Produced by Al Haines, Cindy Beyer & the online Distributed
Proofreaders Canada team at http://www.pgdpcanada.net











                          [Cover Illustration]




[Illustration: “‘Hold tight to the rail,’ Jim’s voice said in Nora’s
ear.” (Page 67.)]

      _Jim and Wally_]                              [_Frontispiece_




                            JIM  AND  WALLY



                                   By
                           MARY  GRANT  BRUCE
       Author of “Mates at Billabong,” “Norah of Billabong,” etc.

           W A R D ,   L O C K   &   C O . ,   L I M I T E D
                    LONDON,  MELBOURNE  AND  TORONTO
                                  1917




                          _To_
                       _G. E. B.,_

                              _Cork, 1915-16_




                                CONTENTS

           CHAP.                                           PAGE
               I WAR.....................................     9
              II YELLOW ENVELOPES........................    30
             III WHEN THE BOYS COME HOME.................    43
              IV TO IRELAND..............................    53
               V INTO DONEGAL............................    74
              VI OF LITTLE BROWN TROUT...................    98
             VII LOUGH ANOOR.............................   113
            VIII JOHN O’NEILL............................   131
              IX PINS AND PORK...........................   147
               X THE ROCK OF DOON........................   161
              XI NORTHWARD...............................   183
             XII ASS-CART _VERSUS_ MOTOR.................   197
            XIII THE CAVE AMONG THE ROCKS................   213
             XIV A FAMILY MATTER.........................   229
              XV PLANS OF CAMPAIGN.......................   242
             XVI THE FIGHT IN THE DAWN...................   248




                               CHAPTER I
                                  WAR


     “For one the laurel, one the rose, and glory for them all,
     All the gallant gentlemen who fight and laugh and fall.”
     MARGERY RUTH BETTS.

THE trench wound a sinuous way through the sodden Flanders mud.
Underfoot were boards; and then sandbags; and then more boards, added as
the mud rose up and swallowed all that was put down upon it. Some of the
last-added boards had almost disappeared, ground out of sight by the
trampling feet of hundreds of men: a new battalion had relieved, three
nights before, the men who had held that part of the line for a week,
and when a relief arrives, a trench becomes uncomfortably filled, and
the ground underfoot is churned into deep glue. It was more than time to
put down another floor; to which the only objection was that no more
flooring material was available, and had there been, no one had time to
fetch it.

It was the second trench. Beyond it was another, occupied by British
soldiers: beyond that again, a mass of tangled barbed-wire, and then the
strip of No-Man’s Land dividing the two armies—a strip ploughed up by
shells and scarred with craters formed by the bursting of high
explosives. Here and there lay rifles, and spiked German helmets, and
khaki caps; but no living thing was visible save the cheeky Flemish
sparrows that hopped about the quiet space, chirping and twittering as
if trying to convince themselves and everybody else that War was
hundreds of miles away. The sparrows carried out this pleasant deception
every morning, abandoning the attempt as soon as the first German gun
began what the British soldiers, disagreeably interrupted in frying
bacon, termed “the breakfast hate.” Then they retreated precipitately to
the sparrow equivalent to a dug-out, to meditate in justifiable
annoyance on the curious ways of men.

In the second trench the men were weary and heavy-eyed, and even bacon
had scant attractions for them. It was their first experience of
trench-life complicated by shell-fire, and since their arrival the enemy
had been “hating” with a vigour that seemed to argue on his part a
peculiar sourness of temper. Now, after two days of incessant artillery
din and three nights of the strenuous toil that falls upon the trenches
with darkness, the new men bore evidence of exhaustion. Casualties had
been few, considering the violent nature of the bombardment; but to
those who had never before seen Death come suddenly, an even slighter
loss would have been horrifying. The ceaseless nerve-shattering roar of
the big guns pounded in their brains long after darkness had put an end
to the bombardment; their brief snatches of sleep were haunted by the
white faces of the comrades with whom they would laugh and fight and
work no more. They were stiff and sore with crouching under the parapets
and in the narrow dug-outs; dazed with noise, sullen with the anger of
men who have been forced to endure without making any effort to hit
back. But their faces had hardened under the test. A few were shrinking,
“jumpy,” useless: but the majority had stiffened into men. When the time
for hitting back came, they would be ready.

Dawn on the fourth morning found them weary enough, but, on the whole,
in better condition than they had been two days earlier. They were
getting used to it; and even to artillery bombardment “custom hath made
a property of easiness.” The first sense of imminent personal danger had
faded with each hour that found most of them still alive. Discipline and
routine, making each officer and man merely part of one great machine,
steadied them into familiar ways, even in that unfamiliar setting. And
above all was satisfaction that after months of slow training on
barrack-square and peaceful English fields they were at last in the
middle of the real thing—doing their bit. It had been conveyed to them
that they were considered to be shaping none too badly: a curt
testimonial, which, passing down the line, had lent energy to a hard
night of rebuilding parapets, mending barbed-wire, and cleaning up
battered sections of trench. They were almost too tired to eat. But the
morning—so far—was peaceful; the sunlight was cheery, the clean breeze
refreshing. Possibly to-day might find the Hun grown weary of hating so
noisily. There were worse things than even a trench in Flanders on a
bright April morning.

Jim Linton sat on a small box outside his dug-out, drinking enormous
quantities of tea, and making a less enthusiastic attempt to demolish
the contents of an imperfectly heated tin of bully beef. He was
bare-headed, owing to the fact that a portion of shrapnel had removed
his cap the day before, luckily without damaging the head inside it. Mud
plastered him from neck to heels. He was a huge boy, well over six feet,
broad-shouldered and powerful; and the bronze which the sun of his
native Australia had put into his face had been proof against the trench
experiences that had whitened English cheeks, less deeply tanned.

Another second lieutenant came hastily round a traverse and tripped over
his feet.

“There’s an awful lot of you in a trench!” said the new-comer,
recovering himself.

“Sorry,” said Jim. “I can’t find any other place to put them; they
_will_ stick out. Never mind, the mud will bury them soon; it swallows
them if I forget to move them every two minutes. Come and have
breakfast.”

“I want oceans of tea,” said Wally Meadows, dragging a biscuit-tin from
the dug-out, perching it precariously on a small board island in the
mud, and seating himself with caution. He glanced with disfavour at the
beef-tin. “Is that good?”

“Beastly,” Jim answered laconically. “Smith’s strong point is not
cookery. It’s faintly warm and exceedingly tough; and something with
moisture in it seems to have happened to the biscuits. But the tea is
topping. I told Smith to bring another supply presently. Bacon’s a bit
short, so I said we preferred bully.”

Wally accepted a tin mug of milkless tea with gratitude.

“That’s great,” he said, after a beatific pause, putting down the empty
mug. He pushed his cap back from his tired young face, and heaved a
great sigh of relief. “Blessings on whoever discovered tea! I don’t
think I’ll have any beef, thanks.”

“Yes, you will,” Jim said, firmly. “I know it’s beastly, and one isn’t
hungry, but it’s a fool game not to eat. If we have any luck there may
be some work to-day; and you can’t fight if you don’t eat something. The
first mouthful is the worst.”

His chum took the beef-tin meekly.

“I suppose you’re right,” he said. “If we only do get a chance of
fighting, I should think we’d have enormous appetites afterwards; but
one can’t get hungry hiding in this beastly hole and letting Brother
Boche sling his tin cans at us. Wouldn’t you give something for a bath
and twelve hours’ sleep?”

“By Jove, yes!” Jim agreed. “But I don’t mind postponing them if only we
get a smack at those gentry across the way first. Did you see
Anstruther?”

“Yes—he’s better. He dodged the R.A.M.C. men—said he wasn’t going to
be carted back because of a knock on the head. He’s tied up freshly and
looks awfully interesting, but he declares he’s quite fit.”

Captain Anstruther was the company commander, a veteran of
one-and-twenty, with eight months’ service. The two Australian boys,
nineteen and eighteen respectively, and fully conscious of their own
limitations, regarded him with great respect in his official capacity,
and, off duty, had clearly demonstrated their ability to dispose of him,
with the gloves on, within three rounds. They were exceedingly good
friends. Anstruther could tell stories of the Marne, of the retreat from
Mons, of the amazing tangle of the first weeks of war, which had left
him, then a second lieutenant, in sole command of the remnant of his
battalion. To the two Australians he was a mine of splendid information.
They were mildly puzzled at what he demanded in return—bush “yarns” of
their own country, stories of cattle musterings, of aboriginals, of
sheep-shearing by machinery, of bush-fire fighting; even of football as
played at their school in Melbourne. To them these things, interesting
enough in peacetime and in their own setting, were commonplace and stale
in the trenches, with Europe ablaze with battle all round them.
Anstruther, however, looked on war with an eye that saw little of
romance: willing to see it through, but with no illusions as to its
attractions. He greatly preferred to talk of bush-fires, which he had
not seen.

Yesterday a shell which had wrecked far too much of a section of trench
to be at all comfortable had provided this disillusioned warrior with a
means of escape, had he so wished, by knocking him senseless, with a
severe scalp-wound. Counselled to seek the dressing-station at the rear,
when he had recovered his senses, however, he had flatly declined; all
his boredom lost in annoyance at his aching head, and a wild desire to
obtain enemy scalps in vengeance. Jim and Wally had administered
first-aid with field dressings, and the wounded one, declaring himself
immediately cured, had hidden himself and his bandages from any
intrusive senior who might be hard-hearted enough to insist on his
retirement.

“It was a near thing,” Jim said reflectively.

“So was yours,” stated his chum.

“Oh—my old cap?—a miss is as good as a mile,” said Jim. “I’m glad it
wasn’t a bit nearer, though; it would be a bore to be put out of
business without ever having seen a German, let alone finding out which
of us could ‘get his fist in fust.’” He rose, feeling for his pipe.
“Have you eaten your whack of that stuff?”

“I’ve done my best,” said Wally, displaying the tin, nearly empty.
“Can’t manage any more. Let’s have a walk along the trench and see
what’s happening.”

“Well, keep your silly head down,” Jim said. “The parapet is getting
more and more uneven, and you never remember you’re six feet.”

Wally grinned. Each of the friends suffered under the belief that he was
extremely careful and the other destined to sudden death from
unwittingly exposing himself to a German sniper.

“If you followed your own advice, grandmother,” he said; “you being
three inches taller, and six times more careless! I always told your
father and Norah that you’d be an awful responsibility.”

“I’ll put you under arrest if you’re not civil,” Jim threatened. “Small
boys aren’t allowed to be impertinent on active service!”

They floundered along in the mud, ducking whenever the parapet was low:
sandbags had run short, and trench-repairing on the previous night had
been like making bricks without straw. The men were finishing breakfast,
keeping close to the dug-outs, since at any moment the first German
shell might scream overhead. The line was very thin; reinforcements,
badly enough wanted, were reported to be coming up. Meanwhile the
battalion could only hope that the shells would continue to spare them,
and that when the enemy came the numbers would be sufficiently even to
enable them to put up a good fight.

Captain Anstruther, white-faced under a bandage that showed red stains,
nodded to them cheerily.

“Ripping morning, isn’t it?” he said. “Hope you’ve had a pleasant night,
Linton!”

Jim grinned, glancing at his hands, which displayed numerous long red
scars.

“One’s nights here are first-class training for the career of a burglar
later on,” he said. “Mending barbed-wire in the dark is full of
unexpected happenings, chiefly unpleasant. I don’t mind the actual
mending so much as having to lie flat on one’s face in the mud when a
star-shell comes along.”

“Very disorganizing to work,” said another subaltern, Blake, whose
mud-plastered uniform showed that he had had his share of lying flat. In
private life Blake had belonged to the species “nut,” and had been wont
to parade in Bond Street in beautiful raiment. Here, dirty, unshaven and
scarcely distinguishable from the muddiest of his platoon, he permitted
himself a cheerfulness that Bond Street had never seen.

“Sit down,” Anstruther said. “There are more or less dry sandbags, and
business is slack. Why didn’t you fellows come down to mess? Have you
had any breakfast?”

“Yes, thanks,” Jim answered. “We fed up there—our men were inclined to
give breakfast a miss, so we encouraged them to eat by feeding largely,
among them. Nothing like exciting a feeling of competition.”

“Trenches under fire don’t breed good healthy appetites—at any rate
until you’re used to them,” Blake remarked.

“The men are bucking up well, all the same,” said Anstruther. “I’m jolly
proud of them; it’s a tough breaking-in for fellows who aren’t much more
than recruits. They’re steadying down better than I could have hoped
they would.”

“Doesn’t the weary old barrack-square grind stand to them now!” said
Jim. “They see it, too, themselves; only they’re very keen to put all
the bayonet-exercise into practice. Smith, my servant, was the mildest
little man you ever saw, at home; now he spends most of the day putting
a bloodthirsty edge on his bayonet, and I catch him in corners prodding
the air and looking an awful Berserk. They’re all chirping up
wonderfully this morning, bless ’em. I shouldn’t wonder if by this time
to-morrow they were regarding it all as a picnic!”

“So it is, if you look at it the right way,” said Blake. “Lots of jokes
about, too. Did you hear what one of our airmen gave the enemy on April
the First? He flew over a crowd behind their lines, and dropped a
football. It fell slowly, and Brother Boche took to cover like a rabbit,
from all directions. Then it struck the ground and bounced wildly,
finally settling to rest: I suppose they thought it was a delay-action
fuse, for they laid low for a long time before they dared believe it was
not going to explode. So they came out from their shelters to examine
it, and found written on it ‘April fool—_Gott strafe England_!’”

His hearers gave way to mirth.

“Good man!” said Anstruther. “But there are lots of mad wags among the
flying people. I should think it must make ’em extraordinarily cheerful
always to be cutting about in nice clean air, where there isn’t any
barbed-wire or mud.”

Feeling grunts came from the others.

“Rather!” said Garrett, another veteran of eight months’ service. “There
was one poor chap who had engine-trouble when he was doing a lone
reconnaissance, and had to come down behind the German lines. He worked
furiously, and just got his machine in going order, when two enemy
officers trotted up, armed with revolvers, and took him prisoner. Then
they thought it would be a bright idea to make him take _them_ on a
reconnaissance over the Allied lines; which design they explained to him
in broken English and with a fine display of their portable artillery,
making him understand that if he didn’t obey he’d be shot forthwith.”

“But he didn’t!” Wally burst out.

“Just you wait, young Australia—you’re an awful fire-eater!” said the
narrator. “The airman thought it over, and came to the conclusion that
it would be a pity to waste his valuable life; so he gave in meekly,
climbed in, and took his passengers aboard. They went off very gaily,
and he gave them a first-rate view of all they wanted to see; and, of
course, carrying our colours, he could fly much lower than any German
machine could have gone in safety. It was jam for the two Boches; I
guess they felt their Iron Crosses sprouting. Their joy only ended—and
then it ended suddenly—when he looped the loop!”

The audience jumped.

“What happened?”

“They very naturally fell out.”

“And the airman?” Wally asked, ecstatically.

“He had taken the precaution to strap himself in—unobtrusively. Didn’t
I tell you he appreciated his valuable life?” said Garrett, laughing.
“He came down neatly where he wanted to, made his report, and sent out a
party to give decent burial to two very dead amateur aviators. The force
of gravity is an excellent thing to back you up in a tight place, isn’t
it?”

“Well, it’s something to get one’s chance—and it’s quite another to
know when to take advantage of it,” said Anstruther. “I expect an airman
has to learn to make up his mind quicker than most of us. But there’s no
doubt of the chances that come to some people. A Staff officer was here
early this morning, and he was telling me of young Goujon.”

“Who’s he?” queried Blake, lazily.

“He’s a French kid—just seventeen. He was one of a small party sent out
to locate some enemy machine-guns that were giving a good deal of
trouble. They found ’em, all right; but when they were wriggling their
way back a shell came along and wiped out the entire crowd—all except
this Goujon kid. He was untouched, and he hid for hours in the crater
made by the explosion of the shell. When it got dark he crept out: but
by that time he was pretty mad, and instead of getting home, he wanted
to get a bit of his own back, and what must he do but crawl to those
machine-guns and lob bombs on them!”

“That’s some kid,” said Blake briefly.

“Yes, he was, rather. He destroyed two of the three guns, and then was
overpowered—_that_ wouldn’t have taken long!—and made prisoner: pretty
roughly handled, too. But before he could be sent to the rear, some of
our chaps made a little night-attack on that bit of German trench, and
in the excitement Goujon got away. So he trotted home—but on the way he
stopped, and gathered up the remaining machine-gun. Staggered into his
own lines with it. They’ve given him the Military Medal.”

“Deserved it, too,” was the comment.

“And he’s seventeen!” said some one. “He ought to get pretty high up
before the war is over.”

“I know a man who’s a major at nineteen,” Anstruther said, “Went out as
a second lieutenant and was promoted for gallantry at Mons; got his
captaincy and was wounded at the Aisne; recovered, and at Neuve Chapelle
was the sole officer left, except two very junior subalterns, in all his
battalion. He handled it in action, brought them out brilliantly—awful
corner it was, too,—and was in command for a fortnight after, before
they could find a senior man; there weren’t any to spare. He was
gazetted major last week.”

“Lucky dog!” said Blake.

“Well, I suppose he is. They say he’s a genius at soldiering, anyhow;
and, of course, he got his chance. There must be hundreds of men who
would do as well if they ever got it; only opportunity doesn’t come
their way.”

“They say this will be a war for young men,” Garrett said. “We’re going
back to old days; I believe Wellington and Napoleon were colonels at
twenty. And that’s more than you will be, young Meadows, if you don’t
mend your ways.”

“I never expected to be,” said Wally, thus attacked.

“But why won’t I, anyhow, apart from obvious reasons?”

“Because you’ll be a neat little corpse,” said Garrett. “What’s this
game of yours I hear about?—crawling round on No-Man’s Land at night,
and collecting little souvenirs? The souvenir you’ll certainly collect
will come from a machine-gun.”

Wally blushed.

“Well, there are such a jolly lot of things there,” he defended himself.
“Boche helmets—I’ve got three beauties—and belts, and buckles, and
things. People at home like ’em.”

“Presumably people at home like you,” Anstruther said. “But they
certainly won’t have you to like if you do it, and it’s possible their
affection might even wane for a German helmet that had cost you your
scalp. _Verboten_, Meadows; that’s good German, at any rate.
Understand?”

Wally assented meekly. Jim Linton, apparently sublimely unconscious of
the conversation, sighed with relief. His chum’s adventurous expeditions
had caused him no little anxiety, especially as they were undertaken at
a time when his own duties prevented his keeping an eye on the younger
boy—which would probably have ended in his accompanying him. From
childhood, Jim and Wally had been accustomed to do things in pairs: a
habit which had persisted even to sending them together from Australia
to join the Army, since Wally was too young for the Australian forces.
England was willing to take boys of seventeen; therefore it was
manifestly out of the question that Jim should join anywhere but in
England, despite his nineteen years. And as Jim’s father and sister were
also willing to come to England, the matter had arranged itself as a
family affair. Wally Meadows was an orphan, and the Linton family had
long included him on a permanent, if informal, basis.

“It’s jolly to get V.C.’s and medals and other ironmongery,” Anstruther
was saying; “but I’d like to be the chap who organized the Toy Band on
the retreat from Mons. He was a Staff officer, and he found the remains
of a regiment, several hundred strong, straggling through a village,
just dead beat. The Germans were close on their heels; the British had
no officers left, and had quite given up. The Staff chap called on them
to make another effort to save themselves, but they wouldn’t—they had
been on the run for days, were half-starved, worn out: they didn’t care
what happened to them. The officer was at his wits’ end what to do, when
his eye fell on a little bit of a shop—you know the usual French
village store, with all sorts of stuff in the window: and there he saw
some toy drums and penny whistles. He darted in and bought some: came
out and induced two or three of the less exhausted men to play
them—it’s said he piped on one penny whistle himself, only he won’t
admit it now. But you know what the tap of a drum will do on a
route-march when the men are getting tired. He roused the whole regiment
with his fourpence-worth of band and brought them back to their brigade
next day—never lost a man!”

“Jolly good work,” said Blake.

“He won’t get anything for it, of course,” said Anstruther. “You don’t
get medals for playing tin whistles; and anyhow, there was no one to
report it. But—yes, I’d like to have been that chap.” He rose and
stretched himself, taking advantage of a section of undamaged parapet.
“Brother Boche is rather late in beginning his hate this morning, don’t
you think?”

“Perhaps he’s given up hating as a bad job,” Wally suggested.

“We’ll miss the dear old thing if he really means to leave us alone,”
said Anstruther. “Just as well if he does, though: our line is painfully
thin, and it’s evident to anyone that our guns are short of ammunition:
we’re giving them about one shell to twenty of theirs. And don’t they
know it! They send us enormous doses of high-explosive shells, and in
return we tickle them feebly with a little shrapnel. They must chuckle!”

“I suppose England will wake up and make munitions for us when we’re all
wiped out,” said Garrett, scornfully. “They’re awfully cheery over
there: theatres and restaurants packed, business as usual, bull-dog
grit, and all the rest of it: Parliament yapping happily, and strikes
twice a week. And our chaps trying to fight for ’em, and dying for want
of ammunition to do it with. I suppose they think we’re rather lazy not
to make it in our spare time!”

“I’m afraid they won’t appoint me dictator just yet,” Blake remarked.
“If they would, I’d have every striker and slacker out here: not to
fight, but to mend barbed-wire, clean up trenches, and do the general
dirty work. First-rate tonic for a disgruntled mind. And I’d send what
was left of them to the end of the world afterwards. Will you have them
in Australia, Linton?”

“Thanks; we’ve plenty of troubles of our own,” Jim returned hastily.
“Don’t you think we were dumping-ground for your rubbish for long
enough?”

“You were a large, empty place, and you had to be peopled,” said Blake,
grinning. “And a good many of them were very decent people, I believe.”

“Well, they might well be,” Jim responded—“you sent them out for
stealing a sheep or a shirt or a medicine-bottle: one poor kid of six
was sent out for life for stealing jam-tarts. Many excellent men must
have begun life by stealing jam-tarts: I did, myself!”

“If you’re a sample of the after-effects, I don’t wonder we exported the
other criminals early,” laughed Blake.

“Well, if any of their descendants grew into the chaps that landed at
Gallipoli the other day, they were no bad asset,” said Anstruther. “By
Jove, those fellows must be fighters, Linton! I wouldn’t care to have
the job of holding them back.”

“I knew they’d fight,” said Jim briefly. Down in his quiet soul he was
torn between utter pride in his countrymen, and woe that he had not been
with them in that stern Gallipoli landing: the latter emotion firmly
repressed. It had been the fight of his boyish dreams—wild charging,
hand to hand work, a fleeing enemy: not like this hole-and-corner trench
existence unseen by the unseen foe, with Death that could not be
combated dropping from the sky. His old school-fellows had been at
Gallipoli, and had “made good.” He ached to have been with them.

An orderly came up hurriedly. Anstruther tore open the note he carried.

“There’s word of an enemy attack,” he said crisply. “Get to your
places—quick!”

The subalterns scattered along the trench, each to his platoon. They had
already inspected the men, making sure that no detail of armament had
been forgotten, and that rifles were all in order. Garrett, who
commanded the machine-gun section, fled joyfully to the emplacement, his
face like a happy child’s. The alarm ran swiftly up and down the trench:
low, sharp words of command brought every man to his place, while the
sentries, like statues, were glued to their peep-holes. Jim and Wally
fingered their revolvers, scarcely able to realize that the time for
using them had come at last. Field officers appeared, hurriedly scanning
every detail of preparation, and giving a word of advice here and there.

“Thank ’eving, we’re going to have a look-in!” muttered a man in front
of Jim: a grizzled sergeant with the two South African ribbons on his
breast. “Steady there, young ’Awkins; don’t go meddlin’ with that
trigger of yours. You’ll get a chanst of loosin’ off pretty soon.”

“Cawn’t come too soon for me!” said Hawkins, in a throaty whisper,
fondling his rifle lovingly. “They got me best pal yesterday.”

“Then keep your ’ead cool till the time comes to mention wot you think
of ’em,” returned the sergeant.

Jim and Wally found a chink in the sandbag parapet, and looked out
eagerly ahead. All was quiet. The sparrows, made bold by the
extraordinary peace of the morning, still chirped and twittered on
No-Man’s Land. No sound came from the German trenches beyond. Here and
there a faint smoke-wreath curled lazily into the air, telling of
cooking-fires and breakfast.

