Tales of Our Coast

York Factory, Hudson's Bay.

23rd September, 1747.

My Dear Cousin Fanny,-It was a year last April Fool's Day, I left you on the sands there at Mablethorpe, no more than a stone's throw from the Book-in-Hand, swearing that you should never see or hear from me again. You remember how we saw the coastguards flash their lights here and there, as they searched the sands for me? how one came bundling down the bank, calling, 'Who goes there?' and when I said, 'A friend,' he stumbled, and his light fell to the sands and went out, and in the darkness you and I stole away: you to your home, with a whispering, 'God-bless-you, Cousin Dick,' over your shoulder, and I with a bit of a laugh that, maybe, cut you to the heart, and that split in a sob in my own throat,-though you didn't hear that.

'Twas a bad night's work that, Cousin Fanny, and maybe I wish it undone; and maybe I don't; but a devil gets into the heart of a man when he has to fly from the lass he loved, while the friends of his youth go hunting him with muskets, and he has to steal out of the back-door of his own country and shelter himself, like a cold sparrow, up in the eaves of the world.

Ay, lass, that's how I left the fens of Lincolnshire a year last April Fool's Day. There wasn't a dyke from Lincoln town to Mablethorpe that I hadn't crossed with a running jump; and there wasn't a break in the shore, or a sink-hole in the sand, or a clump of rushes, or a samphire bed, from Skegness to Theddlethorpe, that I didn't know like every line of your face. And when I was a slip of a lad-ay, and later, too,-how you and I used to snuggle into little nooks of the sand-hills, maybe just beneath the coastguard's hut, and watch the tide come swilling in,-daisies you used to call the breaking surf, Cousin Fanny! And that was like you, always with a fancy about everything you saw. And when the ships, the fishing-smacks with their red sails, and the tall-masted brigs, went by, taking the white foam on their canvas, you used to wish that you might sail away to the lands you'd heard tell of from old skippers that gathered round my uncle's fire in the Book-in-Hand. Ay, a grand thing I thought it would be, too, to go riding round the world on a well-washed deck, with plenty of food and grog, and maybe, by-and-by, to be first mate, and lord it from fo'castle bunk to stern-rail!

My heart keeps warm in thinkin' of you.

You did not know, did you, who was the coastguardsman that stumbled as he came on us that night? It looked a stupid thing to do that, and let the lantern fall. But, lass, 'twas done o' purpose. That was the one man in all the parish that would ha' risked his neck to let me free. 'Twas Lancy Doane, who 's give me as many beatings in his time as I him. We were always getting foul one o' t'other since I was big enough to shy a bit of turf at him across a dyke, and there isn't a spot on 's body that I haven't hit, nor one on mine that he hasn't mauled. I've sat on his head, and he's had his knee in my stomach till I squealed, and we never could meet without back-talking and rasping 'gainst the grain. The night before he joined the coastguardsmen, he was down at the Book-in-Hand, and 'twas little like that I'd let the good chance pass,-I might never have another; for Gover'ment folk will not easy work a quarrel on their own account. I mind him sittin' there on the settle, his shins against the fire, a long pipe going, and Casey of the 'Lazy Beetle,' and Jobbin the mate of the 'Dodger,' and Little Faddo, who had the fat Dutch wife down by the Ship Inn, and Whiggle the preaching blacksmith. And you were standin' with your back to the shinin' pewters, and the great jug of ale with the white napkin behind you; the light o' the fire wavin' on your face, and your look lost in the deep hollow o' the chimney. I think of you most as you were that minute, Cousin Fanny, when I come in. I tell you straight and fair, that was the prettiest picture I ever saw; and I've seen some rare fine things in my travels. 'Twas as if the thing had been set by some one just to show you off to your best. Here you were, a slip of a lass, straight as a bulrush, and your head hangin' proud on your shoulders; yet modest too, as you can see off here in the North the top of the golden-rod flower swing on its stem. You were slim as slim, and yet there wasn't a corner on you; so soft and full and firm you were, like the breast of a quail; and I mind me how the shine of your cheeks was like the glimmer of an apple after you've rubbed it with a bit of cloth. Well, there you stood in some sort of smooth, plain, clingin' gown, a little bit loose and tumblin' at the throat, and your pretty foot with a brown slipper pushed out, just savin' you from bein' prim. That's why the men liked you,-you didn't carry a sermon in your waist-ribbon, and the Lord's Day in the lift o' your chin; but you had a smile to give when 'twas the right time for it, and men never said things with you there that they'd have said before many another maid.

