sister, who had been so encumbered with wraps and mufflings, and so stiff with cold and the long drive, that she had found some difficulty in descending from the car.

"An' wudn't I have known it widout the tellin'," declared Biddy, as she caught the hand which Anstace held out to her and kissed it fervently. "Sure 'tis the very moral of ould Miss Ansey she is, the darlin' jool. An' who wud she take after, if twasn't her own godmother that she's called for?"

"I'm glad Miss Anstace was so alive to her duties as to have a proper resemblance to her namesake," said Roderick merrily. "And now, Biddy, I hope you're prepared to give us something to eat, for I'm pretty ready for it after travelling all the way from London, and I've no doubt the others are too."

"Yis sure, Masther Roderick, an' I've a fire in the parlour anyway that'll do yer heart good to see. If yer honours'll warm yerselves a weeny minute I'll have the tay wet an' all ready. Musha, go long wid ye, Tom, an' help to carry the luggidge upstairs, i'stead o' stannin' there, not able to take yer eyes out of Miss Norah!"

And with this last authoritative utterance Biddy flung the parlour door open, revealing a cozy interior, heavy curtains closely drawn, a snowy-covered table laid for supper, and at the end of the room the blazing turf fire of which she had spoken. Biddy herself disappeared down the passage leading to the kitchen, where a vigorous hissing and spluttering was presently heard, betokening that preparations for the meal were being pushed forward with all possible speed.

Norah retained but a very confused recollection of the after-events of that evening. The warmth of the parlour made her drowsy; there was a buzzing in her head as if she were still in the train, and at times the floor seemed to heave and stagger under her feet as the steamer had done. She roused herself in some degree when Biddy reappeared with tea and a smoking dish of eggs and bacon, but even during supper her head was nodding forward, and it was with difficulty that she kept her eyes from closing. She was only too glad, as soon as the meal was over, to let Anstace lead her upstairs and help her to undress. And almost before she had stretched her weary little limbs out in the huge four-post bedstead, with faded chintz curtains, which filled half the room, she had sunk into the oblivion of a deep and dreamless sleep.

CHAPTER V

ENGLISH IDEAS AND IRISH WAYS

It was broad daylight when Norah woke next morning, and she sat up and stared about her, bewildered for a moment by finding herself in the strange, old-fashioned room, with its low ceiling crossed by heavy beams, and its dark mahogany furniture. The next instant, however, she remembered that this was Kilshane, and that they were really at home in Ireland at last. Soft regular breathing by her side made her aware that Anstace was still wrapped in soundest sleep, but Norah was fully awake now, and quite too much on fire with excitement and curiosity to yield herself to slumber again.

The room had only one lattice-paned window, opening in casement fashion, and even that was darkened and encroached on by the luxuriant growth of clematis and climbing roses which mantled the walls outside and flung their long trails across the narrow window space, so that but a comparatively small amount of cool, greenish light could find its way in.

Norah slipped down out of the lofty bed, and pattered across the floor in her bare feet. Pushing the casement open, she leant far out, regardless of the shower of dewdrops which she shook down upon herself, drinking in in one gasp of delight the freshness of the early morning, the salt sea-breeze that blew in her face, and the undreamt-of beauty of the prospect that lay outstretched before her.

Immediately below her the green lawn sloped down to the cliffs, though from the window at which she stood nothing could be seen of the dizzy precipice; the low wall that bounded their little domain stood out against the mid-sea, as though one could have stepped from it far out upon that shining blue plain which stretched away to the far misty horizon, its solitude unbroken by even a single sail. Upon the left rose the great purple mountains which had been invisible the night before, and beneath them lay a wide tract of heathery moor, of gorse-clad hills and green pasture land. Lower still was a long range of woods, and below them the bold coast line, with its lofty headlands, its sheer black cliffs and jagged rocks, over which even on that calm and sunny morning the long Atlantic surges broke in foam.

Anstace's voice behind her recalled Norah to herself.

"You will catch your death of cold, child, hanging out of the window in your night-gown. Come in and dress yourself. You will have plenty of time to look at the view afterwards."

Norah reluctantly drew her head in.

"Oh, Anstace, it's the loveliest place in the whole wide world, and we are the very luckiest people to have got it all for our own."

Anstace laughed.

"Well, that sounds more cheerful than your remark when we were driving: here last night. Do you remember how dismal you were then?"

Norah gave her shoulders an unwilling shake.

"As if one could know what anything was like, sitting in pouring rain with a shawl over one's head. And you haven't half looked at the view, only given it a sort of glance out of the corner of your eye."

"My dear, the view won't run away," said practical Anstace, "and we shall be late for breakfast if we don't hurry on. Do begin to dress yourself!"

The dressing operations partook something of the nature of the famous race between the hare and the tortoise. Norah's toilet should have occupied far less time than Anstace's, seeing that she had no long tresses of hair to brush out, to plait and coil up; but there was so much to attract her attention in the room, that she was making dives hither and thither to examine some fresh object of interest between each garment that she put on. Now she was perched on a chair peering at one of the discoloured prints in black frames which hung upon the wall, now exploring the drawers and pigeon-holes of the tall old mahogany bureau which stood in one corner, and now she was scrutinizing her face in the little clouded mirror above the chimney-piece; so that Anstace, proceeding steadily all the while with her dressing, had put in the last hair-pin, and stood faultlessly neat from her smoothly-parted hair to the tie of her shoes, in the same moment that Norah, wriggling into her frock after a fashion peculiarly her own, and dragging the buttons and button-holes together in haste, proclaimed herself ready. Just then, too, Roderick's door was heard to open, and his step and whistle sounded on the stairs, so Anstace and Norah lost no time in following him down to the little parlour where they had had supper the night before.

The window, which was embowered in green, like that of their bedroom above, stood wide open, letting in the fresh morning breeze and all the sweet spring-tide scents, but there was no appearance of breakfast, and Biddy, who came from the kitchen in a state of morning deshabille, declared "She'd niver had a thought their honours would be that early, an' they desthroyed wid cowld an' hardship the night before ".

Seeing that there was likely to be some delay before their morning meal was ready for them, the new-comers strolled out of doors and down by a moss-grown path which led to the edge of the cliffs. Viewed from without, the house was a rambling, irregular structure, two stories high in some parts, only a single story in others, but overgrown everywhere with the same luxuriant green mantle of roses, jessamine, and ivy, all matted and intertwined.

Anstace's eyes soon wandered back from the house to Roderick's face, on which they rested anxiously. She was afraid he might have caught a chill from the exposure of the previous evening, but he laughed her fears away.

"I feel another man already," he said, drawing a deep draught, as he spoke, of the vigorous sea air; "I shall write to Dr. Trafford and tell him I have tossed all his tonics and physic bottles over the cliffs. It was that stifling city den, and the everlasting scribble, scribble from morning till night, which were doing for me."

Whilst toil had been needful, Roderick had worked on bravely and uncomplainingly, but now that those months of drudgery were laid behind him, he could not conceal how irksome his life in the lawyer's office had been to him.

Norah interposed here to ask what the dark woods were which stretched along the cliffs some two miles away.

"Those are the woods of Moyross Abbey, where our father lived when he was a boy, and Uncle Nicholas lives now," Roderick answered. "Do you see how, on beyond, just this side of the headland—Drinane Head it's called—the cliff is all scarped and cut away, and the red earth thrown out upon the hillside? That is the copper-mine which Uncle Nicholas set going, and there is an iron pier down below that he made, for ships to lie at to load the ore."

"It was a wonderful undertaking," said Anstace, following the direction in which her brother pointed.

"It was, indeed, for one man to plan and carry out. He deserves all the wealth which the mine has brought him in. See, Norah, you can just make out the chimneys of Moyross House above the trees. The ruins of the abbey where the monks used to live in old times are close to it, and behind the abbey there is a little wooded glen, with a steep path winding down through it to a little cove below, one of the very few places along the coast where a boat can find shelter in rough weather. I suppose that was one of the reasons why the monks chose that particular site for their abbey. Some of the steps going down to the sea are the very ones, I believe, that the monks put there, and the stones have deep hollows worn in them by all the feet that have gone up and down for hundreds of years."

"But Roderick, when did you see it all?" cried Norah.

A cloud came over Roderick's face.

"I walked down through the glen that one day that I was at Moyross, the day of poor old Cousin Ansey's funeral. I had heard our father talk so often of that Monks' Walk, as it is called, and I wanted to see as much as I could of his old home."

"And you'll take me to see it all some day, won't you?—the old abbey and the Monks' Walk, and all?" pleaded Norah, hanging coaxingly on his arm.

Roderick shook his head.

"Not unless Uncle Nicholas invites us there, and that, I think, is hardly likely. He has made it plain that he has not forgiven our father, even in his grave, for the wrong he did him, nor us, for being our father's children."

Roderick spoke with a bitterness very unusual to him, but, after all, it was hard that whilst almost all he could see around him—great mountains, wide sweeps of moorland, woods and farms, and rocks rich in minerals—had belonged to his ancestors, he himself should be an alien and a stranger there. Even that low creeper-covered house, with its two or three fields stretching along the edge of the cliffs, had only come to him by the bequest of a distant relative, and in all probability, if the old man who now held the great O'Brien estate in his grasp had had the power to keep it from them, not even that one small corner of the family domain would have descended to his own kith and kin.

"Uncle Nicholas is an old horror!" said Norah with energy; "and if he doesn't want to have anything to say to us, I'm sure we don't want him either."

And just then Biddy appeared in front of the house, and by vehement waving of her arms gave them to understand that the tardy breakfast was at length ready.

Their first morning repast in the quaint old-fashioned parlour was a very gay and cheerful one, though Anstace's housewifely eye detected many things that did not please her: the little heaps of dust in the corners which no intrusive broom could have disturbed for a very considerable period, and the long cobwebs that hung down from the ceiling and swayed slowly to and fro as the fresh breeze blew in at the open window. When breakfast was ended, they started to explore the old house which had come into their possession with all that it contained. Opposite the parlour was the drawing-room, a long, low-ceiled room, furnished with spindle-legged tables and chairs, with tall old cabinets, black with age, ranged against the walls. A glass door opened out into what had once been the garden but was now a wilderness, where evergreen shrubs, tall weeds, and a few hardy flowers which had survived years of neglect struggled with each other for the mastery. Ragged fuchsia hedges fenced in the little plot, and in the kitchen-garden beyond, the old fruit-trees stretched out their branches, laden with snowy blossom, over the sea of tangled vegetation that grew about their roots.

"There will be no lack of work there for some time to come," said Roderick cheerily.

After his months of drudgery at a desk and of close confinement in a city office, occupation of any sort in the open air was alluring, and he opened the glass doors as he spoke and stepped out upon the grass-grown walk, eager to commence the herculean task of digging and uprooting without even a moment's delay. Anstace turned down the flagged passage which led towards the back of the house, in quest of Biddy, and Norah followed her.

At the kitchen door Anstace stopped short and gave a little exclamation of dismay, involuntarily gathering her skirts about her, and undoubtedly anyone accustomed to the neatness and cleanliness of an English kitchen was likely to receive a shock at the first sight of the premises presided over by Biddy. A cavernous fireplace without a grate occupied almost the whole of one wall. The turf fire was built upon the hearthstone, and a huge three-legged pot was suspended over it by a hook and iron chain, whilst a low stone hob in front kept the burning peats from falling on to the floor. The walls had once been whitewashed, but time and turf smoke had mellowed them to a warm yellowish tint, which deepened near the hearth to a rich dark brown, and it must have been long, very long indeed, since the floor had made acquaintance with soap and water or a scrubbing-brush.

Biddy had not allowed herself to suffer from loneliness, at least in so far as dumb companionship went, for a large and motley family were lodged within the kitchen. A mongrel collie, blind of an eye, had been arrested on its way in from the yard by Anstace and Norah's sudden appearance, and stood regarding them mistrustfully out of its remaining orb. A large black cat, snugly curled up in front of the fire, was sleepily keeping watch out of one eye on the gambols of two kittens as they rolled each other over and over on the floor; and on the top rail of a chair beside her, over the back of which some articles from the wash-tub had been hung to dry, a chicken was perched, shaking out its feathers and pluming itself in evident enjoyment of the warmth. It seemed to Anstace, in a rapid survey of the kitchen furniture, that this was the only chair possessed all at once of a back, a seat, and the full complement of legs, all others being destitute of one at least of these appurtenances. An old-fashioned mahogany wine-cooler in one corner had been turned to a use for which it had not originally been intended, for at that moment a hen flew up out of it, and with loud and long repeated cackles made everyone within hearing aware that she had laid an egg. Another hen, with a dozen yellow balls of chickens running at her feet, was stalking about the floor, pecking hither and thither in hope of finding something to eat; and the door of a cupboard which stood open revealed a turkey seated in a basket within and engaged in the important business of bringing out a clutch of eggs.

Norah subsided on to the floor with a little cry of delight, divided in her ecstasy between the soft, furry kittens and the softer, downy chicks; but Anstace remained standing, her skirts still gathered up, gazing with a face of rueful disgust at the kitchen and its denizens, and at the collection of miscellaneous articles which were piled pell-mell upon each other in the corners. There were old fishing-nets and fishing-lines, chairs without seats and jugs without handles, empty bottles and broken plates—even odd boots and shoes were stored up with the other lumber.

Biddy came in just then from the yard, carrying a pail of water, which she splashed freely round her as she walked. She smiled broadly upon the girls, quite unconscious that there was anything amiss with herself and her surroundings, and with a flourish of her disengaged arm drove out the hen, which was still loudly and insistently proclaiming its feat just achieved.

"Quit out o' this, this minnit, the noisy crayther that y' are! Who wants to be hearin' ye, d' ye think?"

Anstace's feelings had been too deeply stirred to permit her to keep silence, and she broke out impatiently:

"Biddy, is there not a hen-house outside to keep the fowl in, instead of having them in the kitchen?"

"Och, yis sure, Miss Anstace, but the roof's bin off it this long start; Tom tuk the rafthers away for firin' one winther whin the turf was scarce. An' what wud ail the craythers bein' in the kitchen? 'Tis warm an' snug for them, an' handy for me to throw them a praty whin I'd be at me dinner."

"But I cannot possibly have hens sitting and laying in the kitchen," protested Anstace. "I will ask Mr. Roderick to have the hen-house put to rights, and then the fowl must go out there."

"Well, plaze yerself, alannah," said Biddy resignedly, "but 'tis kilt they'll be wid the cowld an' the lonesomeness."

"And Biddy," went on Anstace, with all the zeal of a young reformer, not understanding that it is sometimes well to introduce reforms gradually, and one at a time, "there is surely no need to have all this litter piled up here. Why, one can hardly turn round with the quantity of things collected in the kitchen."

"Och, darlin' dear, 'tis just for convaniency, that they'd be there for me to put me hand on whin I'd be in a throng of a hurry."

"But there are some things here which you could never want to put your hand on, whether you were in a hurry or not."

And Anstace, still holding up her dress to keep it from any possible contact with the grimy floor, stepped daintily across the kitchen and lifted the battered remnant of a basket without bottom or handle out of the rubbish heap.

"Now what use could that ever be to anyone?"

"Trath, yis, Miss Anstace, 'twill be jist iligant for lightin' the fires some marnin' whin the shticks is wantin'."

"Well then, Biddy, this won't light fires, and I don't know what else it could be good for;" and Anstace's next dive into the accumulated rubbish produced a rusty, lidless kettle, which she held up to view.

"Well, maybe no, Miss Anstace," admitted Biddy, "unless 'twud be for givin' the hens a dhrink out ov, for 'tis treminjous the crockery thim fowl does break. 'Twas but yisterday, whin I was runnin' twinty ways at a time to git the clanin' done an' all set to rights afore yous 'ud come, that I put their mate for them in the vegetable dish that was ould Miss Ansey's, an' I declare to ye, Miss Anstace, I hadn't it but jist set down out ov me hand than thim divils had it broke wid their fightin' an' their carryin' on, an' it more years in the house nor ye could count."

And with a tragic gesture Biddy pointed to some broken fragments lying amongst the ashes on the hearth, the rich colouring and quaint design upon them proclaiming that they were of rare old china. Before Anstace could attempt any further remonstrance, however, or suggest that in future the fowl should be given their food in less costly feeding-vessels, there was a shrill cry from Norah, who all this while had been goading the kittens into frenzy by trailing her handkerchief slowly before them, and flicking it suddenly high out of their reach just as they were in the very act of pouncing upon it.

"The dog! the dog!" she cried, with a shriek of laughter. "Look at the dog!"

The one-eyed collie, finding that no one was paying him any attention, had crept across the kitchen and in under the table, and was engaged in licking up the tempting sediment of grease which remained in the frying-pan in which the breakfast bacon had been cooked.

"Ye tory! ye thief o' the world!" screamed Biddy, turning round quickly and hurling the first missile which came to her hand—a battered tin candlestick as it chanced—at the offender, with so true an aim that he fled with a yelp of pain and terror, his tail between his legs, and was seen no more.

The speckled hen, startled by the sudden clatter, flew shrieking across the kitchen, her yellow brood scuttling after her; the chicken which had been pluming itself before the fire sought refuge upon the chimney-piece; the two kittens bounded into the recesses of the piled-up lumber, whence they peeped out in much alarm; the old cat alone refused to allow her sleepy dignity to be discomposed, and merely opened her other eye for a moment to see what the disturbance was about. Norah sat back on the floor and laughed till the tears ran down her face, and even Anstace, vexed though she was, could not help joining in her merriment. Judging, however, that no further remonstrances were likely to prove of much effect just then, she drew the reluctant Norah on to her feet and out of the kitchen, declaring that it was time they should get their boxes unpacked and the contents put away in their bedroom upstairs.

Anstace was a good deal disconcerted by the laughter with which Roderick received her account of her first visit to Biddy's domain. It was when they met again at their early dinner that she gave it to him, and it was chiefly the horror-stricken air with which she told of the discoveries she had made, and the condition of things which prevailed there, which diverted Roderick, but Anstace was provoked none the less. And when Norah, looking up from her mutton chop, said: "I suppose all Irish people keep their kitchens like that, Anstace, and the best we can do is to get used to Irish ways as fast as we can, then it will seem quite natural to us too;" she answered, with a sharpness very unusual to her: "My dear, you and Roderick can do as you please, but I must remind you that our mother was an Englishwoman, and we are as much English as Irish. For my own part I trust I shall always remain sufficiently English in my ideas not to find it natural that hens should lay in wine-coolers, and dogs lick the frying-pans clean."

And in her own mind the young mistress of Kilshane determined that her first act after taking over the reins of government should be to institute such a cleaning-down and clearing-out of the old house as it had probably never known since it was built.

In the afternoon the two girls started to make further explorations, and went through the long unused rooms upstairs, where the furniture was still standing exactly as it had stood in the days when the elder Anstace O'Brien had dwelt in the little lonely house upon the cliffs. The family lawyer had furnished Roderick with a huge bunch of rusty keys, and Norah and Anstace went about fitting them to the doors of cupboards and presses. The locks and hinges that had grown stiff with years of disuse creaked dismally as they yielded and disclosed to view long-hidden services of quaint old china, old-fashioned silver that bore the O'Brien crest and was worn by the handling of generations of dead and gone O'Briens, antiquated jewels in faded velvet-lined cases,—all covered thickly with dust that had filtered slowly in on them through cracks and crevices. There were filmy laces too, and embroideries, and richly-coloured Indian shawls, all carefully laid away in the bedroom that had been old Miss Anstace's, and smelling still of the lavender and sandal-wood that had been put amongst them to preserve them. It seemed almost like sacrilege to the two girls to be going about thus letting in the light of day on these hoards, the cherished possessions of the poor old woman whose life had been a living death for twelve years before she died.

Biddy had invited herself to assist in the researches, and each fresh store-place that was opened produced a torrent of exclamations and recollections from her.

"Troth, I mind them well, ivery fork and ivery spoon that's in it. Many's the time I've seen all the quality in the county sittin' down-stairs aitin' their dinner wid that silver an' off that chaney, an' Miss Ansey herself sittin' at the top of the table in her silks an' her lace, as grand as ye plaze, while me an' the other girls wud be peepin' in at the door to get a sight of the ladies' fine dresses. 'Twas always Miss Ansey we called her, for all that she'd the right to be Miss O'Brien, an' carriage an' demanour she had enough to fit a duchess. To see her sweepin' along wid her head in the air an' her silk gown a yard on the ground behind her! 'I must keep up my poseetion, Biddy,' says she to me times an' agin; 'sure any wan as marries an O'Brien looks to marry into wan o' the first families o' Clare, nor they'll not be disappinted by me,' says she. An' all the while her heart was aitin' itself oot wid sorra an' lonesomeness, an' miny's the hour I've seen her stannin' where ye're stannin' this minnit, Miss Anstace, starin' oot over the say as if that 'ud dhraw the man she was waitin' for back to her. But he niver come for all her watchin', an' at the last she tuk to goin' bansheein' about the cliffs, ballyowrin' and wringin' her hands till we was feared 'twud be throwin' herself over she'd be."

"Poor Cousin Ansey!" sighed Anstace; "and so they had to take her away from here and shut her up where she would be safe?"

"Yis indade, Miss Anstace. 'Twas yer own uncle, Mr. O'Brien of Moyross beyant, that fetched a gran' gintleman a' the way from Dublin to see her; an' between them they tuk an' carried her away, an' sure that was the last that any of us here iver seed of her. Thin yer uncle he come down, an' locked all up, an' give me the charge, an' not a key's bin turned nor a ha'porth stirred till this blessed day that yer own hands has done it—an' who'd have the betther right?"

"And have you and your husband lived here in Kilshane ever since old Cousin Ansey went mad and was taken away to Dublin?" asked Norah.

Biddy turned to regard her with amazement.

"Musha, what's come to the child? Husband, says she! Sorra wan o' me iver was married, Miss Norah, or iver will be nayther."

"But the man who lifted me off the car and carried me into the house last night, I thought he must be your husband. Who was he, then?"

"Och, that's jist Tom, me brither Tom, that was coachman to Miss Ansey, an' dhruv her in her own carriage—more be token the carriage is in the coach-house yit, only the mice—bad scran to thim!—has th' inside of it ate out an' desthroyed. He's livin' noo in his own house, that yez passed upon the road, if there'd been light to ha' seen it, an' his sivin orphins wid him—herself's been dead this twal'month past. Sorra tak ye, Lanty! What d'ye come stalin' into people's hooses, an' frightenin' the sinses out o' them, an' me spakin' about ye this very minnit?"

They had descended by this time from the upper regions to the pantry beside the kitchen, and Anstace had been opening the presses in the wall and bringing to view dusty hoards of glasses and decanters of the fashion of fifty years before. A slight noise behind them had made them turn to behold a red-headed, loutish-looking lad standing in the doorway, a string of fine rock-codling in his hand. With an awkward bow to the young ladies, he muttered something about having been at the fishing with his father, and thinking their honours might like a few fresh fish; and having deposited the codling on the flagstone at his feet, he lost no time in making off, without awaiting Anstace's thanks.

"Yis, that's Lanty, that's the ouldest of the sivin, an' not his ekal in the counthry for divvlement an' mischeeviousness," said Biddy, looking dispassionately after her nephew's retreating form. "He's for iver sthreelin' an' sthravagin' aboot i'stead o' doin' an honest day's work. Theer, if it's not foive o'clock as I'm a livin' woman, an' the hins, the craythers, niver fed yit!"

And away Biddy hurried.

Two or three days passed over very busily and very happily. Anstace was hard at work within doors and Roderick no less hard at work without, digging, pruning, clearing away the tangled overgrowth in the neglected garden, or else walking about the two or three fields which comprised the little domain of Kilshane, deep in consultation on farming matters with Tom Hogan, Biddy's brother, who, since those bygone days of state when he had driven Miss Ansey in her own carriage, had acted as steward, gardener, shepherd, and farm-labourer all in one to the little property.

They were halcyon days for Norah. No one had much leisure to attend to her, there were no lessons, no irksome school-room restraints; she was free to wander where she pleased, Roderick's prohibition against going near the cliffs being the only restriction laid upon her. From time to time she proffered her valuable services to her elder brother or sister, but her efforts to assist them in their labours were somewhat spasmodic, and in general she proved fully as much a hindrance as a help, so that Roderick and Anstace were generally glad to dismiss her to amuse herself as she could.

She had speedily made acquaintance with most of the dwellers in the cabins near at hand, welcomed wherever she went with Irish heartiness and good-will. She was on a specially friendly footing, however, with the Hogan family, and had soon come to know all the seven "orphins", from red-haired Lanty down to Kat, the two-year-old bare-legged baby, which spent its time for the most part seated on the door-step scooping water in a broken cup from the stagnant pool in front of the door. A very few days had demonstrated the impossibility of retaining Biddy as servant, indeed she herself had no wish to remain, declaring "she'd be kilt wid the clanin'" which Miss Anstace seemed to consider indispensable. She had departed, therefore, to the family residence of the Hogans, to keep house for her brother, carrying her cats, her hens, and her other belongings with her, and the orphan next in age to Lanty, a bashful, rosy-cheeked girl of whom Anstace hoped in time to make a neat little hand-maiden, had come to Kilshane in her stead.

It was quite wonderful, even by the end of the first week, how much had been effected towards making the little house upon the cliffs more home-like. Open windows and well-polished window-panes, fresh air and light let in everywhere, had done much; Anstace's taste and skill even more. Heavy and dusty hangings had been taken down and fresh muslin curtains put up in their place, bright chintz covers fashioned by Anstace's deft fingers concealed the faded upholstery of the chairs and couches in the little drawing-room. Some rare old china jars and bowls which had been discovered amongst Miss Ansey's belongings had been brought down from the hiding-places where they had been stowed away so long, and were disposed upon the old-fashioned cabinets and whatnots; and such books and photographs and other knick-knacks as they had brought from London were scattered here and there. Norah had borne her part in the decoration of the drawing-room, for it was she who had brought in all the spring-tide spoils—the purple violets and pale primroses, the delicate wood anemones, the silvery catkins and branches of larch just breaking into their first vivid green—which were set everywhere, on the tables, the chimney-piece, the window-sills, and gave grace and beauty to the little room.

It was perhaps no wonder that Anstace, lying back in her chair when Saturday evening came, said in a voice that was tired but triumphant:

"Well, I do think we may feel proud of our little home."

CHAPTER VI

COUSINS

Another week or two sped by, very happily and very busily. Most of the neighbouring families, though they all lived at considerable distances, had come to visit the O'Briens and to express their pleasure at seeing them established at Kilshane. But by those who were nearest to them both in kinship and propinquity no notice of their existence had been taken—no sign had come from Moyross Abbey of any desire for truce or reconciliation, and it seemed only too clear that Roderick had been right when he said that Nicholas O'Brien could not forgive his brother even in his grave for the wrong that he had done him.

The old rector of the church which stood on the cliff's midway between Moyross Abbey and Kilshane—a weather-beaten, gray building which seemed as though it had been specially built to withstand the wild Atlantic winds—Mr. Lynch, and his wife, had been the first to call, and they remained the O'Briens' chiefest friends. From them the new-comers learned that matters were not running altogether smoothly upon the Moyross property. New machinery had recently been introduced at the mine, the great undertaking which Mr. O'Brien had built up from its first commencement, and of which he was justly proud, and with the machinery had came a Scotch manager to assume the control, which Mr. O'Brien had hitherto kept in his own hands, but which was beginning to prove too heavy a burden to him. The new functionary had loudly expressed his scorn of the easy-going fashion of working which had prevailed hitherto, and his intention of introducing an entirely new system. The ire of the whole country side had been roused, and reprisals of a sort but too common in Ireland had followed: the new machinery had been broken, and a skull and cross-bones painted on the manager's hall-door.