“How do they know they’re coming?” Wally whispered.

“Aeroplane reconnaissance, I suppose,” Jim answered, pointing to two or
three specks floating in the blue overhead, far out of reach of the
anti-aircraft guns. “They’ve been hovering up there all the morning.
Feeling all right, Wal?”

“Fit as a fiddle. I suppose I’ll be in a blue funk presently, but just
now I feel as if I were going to a picnic.”

“So do I—and the men are keen as mustard. I thought little Wilson would
be useless; you know how jumpy he’s been since we came here. But look at
him, there; he’s as steady and cool as any sergeant. They’re good boys,”
said the subaltern, who was not yet twenty.

“Mind your ’ead, sir!” came in an agonized whisper from a corporal
below; and Jim ducked obediently under the lee of the parapet.

“It’s quite hot,” he said, peering again through his peep-hole. “There’s
a jolly breeze springing up, though.”

The breeze came softly over No-Man’s Land, fluttering the wings of the
cheerful sparrows. Across the scarred strip of grass a low, green cloud
wavered upwards. It grew more solid, spreading in a dense wall over the
parapet of the German trench.

“What on earth——?” Jim began.

The green cloud seemed to hesitate. Then the wind freshened a little,
and it suddenly blew forward across No-Man’s Land, growing denser as it
came. Before it, the sparrows fled suddenly, darting to the upper air
with shrill chirpings of alarm. But one bird, taken unawares, beat his
wings wildly for a moment, flying forward. Then he pitched downwards and
the cloud rolled over him.

“What is it?” uttered Wally.

Before the parapet of the British trench ahead of them the cloud stood
for a moment, and then toppled bodily into the trench. It fell as water
falls like a heavy thing. From its green depths came hoarse shouts, and
rifles suddenly went off in an irregular fusillade. Then the cloud
rolled over, leaving the trench full of vapour, and stole towards the
second British line.

A great cry came ringing down the trench.

“Gas! It’s their filthy gas!”

It was a new thing, and no one was prepared for it. Across the Channel,
England was shuddering over the first reports of the asphyxiating gas
attacks, and the women of England were working night and day at the
first half-million respirators to be sent out to the troops. But to the
men in the trenches there had come only vague rumours of what the French
and Canadians had suffered: and they had been slow to believe. It was
not easy to realize, unseeing, the full horror of that most malignant
device with which Science had blackened War. A few of the officers had
respirators—dry, and comparatively useless. The men were utterly
unprotected. Like sheep waiting for the slaughter they stood rigidly at
attention, waiting for the evil green cloud that blew towards them,
already poisoning the clean air with its noxious fumes.

“Tie your handkerchiefs round your mouths and nostrils!” Jim Linton
shouted. “Quick, Wally!”

He caught at the younger boy’s handkerchief and knotted it swiftly. The
corporal shook his head.

“Most of ’em ain’t got no ’ankerchers, sir,” he said grimly. “They
_will_ clean their rifles with ’em.”

Then came another cry.

“Look out—they’re coming!”

Dimly, behind the cloud of gas, they could see shadowy forms clambering
over the parapet of the enemy trench; German soldiers, unreal and
horrible in their hideous respirators, with great goggle eyes of talc.
Ahead, the quick spit of machine-guns broke out spitefully; and, as if
in answer, Garrett’s Maxims opened fire. Then the gas was upon them:
falling from above over the parapet, stealing like a live thing down the
communication trench that led from the first line, where already the
Germans were swarming. Men were choking, gasping, fighting for air;
dropping their rifles as they tore at their collars, losing their heads
altogether in the horror of the silent attack. A little way down the
trench Anstruther was trying to rally them, his voice only audible for a
few yards. Jim echoed him.

“Come on, boys! it’s better in the open. Let’s get at them!”

He sprang up over the parapet, Wally at his side. There were bullets
whistling all round them, but the air was more free—it was Paradise
compared to the agony of suffocation in the trench. Some of the men
followed. Jim leaped back again, dragging at others; pushing, striking,
threatening; anything to get them up above, where at least they might
die fighting, not like rats in a hole. He was voiceless, inarticulate;
he could only point upwards, and force them over the parapet and into
the bullet-swept space. Wally was there—was Wally killed? Then he saw
him beside him in the trench, dragging at little Private Wilson, who had
fallen senseless. Together they lifted him and flung him out at the
rear, turning to fight with other men who had given up and were leaning
against the walls, choking. Above them Anstruther was getting the men
into some semblance of formation to meet the oncoming rush of Germans.
He called to them sharply, authoritatively.

“Linton!—Meadows! Come out at once!”

Jim tried to obey. Then he saw that Wally was staggering, and flung his
arm round him; but the arm was suddenly limp and helpless, and Wally
pitched forward on his face and lay still, gasping. Jim tried to drag
him up, fighting with the powerlessness that was creeping over him.
Behind him the roar of artillery grew faint in his ears and died away,
though still he seemed to hear the steady spit of Garrett’s
machine-guns. He sagged downwards. Then black, choking darkness rushed
upon him, and he fell across the body of his friend.




[Illustration: “Jim Linton sat on a small box outside his dug-out
. . .”]

      _Jim and Wally_]                                   [_Page 11_




                               CHAPTER II
                            YELLOW ENVELOPES


            “London’s smoke hides all the stars from me,
            Light from mine eyes and Heaven from my heart.”
            DORA WILCOX.

THE lift came gliding on its upward journey in a big London hotel, far
too slowly for the impatience of its only passenger, a tall girl of
sixteen, with a mop of brown curls, and grey eyes alight with
excitement. Ordinarily, Norah Linton was rather pale, especially in
London, where the air is largely composed of smoke, and has been
breathed in and out of a great number of people until it is nearly worn
out; but just now there was a scarlet spot on each cheek, and her mouth
broke into smiles as though it could not help itself. At Floor No. 4, a
fat old lady threatened to stop the lift, but decided at the last moment
that she preferred to walk upstairs. At No. 5, no one was in sight, and
Norah sighed with audible relief, and ejaculated, “Thank goodness!” At
No. 6, two men were seen hurrying along the corridor some distance away,
and shouting, “Lift!” But at this point the lift-boy, to whom Norah’s
impatience had communicated itself, behaved like Nelson when he applied
his telescope to his blind eye, and shot upwards, disregarding the
shouts of his would-be passengers; and, passing by No. 7 as though it
were not there, brought the lift to an abrupt halt at No. 8, flinging
the door open with a rattle and a triumphant, “There y’are, miss!”

“Thank you!” said Norah, flashing at him a grateful smile that sent the
lift-boy earthwards in a state of mind that made him loftily oblivious
of the reproaches of neglected passengers. She was out of the lift with
a quick movement, and in the empty corridor broke into a run. Her flying
feet carried her swiftly to a sitting-room some distance away, and she
burst in like a whirlwind. “Dad! Daddy!”

There was no one there, and with an exclamation of impatience she turned
and ran once more, far too excited now to care whether any Londoners
were there to be shocked at the spectacle of a daughter of Australia
racing along an hotel corridor. She had not far to go; a turn brought
her face to face with a tall man, lean and grizzled, who cast a glance
at her that took in the crumpled yellow envelope in her hand.

No one with a soldier son looked calmly on telegrams in those days, and
David Linton’s face changed abruptly. “What is it, Norah?”

“They’re coming,” said Norah, and suddenly found a huge lump in her
throat that would not go away. She put out a hand and clung to her
father’s coat. “They’re truly coming, daddy!”

Her father’s voice was not as steady as usual.

“They’re all right?”

“Oh, yes, they must be. It says ‘Better—London to-morrow.’”

“Better?” mused Mr. Linton. “I wonder if that means hospital or us,
Norah?”

Norah’s face fell.

“I suppose it may be hospital,” she said. “It was so lovely to think
they were coming that I nearly forgot that part of it. Can we find out,
daddy?”

“We’ll go and try,” Mr. Linton said.

“Now?” said Norah, and jigged on one foot.

“I’ll get my hat,” said her father, departing with a step not so unlike
his daughter’s. Norah waited in the corridor for a few minutes, and
then, impatient beyond the possibility of further waiting in silence,
followed him to his room, there finding him endeavouring to remove
London mud-stains from a trouser-leg.

“You might think when you’ve managed to brush it off that it had
gone—but indeed it hasn’t,” said David Linton, wrathfully regarding
gruesome stains and brushing them with a vigour that should have been
productive of better results.

“It does cling,” remarked Norah, comprehendingly. “I’ll sponge it for
you, daddy; those stains never yield to mild measures. Daddy, do you
think they’ll be long getting better?”

Anyone else might have been excused for thinking she meant the
mud-stains. But David Linton made no such mistake.

“I don’t know,” he said slowly. “One hears such different stories about
that filthy German gas. It all depends on the size of the dose they got,
I fancy. Jim said it was mild; but then Jim would say a good deal to
avoid frightening us.”

“And he was able to write. But Wally hasn’t written.”

“No; and that doesn’t look well. He’s such a good lad—it’s quite likely
he’d write and let us know all he could about Jim. But I don’t fancy the
doctors would let them travel unless they were pretty well.”

“I suppose not. Oh, doesn’t it seem ages until to-morrow, dad!”

“It’ll come, if you give it time,” said her father. “However—yes, it
does seem a pretty long time, Norah.” They laughed at each other.

“It doesn’t do a bit of good for you to put on that wise air,” Norah
said, “because I know exactly how you feel, and that’s just the same as
I do. And anyone would be the same who had two boys at the Front like
Jim and Wally.”

“I think they would,” said her father, abandoning as untenable the
position of age and wisdom. “Thank goodness they will be back with us
to-morrow, at any rate.” He put his clothes-brush on the table and stood
up, tall and thin and a little grim. “It seems a long while since they
went away.”

“Long!” Norah echoed, expressively. It was in reality only a month since
her brother Jim and his chum had said good-bye on the platform at
Victoria Station; and in some ways it seemed only a few minutes since
the train had moved slowly out, with the laughing boyish faces framed in
the window. But each slow day, with its dragging weight of anxiety, had
been a lifetime. To them had come what the whole world had learned to
know; the shiver of fear on opening the green envelopes from the Front;
the racking longing for the news; the sick dread at the sight of a
telegram—even at the sound of an unusual knock. David Linton had grown
silent and grim; Norah felt an old woman, and the care-free Australian
life which was all she had known seemed a world away—vanished as
completely as the Australian tan had faded from her cheeks.

Now it was all over, and for a while, at any rate, they could forget.
Jim had so managed that no shock came to them—the cheery telegram he
had contrived to send before being taken to hospital had reached them
two days earlier than the curt War Office intimation that both boys were
suffering from gas-poisoning. Jim did not mean that they should ever
know what it had meant to send it. The cavalry subaltern who had helped
him along to the dressing-station had been very kind; he had contrived
to hear the address, even in the choked, strangling whisper, which was
all the voice the gas had left to Jim; had even suggested a wording that
would tell without alarming, and had put aside almost angrily Jim’s
struggle to find his money. “Don’t you worry,” he had said, “it’ll go.
I’ve seen other chaps gassed, and you’ll be all right soon.” He was a
cheery pink and white youngster: Jim was sorry he had not found out his
name. In the hard days and nights that followed, his face hovered round
his half-conscious dreams—curiously like a little lad who had fagged
for him at school in Melbourne.

That was two weeks ago, and of those two weeks Mr. Linton and Norah
fortunately knew little. Wally had been the worst; Jim had been dragged
out of the gassed trench a few minutes earlier than his friend, and
possibly to the younger boy the shock had been greater. When the first
terrible paroxysms passed, he could only lie motionless, endeavouring to
conjure up a faint ghost of his old smile when Jim’s anxious face peered
at him from the next bed. Neither had any idea at all of how they had
reached the hospital at Boulogne; all their definite memories ended
abruptly when that evil-smelling green cloud had rolled like a wave
above them into the trench.

Out of the first dark mist of choking suffering they had passed slowly
into comparative peace, broken now and then by recurring attacks, but,
by contrast, a very haven of tranquillity. They were very tired and
lazy: it was heavenly to lie there, quite still, and watch the blue
French sky through the window and the kind-faced nurses flitting
about—each doing far too much for her strength, but always cheery. They
did not want to talk—their voices had gone somewhere very far off; all
they wanted was just to be quiet; not to move, not to talk, not to
cough. Then, as the clean vigour of their youth reasserted itself, and
strength came back to them, energy woke once more, and with it their
old-time lively hatred of bed. They begged to be allowed to get up; and
as their places were badly needed for men worse than they, the doctors
granted their prayer—after which they would have been extremely glad to
get back again, only that pride forbade their admitting it.

Moreover, there was London; and London, with all that it meant to them,
was worth a struggle. Two months earlier it had bored them exceedingly,
and nothing had seemed worth while, with the call in their blood to be
out in the trenches. Now, after actual experience of the trenches, their
ideas had undergone a violent change. The romance of war had faded
utterly. The Flying Corps might retain it still—those plucky fighting
men who soared and circled overhead, bright specks in the clouds and the
blue sky; but to the men who grubbed underground amid discomfort,
smells, and dirt, to which actual fighting came as a blessed relief, war
had lost all its glamour. They wanted to see the job through. But London
was coming first, and it had blossomed suddenly into a paradise.

Some of which Jim had tried to put into his shaky pencilled notes; and
the certainty of their boys’ gladness to get back lay warm at the hearts
of Norah and her father as they walked along Piccadilly. Spring was in
the air: the Park had been full of people, the Row crowded with happy
children, scurrying up and down the tan on their ponies, with decorous
grooms endeavouring to keep them in sight. The window-boxes in the clubs
were gay with daffodils and hyacinths: the busy, knowing London sparrows
twittered noisily in the budding trees, making hurried arrangements for
setting up housekeeping in the summer. Even though war raged so close to
England, and its shadow lay on every hearth, nothing could quite dim the
gladness of London’s awakening to the Spring.

“Those fellows all look so happy,” said Mr. Linton, indicating a
motor-car crammed with wounded men in their blue hospital suits and
scarlet ties. “One never sees a discontented face among them. I hope our
boys will look as happy, Norah.”

“If there is any chance of looking happy, Jim and Wally will take it!”
said Norah, firmly.

“I think they will,” said her father, laughing. “The difficulty is to
imagine them ill.”

“Yes, isn’t it? Do you remember when those horrid Zulus battered them
about so badly in Durban, how extraordinary it was to see them both in
bed, looking pale?”

“Well, I think it was the first time it had occurred to either of them,”
said Mr. Linton.

“I suppose one could never realize the awful effects of the gas unless
one actually saw it,” Norah said. “But I can’t help feeling glad, if
they had to be hurt, that it was that: not wounds or—crippling.” Her
voice fell on the last word. “I just couldn’t bear the thought of Jim or
Wally being crippled.”

“Don’t!” said her father, sharply. “Please God, they’ll come out of it
without that. And as for the gas—Jim assured us they would be all
right, but I’ll be glad when I talk to a doctor about them myself.”

Inquiries proved disappointing. It was certain that the boys would not
be allowed to return directly to them. They would travel in hospital
trains and a hospital ship; it was difficult to say where men would be
taken, when so many, broken and helpless, were being brought to England
every day. The Victorian Agent-General was sympathetic and helpful; he
promised to find out all that could be found from the overworked
authorities, and to let them know at the earliest possible moment.

“But I fancy that long son of yours will find a way of letting you know
himself, Mr. Linton,” he said. “I’ll do my best—but I wouldn’t mind
betting he gets ahead of me.”

They came out of the building that is a kind of oasis in London to all
homesick Victorians, pausing, as they always did, to look at the
exhibits in the outer office—wool and wheat and timber, big model gold
nuggets, and the shining fruits that spoke of the orchards on the
hillsides at home; with pictures of wide pastures where sleek cattle
stood in the knee-high grass, or reapers and binders whirred through
splendid crops. It was a little patch of Australia, planted in the very
heart of London; hard to realize that just outside the swinging glass
doors the grey city—history suddenly become a live thing—stretched
away eastward, and, to the west, the roaring Strand carried its mighty
burden of traffic.

“I’ll always be glad I had the chance of seeing London,” said Norah.
“But whenever I come here I know how glad I’ll be to go back!”

“I know that without coming here,” said her father, drily. “It would be
jolly if we could take those boys home to get strong, Norah.”

“To Billabong?” said Norah, wistfully. “Oh-h! But we’ll do it some day,
daddy.”

“I trust so. Won’t there be a scene when we get back!”

“Oh, I dream about it!” said Norah. “And I wake up all homesick. Can’t
you picture Brownie, dad!—she’ll have cooked everything any of us ever
liked, and the house will be shining from top to bottom, and there won’t
be a thing different—I know she dusts your old pipes and Jim’s
stockwhips herself every day! And Murty will have the horses jumping out
of their skins with fitness, and Lee Wing’s garden will be something
marvellous.”

“And Billy,” said David Linton, laughing. “Can’t you see his black
face—and his grin!”

“Oh, and the great wide paddocks—the view from the verandah, across the
lagoon and looking right over the plains! I don’t seem to have looked at
anything far away since we came off the ship,” said Norah; “all the
views are shut in by houses, and the air is so thick one couldn’t see
far, in any case!”

“They tell me there’s clear air in Ireland,” said her father.

“Then I want to go there,” responded his daughter, promptly.

“Well—we might do worse than that. I’ve been thinking a good deal,
Norah; if the boys don’t get well quickly—and I believe few of the
gassed men do—we shall have to take them away somewhere for a change.”

“Certainly,” agreed Norah. “We couldn’t keep them in London.”

“No, of course not. Country air and not too many people; that is the
kind of tonic our boys will want. What would you think of going to
Ireland?”

Norah drew a long breath of delight.

“Oh-h!” she said. “You do make the most beautiful plans, daddy! We’ve
always wanted to go there more than anywhere: and war wouldn’t seem so
near to us there, and we could try to make the boys forget gas and
trenches and shells and all sorts of horrors.”

“That’s just it,” said her father. “The wisest doctor I ever knew used
to say that change of environment was worth far more than change of air;
we might try to manage both for them, Norah. Donegal was your mother’s
country: I’ve been meaning to go there. She loved it till the day she
died.”

In the tumult of the Strand Norah slipped a hand into her father’s. Very
seldom did he speak of the one who was always in his memory: the little
mother who had grown tired, and had slipped out of life when Norah was a
baby.

“Let’s go there, daddy,” she begged.

“We’ll consult the boys,” said Mr. Linton. “Eh, but it’s good to think
we shall have them to consult with to-morrow! You know, Norah, since Jim
left school, I’ve become so used to consulting him on all points, that I
feel a lost old man without him.”

“You’ll never be old!” said his daughter, indignantly. “But Jim just
loves you to talk to him the way you do,—I know he does, only, of
course, he’s quite unable to say so.”

“Jim has lots of sense,” said Jim’s father. “So has Wally, for that
matter: there is plenty of shrewdness hidden somewhere in that
feather-pate of his. They’re very reliable boys. I was ‘thinking back’
the other night, and I don’t remember ever having been really angry with
Jim in my life.”

“I should think not!” said Norah, regarding him with wide eyes of
amazement. “Why would you be angry with him?”

“Why, I don’t know,” said her father rather helplessly. “Jim never was a
pattern sort of boy.”

“No, but he had sense,” said Norah. She began to laugh. “Oh, I don’t
know how it is,” she said. “We’ve all been mates always: and mates don’t
get angry with each other, or they wouldn’t be mates.”

“I suppose that’s it,” Mr. Linton said, accepting this comprehensive
description of a bush family standpoint. “There’s a ’bus that will go
our way, Norah: I’ve had enough of elbowing my way through this crowd.”

They climbed on top of the motor-’bus, and found the front seat empty;
and when Norah was on the front seat of a ’bus she always felt that it
was her own private equipage and that she owned London. To their left
was the huge yard of Charing Cross Station, crowded with taxis and cabs
and private motors, with streams of foot passengers pouring in and out
of the gateways. At Charing Cross one may see in five minutes more
foreigners than one meets in many hours in other parts of London, and
this was especially the case since the outbreak of war. Homesick Belgian
refugees were wont to stray there, to watch the stream of passengers
from the incoming Continental trains, hoping against hope that they
might see some familiar face. There were soldiers of many nations;
unfamiliar uniforms were dotted throughout the crowd, besides the khaki
that coloured every London street. Even from the ’bus-top could be heard
snatches of talk in many languages—save only one often heard in former
days: German. A string of recruits, each wearing the King’s ribbon,
swung into the station under a smart recruiting sergeant: a cheery
little band, apparently relieved that the plunge had at last been taken,
and that they were about to shoulder their share of the nation’s work.

“Not a straight pair of shoulders among the lot,” remarked Mr. Linton,
surveying them critically. “It’s pleasant to think that very soon they
will be almost as well set up as that fellow in the lead. War is going
to do a big work in straightening English shoulders—morally and
physically.”

The ’bus gave a violent jerk, after the manner of ’buses in starting,
and moved on through the crowded street, threading its way in and out of
the traffic in the most amazing fashion—finding room to squeeze its
huge bulk through chinks that looked small for a donkey-cart to pass,
and showing an agility in dodging that would have done credit to a hare.
It rocked on its triumphal way westward: past the crouching stone lions
in Trafalgar Square, where the plinth of the Nelson Column blazed with
recruiting posters; past the “Orient” offices, with their big pictures
of Australian-going steamers—which made Norah sigh; and so up to
Piccadilly Circus, where they found themselves packed into a jam of
traffic so tight that it seemed that it could never disentangle. But
presently it melted away, and they went on round the stately curve of
Regent Street, with its glittering shops; and so home to the
hotel—where they had lived so long that it really seemed almost
home—and to their own sitting-room, gay with daffodils and primroses,
and littered with work. Norah’s knitting—khaki socks and mufflers—lay
here and there, and there was a pile of finished articles awaiting
dispatch to the Red Cross headquarters in the morning. Under the window,
a big, workmanlike deal table was littered with scraps of wood,
curiously fashioned, with tools in a neat rack. It was David Linton’s
workshop; all the time he could spare from helping with wounded soldiers
went to the fashioning of splints and crutches for the hospitals, where
so many were needed every day.

A yellow envelope was on the table now, lying across a splint.

“Duke of Clarence Hospital,” it said; “to-morrow afternoon.—JIM.”




[Illustration: “She put out a hand and clung to her father’s coat.”]

      _Jim and Wally_]                                   [_Page 31_




                              CHAPTER III
                        WHEN THE BOYS COME HOME


     “Oh! the spring is here again, and all the ways are fair.
     The wattle-blossom’s out again, and do you know it there?”
     MARGERY RUTH BETTS.

‟THEY’RE doing quite well,” the doctor said, patting Norah benevolently
on the shoulder. He was a plump little man, always busy, always in a
hurry; but David Linton and his daughter had been regular visitors to
the hospital for some time, and he had a regard for them. (“Sensible
people,” he was wont to say, approvingly: “they don’t talk too much to
patients, and they don’t fuss!”) Now he knew that war had hit them
personally, and he gave them two of his few spare minutes. “They’re
tired, of course; and you must expect to see them looking queer. Gas
isn’t a beautifier. But they’ll be all right. Don’t stay too long. Don’t
talk war, if you can keep them off it. And above all, don’t speak about
gas.” He smiled at them both. “Buck them up, Miss Norah—buck them up!”
Some one called him hurriedly, and he fled. The khaki ambulances had
delivered a heavy load at the hospital that day.

In a little room off a quiet corridor, the scent of golden wattle flung
a breath of Australia to greet them, as it had greeted the tired boys
when the orderlies had carried them in hours before. Jim and Wally
smiled at them from their pillows. No one seemed able to say anything.
Afterwards, Norah had a dim idea that she had kissed Wally as well as
Jim. It did not appear to matter greatly.

They were white-faced boys, with black shadows under their eyes; but the
old merriment was there. A great wave of relief swept over Norah and her
father. They had feared they knew not what from this evil choking enemy:
it was sudden happiness to see that their boys were not so unlike their
old selves.

“We had visions of being up to meet you,” said Jim, keeping a hand on
Norah’s, as she perched on his bed. “But the doctor thought otherwise.
Doctors are awful tyrants.”

“You had a good crossing?” David Linton found words hard—they stuck in
his throat as he looked at his son.