'Twas a thing I've thought on off here, where I've little to do but think, how a lass like you could put a finger on the lip of such rough tykes as Faddo, Jobbin, and the rest, keepin' their rude words under flap and button. Do you mind how, when I passed you comin' in, I laid my hand on yours as it rested on the dresser? That hand of yours wasn't a tiny bit of a thing, and the fingers weren't all taperin' like a simperin' miss from town, worked down in the mill of quality and got from graftin' and graftin', like one of them roses from the flower-house at Mablethorpe Hall,-not fit to stand by one o' them that grew strong and sweet with no fancy colour, in the garden o' the Book-in-Hand. Yours was a hand that talked as much as your lips or face, as honest and white; and the palm all pink, and strong as strong could be, and warmin' every thread in a man's body when he touched it. Well, I touched your hand then, and you looked at me and nodded, and went musin' into the fire again, not seemin' to hear our gabble.

But, you remember-don't you?-how Jobbin took to chaffin' of Lancy Doane, and how Faddo's tongue got sharper as the time got on, and many a nasty word was said of coastguards and excisemen, and all that had to do with law and gover'ment. Cuts there were at some of Lancy's wild doings in the past, and now and then they'd turn to me, saying what they thought would set me girdin' Lancy too. But I had my own quarrel, and I wasn't to be baited by such numskulls. And Lancy-that was a thing I couldn't understand-he did no more than shrug his shoulder and call for more ale, and wish them all good health and a hundred a year. I never thought he could ha' been so patient-like. But there was a kind of little smile, too, on his face, showin' he did some thinkin'; and I guessed he was bidin' his time.

I wasn't as sharp as I might ha' been, or I'd ha' seen what he was waitin' for, with that quiet provokin' smile on his face, and his eyes smoulderin' like. I don't know to this day whether you wanted to leave the room when you did, though 'twas about half after ten o'clock, later than I ever saw you there before. But when my uncle came in from Louth, and gave you a touch on the shoulder, and said: 'To bed wi' you, my lass,' you waited for a minute longer, glancin' round on all of us, at last lookin' steady at Lancy; and he got up from his chair, and took off his hat to you with a way he had. You didn't stay a second after that, but went away straight, sayin' good-night to all of us; but Lancy was the only one on his feet.

Just as soon as the door was shut behind you, Lancy turned round to the fire, and pushed the log with his feet in a way a man does when he's thinkin' a bit. And Faddo gave a nasty laugh, and said:-

'Theer's a dainty sitovation. Theer's Mr. Thomas Doane, outlaw and smuggler, and theer's Mr. Lancy Doane, coastguardsman. Now, if them two should 'appen to meet on Lincolnshire coast, Lord, theer's a sitovation for ye,-Lord, theer's a cud to chew! 'Ere's one gentleman wants to try 'is 'and at 'elpin' Prince Charlie, and when 'is 'elp doesn't amount to anythink, what does the King on 'is throne say? He says, "As for Thomas Doane, Esquire, aw've doone wi' 'im!" And theer's another gentleman, Mr. Lancy Doane, Esquire. He turns pious, and says, "Aw'm goin' for a coastguardsman!" What does the King on his throne say? 'E says, "Theer's the man for me!" But aw says, "Aw've doone, aw've doone wid Mr. Lancy Doane, Esquire, and be damned to 'im." He! he! Theer's a fancy sitovation for ye. Mr. Thomas Doane, Esquire, smuggler and outlaw, an' Mr. Lancy Doane, Esquire, coastguardsman. Aw've doone. Ho! ho! That gits into my crop.'