"If Nicholas O'Brien were the man he was ten years ago, it would not have happened," Mr. Lynch said, with a shake of his head. "He understood the people and how to deal with them, but they've put his back up now, and he'll uphold M'Bain through thick and thin. A thoroughly determined man Nicholas O'Brien always was—there's no turning him aside when once his mind is made up—and M'Bain is another of the same sort. But if they're as tough as steel, the people are like tinder, and between them I shouldn't wonder if there was a big flare-up one of these days."

"Oh, Mr. Lynch, do tell us something about the Wyndhams who live at Moyross Abbey!" called out Norah, who was perched on the window sill, and had not understood much of the previous conversation. "They are a kind of cousins of ours, you know, and we have never even seen them; it is so funny."

"Cousins of yours? Of course they are," said the old clergyman briskly. "Their grandmother was Jess O'Brien, the eldest of the family. She married and went out to India while your father was in petticoats. I knew your father before he was the height of that," holding up his walking-stick for Norah's inspection, "and I'd have known you for his child anywhere: you've just got his eyes and the cock of his nose. As to the Wyndhams, Harry and Ella, why, they are a nice, pleasant-mannered pair of young people. I shouldn't wonder but there might be trouble in that quarter too. Your uncle has been drawing the rein too tight with the boy—just the mistake he made long ago with your father, Roderick. He thinks no will but his is to prevail, and he has made up his mind that Master Harry is to undertake the management of the mine some day; but I've a notion that that young gentleman has different views of life for himself. However, he's been sent off to some Austrian mining works to be trained for a couple of years, and we'll see what comes of it."

"It must be very lonely for Ella, poor child, living in that big house at Moyross with no other society than old Mr. O'Brien, and that good soul they call Brownie," said Mrs. Lynch, a very trim little old lady in the neatest of black silk mantles and bonnets. "She was the children's governess years ago, and came home with them from India after their mother died. She manages the servants and the housekeeping, and is quite wrapped up in Ella."

"She's as little like a brownie as anyone I ever saw," laughed the old rector. "Come along, my dear, it's time for old folks like us to be getting home. Miss Anstace, you and your brother and sister are to dine with us to-morrow after church—nonsense, we'll take no excuse! We're not new acquaintances to be paying calls and leaving our pasteboards on each other. Bless me, we're old friends! I boxed your father's ears over his Latin grammar forty years ago!"

And the kindly old pair trotted off together.

Anstace and Norah, and indeed Roderick too, had a great curiosity to see the relatives of whom they had heard so much and who were so closely connected with themselves, but there did not seem much likelihood of their desire being gratified. In the church the Moyross family occupied a pew in a recess of the chancel, where they were invisible to most of the congregation, and passed in and out by a side-door, and nowhere else was there much chance of their meeting.

The trio at Kilshane were at breakfast one morning when the post brought a letter to Roderick addressed in Manus's round schoolboy hand. Roderick opened it, and a look of some vexation gathered on his face.

"There is nothing wrong with Manus, I hope?" asked Anstace, pausing in her occupation of pouring out the tea.

"Not with Manus himself, but it is a most unfortunate business, and worse for other people than ourselves. Diphtheria has broken out at the school, and the doctor has ordered all the boys to be sent home at once."

Norah let her bread and butter fall, and jumped to her feet, clapping her hands.

"Then Manus will be coming home, coming here at once! How splendid!" she cried. "Oh, Roderick, don't sit with that terrible long face, as if it was a misfortune."

"It is certainly a misfortune for poor Dr. and Mrs. Ford, and for the boys who are ill," said Anstace. "Does Manus say whether any of the cases are serious?"

"No; the young rascal is so taken up with the idea of coming over here that he does not seem to have been able to think of anything else."

Roderick picked up Manus's letter, and read it through again with a frown.

"Really, Manus's writing is disgraceful, the lines are all up and down the paper. Surely a boy of twelve ought to know better than to spell 'diftheria' with an f, and 'hollidays' with two ll's. I must try and find time to give him some teaching while he is here, for I suppose we shall have him on our hands for three months at least."

"Oh, but Manus need not begin lessons at once. I'm sure after all the hard work he's had at school a little rest will be good for him," said Norah, with the funny old-fashioned manner she put on at times.

"I don't think Manus is likely to have worked hard enough to injure himself," said Roderick grimly; "it's about the last thing we need be afraid of."

"It is very unlucky this interruption coming just after Dr. Ford had written to you that Manus was beginning to settle down properly to his school work. However, we can only be thankful that he has not fallen ill himself," remarked Anstace. "Does he say what day he will be over?"

"He speaks of starting 'to-morrow', whatever day that may be," said Roderick, turning over the leaf. "I suppose as usual he has not dated his letter, so that we might know what he meant. Yes, he has though—'Monday!' Why, that's two days ago. The letter hasn't been posted in time, of course. Then in that case—"

"He must have started yesterday, and he'll be here to-day, this very, very day!" cried Norah, jumping from her seat and skipping round the table, almost beside herself with joy.

"My dear Norah, do sit down and finish your breakfast like a reasonable mortal," said Anstace. "I suppose she is right, Roderick, and Manus will arrive this evening. Someone must drive into Ballyfin to meet him. Will you go?"

Roderick shook his head.

"I have to go off with Tom after breakfast to arrange about letting the grazing of a couple of the fields for the summer, and there's that article for the Piccadilly besides, which must be finished to-night."

Roderick had inherited a considerable share of his father's talent as a writer, and his contributions to newspapers and periodicals promised in time to bring in material aid to the slender resources of the family.

"I don't think I can go either," said Anstace. "Mrs. Lynch is bringing Lady Louisa Butler over to tea this afternoon. She knew Father in old times, and wants to make our acquaintance."

"But there's not the least necessity for anyone to go to Ballyfin. I'll tell Connor, who drove us here the night we came, to meet Manus at the station; that's all that's needful."

"But I can go. Oh, Roderick, do let me drive in to meet Manus," cried Norah eagerly.

"Well, I suppose there is no reason why you should not," said her brother good-naturedly. "You won't tumble off the outside-car, I suppose?"

"Of course not. How can you be so silly?" returned Norah, drawing her little self up with much dignity.

"All right, I didn't mean to offend your ladyship. I'll tell Connor to be here with his car at three."

And Roderick left the room laughing.

Probably there was no prouder little girl in all Connaught than Norah that afternoon, as she drove from the door, sitting up very straight on one side of the car, her hands folded on the rug which Roderick had wrapped round her before starting. She and Connor, who was sole occupant of the other side, had become quite confidential before the ten miles' drive was accomplished. Connor had acquainted her with all his family affairs, and Norah had promised to pay a visit on the earliest opportunity, partly to his old mother, but more especially to the litter of a dozen little pigs which had been born only a few days before.

Very important Norah felt, too, as she went in and out of the two or three shops of which Ballyfin boasted, executing various small commissions with which Anstace had entrusted her. She had more than an hour in which to wander about the little country town, as Connor's horse required rest and a feed before commencing the homeward journey. And as Ballyfin did not possess very many attractions and objects of interest, she found herself at the station a full half-hour before there was any possibility of the train's arrival. A porter pointed it out obligingly to her at last, almost at vanishing point upon the track that stretched away with undeviating straightness through the flat bog-land. Norah watched its gradual approach, a prey to fears that after all it might not contain Manus, that he might have arrived late at Euston or been left behind somewhere on the journey. Her mind was relieved of this anxiety, however, long before the train reached the station, by seeing Manus's close-cropped, bullet head protruding from one of the windows. Norah ran to the end of the platform to meet the train, and then had to run back for her pains, keeping up with the carriage at the door of which Manus was standing. Almost before Manus had time to alight she had thrown her arms round his neck and was kissing him with all the fervour that was possible, seeing that she had to stand on tiptoe even to reach the point of his chin.

"There, hold on, don't squeeze the breath out of a fellow!" said Manus, striving to disengage himself from Norah's embraces, and looking round rather sheepishly to see if anyone was observing their meeting.

"Oh, Manus, and I haven't seen you for such an age, not since Christmas!" said Norah reproachfully, withdrawing her arms, but continuing to devour her brother with her eyes.

"You needn't make a gazabo of yourself all the same!" retorted Manus. "Come along, and let's see after my traps. I suppose you have some sort of shandrydan outside?"

And Manus sauntered towards the luggage-van with an easy man-of-the-world air which filled Norah with admiration, but accorded none too well, if the truth be told, with his broad, sunburnt face and squat schoolboy figure. As for Norah, she danced along by his side, for in her present ecstasy of delight it was quite impossible for her feet to pace along at an ordinary walk.

Once, however, that they were seated side by side on the car and driving over the bog road, Manus condescended to relax in some degree from his new-born dignity and to become more like his former self. He even permitted Norah to hold one of his hands under cover of the rug, but rebelled when in an outburst of affection she rubbed her cheek against his sleeve.

"The driver fellow is looking," he muttered ungraciously, jerking her off with his shoulder.

Connor, however, who occupied the other side of the car conjointly with the carpet-bag and large brown-paper parcel, which contained all Manus's worldly goods, and were by him somewhat grandly designated his "traps", kept his eyes stolidly fixed upon his horse's ears, and seemed to take no heed of the pair across the well. The drive home was a very silent one for him, for Norah and Manus had so much to tell each other that their tongues never once ceased wagging during the whole of the drive, and Connor did not seem called upon to take any part in the conversation. It was after dark when they drove up to Kilshane, and found Roderick and Anstace at the door waiting to welcome the traveller.

"This is a long way jollier than school," observed Manus half an hour later, when he was seated at the supper-table with Anstace smiling at him from behind the tea-urn, and Norah hovering round, herself unable to eat in her excitement, and her desire to pile his plate with dainties.

That brief remark brought balm to his little sister's heart, for Norah had been troubled by terrible misgivings that the brother who had come back to her would prove quite different from the Manus of old. She had feared that after a term of school-life and of the companionship of other boys he would look down upon her as being "only a girl"—an inferiority which Norah fully recognized and the irremediableness of which she most deeply deplored—and refuse her the place in his affections and his confidence which she had hitherto enjoyed.

The next day was wild and boisterous, with fierce rain squalls sweeping in from the Atlantic and beating on the window-panes. To venture on any distant expedition was therefore out of the question, and Norah had to content herself with showing off the house and garden to Manus, and taking him down to gaze over the cliffs into the wonderful clearness of the green depths below, where the great forests of sea-weed could be traced lying like purple shadows far beneath the water. Upon the following day, however, she proposed that he should accompany her upon her promised visit to old Mrs. Connor and the family of infant pigs, and Manus was graciously pleased to accede to the suggestion.

The Connors' abode was situated at the end of a long boreen or lane, very narrow and muddy, with high furze-topped banks on either side. It had originally been a tolerably well-built and comfortable cabin, but was much impaired by dirt and neglect. The thatched roof was fastened down by ropes elaborately interlaced, and weighted with stones to prevent its being swept bodily off in the wild Atlantic gales, and the approach to the house was by a causeway with a manure-heap on one hand and a pool of stagnant filth upon the other. Mrs. Connor, an old woman in a wondrously-quilled night-cap, came to the door on hearing steps and voices outside, and welcomed the children with great heartiness and good-will. It was quite unnecessary to express a wish to be taken to see the interesting family of pigs, since on entering the kitchen they and their grunting old mother were found to be in possession of the most comfortable place in front of the fire. Mrs. Connor, whilst edging them to one side with her foot to enable her to set chairs for the visitors, explained that this was necessitated by the cannibalistic tastes of the old sow, who had on one or two previous occasions demolished some of her offspring soon after their birth.

"It takes Thady an' me, turn an' turn, day an' night, to kape an eye on her, the ould villin; but glory be to goodness the craythers is growin' that fast they'll put it beyant her to ait them soon."

Then, whilst Norali eyed the unnatural parent with horror, Mrs. Connor proceeded to hang a griddle—a round iron plate—above the turf fire, and to arrange upon it a goodly supply of potato scones, in the kneading of which she had been engaged when interrupted by the children's arrival.

"Thady—that's the boy that dhruv ye, Miss Norah—'ull be fit to break his heart he wasn't here, but he's away to the bog to cut turf since cockshout, an' I was gettin' his tay ready agin he'd come home. Yez'll take bite an' sup now afore yez go."

Looking at the table on which the cakes had been prepared, and the smoky interior of the cabin, Norah had some qualms about accepting the proffered hospitality. She hardly saw her way to refusing it with politeness, however, and Manus manifestly was not troubled by any inconvenient fastidiousness, for he was sniffing the fragrant smell of the potato bread, as the old woman moved it to and fro and turned it in the griddle, with evident satisfaction. Norah thanked Mrs. Connor, therefore, with the best grace that she could, and having once overcome her scruples, was fain to admit that she had never tasted anything more delicious than potato scones buttered hot from the fire, and accompanied by draughts of new milk, the seasoning imparted by a previous walk in the sea-breezes not being omitted. It was with promises of paying another visit before long to see the progress of the little pink porkers that Manus and Norah took their leave at last.

They had reached the confines of Kilshane, and were discussing whether to go round in orderly fashion by the gate, or to attempt a short cut by scrambling through the hedge, when they heard the sound of horse hoofs coming full gallop down the road.

"Whoever that is, they're going a stunning pace," observed Manus.

The next instant a black pony, stretched out like a greyhound, came tearing round a bend in the road. The girl who rode it was sitting back in the saddle, pulling with all her might on the reins. Her hat was gone, and her fair hair had become loose and was flying in a cloud about her. As she flashed past them, Manus and Norah had an instant's glimpse of a white, set face and eyes wide with terror. Even to their inexperience the peril of the situation was manifest. A few hundred yards farther on, the road ran steeply downhill, turning sharply at the foot of the descent over a bridge which spanned a little stream. Going at its present pace, it would be little short of miraculous if the pony took that turn in safety.

"That girl will be killed, she will indeed!" gasped Norah, clutching her brother by the arm. "Oh, Manus, can't something be done?"

"Nothing whatever," said Manus, from whose ruddy face the colour had faded. "Cart ropes wouldn't stop that pony." Then in a tone of sudden relief: "Oh look, Norah, there's Roderick; he's rushing across the field! Oh, I say, I do hope he'll be in time."

Norah said nothing, she only tightened her hold on Manus's arm, and in silence both children strained their eyes on their brother as he raced at top speed towards the road. Would he reach it before the pony in its frantic gallop had passed him by? Another minute would bring it to the brow of the hill. There was a second or two of sickening suspense, then they saw Roderick vault over the gate of the field and almost in the same instant catch the pony by the bridle. He let himself be dragged along by it for a few paces, then with a sudden jerk brought it up short in its career. The terrified animal made an attempt to rear, but Roderick's hand was at its nostrils, squeezing them with an iron grip, and feeling itself mastered it dropped on its forefeet and stood still, panting and quivering all over.

"She's saved! Hooray! hooray, three cheers! Well done, Roderick!" cried Manus, beginning to run, and Norah ran too, keeping up with him as well as she could.

When they came up, the stranger was sitting in her saddle, deadly pale and trembling from head to foot. It was evidently only by a great effort that she succeeded in keeping back her tears. Roderick, somewhat out of breath, and hardly less pale, stood at the pony's head.

"You saved my life, I think," the girl said tremulously, as soon as she had regained sufficient self-control to speak; "I should have thrown myself off in another minute if you had not caught Sheila, I knew it was my only chance. I am very, very grateful to you."

"There is nothing to be grateful about," Roderick returned lightly. "It was most fortunate I was near enough to reach the road in time; anyone who had been where I was would have done just the same."

"You saved me all the same," the girl repeated; "and poor little Sheila, too, she must have been killed. Even if I had escaped, she never would have got over the bridge safely." And she leant forward to pat the pony's mane.

"The little brute hardly deserves so much commiseration after running away with you," said Roderick.

"Oh, but it was not Sheila's fault," the girl cried eagerly, "it was mine quite as much as hers. She has not been out of the stable for two or three days, and that made her fresh and fidgety; she is generally as quiet as a mouse. I was riding carelessly, not keeping a look-out as I ought to have done. A wheel-barrow which someone had left upside down on the road frightened her and made her shy, and before I knew what I was about she had got her head and was tearing down the road."

She stopped short with a shiver she could not repress.

"Don't think any more about it," Roderick said cheerily. "Our house is close by, and you must let me lead the pony there and give you into my sister's charge till you have recovered from the shock you have had."

"Oh, thank you, I must go home. Brownie—Miss Browne, I mean—would be so frightened if I did not come back at the right time; she is always nervous when I am out by myself, and she would be sure something dreadful had happened to me," and the stranger laid her hands on the reins as if she wished to take them into her own keeping again.

Roderick, however, held them fast.

"Something dreadful very nearly did happen," he said gravely, "and you are quite too much shaken to attempt riding anywhere at present. I can send a message to Miss Browne to assure her of your safety, and meanwhile you must rest at Kilshane."

"But—but," and the girl's eyes grew big with alarm, "you must be Mr. Roderick O'Brien."

This time Roderick could not forbear laughing.

"So I am, but I am not a very formidable personage notwithstanding."

"Oh, indeed, it is not that," and confusion and distress brought the colour back into her cheeks, "but I ought to tell you who I am; my name is Wyndham—Ella Wyndham—and I live at Moyross Abbey."

"In that case, Miss Wyndham," said Roderick courteously, but making no attempt to claim relationship, "the best arrangement will be to have a carriage sent for you from Moyross Abbey. You are really not fit to ride back, and I hope you will not mind waiting at our house till it comes. Manus, run up the road and see if you can find Miss Wyndham's hat."

Perhaps Ella was too shy to make any further resistance, perhaps in her secret soul she was not sorry that fate had willed that she should make acquaintance under their own roof with the kinsfolk from whom she had hitherto been kept apart. At any rate she offered no opposition when Roderick turned the pony's head towards Kilshane. He kept a careful hand on the bridle all the way to the house, though Mistress Sheila, who had had the fire taken out of herself very effectively by her wild race, walked along very soberly and evinced no inclination for any further pranks. With a thoughtfulness which Ella fully appreciated, he left her to herself to recover her composure in some degree, and chatted gaily with Norah as they walked along, questioning that small personage about her ramble and her visit to old Mrs. Connor.

Anstace was nailing up a rose-tree on the porch when the party arrived, but she took prompt possession of Ella, and conveyed her upstairs to the quiet of her own room, where she made her lie down upon the bed. Ella submitted very docilely; she was very young and evidently still accustomed to be looked upon and treated as a child. When, however, Anstace, having seen her comfortably settled, was about to leave the room, she stretched out imploring hands to detain her.

"Do stay with me," she pleaded, "and don't call me Miss Wyndham, it sounds so cold and distant. We are cousins, you know, though we have never seen each other before, and why should we not be friends, you and I?"

"Why not indeed?" said Anstace pleasantly; "that is, if you will do as you are told, and not talk or excite yourself, otherwise I shall have to be angry and scold you, as I do Norah."

"I don't think I should mind being scolded by you," returned Ella, looking up into Anstace's face. "Norah is your little sister, I suppose, and you are Anstace. I heard your brother call you so downstairs. It is such a pretty, quaint name, and it suits you so well. No, I will not talk any more if you will sit where I can see you."

And with a sigh of contentment Ella lay back amongst her pillows.

Roderick meanwhile had written a hasty note to Miss Browne at Moyross Abbey to tell her what had occurred. Pride forbade his thrusting himself in any way upon the notice of the uncle, who hitherto had not deigned to take any notice of his existence. A messenger to convey the note to Moyross Abbey was found in the person of Lanty Hogan, Biddy's red-headed nephew, who, since Manus's arrival at Kilshane, was generally to be found hanging about the back door or the out-offices.

Lanty had already fired Manus's imagination full by the accounts he gave of the breeding-places of the sea-birds upon the coast, well-nigh inaccessible spots all of them, where the gannets, the gulls, and the kittiwakes in thousands laid their eggs on narrow ledges high above the boiling surf—fastnesses which could only be scaled by the most experienced and most daring climbers.

Manus saw himself in fancy returning to school the possessor of a collection of birds' eggs which should make him the envy of every other boy there. Lanty threw out other hints, too, that were no less alluring, about the enormous trout which peopled a trout stream a couple of miles away, real "breedhauns" in Lanty's speech, who seemed acquainted with the exact haunts of each of these monsters of the finny tribe and with the fly that would infallibly land him in the angler's basket.

"He knows a good deal more about it than he has any business to do, I'll be bound, the poaching young rascal!" was Roderick's comment when some of these wondrous tales were repeated to him by Manus; but that did not cause Manus to take any less delight in Lanty's society.

Half an hour's rest had so far composed Ella's nerves that she would not allow Anstace to bring tea up to her as she proposed, but insisted on accompanying her down to the little drawing-room, where she was received with general acclamation. Roderick pulled the most luxurious chair which the room boasted of forward beside the tea-table for her, and Norah, who was always ready to strike up friendships upon the briefest acquaintance, established herself upon a footstool at her side, with her small black head on a level with the arm of Ella's chair and her eyes fixed admiringly upon her. Manus had returned triumphant from his search after Ella's hat, which he had found reposing in a pool by the roadside.

As he and Norah had already had their afternoon repast at Mrs. Connor's, and as not even Manus's powers, though prodigious in that direction, were equal to commencing a second meal after so short an interval, they were able to contribute even more than their usual share to the conversation, and their tongues ran on so persistently that Anstace asked Ella, laughing, if she had ever heard so much nonsense talked before, and Roderick proposed to banish them both summarily from the room.

"Oh, don't stop them, please don't!" Ella said earnestly, laying her arm round Norah's shoulders. "I like to listen to them. I wish I had a little sister like Norah to live with me at home. It's so quiet and so silent at Moyross since Harry—that's my brother—went away. Uncle Nicholas lives almost entirely in his own rooms, and there are only Brownie and I to sit together in the evenings."

She stopped short and flushed painfully, afraid that she had betrayed more than she had intended of her home life to these strangers. In truth, she had been contrasting the cosy, home-like air of the little drawing-room, shabby and faded though its furniture might be, with the chill stateliness of the great rooms at Moyross Abbey, where tables and chairs and ornaments were set out with the formality and precision which Miss Browne deemed correct.

Before another word could be said, the crunching of wheels was heard outside, and an open carriage, with a gray-haired lady as its solitary occupant, drew up at the door.

"That is Brownie; she has come for me herself. Oh, I do hope she has not been frightened about me!" exclaimed Ella, starting up anxiously.

Miss Browne on her part had alighted almost before the carriage had drawn up. She entered the house without any of the ordinary formalities of knocking or ringing, and came straight into the drawing-room. She was a tall, thin woman with a slight stoop, and light blue, near-sighted eyes which compelled her to wear glasses. She would have been a ludicrous figure had it not been for her manifest anxiety and distress, for her bonnet was put on backwards, and in her haste she had caught up a table-cover to put about her in place of a shawl.

"Oh, Ella, my darling child, then you are not so very badly hurt after all!" she exclaimed, seizing her by both hands and peering nervously into her face. "I was so afraid I had not been told the worst, and that you were seriously injured—or even killed."

"Brownie, dear, why will you always worry yourself for nothing?" Ella returned, smiling. "I am not the very least bit hurt, and you have not spoken to Miss O'Brien yet, and to Mr. O'Brien, who caught Sheila and stopped her."

"You must never ride her again, never. I should not have an easy moment if I knew you were on her back," declared poor Miss Browne vehemently.

She drew a long breath of relief notwithstanding, and her eye wandered round the room, taking in the paraphernalia of the tea-table, and the family group which her unceremonious entry had disturbed.

"Dear me! I think I did allow myself to be alarmed needlessly. I am always so nervous where dear Ella is concerned. How do you do, Miss O'Brien; we have not met before. How do you do, Mr. O'Brien. I am most obliged to you for your services to Ella."

It was all said very jerkily and awkwardly, for as poor Miss Browne's fears and anxieties subsided, she became painfully aware of the eccentricities of her attire, and of the open-eyed amazement with which Norah was regarding her, while Manus had only too evident difficulty in suppressing his laughter. Ella, too, looked annoyed, and made one or two furtive but vain attempts to pull the unlucky bonnet right. Miss Browne prided herself on her neatness and her habits of order, and to have appeared in such guise before strangers was therefore to her unspeakably mortifying.

"No, thank you, we cannot stay," in answer to Anstace's invitation to sit down and partake of tea. "We must not keep the horses standing, and Ella's uncle is coming from Dublin by the evening train, and will expect to find us at home. If you have finished your tea, dear, we had better start at once. I must thank you once again, Mr. O'Brien, for the assistance you rendered Ella this afternoon."

"It is quite unnecessary, I assure you," Roderick said rather loftily, as he escorted Miss Browne to the carriage. "I am very glad to have been of service to Miss Wyndham; my being at the spot was a mere accident."

Ella had lingered in the drawing-room to say good-bye to Anstace and Norah.

"Thank you so much for all your kindness to me," she said, holding out both her hands to Anstace. "It was so nice to be here with you all."

"Then I hope you will come and pay us another visit before very long," said Anstace cordially, as she kissed her. "We shall always be very glad to see you."

"Oh yes, you must come back very soon!" chimed in Norah, holding up her face in turn to be kissed; "and when you do, I will show you the bantam cock and hen which Mrs. Lynch gave me, and the cliffs, and the garden—oh, and lots of things besides!"

"I should like dearly to come and see you again," said Ella, but as she spoke she looked round the little room into which the westering sun was streaming, and wondered if she would be allowed to enter it again.

"Ella, my dear, make haste, I am waiting for you," came from the carriage, in which Miss Browne was already seated, and with a brief nod of farewell the girl hurried out.

CHAPTER VII

MOYROSS ABBEY

Miss Browne's feelings, as she drove homewards with Ella, were of a somewhat mixed nature. Roderick in his note had made as light of Ella's adventure, and of his own share in it, as possible; he had not the least wish to glorify himself, or to endeavour to pose as a hero in his uncle's eyes. None the less, had he been anyone else, Miss Browne would have been ready to fall at his feet in her gratitude to him for having rescued Ella from any position of peril. She had made up her mind from the first, however, that the O'Briens of Kilshane were an artful, designing family, who had come over to the little lonely house upon the cliffs specially to work their way into their uncle's good graces, and to oust Ella and her brother from the place which they held in his affections. Miss Browne, ordinarily the most simple-minded and unsuspicious of mortals, was almost inclined to imagine that it must have been by some crafty and deeply-laid plot that Ella's pony had been made to run away just at the gate of Kilshane, thereby forcing on an acquaintanceship between the two families.

Poor Miss Browne had been left an orphan without near relations, and had therefore become a governess at a very early age. She had taken charge of many children, and had been tossed to and fro in many directions before fate drifted her out to India to Mrs. Wyndham's bungalow at Dinapore upon the Ganges. For the first time in her lonely and unconsidered life she found herself treated with real kindliness and thought, for it was gentle Mrs. Wyndham's way to endeavour to make everyone dependent on her happy. Miss Browne repaid her employer's good-will by lavishing all her starved affections on her, and on the two fair-haired children who were in her charge. Before she had been two years with Mrs. Wyndham, the dread scourge cholera smote the cantonment. Captain Wyndham was amongst the first of its victims, and a few days later his young wife was stricken too. Miss Browne nursed her with unbounded and fearless devotion, and Mrs. Wyndham's last whisper to her was:

"You love the children, Brownie, and there is no one else. Promise me to stay with them always—promise."