“Oh yes. We didn’t know much about it. The hospital train runs you
almost on to the ship, and the orderlies have you in a swinging cot
before you know where you are. Same at the other side: those fellows do
know their job,” Jim said, admiringly. “Of course, you get a little
tired of being handled, towards the finish, and this room—and
bed—seemed awfully good.”

“And the wattle was ripping,” said Wally. “However did you manage to get
it?”

“It comes from the South of France,” Norah answered. “There’s quite a
lot of it in London; only they stare at you if you ask for ‘wattle’, and
you have to learn to say ‘mimosa.’ One gets broken into anything. I’ve
learned to say ‘field’ quite naturally when I’m talking of a paddock.”

“I wish Murty could hear you,” said Wally solemnly. Murty O’Toole was
head stockman on Billabong, the home in Australia. He was a very great
friend.

“Can’t you picture his face!” Norah uttered. “It would be interesting to
watch Murty’s expression if dad told him to bring in the cattle from the
field when he wanted the bullocks mustered in the home-paddock!”

“He’d give me notice,” said Mr. Linton, firmly. “Neither long service
nor affection would keep him!”

“Well, Murty was born in Ireland, though he did come out to Australia
when he was a small boy,” Norah said. “So he ought not to feel
astonished. But the person I do want to import to England is black
Billy. It’s part of Billy’s principles not to show amazement at
anything, but I don’t think they’d be proof against a block of traffic
in Piccadilly!”

“He’d only say, ‘Plenty!’” said Jim, laughing—“that is, if he had any
speech left. Poor old Billy, he hates everything but horses, and any
motor is a ‘devil-wagon’ to him. A fleet of big red and yellow ’buses
would give him nervous prostration.”

“There’s one thing that would scare him more,” Mr. Linton said. “Do you
remember the day last winter when we took Norah to Hampton Court, and
you chucked a stone at the Round Pond?” He laughed, and every one
followed his example.

“And the stone ran along tinkling over the top of the water,” said
Norah, recovering. “I never was so taken aback in my life. And all the
small children and their nursemaids laughed at me. How was I to know
water turned to ice like that? The only frozen thing I had ever seen was
ice-cream in Melbourne!”

“Billy never saw ice in his life,” said her father. “He would have
thought it very bad magic.”

“He’d have taken to his heels and made for the bush,” said Wally,
grinning. “Probably he’d have made himself a boomerang and turned into
an up-to-date black Robin Hood, living on those tame old Bushy Park
deer.”

“With his headquarters in the Hampton Court Maze!” added Jim. “Wouldn’t
it have been an enormous attraction—the halfpenny papers would have
called it ‘Wild Life in Quiet Places,’ and London would have run special
motor-bus trips to see our Billy!”

His laugh ended in a fit of coughing, which left him trembling. Norah
patted him anxiously, watching him with troubled eyes.

“Don’t you talk too much, or we’ll get sent away,” she warned him.
“We’ll do the talking—dad and I. We’ve heaps to tell you: and such
jolly plans.”

“You have to make haste and get better,” said Mr. Linton, looking from
one white face to the other. “Then we’re going to take possession of
you.”

“Kitchener will do that, I guess,” said Wally.

“No, Kitchener won—not until you’re quite fit. You’ll be handed over to
us, and it will be our job to get you thoroughly well. And Norah and I
have agreed that it can’t be done in London.”

“So we’re all going to Ireland,” said Norah, happily.

“Ireland!” Jim uttered.

“Yes. You’re sure to get leave, so that you can be thoroughly repaired.
We’re going to find some jolly place in Donegal, where it’s quiet and
peaceful, and we’re all going to buy rods and find out how to catch
trout. Brown trout,” said Norah, learnedly. “We know all about it,
because we bought ever so many guide-books and studied them all last
night.”

“I say!” ejaculated both patients as one man.

“It sounds rather like Heaven,” said Jim, drawing a long breath. “Do you
really think it can be managed, dad?”

“I don’t see why not,” said his father.

“We must get back to our job as soon as we can.”

“Certainly you must. But there’s no sense in your going back until you
are perfectly fit. They wouldn’t want you. And though you were not as
badly gassed as many—thank goodness!—and your recovery won’t be such a
trying matter as if you had had a bigger dose, every one agrees that gas
takes its time.”

“I shouldn’t wonder,” Jim said, grimly.

“That being so, London does not strike me as a good place for
convalescents,” said Mr. Linton. “Pure air is what you’ll need; and that
is not the fine, solid, grey variety of atmosphere you get here. And
Zeppelins will be happening along freely, once they feel at home on the
track to England. I don’t believe they will limit their raids to London.
The big manufacturing towns will come in for a share of their attention
sooner or later; and they won’t spare the country places over which they
fly.”

“Not they!” said Wally.

“So, all things considered, I think you would be better in Ireland. I
believe it’s peaceful there, if you don’t talk politics. We don’t want
any adventures.”

“We’ve had quite enough since we left Billabong,” said Norah.

“Hear, hear!” said Wally. “I guess the calm peace of a bog in Ireland is
just about our form until we’re ready to go back and take our turn at
strafing.”

“Then that’s settled—if the doctors will back me up,” Mr. Linton said.
“Just as soon as they will let you we’ll pack up the fewest possible
clothes and set out for a sleepy holiday in Ireland: trout-fishing, old
ruins, bogs, heather, and no adventures at all.”

Later on, they were to recall this peaceful forecast with amazement. At
present it seemed a dream of everything the heart could desire; they
fell into a happy discussion of ways and means, of the best places to
buy fishing-tackle, of the clothes demanded by bogs and heathery
mountains; until a nurse arrived with tea, and a warning word that the
patients had talked nearly enough. At which the patients waxed
indignant, declaring that their visitors had only been with them about
ten minutes.

“Ten minutes!” said the nurse, round-eyed. “Over an hour—and doctor’s
orders were——”

“Never you mind the doctor’s orders,” Jim said solemnly. “Doctors don’t
know everything. Why, in Boulogne——” He broke off, assuming an air of
meek unconsciousness of debate as the doctor himself appeared suddenly.

“I beg your pardon,” said the doctor, transfixing patients with an eagle
glance, while the nurse made an unobtrusive escape. “You were saying
something about doctors, I think?”

“Nothing, I assure you, sir,” said Jim, grinning widely.

“Doctors—and Boulogne,” repeated the new-comer, firmly. “Don’t let me
interrupt you.”

“No, sir. Certainly not,” said Jim. “The doctors in Boulogne are very
hard-worked.”

“H’m!” said his medical attendant, receiving this piece of information
with the suspicion it merited. “Quite so. We’re all hard-worked, these
times, chiefly with looking after bad boys who ought to be back at
school, getting swished. It’s an awful fate for a respectable M.D.” He
gazed severely at the cheerful faces on the pillows. “You ought to be
asleep; and of course you are not. Is this a hospital ward, or an
Australian picnic?”

“Both,” said Wally, laughing. “Don’t be rough on us, doctor; it isn’t
every day we kill a pig!”

The doctor stared.

“You put things pleasantly!” he said. “It seems to me that the pigs were
trying to kill you: but you’re all extraordinarily cheerful about it.
Now, where’s Miss Norah gone? I never saw such a girl—she moves like
quicksilver!”

Norah returned, bearing a spare cup.

“Do have some tea, doctor,” she begged.

“I haven’t time, but I will,” said the doctor, abandoning professional
cares, and sitting down. “One’s life is all topsy-turvy nowadays. A year
ago I would not have dreamed of having tea in a patient’s bedroom—let
alone two patients—but then, a year ago I was practising in Harley
Street, developing a sweet, bedside manner and the figure of an
alderman. Today I’m a semi-military hack, with no manner at all, and my
patients chaff me—actually chaff me, Miss Norah! It’s very distressing
to one’s inherited notions.”

“It must be,” said Norah, deeply sympathetic. “The cake is quite good,
doctor.”

“It is,” agreed the doctor, accepting some. “Occasionally I find a
pompous old colonel or brigadier among my patients, and we exchange
soothing confidences about the terrible future of the medical profession
and the Army. That helps; but then I come back to the long procession of
the foolish subalterns who go out to Flanders without ever having
learned to dodge!” His eye twinkled as he glared at Jim and Wally.
Norah, whose visits to wounded soldiers during many weeks had taught her
something beyond his reputation as the most skilful and most merciful of
surgeons, listened unmoved and offered him more tea.

“It’s no good trying to impress you!” said the doctor, surrendering his
cup. “Thank you, I will have some more—in pure kindness of heart
towards you, Miss Norah, since, when I leave this room, all visitors go
with me!”

“Oh!” said Norah. “I’ll get some fresh tea, doctor!”

“You will not,” said the doctor, severely. “The picnic is nearly at an
end: you can have another to-morrow, if you’re good.”

“When can we remove the patients, doctor?” asked Mr. Linton, who had
been sitting in amused silence. A great contentment had settled on his
face: already the lines of anxiety were smoothed away. He did not want
to talk; it was sufficient to sit and watch Jim, occasionally meeting
his eyes with a half-smile.

“Remove the patients—Good gracious!” ejaculated the doctor. “Why
they’ve only just been removed once! Can’t you let them settle down a
little?”

“We want to take them to Ireland,” said Norah, eagerly. “Can we,
doctor?”

“H’m,” said the doctor, reflectively. “There might be worse plans. We’ll
see. Ireland: that’s the place where the motto is, ‘When you see a head,
hit it!’ isn’t it?”

“I don’t think it’s universal,” said Mr. Linton mildly. “It’s really
much more peaceful than English legends would lead you to believe.”

“Between you and me, what the average Englishmen knows of Ireland might,
I believe, he put into one’s eye without inconvenience,” affirmed the
doctor. “I’m a Scot, and I don’t mind admitting I don’t know anything.
But no Englishman tells an Irish story without making his speakers say
‘Bedad!’ and ‘Begorra!’ in turn: and I’ve known a heap of Irishmen, and
their conversation was singularly free from those remarks. I have an
inward conviction that the English-made Irishman doesn’t exist; only I
never have time to verify any of my inward convictions. And perhaps
that’s as well, because then they never lose weight! Have I drunk all
the tea, Miss Norah?”

“I’m afraid so,” said Norah, tilting the teapot regretfully and without
success. “Do let me get you some more. I know quite well where they make
it.”

“Go to!” said the doctor, rising. “Don’t tempt an honest man from the
path of duty. I’m off—and I give you three minutes. Then the patients
are to compose themselves to slumber.”

“And Ireland, doctor?”

“Ireland?” said the doctor, pausing in the doorway. “Oh, there’s lots of
time to think about that distressful country.” He relented a little,
looking at the eager faces. “Very possibly. We’ll re-open the discussion
this day week. Three minutes, mind. Good-bye.” His quick steps died away
along the corridor.

Half an hour later Wally wriggled on his pillow.

“Asleep, Jim?”

“No—not quite.”

“D’you know something? Your people were here quite a while. And they
never said one word about gas or war or any silly rot like that!”

“No,” said Jim, drowsily. “Bricks, weren’t they? Go to sleep.”




                               CHAPTER IV
                               TO IRELAND


          “Be it granted me to behold you again in dying,
          Hills of home.”
          R. L. STEVENSON.

HOLYHEAD pier was in the state of wild turmoil that seethes between the
arrival of the mail and its transhipping to the Dublin boat. Passengers
ran hither and thither, distractedly seeking luggage, while stolid
English porters lent a deaf ear to their complainings or assured them
absent-mindedly that everything would be all right on the other side; an
assurance always given light-heartedly by the porter who is comfortably
certain of the fact that, whatever happens on the other side, he will
not be there. First and third class passengers mingled inextricably in
the luggage-hunt, with equal lack of success, and divided into two
streams when the whistle blew an impatient summons, seeking their
respective gangways under the guiding shouts of officials on the upper
deck. Through the crowd ploughed the mail trollies, regarding first and
third class travellers alike as mere obstructors of His Majesty’s
business, and asserting their right-of-way by sheer weight and impetus.
Overhead, a grey sky hung darkly, and was reflected in a grey,
white-flecked sea.

It was not the usual Ireland-bound crowd of early summer. Comparatively
few women were travelling, and except for a few elderly men, there was
an entire absence of the knickerbocker-suited, tweed-capped travellers,
with golf-clubs and rod-boxes, who make a yearly pilgrimage across the
Irish Sea. Most of them were in Flanders or Gallipoli now, and khaki had
replaced the rough tweeds; many would never come again. In their stead,
khaki sprinkled the crowd thickly. A big detachment of soldiers
returning after furlough, crowded the boat for’ard. Officers in heavy
great-coats were everywhere; one chubby subaltern in charge of a
regimental band, which had been assisting in a recruiting tour in Wales.
A small group surrounded a tall old general, whose great-coat showed the
crossed sword and baton, while his gold-laced and red-banded cap made
him the object of awed glances from junior officers, who forthwith put
as much of the ship as possible between themselves and his eagle eye.

Jim Linton and Wally Meadows were among the first out of the train. It
was Jim’s way to let a crowd disperse a little before he attempted to
reach a given point. “You get there just as quickly, and it saves an
awful lot of pushing and shoving,” he said. But Wally’s impatience never
brooked any such delay; at all times he found it difficult to sit still,
and once movement was permitted him, he was wont, as Jim further said,
“to run three ways at once.” Therefore, Jim being too peaceably inclined
to argue the matter, they made a hurried descent to the platform,
collected hand-luggage hastily, discovered a porter, assisted Mr. Linton
and Norah to alight, and had marshalled their forces on the upper deck
of the steamer while yet the main body of the passengers strove
agonizedly to find their belongings. Then Jim made a leisurely
inspection, discovered their heavy luggage in perfect safety, duly
embarked: and rejoined his party with the calm certainty of all being
right with the world.

People were disposing themselves after the varied fashion of
’cross-Channel passengers. Apprehensive ladies and a few men cast a
despondent look at the grey sea and the white horses tumbling off-shore,
and prudently sought the shelter of the cabins, hoping, by prompt lying
down, to cheat the demon of sea-sickness. More seasoned travellers
selected chairs on the main decks, pitched them where any gleams of sun
might reach them, and settled down, rolled in rugs, to read through the
boredom of the passage. On the railings, small boys perched themselves
with the fell determination of small boys all the world over, while
anxious mothers rent the air with fruitless appeals for them to come
down, and wrathful fathers emphasized the commands with blows, or else
smoked stolidly in the conviction that a small boy who was meant to fall
in the sea would certainly fall there, in spite of his parents. Babies
wailed dismally, until borne off to the cabin by mothers and nurses;
sirens rent the air with hoarse shrieks; cranes, loading luggage,
rattled and banged, and above their din rose the shouts of newsboys
hawking London and Dublin papers. Every hand on the ship was working
furiously, for the mail has no time to spare, and nothing matters to it
but the time-table.

They were off presently, slipping away almost imperceptibly from the
wharf, and nosing out to sea through the grey waves. The ship thrust her
bow into them doggedly. The mail-boat’s line is a straight line, and she
takes no account of the foaming billows and the anguish of passengers,
thrusting through everything from port to port. Several people who had
settled down on deck more in hope than certainty cast sad glances on the
sea, and disappeared hurriedly below.

Jim and Wally turned up their coat-collars as the breeze freshened, and
stood swaying easily to the motion of the ship. They still bore traces
of the ordeal they had undergone in the trenches; each was unnaturally
pale and heavy-eyed, and recurring attacks of throat-trouble had kept
them from regaining full strength. Wally’s eyes, too, were weak: he was
under orders to rest them altogether, and was therefore openly jubilant
because he could not read war news—which, as he said, was one of the
most wearying occupations, only you couldn’t cease doing it without a
decent excuse. “Vetted” by a Medical Board, the pair had been given six
weeks’ leave, at the end of which time they were to report progress.

Of the nerve-disorder which so frequently follows in the track of
gas-poisoning they were fortunately entirely free. Possibly their dose
had not been large enough: or their clean youth and perfect health had
helped them to throw off the effects felt heavily by older men. They
could joke about it now, and their longing to get “some of their own
back” was so keen as almost to discount an Irish holiday. Still, war was
likely to last long enough to give them all the fighting they needed:
there was, after all, no immediate hurry. And it was glorious to feel
strength returning: and the new fishing-rods and tackle bore fascinating
promise, while Ireland itself was a country of their dreams.

As for Mr. Linton and Norah, they looked after the boys unceasingly, fed
them at alarmingly short intervals, and in general manifested so
subservient a desire to run all their errands that the victims revolted,
declaring they were patients no longer, and threatening severe measures
if they were not restored to independence. Norah and her father
submitted unwillingly. To nurse trench-worn warriors had the double
effect of being in itself comforting, while, so long as the nursing
lasted, the warriors could not possibly consider returning to the
trenches.

They looked about them as the swift steamer raced westward. Soldiers,
soldiers everywhere; every likely youngster was in uniform, and there
were many older men whose keen, quiet faces bore the ineffaceable stamp
of the regular officer of the old Army—the old Army that was gone for
ever, only a fragment left after the first fierce onslaught of war. The
men for’ard were laughing and singing, just as they laughed and sang in
the trenches; a cornet-player belonging to the band had found his
instrument and was leading the tune. Near Norah, three or four nuns,
sweet-faced and grave, were seated, evidently enjoying the keen wind
that swept into their faces. There was the usual sprinkling of
passengers, some mere heaps of rugs in deck-chairs, others walking
briskly up and down. Somewhat apart, a tall old priest stood by the
rail, looking ahead: a gaunt old man with burning, dark eyes, that
searched the grey sea and sky wistfully, as if looking for the land to
which they were hastening. Jim, strolling backwards and forwards, came
presently to a standstill near him, and asked a question.

“Do you know what time we get in, sir?”

“’Tis about three hours, I believe—that or less,” said the old man,
courteously. He turned a steady glance on Jim, and apparently approved
of him, for he smiled. “Do you not know Ireland, then?”

Jim shook his head. “It’s my first visit.”

“So?” The old eyes looked ahead once more. “They take under three hours
now to cross; ’twas many more last time I came away—the bitter day!” he
added, half under his breath. “And that’s three-and-forty years ago, my
son!”

“What! and you’ve never been back, sir?”

“Never. I’ve been in America. A good country; but it never lets you go,
and it never gets to be home. All that three-and-forty years I’ve been
thinking of the day I’d be going back again.”

“And it’s come,” said Jim, his smile suddenly lighting his grey eyes.
The old man smiled back

“If you weren’t so young I’d say you knew what it was to be homesick,”
said he.

“I come from Australia,” said Jim, briefly.

“Well, well, well!” the priest said. “There’s another great
country—only so far away. There’s many a good Irishman there, they tell
me.”

“Any number of them,” said Jim. “We’ve got one of the best on our
place—Murty O’Toole. He taught me to ride.”

“Did he so? There were O’Tooles in Wicklow when I was a boy; but sure
and they’re all over the world. You’ll be glad to go back, when the time
comes?”

“Glad!” said Jim, explosively. He laughed. “It’s very jolly, of course,
to visit other places. But home’s home, isn’t it, sir?”

“Aye,” said the old man. He looked ahead, his eyes misty.
“Three-and-forty years I’ve dreamed of it; and now I’m waiting to see
the hills of Ireland coming out of the sea, and this last hour seems
longer than all the years. Well, well; and they’re all dead, all the
people I knew; and I going home to die, like a wornout old dog.”

“You’ll live in Ireland many a year yet, sir,” Jim told him, quickly.

“No, no; I’m done. ’Tis my heart, and it finished—sure, wouldn’t forty
years of work in New York finish any heart!” said the old man, laughing.
“But I’m lucky to be getting back to Ireland to die. Did you ever hear,
now, of the Sons of Tuireann?”

Jim shook his head. “I’m afraid not, sir.”

“They were great fighting men, and they had great hardship,” said the
priest: “and at the end of all things they were on the sea coming home,
dying. And one of them cried out that he saw the hills of home. And the
others said, ‘Raise up our heads on your breast till we see Ireland
again: and life or death will be the same to us after that.’ So they
died. That was a good ending. A man wouldn’t ask better. ’Tis a hard
thing, dying in a strange country, but you’d go very easy, once you got
home.” He spoke half to himself, so low that the boy hardly caught the
words. They stood silently for awhile, looking ahead across the tumbling
sea.

“I had no right to be talking to you about dying,” the old priest said
presently, turning to Jim with a smile that made his face
extraordinarily child-like. “Old men get foolish; and my heart’s too big
for my body this day, and I getting home. Tell me now—are ye Irish, at
all?”

“My mother was Irish,” Jim answered.

“I’d have said so. What part might she have come from?—and is she with
you?”

“She died when I was a kiddie,” Jim answered. “She came from Donegal.
Father says she always loved it.”

“Well, well! Wherever you’re born, you love that place. But I think the
love for Ireland is beyond most things. The people leave it because
there’s no room for them and no money; but no matter where they go they
leave the half of their hearts behind. And they put something of the
love into their children no matter where they’re born, so that they
always want to come and see Ireland: and when they come, ’tis no strange
place to them; they feel they’ve come home. You’ll feel it—for all that
you love that big young country of yours, and want to get back to her.
But every old ruin, and every bit of brown bog and heathery mountain,
and every little stony field, will say something to you that you will
not be able to put into words: and when you go back you will not forget.
There, there! I’m talking again!” said the old man; “and to a boy with
business of his own. Tell me, now, have you been out across yonder yet?”
He nodded in the direction of Flanders.

They talked of war, the priest nodding vehemently and punctuating Jim’s
brief sentences with exclamations of “Well, well!” The wistfulness
dropped from him suddenly; he was a fighting man, a Crusader—with a
young man’s burning desire to be out in the trenches, and a young man’s
keenness to hear details of battle. “There’s fifty thousand French
priests fighting for France,” he said, enviously: “none the worse
soldiers for being priests, I’ll vow, and they’ll be all the better
priests afterwards for having been soldiers! If I were young! if I were
young!” He laughed at his own vehemence. “It’s your day,” he said; “a
great world just now for young men. And they tell me there’s any number
of them out of khaki yet—standing behind counters and selling lace and
ribbons; and some of them doing women’s hair! More shame for the women
that let them!”

“If a man wants to stay out of the game and do women’s work, well that’s
all he’s fit for,” said Jim, slowly. “He’s not wanted where there’s work
going. But he ought to have some sort of a brand put on him, so that
people will be able to tell him from a man in future!”

The priest chuckled appreciatively.

“Petticoats are the brand he wants,” said he. “And an extra tax put on
him, to support the widows and children of the men who were men—who
went and fought to save his worthless hide. ’Tis a shame, now, they
wouldn’t make him pay some way. Well, they wouldn’t have me in the
trenches—and it’s good sense they have; but for all I’m a broken-down
old ruin I’m going fighting—fighting with my tongue against the boys
that stay at home. Perhaps they don’t realize—the young ones: they
might listen to an old man that was a priest. Just a few days to rest
and feel I’m home at last, and I’m going to do my bit as a recruiting
sergeant!”

“Good luck!” Jim said, heartily. “Only don’t get knocked up, sir.”

The old man laughed.

“’Tis only once a man can die,” he said, cheerfully. “I’d die easier
knowing I’d done my bit, as you boys say. But I’m in dread I’ll lose my
temper with them, especially if I meet the lads that dress heads of
hair! They wash them too, I’m told. Well, well, it’s a queer world!”

Wally came up, faintly indignant at Jim’s lengthy absence, and joined in
the talk: and presently Mr. Linton and Norah followed, and made friends
with the old man. He was such a simple, cheery old man: it was easy to
be friends with him. They grew merry over queer stories from many
countries, and often the priest’s laugh rang out like a boy’s, while his
own stories brought peals of mirth from his new friends. But through it
all his dark eyes kept searching ahead: ever looking, looking till the
hills of Ireland should lift from the sea.

“They tell me you have big trees in that Australia of yours,” he said.
“Tell me now, are they as big as the Califorian redwoods?”

“I don’t know the redwoods,” Wally answered solemnly. “But ours are big.
There’s a story of twelve men who started with axes and cross-cut saws
to get a gum-tree down. They worked on one side for nine months and then
they got bored with that, and they packed up and made a journey round to
the other side. And there they found a party of fifteen men who’d been
working at that side for a year, and they were very surprised——”
Laughter overcame him suddenly at the sight of the priest’s amazed face.

“You young rascal!” said he, joining in the laugh against himself. “And
I taking it all in so meekly!”

“I might go on, if you liked, sir, and tell you the story of the man who
was out in the bush bringing home some calves,” said Wally.

