AN IRISH COUSIN.

BY
GEILLES HERRING AND MARTIN ROSS.


IN TWO VOLUMES.
VOL. I.



LONDON:
RICHARD BENTLEY AND SON,
Publishers in Ordinary to Her Majesty the Queen.
1889.
(All rights reserved.)

CONTENTS.

AN IRISH COUSIN.

PART I.

AN EXPERIMENT.

CHAPTER I.

THE “ALASKA.”

There had been several days of thick, murky weather—dull, uncomplaining days that bore their burden of fog and rain in monotonous endurance. Six of such I had lived through; a passive existence, parcelled out to me by the uncomprehended clanging of bells, and the, to me, still more incomprehensible clatter which, recurring at regular intervals, told that a hungry multitude were plying their knives and forks in the saloon.

But a change had come at last; and on Saturday morning, instead of the usual heaving ridges of grey water, I saw through the port-hole the broken green glitter of sunlit waves. The s.s. Alaska’s lurching plunge had subsided into a smooth unimpeded rushing through the water, and for the first time since I had left New York, the desire for food and human companionship awoke in me.

“Stewardess,” I said, “get me a cup of tea. I am going on deck.”

It was early when I came on deck. The sun was still low in the south-east, and was spreading a long road of rays toward us, up which the big steamer was hurrying, dividing the radiancy into shining lines, that writhed backwards from her bows till they were lost in the foaming turmoil astern.

A light north wind was blowing from a low-lying coast on our left, bringing, as I fancied, some faint suggestion of fields and woods. I walked across the snowy deck, to where a sailor was engaged in a sailor’s seemingly invariable occupation of coiling a rope in a neat circle.

“I suppose that is Ireland?” I said, pointing to the land.

“Yes, miss; that’s the county Cork right enough. We’ll be into Queenstown in a matter of three hours now.”

“Three hours more!” I said to myself, while I watched the headlands slowly changing their shapes as we steamed past. It would soon begin now, this new phase of my life, whether I wished it or not. It had once seemed impossible; now it was inevitable. My destiny was no longer in my own control, and its secret was, perhaps, hidden among those blue Irish hills, which looked as if they were waiting for me to come and prove what they had in store for me.

“Well, it has been my own doing,” I thought; “whatever comes of it, I have only myself to thank; and whether they like or dislike me, I shall have to make the best of them, and they of me.”

“First breakfast just ready, miss,” said one of the innumerable ship-stewards, scurrying past me with cups of tea on a tray.

I paid no attention to the suggestion, and made my way to a deck chair just vacated by an elderly gentleman. I could not bring myself to go below. The fresh sweet wind, the seagulls glancing against the blue sky, the sunshine that gleamed broadly from the water and made a dazzling mimic sun of each knob and point of brasswork about the ship,—to exchange these for the fumes of bacon and eggs, and the undesired conversation of some chance fellow-passenger, seemed out of the question.

Moreover, I was too restless and excited to care about breakfast just then. The sight of the land had given new life to expectations and hopes from which most of the glory had departed during the ignominious misery of the last six days. I lay in my deck chair, idly watching the black river of smoke that streamed back from the funnels, and for the first time found a certain dubious enjoyment in the motion of the vessel, as she progressed with that slight roll in her gait which the sea confers upon all its habitués.

Most people appear to think that sea-sickness, if spoken of at all, should be treated as an involuntarily comic episode, to be dealt with in a facetious manner. But for me it has only two aspects—the pathetic and the revolting; the former being the point of view from which I regard my own sufferings, and the latter having reference to those of others. In the dark hours spent in my state-room, I had had abundant opportunity to formulate and verify this theory, and I have never since then seen any reason to depart from it.

CHAPTER II.

AUNT JANE.

In self-extenuation, I may mention that I had for the last twelve months lived in her house, and had thus had ample opportunity of verifying the opinion expressed by many of her most intimate friends—“That Jane Farquharson was the salt of the earth, but as such was better when taken in very small quantities.”

She was a Scotchwoman of the most inflexible type. Twenty-five years of sojourn in the United States had modified none of her insular prejudices, and my mother, who was her youngest sister, had never, even during her married life, lost belief in the awfulness of her authority.