Miss Browne had promised, and had kept her promise faithfully; indeed it might be doubted if their own mother could have devoted herself to the two children, gentle dreamy Ella and her handsome high-spirited brother, more unselfishly than she had done. She had come home with the two little orphans from India, and for their sakes she had dwelt for the past dozen years in what was to her a wilderness, shut in between the wild mountains and the wilder sea. For the grandeur of the scenery she had no appreciation, a trimly-kept suburban road would have been a far more pleasing prospect to her than the wide stretch of rugged coast that Moyross House looked out upon; and the Irish peasantry, with their guttural language, and their disregard of dirt and disorder, repelled her almost more than the dusky natives of India had done.

If Miss Browne had ever had any hopes or aspirations for herself, they were dead long ago. All her aims and ambitious projects were for the charges whom their dying mother had left to her care. From her first coming to Moyross Abbey she had made up her mind that Harry was to be his grand-uncle's heir, and succeed to the old heritage of the O'Briens. She was certain that Piers O'Brien had been a very worthless and undeserving person, and that his family were no better than himself. Indeed Miss Browne entertained but a poor opinion of Irish people in general, the only flattering exception she made being in favour of old Mr. O'Brien himself, and the commendation that she was wont to pass upon him to Ella was:

"Indeed, my dear, no one would ever imagine that your uncle was an Irishman."

During the past few months poor Miss Browne had been painfully aware that the fair castle in the air which she had built up was only too likely to fall in ruin. There had been serious differences between Harry Wyndham and his uncle, since the former had left school and come to live permanently at Moyross Abbey. The boy was hot-headed and wilful, and not inclined for either the steady work or the implicit obedience which Mr. O'Brien expected from him. As an outcome he had been despatched to Austria for a couple of years' training in practical mining.

"He's likely to come to his senses there," Mr. O'Brien had remarked grimly.

And now whilst Harry was absent, banished, and more or less in disgrace, here were these formidable rivals of the old name established close by, and eagerly on the watch, no doubt, to seize every advantage for themselves. Quite unconsciously to herself, Miss Browne's prejudice against the new-comers had been aggravated just a little by the mortifying recollection of the laughable figure she had cut in the drawing-room at Kilshane. Nature certainly had never intended her for a conspirator, but just as a timid moorhen will ruffle up her feathers and peck fiercely at the enemy who menaces her brood, so, for what she conceived to be the interests of her charges, poor Miss Browne was ready to plot and scheme, and accordingly, as the carriage turned in at the entrance gates of Moyross Abbey and bowled up the smoothly gravelled drive, she said impressively to Ella, "My dear, I would say as little as possible to your uncle of what took place this afternoon. Of course you were not to blame in any way; still, I am afraid he will not be pleased to hear that you have made the acquaintance of a family with whom he evidently wishes to have nothing to do."

"But that is such a pity," said Ella, looking at her with wide, innocent eyes, "and if he could only see them, and how nice they all are, I am sure he would wish to be friends. Their father was his own brother, and they are the only relations he has of his own name—Oh, Brownie, wouldn't it be delightful if we could persuade Uncle Nicholas to make up that dreadful old feud, you and I?"

Miss Browne gave an embarrassed cough; this was hardly according to her mind.

"One must be careful not to let one's self be influenced too much by outward appearances, dear," she said in judicial tones; "I am sure the young O'Briens were very pleasant and polite to you this afternoon, they would be anxious to make as good an impression as possible. Their father was not Mr. O'Brien's own brother, you must always remember, but only his step-brother, which is quite a different thing, and we all know how shamefully he behaved, after your good, kind uncle had educated him, and done everything for him. Indeed, he was a very extravagant, good-for-nothing person, from all I have ever heard; he wrote for magazines and newspapers and things of that sort." Miss Browne brought this forward as if it were an undoubted proof of an idle, ill-regulated life. "I should doubt if his children were much better than he," she went on; "they have no sooner inherited that little property of Kilshane than that young Mr. O'Brien throws up whatever employment he had in London, and comes over here, no doubt to set up as an Irish country gentleman, and lead the same sort of spendthrift, wasteful life that too many of his ancestors did."

"I am very glad he was on the road to-day, and not in London, or Sheila and I would have fared very badly," Ella answered, rather more sharply than was usual to her, and in her heart she thought that whatever the sins and follies of bygone generations of O'Briens might have been, Roderick and Anstace did not look as if they were likely to embark on any wild career of debt and dissipation.

The carriage swept round the last bend of the avenue and came in view of the house, a square erection, solidly built of gray stone. On one side, and separated only from the house by a stretch of smoothly shaven greensward, rose the old abbey from which Moyross had its name, with its broken arches and cloisters—grand even in its desolation. Behind it lay an old, old graveyard, with great beech-trees stretching their long branches out over moss-green tombstones. And at the back, where the path wound down through the little glen to the shore below, an opening in the trees allowed the blue plain of the sea to be seen, tracked with glistening streaks and wavy tide-marks.

The butler, who came down the steps to open the carriage door for the ladies, informed them that Mr. O'Brien had arrived from Dublin half an hour previously, and had asked for Miss Ella.

"I will go to him at once then, before I change my dress," Ella said, gathering up her riding habit. "I am not very untidy, am I, Brownie?"

"No, my love, you look very nice, as you always do," said Miss Browne, gazing at her with fond admiration. "But as I said before, be cautious, Ella, and don't make too much of the little occurrence this afternoon, or you may vex your uncle."

The poor lady would have liked to be more explicit, but she shrank from instilling any of her worldly motives, unselfish though they might be, into Ella's pure mind. As for the girl herself, no thought of the future, with its possibilities of gain or loss, had ever entered her head, and as she went swiftly towards the wing of the house in which Mr. O'Brien's rooms were situated, she could only marvel at Brownie's strange manner that day. Why! one of her most frequent complaints had been of the utter absence in the neighbourhood of Moyross of any suitable companionship for Ella, and Ella herself had often longed for a friend of her own age. Could she have a more winning one than Anstace O'Brien, with her sweet face and gentle manner; her own kinswoman too? Then there was her brother Roderick, who had saved her own life that day, and those two merry children—how delightful if they might all be on the easy, intimate footing which their relationship warranted, and why should these young O'Briens be held accountable for their father's sins and misdoings? Ella could only shake her head in perplexity, as she opened the door of her uncle's study.

Mr. O'Brien was sitting at his writing-table, opening the letters that had come for him during his three days' absence from home. He was a handsome, high-bred looking old man, with keen dark eyes, a hooked nose, and a firm, thin-lipped mouth. His hair and his eyebrows were both snowy-white, and his figure, that had been tall and erect, was somewhat stooped. He looked tired and dejected, too, as though the letters he was reading were not altogether pleasant, but he roused himself with eager anxiety as Ella came in.

"My dear child, I am very glad to see you; they told me something about an accident, but you seem none the worse."

"No more I am, Uncle Nicholas," Ella answered brightly. "I was a little frightened and shaken at the time, that was all. Sheila ran away with me near the top of the long hill beyond Kilshane gate."

Mr. O'Brien started; his superior knowledge made him understand the peril of the situation much more thoroughly than Miss Browne had done.

"And a nastier place for a runaway there is not in the whole county. It was a most providential escape. What stopped the pony?"

"Young Mr. O'Brien—Roderick O'Brien—was in the field close by, and he jumped out over the gate and caught Sheila by the head."

Mr. O'Brien did not speak for a moment or two.

"He seems to have displayed great promptitude," he said then, slowly. "The consequences might have been very serious if he had not been there. Well, what happened afterwards?"

"He made me go back with him to Kilshane, while he sent over here for the carriage, and I had tea there with them all."

Another pause, but Ella noticed how Mr. O'Brien's fingers were closing and unclosing on the paper-knife that lay before him.

"Yes, I heard they had come over," he said at length, speaking more to himself than to Ella. "They were not long in taking possession of poor Ansey's little place. And whom does the 'all' consist of?"

"Not very many," Ella said, trying to speak lightly, though she felt somewhat nervous, and Mr. O'Brien still continued to toy with the paper-knife without looking up at her as she stood beside him. "There is one grown-up sister and a boy and a little girl, besides Roderick O'Brien himself. They were all very nice and kind to me, but I liked Anstace, the elder sister, best. She is quite unlike the others, one would not take her for their sister at all; they are all dark, and the little girl has such merry blue eyes, full of fun and mischief. Miss O'Brien has very fair hair and gray eyes; she is not pretty exactly, but she has such a sweet face, and it lights up wonderfully when she talks and smiles."

She stopped abruptly as her eyes rested on a little water-colour sketch that hung over Mr. O'Brien's writing-table, the head of a young girl with fair hair, very smoothly banded down on either side of her face. It had often moved Ella's childish curiosity in former days, and Mr. O'Brien had always put her off with some evasive answer when she questioned him about it, but now she gave an eager exclamation.

"Why, Uncle Nicholas, that might be Anstace O'Brien herself, it is so like her! I knew her face reminded me of something, but I could not remember what it was. Is that a likeness of the old Miss O'Brien who died the other day, who left Kilshane to them?"

"No, Ella," Mr. O'Brien said quietly, as he turned back to his letters again. "That is not the portrait of any O'Brien."

Ella had no need to ask any more, she knew that the little picture was the face of the one woman whom Nicholas O'Brien had ever loved, and whom—though she had been nearly ten years in her grave—he had neither forgotten nor forgiven. She had intended to make a timid request that she might be allowed to keep up the acquaintanceship with her cousins which she had begun that day, but her courage failed her, as her uncle went on imperturbably reading and arranging his correspondence, and after a few moments' hesitation she stole away.

CHAPTER VIII

BALLINTAGGART CAVE

Some weeks passed over uneventfully. May was almost ended, and June was coming in with its cloudless skies and long, clear twilights. Poor Norah, during those days, had many secret pangs of grief and jealousy as she watched the growing friendship between Manus and Lanty Hogan. In London she and Manus had been the closest companions, sharing all each other's possessions and amusements, but now Norah was reluctantly driven to perceive that her company no longer sufficed to content Manus, and that she could not hope to compete against Lanty's greater attractions. There were few mornings indeed on which Lanty's shock head did not make its appearance at the back door soon after breakfast, and then it would be:

"Sure now, 'tis a grand marnin' for the fishin', Masther Manus, afther the rain, an' there'll be a great rise on the trout intirely. 'Deed now, I wudn't wondher but we'd be gettin' the full o' the basket."

Or else:

"Glory be to goodness, Masther Manus, there's a schull o' mackarel in the bay, the say's shtiff wid 'em, it's jostlin' one another out o' the wather they is, an' whin we've had our divarsion wid thim theer boys, we might have a thry for a few cormorants' eggs, if yer honour had a mind for't. The say's that calm, the coracle wud float us in amongst the rocks as aisy as if 'twas a duck settin' on a horse-pond."

Norah shed a few tears in secret sometimes when she had watched her brother and his ally go off on one of these expeditions, whilst she was left behind to find what amusement she could for herself. She took herself severely to task, like a loyal little soul as she was, for grudging Manus any pleasure merely because she could have no part in it; and when Manus came home at night, bringing back his trophies and brimming over with accounts of his own and Lanty's adventures, Norah was nearly as proud and delighted as he was himself. Yet that did not hinder her from experiencing the same feelings of loneliness and desertion the next time Manus and Lanty went off fishing or sailing together.

Anstace had her doubts as to whether Lanty's constant companionship was likely to be of benefit to Manus. She spoke to Roderick on the subject, but he laughed her fears away.

"You don't expect to keep a boy of Manus's age about the house like a tame cat, do you? Nonsense, let him go about with that red-headed young scamp as much as he likes, and learn to row and fish and climb the rocks. I only wish I'd had the same chance when I was his age, I'd be twice the man that I am now."

A glance of loving admiration from Anstace said plainly that in her estimation Roderick was already perfect, and could not possibly have been improved upon. Roderick was her special brother, as Manus was Norah's. Concerning Lanty, however, she remained of the same opinion as before, though she attempted no further remonstrance.

One bright, sunny afternoon Lanty appeared at the kitchen door with an air of unusual mystery.

"Whisht, Masther Manus," he said, "there's bin spring tides this couple o' days past, an' the say's that smooth as ye'd not see't twiced in the twal' month, no, nor maybe wanst. If you an' me was to be havin' that little adventure wid the sales in Ballintaggart Cave, that we've talked of, 'twud be the day for't an' no mistake."

Manus hesitated. "I told Mr. Roderick about it, Lanty, and he said he'd come with us, whatever day we went, with his gun and try a shot. He didn't think it would be safe for you and me to tackle the seals by ourselves, with nothing but clubs."

"'Tis himself that knows, that niver was next nor nigh a sale before," Lanty muttered under his breath. Aloud he said, "An' wudn't his honour come wid us this day, it's no finer one we'll be gettin'?"

"He and Miss Anstace have driven into Ballyfin, you see, and they won't be home till evening."

"Faix thin, that's the chanst for us," said Lanty, with a knowing look. "We'll take the gun an' be off wid ourselves, unbeknownst. His honour can't say as we wasn't well armed, anyways, an' if we get killin' of a sale, I'll be bound it's not displazed he'll be, but quite contrary."

Manus still hesitated; he had some qualms as to whether he ought to venture on the enterprise in Roderick's absence, and without his leave. But a visit to Ballintaggart Cave, famed as the resort of seals, had been one of the most alluring schemes which Lanty had held out to him. Manus knew that the cave could only be visited on rare occasions—at extreme low tide, and only then when the state of the weather permitted—so that few even of the fishermen upon the coast had ever entered it, and a chance once lost might not recur again.

"All right, I'll come," he said briefly, and Lanty intimated his satisfaction by a nod.

"We'll have no need to be burnin' daylight over the job," he said. "Wanst the tide turns 'twill be hurry out an' no mistake. If ye'll be at Portkerin in half an hour, Masther Manus, wid the gun, I'll meet ye there wid the oars an' all else we'll be needin'."

Neither Lanty nor Manus had any idea that there had been a listener to their colloquy. The dairy window was close to where they stood, screened and overshadowed by a clump of tall shrubs that grew outside it, and Norah had been standing just within. She had had no intention of playing eavesdropper, but it had never occurred to her that Manus and Lanty could have anything to say to each other which it was not open to all the rest of the family to listen to. When they separated, however, and she heard Lanty's footsteps dying away outside, whilst Manus ran whistling into the house and upstairs, a sudden wild desire took possession of her. She too had heard of the wondrous, seal-tenanted cave. Why should not she be one of the party about to visit it? If she were to beg Manus to take her with him she would only meet with a contemptuous refusal, she knew that well enough; but if she were down upon the shore when they were starting, perhaps she might prevail upon them to let her go too. Deep down in Norah's heart, perhaps, besides her desire to see the cave, there was the thought that, if she were to prove herself a competent comrade upon the present occasion, Manus might not disdain her company occasionally in the future on his fishing and boating excursions. Poor Norah's aspirations were very humble; all she desired was to accompany Manus, much as a faithful dog accompanies his master, to watch him whilst he fished, or sit in the boat which he rowed, and she hoped to be able to convince him that the mere fact of being a girl did not of necessity disqualify her from such lowly participation in his pursuits.

She knew that Lanty kept his boat at Portkerin, a little cove about half a mile away, and having made her escape out of the house unseen, Norah raced thither at flying speed. A break-neck track, hardly to be called a path, trodden only by the feet of the fisherfolk, led down from the cliffs to the strip of sandy beach below, on which two or three coracles were lying, keel upwards, well above high-water mark.

When Manus and Lanty came down the track together half an hour later—Manus walking first, and feeling himself of no small consequence with Roderick's gun over his shoulder and a well-filled cartridge-pouch slung round him—their astonishment was great at finding Norah in the cove before them, a solitary little figure sitting on a block of gray stone, where the sand and the bent—the coarse sea-grass—met.

"Hullo, Norah, whatever are you doing here, sitting by yourself like a thingummy in the wilderness?" was Manus's greeting.

Norah sprang to her feet, breathlessly eager.

"I want to go to Ballintaggart Cave with you," she cried. "I heard you and Lanty settling to go, Manus; I was behind you in the dairy, and I ran all the way to be here before you. Do let me come!"

"Rubbish!" said Manus loftily. "Do you suppose you're fit to go after seals? A fine funk you'd be in when it came to going into the cave, and you'd scream if the gun were fired."

"I should not," Norah retorted indignantly. "I was standing close to Roderick when he shot a magpie the other day, and I didn't scream; I didn't even put my fingers in my ears, and I don't mind going into dark places either."

"An' why shouldn't she come if she's minded for't, the darlin' young leddy?" broke in Lanty. "Afeard? Troth, not she, an' her an O'Brien born! Yis, come along, Miss Norah, an' I'll take care of ye, niver fear."

Norah repaid his championship of her cause by a look of the most rapturous gratitude. Lanty hoisted the coracle on to his back, and started off towards the sea with it, looking to the two children, as they followed him, very much like a gigantic black beetle reared upon its hind-legs. Norah essayed to make herself useful by bringing the oars, which Lanty had been obliged to lay down, along with her, but as she carried them awkwardly, crosswise in her arms, not sailor-fashion over her shoulder, she provoked some uncomplimentary remarks about the "butter-fingeredness" of girls from Manus, who stalked airily along, only carrying the gun. Manus, to say the truth, was in a somewhat ungracious mood, for it seemed to him that this visit to the seals' cave would not appear at all as tremendous a feat to have achieved if it became known that his younger sister had accompanied him. However, by the time the coracle was launched, and they were floating out upon the deep, green water, his ill-humour had evaporated, and he was laughing and chatting gaily with Lanty.

There were only seats for the two rowers in the frail little craft. Norah had to sit down flat in the stern, with her feet straight out in front of her, and her head not far above the gunwale. At first she could not help feeling some internal tremors as the coracle skimmed the sea, its very buoyancy, as it topped the waves and slid down into the hollows between them, giving it a peculiar dancing motion which was painfully suggestive of instability. It was somewhat alarming, too, to look at the tarred canvas stretched over the rude wooden framework, and to reflect that it was all that separated her from the deep sea all round, and that the smallest injury, a pin-prick even, would bring the salt water gurgling in. However, after a few minutes, finding that the coracle, bob as it might upon the waves, showed no inclination to upset, Norah's fears subsided, and she even began to enjoy the lapping of the wavelets so close beside her, and to gaze up in awe at the black cliffs that towered above their heads, and which looked so much loftier from below than when they were viewed from the top.

They hed three miles to row to the cave of Ballintaggart, and it took them the best part of an hour to accomplish it. They passed Moyross Abbey on the way, with its little glen wooded to the water's edge, and the house standing high on the cliff above. A little farther on Lanty pointed out to Norah the ironwork pier which Mr. O'Brien had constructed years before for the shipping of the ore from his mine. It jutted out into the sea, protected from the great Atlantic rollers by a long wall of rock, which seemed as though it had been specially designed by nature for a breakwater. A zigzag track had been cut out of the face of the cliff, and the trollies ran down it to discharge their loads into the holds of the ships lying at the pier below.

No ship was in waiting there now, and an ugly scowl came upon Lanty's face as he looked over at the scarped rocks and the slender framework of the pier.

"The curse o' the crows on M'Bain, an' the notions he's puttin' in th' ould masther's head," he muttered. "'Tis a cliver pair they thinks themselves, but maybe the boys might larn them that they was cliverer yet."

Norah remembered that she had overheard Roderick speaking very gravely to Anstace a few days ago about the disagreement between Mr. O'Brien and the miners, concerning the innovations introduced by the new manager. "I fear there will be bad work before all is over," he had said. No questioning on her part or Manus's could elicit anything more from Lanty, however.

"'Twasn't manin' anythin' in partic'lar he was, but just a manner o' spakin'!" he declared, and relapsed into a dogged silence.

Ballintaggart Cave, which they reached at length, was situated at the end of a narrow inlet, a fissure in the cliffs, guarded by a ridge of rocks which showed above the water like a row of jagged teeth, and round which the sea swirled and foamed. It required extreme care to guide the coracle through the narrow passage, for a touch from the rocks on either hand would have ripped the canvas open as with a knife. Once within the reef, however, they floated in calm water in a tiny natural harbour. Before them was a low, dark opening—the entrance to the cave—which was generally covered by the sea, preventing any access to the interior. Now, however, the sea had receded sufficiently to leave bare not only the mouth of the cave, but also a narrow strip of firm, white sand, which sloped to the water's edge.

Lanty leaped overboard, and dragged the coracle up this little strand by main force, lifting Norah out carefully afterwards. He stooped and examined the sand, and pointed with much exultation to tracks that led upwards into the darkness of the cave.

"Thim theer boys is at home, sure enough," he whispered. "'Twill be a poor thing an' we don't give an account o' wan or two o' thim. The tide's flowin' too," he went on, looking critically at the margin of the sand. "We'll need to hurry ourselves an' we wudn't be wantin' to swim out."

The preparations for the adventure were speedily made. Lanty produced a torch made of pieces of split bog-wood tied together and saturated with inflammable oil, and a few chips besides, similarly soaked, which he stuck in his hat, and signed to Manus to stick into his. Then, still in silence, he placed two cartridges in the breech of Manus's gun and handed it back to him.

"Kape close to me, an' don't fire till I give the word," he whispered. "Miss Norah, will ye shtop out here an' wait for us while we go in?"

But no, Norah was determined to prove her courage and go through with the adventure to the bitter end. Perhaps, if the truth had been told, she was not very willing to be left alone on that narrow strip of sand between the deep sea and the lofty cliffs that towered sheer above her. She preferred to face even the darkness of the cave, and the possibility of a rush of angry seals, so that she had at least living companionship. None the less, however, her heart beat thick and fast as she followed Lanty and Manus up to the low archway which gave access to the seals' retreat.

Lanty went first, the blazing torch in his left hand, a short bludgeon, loaded at the end with lead, in his right. There was a yard or two of slimy passage and then the cave opened out into an underground chamber of considerable extent, floored with the same white sand that composed the strand outside. Lanty stooped and examined it closely with his torch. The tracks were still visible, leading upwards into the innermost recesses of the cave. Without speaking a word he pushed Norah back till she stood in a sort of recess just within the arch by which they had entered, and lighting one of the bog-wood chips that adorned his own hat, he stuck it in hers.

"Stand ye theer, Miss Norah, an' don't stir a ha'porth," lie whispered, with his mouth close to her ear. "'Tis the doore they'll make for, an' ye're safe out o' their road. Masther Manus an' me we'll folly on."

Norah stood still as she was bidden, and watched the light of Lanty's torch growing gradually more and more distant till it showed only like a twinkling star far up within the cavern. A moment later it was gone altogether, and Norah was left alone, the strange candle in her hat throwing a feeble radiance on the yellow sea-weed that clothed the rock beside her, and on the sand at her feet. She could have screamed aloud, merely for the relief of hearing her own voice in the silence that surrounded her, but the fear of incurring Manus's contempt kept her from uttering a sound, and she stood motionless, clutching the long tangles of sea-weed in her hands as if even their cold and clammy touch gave a certain sense of comfort and support.

Lanty and Manus meanwhile were making their way slowly and with much difficulty up into the interior of the cave. The firm, white sand with which it was floored at its mouth soon gave place to rocky debris and great boulders, over which they had to clamber, as best they could, by the uncertain light of the torch. As they proceeded, the cave gradually narrowed till it formed a mere passage a hundred yards or more in length, and so low that they had to bend nearly double to avoid striking their heads against the roof. It was necessary to advance with extreme caution here, since they might at any moment encounter a charge of infuriated seals, for seals, though in general most peaceful and inoffensive animals, yet become savage if they are brought to bay.

The passage opened out, as Lanty, who had visited the cave once before, knew, into a circular rocky chamber known as the "Seals' Parlour", and here at last they found their quarry. A large male seal, but fortunately for them only one, the rest of the herd having made their way out again before their visit, was lying at his ease upon a slab of rock. He gazed for a moment with a calm, sage air of wonderment at his unexpected and unwelcome visitors, then with a heavy flop he slipped from his couch and made, with an awkward, shuffling gait, for the passage they had just come by, the only way of escape to the sea.

"Fire, Masther Manus, fire!" shouted Lanty, and Manus, bringing his gun up to his shoulder and aiming as well as his excitement would permit, pulled the trigger. There was a flash, a deafening bang and cloud of smoke, and before the noise had died away the seal charged straight for Manus, between whose legs it sought to pass. Manus was swept off his feet by the rush, and fell right before the seal, which gripped him fiercely by the arm as he lay.

So close were boy and animal together that it was impossible to strike at one without risk of injuring the other. Lanty, all the same, seeing the extremity of Manus's danger, whirled his club round his head and brought it down with such terrific force that the seal rolled, over, dead, with its skull shattered like an egg-shell. Manus scrambled to his feet again, hugely frightened but unhurt; the seal happily had only caught the sleeve of his jacket, but the long rent which its tusks had made showed plainly what the result would have been if they had closed upon the flesh of his arm.

"Glory be to goodness, Masther Manus, but that might ha' been the mischief's own job!" panted Lanty, breathless between terror and the exertion that he had just made; "but sure what matther, so that the ould ruffin hasn't ye desthroyed."

"Oh, I'm all right!" said Manus proudly, beginning to feel himself something of a hero as he looked at his fallen foe. "All the same I should have been in Queer Street only for you, Lanty. And now, however are we going to get the brute along?"

This, indeed, seemed a task not very easy to accomplish, for the seal was nearly as heavy as a well-grown sheep, and considerably longer, whilst its slippery, glossy hide made it extremely difficult to catch hold of. Lanty, however, giving the torch to Manus, went vigorously to work to convey it back over the rough road by which they had come, alternately dragging and shoving the heavy carcass over the rocks which impeded their course.

To Norah, meanwhile, the leaden moments had seemed like hours as they crawled along, and she waited vainly to hear the sound of voices or catch a glimmer of the returning torch. All sorts of horrible fancies began to crowd into her brain. What if Manus and Lanty had encountered a whole host of furious seals or even more ferocious sea-monsters—for who could tell what terrible shapes and creatures might dwell far up in the inmost recesses of the cave? They might be lying wounded or dying somewhere far underground, where no one had ever penetrated before, or perhaps they had lost their way in those subterranean windings and passages, and were vainly trying to retrace their steps. What if she were to be left there whilst the tide came slowly creeping up over the strip of sand outside, and closed the arch by which they had entered, prisoning her and the others within!

With trembling hands Norah groped upwards. The rock was covered with sea-weed far above her head, as far as she could reach. To that height, then, the tide must rise when it was at its fullest, and Norah, in her terror at making this discovery, would have screamed aloud, forgetful of Manus's disdain, for already she pictured herself shut in in the dark cave and drowning inch by inch as the water rose slowly around her.

An iron grip, however, seemed to be upon her throat, compressing it and preventing her from uttering a sound. It was an unreasoning panic after all, begotten of the darkness and the solitude, since the way of escape was at any rate still open, and Lanty's coracle floated safely in the little basin outside, and it was ended in another minute by a sharp ringing sound, the shot fired by Manus in the Seals' Parlour, which pealed and reverberated from rock to rock till the cavern seemed alive with echoes.

A pause followed, during which Norah held her breath to listen, and then there came a shout, very faint and far away indeed, but none the less cheering and reassuring, especially as it was followed by another and another, for Manus, now that the necessity for silence and caution was at an end, was endeavouring, by a series of joyous halloos, to apprise her of their whereabouts and the victory which they had achieved. Manus and Lanty were alive then, they were coming back to her, and Norah all at once became ashamed of her foolish fears of a minute or two before, and realized that after all she could not have been left so very long by herself.