“Don’t spare me,” begged his hearer.

“Well, he found his way blocked by a fallen tree, too big to get the
calves over. So he started to drive them along it, to get round. When he
didn’t come home they came to the conclusion that he had stolen the
calves; and so they had to apologize to him, later on, when he turned up
with a nice lot of bullocks. He said proudly that he hadn’t lost one,
only they had grown up while they were on the journey!”

“That was a long tree!” said the priest, between chuckles. “Well, well,
it must be a great country that will grow such timber—and such stories,
and the boys to tell them!”

Wally laughed.

“I ought to beg your pardon, sir,” he said. “Only no good Australian can
resist telling tall stories about his tall trees. But I can tell you a
true one of a tree I knew where seven men camped in the hollow butt.
They had bunks built inside, all round it, and a table in the middle,
and of course, space for a doorway. That tree was over fifty-five feet
inside, and goodness only knows what it was outside, buttresses and
all.”

“And it’s true, I suppose, that you could drive a coach-and-four through
a tree?” the priest asked.

“Driving a coach-and-four through the hollowed-out stump of a tree used
to be common enough with us,” said Jim. “Not that the four horses
mattered: you might as well say ‘and twelve’; it was the width high
enough up to take the top of the coach that meant a really big tree. It
was easier to make a hollow shell fit for the passage of the coach than
to get the whole tree cut down.”

“Quite so—quite so,” said the priest. “And I’ve read of church services
being held in a hollow tree, in your country.

“Rather. We know one that held twenty-two people. It was in a wild part
of the bush, and whatever clergyman came along used to use it—Roman
Catholic, Protestant, Presbyterian or Baptist; it didn’t matter. Every
one used to roll up, for it wasn’t often there was a chance of a church
service. There were lots of jobs for the travelling parson, too: all the
accumulated weddings and christenings.”

“Do you tell me!” said the priest.

“My mother had three children before ever a chance came of a baptism,”
said Mr. Linton. “Then the three were done together. I was the eldest,
and I remember being extremely indignant about it—I was four years old,
and it was winter, and the water was cold! It was a standing joke
against me afterwards that I had behaved so much worse than my small
brother and sister.” He laughed, and then grew grave. “Poor bush
mothers! they didn’t have an easy time. Two of my mother’s babies died
without ever having seen a clergyman; to the end of her life she worried
about the little souls that had gone out unbaptized.”

“It was themselves needed great hearts—those pioneer women,” said the
priest.

“They did; and mostly they had great hearts. But then I think most women
have, if the need really comes,” Mr. Linton said. “Thousands of them
were delicate, tenderly-reared women, with no experience of bush
conditions in a new country; but they made good. Women have a curious
way of finding themselves able to tackle any conditions with which they
are actually faced. My mother never was strong, and she had no training
for work; I expect she was something of a butterfly until she married my
father and went off into the Never-Never. She ended by being a kind of
oracle for fifty miles round; people used to send for her at all hours
of the day or night, in sickness, and she developed a business capacity
better than my father’s. I remember her as a little, merry thing: always
tired, but never too tired to work for other people. She was only one of
thousands of women doing the same thing.”

“But the process of learning must have been hard,” said the old priest,
pityingly.

“Yes. It must have been a tough apprenticeship. My mother told me she
used to sit down and cry often at the loneliness and strangeness of it
all—in the long days when all the men were miles away from the
homestead, and she was alone, with the chance of bush fires and
bushrangers and wild blacks. That was until the babies came. After that
there was no time to cry—which, she said, was a very good thing for
her. Poor little mother!”

He sighed; and in the silence that followed a slight commotion was
audible on the bridge. The priest glanced up sharply.

“Nothing—but that cruel business of the _Lusitania_ makes everyone
suspicious at sea, nowadays,” he said. “Still, the Germans may be active
enough in the south, but I don’t fancy they’ll come into these
landlocked waters. Too much risk from our destroyers.”

Norah was leaning over the rail.

“What’s that thing?” she said, slowly.

Their eyes followed the direction of her pointing finger. Nearly astern,
a slender grey object bobbed among the waves: so small a thing that an
idle glance might easily have passed it by unnoticed. A shadowy, grey
bar, bearing aloft what looked like a nut.

Jim uttered a shout.

“By Jove, it’s a submarine!”

Even as he shouted, a long grey shadow came into view under the bar.
Simultaneously, the engine-telegraph clanged from the bridge, and
following the signal, the steamer altered her course with a jerk that
sent most of the standing passengers headlong to the deck. They picked
themselves up, unconscious of bruises, rushing again to the rail.

The submarine was well in view—a slender, vicious, grey boat, with a
little cluster of men visible on her tiny deck, round the shaft of the
periscope. She was terribly near. Suddenly a volume of black smoke
gushed from the steamer’s funnels; the firemen were flinging themselves
at their work below, since on speed alone hung their slender hope of
safety. Again she altered her course. Sharp orders came from the bridge;
sailors were running to and fro, and an officer was serving out
life-belts frantically.

Something shot from the submarine—something that made a long,
glistening streak across the water, coming straight towards them like a
flash; and David Linton flung his arm round Norah muttering, “My God!” A
strained, high voice cried, “A torpedo!” and then silence fell upon the
ship, broken only by the smothered gasps of women. Straight and swift
the streak came; unimaginably swift, and yet the watching seemed a
lifetime.

“Hold tight to the rail,” Jim’s voice said in Norah’s ear. She gripped
mechanically; and as she did so, the steamer jerked again, plunging to
one side like a frightened horse that sees danger. It was just in time.
The torpedo shot past, missing the bow by a fraction—a space so small
that it was almost impossible to believe that it had indeed missed. Then
came relief, finding vent in an irrepressible shout.

“It’s too soon to shout,” some one said. “She’ll make better shooting
next time.”

Stewards and sailors were hurrying round, distributing life-belts; it
was no easy matter to put them on, for the ship was zigzagging wildly,
dodging in a desperate effort to elude her pursuer, and balance was
impossible without a firm hold on some fixed object.

“Sit on the deck—it’s safest,” said Mr. Linton. He fastened Norah’s
life-belt, while Jim performed a similar office for him, and Wally put
one on the old priest, who was so wild with excitement as to be quite
oblivious of any such precaution. His face was deadly white, his dark
eyes blazing. In his first fall he had lost his black felt hat, and his
silver hair waved in the wind.

“The murdering villains—the assassins!” he said. “Yerra, if I could
fight!”

An officer called for helpers to bring the women and children from
below. Jim and Wally sprang in answer, and a crowd of soldiers came
tumbling up from for’ard, elbowing their officers in mad excitement and
the rush to be first. Quick and strong hands were needed on the
companion ladders with their burdens, as the ship plunged hither and
thither, racing in zig-zags at top speed. Many of the women were
helpless between fear and the aftermath of sea-sickness; but they came
without outcry, with set white faces, determined, if this were indeed
Death, to die decently. The babies howled with a lusty disregard of the
world common to babies, while the soldiers patted them with far more
concern than they showed for the submarine. In a very few minutes not a
soul was left below.

“Why do we zigzag?” Norah asked, clinging to the rail as a fresh jerk
shook the ship.

“It’s our only chance,” Jim answered. “I don’t think the submarines can
beat these boats for speed, or else she’d just come up and sink us at
her leisure; and she can’t take aim accurately if we’re dodging. Of
course we cut down our speed by not going straight; but we can’t afford
the risk of letting her train her torpedo-tube carefully on us. Jove,
can’t the skipper handle this ship! She answers the helm like a
motor-car.”

“And can’t she go!” uttered Wally.

“Oh, the mail-boats are built for speed and not much else—thank
goodness!” Jim said. “Look!—she’s firing again!”

Again the streak shot from the pursuing submarine and darted towards
them. They held their breath.

It was a very close shave—only a lightning swerve saved the mail-boat.
The old priest uttered a sudden shout of triumph. “Whirroo!” he
cried—for a moment just the boy who had left Wicklow more than forty
years ago. He shook as he gripped the rail, laughing at the racing grey
shadow that followed them.

Jim Linton’s eyes were on his little sister: and Norah, feeling them,
slipped a hand into his.

“If it hadn’t been for us you wouldn’t be in this,” he said, miserably.

Norah opened her eyes in amazement.

“But that just makes it not matter so much,” she said. “Just fancy if we
weren’t all together! Don’t you worry, Jimmy.” She smiled at him very
cheerfully.

“If she hits us and we begin to sink, don’t wait for the ship to go
over,” Mr. Linton said. “Half the boats on the _Lusitania_ were
death-traps. Let us all jump in and keep together if we can; we would
have more chance of being picked up, and less of being taken down in the
suction as she sank. Can you swim, Father?”—to the priest.

“I can. But it’s years since I tried, and I don’t know would I keep
afloat at all,” said the old man, with unimpaired cheerfulness. “Let you
take your own course, and not trouble about me. I’m too old to try
jumping, and there’ll be some poor souls I could maybe help. And we’re
not beaten yet.” He gave a quick laugh, his grey head well up. “We’re
running away, but it’s a good fight we’re putting up, all the same:
something to see, after forty years in a New York slum!”

“I believe he likes it!” said Wally, under his breath. But the old man
caught the words.

“Like it! I used to dream of adventures when I was a boy, and it was all
the sea—clean winds and waves, and ships that were always magic to me.
And it ended in a slum: forty years of it, doing my work in the midst of
filth and wretchedness. Well, every man has his work, and mine lay
there. And now, at the end, this! I always knew ’twas luck I’d have if I
got back to Ireland!”

They had raced away in a straight course after the second torpedo,
increasing the distance from their pursuer. Now, however, a shot hummed
past them, and the captain dared no longer risk a hit—again the ship
swerved from side to side, in short, irregular tacks, and the submarine
drew nearer once more. On and on—leaping like a hare when the greyhound
is behind her: engines throbbing, smoke blackening the sky in her wake.
Some of the firemen had staggered up, exhausted, their places taken by
volunteers. Ahead, a dim line lay upon the sea: the Irish coast, where
lay safety. Would they ever reach it?

Then, from the north, came rescue: a patrol-boat, racing down upon them
with threatening guns ready to speak in their defence. She came out of a
light haze, which, blowing away, revealed her dogged grey shape, with
the white water churning and parting at her bow. Presently one of her
guns spoke, and a shell buried itself in the sea not far from the
submarine.

“So long, Brother Boche!” said an officer; and suddenly, as if in
answer, the submarine disappeared, submerging to the safety of the
underworld. The mail-boat ceased to zigzag, running a straight course
until near the destroyer, as a child runs to a protector.

The tension relaxed. Voices broke out in quick clamour: and then cheer
after cheer came from the pent-up passengers, redoubling as the
captain’s face showed over the railings of the bridge. The captain
grinned, saluted, and looked at his watch all at once: the danger was
over, and now the pressing business of his ordinary life reasserted
itself—the landing in time at Kingstown Pier of His Majesty’s mails.

People were laughing and talking nervously, keeping an anxious look-out
towards the spot where the submarine had disappeared; scarcely realizing
that their peril was past, and that the grey hunter would not again
reveal itself, hurrying upon their track. The destroyer shot past them,
seeking the enemy, with signal flags talking busily to the mail-boat. A
comforting sense of security was in her wake.

“Well!” said Jim. “We left England to find peace and quiet; but if this
is a specimen of what Ireland means to give us——”

“We’d better get back to the peaceful marshes of Flanders,” finished
Wally.

“I used to think when I was at home—at Billabong—that excitement would
be nice,” said Norah. “But it isn’t—not a bit: or else I’ve had an
overdose. At any rate, I don’t want any more as long as I live.”

A little sigh came from behind her, and her father made a sudden
movement, springing to the side of the priest. The old man was swaying
backwards and forwards. They caught him, and laid him gently on the
deck. His lips parted, and he tried to speak, but no sound came.

“Go and look for a doctor,” said Mr. Linton to Wally. “Quick!”

He tore at the old man’s collar, while Norah rubbed his hands
desperately. It seemed the only thing she could do. A little life came
into the white face, and his voice came faintly.

“’Tis the finish for me—don’t worry . . . my heart.” He smiled at them.
“And the doctor after telling me not to get excited.”

“Don’t talk,” Norah begged.

“It can’t hurt me. Don’t mind, little one.” He saw the tears in her
eyes, and tightened his hand on her fingers. “’Tis a good ending. I
wouldn’t ask for a better.”

Wally came back, a young man in uniform, with the R.A.M.C. badge on his
collar, at his heels. The doctor bent over the old priest. Presently he
rose, shaking his head as he met David Linton’s eyes.

“There’s nothing to be done,” he said, softly.

The old man’s hearing was no less acute.

“’Tis myself could have told you that,” he said. “I knew . . . next time
it came. And . . . when a man’s ready . . .”

His voice became almost inaudible, murmuring broken words of prayer.
Behind them Jim had formed a line of soldiers, keeping off the curious
crowd. Presently he spoke again.

“It’s easy, dying. Only it would be easier if I’d seen it again . . .
Ireland.”

“We’re very near,” Norah told him, pityingly.

“Near! And not to see it!” He tried to rise, helplessly. “Ah, but let me
look—let me look!”

David Linton’s eyes met the doctor’s.

“It can’t hurt him,” whispered the doctor. “Nothing can do that now.”

They lifted him, very gently. Ahead, the hills of Wicklow were green and
near. The grey sky had broken, and a little shaft of sunlight stole out
and lay upon the coast. It was as though Ireland smiled to welcome back
her son.

The dark eyes looked long and wistfully. Once he smiled at Norah; and
then looked back quickly, as though to lose no instant of home.
Presently his lips parted in broken words.

“Till we see . . . till we see Ireland again; and life or death will be
the same to us after that.” Then no more words came. But when the doctor
signed to them to lay him down he was still smiling.




                               CHAPTER V
                              INTO DONEGAL


“A homely-looking folk they are, these people of my kin;
Their hands are hard as horse-shoes, but their hearts come through the
  skin.
Old Michael Clancy said to me (his age is eighty-seven),
‘There’s no place like Australia—barring Ireland and Heaven!’”
V. J. DALEY.

‟WE ought to be nearly there,” said Jim.

“‘Ought’ seems to be the last argument that counts on this railway
line,” his father answered. “What grounds have you for your fond
belief?”

“It’s not time-tables,” his son admitted. “They wore out long ago; I
scrapped them when they got to the stage when reading them only led to
despair. Partly I’m hoping that the guard wasn’t merely trying to keep
up my spirits when he told me we’d get to Killard at three o’clock if
Jamesy Doyle wasn’t late with his milk-cans at Ballymoe; only he added
that ’twas the bad little ass Jamesy had, and if it lay down in the cart
how would the poor man be in time?”

“And will they wait for Jamesy and his cans?” queried Wally.

“Most certainly, I should think. Passengers are just odd happenings, to
the guard; but Jamesy is married to a woman that’s the cousin of his
wife’s aunt, and the guard evidently has a strong family sense. This
train exists as much to carry Jamesy’s cans as anything else. However,
there’s Ballymoe, and the gentleman on the platform looks as if he might
be Jamesy. And there’s the ass in the cart outside, standing up. I
expect it’s all right.”

The little train drew slowly into the wayside station, and the guard,
descending, wrung the hand of the somnolent gentleman enthroned upon the
milk-cans. Together they proceeded to load them into the van, but being
overcome by argument in the middle of the operation, relinquished work,
sat down on the cans, and gave themselves up to the delights of
conversation. The Linton family got out, and walked along the platform.
They had been travelling from early morning into the wilds of Donegal,
and, since leaving the main line for a succession of local trains, had
grown well accustomed to these sociable delays. Presently the
engine-driver and his fireman left their engine and joined the
discussion on the milk-cans. Norah strolled to the road and scratched
the ass gently, a proceeding accepted by the ass without resentment, but
without enthusiasm. Time went by.

The gathering on the platform dissolved itself after a while, the first
move being made by Mr. Jamesy Doyle, who remarked that his wife’d be
tearing the hair off of him, and she waiting for him for dinner.

“She’ll not wait long on ye; I know that one!” said the guard.

“She will, then; sure, haven’t I it bought in the little cart yonder?”
said Jamesy, with the calmness of certainty. He assisted to place the
remainder of his property in the van, and the guard, addressing Norah
with enormous politeness, mentioned that when she was quite ready the
train would go on. “Let you not be hurrying yourself—sure we’re that
late already as makes no difference,” he added, pleasantly. They climbed
in, and the little train clanged and rattled on its way.

At the next station two energetic men in tweed suits descended hurriedly
from the one first-class smoking-carriage and demanded their bicycles,
which had been put in an empty truck—the train being of the type known
as a “mixed goods.” Thereafter arose sounds of wrath and vituperation.

“Something’s up; I’m going to see,” said Wally.

They all went to see. The two cyclists, visions of helpless rage,
confronted a scene of desolation. The truck, being opened, disclosed
upon the floor a mingled heap of scrap-iron and twisted metal, which had
once been two fair bicycles: in the midst of which, firmly caught among
the battered spokes, a couple of fat wethers stood and bleated a woe
almost equal to that of the cyclists. A dozen more sheep, most of them
bearing traces of conflict with the defunct machines, in the shape of
scarred legs, pressed about the doorway, while the guard, distraught to
incoherence, endeavoured to restrain them from escaping while attempting
to justify himself before the outraged owners. Totally unsuccessful in
the second endeavour, he was only partially fortunate in the first: a
black-faced sheep, bearing a mudguard wedged upon his horns, made a dash
for freedom and fled wildly down the platform, apparently maddened by
his unfamiliar adornment.

“And I after putting them in at one end of the truck!” lamented the
guard—“and them bikes standing against the other end! Wasn’t there room
for them all—how would I know they’d mix up on me! Get back there, bad
luck to ye, ye vilyun!”—to another black-faced aspirant for liberty.

Helpers, divided in their sympathies, but with the preponderance of
feeling on the side of the guard, appeared mysteriously from an
apparently empty landscape and disentangled the sheep from the ruins.
The engine-driver, cutting the Gordian knot of debate, discovered that
the time-table demanded that the train should proceed forthwith; and the
cyclists were left foaming over a twisted heap on the platform,
threatening immediate telegrams to headquarters, and, if necessary,
murder. As the train slid away from the sound of their lamentations, the
fugitive sheep could be descried standing on a bank, his black visage
melancholy beneath the mudguard.

At the next station, the guard, with a chastened face, appeared at the
window.

“Killard, sir,” he stated. “And Patsy Burke, he have the outside car and
an ass-cart for ye.”

Mr. Linton and his party obeyed the summons gladly. They found
themselves on a grass-grown platform, boasting very rudimentary
station-buildings. Beyond, a road ran east and west, bordered by high
banks, while on either side were small fields and wide, flat stretches
of bog. A long, thin man advanced to meet them. No one else had left the
train, and he accepted them, without introduction, as his
responsibility.

“The car is below in the road,” he said. “The little horse, he have an
objection to the train; he’d lep a ditch sooner than face it. I’ll throw
the luggage on the ass-cart, sir, before I take you up.”

The guard, still subdued in spirit, was diligently hauling out boxes
from his van. A suit-case and the rod-box, failing to appear, were made
the objects of fevered search, despaired of, promised by the next train,
and finally discovered in an empty third class carriage, all within the
space of five minutes. The ass-cart, drawn by a dispirited donkey
without energy to disapprove of trains, was backed on to the platform,
and the luggage piled upon it in a tottery heap, secured—more or
less—by an assortment of knotted string and old rope. Then the guard
and engine-driver, both of whom had assisted enthusiastically, bade an
affectionate farewell, and the train disappeared slowly, while the
Australians followed Patsy Burke meekly to the outside car.

Dublin had already introduced them to the jaunting-car of Ireland, and
they had fallen instant victims to the fascination of that most
irresponsible vehicle. English tourists are wont to regard it with fear
and trembling until familiar with its ways: to hold on desperately, to
sit stiffly, and, very frequently, to fall off when rounding corners.
That the Linton party did none of these things was not due to any
superior intelligence on their parts, but merely to the fact that the
back-to-back position on the open-air cars of the Melbourne tramways
proved an excellent introduction to the Irish vehicle—insomuch that the
force of habit was so strong in Wally that the Melbourne gripman’s
habitual ejaculation, “Hold _tight_ round the curve!” sprang unbidden to
his lips every time the jarveys took a corner on one wheel. The Dublin
jarveys had liked the cheery Australians, who paid well and frankly
averred that there was never any conveyance like the jingling cars with
their merry little bells, and their good horses; and the jarveys of
Dublin are a critical race, with quick tongues and quicker wits. They
had confided to them their woes, which centred round the introduction of
motor-cars and the complete indifference of pedestrians to the rule of
the road—an indifference universal throughout Ireland, where the
unseasoned traveller is perpetually a-shiver with dread at threatened
street tragedies, perpetually averted by good luck that amounts to a
miracle.

“I never seen the equal of these people,” one of their drivers had said,
emitting a roar like a bull of Bashan, which barely saved an elderly
woman from what looked like deliberate suicide under his horse’s hoofs.
“Yerra, ma’am, is it owning the road you are?”—to the lady, who pursued
her leisurely way with the calmness born of many such episodes. “Young
or old, ’tis all the same; they do be strolling the streets for all the
world as if they was picking mushrooms, and taking no notice of you till
you’d be knocking them down—and then they do be annoyed! There’s only
one way, and that is to let a roar out of you at them—and then the look
they give you is worse than a curse!”

“I suppose you get into trouble if you kill more than six a day,” Wally
had said.

The jarvey grinned.

“Trouble, is it? Sure, some of them makes a trade of it; there’s them
old wasters in this town that’d ask nothing better than that you’d knock
’em down—not to kill them, but to knock a small piece off them, the way
you’d have to support them afterwards. There’s one man I but tipped with
the end of a shaft, and he strolling at his aise in a crowd. Crawling at
a slow walk I was; and what did he do but rowl on the ground before me,
letting on that he was kilt. There was none of the polis about, so I
left him rowling and calling murder!”

“Did you hear any more of him?”

“I did. Didn’t he come to me that evening and say he had his witnesses
ready, and he’d be making a polis-court matter of it if I didn’t give
him five pounds? ‘I do be making twenty-eight shillings a week,’ says
he, ‘in me health,’ says he, and now ’tis the way I cannot lift me hand
to me head,’ he says. Him, that never earned five shillings in a week in
his life, and not that, if he could steal it! I towld him to bring his
polis-court and his dirty witnesses, and that if he did, I’d pay the
five pounds for the pleasure I’d have in belting the life out of him.”

“And did he bring it?”

“He did not. I seen him a week after that, and he cleaning steps. ‘I’m
glad to see you looking so well and hearty, me poor man!’ says I to him;
and he thrun a look at me fit to kill. Sure I knew that one’d be more
anxious to keep out of the way of the polis than to be dandhering about
them with his cases!”

The Dublin cars had been smart affairs, spick-and-span with bright paint
and clean upholstering, every buckle on their harness polished brightly.
Their rubber tyres strove to soften the asperities of cobbled streets.
But the car to which Patsy Burke led the Australians was of a different
aspect: small and forbidding, with straight up-and-down seats whereon
reposed cushions from which the stuffing had chiefly escaped, the
insignificant remnant remaining in hard knobs in the corners. The
original wood peeped out through faint streaks of the original paint,
while here and there patches of deal and hoop-iron lent variety to the
exterior. Many different sets had contributed towards the composition of
the harness, wherein nothing matched except in age and decrepitude. A
tattered urchin stood at the head of the little horse which had an
objection to trains. The horse was asleep.

“If I were asked,” murmured Norah, surveying him, “I would say he had an
objection to moving at all.”

“He looks as if he would like to lean up against a tree and dream,” said
Wally, “and good gracious! is he going to drag the lot of us!”

“Why wouldn’t he?” asked Mr. Burke, with some asperity. “Git along with
ye to the ass, John Conolly,”—to the boy—“and lend a hand to the big
thrunk when the road does be rough, or it will fall off on ye. Will ye
get up, miss?”

“Is it far?” asked Norah, regarding the somnolent horse with troubled
eyes.

“’Tis five Irish miles, miss.”

“But can he take us all? There’s—there’s so much of us,” said Norah,
her glance roving over her tall menfolk, and dwelling finally on Mr.
Burke, who was not less tall.