I tell you these things, Cousin Fanny, because I'm doubtin' if you ever heard them, or knew exactly how things stood that night. I never was a friend of Lancy Doane, you understand, but it's only fair that the truth be told about that quarrel, for like as not he wouldn't speak himself, and your father was moving in and out; and, I take my oath, I wouldn't believe Faddo and the others if they were to swear on the Bible. Not that they didn't know the truth when they saw it, but they did love just to let their fancy run. I'm livin' over all the things that happened that night,-livin' them over to-day, when everything's so quiet about me here, so lonesome. I wanted to go over it all, bit by bit, and work it out in my head just as you and I used to do the puzzle games we played in the sands. And maybe, when you're a long way off from things you once lived, you can see them and understand them better. Out here, where it's so lonely, and yet so good a place to live in, I seem to get the hang o' the world better, and why some things are, and other things aren't; and I thought it would pull at my heart to sit down and write you a long letter, goin' over the whole business again; but it doesn't. I suppose I feel as a judge does when he goes over a lot of evidence, and sums it all up for the jury. I don't seem prejudiced one way or another. But I'm not sure that I've got all the evidence to make me ken everything; and that's what made me bitter wild the last time that I saw you. Maybe you hadn't anything to tell me, and maybe you had, and maybe, if you ever write to me out here, you'll tell me if there's anything I don't know about them days.

Well, I'll go back now to what happened when Faddo was speakin' at my uncle's bar. Lancy Doane was standin' behind the settle, leanin' his arms on it, and smokin' his pipe quiet. He waited patient till Faddo had done, then he comes round the settle, puts his pipe up in the rack between the rafters, and steps in front of Faddo. If ever the devil was in a man's face, it looked out of Lancy Doane's that minute. Faddo had touched him on the raw when he fetched out that about Tom Doane. All of a sudden Lancy swings, and looks at the clock.

'It's half-past ten, Jim Faddo,' he said, 'and aw've got an hour an' a half to deal wi' you as a Lincolnshire lad. At twelve o'clock aw'm the Gover'ment's, but till then aw'm Lancy Doane, free to strike or free to let alone; to swallow dirt or throw it; to take a lie or give it. And now list to me; aw'm not goin' to eat dirt, and aw'm goin' to give you the lie, and aw'm goin' to break your neck, if I swing for it to-morrow, Jim Faddo. And here's another thing aw'll tell you. When the clock strikes twelve, on the best horse in the country aw'll ride to Theddlethorpe, straight for the well that's dug you know where, to find your smuggled stuff, and to run the irons round your wrists. Aw'm dealin' fair wi' you that never dealt fair by no man. You never had an open hand nor soft heart; and because you've made money, not out o' smugglin' alone, but out o' poor devils of smugglers that didn't know rightly to be rogues, you think to fling your dirt where you choose. But aw'll have ye to-night as a man, and aw'll have ye to-night as a King's officer, or aw'll go damned to hell.'

Then he steps back a bit very shiny in the face, and his eyes like torchlights, but cool and steady. 'Come on now,' he says, 'Jim Faddo, away from the Book-in-Hand, and down to the beach under the sand-hills, and we'll see man for man-though, come to think of it, y'are no man,' he said-'if ye'll have the right to say when aw'm a King's officer that you could fling foul words in the face of Lancy Doane. And a word more,' he says; 'aw wouldn't trust ye if an Angel o' Heaven swore for ye. Take the knife from the belt behind your back there, and throw it on the table, for you wouldn't bide by no fair rules o' fightin'. Throw the knife on the table,' he says, comin' a step forward.

Faddo got on to his feet. He was bigger built than Lancy, and a bit taller, and we all knew he was devilish strong in his arms. There was a look in his face I couldn't understand. One minute I thought it was fear, and another I thought it was daze; and maybe it was both. But all on a sudden something horrible cunnin' come into it, and ugly too.

'Go to the well, then, since ye've found out all about it,' he says, 'but aw've an hour and a half start o' ye, Lancy Doane.'

'Ye've less than that,' says Lancy back to him, 'if ye go with me to the sands first.'

At that my uncle stepped in to say a word for peace-makin', but Lancy would have none of it. 'Take the knife and throw it on the table,' he said to Faddo once more, and Faddo took it out and threw it down.

'Come on, then,' Faddo says, with a sneerin' laugh; 'we'll see by daybreak who has the best o' this night's work,' and he steps towards the door.