She had to wait a considerable time longer, however, before the first gleam of the torch reappeared in view; but when it did, rather than bear the suspense any longer, she started off to meet her brother and his companion, stumbling as best she could in the darkness over the fallen rocks and boulders, and guided by the lights which were growing larger and more distinct every moment.

"Hullo, so there you are!" cried Manus jubilantly. "We've got something to show you that'll make you open your eyes. Look here, what do you think of that?"

And he held the torch aloft to let its light fall on the dead seal with its long tusks and dark velvety hide.

Norah instinctively shrank from contact with the slimy carcass, which emitted a strong and by no means agreeable odour, and contented herself with gazing at it with awe and admiration from a respectful distance.

"Did you shoot it?" she enquired of her brother.

"Well, no," Manus admitted. "I fired at him, but I'm not sure that I hit him. I didn't kill him at any rate, for he made for me and knocked me over. I'd have been done for if Lanty hadn't come down on him with his club. There, that's something like a whack!"

And Manus pointed to the seal's battered skull.

"Oh, Manus, he might have killed you!" said Norah, horror-stricken.

"Well, he might, but you see he didn't; he only tore my coat," Manus returned philosophically, displaying the jagged rent which the seal's tusks had made.

In his secret soul he felt himself no small hero at bearing off such traces of the conflict, and was already figuring to himself with much pride how high this adventure would raise him in the estimation of the other boys on his return to school. Bodkin Major, who came from Galway, and hunted in the Christmas holidays, had hitherto been regarded as the Nimrod of the school, and a fox's brush, which had been presented to him for keeping up with special gallantry during one most notable run, had been the envy and admiration of all his school-fellows. But Manus felt, with much inward elation, that beside the slaughter of the seal deep in the bowels of the rocks, even Bodkin Major's fox-hunting exploits would fade into nothingness.

The wavelets were lapping almost up to the mouth of the cave when they emerged from under the low arch, winking and blinking as their eyes once more encountered the full light of day. Manus, who had been torch-bearer on the return journey, tossed the bog-wood torch, which had burnt down almost to the handgrip, hissing into the sea, whilst Lanty, not without considerable difficulty, hoisted the seal into the coracle.

"Bedad, Miss Norah," said the latter, when they had taken their seats in the canvas-covered bark once more, and he was shoving off with his oar, "ye've bate the whoule world out. Sure ye're the first leddy that iver wint sale-huntin' in Ballintaggart Cave, an' 'tis like ye'll be the last."

CHAPTER IX

THE GHOST IN THE MONK'S WALK

The row home proved to be a long and toilsome one. The dead seal in the bottom of the coracle added no little to its weight, and the wind, which had freshened considerably whilst they were in the cave, was full in their teeth. Added to this, both Lanty and Manus were tired after their exertions, and Norah, who tried taking an oar once or twice to relieve her brother, did not prove a very efficient aid, as indeed could hardly be expected of her, seeing that it was the first time that she had handled that implement of navigation. Their progress accordingly was but slow, and the sun had sunk into the sea, leaving a wondrous rose-red glow behind it, before they rounded Drinane Head, the great black promontory which forms one of the extremities of the bay within which both Moyross and Kilshane lay. Norah was beginning to speculate rather uncomfortably as to whether Roderick and Anstace were likely to have got back from Ballyfin yet, and what they would think of Manus's and her own prolonged absence, when a sudden hail came across the water from the shadows that were beginning to gather under the cliffs, and the next moment a large boat, pulled by four rowers, shot out of the gloom and lay-to beside them.

A most animated and voluble colloquy took place between Lanty and its crew, but as it was carried on wholly in Irish it was, of course, quite unintelligible to the children. However, it was plain from the manner in which Lanty pointed to the dead seal and gesticulated, that he was giving them a graphic account of the slaughter in the cave, and the men, catching hold of the gunwale of the coracle, peered over at the slain sea-monster and evinced their astonishment and admiration by uncouth and guttural exclamations. The steersman, a wild-looking, red-bearded man, doffed his battered head-gear to Norah and Manus, saying in English:

"'Tis meself an' ivery mother's son here is proud an' glad to see yer honours this day. No need to be tellin' that ye come of the ould fightin' O'Briens, for 'tis their sperrit that's in yez both, young masther an' little darlin' miss. An' I say," and here he raised his voice and waved his hat, "God's blessin' on Moyross Abbey, an' on the blue sky over it, an' on thim that should be in it an' will be there yit some day, plaze God."

After this, however, the conversation relapsed into Irish, and now it was the men in the other boat who were becoming vociferous, and were apparently, as far as Norah and Manus could gather from their gestures, urging something upon Lanty which he, with a glance towards the children, seemed to raise objection to. Further vehement utterances on the part of the strangers followed and became more rapid and excited as Lanty still seemed to hold back; hands were pointed towards the cave below Moyross Abbey and then back towards the great headland that reared its heather-covered summit behind them.

"Thau," Lanty called out at last, in evident consent, for "thau", as Norah and Manus had both already learnt, signifies "Yes" in Irish, and the strangers, satisfied as it would appear, dipped their oars once more and speedily disappeared from sight.

The glow had almost faded away by this time, only a few gold and purple cloudlets still caught the light of the sun and marked where it had gone down. Norah shivered, everything seemed to have become chilly and gray all of a sudden.

"Sure 'twon't be long now till we have ye ashore, Miss Norah," Lanty said encouragingly. "I was thinkin', Masther Manus," he went on, turning his head to address Manus, who was pulling the bow oar, "that 'tis hard set we'd be to pull to Portkerin an' the wind blowin' us back ivery shtroke. If we was to put in at Moyross, it's just there close forenenst, two good miles nearer, we cud run the coracle in handy, an' you an' Miss Norah wud be home in no time at all."

Neither Manus nor Norah relished this suggestion. They were both sure that Roderick would be very seriously annoyed if he heard that they had come home through the Moyross demesne, seeing that their uncle had not so far condescended to take the least notice of their existence, and the path from the shore, as they had heard, led past the abbey ruins and in front of the house.

"And what matther for that?" returned Lanty. "Hasn't ivery sowl that plazed gone up an' down the Monk's Walk since there was monks in it, aye, an' before too; an' who'd have the betther right to set foot in Moyross nor yerself an' Miss Norah?"

Manus attempted some further remonstrance, but in vain. It was evident that Lanty was determined to effect a landing in the little cove below Moyross Abbey and nowhere else.

"'Tisn't like that Miss Ella or ould Browne"—so he disrespectfully termed the controller of the Moyross household—"wud be trapezin' about in the black night, an' if the masther's never set his eyes on you nor on Miss Norah sure he wudn't know ye if he was to meet ye itself."

And in a few minutes more the sand was grating beneath the keel of the coracle as it ran in upon the beach.

Lanty jumped overboard and hauled the coracle up out of the water, lifting Norah out, and then dislodging the seal by the summary method of turning the boat over and shooting the slain monster out upon the strand. Within the cove all was shadow, but behind them the water still reflected the clear light of the sky, and the little waves, as they broke at their feet, were bright with a strange phosphoric radiance.

With Manus's aid Lanty dragged the body of the seal up above high-water mark, wedging it in securely among some stones. He said a few words low and energetically to Manus, and before Norah well understood what he was about, he had hurried down to the water's edge again. Launching his tiny craft once more he pushed off, and pulled vigorously in the direction from which they had just come, his track marked by phosphoric flashes each time the oars were dipped in the sea.

"Manus, he surely hasn't gone and left us here alone!" exclaimed Norah, as she looked with alarm at the dark wood which came down almost to the shore, and up through which they had to make their way.

"Well, and what does it matter if he has? He says the path is as plain as a pikestaff, we can't possibly mistake it, and when we get up above we'll come out upon the avenue."

"It's so dark in there," faltered Norah, as she reluctantly followed Manus towards the shade of the overhanging trees, "and you know, Manus, they say—at least Bride does" (Bride was Lanty's sister, the little handmaiden who had been imported into Kilshane to take Biddy's place)—"that the Black Monk goes up and down here sometimes at night. He was a wicked monk who lived long ago, and he did such dreadful things that he can't stay in his grave near the old abbey—people have seen him, they have really, Manus."

"And you believed all that stuff?" Manus returned derisively. "Well, I've got my gun and a cartridge in it, and if any Mr. Ghosts come bothering, they'll get the worst of it, I can tell them."

Perhaps, in spite of his bold words Manus did feel a slight nervous tremor as he and Norah plunged into the thick darkness under the trees, and began slowly to mount the narrow path that wound up through the little glen. Manus went first, his gun over his shoulder, stumbling up the uneven track as best he could, and Norah followed as close to him as the steepness of the path would allow. Upwards and upwards they went, Manus sometimes feeling his way with his hand up the rocky steps of which Roderick had spoken, or else edging carefully, foot by foot, along the rough path.

"I say, Norah, there hasn't been much to be afraid of after all," observed Manus in his loud, cheerful voice. "Your friend, the Black Monk, doesn't seem to be on the prowl to-night, perhaps—"

The words died upon his lips, for at that moment they turned the corner of the last zigzag and came in sight of the abbey ruins, their outline clearly discernible against the pale sky. Before them on the path, one arm uplifted threateningly, as if to warn them back, stood a tall white figure, taller, as it seemed to Norah and Manus, than any living man could be. They both came to a dead halt, and stood as though they had been rooted to the ground, staring with dilated eyes at the motionless form which barred their way. Norah's heart was sending the blood up in suffocating thuds into her throat, she caught Manus's jacket, and clung to it with the grasp of despair.

Manus's courage did not forsake him altogether; perhaps the knowledge that there was no retreat, and that the path behind them only led down to the sea-shore, helped to brace his nerves.

"Look here!" he called out in accents which sounded strange and eerie in the darkness; "if you think that we don't know that you're someone dressed up, trying to frighten us, you're very much mistaken. I've my gun with me, and it's loaded, and if you don't clear out of that double-quick, I'll shoot you."

Manus's voice quavered a little towards the end, as if, for all his bold words, his teeth had had a certain inclination to chatter in his head.

No answer was returned, only in the silence a little breeze crept sobbing through the tree-tops, and the figure seemed to lower its arm for an instant and then to raise it again more threateningly than before.

Manus had his gun presented by this time, his cheek against the stock, and his finger on the trigger.

"I give you fair warning, if you're not out of that before I count three, I'll fire. Now then: One, two—"

Manus never could be quite sure in his own mind afterwards whether he had really intended to carry out his threat, or whether it had been that his hand had trembled so, as he faced that white menacing form, that he had jerked the trigger involuntarily. Be that as it may, even as he said "Three!" there was a crash and flare of light. Norah and Manus both held their breath, for if what Manus had said was true, and it was some practical joker who had waylaid them, it was impossible at such close quarters for Manus to have missed his aim.

There was no cry, no sound, however, and as the smoke cleared away, the white figure stood before them for a moment, erect as ever, then seemed to lean forward as though about to rush upon them, and the children waited to see no more, but turned and fled headlong down the path which they had climbed with such difficulty.

How they got to the bottom they never knew, they scrambled and plunged down-wards, regardless of their footing and unheeding how they bumped and bruised themselves against stones and against the trunks of the trees. They came to a halt at last in a little clearing a hundred yards or so above the shore, and there they stood, panting and breathless, partly with the haste they had made and partly with terror, as helpless and disconsolate a pair as could have been found in the length and breadth of the land. Manus had abandoned all attempt at keeping up a show of bravery; he had his arm round Norah, and Norah had hers round him, and they clung to each other so close that they could feel the beating of each other's hearts, and each other's breath hot upon their cheeks. That warm, close contact seemed to give them some little sense of comfort and protection, but in truth their position was a most pitiable one. Behind them there was only the strip of lonely beach and the sea, and they must either wait where they were all the night through, till daylight came, or mount the path again and face that dread white shape once more; and even whilst they stood clinging to each other, they were straining their eyes into the darkness, terrified lest they should see it loom out as it moved downwards in pursuit of them.

Manus's shot, however, had not been without effect. It had evidently been heard at the house, for voices now became audible—eager, excited voices, all speaking at once—and a light could be seen moving up above amongst the trees. Manus's spirits began to revive a little.

"Come, Norah, come along," he whispered, though his tongue was so dry that he could only form the words with difficulty. "There are people up there now, and they—those sort of things, you know,—don't appear except when one's alone. And if we did see anything we could call out. Come on, quick! and let us get up through the wood before whoever's up there goes away and leaves us alone again."

Norah was willing enough, and holding each other's hands tight they climbed up the steep path once more, not uttering a word, and treading softly, as though they feared to disturb the ghostly apparition which might be lurking somewhere still amongst the trees.

The windings of the track had brought them immediately below the spot where the tall, spectral form had barred their path, and where the search-party with their lantern were now gathered. They could hear a shrill voice scolding angrily above their heads, and mingled with it the sound of crying. Instinctively they stopped short to listen.

"Don't tell me any such nonsense, you idle, good for-nothing girl!" And though Manus and Norah had only heard Miss Browne's voice once before, on the occasion of her brief visit to Kilshane, neither of them had any difficulty in recognizing the high, thin tones as hers. "How would anyone have known that the table-cloth was hanging up here if you had not been in league with the vile, cowardly wretches? One of the very best table-cloths, too; you took good care of that!"

"Och thin, ma'am, the saints in heaven knows 'twas niver a thought of harm was in me mind;" broke in another voice, its utterance interrupted by frequent sobs. "Run off of me feet I was this blessed day to git the washin' done, an' that cloth, the wan thing I kep' back to give it an exthry rinsin', seein' 'twas stained wid wine an' all sorts. An' I jist run down a weeny minnit to the shore to see was me feyther's boat in, an' him away to the fishin' before cockshout, an' I thrown that cloth up on the three as I wint by, the way 'twud dhry, an' be handy to fetch in the marnin'. Och wirra, wirra, to think 'tis clane desthroyed, an' it the beautifullest table-cloth iver was!"

And the voice broke down in hopeless weeping.

"And how often have I given orders that the washing is not to be hung out anywhere except upon the bleach-green that's intended for it?" Miss Browne's voice was shrill with indignation. "It is all of a piece with those hateful, slatternly Irish ways that nothing will cure any of you of. Of course you would rather hang the clothes up here on the trees, you would spread them on the rosebushes in the garden, or on the door-steps if you only could, rather than take them where there are clothes-lines and everything you require provided for you!—Not so far away? Don't tell me any such nonsense! I don't find that you're so anxious to save your time in general."

Stealthily and cautiously, whilst this dialogue was proceeding, the children crept on up the path, and by moving in amongst the trees and treading with the utmost care, lest by chance the snapping of a dry twig under their feet should betray their whereabouts, they were able to gain a view of the group gathered on the pathway, whilst they themselves were completely shrouded in the darkness.

Foremost, tall and erect, stood the English coachman with a stable-lamp in his hand, which he flashed about, here and there, letting the light fall on the stems of the trees on either hand, and making the spaces between them appear all the blacker by contrast. He did not seem to relish his position particularly, thinking, no doubt, that the light shed on the party from his lantern made them an easy mark for any miscreant who might still be lurking in the wood; and a knot of frightened maids, who were huddled together higher up on the path, their white caps and aprons just making them visible in the gloom, seemed to be of his opinion and to be afraid of venturing further. Miss Browne's anger and vexation were too great to let her give a thought to possible danger, and with one corner of the table-cloth in her hand, and the rest of it lying in folds at her feet, she was scolding the luckless laundry-maid, who stood before her holding her apron to her eyes. Ella was standing beside Miss Browne, and she interposed now, but in so low a tone that Manus and Norah could not hear what she said.

"Nonsense, my dear, you would find an excuse for anyone, no matter what they did," Miss Browne returned sharply. "I tell you, it was a plot, a vile plot, got up to annoy me, no doubt, because I am English and because I have persuaded Mr. O'Brien only to have English servants in the house. Perhaps it was intended as a hint that if I did not take care I might be served in the same fashion as the table-cloth."

With a dramatic gesture Miss Browne spread the luckless piece of damask out in full view, and as the light of the stable-lamp fell on it, Manus and Norah could see, even from the distance at which they stood, sundry large circular holes where the charge of Manus's gun had pierced, not the impalpable form of a ghost, but the warp and woof of one of their uncle's table-cloths!

"But if they imagine that they will frighten me by any such proceeding they are greatly mistaken," Miss Browne went on, raising her voice with the evident intention of being heard by anyone who might be still within earshot. "I shall stand my ground, and continue to do as I think right, without paying the least attention to miserable creatures who prowl about in the dark to shoot holes in table-cloths."

"Then, begging pardon, ma'am," interposed the coachman, whose uneasiness had clearly not decreased during Miss Browne's last words, and who was peering apprehensively at the trunks and branches of the trees as the yellow glare of the lamp fell on them, "if standing your ground means setting ourselves up as figgerheads, for parties as is sitting behind bushes with guns to fire at, I says, the sooner we're out of this the better. I don't yield to no man with a hoss, let him kick his worst, likewise rear or buck, but when it comes to these Irish ways of taking shots from no one knows where, then I ain't got no mind for it."

And with a last twirl of his lantern he set off determinedly up the path towards the house, leaving nothing for Miss Browne and Ella and the maids but to follow him.

Manus and Norah were left behind in the darkness of the wood. In honour, no doubt, they ought to have come forward and acknowledged that they were the culprits who, by mistake, had damaged the Moyross table-linen. Shyness, however, and a sense of the humiliation which it would be to confess before the whole of the Moyross household that they had mistaken a harmless table-cloth, hanging upon a tree to dry, for a ghost, and had fired at it, held them back, and so they waited till the steps and voices had died away, and the last gleam of the lantern had disappeared. Then only did they venture on, silently and cautiously. All their fears of supernatural appearances had melted away, and the ruined arches of the old abbey bore quite a friendly aspect as they skirted past them, keeping as far from the house and its lawns and gravel-walks as possible. They struck the avenue some distance farther down, and walked rapidly along it, in momentary dread of being called upon to stand and answer who they were and what had brought them there. Nothing of the sort occurred, however. They passed unchallenged out of the gates, and drew a long breath of relief when they found themselves on the public road once more.

Then only did they venture to speak to each other of their recent adventure, and they could not but admit that they had cut somewhat ignominious figures in the frantic terror with which they had fled from that weird, white object which had loomed up on them in the loneliness of the Monk's Walk. Manus, in particular, felt himself getting hot all over at the thought of how everyone would laugh if the story of his firing at the table-cloth should be known, and what, oh what! if any ill wind should blow it to the ears of Bodkin Major over in Galway! Would there be any end to the ridicule he would have to endure at school? Even the glory of having taken part in the slaughter of the seal seemed but a trifling set-off in comparison. Then, too, Roderick, who, as it was, would most probably be annoyed by their staying out so late, would certainly be extremely angry about the whole business and at their having come home through the Moyross demesne. These and other considerations induced Manus to observe to his sister as they were trudging homewards:

"I say, Norah, there's no good in our telling Roderick and Anstace anything about our coming up by the Monk's Walk and all that affair. We'd look such a pair of thundering idiots, and Roderick's sure to be horribly angry at our having gone that way at all. He'll pitch into us pretty well, I expect, as it is, for staying out so late, but he'll never think of asking what way we came back; and we needn't say anything if he doesn't."

"But why shouldn't we, Manus? There wasn't any harm really in our landing down there when it was blowing hard and we were so late; and I always tell Anstace everything."

"Oh yes, that's all right for a girl, of course," said Manus loftily, "but when a fellow's been to school it's different. He doesn't think it necessary to run and tell everything as if he was a small kid. And there's another thing, Norah; if we said anything about it, Roderick and Anstace would begin asking where Lanty was, and why he didn't come back with us."

"And why didn't he?" in tones which made it clear that Norah still resented his desertion of them.

"Oh, well, you see,"—Manus was becoming rather embarrassed,—"he'd promised to meet those other chaps in the boat up on Drinane Head, so he was going to get ashore at the iron pier and go up past the mine by the tramway that the trucks come down by—he can get out upon the Head that way. He'll be back ever so early in the morning, before daybreak, and bring the seal round to Portkerin, so we can take Roderick and Anstace down after breakfast to-morrow to see him before he's cut up. Lanty's going to get the oil out of him; he says there's a whole winter's burning, as he calls it, in him, and I'm going to have the head to keep."

"But what are he and the other men going to do up on Drinane Head in the dark? Are they going to stay there all night?" asked Norah in not unnatural amazement as she turned to look back towards the great promontory, which could be dimly descried rearing its rugged head against the sky, and which certainly did not seem to hold out much promise of comfortable quarters for the night.

"Oh, there's some sort of house up there, and they've things to do," mysteriously. "Lanty's going to take me there some day. He tells me almost everything, because he knows I'm safe; no fear of my blabbing or letting things out."

And Manus drew himself erect with the proud consciousness of being Lanty's confidant and the trusted repository of his secrets.

"I'm not going to blab either," said Norah in an aggrieved tone, feeling Manus's remarks in some sort a reflection on herself.

The children were luckier than they expected, and perhaps than they deserved. They found the house empty when they got back, and no one in it, upstairs or down. Roderick and Anstace had not yet returned from Ballyfin, and Bride, the little maid, had availed herself of the absence of the whole family to slip over and spend an evening at her father's fireside. The sight of their supper laid out and waiting for them in the parlour first brought to Manus and Norah's minds how many hours it was past the usual time of their evening meal, to which in the many and varied excitements of the evening neither of them had hitherto given a thought. Even now, when they saw food laid ready for them, they did not feel any very ravenous desire to partake of it. They sat down, however, at the table, and Manus found his appetite return to him in wondrous fashion when once he began to attack the eatables; whilst Norah, who had not yet recovered from the shock which the apparition in the Monk's Walk had given her, could make little more than a feint of eating.

Their supper was just finished when the sound of wheels upon the avenue proclaimed Roderick and Anstace's return. The children rushed out to the hall-door to meet them, and there were questions and answers and explanations on both sides.

Roderick and Anstace had been late leaving Ballyfin, it seemed, and half-way home the horse had cast a shoe. The nearest smithy was two miles distant, and they had had to proceed thither at a walk, Connor leading the horse. When the forge was reached there was further delay, for the smith had not expected any customers at that late hour and had let his fire out, and they had to wait till it was rekindled, so that nearly a couple of hours had elapsed before they were able to resume their journey.

Then Manus, with a modest air of self-consciousness, told of their afternoon's exploit and of the killing of the seal in Ballintaggart Cave. Roderick looked rather grave at first on hearing of Manus having set off on such an expedition without leave and with no other companion than Lanty, and still graver on learning that Norah had been of the party. However, his displeasure was not of long duration, and though he gave Manus an admonition against the repetition of any such rash feats, he promised to accompany him in the morning to inspect the trophy in Portkerin, and, to Manus's great satisfaction, he asked no awkward questions as to the hour or manner of their return, taking it for granted that they had all landed at the same place where they had embarked. Norah's pale face did not escape Anstace's solicitous gaze, but she supposed it to be the result of excitement and over-fatigue, and ordered her to bed without delay, to which refuge indeed Norah was not sorry to betake herself.

CHAPTER X

CAPTAIN LESTER, R.M.

"Did you hear what happened last night?" said Anstace when she came into the breakfast-room next morning. "The whole neighbourhood is in excitement, and Biddy has been up in the kitchen to tell me about it. A table-cloth which had been left hanging up on one of the trees in the Monk's Walk had a charge of shot fired through it, and it is all riddled with holes."

"And what is the object of that piece of marksmanship supposed to be?" enquired Roderick as he took his seat at the table.

"Well, no one seems exactly to know; but the general impression is that it is a sort of warning to Uncle Nicholas, in place of the usual threatening letter with a skull and cross-bones on it—an intimation that something worse may happen if he does not dismiss M'Bain and give way to the men's demands."

"It looks as if a bad spirit was getting up in the country," observed Roderick thoughtfully.

"I am afraid it does; and I could see that Biddy was secretly delighted, though she did not want to betray it to me. 'Maybe the boys wud sarve th' ould masther a worse turn yet if he doesn't mind himself,' she said. Uncle Nicholas was out last night, it seems, when the outrage occurred, there were only Ella and Miss Browne at home; but he is furious about it, and says that if the people think he is to be frightened by tricks of that sort they are very much mistaken, and that if the offenders can be discovered he will show them no mercy."

Manus and Norah had not ventured to lift their eyes from their plates during this conversation. Fortunately for them neither Roderick nor Anstace noticed this very unusual silence on their part, as in general they were by no means backward in giving their opinion on any topic that might be under discussion.

Norah had come down to breakfast listless and heavy-eyed, and evinced a nervous tendency to start at the least noise. Anstace, too, testified that she had been awakened in the night by unaccountable sounds proceeding from the little room of which Norah had lately, at her own earnest request, been put in possession, and going in to see what was the matter, had found her little sister crying out and struggling under the bed-clothes in the throes of some unpleasantly vivid dream. Roderick declared curtly that it was clear seal-hunting did not suit Norah, and issued an absolute prohibition against her accompanying Manus and Lanty upon any other expedition unless he himself were of the party. Poor Norah, who knew that her troubled night was in no way owing to the seal-hunt but to the fright of encountering the supposed ghost, had perforce to submit to the mandate.

"If you will be a goose what else can you expect?" was all the consolation Manus had to give her when she lamented herself to him after breakfast.

Norah brisked up, however, considerably under the effects of the bright sunshine and the strong sea-wind, as a little later they all four walked across the fields to Portkerin to inspect the seal. Manus looked eagerly this way and that to descry the body of his late adversary as they came down the narrow track into the little horse-shoe-shaped bay.

"Hallo, old chap, don't you know where you left him last night?" was Roderick's enquiry.

"Oh yes, but Lanty thought he'd have to haul him over somewhere else—somewhere better suited for cutting him up, you know," Manus muttered confusedly, carefully avoiding meeting Norah's eye.

It was Anstace who caught sight of the seal at last, lying on a large flat rock in the shadow of the cliff. He was indubitably a monster of his kind, and his proportions could be better seen now than when he had been lying in the bottom of the coracle. Roderick paced the rock beside him carefully, and pronounced him to be full five feet in length. Manus's only and most poignant regret was that he could not be stuffed whole as he was. He consoled himself, however, with the reflection that, even if this could have been done, it would have been quite impossible for him to carry the stuffed monster back amongst his baggage to exhibit to the boys at school.

Lanty came down the path at that moment carrying a huge three-legged iron pot, a formidable looking knife, and all the other implements necessary for flaying the seal and depriving the carcass of the thick coating of blubber which intervenes between the skin and the flesh, and contains the valuable seal-oil. Lanty's eyes were bloodshot, and he looked pallid and dishevelled, as if his night upon Drinane Head had not been beneficial to him.

Anstace and Norah, who had no desire to witness the skinning and boiling-down process, took their leave, and Roderick, too, had soon had enough of the operation. Manus, however, remained to the last, and was able to report, when he came home to dinner, that the yield of oil had been highly satisfactory. He had brought the seal's head with him, tied up in Lanty's red pocket-handkerchief, and in answer to Anstace's enquiries as to what he intended to do with it, explained that he was going to preserve the skull by a method, much in vogue amongst the boys at his school, for obtaining skeletons of bats, field-mice, and other small animals, namely, by placing it in a vessel of water and leaving it to macerate there till the flesh dropped off the bones.

As the process was not likely to be a very agreeable one, Anstace begged that the vessel with the seal's head might be placed at a considerable distance from the house, but to this Manus objected that wandering cats or dogs might find his treasure and carry it off to devour it. Finally, on Roderick's suggestion that the roof of the house offered a secure and yet sufficiently remote repository, the head was carried up thither, and left between the chimney-stacks for the sun and winds to bleach it.