“Him!” said Mr. Burke. “But isn’t the luggage on the ass-cart? Sure
it’ll only be a luxury for him—many’s the time I’ve known that one with
seven or eight behind him, going to a funeral, and he that full of
courage, I’d me own throubles to keep him from bolting? Let ye get up,
and ’tis little he’ll be making of ye.”

They got up, unhappily, and Mr. Burke hopped into the driver’s
seat—which is occupied only in time of stress, the jarvey greatly
preferring to drive from the side. He said, “G’wan, now!” to the little
horse, and that animal awoke and took the road gallantly, while a
cracked bell on his collar rattled a discordant accompaniment to his
hoof-beats.

They jogged on between the high banks. The scent of the whitethorn that
made snow upon their crests flooded the air, and mingled with deep wafts
of odour from clumps of furze lying golden in the fields. There were
other flowers starring the hedges; honeysuckle, waving long arms of
sweetness, and, nestling closely in the grass-grown banks, clusters of
wild violets, starry celandines and even a few late primroses. There
were many houses in sight; little whitewashed cabins scattered over the
hills, approached by narrow boreens or tiny lanes, so narrow that it
seemed that even an ass-cart could scarcely manage to squeeze in between
their towering banks.

“Did you ever see such little paddocks—fields, I ought to say?” uttered
Wally. “And the great fat banks and hedges between them! Why, they must
cover as much ground as there is in many of the fields!”

“We’d put wire-fences, in Australia,” said Mr. Linton, laughing. “It’s
queer, when you come to think of it: we’re supposed to have land to
spare, but we put the narrowest fences that can be made; and here, there
isn’t enough to go round, and they cover up ever so much of it with
their banks.”

“Oh, but aren’t you glad they don’t make wire-fences!” Norah broke out.
“They’re so hideous: and these hedges are just exquisite.”

“Not being a landholder, I am, indeed,” said her father. “The idea of
this landscape given up to wire-fences is depressing—long may they
stick to their banks! And their shelter must be valuable in this
country; they don’t seem to have many trees.” His eye ran over the bare
little fields. “Don’t you grow trees, in Donegal?” he asked of the back
of Mr. Burke.

That gentleman, feeling himself addressed, swung round.

“There do be plenty in the woods and in gentlemen’s grounds, sir. I
never seen any in the fields. They do say there was any amount in the
ould ancient days, or how would the bogs be there? Forests, no less; and
quare beasts in them. I’ve seen ould heads of deer with horns that wide
you’d never get them up a boreen. There were no fields and no fences in
those days, and people lived by hunting—great hunting those big deer
would give them, to be sure. If you’d kill a rabbit nowadays it’d be as
much as you’d do to ate it before the polis had you!”

“If killing rabbits is what you care for, you might come to Australia,”
said Jim, laughing. “You would certainly be welcome there. Only after a
little while, you wouldn’t eat any.”

“There was a lad I knew in Derry went out to them parts,” said Mr.
Burke, “and he sent home letters with such tales of his doings you
wouldn’t believe them. He said there were beasts that hopped on their
tails faster than a horse ’ud gallop, and rabbits that had the face ate
off the country. Like a carpet on the floor, he says. But sure he was
always the boy that’d spin you a yarn.”

“It was a true yarn, anyhow,” Jim remarked.

“Do ye tell me, now?” The long face of Patsy Burke was respectful, but
incredulous, “And another thing he said, that a man couldn’t believe:
that the genthry’d go out and poison foxes!”

“They would,” said Mr. Linton. “Gladly.”

“But——” Words failed Mr. Burke. He gaped at his passengers. The horse
dropped to a walk, unheeded.

“Poison them, or shoot them, or get rid of them in any way possible,”
said Jim, enjoying the mounting agony of Mr. Burke. “We can’t do much
hunting, you see, when we live on big places, with the nearest neighbour
perhaps twenty miles off; and often the hills are so steep and rough,
and so thick with fallen timber, that horses and hounds would want wings
to hunt through them. But a man may have thousands of sheep on hills
like that.”

“Do ye tell me? Thousands, is it?”

“Rather. And the foxes breed like rabbits in those hills, and there’s
nothing they like so well as young lambs. You can go out in the morning
and find forty or fifty dead lambs—the cruel brutes of foxes just eat
their noses and go on to the next. When you see that number of little
lambs killed, in that fashion, you’re ready to start poisoning foxes.”

“Ye would so,” said Mr. Burke, explosively. “And no one interferes with
ye?”

“Why, you get paid for it,” Jim said. To which Mr. Burke replied by a
gasp of “God help us!” and relieved his feelings by lashing the horse
with a shout of “G’wan, now!” The horse broke into a surprised canter,
and they rocked down a little hill. At its foot a wide expanse of bog
stretched westward, looking like a great grassy plain. Here and there,
near the road, men were working at cutting turf, armed with the loy or
narrow, sharp spade, which takes out a sod of turf, the size of a brick,
to be stacked to dry in the sun. A great corner had already been cut
away, and lay bleak and desolate. Above its level the wall of turf rose
three or four feet, a dark-brown glutinous-looking mass, smoothly marked
with the scars of the loy. There were deep pools of water here and
there: the brown bog-water that scares the English tourists who finds it
in a bedroom jug in a hotel, and gives foundation for future scathing
comments on the dirty ways of Ireland: the fact being that if its
exquisite velvet-softness could be taken to London, most of the Bond
Street complexion specialists would go out of business for lack of
customers.

“So that’s turf,” commented Wally, looking curiously at the rough stacks
of sods, which the sun was drying to a lighter colour than the deep
brown of the bog-face. “It doesn’t look the sort of stuff you’d make
fires of—wherein I expect I show my hideous ignorance.”

Mr. Burke had begun with a snort at the first part of this remark, but
checked it in its birth at the frank avowal of the conclusion.

“Wait till ye see it burn, sir,” he said. “Ye’d not want a better fire,
barring ye could get a bit of bog-wood to mix with it. Then ye’d not get
its aiqual if ye were walking the world all your life.”

“Are those pools deep?” Norah asked, looking at the still brown water,
fringed with reeds and sedges.

“Some of ’em’s no depth at all; and there’s some that deep that no man
knows the bottom of ’em. They’d take anyone and swallow him entirely,
the way he’d never be heard of again; and they do say the bog keeps ’em
fresh as if they’d just fallen in, only I dunno would it be true: I
never seen anybody that had come out. It’s one of the old stories that
do be going in the country.”

“When _we_ talk about a bog, we mean something that looks—well, boggy,”
Norah said. “I never thought an Irish bog looked so pretty; all grass
and rushes, like a big plain. Why do they call it a bog?”

“You’d know if you got into it,” said Mr. Burke, bearing patiently with
the ignorance of the foreigner. “There’s parts of it firm enough to
gallop a horse over; but you’d want to know where you were going, it’s
that treacherous—it’d let you down as deep as your waist in a second,
and it looking safe as a street. Some of the mosses that do be growing
on it ’ud warn you: there’s one or two kinds that only grow where it’s
deep and quaking. As for pretty—it’s airly yet for flowers; but you’d
see it like a garden, in the autumn, with meadowsweet and loosestrife
and canavan, that they call the bog-cotton, like snow lying on it.
There’s no end to the quare things that do be growing in a bog.”

They passed ass-carts, built up with basket work to form creels, piled
high with turf,—generally in the charge of a barefooted urchin,
dark-eyed and graceful in his rags, who would fling a cheery “Good-day”
at the car rattling by, touching his cap to “the genthry.”

“’Tis a great year for saving turf,” Mr. Burke told them. “There’s no
knowing what the war’ll be doing with prices; they say the poor
people’ll be hard put to it to go on living at all. So everyone’s
getting turf; sure, it’s easier to be hungry if you’re warm. I dunno, at
all, why would they make a war: didn’t we have enough and too much to
pay for tea and tobacco as it was without the ould Kaiser poking in his
nose?” Thus adjusting satisfactorily the responsibility for his
financial troubles, Mr. Burke addressed the horse angrily, and drove on
in silence.

They came to a little river, brawling merrily under a bridge of grey
stone. A turn in the road brought trees in view, fringing a lough that
lay tranquil in the sunlight; a placid sheet of blue water broken here
and there by tiny islands. Towards the end that was nearest, the trees
were thickly planted. Between them they caught glimpses of an old stone
house nestling in a wilderness of a garden that ran down almost to the
edge of the lough.

Patsy Burke swung the little horse in through a gateway, the iron gates
of which stood invitingly open. They jogged up a winding avenue,
overhung with lofty beech-trees. It ended suddenly in front of the
house. Through a wide doorway they could see a dim hall, where a
bewildering collection of old guns and blunderbusses was ranged over a
massive mahogany table, the legs of which ended in claw-feet that would
have drawn a connoisseur like a magnet. Honeysuckle and roses climbed
together up the old walls, framing the doorway in blossom.

“Are ye there, ma’am?” bawled Patsy.

A pleasant-faced woman came through the hall quickly.

“I’d have given up expecting you, if that old train was ever in time,”
she said, giving a hand to Norah as that damsel hopped from the car.
“Aren’t you all tired out, and you travelling since early morning? Come
in then—there’s hot water waiting in your rooms, and tea will be ready
in ten minutes. Is the luggage coming, Patsy?”

“It is, ma’am,” responded Mr. Burke. “Lasteways, if that image of a John
Conolly doesn’t play any of his thricks with the ass.”

“Perhaps, now, you’d be better going back to meet him when you have the
horse stabled,” suggested his mistress. “I wouldn’t have the luggage
delayed.”

“Ah, sure, it will be all right,” said Mr. Burke, hastily, “John
Conolly’s not that bad; he’ll get it here sometime, but where’d be the
use of hurrying the ass? Well, I’ll throw a look down the road when I’m
after putting the car by, ma’am.”

“And that makes sure of me poor Brownie getting a good grooming,”
murmured the landlady, ushering her guests into the house as the car
jogged stablewards. “Patsy’s not that fond of a walk that he’d scamp his
job to be travelling the road after John Conolly. Are you there,
Bridget?”

“I am, ma’am,” said a pretty girl, appearing from the back of the hall
with such swiftness as to compel the belief that she had been
surreptitiously observing the new-comers.

“Take the gentlemen to their rooms,” commanded the landlady. “Will you
come with me, Miss Linton?”

Norah followed her up the broad staircase. A wide corridor led through
mouldering archways, whence passages branched off to right and left. The
walls bore signs of decorations of a bygone day, now faint and faded
with age. The landlady threw open the door of a large room, with two
windows looking over the lough. A huge bed occupied an alcove: bare
acreages of floor intervened between isolated pieces of furniture, with
rugs lying, like islands, on the stained boards.

“I took up the carpet—’twas old and there were holes in it you’d fall
through,” said the landlady. “But I could put you in a smaller room if
you’d rather have a carpet.”

“I like this,” Norah said, looking round the clean bareness of the room.
“But can’t I have the windows open?”

“You’ll have to fight Bridget over them,” replied the landlady, flinging
both windows wide. “I opened them twice this morning, but she shut them
again; and the second time she was so anxious about all the deaths you’d
be dying with the dint of the cold blast sweeping in, that I let them
stay.”

“I didn’t think there was any cold blast,” Norah said laughing.

“There wasn’t; but Bridget thinks that any air that comes in through an
open window is a blast, even if it’s the middle of summer. Have you
everything you want, Miss Linton? I’m sure you’ll all be famished for
your tea, and I’ll run and see to it.”

“I think this is a jolly place,” Norah said, as they gathered, ten
minutes later, round a table that might certainly have groaned under its
load of good things, had it not been made of exceedingly solid old
mahogany. “It’s not a bit like a boarding-house, is it? There’s such a
home-y feel about it.”

“There’s a home-y look about this table,” Jim averred. “I haven’t seen
anything like it since we left Billabong.”

There were crusty loaves of Irish soda-bread, which is better than
anything else except the home-made bread of Australia, heaps of brown,
crisp scones, buttered hot-cakes, and glass dishes with ruby-coloured
jams. A bowl of cream was in the middle, and a dish of rich dark honey
in the comb—not like the anæmic honey one buys in London, which is made
by fat and lazy bees out of dishes of sugar and water, and tastes like
it. The Irish bees had worked over miles of heathery moorland, and their
honey held something of the heather’s fresh sweetness.

“Think of the trenches—and bully beef!” ejaculated Wally. “I say,
what’s this?”

He had uncovered a smoking plateful of a queer flat substance, on which
attention was immediately focussed.

“Does one eat it?” Norah queried.

“Blessed if I know,” Jim answered. “It looks a bit queer.”

Light suddenly illumined Mr. Linton.

“Bless us, that’s potato-cake!” he exclaimed. “I haven’t tasted it for
many a year, and it’s one of the best things going. It ought to be eaten
so hot that it burns the mouth, so I advise you not to lose time.’ He
helped himself, declaring that no considerations of etiquette were to
stand in the way of the proper temperature of a potato-cake, and the
others somewhat doubtfully followed his example. In a very short time
the plate was empty.

“_That’s_ a recipe I’ll take back to Brownie!” was Norah’s significant
comment. “Do you think Mrs. Moroney would let me have a lesson on it in
the kitchen?”

“Mrs. Moroney seems inclined to eat from one’s hand,” said Mr. Linton.
“She’s desperately anxious for us to be comfortable. You know, we were
told in London that she had only begun this business since the war—her
husband is at the front—so time hasn’t soured her as it sours most
landladies. We’re lucky in catching her in the fluid state: later on
she’ll solidify into the adamantine condition that is truly
landladylike.”

“Meanwhile, she’s rather an old duck,” said Wally. “Hallo, who’s that?”

A small rosy face, crowned with a tangle of yellow curls, was peeping
round the doorway. Finding itself observed, it hastily disappeared.
Norah snatched a sponge-cake and went in swift pursuit, returning, a
moment later, with a very small boy clad in a blue shirt and
ridiculously diminutive knickerbockers, who greeted the company with a
friendly smile somewhat complicated by a large mouthful of cake.

“Well, you’re a cheerful person,” Jim said. “What’s your name?”

“Timsy,” said the new-comer. “And I’m eight.”

“I call that genius,” said Wally. “He knew you’d ask him that next, so
he saved you the trouble. Do you live here, Timsy?”

The small boy nodded vigorously.

“Me daddy’s gorn,” he volunteered.

“Where?”

“Fightin’ the Gair-mins. They’s bad—they’s after hurtin’ him in the
laig.”

“Did they?” said Wally, sympathetically. “Poor daddy! Is he better?”

“He is. He’s goin’ to shoot me some.”

“Is he, now? Will he bring them home?”

“I dunno will he. I asked the postman, an’ he said daddy couldn’t post
’em.”

“That wasn’t nice of the postman,” said Jim. “What would you do with
them if you got them?”

“Frow fings at ’em,” said Timsy, valiantly.

“Good man!” said Jim. “We’ll have you in the trenches before the war’s
over, I expect. Another cake, old chap?”

Timsy accepted the cake graciously, digging his white teeth into it with
appreciation.

“I’m after having me tea,” he confided. “An’ Bridget said there wasn’t
any cake. But there’s lots.” His eye swept the table.

“There is, indeed,” said Jim, guiltily. “Just you have as much as you
feel like.”

“Are you a soldier?” demanded Timsy, his eyes on Jim’s uniform.

The boy nodded.

“Like me daddy?”

“Not as good, I expect,” said Jim.

“Me daddy’s the finest soldier ever went out of Ireland—old Nanny told
me he was. And she said if once he met that old Kaiser he’d be sorry he
ever got borned. An’ he would, too, if me daddy cot him. An he’s a
sergeant, ’cause he’s got free stripes on his arm. Why hasn’t you got
any?”

“I don’t know as much as your daddy,” said Jim, probably with perfect
truth. “When I get bigger they may give me some.”

“You’re bigger than me daddy, now,” said Timsy, surveying him. “Only you
haven’t got any whiskers. I ’spect you have to have whiskers before you
get free stripes.”

“I expect so,” Jim agreed. “I’ll grow some the first minute I get time.
What have you done with your legs, Timsy?”

“Scratched ’em, I ’spect,” said Timsy, indifferently, casting a fleeting
glance at his bare brown legs, which bore many marks of warfare. “They’s
bwambles in the wood. Why is your buttons dif-runt to me daddy’s?”

“What are your daddy’s like?”

Timsy fished laboriously in the pocket of his shirt.

“I got one here,” he said. “It came uncottoned, an’ fell off, an’ daddy
said I could have it. Look—it’s nicer than yours.”

“Of course it is—isn’t your daddy a sergeant?” said Jim, gravely. Timsy
looked up sharply, and was seized with compunction.

“Don’t you mind,” he said, hastily putting away his cherished button,
lest dangling it before the eyes of his new friend should excite vain
longings in his soul. He slipped a grimy little paw into Jim’s. “’Twill
not be long at all before they make a sergeant of you. Can you hurry up
an’ grow whiskers?”

“I’ll do my best,” returned Jim, laughing. “You’re a good old sportsman,
Timsy. Have another cake.”

Timsy’s head was bent over the dish in the tremendous effort of
selection, when a slight commotion was heard in the hall.

“I was without in the scullery,” said a high-pitched voice, “and I after
giving him his tea. ‘Let you sit quiet there till I have a minute to put
a decent appearance on you,’ says I. ‘’Tis not in them ould rags you’d
be having the genthry see you,’ I says. With that I wint back, an’ the
kitchen was as bare as the palm of me hand. I’ve called him till me
throat’s cracking——”

“Is that you, Timsy?” whispered Norah. The dancing eyes of the culprit
were sufficient answer.

“Blessed Hour!” said the voice of Mrs. Moroney, torn between relief and
wrath. Her good-natured face hung in the doorway, presently followed by
her ample form. “Is it you, then, Timsy Moroney, disgracing me and
annoying the gentleman! Why would you have him on your knee, sir, and he
the ragamuffin of the world? I’d not have you troubled with him.”

“He’s not troubling me at all, Mrs. Moroney,” Jim assured her. “He’s an
awfully friendly little chap. Does it matter if he has cakes?”

The question savoured of shutting the stable-door after the stealing of
the steed. Timsy ate his cake hurriedly, lest disaster await him in the
answer.

“There’s nothing he doesn’t eat,” said his mother resignedly. “But I’d
not let him annoy you, sir.”

“There was no cake in the kitchen!” said Timsy, fixing reproachful eyes
on his parent. “How would I have me tea, an’ no cake?”

“Cock you up with cake!” returned Mrs. Moroney, spiritedly. “Well able
to go without it you are, for once in a while.” She relented before her
son’s appealing gaze. “Come away, then, and let Bridget wash you: sure,
she’s screaming all over the place after you.”

Timsy hesitated, regarding Jim with affection.

“Can I come back some time?” he demanded.

“Of course you can,” said Jim.

The small boy climbed down slowly.

“I’m destroyed with washin’,” he complained. “’Tis only at dinner-time
she had me all soaped. An’ I _hate_ shoes . . .” The voice of his
lamentations died away as his mother swept him from the room.

“Nice kid,” said Jim, getting up. “Let’s go out and reconnoitre.”

The shadows were lengthening across the strip of tree-fringed grass
leading to the gate. Near the house, the garden was a wilderness of
colour and fragrance. Roses and sweet-peas, stocks and asters,
nasturtiums and clematis, in a bewildering tangle, jostled each other in
the untidy beds and on the old stone walls. Here and there was a
mouldering summer-house, its entrance almost blocked with hanging
creepers, while in shady nooks in the winding walks were seats with an
appearance of old age that suggested prudence in sitting down.

Presently they came upon a path leading abruptly down-hill to the lough.
They followed it, passing out of the garden into a little field where
small black Kerry cattle looked inquisitively at them, and through a
rickety gate on to the shore, where grey pebbles made a rough beach. A
disconsolate donkey, attached to a windlass, walked round and round in a
weary circle, pumping water up to the house—a spectacle which promptly
set Norah to hunting for a thistle for him, which the donkey received
coldly.

“It would take more than a thistle to sweeten that job,” said Wally.
“Come and look at the boat.”

Mr. Patsy Burke was rather feverishly busy with the boat—it had
apparently occurred to him that since the new-comers would assuredly
want her it might be as well to make certain that she was sound. She was
not sound—to rectify which obvious condition Mr. Burke laboured
mightily.

“She’s seen better days,” remarked Mr. Linton, looking at the ancient
vessel with critical eyes. Already she had been extensively patched: her
paint was merely a memory, and she bore “a general flavour of mild
decay.” The oars, which lay near, had also been mended many times. They
did not match: a fact which the Australians were to discover later.

“Ah, sure, she’s a good boat,” said Mr. Burke. “’Tis only the thrifle of
a leak she have in her. You wouldn’t ask an aisier or a kinder boat to
pull than that one—begob, she’s the best boat to be found on any lough
hereabouts.” This assertion also was to be verified by time. “In the
ould times, when the family was here, many’s the day I’ve seen her, full
of red cushions and fine ladies, and she tearing up the lough like a
racehorse!” The poetic nature of Mr. Burke’s memories moved him to a
sigh.

“Who was the family?” queried Mr. Linton.

“The O’Donnells, to be sure,” answered Mr. Burke, his long face
expressing faint surprise at ignorance so vast. “They owned all this
country, from the ould ancient times—but there’s none of them left now.
Me gran’father, and his gran’father before him, was tenants under them.
I’m told they were kings, one time. But there’s nothing left of any of
the ould stock now—all their houses is sold, or falling to pieces, an’
they at the ends of the earth, seeking their fortune.”

“The house is very old, isn’t it?” Norah asked.

“’Tis ould, and ’tis falling to decay—it ’ud take a power of money to
put it right. Ah, the good days is gone from Ireland—what with the land
war and the famine, all the money was swept from her.” Mr. Burke stopped
abruptly. He pulled his battered felt hat over his eyes and hammered
vigorously at the old boat.

They went up through the fragrant garden, now heavy with evening
shadows. Above them the gaunt old house towered, bosomed in its trees,
dim with the night mist from the lough. Lights were beginning to twinkle
from the windows, and the faint acrid smell of turf fires stole upon the
still air. To Norah’s fancy the silent garden was peopled with shadowy
forms—tall gallants and exquisite ladies of a bygone day, and little
children who ran, laughing, along paths that had no tangle of neglected
growth. It was theirs; the dream visions made her feel an interloper as
she crossed the threshold into the lit hall.




                               CHAPTER VI
                         OF LITTLE BROWN TROUT


                “Loughareema! Loughareema!
                    Lies so high among the heather,
                A little lough, a dark lough,
                    The wather’s black an’ deep:
                Ould herons go a-fishing there,
                    An’ sea-gulls all together
                Float roun’ the one green island
                    On the fairy lough asleep.”
                MOIRA O’NEIL.

A WEEK went by with the mysterious swiftness of holiday weeks,
especially in Ireland. No one quite knew what became of the long June
days; they dawned in light mists that lay on the surface of Lough
Aniller, reddened with the sunrise, only to vanish as the sun mounted;
they widened to warm brightness, with clear blue skies flecked with the
tiniest cloudlets; and sank to long, delicious twilights, with just
enough chill in the air to make light coats necessary. No one was
inclined for strenuous exertion. Jim and Wally, under orders to take
life very easily for the present, were content to lie about in the
fragrant grass, to go for short walks along the borders of the lough, or
to let Patsy Burke row them slowly up its placid waters, where scarcely
a ripple marked the rising of a trout. To Norah and her father it was
sufficient happiness to watch their boys gradually winning back
strength. Each day that went by and brought no recurrence of
throat-trouble was something achieved; and the long, golden days
smoothed the weary lines from the boyish faces, and brought something of
the old tan into their cheeks. There was no doubt that as a sanatorium
Donegal merited all that had been claimed of her.

They were the only guests in the old stone house. Later on, Mrs. Moroney
told them, people were coming from Dublin and Belfast: but the war had
temporarily killed the tourist traffic from England, and Irish fishing
was having a much-needed rest.

“But for the fowl I have, indeed, I’d be hard put to it,” said Mrs.
Moroney. She reared innumerable ducks and chickens, and carried on a
thriving trade, sending them ready dressed to England—aided by a
parcels post system which, unlike that of Australia, does not appear to
regard the senders and receivers of parcels as wealthy eccentrics, to be
heavily charged, but otherwise unworthy of consideration. At all times
Mrs. Moroney was to be found plucking and dressing her wares—keeping,
nevertheless, an eagle eye upon her household, and always ready to take
interest in the doings of her guests. Good nature beamed from her
countenance, and chicken-fluff always ornamented her hair.