'Wait a minute,' says Lancy, gettin' in front of him. 'Now take the knife from your boot. Take it,' he says again, 'or aw will. That's like a man, to go to a fist-fight wi' knives. Take it,' he said; 'aw'll gi' ye till aw count four, and if ye doan't take it, aw'll take it meself. One!' he says steady and soft. 'Two!' Faddo never moved. 'Three!' The silence made me sick, and the clock ticked like hammers. 'Four!' he said, and then he sprang for the boot, but Faddo's hand went down like lightnin', too. I couldn't tell exactly how they clinched, but once or twice I saw the light flash on the steel. Then they came down together, Faddo under, and when I looked again Faddo was lying eyes starin' wide, and mouth all white with fear, for Lancy was holding the knife-point at his throat. 'Stir an inch,' says Lancy, 'and aw'll pin ye to the lid o' hell.'

And three minutes by the clock he knelt there on Faddo's chest, the knife-point touching the bone in 's throat. Not one of us stirred, but just stood lookin', and my own heart beat so hard it hurt me, and my uncle steadyin' himself against the dresser. At last Lancy threw the knife away into the fire.

'Coward!' he said. 'A man would ha' taken the knife. Did you think aw was goin' to gie my neck to the noose just to put your knife to proper use? But don't stir till aw gie you the word, or aw'll choke the breath o' life out o' ye.'

At that Faddo sprung to clinch Lancy's arms, but Lancy's fingers caught him in the throat, and I thought surely Faddo was gone, for his tongue stood out a finger-length, and he was black in the face.

'For God's sake, Lancy,' said my uncle, steppin' forward, 'let him go.'

At that Lancy said, 'He's right enough. It's not the first time aw've choked a coward. Throw cold water on him and gi' 'im brandy.'

Sure enough, he wasn't dead. Lancy stood there watchin' us while we fetched Faddo back, and I tell you, that was a narrow squeak for him. When he got his senses again, and was sittin' there lookin' as if he'd been hung and brought back to life, Lancy says to him: 'There, Jim Faddo, aw've done wi' you as a man, and at twelve o'clock aw'll begin wi' ye as King's officer.' And at that, with a good-night to my uncle and all of us, he turns on his heels and leaves the Book-in-Hand.

I tell you, Cousin Fanny, though I'd been ripe for quarrel wi' Lancy Doane myself that night, I could ha' took his hand like a brother, for I never saw a man deal fairer wi' a scoundrel than he did wi' Jim Faddo. You see it wasn't what Faddo said about himself that made Lancy wild, but that about his brother Tom; and a man doesn't like his brother spoken ill of by dirt like Faddo, be it true or false. And of Lancy's brother I'm goin' to write further on in this letter, for I doubt that you know all I know about him, and the rest of what happened that night and afterwards.

* * * * * * * *

Dear Cousin Fanny,-I canna write all I set out to, for word come to me, just as I wrote the last sentence above, that the ship was to leave port three days sooner than was fixed for when I began. I have been rare and busy since then, and I have no time to write more. And so 't will be another year before you get a word from me; but I hope that when this letter comes you'll write one back to me by the ship that sails next summer from London. The summer's short and the winter's long here, Cousin Fanny, and there's more snow than grass; and there's more flowers in a week in Mablethorpe than in a whole year here. But, lass, the sun shines always, and my heart keeps warm in thinkin' of you, and I ask you to forgive me for any harsh word I ever spoke, not forgettin' that last night when I left you on the sands, and stole away like a thief across the sea. I'm going to tell you the whole truth in my next letter, but I'd like you to forgive me before you know it all, for 't is a right lonely and distant land, this, and who can tell what may come to pass in twice a twelvemonth! Maybe a prayer on lips like mine doesn't seem in place, for I've not lived as parson says man ought to live, but I think the Lord will have no worse thought o' me when I say, God bless thee, lass, and keep thee safe as any flower in His garden that He watereth with His own hand. Write to me, lass: I love thee still, I do love thee.

Dick Orry.

When the sun began to sink out of sight, down behind the sea, two men stood on the edge of the great cliff of Dunlogher, their faces turned to the west.

The yellow flame from the sky shone full in the eyes of Murtogh, and he held his huge, bare head erect with boldness, and stared back at it without blinking. His companion, a little, shrivelled old man, whom he held by the arm, had the glowing light on his countenance as well, but his eyelids were shut. He bent himself against his chief's thick shoulder and trembled.

'Are we to the brink itself?' he asked; his aged voice shook when he spoke.