The affair of the table-cloth made a considerable stir in the country, and an investigation was made upon the spot in the hope of discovering some clue to the perpetrators of the outrage. A force of police were occupied for a day or two in beating the underwood and examining every square inch of ground near the Monk's Walk. They found nothing to reward them for their labours, however, and little by little interest in the matter died away. Most people thought with Anstace that the outrage was a consequence of the dispute between Mr. O'Brien and the miners, and probably an attempt to intimidate him into dismissing the unpopular Scotch manager. There could be no doubt, however, that it had failed of its effect. Age might have enfeebled Mr. O'Brien's bodily powers, but it had failed to rob him of his energy and determination. To sullen threats that if the men were not suffered to work in the old, easy-going fashion to which they had been used they would not work at all, he responded by closing down the mine and summarily dismissing all hands.

"If they don't know who is master of the Moyross mine they had better learn," he was reported to have said grimly.

M'Bain, not less resolute, had hinted that, if a few weeks' idling did not bring the miners to their senses, there would be no difficulty in finding others to take their places. Mr. Lynch shook his head over it all in the drawing-room at Kilshane.

"We've a bad winter before us, I fear," he said, gloomily.

Meanwhile, what remained of the summer was passing over, and August was nearing its end. Dr. Ford, the principal of Manus's school, wrote to Roderick that all needful repairs and alterations having been carried out to the satisfaction of a high sanitary authority, he hoped to see his pupils reassemble early in September. Manus groaned at the thought of his glorious holiday-time being so near its close, and of the boating and fishing and other outdoor enjoyments having to be exchanged for Latin and algebra, and the routine of school life. Lanty had been much less about Kilshane of late, but Manus seemed to understand his comings and goings very well, and evinced no surprise thereat.

Manus's return to school was only a week off when Lady Louisa Butler, who on a former occasion had driven over to make the O'Briens' acquaintance, sent a friendly invitation to Roderick and Anstace to dine and sleep at her house upon a certain evening when she hoped to have a few friends to meet them.

"My dear, you must on no account refuse," said kindly Mrs. Lynch, whom Anstace had consulted; "Lady Louisa's little parties are always delightful, and she is sure to have people whom you would like to know, and who will be interested in you for your father's sake."

So a note of acceptance was written, and then the question of ways and means had to be considered, as Dromore, Lady Louisa's place, was fourteen Irish miles distant. Biddy, though dismissed from active service with the O'Briens, kept herself posted up in all the family affairs by frequent visits to the kitchen, and was always ready to tender advice on knotty points. She was urgent that the old chariot in the coach-house, in which Miss Ansey had been wont to take her drives in state, should be brought out from its retirement for the occasion.

"An' what wud the O'Briens be dhrivin' in, to mate all the quality o' the county, if 'twasn't their own ekeepage?" she demanded indignantly. "Shure it's not on a common jauntin' car, that any shoneen wid a shillin' in his pocket could pay for as well as yerself, that ye'd have Miss Anstace sottin', Masther Roderick?"

"I've no doubt that Miss Anstace and I would create a sensation amongst the quality if we arrived in the family equipage, Biddy," Roderick answered with much gravity, though there was a twinkle in his eyes, as he surveyed the crazy, antiquated chariot which had been drawn out into the grass-grown yard for inspection.

Cobwebs festooned it inside and out, the iron-work was red with rust, and the lining of the interior mouldy with damp, and perforated by moths. It was hung so high from the ground that it had to be entered by a flight of steps, let down and fastened up from the outside. Roderick shook his head as he turned away with a laugh.

"No, Biddy; I'm afraid that however humiliating it may be to Miss Anstace and me, there is nothing for it but for us to make our first appearance amongst the aristocracy of Clare upon a hack car."

A ragged, shoeless boy came running into the yard at that moment and thrust a note into Roderick's hand.

"Captin Lester's complimints, yer honour, an' I was to give that to you at wanst."

Roderick opened the note and then called to Anstace, who, the carriage-parade being at an end, was going back into the house.

"Hullo, Anstace; what do you say to entertaining a guest? Are your household resources up to the mark?"

"A guest! Roderick! who?"

"Lester, the resident magistrate. You haven't met him, but he's a capital fellow; you're sure to like him. Here's what he says—I suppose it's no harm for the children to hear it."

For Norah and Manus, with eyes brimming with curiosity, had drawn near to listen, leaving it to Biddy and Bride, with the assistance of Captain Lester's messenger, to push the ancestral chariot back to slumber once more within the dilapidated coach-house.

Dear O'Brien,—the note ran,—Should I be taking a great liberty if I asked you and Miss O'Brien to give me a shake-down at Kilshane to-morrow night? There is to be a seizure effected in your neighbourhood the following day, and in the present state of the country it would be idle to attempt it except immediately after daybreak. I should, therefore, be saved a long night-drive by sleeping at your house, and this must be my excuse for troubling you.

Yours, &c.
        CHARLES LESTER.

P.S. I know I can trust you to keep the object of my visit secret, otherwise its purpose would be rendered nugatory.

"Well, Anstace, what do you say?" looking at her with the open note still in his hand.

"I don't really know," Anstace returned dubiously. "Bride is a good little girl, but she has not got many ideas yet about cooking or attending at table, or anything of that sort, and a man like Captain Lester is accustomed to having everything comfortable and well done."

"Oh, nonsense! Lester's not that sort of fellow at all. Give him a good plain dinner and he'll be quite satisfied. I should think a man would prefer any sort of dinner at all to having to drive over from Ballyfin at one o'clock in the morning You can get Biddy in to help, you know, if necessary."

Anstace smiled a little at the latter suggestion, but she saw that Roderick was anxious for the invitation to be given, and if Roderick wished for anything it was certain that Anstace would gratify him if it was within her power to do so.

"Oh yes, ask him by all means," she said pleasantly, "and we'll do the best we can for him. He knows we're not millionaires, so he won't expect too much."

"It fits in first-rate, too," said Roderick, reading the letter over again. "If he'd wanted to come the next night we couldn't have had him, as that's the evening we're going to Lady Louisa's. Now remember, you two," to Norah and Manus, "not a word of this to anyone." And he walked off into the house to write his answer to the note.

Manus and Norah were in quite a tumult of expectation next evening. Captain Lester was the first visitor who had passed a night under the roof at Kilshane, and to their minds a resident magistrate, to whom the peace of the district was committed, and who could incarcerate offenders and order the constabulary hither and thither, was a very tremendous personage to be brought in contact with. Captain Lester, on his arrival, did not appear the least awe-inspiring however; he was a big, sandy-haired, good-humoured looking man, with a loud voice and cheery manner, and Anstace owned to herself, with a sigh of relief, that she would not mind so very much if Bride did commit a few blunders during the course of the dinner.

This was just as well, since Bride, although Anstace had spent a good part of the day in drilling her and rehearsing to her what she would have to do, evinced a capacity for making mistakes which was absolutely marvellous. Manus and Norah were partaking of late dinner for the first time in their lives, and Manus grew purple in the face in his efforts to choke down his laughter, as poor Bride, blushing to the roots of her hair in her bashfulness, went floundering round the table, setting down plates where dishes should have been, and knocking over glasses. It was only by an agonized frown, which Bride fortunately caught just in time, that Anstace brought to her mind that it was the mustard and not the powdered sugar which was to be handed round with the roast-beef. All her signals, however, failed to prevent the cauliflower from being presented to the guests as a course all by itself, while the dish of croquettes, which Anstace had prepared herself, with the expenditure of much time and trouble, as an entrée, appeared later on in the company of the potatoes. Besides which, Bride persistently left the door open whenever she went out to the kitchen, where Biddy was assisting to the best of her ability, so that scraps of conversation, not intended to be heard in the dining-room, were only too audible to the party seated at table.

"Bride, will I pull the tart out o' the oven yit, 'tis the beautifullest brown that iver ye see? Gorra, but it's hot; it has the fingers burnt off of me!—Och, but the captin's the fine lump of a man, an' I'll be bound he's not takin' his two oyes out o' Miss Anstace this minit. I'll jist shlip to the doore an' have a look at her, the darlin', sottin' at the head of her table, as swate as a flower, an' as shtately as a queen."

This was too much for Manus, who from his seat opposite the door had a full sight of Biddy trying to post herself where she could command the best view of the room, and he winked knowingly at her. Biddy, much discomfited at being detected, retreated backwards on some crockery which Bride, notwithstanding all Anstace's injunctions to the contrary, had set down in her hurry on the floor of the hall, and there arose a terrible outcry.

"The saints 'twixt us an' harm! Bride, joo'l of me sowl, if 'tisn't the mashed pitaties I've sot me fut in, an' the dish gone clane in two undher me!"

Everyone laughed; even Anstace could not prevent herself from joining in the general merriment, though for an instant she had flushed red with mortification. Captain Lester, however, enjoyed the joke so thoroughly, and told so many ludicrous stories of what his own experiences had been when he had first set up house in the west of Ireland, that Anstace speedily forgot her annoyance.

Manus elected to remain with the gentlemen when Anstace and Norah withdrew after dinner. Roderick and Captain Lester must have found something very interesting to talk about, they made such a prolonged stay in the dining-room, and Norah, who had only been granted a scanty half-hour beyond her usual bed-time, and who had looked forward to hearing some more of Captain Lester's stories, grudgingly watched the clock upon the chimney-piece as it ticked on towards the fateful half-past nine.

"What an age they are in there, Anstace," she grumbled, "why can't they come in and talk here? I did want to ask Captain Lester to tell us the end of that story about the old woman and her goose. Don't you remember he was in the middle of it when Biddy stood in the potato dish? It's twenty-five minutes past nine, so I have only five minutes more. Oh, they're coming at last!" as the dining-room door was heard to open.

The trio made their appearance. Captain Lester first, with his broad expanse of shirt-front and jolly red face; Roderick, taller and slighter, followed, and Manus brought up the rear. To Norah's thinking the last-named had become strangely quiet and dispirited. He ensconced himself in a corner, and hardly even laughed at the conclusion of the goose story, which, lest Norah should be disappointed, Anstace begged Captain Lester for. Immediately afterwards, however, she contrived to make a sign to her little sister to come to her where she sat at a small table pouring out the coffee, and whispered to her that it was a quarter to ten, and quite time for her to go to bed.

"You need not mind bidding good-night. Just slip quietly out of the room and run upstairs. I'll send Manus up after you, as soon as I get a chance of speaking to him. He seems half-asleep as it is, sitting over there in the corner."

Norah stole off as she was bidden, the last thing she heard was Captain Lester saying to Anstace, as he took his cup of coffee from her: "I am going to show your brother a little real Irish life, Miss O'Brien. He is going to accompany me on the raid I am making on some gentry who are distilling illicit whisky near this. We shall have to be off before five in the morning—"

More Norah did not hear, as she was obliged regretfully to close the door. It would be nice to be grown-up, she reflected, as she went upstairs, and to sit up just as long as one liked without an elder sister to order one off to bed.

Norah had been in that safe refuge for some time, lying wide awake, with the door open so that she could hear the murmur of voices downstairs, and Captain Lester's loud, hilarious laugh ringing out every now and again, when a light pattering footfall came along the passage, and Manus appeared in the doorway. A quaint figure he was, as seen by the light of the lamp on the stairs, for he was barefooted, and only attired in his nightshirt with his flannel cricketing-jacket drawn over it.

He came over towards the bed, groping his way in the dark.

"Norah!" he whispered, "I say, Norah, are you awake?"

"Yes, as wide as anything. What's the matter?"

"There's the most awful thing going to happen, and I'm sure I don't know what's to be done. I've been lying awake, thinking and thinking till my head feels like splitting, and I thought at last I'd come and tell you."

"Gracious, Manus!" starting up in bed as she spoke; "what on earth is it?"

"Hush, don't speak so loud!" in an apprehensive whisper. "That still which you heard the captain speak about, that they're going to seize to-morrow morning—well, it's Lanty's!"

Manus paused to see what effect this tremendous communication would produce, but as Norah had never heard of a still before, and had not the least idea what it was, she was not as much dismayed as Manus had expected.

"But if it's Lanty's," she said stupidly, "how can anyone take it from him?"

"You don't understand one little bit," Manus returned impatiently. "A still is for making whisky with—potheen,[1] Lanty calls it—and all whisky has got to pay tax to the government, why, I'm sure I don't know. But Lanty says he's not going to pay taxes to the English government any way, so he and the fellows who work with him have their place hidden away on Drinane Head, where they thought no one was likely to find it."

[1] Pronounced putcheen.

"Oh, and it was up there Lanty was going the night that he left us to come home by the Monk's Walk?" exclaimed Norah, a sudden light breaking in upon her.

Manus, who had by this time established himself on the side of her bed, nodded, forgetful that that manner of signifying assent is not of much use in the dark.

"You remember that boat with a lot of men in it which pulled out to us, just under the Head? Those were the other fellows who help in the business, and they wanted him up there for something special that night. They have meetings up in that place of theirs, and talk over all sorts of things, as well as making the potheen. Lanty didn't like leaving us, but they made him; he told me about it while I was helping him to drag the seal up over the rocks. Lanty knew I was safe to trust, only of course I said nothing to you, as it was such a tremendous secret."

And Manus assumed an air of conscious rectitude which was unfortunately also lost in the darkness.

"And have you ever been up where they make the—whatever the stuff is called?"

"No; Lanty's promised to take me up there ever so often, and let me see it all, but we've never been able to manage it somehow. But, Norah, the question is, what's to be done? Captain Lester has got wind of it somehow; he told Roderick after dinner, when you and Anstace had gone, that he had known there was this still working somewhere hereabouts, and he had been trying to hunt it out for ever so long, but now he had got certain information of it's being up on Drinane Head, and right enough he is, for he described it all to Roderick, just as Lanty did to me. There's a tarn—that's a sort of lake, you know—on the very top of Drinane Head, and a little stream flows out of it and falls right over the cliffs; that's the water they make the potheen with—real mountain-dew, Lanty calls it. They've built some kind of a hovel there, up against a rock, and they work days and nights together sometimes when there's a brewing going on."

"Hew did Captain Lester find out about it? Did he go up there to see?"

"I'm sure he did not; they'd have smelt a rat fast enough if he'd been poking about anywhere within miles of them. But he has found it out somehow or other, and he's going to pounce down on them at sunrise and capture the whole gang—that's what he called them—a gang!" said Manus in high indignation. "He has it all laid off pat, how he's going to surround the place and all, and he's so afraid of its leaking out that he hasn't told a single soul what's brought him here,—even the police who are coming won't know what they're wanted for till he meets them at the cross-roads at five to-morrow morning. Of course he knew he was all safe in telling Roderick, and he didn't think I was of any account at all. I went on eating the dessert things and didn't pretend to be listening much. And now, Norah, we've got to get Lanty out of the mess somehow or other."

"Perhaps he's not there at all; perhaps he's at home," suggested Norah hopefully.

"Oh yes, he is though, he's been up there for days past," said Manus, who seemed extremely well informed of his ally's movements. "He hasn't been out fishing or boating with me once the whole of this week."

To both Manus and Norah it seemed that if Lanty were only safe the capture of his confederates, of the wild-looking crew whom they had seen under Drinane Head, was of comparatively little importance.

Norah sat silent and reflected—in former childish days it had always been her little brain which had done the contriving necessary to get them out of any scrape in which they happened to find themselves. Manus of late had got into the way of speaking of girls as of an inferior race of beings, but now that he was in trouble he came to her as of old for help and advice.

"I wonder if Biddy has gone home yet," she said at last. "I could slip down to the kitchen and tell her, and she would tell Tom. He could go up to Drinane Head and let Lanty know that Captain Lester was coming."

"No, that wouldn't do at all," said Manus. "You see they none of them know anything about it—about Lanty's being in with all those other fellows, and making potheen and all that—and Lanty doesn't want them to find out. He says his father's 'raal ragin' mad' as it is, about his 'goings-on', as he calls them."

"O—oh!" This was a new light on the matter to Norah, whose code of right and wrong was a very simple one. Breaking the law was a thing quite outside any experience of hers, and which she understood nothing about. There seemed something absolutely heroic in Lanty's manufacturing his whisky on the solitude of Drinane Head that he might defy Captain Lester and the police in their efforts to make him pay taxes to the English government. But that he should be doing something which his father and Biddy did not know of, and which, if they did know, they would not approve—that was another matter altogether in Norah's eyes.

"Making potheen must be wrong, Manus," she said gravely, "if Lanty doesn't want anyone to find out about it."

"Well, if you come to that, I suppose it is," Manus admitted. "But if Lanty and the rest of them are caught to-morrow, they'll all be marched off to Ennis jail—handcuffed, mind you—and locked up there for months perhaps. Just think of Lanty handcuffed and shut up in jail! I declare I've half a mind to try and get up on Drinane Head now and give them warning to clear out, but it's as black as pitch, not a gleam of light in the sky; and I don't believe I'd find the way."

Then it was that Norah had a brilliant inspiration.

"I'll tell you what, Manus," she cried; "Captain Lester and Roderick won't start till five. I heard Captain Lester tell Anstace so, and it's light—a sort of light—hours before that. I know, because when I was bad with toothache last week and couldn't sleep, I saw everything in the room quite plain before the clock struck three. If you stole out then no one would hear you, they'd all be sound asleep, and you could go to Drinane Head and tell Lanty the police were coming."

"Oh, but I say, Norah, if I go you'll have to come too!" said Manus.

"I'll come of course if you want me," Norah rejoined promptly, trying not to let her voice betray her satisfaction at Manus's sudden desire for the feminine companionship at which he was generally wont to rail. "I only hope we'll manage to awake in proper time."

"Oh, I'll wake, no fear! I've never any difficulty in waking up any time that I want to, and I'll come and call you," Manus said valiantly. "I don't feel as if I could sleep a wink to-night, thinking of it all; but I'd better be off, lest the others should come up and catch me—they won't sit up late, as Captain Lester and Roderick have to turn out so early. Oh, I say! won't it be fun, their going off solemnly all that way and drawing a cordon round the place and all the rest of it, when we've been there before them and given the fellows warning. Be sure and jump up at once, Norah, when I come to call you. I won't be able to make a noise for fear of someone hearing me."

And with this parting injunction Manus withdrew.

CHAPTER XI

ON DRINANE HEAD

Notwithstanding Manus's valorous undertaking to come and call her in the morning, Norah took the precaution of getting up after he had gone and drawing back the curtains and pulling up the blind, so that the first gleam of the gray dawn might fall into her room and wake her. She had but just huddled back into bed again when she heard the drawing-room door open and good-nights being exchanged. A minute later the handle of her own door was softly turned and Anstace came in, carefully shading her candle with her hand to keep its light from falling on her little sister's face. Norah closed her eyes tight and feigned to be asleep. She was afraid of Anstace questioning her about her unusual wakefulness, but it gave her an uncomfortable sense of deceit to feel Anstace with cautious touch drawing the tumbled bed-clothes straight, and tucking them in comfortably about her. Then she went away as softly as she had come, and Norah fell asleep and started up, as it seemed to herself, but a few minutes afterwards, to find the window opposite her bed a square of pale-grayish light, and the different objects in the room becoming dimly visible.

It was only after a minute or two's partial bewilderment that she could remember what it was which impended that morning, and why she ought to be awake. In a moment, however, it all came back to her mind, and she slipped hastily out upon the floor. Manus had not come to call her as yet, but it would be well, all the same, to know whether it were already three o'clock or not. A strange, ghostly little figure Norah looked as she stole along the passage and down the stairs in her night-gown and bare feet to where the tall old clock in the hall ticked solemnly on, its ticking sounding ever so much louder now in the silence of the house than it did ordinarily during the day-time.

Norah had to mount on a chair so as to bring her face upon a level with that of the clock before she could make out the position of the two hands, and ascertain that it was as yet but half-past two. Back to bed, therefore, she had to journey; but she did not venture to lie down, lest sleep should steal upon her unawares. She sat up straight instead, with her knees drawn up to her chin and the blankets pulled round her shoulders, waiting till, after what seemed to her an interminable time, the clock downstairs told out the hour with three ringing metallic strokes.

There was still no stir from Manus's side of the house, and so she started off on her peregrinations once more. She crept past the door of Roderick's room, which was next to that of Manus, with bated breath. The handle of the door made what seemed an appallingly loud noise as she turned it. Within all was darkness, and the deep, regular breathing, which was the only sound to be heard, betokened that Lanty's peril had not interfered with Manus's slumbers as much as he himself had expected.

"Manus, it has struck three!" whispered Norah from the door.

There was no answer. The breathing continued as regularly as before, and Norah had to make her way across the room in dread of tumbling over some of the furniture and making a clatter, which would arouse half the household.

"Manus, wake up!" she whispered again as she reached the bed. "It's time to dress."

"Eh—ah—hi—what's the matter?" came in indistinct gurglings from amongst the bed-clothes.

"It's three o'clock, Manus—past it. And we're to go up to warn Lanty; don't you remember?"

"Lanty!" in very sleepy accents. "Oh, bother, Norah, we'll leave Lanty alone!"

It was quite evident that the enterprise bore a very different aspect to Manus now, just roused out of his warm sleep, from what it had done a few hours before.

"But the police and Captain Lester are going up to look for him, and they'll take his still away, and carry him and his friends off to prison."

"Nonsense! Not they! Trust old Lanty to look after himself. He'll show them a trick or two if they come making trouble up there. I don't believe they'll find the way, and very likely we shouldn't either."

"But we ought to try," urged Norah, not a little taken aback at this unexpected change of front on Manus's part.

"Oh, it's too great a fag, and I'm tired. Go back to bed, Norah, it'll be all right, you'll see."

And a rustling of the bed-clothes betokened that Manus, after giving this comfortable assurance, had turned over and disposed himself to sleep once more.

Norah retired baffled from the room. It was full daylight by this time, the cold, cheerless light of dawn, and she stood in the lobby window, looking at the gray world outside, and debating with herself what she should do. Perhaps, as Manus had said, it would be all right, and Lanty's hiding-place would remain undiscovered, but on the other hand Captain Lester, for all his jollity and good-humour, did not look like a man who would follow a wild-goose chase, and probably he had made himself well acquainted with the whereabouts of the still before starting on his present enterprise. Norah thought of Lanty's ugly, good-natured face, and of his kindness to her the day of the seal-hunt. She was a little girl who did not forget kindness very readily; and then there were Biddy and Tom and Bride to be thought of. What a disgrace and a sorrow it would be to all of them if Lanty should be marched along the road handcuffed on his way to Ennis jail, as Manus had said he would be! No, the police should not take Lanty if she could help it—that was a determination to which Norah very quickly came, and since Manus would not go with her she would go alone out on Drinane Head, and warn him of his danger. She thought that from Manus's description of the place upon the previous night she could hardly fail to find it.

It must be confessed that it required all Norah's self-command, when she went back to her own little room, to keep her from plunging into bed again, it looked so invitingly warm, and the raw chill of the early morning had penetrated to her very bones. She withstood the temptation bravely, however, and by the time that she had deluged her face abundantly with cold water, and scrubbed it into a glow with a rough towel, and had huddled in all haste into her clothes, the last remnant of sleepiness had disappeared.

It was a strange sensation to step out-of-doors into the freshness of the day which had but just begun. The birds were awake, and twittered loudly in the trees as Norah walked down the avenue, but they and she seemed the only things that were astir as yet. The cattle were still lying down in the fields, as they had lain during the night, and the doors of the few cabins which she passed upon the road were shut, and not even a curl of smoke rose upwards from the chimneys. It was a longer walk than Norah had expected, but she kept the lofty frowning headland for which she was bound well in view, and trudged steadily on. The road grew rougher and steeper as she went, and dwindled down at last into a mere cattle-track which led out upon the open moorland and left her free to make her way in what direction she pleased.

Norah had never been so far from home by herself before, but that did not trouble her much, any more than did the heathery solitude on which she found herself. She had grown used to lonely rambles since they had come to live at Kilshane, and her only fear was that she might miss the snug retreat in which Lanty and his confederates carried on their illegal practices, or that she might not reach it in time to enable them to escape. She found that walking through the deep heather, which reached almost to her waist, was very hard and tiring work, and here and there she came upon soft, swampy places into which her feet sunk with, a squelching sound, and threatened more than once to stick fast altogether. All the same she struggled onwards and upwards valiantly, sometimes helped on her way by a bare slope of limestone which cropped out above the heather, and sometimes having to make a long step to cross a rift or crevice, which seemed to go down into unknown depths, but which was filled almost to the brim with little green ferns and mosses, and trailing brambles, which had established themselves in there out of reach of cutting blasts.

A yellow glow had been spreading gradually higher into the sky, and the tops of the great mountains to her left were bathed in sunlight. Suddenly, as Norah walked along, she saw her own shadow thrown before her on the rocks—the sun, a red, rayless disc, had risen up over the mountains, and in a moment the dull monotony of the landscape broke into sudden life and colour. It was the first sunrise which Norah had ever been out-of-doors to witness, but its beauty awoke little response in her, her only thought being that if the sun had risen it must be getting late—late, that is, for what she had to do, and that it behoved her to hurry on if her expedition was not to fail of its purpose. Panting, she struggled on up the steep heathery incline, till she stopped all at once with a little gasp of wonder and relief—she had reached the end of the long ascent, and almost at her very feet the great cliff sank sheer to the sea, five hundred feet below.

For a brief moment the little girl stood still to recover her breath, whilst the keen salt wind blew her hair and her short skirts about. A sea-gull circled close above her uttering its short, plaintive cry, then with extended wings glided far out over the abyss. No other living thing was in view on all the wide waste of heather and sea, in the midst of which she stood, a little solitary speck.

She could walk faster now, for here, on the edge of the cliffs, exposed to the fierce western gales, not even the heather could grow; there were only a few inches of black peaty soil covering the rocks. The long, level rays of the early sun shone upon her as she hurried along, and far beneath her the great Atlantic surges broke in foam upon the rocks. She had to make more than one detour to avoid yawning clefts that ran far inland, another rise had to be struggled up, and she stood at last on the very summit of Drinane Head.

Immediately below her was a hollow, a little green oasis which seemed scooped out from the surrounding wilderness, and with a great throb of joy Norah recognized the description which Manus had given her, and knew she had arrived at the secluded retreat in which Lanty had deemed that he might securely carry on his lawless trade. The little mountain tarn lay in the centre of the circle of green, its black sullen waters not brightened even by the morning sunshine; a tiny stream flowed out of it and fell over the edge of the cliffs, to be blown away in mist and spray long before the sea was reached. Facing her, midway between the lake and the cliffs, was the thatched hovel of which Manus had spoken, built against a rock, so that the wreaths of blue peat-smoke which curled up from its roof seemed to rise out of the very ground.

No one, police-constable or anyone else, was in sight, and by all appearances she was still in time to accomplish her errand. Slipping, scrambling, jumping from ledge to ledge of the rocks, Norah descended from the height on which she stood into the little dell below. She had to cross the streamlet which purled and gurgled between banks of close mountain turf in its short course to the sea. A large stone, however, had been placed in its bed to facilitate such crossings, and a moment later Norah was knocking boldly at the door of the hovel.

A shuffling of feet was heard within, a subdued muttering of voices, then the door was cautiously opened a little way, and a fierce-looking man with unkempt red hair and beard appeared. Norah recognized him at once as the steersman of the boat which they had encountered down below on their return from Ballintaggart Cave.

