*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 75934 ***







[Frontispiece: "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."









*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 75934 ***