'Here, where I stand, when I would grip you, and hold you forth at the length of my arm, and open my hand, you would fall a hundred fathoms in the air.' Murtogh's free arm and hand made the terrible gesture to fit his words, but he tightened his protecting clasp upon the other, and led him back a few paces. The old man groaned his sigh of relief.

'It is you who are the brave nobleman, Murty,' he whispered, admiringly. 'There is none to equal your strength, or your grand courage, in all the land. And the heart of pure gold along with it!'

Murtogh tossed his big head, to shake the twisted forelock of his hair to one side. 'I looked straight into the sun at noon on St. John's Day,' he said, quietly, with the pride of a child. 'If it were a hundred times as bright, I would look at it, and never fear for my eyes. I would hold my own son out here, stretched over the abyss, and he would be no safer in his bed. Whatever I wished to do, I would do it.'

'You would-O, you would!' assented the old man, in tones of entire sincerity.

The chieftain kept his eyes on the skyline, beneath which, as the radiance above deepened, the waters grew ashen and coldly dark. Musing, he held his silence for a time. Then, with abruptness, he asked:-

'What age were you, Owny Hea, when the McSwineys put out your eyes? Were you strong enough to remember the sun well?'

'I was of no strength at all,' the other whimpered, the tragedy of his childhood affecting his speech on the instant. 'I was in my mother's arms. There were the men breaking in through the wall, and the kine bellowing outside, and my father cut down; and then it was like my mother drew her cloak tight over my head,-and no one came ever to take it off again. I forget the sun.'

Murtogh nodded his head. 'I will go to Muskerry some day,' he said, in a kindly way. 'I cannot tell when, just now; but I will go, and I will burn and desolate everything for six miles around, and you shall have a bag for your harp made of eyelids of the McSwineys.'

Old Owny lifted his sightless face toward his master, and smiled with wistful affection. 'Ah, Murty, dear,' he expostulated, mildly, 'it is you who have the grand nature; but think, Murty,-I am a very old man, and no kin of yours. It is fifty years since the last man who took my eyes drew breath. If you went now, no living soul could tell what you came for, or why the great suffering was put upon them. And, moreover, the O'Mahonys Carbery have wives from the McSwineys these three generations. No feud lies now.'

The lord of Dunlogher growled sharply between his teeth, and Owny shrank further back.

'How long will you be learning,' Murtogh demanded, with an arrogant note in his voice, 'that I have no concern in the O'Mahonys Carbery, or the O'Mahonys Fonn-Iartarach, or any other? I do not take heed of Conogher of Ardintenant, or Teige of Rosbrin, or Donogh of Dunmanus, or Donal of Leamcon. I will give them all my bidding to do, and they will do it, or I will kill them, and spoil their castles. You could not behold it, but you have your song from the words of others: how last year I fell upon Diarmaid Bhade, and crushed him and his house, and slew his son, and brought away his herds. His father's father and mine were brothers. He is nearer to me in blood than the rest, yet I would not spare him. I made his Ballydevlin a nest for owls and bats. Let the others observe what I did. I am in Dunlogher, and I am the O'Mahony here, and I look the sun in the face like an eagle. Put that to your song!'

The sound came to them, from the walled bawn and gateways beyond the Three Castles, a hundred yards behind, of voices in commotion. The old bard lifted his head, and his brow scored itself in lines of listening attention. If Murtogh heard, he gave no sign, but gazed again in meditation out upon the vast waste of waters, blackening now as the purple reflections of the twilight waned.

'Blind men have senses that others lack,' he remarked at last. 'Tell me, you, does the earth we stand on seem ever to you to be turning round?'

Owny shuddered a little at the thought which came to him. 'When you led me out beyond here, and I felt the big round sea-pinks under my feet, and remembered they grew only on the very edge-' he began.

'Not that,' the chief broke in, ''tis not my meaning. But at Rosbrin there was a book written by Fineen the son of Diarmaid, an uncle to my father's father, and my father heard it read from this book that the world turned round one way, like a duck on a spit, and the sun turned round the other way, and that was why they were apart all night. And often I come here, and I swear there is a movement under my feet. But elsewhere there is none, not in the bawn, or in the towers, or anywhere else but just here.'