Timsy had constituted himself Jim’s shadow, and courier-in-chief to the
party. He knew all the country with a boy’s knowledge, had an
acquaintance with the ways of trout which seemed miraculous in one of
his years, and cherished a feud of long standing with John Conolly,
whose treatment of the little ass did not come up to the standard
instilled into Timsy by the sergeant, now in France. All these matters
he placed at the absolute disposal of Jim. The rest of the party he
treated politely: they were well enough. But the big boy in khaki was
somehow different, and Timsy gave him all his warm little heart.

It was a shock to him that Jim and Wally appeared in rough tweeds on the
morning after their arrival.

“Where’s you uny-forms?” demanded Timsy, hopping on one foot on the
mossy path, rather like an impertinent sparrow.

“Upstairs,” Jim said, solemnly.

“Why for don’t you put ’em on?”

“Didn’t want to.”

Timsy surveyed him with a pained air.

“Me daddy says uny-form had a right to be wore all the time,” he said.
“He didn’t have no uvver clothes when _he_ came home.”

Jim relented at the small, worried face.

“Tell you how it is, old man,” he said. “The old Germans laid us out;
and we’re going to get better as quick as we can, to go and lick them.”

“Yes?” said Timsy, digging his heel into the earth, in bloodthirsty
ecstasy. “That’s what me daddy’s after doing.”

“Of course he is. Well, we’ll get better quicker if we haven’t got to
wear heavy uniforms all the time, don’t you see? So we asked leave; and
a big general said we could put on other clothes. He was a very big
general, so it’s all right, isn’t it?”

“Was he very big?”

“Enormous,” said Jim, gravely.

“If he was very ’normous, I ’spect it’s all right,” Timsy said,
relinquishing his point with reluctance. “Only I likes you best in
uny-forms.” His eye suddenly lit with new hope. “Do you think you’d wear
’em on Sunday, an’ you goin’ to church?”

“I would,” Jim said. “There, it’s a bargain, Timsy.” So Timsy accepted
the tweed knickerbockers as necessary evils, and peace reigned.

As for the trout, they had remained in peace. Patsy Burke had given the
Australians a few lessons in throwing a fly, a gentle art to which they
did not take very kindly, though they proved apt enough pupils. But the
trout were not rising, and they found it dull. Their previous experience
had been either the primitive method of a stick, a string, and a worm,
in the creeks at home, or a deep-sea hand-line with a substantial bait
and a heavy sinker. They liked these peaceful ways, and to them the
incessant business of casting seemed, in the Australian phrase, “too
much like hard work.” They endeavoured, however, to keep this view from
the scandalized Mr. Burke, whose scorn at the mere mention of a
hand-line was almost painful to witness.

In defence of their apathy, it must be admitted that the sport was poor.
The weather had been unfavourable, and the brown trout declined to rise;
but even in the best of years Lough Aniller, the big lough by the house,
was not a good fishing lake. A few rises came to them, which they
missed: and they had the poor satisfaction of beholding Mr. Burke land a
specimen which weighed not quite a quarter of a pound. It did not seem,
to untutored eyes quite worth the candle.

“’Tis a poor lake, anyways,” Mr. Burke said. They were paddling home in
the setting sun, the water full of bright reflections. “I dunno why the
trout wouldn’t be in it: it’s the biggest hereabouts, but they don’t
seem wishful for it at all. There’s Lough Nacurra and Lough
Anoor—they’re little enough, but you’d get finer fishing in them in a
day than in a week of Lough Aniller.”

“Why don’t we go there?” spoke Wally, lazily.

“There’s no reason in the world why you shouldn’t. Sure, they’re no
distance, and the fishing belongs to the house; there’ll not be a rod on
them, barring your own.”

“What do they mean, Patsy?” Norah asked. Mr. Burke was her instructor in
the Irish language, and she thirsted for translations of each unknown
word.

“Lough Anoor’s the lough of the gold, miss, and Lough Nacurra’s the
lough of the Champions. I dunno why they have those names on them;
there’s a lot of ould stories goin’. Whatever reason anybody was to
give, no one could say it was wrong.”

“Well, Lough Aniller means the lough of the Eagle, you said, Patsy, but
there don’t seem any eagles about.”

“Thrue for ye,” agreed Mr. Burke; “they do not. But I wouldn’t wonder if
there was any amount of them here in the ould ancient times.” He scanned
the placid waters with disfavour. “There’s one thing they couldn’t call
it, and that’s Nabrack—the lough of the Trout!”

“They certainly couldn’t—whoever ‘they’ may be,” said Wally, laughing.
“There are just about as many trout in this lough as there are in the
front garden, I believe. Who’ll come to one of the others
to-morrow?—I’ll have to learn their names before I say them in public.
I vote for the one that belongs to the Champions!”

“Lough Nacurra—ye might do worse,” said Patsy. “’Tis a good little
lough, and there’s a small little island in it, that ’ud be a good place
for you to be taking your dinners. The boat’s no great thing at all—but
she’s better than the one on Lough Anoor.”

“What!” exclaimed Mr. Linton. “Is she worse than this one?” The boat on
Lough Aniller had not struck the party as an up-to-date craft.

“She is,” said Mr. Burke. “But there’s no distance to be pulling her:
sure, the lough’s not big enough to go any ways far. If ’twas Lough
Anoor, now, there’d be no good in me comin’ with you, for five couldn’t
sit in her. Four’ll be all she’ll hold.”

“Is she safe?” asked Mr. Linton.

“Is it safe? Sure, you wouldn’t sink that one, not if you danced in
her,” said Patsy.

They had drifted almost to the end of the lough. Above them the high
road crossed the stone bridge. The whir of a motor hummed across it,
and, looking up, they saw a grey runabout car, driven by a man of whose
face little could be seen, since goggles hid his eyes and his cap was
pulled low. Patsy touched his cap hastily as the car vanished in its own
dust.

“’Tis the young masther,” he said; and added, as if in further
explanation, “Sir John, I mean—Sir John O’Neill.”

“Does he live here?” Norah asked.

“He do, miss. But a lot of his time he’s somewhere else—London or
foreign parts.”

“I thought every landowner about here had gone to the war,” Mr. Linton
said.

“Begob, Sir John ’ud give the two eyes out of his head to be gone, too,”
said Patsy, shortly. “But they won’t take him. ’Tis—’tis weakly he is.
He have the spirit of ten men in him; them ould German’s ’ud find their
hands full, and they to be tackling him in a tight place. Well,
well—some people don’t get much luck.” He stopped short, and rowed
violently for some time.

“Do you get many salmon here?” Jim asked, idly. It was evident that Mr.
Burke did not wish to pursue the subject of Sir John O’Neill.

“In the river—but only a few,” replied the boatman. “’Twouldn’t be
worth your while getting a licence, sir. Sure it’s them ’ud give you a
different idea of fishing. I got one in Lough Illion, in Kerry, one time
when I was staying in them parts. That was the fish! He tuk me four and
a half hours to kill.”

“Whew—w!” said Jim, respectfully. “He must have been a big fellow.”

“Well, he was not that big at all; but he tuk the fly as if he meant it,
and down he went to the bottom like a shtone. An’ there he lay, and I
going round and round him in the boat, trying any ways to shift him, and
he sulking in the weeds. Banging my rod I was, and pelting at him all
the bits of rock I had in the boat, and I couldn’t shtir him. I was
famished out, for it was pegging hailshtones and sleet. At last he come
up; and then he thought better of it, when he saw the sky above him, and
he was going down again, and I let a dhrive at him with the gaff, and
got him just near the tail—great luck I had with him, to be sure.”

“It was about time you did have some luck,” Jim remarked.

“There’s not many of them ’ud sulk like that,” said Patsy. “Generally
they’d be tiring themselves with the runs they’s take at the first. And
if they thrun a lep or two—’tis the lep takes most out of them: it
breaks their courage. There’s nothing like a salmon, to my way of
thinking, though there’s a lot of the gentry do be sticking to the
little brown trout. Will ye be for Lough Nacurra in the morning, sir?”

“We will—if you’ll promise us fish,” Jim responded.

“It ’ud be a bold man to promise anything this weather,” said Patsy,
looking with disfavour at the clear sky and the placid lough.
“Still-an’-all, ’tis a good lough; if they’re rising anywhere it’ll be
on Nacurra.”

Morning came with a haze lying on the blue hills, and a fitful breeze:
the best fishing day yet, Patsy pronounced it, as he shouldered a
gigantic luncheon-basket and led the way down the avenue and along the
dusty high road. They struck across the bog presently, following a path
that led through a tangle of the sweet bog-myrtle; and, in a little
harbour of smooth grey stones at the western end of Lough Nacurra, came
upon their boat, half-concealed among the rushes fringing the water’s
edge. The lough was a long narrow sheet of water, widening a little at
the far end, where a thickly-wooded island showed dimly through the
haze.

“Have you been storing water in the boat?” Jim inquired, gravely,
surveying the ancient craft among the rushes. Its bottom timbers bore
evidence of long soaking.

“Tis a thrifle of dampness she have in her,” admitted Mr. Burke,
stepping in carefully and getting to work with a baling-tin. “I’m after
sending John Conolly up only this morning to bale her out, but he’s the
champion at scamping a job. Ah, she’ll dry out beautifully in the sun,
sir, once I have her emptied. There now—let you get in gently, sir.”

“I will,” said Mr. Linton, placing his feet with extreme caution, and
coming to rest thankfully in the stern. “I don’t want to begin the day
with a ducking, and those bottom boards look as if they would crumble
under my weight. Take care, Wally—this is a craft to be treated with
respect.”

“Have you drowned many in this one?” queried Jim.

Mr. Burke emitted a deep chuckle.

“Yerra, you will have your joke, sir!” he said, making hasty repairs to
a rowlock that chiefly consisted of rusty wire, of which more than one
strand had broken away. “There’s many a good fish killed in worse boats
than this. A lick of paint, now, and you wouldn’t know her.”

“I wouldn’t call her a boat at all,” retorted Jim, disposing his long
legs so as to avoid, as far as possible, the steadily increasing
dampness in the bottom. “She’s a hoary antique, and she ought to be in a
museum; but if you say she’ll stay afloat, Patsy, we’re game. Lend me
that baling-tin while you’re rowing, and I’ll try to discourage the
lough from entering.”

Mr. Linton declined to fish, remarking that he preferred to be ready to
swim when necessary, and would meanwhile officiate as baler as soon as
Jim was ready to get to work with his rod. Patsy pulled out gently,
until they were clear of rushes. A light wind rippled the water, sending
tiny wavelets lapping against the sides of the boat; overhead, clouds
drifted across a soft blue sky and now and then blotted out the sun. The
hills sloping down to the lough on three sides were half shrouded in
haze.

“’Tis a perfect fishing-day,” Patsy pronounced, shipping his oars and
letting the boat drift gently. “If there was a little more wind itself
ye’d soon have a tremenjious basket of fish.”

Patsy’s predictions were by this time well known to the Australians. He
suffered, as Wally said, from enthusiasms, and all his geese were swans;
so that his cheerful forecast raised no throb of hope in their hearts.
He had been as cheerful on other mornings, when they had fished in vain.

“I don’t quite see the fascination of it,” Wally commented, after ten
minutes of steady whipping the water. “It’s so continuous; and you get
nothing for it.”

“Give me a good sinker and a plump slab of clam for a bait—and the
schnapper on the bite,” Jim responded. “I don’t believe these trout know
how to bite at all.”

“You don’t say bite—it’s ‘rise,’” said Norah, gloomily.

“Why?”

“I don’t know. Perhaps because they don’t bite. They certainly don’t.”

“They do not,” Wally agreed. “Perhaps they rise and saunter past this
queer collection of sham insects that we dangle on the face of the
waters: and if you have luck you hook them as they go by. Only we don’t
have luck.”

They fished on, sadly, casting with a precision that won commendation
from Mr. Burke, and to which long practice with a stock whip had
probably contributed. Nothing occurred, except the end of the lough:
whereupon Patsy resumed the oars, rowed to the end whence they had
started, and began up drift again.

“Do people do this all day—for weeks?” Norah demanded.

“Yerra, they do, miss.”

“Well, what do they do it _for_?” Norah said, desperately. “I don’t see
any fun at all. I’m going to take the oars presently, Patsy, and you can
have my rod.”

“If ever I put hard-earned pay into contraptions like this again!” Jim
uttered, gazing despondently on the dainty ten feet green-heart rods,
new and workmanlike with their fresh tackle. “They looked just top-hole
in the shop, and they do still; but that’s all there is about them. I
vote we go and scramble over a heathery mountain or two, and stop
whipping this old lough.”

“Hear, hear!” said Wally. “Let’s get Patsy to put us ashore at the lower
end, and we’ll leave the trout to some one else. I’m blessed if I fish
again until we get back to the creek at Billabong—with a worm and a
sinker, and a nice little cork bobbing on the top of the water. No
science, but you get fish. These old Irish trout—my aunt!”

His reel whirred suddenly under his hand, and his rod bent double. There
was a swirl in the water. The line ran out sharply, and something that
was living gold in the sunlight leaped, flashed for an instant, and was
gone again. Patsy uttered a howl.

“Leave him run, sir!—give and take! Reel in when the strain is off him.
Aisy now, sir!”

“Off him!” gasped Wally. “Why, he pulls like a working bullock! Won’t
the rod break?”

“It will not,” said Patsy. “Drop the point, sir, if he leps. Yerra, sure
that’s a fine grand trout ye have—did ye see the great splashing rise
he made to ye? Howld him, sir—he’ll get off on ye if ye slacken too
much. Wind in when ye get a chanst, and bring him nice and aisy to the
boat—I have the net ready.”

“Bring him to the boat!—it’s himself that’s doing all the bringing!”
uttered Wally. “Tell me if I’m messing it up, Patsy.”

“Begob, you’re doing fine!” said Patsy—“ye’re playing him beautiful.
Give and take, and his head’ll come up presently—don’t be afraid if he
do run from ye. Oh, murder, there’s the little mistress got one too!”

Norah’s reel sang suddenly, and a fish went off astern. The owner of the
rod made a wild effort to play him sitting down, and then stood up, her
rod describing erratic circles while Mr. Linton grasped her skirt in a
desperate effort to steady her.

“I’m all right, daddy!” she gasped. “Oh, such a beauty—I know he weighs
a ton!”

“Let him go, miss!” shouted Patsy, rendered desperate by the
hopelessness of coaching two novices at once. “Give him his head—he’ll
come back to ye. There y’are, sir—did ye see his head come up?—wind
him in! No, not you, miss—let him have his run: sure that one won’t be
tired this long while, by the looks of him. Oh, murder, sir, is he gone
from you?”—as the trout made a fresh dash for freedom and fled under
the boat. “No,—howld on to the vilyun an’ he’ll be back. Kape a nice,
steady strain on him, miss—give and take.” He hovered over the side,
feverishly grasping the handle of the landing-net. “Ye have him bet,
sir—here he comes. Nice and aisy does it—don’t hurry him—kape your
point up. Back a little—ah, I have him!”

The net slipped under Wally’s fish deftly. Simultaneously, Norah’s trout
executed a wild leap, and Norah reeled him, quite involuntarily, near
the boat. Patsy, responding gallantly to her cry for help, dropped the
first trout hastily, and turned just in time to net the second, by sheer
good luck. The excitement of the moment overcame him, and Norah’s fish,
falling upon Wally’s, entangled both casts and lines by a few frantic
leaps, before Patsy could collect himself sufficiently to pounce upon
them. The boat rocked with enthusiasm. Jim had prudently reeled in, to
be out of the way of possible happenings, and stood, beaming, while the
victorious anglers looked at each other with parted lips and shining
eyes, and Mr. Burke wailed and triumphed alternately.

“Wirra, but them lines is destroyed on us! Oh, the grand fish,
entirely!—would ye get as good now, sir, with your sinkers and your big
lump of bait! An’ you played ’em fine, both of ye! Lave off flopping,
will ye, and let me get a howlt of the fly—begob, he have it ate, no
less!” Norah’s trout was put out of its misery by a quick blow on a
thwart, and the fly rescued. “There you are, miss, and he well over a
pound if he’s an ounce!”

“Oh, daddy, isn’t he a beauty!”

“He is, indeed,” Mr. Linton said, looking at the golden-brown fish, with
his splendid spots. “I never saw a handsomer fellow. Is yours as good
Wally?”

“Betther, I believe,” boomed Patsy, a vision of triumph. “They might be
mates—but Mr. Wally’s is bigger. Have ye the little spring-balance,
sir? Ye’d ought to weigh them.”

“I have it,” Wally said. “Eighteen ounces, Nor,—and mine’s a pound and
a half. Well-l!” He drew a long breath. “If ever I say a word against my
little rod again!”

“Oh, wasn’t it glorious!” Norah uttered. “Will those lines ever come
clear, Patsy?”

“Yerra, they will. Have patience, miss, and I’ll get them undone in no
time. Cast away now, Mr. Jim—and heaven send he do not land his on the
top of this tangle!” added Mr. Burke, in pious hope.

“Hurry up, Jim—it’s the best fun since we went bombing!” said Wally.
“Gives you a feeling like nothing on earth, and the little rod’s just a
live thing in your hands. Glory! there’s one at you—ah, the brute!” as
a big trout rose at Jim’s fly, missed, and went down, giving a full view
of his beautiful speckled side.

“Cast over him again, Mr. Jim—that one’ll come back,” Patsy whispered.
“Gently—ah, that’s the lovely throw!” The flies settled gently on the
water, but the trout failed to respond. “Thry him again, sir—that’s it;
dhraw them back quiet, now. Begob, he have him—howld him, sir! Hark at
the little wheel singing: isn’t that the fine run he made! Wind him
in—don’t check him sudden.” Mr. Burke babbled on happily until the
third big trout lay gasping in the landing-net.

“Didn’t I tell you there’d be trout in Lough Nacurra?” he demanded. “Oh,
the beauties! them’s the grand fish, entirely, no matter where you’d be
fishing. Let ye cast out again, sir. Aisy, Miss Norah, let be—sure I’ll
have it for ye quicker than ye would yourself. There’s the terrible
tangle now; ye’d not get it in a knot like that, not if ye tried for a
week. And is it in Australia you’d get them like that, with a stick and
a sinker and a lump of bait? and play them too, same as ye did them
there? Well, well, that must be the fine country!”

Mr. Linton laughed.

“Oh there’s plenty of good trout-fishing in Australia, Patsy, and plenty
of people who use the proper tackle. But it doesn’t happen to be in our
part of the country.”

“Ye’ll not beat Irish trout, anywheres in the world,” said Mr. Burke,
shortly. “Them new countries is all very well in their way, but give me
the ould places I’m after knowing all my life.” He drew a long breath.
“There—I have them untwisted at last: and more by token, here we are at
the end of the lough.” He fixed Wally with an inquiring gaze. “It was
here you wanted to be landed, sir, wasn’t it? Will I take down the rod
and put you ashore?”

Wally grinned in appreciation.

“It’s your game, Patsy,” he admitted, cheerfully. “I take it all back.
If you’ll just hand me that rod again, you won’t get me off this lough
before dark!”




                              CHAPTER VII
                              LOUGH ANOOR


                 “A capital ship for an ocean trip
                 Was the Walloping Window-Blind.”
                 _Students’ Song._

FROM that day the spell of the little brown trout laid itself upon the
Australians. The basket of fish which they carried home with pride in
the evening, and which caused Mrs. Moroney to call upon the saints to
protect her, was the forerunner of many, since the weather was kind and
Lough Nacurra had profited by its war-time rest to become the happiest
of hunting grounds. Day after day, with and without Mr. Burke, whose
multifarious duties often called him elsewhere, they visited the little
lough in the bog, until they knew all its best spots as well as Patsy
himself, and were familiar with every inch of the wooded island where
they generally landed for lunch. With the fever of fishing came to them
the patience which—curiously enough—accompanies it, making them
content to sit hour after hour if rewarded with an occasional rise:
since no lough on this side of Paradise could be expected to live up to
the first spectacular minutes in which Lough Nacurra had claimed them
for its own. Nevertheless, the little lough held well; and trout figured
largely on the table for breakfast and dinner, insomuch that Mrs.
Moroney confided to Bridget that ’twas the grand guests they were to be
keeping down the expense—a remark retailed to Jim by Timsy, in such
innocent certainty that his friend would be pleased, that Jim could not
find it in his heart to rebuke him for repeating what he was not meant
to hear.

Day by day the air of moorland and mountain worked the boys’ cure.
Strength came back to them quickly, with long days in the open and long
nights of quiet sleep. War seemed very far away. Papers came
irregularly, and the younger members of the party were very willing to
let Mr. Linton read them and tell them anything startling, without
troubling about details. Little by little, the horror of the gas faded;
they ceased to dream about it, a nightly torment which had kept them
back for the first weeks. The regiment was having a much-needed rest in
billets: Anstruther, Garrett, and their other chums were fit and well,
and longing for another chance of coming to grips with the enemy. Much
of the horror of Gallipoli Mr. Linton succeeded in keeping from them:
too many of their school-fellows lay dead upon that most cruel of
battlefields, and he suppressed the papers that gave details of the
losses. The fog of war always hangs closely: it was easy to make it hide
from his boys details of the news that had plunged Australia alike into
mourning and into deeper resolve to see the thing through.

For Norah and her father the time was an oasis of peace in a desert of
anxiety. Too soon they must send Jim and Wally back, and themselves
return to work and wait in London. Now, nothing mattered greatly, and
they could try to forget. It was not the least of David Linton’s
happiness that each day brought back light to Norah’s eyes and colour to
her cheeks.

So they played about Ireland as they had played all their lives in
Australia. The Irish blood that was in them made them curiously at home;
they liked the simple, kindly country-folk, and found a ready welcome in
the scattered cottages, where already Norah had made friends with at
least half a dozen babies. Her education developed on new lines: she
picked up a good deal of Irish, and became steeped in the innumerable
legends of the country, not in the least realizing that in being told
the “ould ancient” stories she was being paid a compliment for which the
average tourist might sigh in vain,—for the Irish peasant is jealous of
his folk-stories, and seldom tells them to anyone not of the country. In
the great stone kitchen Mrs. Moroney gave her lessons in the manufacture
of potato-cakes, colcannon, soda-bread, and other national delicacies,
and, with old Nanny the cook, listened to stories of Australia with
frequent ejaculations of “God help us!” while Jim and Wally talked much
to Patsy Burke and John Conolly, and to the men in the villages, doing a
little recruiting work as occasion offered. They also talked of
Australia, since they could not help it, and became at times slightly
confused as to the number of men for whom they had promised to find work
after the war, on Billabong, if possible. However, as Jim said
resignedly if Billabong overflowed with men, there were other
places—Australia was large and empty. They could all come.

“Are you there, Norah? Coo-ee!”

An answering “Coo-ee!” came from one of the mouldering summer-houses in
the garden, and Wally plunged down the overgrown walk in its direction.
Norah was not in the summer-house, which she described as an insecty
place, but cross-legged on a sunny patch of grass behind it, surrounded
by innumerable letters. The Australian mail had arrived that morning;
and, since mails in war time were apt to be “hung up” until a ship could
be found to take them, letters were wont to accumulate in alarming
quantities.

“Good gracious, are you still reading?” inquired Wally. “I finished all
mine ages ago: not that I ever get such awful bundles as you do. Jim and
your father are plunged in business letters, and I’m like Mary’s little
lamb, or Bo-Peep’s sheep, or whichever mutton it was that got lost.”

“Poor old thing!” said Norah, absently. “Never mind; sit down and read
dear old Brownie’s letter. It takes one straight back to Billabong.”

“Well, that’s no bad thing—though I’d like to see a little more of
Ireland,” said Wally, subsiding upon grass. “Poor old Brownie! can’t you
see her, Nor, struggling over this in the kitchen at home. She’d be so
much happier over tackling a day’s baking.”

“She would, indeed,” Norah assented, her eyes a little misty. She
touched the scrawled pages of the old nurse-housekeeper’s letter, her
hand resting on it as though it were a living thing. Brownie had been
all the mother she had known, and the bond between them was very close.
The ill-written sheets brought vividly to her the kind old face, beaming
with love as she had always known it.

“Dear Miss Norah,” began Brownie, with due formality. Then the formality
slumped.