The Farquharsons were a family whose pedigree was longer than their purse; and when her younger brother, my Uncle James, had been compelled to sell the paternal acres and emigrate to California, my aunt had uprooted herself from her native land and followed his fortunes, in the full conviction that he, excellent young man though he was, would become altogether a castaway if once allowed out of range of her vigilant eye. They were orphans, and Aunt Jane, having imposed upon herself the duties of both parents, took my mother with her to the Far West, where she maintained on my uncle’s ranch the straitest traditions of the elders.

Uncle James never married. Aunt Jane’s vigilance had been so conscientiously unremitting that no daughter of Heth had ever disputed with her the position of mistress of Farquharson’s ranch. But the precautionary measures that had preserved Uncle James from the snares of matrimony were a distinct failure in my mother’s case. With the unexpected revolt of a weak nature, she defied her elder sister, and committed the incredible enormity of getting married.

Men—with the exception of a legendary Scotch minister, who, if tradition spoke truly, had not long survived his betrothal to Aunt Jane—were regarded by her as the natural foes of cleanliness, economy, and piety. And of all men she considered Irishmen to be the epitome of their sex’s atrocities.

It must, then, be admitted that Fate dealt hardly with Aunt Jane, when, one summer afternoon, her sister Helen came to her and told her that she had that morning been married to Owen Sarsfield, the good-looking Irishman who, a few months before, had entered into partnership with their brother. My mother has often described the scene to me—how she had found Aunt Jane grimly darning her brother’s socks; how she had received the news at first in terrible silence; and then how on my mother, white and trembling, had fallen the thunders of her wrath.

“That ne’er-do-weel Irishman! A creature that ’tis well known had to leave his home for Heaven only knows what wickedness! Did you never hear that a bad son makes a bad husband? I was right when I warned James against having anything to do with a vagabond scamp such as he is, and told him no good would come of handling money that had doubtless been won at the gaming-table!”

To all this, and much more, my mother did not attempt a reply; she thought she knew more of Owen Sarsfield than her sister did. She and her husband settled down in another house on the ranch, and, notwithstanding their proximity to Aunt Jane, they were very happy.

My father, in spite of Aunt Jane’s insinuations to the contrary, was an Irish gentleman of good family, and the money which he had put into the farm had been honestly come by. Perhaps my mother never knew the exact reason of his leaving Ireland. She only told me that money troubles had led to a quarrel with his father, Theodore Sarsfield, of Durrus, in the county Cork. He had no sisters, and his younger and only brother, Dominick, had sided with my grandfather against him, so that during the fifteen years he had spent in America he was as much cut off from his home as if he had been on another planet. The little that he knew of it was gathered from a few misspelt letters, written by one Patrick Roche, a special retainer of his in the old days at Durrus.

These reached him at long intervals, and usually announced some event connected with the Sarsfield family. In this way he heard of his brother’s marriage, which took place three or four years before his own. Then shortly afterwards, towards the end of the Irish famine, came the news that “The young misthris was ded, and she just after havin’ a fine young son; ’twas what the peepel war all saying that the hard times kilt her.”

My mother used sometimes to take these letters from a little old green velvet bag in which she hoarded many valueless treasures, and give them to me to read. And I well remember the yellow worn papers, with the half-foreign smell of turf-smoke lingering about them. I did not then dream of how, in after-years, when that same smell of turf-smoke became very familiar, it would recall the hours I spent when a child, sitting in the shade of the verandah beside my mother’s rocking-chair, and poring with subdued excitement over these messages from the other side of the world.

The last letter which my father received was as urgent as it was brief.

On getting this letter, my father started at once for Ireland. I was at this time about a year old, a very ugly and stubborn little baby, so Aunt Jane has often told me; and when my mother held me high above the sunflowers at the gate, to kiss my hand to my father as he drove away, I only beat her upon the head and screamed for the pussy.

That was the last chance I ever had of seeing my father. He wrote to my mother from New York, and again from Queenstown—short dispirited letters; the latter saying that he had caught a bad cold, and felt the change from a Californian to an Irish winter very severely. A week afterwards came another letter in a strange handwriting. It was from my Uncle Dominick, and it told my mother, not unkindly, the news that she never quite recovered from. The cold which my father had spoken of had turned to pleurisy, and he had died in a hotel in Queenstown the day after he landed. The writer said that, owing to the unfortunate relations that existed between him and his brother, he had not been aware of his marriage till letters that he had found in his possession informed him of the fact. He now forwarded them to her, with his brother’s few personal effects, and remained, hers faithfully, D. Sarsfield.