The old man inclined his face, as if he could see the ground he stood upon, but shook his head after a moment's waiting. 'It would not be true, Murty,' he suggested. 'Old Fineen had a mighty scholarship, as I have heard, and he made an end to edify the angels, but-but-'

Murtogh did not wait for the hesitating conclusion. 'I saw his tomb when I was a lad, in the chapel at Rosbrin. He was laid at his own desire under a weight of stone like my wall here. I saw even then how foolish it was. These landsmen have no proper sense. How will they rise at the blessed Resurrection, with all that burden of stone to hold them down? I have a better understanding than that. I buried my father, as he buried his father, out yonder in the sea. And I will be buried there, too, and my son after me-and if I have other children-' he stole a swift glance at the old man's withered face as he spoke-'if I have others, I say, it will be my command that they shall follow me there, when their time comes. I make you witness to that wish, Owny Hea.'

The bard hung his head. 'As if my time would not come first!' he said, for the mere sake of saying something. Then, gathering courage, he pulled upon the strong arm which was still locked in his, and raised his head to speak softly in the O'Mahony's ear.

'If only the desire of your heart were given you, Murty,' he murmured; 'if only once I could hold a babe of yours to my breast, and put its pretty little hands in my beard,-I'd be fit to pray for the men who took my eyes from me. And Murty dear,'-his voice rose in tremulous entreaty as he went on,-'tell me, Murty,-I'm of an age to be your father's father, and I've no eyesight to shame you,-is she-is your holy wife coming to see her duty differently? Have you hope that-that-?'

Murtogh turned abruptly on his heel, swinging his companion round with him. They walked a dozen paces towards the sea-gate of the castles, before he spoke. 'You have never seen her, Owny!' he said, gravely. 'You do not know at all how beautiful she is. It is not in the power of your mind to imagine it. There is no one like her in all the world. She is not just flesh and blood like you, Owny, or even like me. I am a great lord among men, Owny, and I am not afraid of any man. I would put the MacCarthy, or even the Earl of Desmond, over my cliff like a rat, if he came to me here, and would not do me honour. But whenever I come where she sits, I am like a little dirty boy, frightened before a great shrine of our Blessed Lady, all with jewels and lights and incense. I take shame to myself when she looks at me, that there are such things in my heart for her to see.'

Owny sighed deeply. 'The grandest princess in the world might be proud to be mated to you, Murty,' he urged.

'True enough,' responded Murtogh, with candour. 'But she is not a princess,-or any mere woman at all. She is a saint. Perhaps she is more still. Listen, Owny. Do you remember how I took her,-how I swam for her through the breakers-and snapped the bone of my arm to keep the mast of their wreck from crushing her when the wave flung it upon us, and still made land with her head on my neck, and hung to the bare rock against all the devils of the sea sucking to pull me down-?'

'Is it not all in my song?' said Owny, with gentle reproach.

'Owny, man, listen!' said Murtogh, halting and giving new impressiveness to his tone. 'I took her from the water. Her companions were gone; their vessel was gone. Did we ever see sign of them afterward? And her family,-the Sigersons of that island beyond Tiobrad,-when men of mine sailed thither, and asked for Hugh, son of Art, were they not told that the O'Flaherty had passed over the island, and left nothing alive on it the size of a mussel shell? Draw nearer to me, Owny. You will be thinking the more without your eyes. Have you thought that it may be she-whisper now!-that she may belong to the water?'

They stood motionless in the gathering twilight, and the bard turned the problem over deliberately. At last he seemed to shake his head. 'They would not be displaying such piety, as the old stories of them go,' he suggested, 'or-I mean it well to you, Murty-or breaking husbands' hearts with vows of celibacy.'

The O'Mahony pushed the old man from him. 'Then if she be a saint,' he cried, 'why then it were better for me to make ten thousand more blind men like you, and tear my own eyes out, and lead you all headlong over the cliff there, than risk the littlest offence to her pure soul!'

The old bard held out a warning hand. 'People are coming!' he said. Then gliding towards his chief, he seized the protecting arm again, and patted it, and fawned against it. 'Where you go, Murty,' he said eagerly, 'I follow. What you say, I say.'

Some dancing lights had suddenly revealed themselves at the corner of the nearest castle wall. Murtogh had not realised before that it was dusk. 'They will be looking for me,' he said, and moved forward, guiding his companion's steps. The thought that with Owny it was always dark rose in him, and drove other things away.