    “My dearie, the place is lost without you all everyone arsks me
    as soon as the male comes wots in the letters and are you coming
    back soon the hot whether is over thang goodness and we have had
    good rain and the place is lookin splendid all the horses are in
    great condishun and Murty says to tell you Bosun is fit to jump
    out of his skin Murty won’t let anyone but himself ride him or
    Garyowin or Monnuk or the chesnet colt and it keeps him pretty
    busy keepin them all exercised. Black Billy is no better than he
    was he is a limb and no mistake it will be a mersy when Mr. Jim
    comes back to keep that boy in order and your Pa too he will not
    take no notice of anyone else. We are always wonderin and hopin
    about the war will it soon be over and that old Kyser hung and
    how are Mr. Jim and Mr. Wally we all know they will fight as
    well as any Englishman or any two Germans. But the best of all
    will be when the old war is over and you all come home to
    Billabong tell Mr. Wally I have not forgot to make pikelits like
    he likes they will be waiting for him we got their photergrafs
    in uniform and dont they look beautiful only so grown up I keep
    thinking of them just little boys ridin the ponies like they
    always was in short pants and socks and plenty of darnin they
    give me to do which it was always a pleasure I’m sure do they
    look after you well in that old London i hope they feed you
    proply in that big hotel im told their sheets is always damp do
    be careful dearie. We try to look after everything the way the
    master and Mr. Jim would like it juring their absence Murty is
    sendin word about the stock so i will leave that part of it
    aloan the garden is lookin grand the ortum roses all out just
    blazin along the walls and fences there are other flowers but
    its no good i cant spell them not being no hand with the pen but
    you will know them all without me tellin the dogs are well but
    they miss you like all the rest of us also the Wallerby and so
    my dearie no more at present only come back soon we all send our
    love and hoppin you are well

                                                         “BROWNIE.”

Wally put down the letter, after folding it slowly. Norah, who had read
it again over his shoulder, put out her hand for it and tucked it into
the pocket of her coat. Neither spoke for awhile. Ireland had faded
away: they saw only a long low house with a garden blazing with roses—a
kitchen, spotless and shining, where an old woman laboured mightily with
the pen. She was a fat old woman, plain and unromantic and very
practical; but the thought of her brought home-sickness sharply to the
boy and girl sitting on the green slope of Irish turf.

“She’s an old brick,” said Wally, presently. “By Jove, Nor, won’t it be
jolly to go back when all this show is over! It makes one feel sort of
jumpy to think of driving up to Billabong again!”

“’M,” assented Norah, lucidly. Speech was a little difficult just then.
Presently she laughed.

“Australian mail-days are lovely, but they always hurt a bit, too. Never
mind, we’ll all go home together some day, and Billabong will go quite
mad, and it will be worth having been away. What do we do this morning,
Mr. Second-Lieutenant Meadows?”

“Well, I don’t know,” Wally answered. “I think you’d better choose your
own amusement, Miss Linton-of-Billabong, and I’ll fall in with it
meekly. Jim and your father have shut themselves up with piles of
business letters and stock reports and things like that, and can’t come
out before lunch.”

“Bother the old business!” said Norah, inelegantly, wrinkling her nose,
as was her way in deep thought. “Wally, why shouldn’t we try Lough
Anoor?”

“That’s rather an idea—especially as Patsy’s engaged to-day, and can’t
act as boatman. We could paddle round and try Lough Anoor by ourselves.
It won’t do Lough Nacurra any harm to have a rest.”

“No; we’ve fished it pretty steadily lately,” Norah agreed. “It would be
rather fun to try a new place. I’d like to take Timsy, if you don’t
mind, Wally. He’s such a jolly little chap, and it would be a tremendous
treat for him.”

“Good idea!” agreed Wally. “Great man, Timsy; he’ll take charge of us
and run the whole show, and be entirely happy. Will you find him, Nor,
while I get the rods and basket?”

Timsy was never difficult to find, when the seekers were the
Australians. He was digging his bare brown toes into the gravel by the
front door when Norah and Wally emerged from the garden.

“Are you busy to-day, Timsy?” asked Norah, gravely. One of the things
that Timsy liked about these people from the other side of the world was
that they always treated him as an equal in age and sense, and did not
“talk down” to him. He had bitter memories of an English visitor who had
addressed him as “Little boy,” and of an elderly lady who had patted him
on the head, and called him “dear.” His blood still boiled when he
thought of it.

“I am not,” he replied. “I’m after catching all the chickens me mother
wants,—and ’twas themselves give me a fine hunt. Chickens do be always
knowing when they’re wanted to be kilt.”

“Then you can’t blame them for running,” said Norah. “No more jobs,
Timsy?”

“There is not, miss. Me mother’s after telling me to get out and play.”

“Mr. Wally and I are going to fish Lough Anoor,” Norah said. “We haven’t
been there yet, and we don’t know much about it. Would you care to come,
too, Timsy?”

Swift delight leaped to the small boy’s eyes.

“Is it me? Sure, wouldn’t I be in your way, miss?”

“Why, you’ll be very useful,” said Norah. “You’d to come?”

“Like!” said Timsy. Words failed him, and he could only beam at them
speechlessly. As they disappeared into the house they heard suppressed
yelps of joy, and presently, from the front windows, beheld Timsy
energetically turning handsprings on the path, in the effort to relieve
his overcharged feelings.

They took the track across the bog leading to Lough Nacurra, skirted it,
following a sheep-path along the shore, and mounted a rise. Below them
lay the little lough they sought, a jewel in a setting of gently-rolling
hills. In one corner a number of queer, gnarled objects showed above the
surface of the water.

“What are those, Timsy?” Wally asked.

“They’s ould limbs of trees, sir; the lough does be low, and them ould
things sticks out. Me daddy says there was a mighty big forest here, one
time: there’s bog-wood everywhere in this part. There’s a small little
landing-stage near them, where the boat is.”

They plunged down hill. Arrived at the boat, Wally whistled long and
low.

“It must be a boat, I suppose,” he said, doubtfully. “Timsy said it was,
and he ought to know. But—Did you ever see anything quite like it,
Nor?”

“I did not,” Norah said.

The boat was flat-bottomed, clumsily and heavily built. The paint which
had originally declared her a white vessel had long ago peeled off or
faded to a yellowish grey. She squatted on the water like a very flat
duck, and water lay in her, and evidently had lain long. There were no
oars, and nothing that could be used to bale. Altogether, no craft could
have looked less tempting.

“Well, Jim reckoned the boat on Lough Aniller bad, and the Nacurra one
only fit for a museum,” Wally said. “I’d like him to see this one: it
would do his old heart good. Timsy, how does one row a boat in this
country when there are no oars?”

Timsy, thus appealed to, gave as his opinion that the paddles would be
up at Michael McCarthy’s house, beyant; further, that if Patsy knew how
the said Michael McCarthy had the boat left, he’d have him destroyed.
“Let ye sit down, sir, and Miss Norah, too,” concluded the small boy,
shouldering the burden of the responsibility. “I’ll slip up and bring
the paddles and a baling-tin down in no time at all.”

“You won’t,” said Wally, firmly. “I’m in this job, Timsy. Come along and
we’ll interview Mr. McCarthy.”

That gentleman, however, was from home, his place being taken by a lame
son, who produced two oars which were not even distantly related to each
other, remarking that his father was wore out with keeping the boat in
order for the gentry, and none of them coming anigh her. When Wally
demanded a baling-tin, he cast about him a wild glance which finally
rested on an excellent tin dipper which presumably belonged to his
mother.

“Herself is away with the hins—let you take it,” he said, thankfully.
“Hiven send she do not come back on me before you’d be gone!”

With this pious hope echoing in their ears, the marauding party
withdrew, Timsy racing ahead with the dipper, lest “herself” should make
an untimely appearance and demand her cherished vessel. When Norah and
Wally arrived at the boat he was baling furiously, and clung to his job
until he was too breathless to argue the question further with Wally.

A flat-bottomed boat, built on elementary principles, is not the easiest
thing to empty. They tilted her sideways, getting very wet in the
process, and wielded the dipper until it scraped dismally against the
boards; but a large residue of water still lingered, defying anything
but a pump or a bath-sponge, equipment which they lacked. When they
restored her to an even keel the water slapped dismally across the
sodden bottom boards.

“I’m afraid we’ll never get her dry,” Wally said, ruefully. “Tell you
what, Norah—I’ll put in a few bits of wood, and you can put your feet
on them; that will keep them out of the water, at any rate.”

Wood is scarce in Donegal. There was not a bit to be found except the
tough lumps of bog-wood sticking out of the water, and of these Wally
managed to secure enough for his purpose.

“They aren’t lovely,” he said, looking at the uneven logs. “Still, they
ought to keep your feet dry, and that’s something.” He worked the
unwieldy boat round until her stern pointed to the shore, so that Norah
could get in without being compelled to walk along the wet floor. Timsy
hopped in, bare-legged and cheery, and they shoved off, moving gingerly
among the half-submerged wood, which threatened momentarily to rip a
hole in the rotten flooring.

“I’d hate to say a word against Ireland,” Wally remarked. “But you’d
wonder why they’d build the landing-stage in the very middle of a
submerged forest.”

“The stones did be a thrifle more convanient there.” Timsy offered as a
solution.

“Well—maybe. Still it would be no great lift to take them a little
further,” said Wally. “Does the boat never get snagged, Timsy?”

“She do, sir. Many’s the time me daddy’s mended her, and he at home.
There’s no one to do it now, till I get a bit bigger—Patsy he’s
destroyed with work, he says, and he can’t be lugging tools all this
way, says he. And that Michael McCarthy, he’s no use at all in the
world.” Timsy knitted his brows, a worried little figure. “It’ll be a
good thing when the ould war is over and all them Germans kilt. Then me
daddy’ll come back and fix everything.”

“Would you rather he hadn’t gone, Timsy?”

The small boy’s lip trembled.

“’Twas awful when he went. Me mother cried, and so did old Nanny and
Bridget. But me mother and me daddy they says there’s no dacint man can
stop out of it. I wisht I was big enough to go too. Will they take
drummer-boys in your regiment, Mr. Wally? I’m pretty big when I howld
meself straight.”

“I’m afraid you’ve got to be a bit bigger yet, old man,” Wally told him.
“But you’ve got to be here, to keep an eye on the place; it must be a
great comfort to your daddy to know you’re here, to look after your
mother. There must be a certain number of fellows at home to mind
Ireland in case the Germans should send troops here, you know; so we
leave those at home who are too young or too old to march fast, and
carry heavy loads, and do rough digging. You’re doing your bit as long
as you’re helping at home.”

“Is that so, truly?” said Timsy, much cheered. “And could I go when I’m
bigger?”

“Of course you could, if the war is still there,” Wally answered,
cheerfully. “Only we hope it won’t be. You’ll be able to fight much
better in the next war if you have your daddy home to train you first.
It isn’t every fellow who can have a sergeant all on himself to train
him, you know.”

“I’d be in great luck, wouldn’t I?” said the small boy, hopefully. “But
sure, we’ll all be in the heighth of luck once we get daddy home.”

Wally had poled the old boat out of the submerged trees, with many a
bump and scrape that made him look apprehensively at the boards. The
gaunt and stunted tree-ghosts ceased, and the water deepened, so he took
to the oars. They pulled up against a freshening breeze to the head of
the lough, where Wally shipped the paddles thankfully.

“That’s a great pair of oars,” said he. “One weighs a ton and the other
only a hundredweight, so pulling becomes a matter of scientific
adjustment. Well, we’ll drift down, Nor, and see what Lough Anoor
holds.”

That the little lough held trout was made clear within the first five
minutes, when a fish rose at Norah, who struck too hard and missed it,
to her intense disgust. Luck favoured her, however, for it was a hungry
trout and came at her gamely on the next cast, this time departing with
an annoying mouthful of steel and feathers instead of the plump fly he
had hoped to engulf. He came to the surface after an exciting few
minutes, and, being very thoroughly hooked, survived three ineffectual
attempts by Wally to get the landing-net under him. The fourth landed
him in the bottom of the boat, both operators slightly breathless, while
Timsy, scarlet with excitement, jigged on his seat and uttered sage
counsel which no one heard.

“Awfully sorry, Nor,—I nearly lost that fellow for you,” Wally
exclaimed. “Scooping up a jumping fish with that old net is much harder
than playing him, I think: I have the utmost respect for Patsy every
time he uses it. Never saw him make a mistake yet. I say, young Norah,
what’s the good of my putting down a floor of bog-wood for you? Your
feet are soaking!”

Norah glanced down, still flushed with the pride of capture.

“I’m sorry, truly,” she said, laughing. “You see, I can’t possibly play
a fish sitting down; I’ve just _got_ to stand up. And I tried to stand
on those old lumps of wood, but they simply turned over and deposited me
in the water. Never mind, Wally, it isn’t the first time I’ve had wet
feet.”

“Don’t go and collect a cold, or your father and Jim will have my
blood,” said Wally, doubtfully. “You’ll have to land and run about if
you get chilly.”

“If I said, ‘Land my grandmother!’ it would be rude, so I won’t,” said
Norah, who was casting again vigorously. “Quick, Wally, there’s a rise
near you!”—and Mr. Meadows forgot prudence in the excitement of trout.
At the end of the drift the basket held four fish, while a fifth had
made his escape at the very edge of the boat, and was doubtless in some
snug hole, reflecting on the Providence which helps little trout by
entrusting the landing-net to inexperienced hands.

The wind had risen, and to pull the heavy, water-logged old boat up the
lough was no easy task. There was no rudder, and she steered very badly,
her awkwardness intensified by the unequal oars. The waves slapped
against her side, and occasionally flung in a little cloud of spray, and
she leaked fast. Norah baled energetically, with poor results.

“She’s a noble vessel,” said Wally, pulling with a will. “Feel her
wallow in the trough of these silly little waves. I guess we’ll call her
‘The Walloping Window-Blind,’ Nor, after the boat in the song. Can you
swim, Timsy?”

“I cannot, sir,” said Timsy, grinning. “Sure that one won’t sink on us.”

“Blest if I know,” Wally answered, doubtfully. “I wouldn’t be surprised
at any old thing she’d do. Anyhow, Miss Norah and I can rescue you if
she goes down; and the water isn’t very cold. Timsy, did you ever hear
the sergeant’s opinion of this boat?”

Timsy’s grin widened.

“I did, sir,” he said, with probably prudent reticence. “Sure, there’s
no one does be liking her in these parts. She’s not an aisy puller at
all.”

“True for you,” said Wally, panting. “Thank goodness, here’s the end of
the lough. Hurry up, Nor, she’ll drift back quickly before this wind,
and they ought to be rising.” His flies whistled out over the dancing
water.

“If you’d let me have the net itself I could be landing the fish for
you,” said Timsy, eagerly. “I’ve landed ’em for me daddy many a time—he
taught me.”

“Good man—what the sergeant taught you is good enough for us,” said
Wally. “Stand by, then—I’ve got a beauty on. He’s pulling like fury.”
He played the fish dexterously, his keen, brown face eager. “Come on,
you monster—I’d bet he weighs a pound, Norah! Ready, Timsy?—he’s about
done—ah, good kid!” as the small boy slipped the net under the
struggling fish with all the deftness of Mr. Burke himself. “Oh, a
beauty! And to think we used to imagine that a hand-line was sport!”

“You live and learn,” said Norah, sagely. “That’s the biggest yet,
Wally, and didn’t he fight! Oh, I’ve got one!—be ready, Timsy.”

Timsy crouched, alert, his hard little hand gripping the net. The fish
was a strong one and fought hard for his life; again and again he ran
the line out, even when almost at the side of the boat. Norah reeled him
in at last, almost done, but still fighting.

“Oh, be careful, and he lepping!” Timsy uttered. “If you take the strain
off when he’s hooked slightly he’ll get off on you. Isn’t he the great
fighter entirely! Quick, miss, I’ll get him!”

He dived at him with the net. The trout leaped to one side, a wave
hiding his flashing golden-brown body; and Timsy, following a thought
too far, overbalanced, and shot head first into the water. Wally,
casting in the bow, did not see. Norah had a moment’s vision of the
slight childish body as the brown water closed over him. He had not
uttered a sound.

“Wally, quick—the oars!” she gasped, dropping her rod. The boat was
drifting fast before the wind. She watched, knowing that Timsy would be
far beyond their reach when he came to the surface. Then the little head
appeared for an instant and she sprang into the water.

A year earlier, Wally would have followed without a thought. But
training and experience had steadied him; he knew that in the boat he
would be far more use than in the rough water, with the wind taking the
‘Walloping Window-Blind,’ their one refuge, swiftly away from them. He
flung himself at the oars and steadied her, watching, his heart in his
mouth. Norah swam like a fish, he knew; but the water was rough, and
Timsy would be a dead weight, even supposing that she had been able to
grip him.

Then, to his utter relief, the two heads broke the water together. He
heard Norah’s voice: “Hold my shoulder, Timsy—you’re all right. Don’t
be scared.”

“I’ll be beside you in a second, Nor,” Wally shouted. “Just keep
paddling.” He pulled the clumsy boat frantically up the lough, and let
her drop down to Norah, shipping the oars as he reached her. Leaning
over, he gripped Timsy firmly.

“Hold on to the kid, and I’ll pull you both to the boat,” he said. “Can
you catch it?—I’ve got him.” He waited until Norah’s hand gripped the
side. “That’s right—let him go. Come on, Timsy.” He hauled the silent
small boy into the boat and turned back to Norah. “Hang on to me, old
girl—thank goodness we can’t pull this old tub over.”

There was a struggle, and Norah came over the side, scrambling in with
difficulty.

“Is Timsy all right?”

“I am, miss,” said a small voice, between chattering teeth.

Wally flung off his coat, and wrapped it round the child.

“Poor old chap—that will keep the wind off you a bit,” he said. “Norah,
get hold of the oars and pull in—you’ll be nearly as quick as I would
be, and it will keep you warmer. My Aunt! that kid hung on to the
landing-net all the time! Well, you are a good sort, Timsy!”

“I dunno why would I let it go,” shivered Timsy. “Bad enough for me to
be such an omadhaun, to be falling in—and herself going after me! Me
mother’ll be fit to tear the face off me!”

“She’ll be too glad to see you alive,” said Wally, reassuringly.
“We’ll——”

Timsy interrupted him with a cry. He caught Norah’s neglected rod.

“Howly Mother, but the fish is in it yet!” he shouted. “Oh, will ye
come, please, sir!”

They landed the trout between them, Timsy recovering some measure of his
self-respect by being allowed to use the net.

“He had it nearly swallowed—if he hadn’t, he’d have been gone this long
time,” he chattered, watching Wally disengage the hook. “Isn’t it the
grand luck we’re in! and he the beautifullest trout! Oh, why would I
want to be falling in, and the fish rising!” He looked wistfully at
Norah. “Tis all wet ye are, and the day spoilt on ye,” he said, sadly.
“You won’t never take me out again, Miss Norah.”

“Won’t we just!” said Norah, smiling at him through a tangle of wet
hair. “We don’t get out of friends because of a trifle like that,
Timsy.” She brought the “Walloping Window-Blind” floundering against the
shore. “There! it would warm an iceberg to pull that old tub. Come
along, Timsy, and I’ll race you home.”

Wally put a detaining hand on her arm as he turned from securing the
boat.

“Sure you’re all right, Nor?”

“Right as—as anything,” said Norah, laughing at the anxious face. “I
believe you’re growing careful, Wally—what’s come to you?”

“It’s all very well,” said Wally, unhappily. “Do you think it’s jolly
for a fellow to see you pitching into a beastly lough? And I’m going
home dry, and you and the kid wet. If there was any sense in it I’d jump
in and get wet, too!”

“Only there isn’t,” said Norah—“and it was lucky for the two wet ones
that you were dry in the boat. An old and hardened warrior like you
ought to have more common sense.”

“I suppose I ought,” said Wally, relapsing into a smile. “Only . . . Oh,
well. Now we’ve got to run, or we’ll never catch young Timsy.”




[Illustration: “Norah had read it over his shoulder.”]

      _Jim and Wally_]                                  [_Page 118_




[Illustration: “Then the little head appeared for an instant and she
sprang into the water.”]

      _Jim and Wally_]                                  [_Page 128_




                              CHAPTER VIII
                              JOHN O’NEILL


             “A fiery soul, which, working out its way,
             Fretted the pigmy body to decay.”
             DRYDEN.



                   “And we’re hanging out the sign
                   From the Leeuwin to the Line:
                 ‘This bit of the world belongs to US!’”

THE words came floating down the hillside at the top of a cheery young
baritone. Also down the hillside came sounds of haste—heavy footsteps,
crashing undergrowth, and rustling of bracken.

The hill sloped steeply, ending with an abrupt plunge into a boreen
below: a little winding lane, walled in by high banks, clad with heather
and furze, and all abloom with wild flowers. The main road ran westward,
dusty and hot in the June sunlight; but the boreen was all in shade,
twisting its way in and out between the hills. The dew was yet on its
grass, though in the blossoming furze above, fringing the banks, the
bees droned heavily, winging their busy way among the hot sweetness.

The noise overhead came nearer, and there came into the song staccato
notes never intended by the composer, as the singer half-slid,
half-plunged, down the hillside, taking inequalities in the ground with
long strides. Nevertheless, the voice persevered, happy, if disjointed,
until it was just above the boreen. Then the song and the hurrying
footsteps ceased together, and there was a pause.

“Wire!” said Wally’s disgusted tones. “And barbed, at that! Didn’t we
have enough in France!”

The wire was half-hidden in the tangle of grass and furze; a tense
strand twanged as his boot caught it in clambering over. His thin face
showed for a moment, peeping over into the boreen. There was nothing to
do but slither, and slither he did, landing in the little lane with a
mighty thud, and bringing with him a shower of furze blossoms, and
clattering stones and clods. They fell close to a man sitting on a
fragment of rock and leaning back against the bank. He had not stirred
at the commotion overhead, and now he sat motionless, looking up at the
tall lad with a faint smile.

“I beg your pardon!” said Wally, abashed. “I say. I hope nothing hit
you?”

The man on the boulder shook his head. It was a big head, with a wide
brow and lines of pain round the eyes; but he was a small man, and the
hand lying on the knee of his rough tweed suit was startlingly thin.
Even as he leaned back against the bank it was easy to see that his
shoulders were misshapen and humped. Wally glanced once, and withdrew
his eyes hurriedly, with a boy’s instinctive dread of appearing to
notice anything amiss.

“Beastly careless of me!” he said, apologetically. “I never thought of
anyone being down below.”

“Well, you gave enough warning that you were coming,” said the man.
“Anyone remaining below did so entirely at his own risk. Do you always
come down a hill in that fashion, may I ask?”

Wally grinned.

“Not always,” he admitted. “But it was a jolly hill; and it had taken me
such a time to climb up it that I had a fancy to see how quickly I could
get down. And I was feeling awfully fit. It’s so jolly to be feeling
well—makes you act like a kid.”

“It must be jolly,” said the other, laconically.

Wally flushed hotly, in dread of having hurt him. It was painfully clear
that to feel well was not a common experience for the man on the
boulder. He had a sudden wild desire to undo the impression of exuberant
health and spirits. The tired eyes were even harder to face than the
twisted shoulders.

“Been an awful crock, really,” he said, sitting down on another fragment
of rock. “Gassed—over there.” He nodded vaguely in the direction—more
or less—of Europe. “Makes you feel like nothing on earth.”

“It’s pretty bad, isn’t it?” asked the other, with swift interest.

“Rather. We didn’t get anything like a full dose, of course, or we
wouldn’t be here. But even a little is rather beastly. And the worst of
it is, that it hangs on to you long after you’re better—it seems to
lurk down somewhere inside you, and gets hold of you just as you’re
beginning to think you’re really all right. It actually makes a fellow
think he’s got nerves!”

“You don’t look like it,” said the man, laughing for the first time. The
brown, boyish face did not suggest such attributes.

“Well, it truly does make one pretty queer,” said Wally, laughing too.
“However, I believe we’ve nearly got rid of it—this country of yours is
enough to make us forget it.”

“You’re Australian, aren’t you?” the man asked.

Wally nodded. “How did you know?”

“Oh, this is a little place,” said the other. “Strangers are our only
excitement, and since the war started we haven’t had nearly so many. All
the people who used to come here to fish are away fighting.” He sighed.
“Most of them will not come back any more. You were quite a godsend to
us. Your boatman told one of my men about you; and the baker’s boy tells
the cook; and the butcher tells every one; and the postmistress is
simply full of news about you. As for the shops, they are fairly
buzzing!”