The next mail brought a second letter from my Uncle Dominick. Since he last wrote, my grandfather had died; and by the terms of his will, in consequence of my father having predeceased him, the property and house of Durrus passed to the second son, the writer himself. “Had my father known that my brother had married,” wrote my uncle, he might possibly have made an alteration in the terms of the will; but as Owen had never seen fit to make any communication on the subject, no such provision was made. “The property has suffered much during the recent famine, but, as I feel sure that it would have been in accordance with my father’s wishes, I have ventured to place a small sum to your credit at the Bank of Ireland, with directions to forward it to your order.”

My mother never allowed the correspondence thus begun with my Uncle Dominick to drop altogether, and once or twice a year she would devote a couple of mornings to the toilful compilation of a letter to the brother-in-law whom she had never seen. Looking back now, I think there was something very touching in the confident way in which she relied on his interest in those annals of my childhood which filled her letters. I came upon them long afterwards, and read them with a strange mingling of feeling, very different from the wonder and longing with which I, in those childish days, saw them despatched on the first stage of their long journey, and wished that I could accompany them into the post-bag’s grimy recesses, and go to Durrus too.

I had a very happy childhood. Either my mother or Uncle James could single-handed have spoiled the best of children, and their joint efforts being devoted to giving me everything I wished for, I should, had it not been for Aunt Jane, have lived a life of lawless enjoyment. The result of their long years of subjugation was a secret exultation in the undaunted front which I bore towards my aunt, and at a very early age I had learnt to recognize the fact that we three were confederates against a common despot. Uncle James was my most daring ally, and at his instigation I committed some of my most signal and spirited misdemeanours. By the time I was sixteen, I had become, under his supervision, a young lady of varied, if unusual, attainments. I could catch and saddle my own horse; I could guide a steam-plough; I could make some attempt at Latin verse; I knew a little about the rotation of crops, and a good deal of Shakespeare and Walter Scott. Aunt Jane herself took charge of my music, and I spent a daily hour of suffering at a piano as upright and unsympathetic as she was, learning from the frayed, discoloured pages of her music-books, the old-fashioned marches, and “Scotch airs with variations,” that had formed the taste of two generations of Farquharsons.

I think my mother would have been satisfied to let me grow up as I was then doing, knowing nothing of the usual more elegant accomplishments of young ladies; and it was owing to Aunt Jane’s abhorrence of my “tom-boy tricks” that the first great change in my life was made. The climax came one early summer morning, when, possessing myself of Uncle James’s gun, I crept out to try and slay one of the big “jack-rabbits” that abounded on the ranch.

My aunt from her bedroom window saw the whole performance—the stalking; the unseemly grovellings and crawlings through the long grass; the deliberate aim; and, finally, the stealthy but triumphant return with the spoil.

That very day it was decided that my mother and I were to go forthwith to Boston, there to abide with a cousin of my mother’s, until such time as some of the high literary polish of that city should be imparted to me.

“Perhaps Rachel Campbell will be given patience to bear with her wild heathen-like ways,” Aunt Jane had said; and my poor mother had answered with a sigh—

“Theo is always good to me, dear Jane; but I dare say you are right, and it will be best for us to go away.”

So my mother and I set out on our long journey, little thinking that we should never see Farquharson’s Ranch again.

Towards the end of our second year in Boston Uncle James died. His horse fell with him, throwing him on his head, and he only lived for a few hours afterwards, never recovering consciousness. He left all his property to my mother and my aunt; and the latter, having sold the ranch, came to live with us in Boston.

My uncle’s death was the first trouble that I had ever known; but in the near future a still greater one awaited me. I was barely twenty-two when my mother’s unexpected death seemed to bring the whole world to a standstill. I do not like to look back to the desolate days which followed. She was all I had in the world to love, and Aunt Jane’s stern, undemonstrative nature would admit me to no fellowship of sorrow.

I dare say it may have been my own fault, but after a time I found the change from my mother’s unexacting governance to Aunt Jane’s rule becoming intolerable.

“Theodora has been quite ruined by poor Helen,” she used, I believe, to say to her friends. “She will do nothing now but what is right in her own eyes. I shudder to think what will become of her.”

Either my aunt’s temper or mine had disimproved with advancing years, and each day I found it harder to avoid a breach of the peace. At length a diatribe upon “the fearful irreverence to my elders which I had learnt in this godless town,” ending with reflections upon my mother’s indulgence, aroused me to angry rejoinder.