Three men with torches came up,-rough men with bare legs and a single skirt-like tunic of yellow woollen cloth, and uncovered heads with tangled and matted shocks of black hair. The lights they bore gleamed again in the fierce eyes which looked out from under their forelocks.

'O'Mahony,' one of them said, 'the liathan priest is at the gate,-young Donogh, son of Donogh Bhade who fled to Spain. He is called Father Donatus now.'

'What will he want here?' growled Murtogh. 'I have beaten his father; if I have the mind, his tonsure will not hold me from beating him also.'

'He has brought a foreign Spaniard, a young man with breeches and a sword, who comes to you from the King of Spain.'

Murtogh straightened himself, and disengaged the arm of the blind man. 'Run forward, you two,' he ordered sharply, 'and call all the men from the bawns and the cattle and the boats, and I will have them light torches, and stand in a line from the second tower to the postern, and show their spears well in front, and be silent. I will not have any man talk but myself, or thrust himself into notice. We were Kings of Rathlin, and we have our own matters to discuss with the Kings of Spain.'

Three score fighting men, some bearing lights, and all showing shields, and spears, or javelins, or long hooked axes, crowded in the semblance of a line along the narrow way to the large keep-and behind them packed four times their number of women and children-watched Murtogh when he brought his guests past from the gate.

He moved proudly up the boreen, with a slow step, and the gleam of a high nature in his eyes. His own people saw afresh how great was his right to be proud. The broad hard muscles of his legs, straining to burst their twisted leather thongs as he walked; the vast weight and thickness of the breast and shoulders, under the thin summer cloak of cloth from the Low Countries which he held wrapped tight about them; the corded sinews of his big bare neck; above all, the lion-like head, with its dauntless regard and its splendid brown-black mane, and the sparkle of gold in the bushing glibb on his brow,-where else in all Ireland would their match be found? But for that strange injunction to silence, the fighters of the sept would be splitting the air with yells for their chieftain. They struck their weapons together, and made the gaze they bent upon him burn with meaning, and he, without looking, read it, and bore himself more nobly yet; and the mothers and wives and little ones, huddled behind in the darkness, groaned aloud with the pain of their joy in Murty mordha.

It swelled the greatness of Murtogh when they looked upon those who followed him. 'It is the soggarth liathan,' they whispered, at view of the young priest, with his pointed face and untimely whitened hair. He would not turn his ferret glance to right or left, as he followed close in his cousin's lordly footsteps, for the reason that these sea-wolves of Dunlogher had ravaged and burnt his father's country within the year, and slain his brother, and gnashed their teeth now, even as he passed, for rage at the sight of him.

And the messenger who came to speak to Murty the words of the King of Spain! They grinned as they stared upon him. An eel-fly, a lame fledgeling gull, a young crab that has lost its shell,-thus they murmured of him. His legs were scarce the bigness of a Cape woman's arms, and were clad in red silken cloth stretched as close as skin. He had foolish little feet, with boots of yellow leather rising to the knee, and from the mid-thigh to the waist were unseemly bulging breeches, blown out like a buoy, and gashed downwise with stripes of glowing colours, repeated again in his flowing sleeves. His burnished steel corslet and long reed-like sword would be toys for children in Dunlogher. His face, under its wide plumed hat of drab felt, was that of no soldier at all,-a thin smooth rounded face of a strange smoky darkness of hue, with tiny upturned moustachios, and delicately bended nose. And the eyes of him! They seemed to be the half of his countenance in size, what with their great dusky-white balls, and sloe black centres, and their thick raven fringes and brows that joined each other. The armed kernes who stood nearest took not much heed of these eyes, but the older women, peeping between their shoulders, saw little else, and they made the sign of the cross at the sight.

When two hours had passed, the baser folk of Dunlogher knew roughly what was in the wind. Two wayfaring men of humble station had come in the train of the Spaniard, and though they had no Irish, their story somehow made itself told. A ship from Spain, which indeed Dunlogher had seen pass a week before, had put in at Dingle, on the Kerry coast, and had landed James Fitzmaurice, the Papal legate Sanders, some other clergy, and a score and more Spanish gentlemen or men at arms, with a banner blessed by the Holy Father. A great army from Spain and Italy would follow in their wake. But, meantime, the first comers were building a fort at Smerwick, and the clan of Fitzgerald was up, and messengers were flying through the length and breadth of Munster and Connaught, passing the word to the Catholic chiefs that the hour of driving the English into the sea was at hand.