"Is Lanty Hogan here, please?" she enquired, whilst he stared in speechless amazement at his unlooked-for visitor.

"An' what wud Lanty be doin' up here on the bare mountain, an' him wid his father's good house to shtop in?" the man returned in true Irish fashion, answering one question by asking another.

"But Lanty has been here, I know," Norah said earnestly, "and if he's here still will you tell him, please, that Norah O'Brien is here and wants to see him about something very important?"

"An' what ailed ye, Miss Norah, to be runnin' up here afther me an' it scarce cockshout yit? Shure there's nothin' gone amiss down in Kilshane?"

And there was genuine anxiety in Lanty's face as he unceremoniously thrust the first speaker to one side and appeared in the doorway himself. He was only in his shirt and trousers, and his face had a sodden, smoke-bleared look.

"There is nothing wrong at Kilshane, thank you, Lanty," Norah began rather nervously, for two or three other men in similar attire had clustered at the door, all gazing at her and evidently curious to learn her errand. "Captain Lester, the resident magistrate, stayed at our house last night, and he and Mr. Roderick are coming up here this morning with a lot of policemen to search for your still. Master Manus heard them talking about it after dinner last night, so I came up to tell you."

"Tare an' ages!"

Lanty almost knocked Norah over as he dashed out of the house, and in another minute was bounding like a cat up the rocky knoll from which she had just descended. Screening himself behind a block of limestone which topped the summit, he crouched for a moment, gazing about him, his eyes shaded from the sun, then came springing down again as actively as he had gone up.

"The child's i' the right!" he ejaculated breathlessly, as he got back, "an' sorra moment to lose! The peelers is movin' up to take us back-ways an' front-ways an' all sides at wanst, but wid the help o' goodness we'll sarcumvint thim theer boys yit."

The men drew away from the door into the centre of the floor, speaking in hoarse, excited murmurs; and Norah, impelled by curiosity, stepped inside, where she could see the interior of the hovel and what was going on there.

A roaring turf-fire burnt at the farther end, making the heat of the room almost unendurable, and a skinny, wrinkled old woman, with locks of grizzled hair escaping from under the red handkerchief round her head, was engaged in tending it. On a tripod above the fire stood a tall, strangely-shaped vessel, closed at the top save for a pipe that issued from it and wound in many spiral coils round the inside of a large tub filled with cold water and placed upon the hearth. The pipe passed out again at the bottom of the tub, discharging the freshly-distilled spirits which had been condensed within it in its passage through the cold water into a large earthenware pan which acted as receiver. Norah had hardly had time, however, to contemplate this strange and rude apparatus when, at an order given in Irish by the red-bearded man who had opened the door to her, two of the other men lifted the still off the fire, and carrying it outside the door, poured the boiling liquor within it into the little stream; another caught up the earthenware pan and emptied it in similar fashion.

"A sin an' shame to be sendin' the good potheen over the racks to the fishes," muttered the red-bearded man, whom the others called Malachy, and who seemed to exercise some sort of authority over the lawless crew. "Stir yerselves, boys," he went on louder, "or they'll be on ye afore all's done."

The still itself, and the tripod on which it had stood, the tub with the "worm" still coiled within it, and all the other portions of the apparatus were carried up to the tarn and sunk in its dark, peat-stained water, so also were two kegs of whisky which were brought out from the inner room of the hovel. Malachy himself seized a broken spade, which formed part of an accumulation of rubbish in one corner, and carried spadeful after spadeful of blazing peats out of the house, flinging them, hissing and spluttering, into the stream, till the furnace on the hearth had been reduced to the limits of an ordinary domestic fire. A big black pot was suspended over it, in the place where the still had been; water and meal were hastily poured in, and the old woman took her stand before it, an iron spoon in her hand, stirring as composedly as if she had never assisted in any more dubious enterprise than preparing stirabout for the breakfast of her son and his friends.

"Now, thim theer boys may come as soon as plazes thim, an' we'll be ready to bid thim the top o' the marnin'," chuckled Malachy, when the preparations indoors were completed and the men who had gone to sink the still and the other appliances in the tarn had straggled back to the hovel again. Then, as his eye fell on Norah, whom in the bustle everyone had forgotten, but who had remained standing just within the door watching all these proceedings with the keenest interest, he exclaimed, "Murdher alive, what'll we do wid the child at all, at all?"

Strangely enough, this question had not occurred to any of the band before, and at that moment four black dots came into view upon the heathery skyline above the little lake. They were the heads of men moving steadily down upon the cabin. A minute or two later two more dark figures appeared high up on the rocky crest which Lanty had scaled to get a view. Clearly the house was surrounded and escape from it cut off.

"Hoide her in theer, quick!" suggested one of the men, pointing towards the inner room.

"An' if it's minded to sarch the house they'd be," retorted Malachy contemptuously, "sure the little darlin' wud be desthroyed for comin' to bring us warnin', an' us desthroyed along of her."

"'Tis the born gomeral that y'are!" exclaimed the old woman, who had hitherto continued to stir the black pot assiduously, but who seemed now to wake up suddenly to the emergency of the situation. Still grasping the iron spoon in one hand, she caught the terrified Norah by the other, and dragged her unceremoniously towards the fire.

"Tak' the cheer an' sit down," she said authoritatively.

Malachy obeyed his mother, as Norah took her to be, by bringing forward the solitary wooden chair of which the establishment boasted, and seating himself upon it by the fire. With a sudden grab the old woman pulled Norah's hat off and flung it amongst the lumber in the corner, then snatching up an old tartan shawl which lay on the window-ledge, she put it over the little girl's head and wrapped it hastily about her.

"Stand her beside ye an' she'll pass for wan o' yer own," she said, giving Norah a push towards her son as she spoke.

"Niver fear, 'cushla, nayther hurt nor harm shall come to ye," whispered Malachy encouragingly, as he drew her to stand at his knee. "Stand still an' kape yer mouth shut, that's all that's for you to do."

CHAPTER XII

DISCOMFITED

A couple of minutes of breathless silence followed. Norah stood motionless, with Malachy's arm round her, his bristling red beard close beside her face, and the heavy shawl, saturated with the reek of peat smoke, weighing her down and dragging backwards off her head. Lanty and the other men were endeavouring to stare out over each other's shoulders through the square foot of greenish glass which served as a window. The brush of feet on the short grass outside became audible, someone's iron-shod boot-heel struck with a metallic click upon a stone, and the next moment there came a loud, imperative knock against the half-closed door.

It was opened wide instantly. Captain Lester stood outside, with Roderick beside him, and four policemen closing in behind. The hot, red blood mounted up into Norah's face as Roderick, stooping his tall head to look under the low doorway, gazed straight at her. It seemed impossible that he should not recognize her, but she had forgotten that to him, standing outside in the bright morning sunshine, the interior of the cabin appeared to be in almost total darkness, and if he was able to distinguish her at all, it was only as a little country girl, frightened by the sudden appearance of the police, and keeping close to her father's side.

"Malachy Flanagan," said Captain Lester, "I have come up here with a search-warrant, having received information that you are in the habit of carrying on illicit distillation in these premises."

"Innicint dissitation!" returned Malachy, scratching his head in much apparent perplexity. "An' what wud yer honour be manin' by that?"

"Nonsense, my man!" Captain Lester answered sharply. "You know what I mean well enough; there is no use in pretending ignorance. You are suspected of manufacturing whisky up here, or potheen if you prefer to call it so."

"Arrah, Mither, did iver ye hear the likes o' that?" said Malachy, turning in well-feigned astonishment to the old woman. "Mannifacterin' potheen, an' up here on Drinane Head, av all places on this mortial airth! But shtep in, yer honour, an' mak' yer resarches."

This last with a lofty air and a sweep of his arm, which implied that there was nothing within the four corners of his cabin which the forces of the law were not entirely welcome to inspect.

Captain Lester did not hesitate to avail himself of the permission so magnificently given—at least he stood without at the door with Roderick whilst two of the policemen went in and ransacked the house, searching everywhere, in the heap of rags which was the nearest approach to a bed, amongst the litter heaped up in the corner, even in the thatch of the roof, but naturally without finding anything to reward them for their labours. Norah had another pang of apprehension when her hat was tossed out with the rest of the lumber, and rolled right across the floor almost to Roderick's feet. She thought he could not fail to know it again, but, fortunately for her and for those she had come to warn, Roderick had the common masculine lack of observation where articles of female apparel were concerned. Often as he had seen that hat with its bow of discoloured ribbon, which bore witness to much battling with wind and weather, upon his little sister's head, it woke no recollection in his mind. Malachy had lighted his pipe, and was puffing away with ostentatious indifference as he watched the efforts of the search-party; the other men looked on either with a malicious grin, or with an expression of sullen ill-will.

"Wudn't yez tak' a look into the pot theer?" enquired Malachy, with feigned politeness, as the constables emerged baffled from the inner room of the hovel, their investigations there having been productive of no better result than in the outer apartment. "Maybe 'tis potheen herself is stirrin' to give us for our breakfast."

Amidst the shout of laughter which this sally evoked from the other occupants, the baffled members of the constabulary made haste to withdraw from the scene. Captain Lester, however, lingered at the door before following his retreating forces.

"Listen to me, boys, and let me give you a word of good advice before I go," he said gravely. "You have been too many for me this time, I admit freely, whether it was through getting warning of my coming or not. But I know well enough that half a dozen able-bodied fellows like yourselves are not up on this desolate spot, where there is no work or lawful trade of any sort, for nothing. And I warn you that the way you are in is not a good way, that whether you succeed in evading the law in future or not, your present courses are certain to bring ruin on yourselves and on everyone belonging to you. Therefore my advice to you is to abandon your way of life without delay and take to some honest calling."

"Sure, 'tis the great counsellor yer honour wud make intirely," said one of the men; "and it's much beholden we shud be for such gran' advice, an' free an' for nothin', mirover."

Captain Lester took no notice of the sneer, but turned to Roderick.

"Come along," he said, "we'd better follow those fellows of mine."

Norah watched them through the open door as they went up over the short grass towards the lake and disappeared round one of the folds of the moorland. Ugly scowls and fierce execrations followed them, clenched fists were shaken at their retreating figures; and when they had passed out of sight, Norah realized the strangeness of her own position for the first time, and felt just a little frightened as she remembered that she was alone with that wild-looking crew of men in the low, smoke-darkened hut, the sheer black cliffs on one side of her, the dark mountain tarn on the other, and that she had their secret in her keeping. Lanty's presence, however, was an assurance that not much harm could befall her, and divesting herself of the shawl which had served as disguise, she said politely:

"I think, if you please, if I may have my hat, I will go home now, or I shall be late for breakfast."

"Thin, begor, alanna, ye'll not set fut to the ground while meself's in it to carry ye!" Malachy exclaimed, and before Norah well understood what he was about to do, he had wrapped the shawl round her once more and lifted her on to his back, knotting the ends of the shawl round his waist, so as to form a sort of hammock for her to sit in, with her hands resting on his shoulders. "Sit ye still, darlint, an' hould yer hoult, an' ye'll have as iligant a roide home as if 'twas yer own carriage ye was sottin' in."

The other men crowded to the door and raised a sort of cheer as Norah departed on her novel charger. "Blessin's on the little lady that give us the warnin', an' on the ould shtock she comes of!"

Malachy did not take the roundabout course by the cliffs by which Norah had come, nor follow the search-party, who were making their way towards the nearest point of the road, where their conveyances waited for them. Instead, he struck straight across the moorland, following a track which was evidently well known to him. Swamps had to be crossed here and there by the aid of stepping-stones, and in one or two places white stones had been bedded in the heather to serve as guiding marks for those who might have to traverse Drinane Head at night. Malachy travelled sometimes at a jog-trot and sometimes at a long, swinging walk, which covered the ground almost as rapidly, the burden on his back scarcely seeming to incommode him at all. Not a single word did he utter till the verge of the moorland had been reached, where he set Norah down, and pointed out the way to her by which she was to reach Kilshane.

"'Tis meself wud carry ye to the very doore, an' proud to do it, but for the fear o' meetin' some wan on the road that wud be axin' questions an' passin' their remarks. But ye'll be home, mavourneen, soon a'most as thim that's had their horses an' ekeepages to dhraw them—bad cess to them for the dirty work they wor afther!"

He lifted his ragged old hat with the air of a courtier, and turned to retrace his steps; then, rushing back suddenly, he caught her small sunburnt hand in his rough grasp and covered it with passionate kisses.

"God's blessin' an' the blessin' of His saints be on ye for what ye've done this day! It's wan of the raal ould O'Briens ye've shown yerself, that always had a heart for the poor. There's thim that'll not forgit it to ye, an'll maybe do a good turn to you and yours afore all's done. It's more nor mannifacterin' potheen the boys talks of betimes! Whisht, thin, what am I sayin'? But you're wan as can kape saycrits for as young as y'are, so niver let on what I've said to ye, nor don't ye be feared for nothin' that happens. Nayther hurt nor harm will come next or nigh you, an' them that's belongin' to you, while Malachy Flanagan's to the fore!"

Norah was rather frightened by the vehemence of this address, of which, to say the truth, she understood very little. She only said, however:

"Oh, I shall not tell anyone, Malachy! you may be quite sure of that, except Manus, my brother. He knows all about your place on Drinane Head already, but he's quite as good at keeping secrets as I am."

Following the line which Malachy had pointed out to her, Norah made her way across the fields and struck the road not far from the gate of Kilshane. She had just scrambled over the loose-built stone wall which skirted the roadside, when she heard the clatter of the whole cavalcade of horses and cars coming down the road behind her. She shrank back behind a bramble bush in the vain hope of escaping being seen, and the next instant they swept past her. First came Roderick and Captain Lester in a dog-cart, and the police followed on two cars. They had hoped to cover themselves with glory by capturing the still and the whole gang, who had succeeded hitherto in carrying on their contraband trade in defiance of the law; but instead, they were returning baffled and somewhat crestfallen from their raid.

Roderick looked rather surprised as he caught sight of his little sister screening herself behind the briar, but he smiled and nodded to her, as they tore past at the full speed of Captain Lester's fast-trotting mare.

Norah had hoped to slip into the house without being perceived, but when she came down the avenue a few minutes later, she found Roderick and Captain Lester standing outside the door enjoying the fresh sea-breeze. Roderick caught hold of her as she tried to pass him by and pulled her to him.

"Hullo, little woman!" he said pleasantly. "Come here and tell me what mischief you've been up to, careering over the country at this hour of the morning."

For the first time in her life Norah could not meet the gaze of those kindly dark eyes that were looking down at her. She hung her head awkwardly, and drew patterns on the gravel with the toe of her boot.

"It was such a fine morning," she began confusedly, "and so—I thought I might as well—that is, I wanted to go out."

Anstace's voice interrupted her, speaking through the open window of the dining-room close at hand.

"Oh, Norah, dear! you have come back. I could not think what had become of you. I suppose you went up to old Mrs. Connor's about those fresh eggs I wanted. Can she let me have them?"

"Yes—that is, I think so—I'm not quite sure," stammered Norah.

"Well, you might have made certain when you set off at such an unearthly hour, There was not such a tremendous hurry; it would have done quite well later in the day. And, my dear child," with just a shade of annoyance in her tone, "what a state you are in! Really, one would think your clothes had been put on you with a pitchfork. And look at your shoes and stockings! I don't know how you found so much mud to walk through on this fine dry morning."

Norah glanced down at her footgear, on which the bog mould had dried by this time, and could not wonder at Anstace's remark.

"Really, Norah, you are getting old enough to be a little more careful," Anstace went on, but in judiciously suppressed tones, so as not to put her sister to shame by a scolding administered before Captain Lester: "Run upstairs now, and make yourself tidy as fast as you can. Breakfast will be ready directly."

Roderick, who had kept his arm round Norah all this time, let her go. He had a suspicion that something was wrong, more than could be accounted for by that expedition in quest of fresh eggs. He prudently refrained from asking questions, however, and Norah lost no time in disappearing into the house.

When she came downstairs again the rest of the party were already assembled at the breakfast-table, and Captain Lester was entertaining them with a humorous account of the fruitless descent he and Roderick had made upon the potheen-brewers' lair, and of the reception which Malachy Flanagan had accorded them.

"I do believe," he said with comic despair, "that not only every man, woman, and child in the county are on the side of lawlessness, but that in Ireland the very winds of heaven are in league with criminals, to carry them intimation of any efforts that may be on foot against them. I declare to you, Miss O'Brien, I did not breathe a word of my object in coming here to anyone except your brother and yourself; and neither of you, I suppose, betrayed my confidence to those gentlemen on Drinane Head. Yet I am as sure as that I am sitting here, receiving this very excellent cup of tea from your hands, that they had been engaged in brewing that infernal stuff—which is the cause of half the crime in the county—not half an hour before we turned up, and that by some means or other, warning of our coming had been conveyed to them."

A sudden thought struck Roderick.

"By the way, I am nearly sure that one of the fellows inside that cabin was that idle young scamp Lanty. I could not be absolutely certain, as he kept as far back as possible, with his back to me, but I think it was he. You were in the room last night, Manus, when Captain Lester was talking of his arrangements for capturing the still. Are you sure that you did not say anything about them to Lanty or to the servants?"

"Not a word," Manus was able to assure him with perfect truthfulness and a most unembarrassed air. "I didn't mention it to a soul except Norah, after she was in bed last night, and I haven't as much as seen Lanty for a week."

He tried to telegraph across the table with his eyes to Norah, "There, wasn't that well done?" but failed in the attempt, as Norah had her face down over her plate, to conceal the burning crimson flush which was surging up to her forehead, and accordingly she did not see his signals.

"Those illicit stills are the very curse of the country," Captain Lester went on. "You saw those men up there to-day, O'Brien, fine stalwart fellows all of them, and the heavy sodden look they had all got? They've been sitting up night after night in that cabin, in a stifling atmosphere, for once the grain is 'wet', as they call it, it has to be watched incessantly till the process is finished, and as you can imagine, a good deal of drinking goes on during these vigils. Then every idle vagabond in the country drops in without being invited, to gossip and taste the brew. And when the stuff is finally manufactured, half of it is generally expended in drunken hospitality. I speak strongly, Miss O'Brien, because I've seen so much of the ruin that this demoralizing trade brings on everyone who embarks in it. I spoke my mind to these fellows on Drinane Head this morning, without getting much thanks for my pains, but the best thing that could have happened for themselves, quite as much as for the Revenue, would have been if I had succeeded in my raid this morning, and had marched the whole lot off to jail. That would have put an end to their distilling once and for all. There, O'Brien, I'm due at the Ballyfin petty sessions, and I've no time to lose. May I ring to have my trap brought round? Good-bye, Miss O'Brien, many thanks for your hospitality."

And the good-humoured, chatty resident magistrate took himself off.

"You see it was a precious good thing you didn't get me to go off on a wild-goose chase to Drinane Head in the middle of the night," observed Manus, when Norah and he found themselves alone in the dining-room, Roderick having gone to see Captain Lester off, and Anstace having departed to her household duties. "I told you Lanty and the boys up there knew how to take care of themselves, and that they could show Captain Lester a trick or two. And a pretty gaby you were at breakfast, turning the colour of a boiled beet-root when they talked of someone having warned those fellows. Why, if anyone had happened to look at you, they'd have twigged at once that you knew something or other about it!"

"I couldn't help it, Manus," pleaded Norah, humbly. "I tried to stop getting red, but I couldn't, and I was so frightened when you said you had told no one but me. Because, you see, Roderick and Captain Lester passed me on the road coming back, and I thought they must guess."

"Passed you on the road? Why, you don't mean to say it was you who warned the fellows?"

"Oh yes it was. I was awake and up, you know, so I thought I might as well go; and it was awfully lucky I did, for they'd only just had time to hide their things away when Captain Lester and the police came. I was inside the house the whole time they were there, and I thought Roderick would be sure to know me, for he stood just at the door, staring straight in at me; but they'd put a shawl over my head, and I stood beside Malachy Flanagan, and pretended to be his little girl, and no one had the least notion who I was."

Manus looked put out and rather ashamed.

"I say, Norah, you've no business to go skying all over the country by yourself like a wild thing. I wonder what all those men thought of your coming up there alone. You ought to have kept pegging on at me until I was really awake, I'd have gone like a shot then. When a fellow's half asleep, as I was, he doesn't know what he's saying, and you oughtn't to have gone without me."

Considering the reception which Manus had given her when she went to wake him, Norah thought that this was hardly fair.

CHAPTER XIII

MALACHY'S ORATION

Norah was very silent and thoughtful all the rest of that day; so much so, indeed, that her preoccupation could hardly have escaped Anstace's notice if she had not been more than usually busy, making all the needful arrangements for her brief absence from home. In the afternoon she and Roderick set out upon Connor's car for their long drive to Dromore, Lady Louisa Butler's place, where, according to invitation, they were to dine and sleep.

"Do be good children, and don't get into any mischief while we are away," was Anstace's parting exhortation to Norah and Manus, as the car drew off.

They turned back into the house with the comfortable knowledge that they had a whole long evening before them, in which to do exactly as they pleased, and that even its termination, bed-time, was a very indeterminate epoch, since there was nothing but their own inclination to decide when it should be.

They tried and grew weary of various amusements and occupations, till at last Manus, throwing down the chisel with which he had been shaping the keel of a toy boat, exclaimed:

"Oh, I say, Norah, wouldn't it be fun to pay a visit to the mine, Uncle Nicholas's mine, you know? Roderick never would let me go there, because none of the Moyross lot have taken any notice of us since we came here; but now that Uncle Nicholas has stopped the work, and turned off all the men, there won't be a soul about the place, and no one will know of our going there."

"But it's rather late," objected Norah. "It's six o'clock and past it."

"Well, and what does that matter on a lovely night like this? We'll tell Bride to leave our supper ready for us, and then we can poke about the place as long as we like. I'd like awfully to see all the machinery, and the shaft, and everything."

Norah offered no further objection; she was always very ready to agree to any proposal of Manus, and even more so than usual just now, when his return to school loomed large upon the horizon.

It was a lovely evening in late August, the corn was ripening fast in the little weedy fields on either side of the road—the same road off which Norah had branched that morning on her expedition to Drinane Head—and here and there the work of harvesting had already begun. They got beyond the verge of cultivation after a while; the small oat and potato fields, separated from each other by loose-built, lace-work walls, gave place to wild, open pasturage, with gorse and bracken growing up through it, and the heathery hillside rising above. The sun was sinking down towards the sea, turning the broad plain of the western ocean into a dazzling flood of gold.

"It will be quite dark before we get home," Norah remarked presently.

"What matter if it is? You're not afraid of meeting another ghost on the road, are you?"

Manus could afford to be quite jocular now about the spectre of the Monk's Walk, though for days and weeks after that episode he and Norah had only ventured to speak to each other of it in out-of-the-way corners, and with bated breath, so great had been their dread lest their guilt should be discovered, and they would be dragged forth publicly as the destroyers of their uncle's table-cloth. Everyone seemed to have forgotten the matter now, and they felt themselves secure.

The rough road, which was worn into deep ruts by the passage of heavy carts over it, surmounted a slight acclivity, and all at once they found themselves close upon the buildings belonging to the mine. There they stood, gaunt and ugly, the tall, square chimney, the stamping-houses and engine-house, and in their midst the quarried opening in the mountain-side, from which the galleries ran in far underground to reach the rich metalliferous lodes. Great heaps of slag and refuse lay on one side, and the whole seemed strangely out of keeping with the rugged grandeur of the spot, the great headland rising on one side, the Atlantic rolling in far below on the other.

The works were all silent and untenanted now, without any of the busy life and bustle that generally reigned there, and in the gathering twilight there was something weird and solemn about that grim range of deserted buildings that stood almost upon the verge of the cliff, thrown out sharp and clear against the background of sea. Even Manus and Norah were impressed with a sense of awe, and they hushed their steps involuntarily and lowered their voices as they approached.

When they got quite close, however, they became aware of a hoarse, suppressed murmur, a sound quite different and distinct from that of the sea chafing against the rocks—the sound as of a great crowd close pressed together. The children paused to listen, and then a voice became audible, speaking, somewhere behind those very buildings, in what seemed a torrent of wrath.

Norah and Manus exchanged questioning glances—no human being was in sight, but still that voice went on, growing fiercer and more rapid in its utterance as it proceeded. The children crept onwards cautiously, and on tiptoe, till they had reached a large shed, the door of which stood open. Shovels, pickaxes, and upturned wheel-barrows lay on the floor within, the implements of the industry that was at a stand-still, and in the opposite wall there was a window with dirt-encrusted panes through which a view could yet be had.

"Keep well back; don't let them see you. Who knows who they are!" whispered Manus as he and Norah stole towards the window. Tales which he had heard of the secret gathering of Ribbonmen and Whiteboys, and of the vengeance they had taken on those who had surprised them unawares, were floating in his brain.

Standing on one of the overturned barrows, some little distance within the shed, they were able to peer out without much risk of being seen, and then a strange spectacle presented itself to them.

A great crowd was gathered in an open space at the back of the mine buildings—wild, excited-looking men and half-grown lads for the most part, though the blue cloaks and red petticoats of a few women mingled with the throng. A warm, orange light which glowed in the west shone on the uplifted faces that were all gazing at a man who stood on an overturned trolly, one of the little trucks employed for bringing the metal out of the depths of the mine. To Norah's amazement it was none other than Malachy Flanagan, her acquaintance of that morning, who, with his arms raised above his head, was addressing the crowd which pressed round his extemporized platform with a vehemence which at times made him almost incoherent.

"I'd ax ye this, boys," cried the orator fiercely and excitedly: "If 'twas Nich'las O'Brien's money that dug that mine undherground into Drinane Head, an' his cliverness an' his ingeenuity that consaved it all, an' made the thrack down the racks for the shtuff to thravel to the say, an' to the ships, whose toilin' an' moilin' was't that cut into thim racks for to bring the good ore out? Who crushed it, an' riddled it, an' sint it down in the thrucks? Wasn't it you an' me, boys, an' our childher, an' our fathers afore us, since first a pick was shtruck into the ground, here where we shtand? Nich'las O'Brien says he'll have us larn who's the masther of the Moyross mine, but if he's the masther we're the men, an' maybe 'tis ourselves might larn him somethin' too. We've worked the mine an' sarved him well this thirty years, an' now he brings in his manager from Scotland wid his new fashions, an' his new notions, to dhrive us, an' grind us, an' rack us, an' whin we renague an' say we'll work the mine as 'twas always worked or we'll not work at all, what's all the talk Misther M'Bain has for us? 'I'll bring over Scotchmin,' says he, 'ivery man o' whom'll do as much work in a day as a lazy Irish pisant wud do in three.' Aye, boys, that's the word for us—lazy Irish pisants."

A howl of hatred and of fury broke in upon his speech; the faces of the men were contorted with rage, and clenched fists were shaken over their heads.

"An' what'll yez do now, boys?" Malachy went on in wheedling tones as soon as he could make himself heard again. "Will yez kape tame, an' quite, an' saft as silk, an' see the Scotchmin brought in to take the wark out o' yer hands an' the bread out of yer childher's mouths, or will yez stand up like min an' show the ould masther, an' M'Bain, an' the whoule of thim, what thim same lazy Irish pisants is like whin the blood is hot widin thim?"

Another roar, wilder and fiercer than the last, answered him.