I was trying to simmer down in my own room after the encounter, and in my stormy trampings to and fro in that limited apartment, I had twice upset a photograph of a plump and smiling little boy that stood on my table.

“That horrid little Willy Sarsfield!” I said, delighted to find something on which to expend my wrath; “he is always tumbling down!”

The picture had been my mother’s, one which, at her request, had been sent to her by my Uncle Dominick many years before; and as for the second time I picked it up and put it in its place, an idea came to me.

“Why should I not go to Durrus?” I said.

I did not wait for a calmer moment, but, seating myself at the table, I immediately began a letter to my Uncle Dominick. My hand shook from the excitement of my suddenly taken resolution and from a sense of its temerity, but I was at least able to make my meaning clear. I had, I said, since I was a child, longed to visit Durrus, and see my father’s relations; but hitherto this had been impossible to me. Now, however, I was comparatively alone in the world, and if my uncle would allow me to pay him a visit, nothing remained to prevent my doing so.

That evening I told my aunt of the step I had taken. The heat of her altercation with me had not yet died out in her, and, though she was, as she said, beyond measure astounded, her pride did not permit her to remonstrate.

“You can do as you please, Theodora. As your mother did not see fit to leave me the control of your fortune, I do not presume to give an opinion as to your movements. I trust, however, that you may not have cause to regret the headstrong self-will which has made you unable to content yourself in a quiet and God-fearing household.”

During the days of waiting for an answer from my uncle, Aunt Jane preserved the same demeanour of distant disapproval, and I began to feel that to leave her house with the weight of her displeasure still hanging over me, would be a strong measure. The morning at length came on which I tore open an envelope with the Irish post-mark, and read to her the ceremonious letter in which Uncle Dominick intimated his and his son’s great pleasure at the prospect of a visit from me.

“Very good; then I suppose you will start without delay.” Her cold voice quavered unexpectedly at the end of the sentence, and, looking up in astonishment, I saw in her hard grey eyes an unmistakable moisture. “I had no wish to drive you out, Theodora.”

“I know, Aunt Jane,” I broke in, in hasty penitence; “I never thought that for an instant.”

But she hurried away before I could get any further, saying inarticulately, as she left the room, “God bless you, child, wherever you go.”

After this Aunt Jane made no further comment on what had taken place, but we found ourselves on a more friendly footing than we had ever been before; and when I said good-bye to her, I did so with the knowledge that I could always rely on her undemonstrative, but steadfast affection.

This is the history of how, on the 18th of October, 188-, I came to be reclining in a deck chair on board the s.s. Alaska, two hours from Queenstown.

CHAPTER III.

MY COUSIN WILLY.

This despatch was put into my hand before I left the steamer at Queenstown. Its genial tone and eccentric grammar were quite in keeping with my ideas of an Irishman. These were at once simple and definite. All Irishmen were genial; most of them were eccentric. In fact, had my uncle and cousin met me on the pier, clad in knee-breeches and tail-coats, and hailed me with what I believed to be the national salutation “Begorra!” I should scarcely have been taken aback.

The outside car on which I drove from the Cork station to the hotel was also a realization of preconceived ideas. In response to the bewildering proffers of “Inside or outside?” I had selected an “outside,” and was quite satisfied with the genuineness of the difficulty I found in remaining on it, as we rattled through the muddy streets. The carman himself was perhaps a little disappointing. His replies to my questions were not only devoid of that repartee which I had understood to be the attribute of all Irish carmen, but were lacking in common intelligence; and on his replying for the third time, “Faith, I dunno, miss,” I concluded I must have hit on an unlucky exception.

The day had lost none of the brilliancy of the early morning. It seemed to me that the sun shone with a deliberate intention of welcome, and the unfamiliar softness of Irish air was almost intoxicating. Everything was conspiring to put me into the highest spirits, and I only laughed when my new dressing-bag was flung on to the pavement by the dislocating jerk with which the car pulled up in front of Foley’s Hotel.

As I walked into the hotel, the porter who had taken in my boxes, went over to a tall young man who was leaning over the bar at the end of the narrow hall, and whispered something to him. He immediately started from his lounging position, and, furtively glancing at the mirror behind the bar, he came up to me.

“How do you do? I’m very glad to see you over here,” he said, with an evident effort to assume an easy cousinly manner. “I hope you didn’t mind not meeting me. I was awfully sorry I couldn’t get down to Queenstown, but I had important business in town.” It was perhaps a consciousness of the interested scrutiny of the young lady behind the bar that caused him to blush an ingenuous red as he spoke. “You’d better come on and have some luncheon,” he continued, without giving me time to answer him. “We’ve only got an hour before the train starts.”