The lower floors of the castle and the pleasant grassy bawns outside, cool with the soft sea wind of the summer night, were stirred to a common fervour by these tidings. The other O'Mahonys, the chiefs of Dunmanus and Dunbeacon to the north, of Ballydevlin, Leamcon, Ardintenant, and Rosbrin to the south, and elsewhere in Desmond the O'Sullivans, MacCarthys, O'Driscolls and the rest, were clashing their shields. Ah, when they should see Murty striding into the field!

In the big hall overhead, where-after three courses of stone stairs were climbed, so narrow that a man in armour must needs walk sideways-the abode of the chieftain and his own blood began, Murtogh was ready to hear the message of the King of Spain.

The broad rough-hewn table, with its dishes of half-cleaned bones and broken cheeses and bread, its drinking horns and flagons, and litter of knives and spoons, had been given over to the master's greyhounds, who stood with forepaws on the board and insinuated their long necks and muzzles noiselessly here and there among the remains of the meal. A clump of reeds, immersed in a brazier of fish oil, burned smokily among the dishes for light.

When, at the finish of the eating, Murtogh had given the signal for departure to the dozen strong men nearest akin to him, or in his best favour, there were left only his son, a slow, good lad born of a first wife long since dead, the blind Owny, the Spaniard and the liathan (or prematurely grey) young priest.

Then Murtogh said to this last man: 'Donogh, son of Donogh Bhade, I have not frowned on you nor struck you, for the reason that you are my guest. But because my hand is open to you, it is no reason that I should lie, and pretend that I am your friend or you mine. Your brother, Diarmaid, the one I could not get to kill, calls himself my heir, and twice has sought to take the life of my son here, my Donogh baoth. Therefore, I will have you go now, and sit below with the others, or read your prayers in your chamber where you are to sleep, because I will hear now what the King of Spain says to me, and that is not meant for your ears.'

The priest stood on his feet. 'Your pride does not become you, Murty Mordha' he said, 'when I am come to you for your soul's sake and the glory of religion.' His voice was thin and high-pitched, but there was no fear in it.

'I will not be taking trouble for my soul just now,' replied Murty; 'that will be for another time, when I am like to die. And then I will have my own confessor, and not you, nor anyone like you. So you will go now, as I bid you.'

Father Donatus, standing still, curled his lips in a hard smile. 'You are a great man, Murty! You could dishonour my father, and slay my brother like the headstrong bullock that you are; but there are things you cannot do. You cannot lay your finger to me because I come on the business of God.'

'It is the business of the King of Spain that I will be thinking of,' said Murty, with curtness.

'They are the same,' rejoined the young priest. 'And you are wrong to say what you will be thinking of, because you have not a mind to think at all. If you could think, you would know that you cannot have the words of the King of Spain except when I interpret them to you. This noble gentleman who comes with me speaks more tongues than one, but he has no Irish, and you,-it is well known that you have nothing else. Don Tello has sat at your side for two hours, and you have not observed that each word between him and you came and went through me. Oh, yes; you are a great man, Murty, but your mind is not of a high order.'

The chieftain rose also. The blood came into his face, and he laid a strong hand on the hilt of his broad sword. But the foot that he lifted he set down again; and he looked at his kinsman, the liathan priest, and did not move towards him. 'You are in the right to wear a gown,' he said slowly, 'because you have the tongue and the evil temper of an ugly girl. You speak foolish things in your heat, and they disgrace you. I have the best mind that any man in my family ever had. I have more thoughts in my mind than there are words in your Latin book. I would speak whatever I chose to this gentleman, and I would understand his speech when I troubled myself to do so. But I will not do that,-for some time at least; I will have my wife come, and she will sit here, and she will tell me his words, and I will be taking my ease.'

Murtogh Mordha called his son to his side, and gave him a message to deliver.

The priest, smiling in his cold way, leant over and spoke for the space of a minute in a tongue strange to Dunlogher into the Spaniard's ear. Then he stood erect, and gazed at Murtogh with an ill-omened look, and so turned and strode after the lad out of the door.