"Come on thin, come on, ivery mother's son of yez! Come on till we go to Moyross an' spake to the masther, to Nich'las O'Brien his own self. We'll malivogue it into him that we'll sarve no Scotchmin nor furriners. Isn't there thim of the ould shtock, of his own name an' his own blood, in the country? If he's ould an' wakely himself, why isn't he for puttin' in his brother's son? It's young Roderick O'Brien we'll have, an' the back of me hand to M'Bain, an' to that young spalpeen that's bein' larned in Jarmany for to tyrannize over us. We'll have our rights, boys, an' if the masther's not for givin' thim to us, or if he's not willin' to be shpoke to, there's ways an' manes of makin' him hear raison. There's arms in that house, boys, an' there's hands here as can use thim—"

His voice was drowned in an uproar of yells and hootings. A hundred throats caught up the cry: "To Moyross, boys! Come on to Moyross till we shpake to the masther!" One voice, high and strident above the others, shouted out: "An' whin we've spoke to Nich'las O'Brien we'll have a word for M'Bain that'll maybe not be plisant hearin'."

And the whole crowd swayed forward and made one wild, tumultuous rush for the road.

It had grown dark within the work-shed by this time, Norah and Manus could just see each other's white faces through the gloom, and Norah, without a word, caught her brother's hand, and pulled him away from the window, back into the darker recesses of the shed.

"Keep back, they mustn't see us," she whispered imperatively.

Manus had no inclination to disobey, and they remained motionless, still holding each other's hands, whilst with oaths and shouts and curses the human torrent swept past their hiding-place. Norah drew a long breath of relief when the voices and the trampling of feet had died away.

"Come now, quick, quick!" she cried, "we must run as fast as ever we can."

"Where to?" Manus asked stupidly.

"To Moyross, of course, to tell Uncle Nicholas and Ella that those men are coming."

Manus positively gasped at the suggestion.

"But I say, Norah, we've never been there before; not up to the house at least, and Uncle Nicholas hates us all like poison because of the family feud, you know. He may be awfully angry with us for coming, and we couldn't get there in time either."

"Oh yes, we can, they've all gone by the road, and we'll run straight across the fields. I should think Uncle Nicholas would be very much obliged to us for coming to tell him that his house is going to be attacked; if he isn't, we can't help it. You wouldn't stand here doing nothing, would you?"

It was a very unusual tone for Norah to adopt towards the brother whom she idolized. Perhaps her adventure of that morning had inclined her to be more independent and self-reliant; at any rate, without waiting for further parley, she darted out of the shed and dashed away down the hillside. Manus followed her after a minute's hesitation, and overtook her before she had got clear of the rubbish heaps and the rough, broken ground.

Two or three old women, whom the crowd in their stampede had left behind, came round the corner of the shed just then.

"Musha! saints in glory! Did iver ye see the likes o' that?" they exclaimed to each other, as they caught sight of the two flying figures racing down the hill.

The children, however, never paused or turned their heads, on and on they ran, as if their lives depended on their speed.

CHAPTER XIV

MR. O'BRIEN SEES A VISION OF THE PAST

Moyross Abbey bore its wonted peaceful aspect upon that night. The broken arches of the ruin stood out against the pale gray sky, in which a star was beginning to twinkle here and there, and the air of the summer evening was heavy with the scent of flowers. The dining-room windows were unshuttered, and the light of the candles shone on the white table-cloth, and the silver and flowers upon it, and on the faces of the trio who sat round. Mr. O'Brien himself was not there. Wearisome and unending business connected with the troubles at the mine, and the proposal to bring in labour from a distance, had taken him once more to Dublin, and he was not expected home till the following day. In his place at the head of the table sat a handsome curly-haired lad, facing Ella and Miss Browne with a look of smiling defiance. The two latter were pale and tearful, and Miss Browne shook her head and sighed to herself with profoundest dejection every now and again.

Whilst dinner was proceeding, conversation had been impossible, but now that the dessert had been placed on the table, and the servants had withdrawn, Ella said apprehensively, as she had already said twenty times at least since her scapegrace brother had walked in, dusty and toil-worn, a couple of hours before:

"Oh, Harry, Uncle Nicholas will be so dreadfully, dreadfully angry when he comes home to-morrow!"

"No doubt, Nelly," said the culprit philosophically. "There'll be a bit of a shine over it, I expect. It's got to be faced, though, and you're not to blame for it, so don't look so doleful, old lady."

"But it's so ungrateful, Harry," sobbed Ella, fairly breaking down, "and Uncle Nicholas has done so much for us. He's let us live here all these years since Father and Mother died, and sent you to school, and—and—"

"I know all that, Nell," interposed her brother more gravely, "and I've tried my best to fall in with Uncle Nicholas's ideas. Do you suppose if it hadn't been for thinking of all we owe him that I'd have let myself be banished off to the Carpathian Mountains to live among a lot of Polish Jews and learn their gibberish. But it's no good. The more I've tried grubbing underground the more I hate it, so I just showed them a clean pair of heels, and made my way back here. I can't let Uncle Nicholas shape my life for me, for all my gratitude to him."

"Oh, my dear boy, don't be hasty, and don't anger your uncle!" pleaded Miss Browne in her thin, reedy tones. "He's not used to be thwarted or contradicted, Harry, and more depends on it than you have any idea of. There are harpies here," nodding her head mysteriously, "on the watch to seize on any advantage. We have kept them at a distance hitherto—"

Miss Browne's speech was cut short by a violent ring of the door-bell, which pealed and clanged far away in the depths of the house.

"My dears, what can that be at this hour, and at the front door?" she exclaimed apprehensively. "I am always so nervous in this dreadful country, and with your uncle away too."

"We'll hear what they have to say for themselves, whoever it may be," said Harry, getting up and opening the dining-room door a little way, so as to be able to hear what passed outside.

"If you please," said a voice, speaking in short gasps, as Norah's panting breath enabled her to find utterance. "We want to see Miss Ella at once; it's very important."

The dignified butler viewed the dishevelled pair on the door-step with much disfavour. Evidently he did not think that any communication they had to import could be of much consequence.

"Miss Ella is at dinner and can't be disturbed," he said loftily. "You'd best give me your message, unless you like to wait till dinner is over to see her."

"We can't do anything of the sort," said Manus bluntly. "We've got to see Miss Ella at once, or else Mr. O'Brien himself, and you'll please go in and say so."

What the butler would have replied to this bold speech remained unknown, for Miss Browne, opening the dining-room door a little wider, called out sharply:

"Who's that out there, Cartwright? Tell them that Mr. O'Brien is not at home, and if they want to see Miss Ella they must come at a proper hour."

"That's just what I was saying, ma'am," returned the indignant butler. "I think it's young Master and Miss O'Brien from Kilshane, and they say they want to see Miss Ella very particular."

"The O'Brien children? At this hour? How extremely forward, and at the very instant when I was speaking of them."

And Miss Browne did not trouble herself to lower her voice or conceal the annoyance of her tones.

Ella, however, had heard too, and she ran out into the hall with a little eager cry.

"Oh, Norah, dear, what is the matter? I hope there is nothing wrong with any of you at Kilshane."

As the light of the hall lamp fell on Manus and Norah, it revealed very visible traces of their scamper across country. They were both greatly flushed and out of breath, and their faces and hands were scratched and bleeding with forcing their way through thickets and hedges. Norah's hat had fallen off and hung behind by its strings, and her frock exhibited innumerable rents.

"Oh, please," she began, forgetting in her excitement to answer Ella's question, or to go through any usual preliminaries of hand-shaking, "we were up at the mine, Manus and I, and there were a lot of people there, the miners, and ever so many besides, and a man was speaking to them about the work being stopped and Mr. M'Bain threatening to bring over Scotchmen!" Norah's instinctive loyalty kept her from betraying who the orator had been. "They're wild about it, and they're all coming here to speak to Uncle Nicholas, and make him promise that the mine shall be worked in the old way. Manus and I ran across the fields to tell you, and oh! we were so afraid we shouldn't get here in time."

Ella turned to her brother, who stood behind her.

"Oh, Harry, do you hear that, and Uncle Nicholas is away! Whatever are we to do?"

"Give them beans if they come; but I'm afraid they won't give us the chance. It was awfully good of you two to take so much trouble," the lad went on, rather patronizingly, to Manus and Norah, "but I expect you've had your run for nothing. Irishmen generally mean about half of what they say, and the rest goes off in bluster and shouting. I shouldn't wonder if the whole lot were sitting in the public-house at the cross-roads at this moment, airing their eloquence and abusing us all very comfortably. I just wish they would pay us a visit and we'll make it hot for them."

"Well, you won't have long to wait," said Manus shortly, "for they're on the avenue this minute; I hear them."

And indeed, as all bent forward to listen, there was audible, in the stillness of the night, a low ominous roll that came steadily nearer, the tramp of many feet, the deep growl of angry voices. Sharper, too, and nearer at hand, though no one at the time paid it any heed, sounded a rattle as if a conveyance were being driven in over the paving-stones of the yard. At the same instant a troop of terror-stricken maids burst into the hall.

"Oh, lor', ma'am! oh, lor' Master Harry, there's a mob of people coming up against us! Maria was out on the avenue and she saw them and ran for her life! They're screeching and hollering that it would lift the hair off your head to hear them. They'll murder us in cold blood! They'll burn the house down over our heads! It's us English that they're mad against."

Miss Browne, ashy white and trembling like an aspen leaf, was yet true to her wonted instincts. She threw her shaking arms round Ella, putting herself in front of her like a shield.

"My darling! my heart!" she cried, "they shall kill me before they touch a hair of your head."

Harry Wyndham drew himself erect, the half-unconscious air of bravado which he had worn all evening was gone, and instead he was cool, prompt, and collected, a typical English lad confronted with danger and difficulty.

"Bar every door and close the shutters of all the ground-floor windows. This house is pretty strong, and ought to be able to hold out for a bit. Thanks to you, Brownie, all the indoor servants are English, so there's no fear of anyone letting the rabble in at the back door."

Meanwhile the roar outside was growing louder and more menacing, and now the crowd appeared in view, rolling on up the avenue with shouts and groans and discordant yells. Their numbers had swelled considerably since the children had seen them last, as all the dwellers along the line of march had joined in as onlookers or sympathizers. Harry turned round angrily to the frightened maids, who were huddled in a corner, sending forth scream upon scream.

"What good do you expect to do yourselves by hullabalooing like that?" he demanded. "Go this instant and close all the windows as I desired you. In spite of Uncle Nicholas, it strikes me it was as well I happened to turn up to-night. Where's Cartwright? You come and help me to load the guns. You can shoot, I suppose?"

"Well, sir, I 'ave fired a gun," said that functionary modestly.

Ella sprang forward, her face almost as white as her evening dress.

"Oh, Harry, you won't shoot the people?" she gasped.

"Not if I can help it, but they won't come into this house while I can keep them out," her brother answered determinedly.

He closed the hall-door, which had been standing open all this time, with a bang, and turned to Manus. "See here, youngster. You slip out of the house at the back, where you won't be seen, and run for your life for the police. Most likely the first volley will send the whole lot flying, but if it doesn't we'll hold out all right for a couple of hours."

Norah caught him by the cuff of his coat sleeve.

"Let me go out and speak to them," she cried. "I know some of them—the man who was speaking at the mine, and some of the others, and perhaps I could make them go away."

Harry shook himself free impatiently. "You don't suppose a howling mob of madmen are going to listen to a little chit like you! Go with Miss Browne there, she'll look after you. Collect all the women, Brownie, when they've done fastening the doors and windows, and take them to the kitchen; they'll be out of the way of harm, and safer than they would be anywhere else. Ella, bring down the guns over the chimney-piece in Uncle Nicholas's bedroom; we shall need all we have."

He issued all his orders like a young commander-in-chief, and was obeyed unhesitatingly. He locked and double-locked the hall-door, fastened a heavy iron bar across it, and drew two stout bolts besides. Then with his own hands he shuttered the narrow windows on either side of the door. Norah cast one last look out before the shutters were closed. The crowd were close up now, hooting, yelling, and brandishing sticks. Behind them, where the last of the daylight still lingered in the sky, rose the abbey ruin, grand and peaceful, a strange contrast to the wild tumult that raged so close to it. It was that glimpse of the ruin which put a sudden idea into Norah's head.

"Wait for me, Manus," she cried breathlessly. "I know how we'll frighten the people away better than with guns."

She tore up the wide staircase and opened the first door that she came to. She dragged the white quilt off the bed, rolling it up hastily into a bundle, and seized a box of matches off a small table by the bed-side. As she dashed out into the corridor again, an old gentleman, white-haired and bent, came up another stair at its farther end with a lighted candle in his hand.

"What's going on?" he cried angrily. "Has Bedlam broken loose while I've been away? What's all the noise outside about, and where are all the servants? Why are the lamps not lit? Where's Miss Ella, or Miss Browne, or anybody?"

There was no one within hearing but Norah, and she did not answer him; she did not even pause to recollect that this must be her Uncle Nicholas, the grim, vindictive being of whom she had heard so much but whom she had never seen. She darted down to him and pulled the candle out of his hand without ceremony.

"Oh please, I must have it!" she gasped; "it's ever so much better than matches, because they go out, you know."

The old man did not attempt to resist, he only gazed in utter amazement at the apparition that had so unexpectedly appeared before him. Norah's hat still hung upon her shoulders, as it had fallen off during her wild scamper with Manus, her black hair was tossed back off her forehead, and her blue eyes were alight with excitement and earnestness of purpose.

"Who are you, child?" he cried.

But Norah did not stay to answer. She had blown the candle out and was racing along the corridor and down the stairs with her spoils; nor did she stop when she met Ella coming upstairs to obey her brother's behest.

"What are you doing up here, Norah?" cried Ella. "Go to the kitchen; Brownie is there, and the servants; and Harry says it is the safest place for you to be."

It had grown so dark within doors that Ella did not see Mr. O'Brien till she ran up against him, standing in the corridor, where Norah had left him, as if he were rooted to the ground. She could not repress a cry of alarm at the sudden shock.

"Uncle Nicholas! We thought you were in Dublin. How do you come to be here?"

"I come to be here because I drove in by the stable-yard five minutes ago, and it's the shortest way to my bedroom," returned the old man gruffly. "Is the world turned upside down, or am I going mad? What's all that shouting and the row that I hear? And in heaven's name, who was it that ran down here just now?"

"It was little Norah O'Brien. Poor child, she's quite terrified. I suppose she's looking for somewhere to hide. The miners are in front of the house, Uncle Nicholas, and a mob of people with them, threatening to attack it. Norah and her brother brought warning just in time, and Harry thinks we can hold out till help comes."

Ella stopped short, remembering that it was the first Mr. O'Brien had heard of the prodigal's return, and dreading an outburst of wrath. She need not have been afraid, however; her uncle had not heard her last words at all.

"Norah O'Brien," he repeated to himself slowly; but it was not of her he was thinking. Another child stood before him—a boy with the same bright eyes and dark waving hair, a boy who had raced about that house and made it ring with his shouts and laughter forty years before. That boy's name had been Piers, and it was nearly a year since he had been laid, far from his kindred, in a crowded London cemetery.

Norah, meanwhile, little dreaming of the effect she had produced, tore on her way downstairs. Ella's words had fallen on unheeding ears. Norah had not even taken their meaning in.

"Quick, quick, Manus!" she cried, as she found her brother waiting for her; "we haven't a minute to lose. We must get out of the house somehow or other—through a window or any way that we can, before the crowd closes up all round."

A momentary lull had come in the din outside, as the human torrent swept up before the house and found themselves confronted by the long blank range of shuttered windows, with no light visible anywhere. They halted irresolutely, uncertain what to do, and in that instant's delay Norah had her chance. A maid-servant with blanched cheeks and trembling hands was drawing the bolts of a little side-door which led down upon the pleasure-ground, the last point that remained to be secured in the defences of the house.

"Let us out, please," Norah said authoritatively.

The woman stared at her, hardly able to believe that she had heard aright.

"You must be mad, Miss, to be wanting such a thing. It's fiends that's out there, nothing less; they'd tear you limb from limb if they got you amongst them."

Norah gave her head a proud little toss as she pushed back the bolts herself.

"No one will see us if we slip out quickly, and even if they did, Malachy is out there, and he wouldn't let anyone hurt me. Shut the door behind us and make it fast. Now then, Manus!"

Brother and sister vanished into the night. Not an instant too soon, for the next moment the mob surged up all round the house, seeking to find some means of entry; and they broke into shouts louder and more ferocious than before as they found that timely warning had been conveyed to the inmates, and that on all sides the house had been made secure.

"Arrah, thin, it's not willin' to be shpoke to they are widin there! Give a rap at the doore, boys, an' let them know we're here."

In obedience to the mandate, heavy and repeated blows were dealt upon the hall-door, which, however, was of good solid oak, and showed no signs of yielding. A pebble whizzed against one of the plate-glass windows, and the crash and shiver of the falling glass were greeted with exultant huzzas; another and another followed. Then a window on the upper floor was thrown open, and Harry's clear, boyish tones made themselves heard:

"Now then, I give fair warning to all concerned. I have a double-barrelled gun, and Cartwright here has another. You've all got two minutes to be out of this, at the end of that time we fire."

But the people's blood was up, too high and hot for threats to turn them. Curses, groans, howls of execration answered him.

"Is't shoot us ye wud, ye clip? Is thim the manners they've larned ye in Jarmany? Quit out o' that, an' let's shpake to the masther. It's Nicholas O'Brien we'll talk to, not you, ye dirty spalpeen!" And another volley of stones crashed against the windows.

Harry had his gun at his shoulder, the gleaming barrels levelled. His intention was to fire the first discharge over the heads of the crowd in the hope of scaring them away, but as his finger touched the trigger he felt himself seized and thrust forcibly to one side. A tall figure, which in the uncertain light seemed to have lost its stoop and to be straight and erect as in years gone by, advanced to the window, and a strident voice called out above the din:

"Who wants to talk to Nicholas O'Brien?"

Everyone in the crowd knew the tones, and a wild hubbub arose.

"It's the masther! Begorra, it's his honour's own self! It's justice we want! It's our rights we'll have! We'll not be robbed nor peeled nor put upon no longer! It's work we want, an' our wages, an' bread for our childher's mouths! Down wid M'Bain an' ivery furriner he'd bring along of him!"

Mr. O'Brien struck his stick violently on the ground, and raised his hand to stay the tumult. What answer, however, he would have made to the people's demands remained unknown, for as he opened his mouth to speak, he stopped short, and his eyes became riveted on some object away beyond the sea of upturned faces waiting breathlessly to hear what he would say.

"Gracious heavens, what's that?" he cried.

All heads were turned to follow the direction of his gaze, and a low murmur of fear and wonder ran through the wild and excited throng.

One of the broken windows high up in the abbey ruins was filled with a dim bluish light, and in that strange radiance stood a white-clad figure silent and motionless, one hand stretched menacingly towards the surging crowd. For a moment or two the people gazed at the vision speechless and paralyzed with terror, then frightened whispers began to be heard.

"The saints 'tween us an' harm, there's the white nun! Mercy be wid us, it's holy St. Bridget it is!"

Those who still held stones let them fall; some of the crowd dropped on their knees and crossed themselves. A few of the more timid began to edge away, others followed; in a moment the movement was general, and the people were huddling down the avenue after each other like a flock of frightened sheep, casting back terrified glances at the dread apparition which still stood on high with uplifted arm in the ruined window.

The moment the terrified crowd had disappeared, the light in the window vanished too. To those who watched the strange sight from Moyross House it seemed as if there was a stifled cry and then a thud. After that all was silent, and the darkness of the summer's night once more reigned supreme.

CHAPTER XV

IT WAS ALL NORAH'S IDEA

It was all so sudden and so inexplicable that the little group at the open window were left gazing at each other in dumb amazement. Mr. O'Brien was the first to recover his speech.

"Tell me what it all means, some of you," he cried irascibly. "Am I going out of my senses, or is the whole world bewitched to-night?"

"I don't understand it one little bit either, Uncle," said Harry, as he slowly opened the breech of his gun and took the cartridges out. "There was a figure up in the abbey window, not a doubt of it. Didn't you see it too, Cartwright?"

But the dignified butler had fallen back against the wall, where he leant shivering and shaking, the cold dew standing on his forehead and his teeth chattering audibly.

"Preserve us all!" he gasped. "Fust it's a horde of savages yellin' an' 'owlin' to make a man's blood run cold to hear them, and then it's a ghost, sich as I never believed in, nor thought to see the likes of. Not another night does I stop in this hawful country. No, Mr. O'Brien, sir, not if you was to offer to make me Hemperor of Rooshia!"

Cartwright's ejaculations were cut short by a knocking at the hall-door, a frightened, hurried knocking made not with the knocker but with somebody's knuckles. Harry leant out of the window and shouted down:

"Who's that down there, and what's your business?"

"Oh, please come down and help me somebody," was the response that came very tremulously in Manus's voice from below. "I'm afraid Norah has hurt herself very badly."

"It's that young O'Brien cub," said Harry, as he drew his head in again. "I thought he was half-way to the police barrack by this time. What was the other child doing outside the house? she ought to have been in the kitchen with Brownie. I'll find out what's wrong and pack them both off home. We've enough on our hands without having them to look after."

But Mr. O'Brien had heard too, and he pressed forward eagerly.

"Is it the child that was in the house just now, and someone says she's hurt? Come on, come on, what are you both standing there for? Come down and see what's happened to her."

And he himself led the way downstairs, moving with an activity and energy such as had been foreign to him for a very long time past. So extraordinary was the condition of affairs which he had found on his return home, a day sooner than he had been expected, that Harry's presence had passed unheeded, and he had as yet expressed no surprise at finding the grand-nephew whom he had believed in the Carpathian mountains, engaged in defending his house.

Ella was on the stairs, and joined them as they went down. The stampede of the crowd had been heard in the kitchen, where Miss Browne and the maids were still ensconced, and she had come out to glean information of what was going on. It took some time to undo all the fastenings with which the hall-door was secured, but when it was opened at length Manus was found standing outside, looking very white and scared. He pushed past the others and caught hold of Ella by her dress.

"You don't think she could be killed," he gasped. "She's lying over there on the ground, and I can't get her to speak or move."

"But did she get a fall, or was she knocked down by the crowd? Tell us what happened, Manus dear," implored Ella, who felt as if the solid earth were whirling round beneath her, so many shocks had succeeded each other upon this eventful night.

"It was all Norah's idea from the beginning," stammered out Manus, only keeping back his tears by a strong effort. "I mean that we could frighten the people off by her shamming to be a ghost over in the abbey, the way she and I were frightened that night by the table-cloth hanging up."

Manus came to a sudden stop as he realized that in the fulness of his heart he had betrayed a secret which hitherto had been only known to Norah and himself. None of his auditors appeared to heed this part of the story, however, in their desire to learn what was coming.

"We had the candle and the counterpane, you know," Manus went on, "and we got round to the abbey without anyone seeing us, and climbed up inside to the high window—the stones are all broken and sticking out, so it was quite easy. Norah stood up in the window with the quilt round her, and her arm stretched out, and I held the candle behind her at the back of the stone-work, where the flame couldn't show and it couldn't throw shadows. We heard the people all crying out and running away, and just as they'd gone the candle blew out. Norah was turning round to get down and somehow she missed her footing or she caught in the quilt, and she fell right down to the ground. I tried to lift her up, but—but—"

And Manus, unable to control himself any longer, broke down in convulsive crying.

"And it was Piers' child that did it—Piers' child that played the trick on them!" Mr. O'Brien exclaimed. Then striking his stick in his wonted fashion on the ground: "What are you all staring at each other like a lot of boobies for? Don't you hear what the boy says? Go with him some of you, and bring the child here. If a door or shutter is wanted, take off the first that comes to your hand."

But no shutter or door was needed to carry the light burden of the poor little would-be ghost. Guided by Manus, Harry and Cartwright went across to the abbey ruin, and Harry brought the little unconscious form back in his arms, Cartwright following, rather ashamed of the relief he felt at discovering that the spectre which had appalled him was of flesh and blood, and not a phantom from another world.

Miss Browne and the women-servants had trooped out into the hall, half-fearful, half-curious, so that it was amidst a babel of questions and exclamations that Norah was borne into the house.

"Oh, Harry, you don't think she's killed!" said Ella with blanched cheeks, almost repeating Manus's words, as she looked at the white face which lay against his shoulder and the small hand which hung down limp and powerless.

Harry shook his head.

"No; her heart's beating all right, and there are no bones broken that I can feel. It's her head most likely that was hurt in the fall."

"Have her carried upstairs at once and put to bed," interposed Mr. O'Brien gruffly. "Get some of these women to stop their chattering and to help you. I'll be bound they didn't chatter much while those idiots were howling outside—that child's worth twenty dozen of the whole lot of them! Send to the stables, and tell them to put the fastest horse into the car and drive for the doctor."

He had turned towards the library, there to pass the weary hour of suspense which must ensue, when his eye fell on Manus standing white and miserable at the foot of the stairs up which the procession carrying Norah had gone.

"See here, my boy," he said, with a sort of embarrassed kindliness, "the best thing you can do, instead of hanging about here, is to run home and tell them what has happened. You've an elder sister and a brother, haven't you?" Mr. O'Brien paused, and seemed as though he were swallowing down an obstruction in his throat. "Don't frighten them more than you can help, but tell them to come here, if they will."

Manus shook his head disconsolately.

"It wouldn't be any good. Roderick and Anstace are staying at Dromore, at Lady Louisa Butler's, to-night, and they won't be home till to-morrow."

Mr. O'Brien gave vent to a sound which was very like a groan.

"Then all we can do is to wait till we hear what the doctor says; after that, if"—he had been about to say "the child is badly hurt", but another glance at Manus's face made him alter the sentence to "it's necessary—they must be sent for."

The doctor was a long time upstairs when he did arrive at last, and he came down again looking very grave.

"Concussion of the brain," he said. "Tolerably severe, I fear; but it is not possible to ascertain precisely just yet. There are some other injuries of less consequence."

Mr. O'Brien waited for no more. His hand was shaking as he scrawled a few lines on a sheet of note-paper and folded it. He went out with the missive to where the coachman waited with the horse and car.

"Dromore," he said, as he handed it to him; "and drive your best."

It was in the gray light of early morning that Roderick and Anstace drove up to Moyross Abbey. Mr. O'Brien had watched for their coming through the long hours of the night, and he came out into the hall to meet them. Anstace was still in her evening dress, with flowers in her hair and a string of Miss Ansey's pearls round her throat. The hood she had worn during the drive had fallen back from her head, and if a few hours before the old man had seen in Norah a vision of the far-back days of his brother's childhood, it was now his lost love, the girl to whom he had given his heart and who had broken it for him, who came forward to meet him.

"Marion!" he exclaimed, stopping short and gazing at her as though spell-bound.

But Anstace did not even notice the name he had called her by.

"Oh, Uncle Nicholas, our little Norah!" she cried, as she caught his outstretched hand. "Is she so badly hurt?"

"My dear, my dear, I hope not!" the old man answered brokenly; "but no one can say for certain yet."

Roderick and Anstace followed him upstairs to the room where a dim night-light burned, and Ella in an arm-chair by the bed-side kept her solitary watch.

"I made everyone else go to bed—there was no use in their remaining up—as there was so little that anyone could do," she whispered, as the brother and sister stooped over the little unconscious form. "Norah has never spoken or moved since she was laid down there."

CHAPTER XVI

PEACE AND HARMONY

It was many days before Norah did speak or move, and many more before she recovered consciousness sufficiently to take notice of the strange room in which she found herself, and to ask how she came to be there; and during that time some very surprising and unlooked-for things had happened.