I followed him into the coffee-room, thinking as I did so how different this well-dressed, rather awkward young man was from the picturesque and vivacious creature I had somehow pictured my Irish cousin to be. His accent, however, was unmistakably that of his native country; or, rather, as I afterwards found, that of his particular part of it. His quick, low way of speaking was at first a little unintelligible to me, and almost gave me the idea that what he said was intended to be of a confidential nature; but on the whole I thought his voice a singularly pleasant one, and listened with interest to its friendly modulations.

By the time our luncheon was put on the table he was more at his ease, and had even, with a sheepish, half-deprecating glance from his light grey eyes, addressed me as “Theo.” The almost fraternal familiarity of the head waiter was, on Willy’s explanation that I was his cousin from America, extended in the fullest degree to me.

“Indeed, when I seen her coming in the door, I remarked to Miss Foley how greatly the young lady favoured the Sarsfield family,” he observed blandly; “and Miss Foley said she considered she had a great likeness to yourself, captain.”

This was a little embarrassing. I did not quite know what I was expected to say, and devoted myself to my mutton-chop.

“I did not know that you were a soldier,” I said, as soon as the waiter had gone.

“Oh, well,” replied my cousin, giving a conscious twist to his yellow moustache, “I’m only a sort of one—what they call ‘a malicious man.’ I’m a captain in the West Cork Artillery Militia,” he explained; “but nobody calls me that but the buckeens hereabouts.”

I wondered silently what a buckeen was, and why it should be so anxious to maintain the prestige of the militia, but did not like to betray too much ignorance of what might be one of the interesting old courtesy titles peculiar to Ireland.

Looking at my cousin as he rapidly devoured his luncheon, I noticed that, in spite of his disclaimer of military rank, he took some pains to cultivate a martial appearance. His straw-coloured hair was clipped with merciless precision, and on his sunburnt forehead, what was evidently a cherished triangle of white marked the limit of protection afforded by an artillery forage cap.

“I think I’d better be looking after your luggage now,” he said, bolting what remained of his second chop, and getting up from the table with his mouth full. “I was quite frightened when I saw those two big mountains of trunks coming along on the car after you. And then when I saw you walk in”—he laughed a pleasant, foolish laugh—“I didn’t think you’d be such a swell!” he ended, with confiding friendliness.

The terminus of the Cork and Moycullen railway, the line by which we were to travel to Durrus, was crowded on that Saturday afternoon. We had ten minutes to spare, during which I sat at the window and watched with the utmost interest the concourse on the platform. It had all the appearance of a large social gathering or conversazione. Stragglers wandered from group to group, showing an equal acquaintance with all, and with apparently entire nonchalance as to the functions of the train, while the guard himself bustled about among them with an interest that was evidently quite unofficial. My carriage soon became thronged with people, between whom and their friends on the platform a constant traffic in brown-paper parcels was carried on; and I was beginning to think there would be no room for Willy, who had disappeared in the crowd. But the ringing of the final bell set my mind at rest.

Contrary to the usual usage, this sound had the effect of almost emptying the train, and, the party in my carriage being reduced to two, I realized that the travellers were left in a minority by those who had come to bid them good-bye.

Willy returned at the last moment, emerging from the centre of a group of young ladies, with the well-pleased air of one whose conversation has been appreciated.

“Did you see those girls I was talking to?” he said, as we moved out of the station. “They are cousins of the O’Neills, people in our part of the world. They came down to see me off. There was a great mob there to-day, but there always is on Saturday.”

“Who are the O’Neills?” I asked, feeling that some response was expected of me.

“They’re neighbours of ours. They live at Clashmore—that’s four miles from us—and they’re very nice people. Nugent, the brother, used to be a great pal of mine—at least, he was till he went to Cambridge, and came back thinking no one fit to speak to but himself.”

Not feeling particularly interested in the O’Neills, I did not pursue the subject; but Willy was full of conversation.

“I’m just after buying a grand little mare in Cork. It was that kept me from going to meet you,” he observed confidentially. “I suppose you learnt to ride at your ranch, Theo? I tell you what! I bought her for the governor, but she’d carry you flying, and you shall hunt her this winter if you like.”

My cousinly feeling for Willy increased perceptibly at this suggestion.

“But,” I said, “if your father buys her, he will want to ride her himself, won’t he?”

“Is it the governor?”—with an intonation of contempt. “You never see him on a horse’s back. He’s always humbugging in the house over papers and books. I believe he used to be a great sportsman and fond of society, but he never goes anywhere now.”

The two ladies who had started from Cork with us had got out a station or two afterwards, and we had the carriage to ourselves. But the extraordinary jolting and rattling of the train were not conducive to conversation, and, seeing that I was not inclined to talk, Willy relapsed into the collar of his ulster and the Cork newspaper, and ended by going unaffectedly to sleep.

It grew slowly darker. I sat watching the endless procession of small fields slipping past the window, until the grey monotony of colour made me dizzy. I leaned back, and, closing my eyes, tried to imagine the life I was going to, and to contrast its probabilities with my past experience. But a strange feeling of remoteness and unreality came upon me. I suppose that the mental exhaustion caused by so many new sights and impressions had dazed me, and I began to doubt that such a person as Theo Sarsfield had ever really existed. Willy, my Uncle Dominick, and my father flitted confusedly through my mind as inconsequently as people in a dream. I myself seemed to have lost touch with the world; my past life had slid away from me, and the future I had not yet grasped. I was a solitary and aimless unit in the dark whirl that surrounded me, and the sleeping figure at the opposite end of the carriage was a trick of imagination, and as unreal as I. I became more and more remote from things actual, and finally fell from all consciousness into a sleep as sound as Willy’s.

My slumbers were at length penetrated by a shriek from the engine. I sat up, and saw that Willy was taking down his parcels from the rack; and in another minute we were in the little station of Moycullen.

A hat with a cockade appeared at the window.

“Hullo, Mick. Is it the dog-cart they’ve sent?”

“’Tis the shut carriage, Masther Willy,” said Mick; “and ’tis waiting without in the street.”

With some difficulty I followed Mick through the crowd of carts in the station yard, to where a landau and pair were standing in the road. The moonlight was bright enough for me to see the fine shapes of the big brown horses, who were evincing so lively an interest in the movements of the engine that the coachman had plenty to do to keep them quiet.

“You’re welcome, miss,” said that functionary, touching his hat; and I got into the carriage, followed by Willy, with the usual number of impedimenta that appear necessary to male travelling youth.

“It’s a good long drive,” he said, arranging rugs over our knees—“twelve Irish miles. But we won’t be very long getting there. You won’t have time to be tired of me—I hope not, anyhow.”

This was more like my idea of the typical Irishman, but was, nevertheless, rather discomposing from a comparative stranger. It was said, moreover, with a certain conquering air, which plainly showed that Willy was not accustomed to being found a bore. I could think of no very effective reply, so I laughed vaguely, and said I hoped I should not.

We had been driving at a good pace for about an hour, when we left the high-road and began the ascent of a long steep hill. At the top the carriage turned a sharp corner, and I saw below me, on my right, a great sheet of water all alight with the misty splendour of a full moon. Black points of land cut their way into the expanse of mellow silver, and the small islands were scattered like blots upon it.

“That’s Roaring Water Bay,” said Willy; “and that mountain over there’s called Croagh Keenan”—pointing to a shadowy mass that formed the western limit of the bay. “You haven’t anything to beat that in America, I’ll bet!” An assertion which I refrained from combatting.

Our road now lay for a mile or two along the top of a hill overlooking the bay, and though Willy had done his best to make himself agreeable, I was tired enough to be extremely glad when the carriage swung sharply between high gate-posts, and we entered the avenue of Durrus.

As we passed the lodge, I caught, in the moonlight, a glimpse of the pretty face of a girl who opened the gates, and asked who she was.

“She’s the lodgekeeper’s daughter,” said my cousin.

“She looked very pretty.”

“Yes, she’s not bad looking,” he said indifferently. “There are plenty of good-looking girls in these parts.”

The drive sloped down through a park to the level of a turf bog, which it skirted for some distance, and then entered a thick clump of trees, through which the moonlight only penetrated sufficiently to let me see that they were growing in a species of reedy swamp, from which, on this cold night, a low frosty mist was rising. We were soon out again into the moonlight, the horses quickening up as they came near their journey’s end. I saw a sudden gleam of sea in front, and on the left a long, low house, looking wan and ghostly in the moonlight.

CHAPTER IV.

THE MASTER OF DURRUS.