Roderick presented himself in his uncle's study later on that same day. Mr. O'Brien sat at his writing-table, a pile of heavy leather-bound ledgers and account-books before him, looking weary and listless after the excitement and the fatigue of the previous day. A quick flush mounted to his forehead as Roderick crossed the room and stood looking down at him.

"I would like to tell you, sir," he said frigidly, "that we will not intrude upon you more than we can possibly avoid. I had hoped that we should have been able to move Norah to Kilshane, but the doctor, who has just been here, has absolutely forbidden our attempting it. Of course, so long as she is here, Anstace must remain to nurse her; and I hope you will not object to Manus and me coming over every day to see her—"

He got no further, for Mr. O'Brien started forward and gripped his hand with a force that was almost painful.

"My boy, what are you talking about?" he cried. "As if I had not wanted you all along!"

Roderick could not conceal his astonishment.

"You did not give me any reason to think so, sir," he said, and stopped short once more, for his glance had fallen on the little water-colour portrait that hung above the writing-table, as Ella's had done months before.

Mr. O'Brien saw the direction of his gaze.

"You don't need to ask who that is, Roderick," he said. "It is your mother as she was in the days when I thought she would have been my wife. It is an old story, over and done with twenty-three years ago, but she was the one woman whom I ever loved, and when she broke faith with me, it went near breaking my heart too. Perhaps you can understand how I dreaded, and yet wished, to see her children. It has been in my mind half a hundred times since I knew you were living in Ansey O'Brien's house to have myself driven over there, and walk in amongst you all. I never could bring myself to do it though. It seemed to me that I had forfeited the right of claiming kinship with you when I let your father die without any effort at reconciliation."

"We would have welcomed you at any time that you had come, Uncle Nicholas," Roderick said earnestly.

"Would you, my boy? I used to doubt it, and so I waited on in the hope that chance would bring us together, till, as you see, it was left for little Norah to act as dea ex machina, and end the great family feud."

Roderick could not forbear laughing.

"Norah did it in a manner peculiarly her own," he said. "I only hope it will not be at too great cost to herself, poor child. Dr. Hanlon says she is going on as well as he could hope for at present, but he will not be able to pronounce her out of danger for some days to come."

Outside his uncle's door Roderick encountered Harry Wyndham, evidently lying in wait for him.

"Look here, I'm awfully glad you've come, and I want you to say a good word for me to the governor—Uncle Nicholas, you know," the lad began eagerly and confidentially. "I haven't ventured to show my nose to him to-day, but I want you to persuade him that it's no good trying to make me work on at this mine business. I hate the whole thing, stock, lock, and barrel, and I've cut it, once and for all."

"Is that what you wish me to tell Uncle Nicholas?" enquired Roderick mildly.

"Oh well, just put it to him the best way you can, like a good fellow; he'll take it better from you than from me," said the ingenuous youth. "The fact is, I mean to be a soldier," and unconsciously he drew himself erect, and threw his chest out. "It's what my father was before me, and what I've wanted to be all my life; but then, you see, Uncle Nicholas had done such a lot for Ella and me, and he's getting old, and—oh, hang it all, you understand what I mean—I felt he'd a sort of claim upon me, and that I was bound to do what he wanted—at least, that I ought to give it a try. It's no go, I can't do it. I wouldn't have come back at all, I'd have struck out for myself, only it would have been behaving scurvily to Uncle Nicholas after all I owe him. And if one's going to be a soldier, one oughtn't to begin by shirking things, ought one?"

"Certainly not," said Roderick, much amused, but not wishing to point out to Harry that now that he had come home, he did not appear very desirous of facing his irate uncle himself.

"Well, if you'd just tell Uncle Nicholas that if he'll help me to get into the army it's all I'll ever ask of him, I'll manage for myself after that. Of course, I know I've no right to expect it, and if he won't do it I'll enlist and work my way up, as many a better chap has done. That's why I'm so awfully glad that you've turned up, for of course you're the right man in the right place to look after the mine and keep things straight for Uncle Nicholas, and it makes it all plain sailing for me to go off. I shan't feel that I'm fighting shy of my duty."

It was quite clear that Miss Browne's ambitious schemes had found no entrance into Harry's boyish mind, and that to him a life of soldiering and adventure far outweighed the O'Brien heritage which she coveted so ardently on his behalf.

"I have no reason to imagine that Uncle Nicholas desires my services in any capacity," said Roderick, "but I think he owes you a good deal for defending his house last night. But for you he would have found the mob in possession on his return, and so I dare say he may be induced to let you follow your own bent."

Roderick's anticipations proved correct, and Mr. O'Brien showed himself even more complaisant than had been expected.

"If the boy's determined to wear a red coat he'll do better in it than he would in one of any other colour, and so it's best to let him have his way."

The days of late summer went by, one by one, and still Norah lay in the same heavy stupor, varied only by occasional outbreaks of wandering and delirium. Ella had begged to be allowed to share the duties of sick-nurse, and she proved as unwearied and devoted in her attendance on Norah as even Anstace herself. Mr. O'Brien paid at least one visit every day to the sick-room, and displayed the liveliest anxiety about the little patient. It was he who despatched the mounted messenger to Ballyfin and thence by rail to Ennis, to procure the ice which the doctor had ordered to be placed on Norah's head; and on the day on which Dr. Hanlon looked his gravest, Mr. O'Brien, without a word to either Roderick or Anstace, telegraphed for the doctor who was most highly thought of in the county, to come to the local practitioner's aid. He would have summoned a surgeon from Dublin if Norah had not taken a favourable turn, which enabled the doctor to pronounce her in a fair way of recovery.

The story of the attack made by the miners upon Moyross Abbey, and the manner in which they had been put to flight by Norah, quickly spread through the neighbourhood, and it was quite wonderful what interest it aroused.

Carriages and cars rolled up the avenue constantly with enquiries for the little girl. Foremost of those who came was Lady Louisa Butler, a stately white-haired old lady, who drove all the way from Dromore and insisted on going up into the darkened sick-chamber, where Anstace kept her anxious watch.

"Me dear," she said, with just the sweetest, softest touch of brogue in her voice, as she stooped to kiss her, "don't you be fretting yourself to fiddle-strings, the child will be well again, you'll see, in next to no time. I'd have known she was Piers O'Brien's daughter just by her planning out that trick, it's what he'd have loved to do himself. Dear, dear, but he was the boy for pranks and mischief. No sooner out of one scrape than he was into another, and how fond we were of him in spite of it all!"

But the interest was by no means confined to the gentry and the county magnates; the house was beset by humbler friends of Norah, who, as they said themselves, "slipped up to git a bit of word" how she was progressing. Amongst the rest was the orator of the trolly, Malachy Flanagan himself, who marched up one windy, blustering afternoon, reckless of all consequences to himself, and careless whether it had become known that it was his eloquence which had fired the recalcitrant miners with the thought of attacking Moyross House. He came, too, not modestly to the back-door like the others, but on up the avenue with his long, swinging gait, the ends of his red beard blown back against his chest, and sat himself down on the hall door-steps. Drawing out his scarlet and white handkerchief, he buried his face in it and broke forth into loud and uncontrolled weeping, for it was just that day on which the doctors had looked their gravest, and a rumour had spread abroad that "it's tuk wid a wakeness since mornin', an' goin' fast the little darlin' is."

"An' if we had knew that 'twas widin the house she was, there wasn't wan as would ha' riz a stone agin it," Malachy declared, between the paroxysms of his grief, to Ella, who had come down to speak to him, and who was somewhat alarmed by his wild and uncouth demeanour. "Or if she'd as much as come to the windy an' held up the little finger of her hand, we'd have been as quite that minnit as a flock of ould lambs."

"She wanted to go out and speak to you, she did indeed," said Ella sadly. "She said you would go away if she asked you, but Mr. Harry would not believe it—it seemed so unlikely—and he would not allow her out."

"An' what call had Miss Norah to be mindin' Misther Harry Wyndham, or any orders that he'd give her?" demanded Malachy fiercely, forgetting in his excitement who his interlocutor was. "Didn't she know there wasn't wan of us that wudn't lie down an' let her walk over us? Yis, indade, an' wid good right too, seein' what she done for us that same marnin' as iver was—"

Here, however, Malachy became incoherent, as even in the midst of his grief it was borne in upon him that the service which Norah had rendered him was one which it would hardly be well to proclaim aloud. Happily, as has been already recorded, Norah took a turn for the better that evening, and from thenceforth made steady though slow progress towards recovery.

Manus had gone back to school as soon as she was pronounced out of danger. Mr. O'Brien had announced his intention of sending him to Harrow in the spring, and Harry had previously departed to a tutor to be prepared for the entrance examination into the army. The mine was once more a busy hive of industry, and shipload after shipload of valuable ore was being despatched from the iron pier at the foot of the cliffs. Mr. O'Brien, with Roderick and M'Bain, had met the miners on that very plot of ground behind the mine buildings where Malachy Flanagan on that notable evening had harangued the crowd, and terms of peace had been arranged. M'Bain was to continue at his post for three months till Roderick had gained an insight into the working of the mine, and then relinquish the management to him. The hard-headed and energetic Scotchman, whose opinion of Irish peasants had not been raised by recent events, was not sorry to resign his charge and return to work amongst his own more congenial countrymen.

"A pack o' grown men rinnin' fra a bit lassie in a white sheet—peeh!" and volumes could not have expressed as much contempt as Mr. M'Bain threw into that monosyllable.

Mr. O'Brien promised to overlook the attack made upon Moyross House, and to take no proceedings for the damage done that night, whilst the men, through their spokesman, Malachy Flanagan, whose influence had had a goodly share in bringing about this peaceful settlement, agreed to return to work and to suffer the introduction of the new machinery, the original cause of all the ill-will.

It was at this point that Roderick stepped forward.

"Boys," he said, "I know less than any of you about copper-mining, but I mean to learn. I hope you and I may work together for many a day to come, and if you'll help me, we'll make Moyross the most flourishing mine in the county Clare, and if we can, in the whole of Ireland."

A frantic outburst of cheering answered him; hats and arms were waving wildly, whilst women poured out blessings on him; and when the tumult subsided for an instant, Malachy, his hat held aloft upon his blackthorn, shouted:

"God bless Moyross Abbey, and them that's in it, an' the blue sky over it, an' little Miss Norah, the first o' them all!"

Another roar, louder and more vociferous than the first, rose and rolled out over the Atlantic, and before its echoes had died away Mr. O'Brien and Roderick had mounted the car that was in waiting for them and driven swiftly away.

The car with its two occupants had become a familiar sight on the roads in the neighbourhood of Moyross by this time. Mr. O'Brien took Roderick for long drives through the wide-spreading property, visiting each portion of it in turn; and as they passed, the women at the cabin doors said to each other: "'Tis the ould masther an' the young masther; the blessin' of God be in their company this day."

No one acquiesced in the altered aspect of affairs with more cheerful complacency than did Miss Browne, and the cause of her contentment was twofold. The first was that Roderick, meeting Ella one evening in the Monk's Walk—as it chanced, upon the very spot where the dread white spectre had menaced Manus and Norah—had taken her hand in his own and told her that he loved her, that he had loved her for a long time—ever since that evening, indeed, when he had caught her pony on the road and she had come down afterwards and sat in the little drawing-room at Kilshane amongst them all. He had asked her if she cared enough for him to trust herself to him and give her life into his keeping, and Ella, though fluttered and taken by surprise, had yet given him an answer that satisfied him; and when they came up the path and past the ruins of the old abbey, it was hand in hand, with the light of a great happiness shining in their eyes. Miss Browne was quite content to relinquish her hopes for Harry Wyndham and to see Roderick acknowledged as his uncle's heir, if Ella was to be his wife; and she had another reason for her satisfaction at the turn which matters had taken. Ever since the night of the onslaught on Moyross House, poor Miss Browne had been in constant trepidation and alarm. She could not sleep at night without fancying that she heard the shouts and cries of the mob under her windows, and in every frieze-coated countryman whom she encountered on the road she saw a possible blood-thirsty assailant. Whilst Ella needed her, nothing would have induced Miss Browne to quit her post; but since Ella had found another protector, there was nothing to hinder her from leaving Moyross and Ireland altogether, and establishing herself upon her modest savings in security and in the trimmest of little suburban dwellings.

Roderick and Anstace still remained at Moyross pending Norah's recovery. It had been arranged that Roderick and Ella should take up their abode at Kilshane after their marriage, whilst Anstace and Norah were to live at Moyross with Mr. O'Brien in Ella's place.

It was upon this changed condition of affairs that Norah opened her eyes, in the early days of autumn, when the trees were beginning to assume tints of russet and gold. The very first wish to which she gave utterance, after coming back to full and clear consciousness, was that Lanty Hogan might be brought up to see her.

Lanty, who had been among the most assiduous of the enquirers at Moyross, was greatly gratified, but also somewhat embarrassed, on hearing of Norah's desire, and he came upstairs treading gingerly on the carpets, and wiping his hobnailed shoes with much care on the mat outside Norah's bedroom door.

"How do you do, Lanty? I am very glad to see you," said Norah, stretching out her small white hand to him as he stood just within the door, turning his hat awkwardly round and round in his hands. Her short black hair had been cut shorter still during her illness, and her face seemed to Lanty to have become all eyes, so thin and wasted was it.

"An' faix an' I'm glad to see you, Miss Norah," he stammered, "if 'twas but a bit heartier ye wor lookin'. But niver fear, ye'll be pickin' up noo, an' it's gran' toimes we'll be havin' whin Masther Manus comes home agin; yis, indade, sale-huntin' an' all else."

In his shyness Lanty hardly knew what he was saying. Norah turned to her sister, who was sitting at the other side of her bed.

"Please, Anstace, what I want to say to Lanty is a secret. Will you let me be alone with him for a little while?"

Anstace got up with less demur than might have been expected.

"Very well, Norah; you may talk to Lanty for five minutes, but not longer. I shall come back then."

"Lanty, you haven't been making any more of that stuff—I forget what you called it—the stuff you and the other men made, up in that little house on Drinane Head?" enquired Norah, when the door had closed behind Anstace.

"Is't the potheen, Miss Norah? Sorra sup's been made since ye saw't yerself spillin' out like dirty dish wather. Nor it's not like there will be, nayther, up there anyways, since the polis has their eye on us, and we'd not be knowin' when they'd be happenin' down—bad scran to them! 'Tis another shnug little hidin' place we'll have to be lookin' out for, I'm thinkin', for it's not always we'd have yerself comin' up an' bringin' us warnin'."

"Lanty," said Norah earnestly, "I want you to promise me that you won't make any more potheen, neither on Drinane Head nor anywhere else. I thought about you nearly all the time I was ill," she went on, as Lanty stared at her in undisguised amazement, "you and Malachy and the other men up there, but you especially. I couldn't think quite straight, all my ideas were upside down and mixed together, like when one's not quite asleep and not quite awake, don't you know, but you were in my head somehow or other all through. I didn't quite understand about the potheen. When I went up to tell you about Captain Lester's coming, it didn't seem as if the government had any right to stop you making it if you liked; but I knew there was something wrong about it the moment I saw you, you looked so different from what you used to do when you were boating and fishing with Master Manus: your eyes were so red, and your face was flabby, and you kept looking about all the time as if you were afraid or ashamed of something."

Lanty stood with his eyes on the ground shuffling his feet awkwardly.

"Thrue for ye, Miss Norah," he said slowly at last, "an' meself knows that same roightly. Nor it's not the love of the potheen that takes me mannefacterin' it, but jist the divvlemint an' the divarsion, an' the playin' blind hookey wid the polis. I'd niver contint meself to live workin' hard, wid no variety an' no venturesomeness, not if I was to be makin' pouns an' pouns a day."

"I'm sure all the devilment and the diversion can't make you happy or comfortable, Lanty, when you look as you did on Drinane Head that morning," said Norah sagely. "And then do you remember what Captain Lester said before he went away, and he talked a lot more about it at breakfast at Kilshane afterwards. He said people who took to making potheen always came to ruin sooner or later. I don't want you to be ruined, Lanty; you were so kind to me, and took care of me that day of the seal-hunt, and Master Manus likes you so much; he says you're a broth of a boy, and he'd be so sorry too. That was what kept worrying me all the time I was ill, that if I didn't get well quick you'd have been ruined; and the very first moment Anstace would allow it, I made her bring you upstairs. I want you to promise me that you'll never make potheen again."

"Sure it's too bad intirely that ye should ha' been throublin' yerself for the likes o' me, Miss Norah; an' there's nothin' on this mortial airth I wudn't do for yer axin'—" he hesitated, but the eyes that seemed to have grown so large of late were fixed pleadingly upon him, and with desperate resolve he added: "Divil resave the dhrop o' potheen I'll make nor swally from this oot, not if Malachy an' the rest o' the boys curshed till they broke their hearts. I've promised that, Miss Norah, an' troth I'll kape it."

"I'm so glad," said Norah gratefully. "I won't have to trouble any more about you; and now I must say good-bye, Lanty, for I'm not strong enough yet to talk a great deal, and it makes me tired."

Lanty touched the thin morsel of a hand which she held out to him cautiously and reverently, as if it were an egg-shell, or costly china, which would break with rough handling. He was brushing his hand across his eyes as he came out into the corridor, and he nearly ran against Roderick, who was on his way to his little sister's room.

"Hullo, Lanty!" exclaimed the latter in some astonishment. "Have you taken to the doctoring trade, or what brings you up into Miss Norah's room?"

"Sure yer honour's always for havin' yer joke," said Lanty, grinning confusedly. "Miss Norah tuk a fancy to see me—'twas a little thransacsheeon her an' me was consarned about."

"Had the transaction anything to do with your making potheen on Drinane Head, and her going up there to tell you the police were coming?" asked Anstace quietly, from the window in which she had stood looking out on the pleasure-ground and waiting for the minutes allotted to the interview to be over.

Lanty faced round quickly.

"An' how did yer honour know that?"

Anstace laughed softly.

"I only guessed it before, Lanty; but I know it now. Miss Norah talked about it almost always when she was delirious, but what she said was so incoherent and confused we could not make much of it. Mr. Roderick would not believe that she could really have gone up to warn you, and thought it was only a delusion that had got hold of her, but I remembered two or three little things which happened that morning which made me suspect it was true; and now, Lanty, you have admitted it to me yourself."

"Yer honour's too cute for a poor boy like me," said Lanty in wheedling tones; "but sure it's not yerself, Miss Anstace, that wud inform agin us, an' me jist afther promisin' Miss Norah that I'd quit out of the business wanst an' for all?"

"Well, I'm glad to hear that, at any rate, Lanty; and if you do turn over a new leaf and settle down steadily to some honest trade, you may be quite sure that neither Mr. Roderick nor I will ever breathe a word of what we know."

"I'll thry me livin' best," protested Lanty earnestly; "but whin ye're used to sthravagin' over the counthry wid ne'er a thing to do but plaze yerself, settlin' down to work stiddy is the mischief's own job."

And Lanty heaved a prodigious sigh.

"I'll make you an offer," said Roderick, who had been listening to the colloquy with much amusement. "Old Pat Lannigan, the gamekeeper, is getting past his work, and Mr. O'Brien has been talking of engaging some strapping young fellow as under-keeper to assist him. Now if you're really going to turn over the new leaf Miss Anstace talks of, and will promise to keep from drink and potheen-making and poaching for the future, I'll try to induce my uncle to give the berth to you. That will give you the sort of roving, outdoor life that you like; and if you are steady and give Mr. O'Brien satisfaction, there will be every likelihood that when old Pat finally gives up work you will become gamekeeper in his stead."

Lanty flushed up under his freckles, and his eyes beamed with pleasure.

"Thank ye, Misther Roderick; sure that's what I'd rather be nor nothin' besides."

"One thing I'm sure of," and Roderick looked at him with a twinkle in his eyes, "that there's not a boy in the country that knows the ways of every creature that has feathers or fur, and where to find it, better than yourself. But remember, Lanty," he added more gravely, "if I speak to my uncle on your behalf I shall expect you not to disgrace my recommendation."

"No fear, yer honour, not the taste of a fear," asseverated Lanty joyfully, as he vanished in the direction of the backstairs.

* * * * * * *

"And when you are married, Ella will be my sister—my real, own sister, like Anstace? Oh, I do think it's the most wonderful and the very jolliest thing that ever happened!"

It was a few days later, and Norah had been moved for the first time from her bed to a sofa.

"I quite agree with you, Norah," said Roderick, who, with Anstace and Ella, had gathered in her room for afternoon tea, and who was sitting on the arm of the sofa looking down at his little sister. "What you have to do now is to get well and strong as quickly as possible, for Ella is determined not to be married till you can be her bridesmaid. The very first day you are able to go out of the house I will take you down and show you the Monk's Walk, where this most wonderful and jolly thing came to pass, and Ella promised to bestow herself on my unworthy self."

"But Norah has seen the Monk's Walk before, surely?" exclaimed Ella. Roderick laughed.

"You forget what strangers we all were to each other till Norah broke the ice for us, and her own head into the bargain, by tumbling down from the abbey window. She had never even set foot inside Moyross till she ran over that night with Manus to give you warning that the miners were coming, had you, little woman?"

To Roderick's astonishment, Norah's pale face crimsoned slowly from chin to brow.

"Yes, I was in Moyross before—once," she said, after a few minutes' painful hesitation; "and I came up the Monk's Walk, only it was so dark we couldn't see anything, Manus and I. I've wanted to tell about it ever so often since I've been ill, only I was afraid it would make Uncle Nicholas so dreadfully angry that perhaps he'd have another quarrel with us. But there can't be a family feud now, can there, when Roderick and Ella are going to be married?"

"No, dear, of course not; and now lie quiet and try to go to sleep," said Anstace soothingly. She thought this strange talk on Norah's part must mean that she had been over-excited and that her mind was beginning to wander as it had done during her illness.

But Norah's eyes were far too wide and bright for any possibility of sleep.

"Not even when Uncle Nicholas hears that it was Manus and I who shot holes into his table-cloth?" she asked anxiously.

"Norah, you are not in earnest surely?" said Roderick sternly, whilst Anstace laid her hand quickly on her little sister's forehead. She was quite certain now that Norah was suffering from a sudden return of fever.

Norah, however, shook herself from under the cool, quieting clasp.

"It is true, it is indeed!" she said piteously. "It was that night when we were coming back after killing the seal in Ballintaggart Cave, and Lanty put us ashore out of his coracle in the cove, because he was in a hurry— Oh, but I forgot," interrupting herself; "that was a secret too!"

Roderick looked even more grave.

"I think we know pretty well about Master Lanty and his doings, Norah," he said; "betraying them is not of much consequence. But I confess I don't like to hear of all this underhand work and keeping of secrets which seems to have gone on behind Anstace's and my back. Let us have the rest of the story now, please; we have not heard about the table-cloth yet."

Very falteringly and tremulously it was told, for Norah, though she was very fond of Roderick, stood also in some awe of him and of his displeasure.

"And why did you not come forward at once when you saw Miss Browne and Ella, and tell them how it had happened, and how sorry you were for the mischief you had done?" demanded Anstace at the end of the recital.

Poor Norah hung her head.

"We were so much ashamed, and we were afraid, too, because Miss Browne seemed so angry about the table-cloth. And Manus said everyone would laugh at us so dreadfully if they heard that we had thought a table-cloth hanging on a tree was a ghost, so we agreed to keep it a secret; but, oh dear! I'm glad it's told, for secrets do weigh on one so much."

Ella stooped quickly to kiss her.

"Never mind, Norah dear, it doesn't matter in the least, not if you had shot all the table-cloths in Moyross into rags. Roderick, you are not to frown like that, I won't have it!"

Roderick, in truth, in his efforts to keep the muscles of his face under control, and to maintain a proper air of severity while Norah was telling her story, had contracted his forehead into a most portentous frown. At Ella's command, however, issued with a pretty air of imperiousness that was quite new to her, he gave up the struggle to retain his gravity and indulged in a hearty and prolonged fit of laughter, in which Anstace and Ella were not slow to join.

"Hey! Hullo! What's all this about?" said a voice behind them.

Mr. O'Brien had come in without anyone hearing him, and was standing leaning on his stick, holding a fine bunch of grapes in his other hand.

"Norah shall tell you what the joke is," said Roderick. "Yes, Norah, every word, just as you have told us now, before you touch one of the grapes Uncle Nicholas has brought you. I ordain that as your penance."

So the whole story had to be told over again, but this time Norah, conscious of having the sympathy of the larger part of her audience with her, was not as nervous as on the first occasion. There was even a roguish twinkle in her eyes as she finished up with:

"But you see, Uncle Nicholas, if it hadn't been for that table-cloth ghost, I'd never have thought of being a ghost up in the abbey window; so it was a good thing it happened after all."

"So it was, my dear, a first-rate thing," said the old man. "And you deserve your grapes for telling it so well. You were a pretty pair of cowards, you and that young rascal Manus; but perhaps we'd none of us have been heroes under the circumstances." And he laughed with as keen enjoyment as anyone else.

"Norah is getting on so well, Uncle Nicholas," said Anstace, "that I think we shall not have to trespass on your kindness much longer. In a few days, if you will lend us the carriage, I think we shall be able to take her home to Kilshane."

"Eh, what's that?" said Mr. O'Brien, wheeling round upon her. "I thought, my dear, you understood that 'home' for you was here from henceforward. I'll lend no carriages to take anyone away from here till one is needed to drive Mr. and Mrs. Roderick O'Brien on their wedding-journey. And that wedding is going to be a big affair, I've made up my mind about that. It shall be remembered in the county when Miss Norah here is brushing a gray head. There's one thing I would like you to understand, nephew Roderick," he said after a pause, fixing his eyes keenly upon him. "Nothing which has occurred during the last few weeks alters your future prospects in any way. You only hold the position which you have held since your father's death. Nothing would have induced me to leave an acre of O'Brien land away from the rightful heir."

"There, didn't I tell you so, Anstace?" exclaimed Norah triumphantly from her sofa, before anyone else could speak.

"Told me what, dear? What are you talking about?" asked her elder sister, somewhat puzzled.

"Don't you remember that first day when you came to Treherne House and told me that Cousin Ansey had left Kilshane to us, and that we were all coming over to live here? You said then you were sure that Uncle Nicholas would not make up the feud, and that he would leave Moyross Abbey to Harry Wyndham; and I told you he hadn't a right to leave half a quarter of a yard of O'Brien land to anyone except an O'Brien."

"Really, Norah, you have become extremely forward since you have been ill," said Roderick, with considerable annoyance. "No one has asked for your opinion, and in future please to remember that little girls should be seen and not heard."

"Just you leave her alone," said Mr. O'Brien gruffly, as the tears sprang into Norah's eyes at her brother's rebuke, and he patted her hand kindly. "If she said anything of the sort, it only showed that she had more sense in her composition than all the rest of her family put together. She's always been the one to cut the Gordian knot and find the way out of difficulties for everyone—miners, smugglers, and quarrelling relatives included." He paused and sighed heavily, then added as by an overmastering impulse, "I wish your father Piers were here to see this day."

"I wish indeed that he were, sir, or even that you and he might have met and made up your quarrel before he died," said Roderick earnestly.

Mr. O'Brien sighed once again.

"You cannot desire it as I do, Roderick. I would gladly give half the little life that is left to me that he and I had shaken hands even once. He wronged me deeply, but he was my only brother, and many a time of late years I should have been glad if any opportunity had arisen to end the estrangement. But I let the time slip by, waiting for the chance that never came, and then one day I heard it was too late."

There was a few minutes' silence, and then Anstace said softly:

"It will be a year next week since he died. How little we thought then that we should all be here, gathered in his old home."

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