“Why, there are only two,” said Wally, laughing.

“That’s why they buzz,” said the man. “I don’t go into shops, myself;
but I have been altogether unable to repress the delighted confidences
of my chauffeur. He tells me that you’re all very keen fishermen——”

“And don’t know a thing about it!” said Wally. “Did he tell you that,
too?”

“He said you were getting on,” said the other, guardedly, his eyes
twinkling. The chauffeur’s confidences had probably been ample. “But
your stories of Australia have them all fascinated, and if they
weren’t—most of them—grandfathers, they would probably emigrate in a
body. Thank goodness, though, we’ve not many slackers here: almost all
our young men are fighting. My chauffeur, poor lad, lost a leg at Ypres.
His wooden leg is fairly satisfactory, but of course he can’t go back,
much as he wants to. We’re nearly all old men or—cripples”—his voice
was suddenly bitter: “and it’s rather pleasant to see young faces again.
You bring the stir of the world with you.”

“We’ve had so much stir that we were uncommonly glad to get away from
it,” Wally answered. “And this is a jolly place; if there were more big
timber it would be nearly as good as our bush-country.” He paused,
cheerfully certain of having paid Ireland the highest possible
compliment: then he rose. “I must be getting back.”

The man on the boulder rose also, slowly. When he stood up, his crooked
shoulders became more evident. He took one or two steps slowly and
painfully. Then he staggered, stretching an uncertain hand towards the
bank.

“Can I help you?” It was impossible to pretend any longer not to notice:
he was swaying, and Wally was beside him with a swift stride. The other
caught at the strong young arm.

“Thank you,” he said, presently. There were drops of perspiration on his
brow, but his voice was steady. “I’m something of a crock myself, and
this happens to be one of my bad days. I came up here because I couldn’t
stand the car any more—it’s waiting for me on the road. If you would
not mind helping me——?”

They went along the boreen slowly, between the blossoming banks. The man
rested heavily on Wally’s arm.

“Sure I’m not tiring you?” he asked, once. “You’re not fit yourself,
yet.”

“Oh, I’m all right,” Wally answered. “Please lean as much as you like.
Would you like a rest?”

“No—we’re nearly there. And I’m better.” His face was white, but he
smiled up at the tall boy. Then a turn in the lane brought the high road
in view, and, drawn up by the side, a big touring-car. The chauffeur,
drowsing in his seat in the sun, became suddenly awake. He limped
quickly towards his master.

“Sure I knew you had no right to be going up there alone,” he said,
reproachfully. “Will you give me the other arm, sir?”

“I’m all right, Con. This gentleman has helped me splendidly.” But he
put a hand on the chauffeur’s sleeve, more, Wally fancied, to pacify him
than because he needed extra help.

In the car, he leaned back with a sigh of relief. It was luxuriously
padded, and there were special cushions that the chauffeur adjusted with
a practised hand.

“Awfully sorry to have been such a nuisance,” he said. “Thanks ever so
much; you saved me a rather nasty five minutes.” He looked wistfully at
Wally. “I suppose you wouldn’t come home with me?”

Wally hesitated. He wanted badly to get back to his party and to the
trout that were so tantalizing and so engrossing. But there was
something hard to resist in the tired eyes.

“You would be doing me a real kindness,” said the other. “I can send
word to your friends——” He broke off. “Oh, it’s hardly fair to ask
you—you didn’t come here to muddle about with a sick man. Never
mind—I’ll get you to come over some day when I’m more fit.”

“I’d like to,” said Wally, cheerfully; “but I’m coming now, as well, if
I may.” He hopped into the car, and sat down. “If you could let them
know, I should be glad—they may be waiting for me.”

“Where are they?—at the hotel?”

“No, they’re fishing Lough Nacurra. I said I would turn up about twelve
and hail them; it’s Australian mail-day, and I’ve been posting the
family’s letters.”

“If doesn’t seem fair to keep you,” said the car’s owner. “But these
days I dread my own company. So if you’ll come to lunch with me I’ll
send you back to them in good time to get a few trout before the
evening. Home, Con.” The car started gently, and he leaned back and
closed his eyes.

Wally felt slightly bewildered. Here was he, in company with a man whose
name he did not know, and who was apparently going to sleep—both of
them being whisked through the peaceful Irish landscape at an
astonishing rate of speed in a motor which surpassed anything he had
ever imagined in luxury of fittings. It was a very large car: four
people could easily have found room in the seat he shared with his
silent host, and there were, in addition, three little arm-chairs which
folded flat when not in use. It was splendidly upholstered, and there
were electric lamps in cunning places, and many of what Wally termed
“contraptions”; pockets and flaps for holding papers, a clock and
speedometer, and a silver vase in which nodded two perfect roses. Wally
infinitely preferred horses to motors: but this was indeed a motor to be
respected, and he gazed about him with frank interest, which did not
abate when he found that his host was looking at him.

“I was admiring your car,” he said. “It’s a beauty; I don’t think I ever
saw such a big one.”

“Well, I use it as a bedroom very often,” said the other. “I like
knocking about in it; and I hate hotels; so Con and I live in the car
when we go touring, and he cooks for me, camp-fashion. This seat makes a
very good bed; and I have various travelling fixtures that screw on here
and there when they are needed, or live under the seat. I planned it
myself, and I don’t think there’s a foot of waste space in it. Con
sleeps in the front seat. We have an electric cooker, and he turns out
uncommonly good meals. Of course, if we encounter really bad weather we
have to put in for shelter, but I’m glad to say that doesn’t often
happen to us.”

“How jolly!” Wally exclaimed. “I suppose you’ve been all over Ireland in
that way?”

“Ireland—Scotland—England: and most of Europe and America,” said his
host. “I’m an idle man, you see, and travelling, if I can do it in my
own fashion, makes amends for a good many things I can’t have.” The
weariness came back into his face. “I might as well introduce myself,”
he said; “I forgot that I had kidnapped you without the civility of
telling you my name, which is O’Neill—John O’Neill. I live at
Rathcullen House, where we shall be in another minute or two.”

Memory came back to Wally of a road perched above the lough, and of a
little runabout car driven by a man in motor-goggles: and of the
boatman’s confidences.

“Then you’re Sir John O’Neill?” he asked.

“Yes—the first part of it doesn’t matter. The line goes back a good
way, but I’m the last of it. But the old house is rather jolly; I hope
you will all come and see it as often as you can spare the time.”

The car swung off the road as he spoke, and through a great gateway
where beautiful gates of wrought iron stood open between massive stone
pillars. A little gabled lodge, with windows of diamond lattice-work,
was just within: a pleasant-faced woman in pursuit of a fleeing
mischievous child stopped, smiled, and dropped a curtsey, while the
three-year-old atom she had been chasing bobbed down in ridiculous
imitation, her elfish face breaking into smiles in its tangle of dark
curls. John O’Neill smiled in return; and the car sped on smoothly, up a
wide avenue lined with enormous beech-trees, arching and meeting
overhead so that they seemed to be driving into a tunnel of perfect
green. Between their mighty trunks Wally caught glimpses of a wide park,
where little black Kerry cattle grazed.

For over a mile the avenue ran its winding way through the park. Then
the trees ceased, and they came out into a clear space of terraced lawn,
blazing with flower-beds, and sloping down to a lake fringed with
ornamental plants, and dotted with many-coloured water-lilies, among
which paddled lazily some curious waterfowl which Wally had never seen.
Beyond the lawn stood a long grey house; a house of old grey stone, of
many gables, clad in ivy and Virginia creeper. Even to the Australian
boy’s eyes it was mellow with the dignity of centuries. It was not
imposing or majestic, like the old houses he had seen in England; but
about it hovered an atmosphere of high breeding and of quiet peace: a
house of memories, tranquil in its beauty and in its dreams.

The car came to rest gently beside a stone step, and in an instant a
white-haired old butler was at the door, offering his arm to his master.
John O’Neill got out slowly, and limped up the steps to the great
doorway, where an Irish wolf-hound stood, looking at him with liquid
eyes of welcome.

“I say—what a jolly dog!” Wally uttered.

“Yes, he’s rather a nice old chap,” said his host. “Shake hands,
Lomair”; and the big dog put a paw gravely into Wally’s hand. He
followed his master into the house.

The great square hall was panelled with old oak, almost black in the
subdued light within. A staircase, with wide, shallow steps, wound its
way in a long curve to a gallery overhead: and at the far end, an
enormous fireplace was filled with evergreens. Eastern rugs lay on the
polished oaken floor; in one corner a stand of flowering plants made a
sheet of colour. On the walls were splendid heads—deer of many kinds,
markhor, ibex, koodoo, and two heads with enormous spreading antlers,
stretching, from tip to tip, fully eleven feet. They drew an exclamation
from Wally.

“They belonged to the old Irish elk,” O’Neill explained. “He must have
been a pretty big fellow; a pity civilization proved too much for him.
He has been extinct thousands of years.”

“Fancy seeing a herd of those fellows!” Wally exclaimed, gazing in
admiration at the noble head. “But however would he get those antlers
through timber?”

“I don’t think he frequented forests much,” O’Neill said. “The plains
suited him better. But he must have been able to lay his horns right
back—all deer can do that when necessary. I dare say he could dodge
through trees at a good rate.”

“Well, he looks as if he could hardly have got through the doorway of a
Town Hall,” Wally commented. “You have a splendid lot of heads. Did you
shoot them yourself?”

“A few—I can’t do much stalking,” O’Neill said. “I got those two
tigers, but that was from the back of an elephant. My father shot most
of the others; he was a mighty hunter. The trout were mine”—he
indicated some huge stuffed specimens, in glass cases, on the wall.

“They’re splendid,” Wally said, regarding his host with much admiration.
“And you actually shot the tigers! Was it very exciting?”

“No—the trout took far more killing. The elephants and the beaters did
most of the work so far as the tigers were concerned; it was only a sort
of arm-chair performance on my part. I simply sat in a fairly
comfortable howdah and fired when I was told to do so.”

“It sounds simple, but—well, I’d like to have the chance. And you must
have shot straight,” Wally said. He glanced from the grim masks to the
slight figure with ungainly shoulders, marvelling in his heart at the
contrast between hunter and hunted. At the moment John O’Neill did not
look capable of killing a mouse.

He dropped in to a big arm-chair, motioning Wally to another. The colour
was returning to his face, and his eyes began to lose their pain-filled
expression. In the big chair’s depths he looked smaller than ever; but
his eyes were very bright, and soon Wally forgot his morning’s fishing
and altogether lost sight of his host’s infirmities in the fascination
of his talk. Half-crippled as he was, he had been everywhere, and done
many things that stronger men long vainly to do. He had travelled
widely, and not as the average tourist, who skims over many experiences
without gathering the cream of any. John O’Neill had gone off the beaten
track in search of the unusual, and he had found it in a dozen different
countries. He had hunted and fished; had shot big game in India and made
his way up unknown rivers in South America, until sickness had forced
him to abandon enterprise and return to civilization to save his life.
Wandering in the bypaths of the world, he had brought home a harvest of
queer experiences; he told them simply, with a twinkle in his eye and a
quick joy in the humorous that often left his hearer shaking with
laughter.

Wally listened in growing wonderment and a great sense of pity. If this
man, so cruelly handicapped, had already done so much, what might he not
have done, given a straight and sound body! Yet how he had accomplished
even the tenth part of what he had done was a mystery. Wally looked at
the frail, slight figure with respectful amazement.

John O’Neill broke off presently.

“I rattle along at a terrible rate when I’m lucky enough to find a
listener,” he said. “And lately I’ve been horribly sick of my own
society. You see, they wouldn’t have me in any capacity at the Front; I
offered to do anything, and I did think they might have let me drive an
ambulance; but an ambulance driver over there really has to be a hefty
chap, able to put his shoulder literally to the wheel when a road goes
to pieces in front of him, owing to a shell lobbing on it; and of course
they said I wouldn’t do, so soon as they looked at me. So I went to
London and did Red Cross work and recruiting—and overdid it, like a
silly ass. Broke down, and had to crawl home and be ill.”

“Hard luck!” said Wally, sympathetically.

“Stupidity, you mean,” remarked his host. “A man ought to know when he
has had enough, whether it’s work or beer. But it’s not easy to stand
aside when all the lucky people—like you—are playing the real game. At
best, mine was only an imitation.”

“I don’t agree with you,” Wally said, warmly. “We can’t all fight—the
rest of the country has to carry on.”

“Oh, well, there are enough slackers and shirkers to do that,” O’Neill
said. “And anyhow, I couldn’t even carry on at what I did attempt to do.
Never mind—tell me your own adventures.”

Wally’s story of war did not take long in the telling; but he spun it
out as much as possible, switching from war to Australia in response to
the eager questions of the man in the big leather chair. John O’Neill
was a curious blending: at one moment almost savagely cynical and
despondent, as his own physical handicap weighed upon him: at the next,
laughing like a boy, and full of a boy’s keen interest in what he had
not seen. Australian talk held him closely attentive: it was almost the
only corner of the world that he had not visited, but he meant to go
there, he said, after the war. Travelling by sea was unpleasant enough
at any time without the added chance of an impromptu ducking if a
submarine or a mine came across you.

“Do they all buck—your horses?” he asked. “I can ride a bit, but a
buckjumper would be beyond me.”

Wally reassured him as to the manners of Australian steeds.

“There’s a general impression in England that we all live in red shirts,
in the bush, and ride fiery, untamed steeds,” said he, laughing. “It
goes with the universal belief that all Australia is tropical. I’ve
tried to tell fellows in England that there are parts of Australia where
we have a pretty decent imitation of Swiss winter sports—skiing,
skating, and all the rest of it; but they look on me with polite
disbelief. They can’t—or won’t—understand that Australia stretches
over enough of the map to have a dozen different kinds of climate. Not
that it matters, anyhow; I don’t think we expect people to be wildly
interested in us.”

“We’ll know more about you by the time the war is over,” his host
suggested.

“Well—I suppose so. Lots of our fellows will come to London; we’re all
awfully keen to see it, and it’s a great chance for us. I only hope we
shall take a lot of your men back with us; they’re falling over each
other in England—or will be, once the war is over: and we want them. We
needed them badly enough before the war: afterwards it will be worse
than ever.”

“Don’t you preach emigration in Ireland,” said O’Neill, laughing.

“Why not? They emigrate, whether you preach or not; only they go to
America and Canada, because they’re near and there’s nothing between
them and Ireland. They would probably do much better if they would come
to Australia, only they don’t know a thing about it. I told one old
woman a few things about Australia and wages there, and all she could
say was, ‘God help us!’ When I’d finished, she said. ‘And Australy’d be
somewhere in Americy, wouldn’t it, dear?’”

“Did you say, ‘God help us’?” laughed O’Neill.

“I might have,” grinned Wally. “They know Canada—but then, look what
Canada is!” He gave a mock shiver—Wally had been reared in hot
Queensland. “As one Canadian chap said to me, after visiting our
irrigation settlements—‘I don’t know why people come to us instead of
to you: just look at the climate you’ve got—and we have three seasons
in the year—July, August, and winter!’ But I suppose they seem nearer
home, and they can’t realize that when you once get on a ship you might
as well be there for a month as a week.”

The white-haired butler announced luncheon, and they found the table
laid in the bow-window of a long and lofty room, whence could be seen
the park, ending in a glimpse of bog and heather, with a flash of blue
that meant a little lough caught among the hills. Afterwards, they
strolled out on the terrace and through the scented garden to the
stables, where two fine hunters and some useful ponies made friends with
Wally instantly.

“The Government took most of my horses when war broke out; but I managed
to keep these two,” said O’Neill, his hand on an arching neck while a
soft muzzle sought in his pocket for a carrot. “I’d sooner have paid
what they were worth than let them go; they’re too good for war
treatment, unless it were absolutely necessary. And thank goodness this
is not a war of horses. Would you care to try one of these fellows, some
day?”

“Wouldn’t I!” said Wally, beaming. “And—could Jim?”

“Of course—and what about Jim’s sister? Does she ride?”

“She does,” said Wally, suppressing a smile at that incomplete
statement.

“Rides anything that ever looked through a bridle, I suppose,” said his
host, watching him. “She looks a workmanlike person. That brown pony is
pretty good; she might like him. I can show you all a bit of Irish
jumping—ditches and banks instead of your fly fences.”

“We’ll probably fall off,” said Wally, with conviction.

“Then you’ll find the falling softer than in Australia,” O’Neill said,
consolingly. “But I don’t fancy you will give us much fun that way.”

The motor waited at the hall door.

“Con will drop you near your people,” O’Neill said. “I’d like to come
with you—but if I overdo things to-day I’ll pay to-morrow; and I’m
anxious to see the last of this attack. Will you tell Mr. Linton I hope
to call on him in a few days?”

“We’ll be awfully glad to see you,” Wally said. “And thanks ever so for
giving me such a good time.”

O’Neill laughed. “Is it me now, to be giving you a good time?” he said.
“I thought ’twas the other way round it was. You have helped me through
a stiff day, and I’m very grateful.” He shook hands warmly, and the
motor whirred away.

[Illustration: He fell close to a man sitting on a fragment of rock and
leaning back against the bank.”]

      _Jim and Wally_]                                  [_Page 132_




                               CHAPTER IX
                             PINS AND PORK


        “Sure, this is blessed Erin, an’ this the same glen;
        The gold is on the whin-bush, the wather sings again:
        The Fairy Thorn’s in flower—an’ what ails my heart then?”
        MOIRA O’NEIL.

‟WELL—of all the deserters!”

“Is it me?” asked Wally, modestly. He made an enormous stride from a
half-submerged stone into the boat, and nearly lost his balance,
collapsing in the stern.

“You!” said Jim, steadying the boat, which endeavoured, under the
assault, to bury her nose in a muddy bank of rushes. “You, that was
going to catch several hundred trout, and instead cleared out——”

“In a plutocratic motor,” said Norah.

“With a bloated aristocrat,” added Jim.

“And never said good-bye!” finished Mr. Linton, with an artistic catch
in his voice.

“I did,” said Wally: “I did it all. And I didn’t want to.”

Sounds of disbelief rose from his hearers.

“You needn’t snort,” said the victim, inelegantly.

“I don’t think it betters your case to describe our just indignation as
snorting,” said Mr. Linton.

“If you were to grovel it would become you better,” said Norah.

“Not in this boat,” hastily remarked her father. “It isn’t planned for
gymnastics.”

“He’s too well-fed to grovel, anyhow,” said Jim brutally. “What did you
have in the ducal castle, Wal? ortolans and plovers’ eggs, and things?”

“Chops,” said Wally.

“Shades of Australia!” ejaculated Mr. Linton. “Is that what one eats in
company with dukes?”

“I don’t know,” Wally answered, patiently. “He isn’t a duke, anyhow.
Where did you people get your soaring ideas?”

“From a lame chauffeur who seemed to think you were getting a great deal
more than you deserved——” Jim began.

“That’s what I’m getting now!” said Wally.

“Well, he said you had gone off in the mothor to the big house. We
inferred from his tone that it was not merely big, but enormous. The
master had tuk you, he said; we further gathered that you might come
back when the master had finished with you. It sounded rather like Jack
and the Giant, and if we had known who had kidnapped you we might have
organized a search party. As we didn’t, we caught trout—lots of ’em.”

“Did you, indeed?” said Wally, with open envy. “Lucky beggars—I wish I
had!”

“And you rioting in baronial halls!” said Norah. “Some people don’t know
when they are well off.”

“If we let Wally have a word in edgeways for a few minutes we might find
out a little more about the baronial halls,” said Mr. Linton. “Tell us
what happened to you, Wally. Was it a duke?”

“It was not—only a poor hump backed chap with some sort of a handle to
his name. He’s Sir John O’Neill, and he has a lovely place; but you
never saw a man with less ‘frill,’” Wally remarked. “Simple as anyone
could be. And I don’t think I’ve ever been so sorry for anyone.”

“Is he badly crippled?” Jim asked.

“No—only he seems awfully delicate, and subject to beastly fits of
illness. He’s got any amount of pluck—rides and shoots and fishes, and
has motored half over the world. But of course he’s terribly
handicapped; the wonder is that he has done half as much.”

“That must be the man Patsy was talking about—only he called him the
young masther,” Norah said. “Is he quite young?”

“Oh, I’d put him down at about forty,” said Wally, to whom that age was
close on senile decay: “I think the old hands here would call a man the
young master until he died of old age. He’s queer: at times he’s like a
kid; and then I suppose the pain gets hold of him, because, in a minute
he seems to grow quite old, and he drops laughing and gets bitter.”

“Poor fellow!” said Mr. Linton. “How did you find him, Wally?”

“Why, I nearly fell on top of him getting down a bank into a lane,”
Wally answered. “He was sitting on a stone, hating himself, but he
didn’t seem to mind my sudden appearance at all, though I’m sure clods
hit him. Then we yarned, and I helped him back to his car, and he got me
to go back to lunch with him—I didn’t want to, but——” He was silent.

“I expect he was glad of someone to talk to,” Mr. Linton said.

“That’s it—he’s just as lonely as he can be. All his people are
fighting, and he’s knocked himself out over Red Cross work, and has had
to come back to Ireland and get fit. He’s coming to call on you,
sir—and he wants us all to go over to Rathcullen—his place—as much as
we can.”

“H’m,” said Jim and Norah, together.

“I wish baronial halls appealed more to my family,” said Mr. Linton,
laughing.

“I didn’t mean to be horrid; but trout and loughs and bogs appeal so
much more,” said Norah. “Of course we’ll go, if he wants us.”

“Well, it’s a jolly place, and he’s horribly lonely,” Wally answered.
“And I don’t know about his halls being baronial, but certainly his
stables are: they’re simply topping. He hasn’t many horses left—the
Government took most of them for the war; but there are two ripping
hunters, and some extra good ponies. And he wants to lend ’em to us.”

“Eh!” said Jim, sitting up. “Wally, my child, how did you manage it?”

“Didn’t have to,” said Wally, grinning. “He simply threw them at me.
Asked me if you could ride, Norah, so I suggested that if he had a quiet
donkey it might do.”

“We have one that is not quiet,” said Norah, regarding him with a fixed
eye. “Tell me the truth, Wally—is there something I can ride?”

“Wait till you see it—that’s all. And he’s going to teach us to jump
banks and ditches and things.”

“Oh-h!” said Norah, blissfully, “I said this place only wanted horses to
make it perfect!”

“Well, now you’re going to have the horses, little as you both deserve
’em,” said Wally; “and now, perhaps, you’ll all apologize humbly for
calling me unpleasant names!”

“Certainly not,” Jim said, firmly. “If you didn’t deserve them at the
moment (and I’m not sure that you didn’t), you’re sure to deserve them
before long. Never mind, look at this!”

He opened his fishing-basket carefully and showed a mass of damp grass,
among which could be seen glimpses of many trout. Jim dived in with his
finger and thumb, and drew out a speckled beauty, which he dangled
before Wally’s envious gaze.

“A pound and a half, by my patent spring-balance!” he declared,
triumphantly. “I played him for what seemed like three hours, and I
never was so scared of anything in my life. He got tired at last,
however, and Norah officiated with the landing-net.”

“Yes, and missed him twice,” said Norah, shame-faced. “It was the
greatest wonder he didn’t get off. But a big trout on the end of a
little line does wobble so much when it’s coming towards the net. It’s
much worse than a screwing ball at tennis.”

“I know—and you feel perfectly certain the line is going to break, if
the rod doesn’t,” Wally said. “I feel like that over a quarter-pounder:
I don’t know how you ever managed to make a collected effort for that
big fellow.”

“It wasn’t collected at all—I just swiped wildly, and got him by the
sheerest good luck,” Norah answered. “I mean to practise with a cricket
ball on a string, hung from the big tree outside my window: it would be
awful to miss another beauty like that.”

They were drifting down the little lough very slowly. There were purple
shadows under the hills, lying across the strip of bog that stretched
westward, where the curlew and golden plover were calling. A little
breeze sprang up, just rippling the surface of the water. Wally got out
his rod hastily; but though the conditions seemed ideal, the trout had
apparently gone to sleep, and when an hour’s casting had not yielded so
much as a rise, it was decided that there might be better things than
fishing, and the party returned to the shore. A small boy, lurking about
the landing stage, was entrusted with the rods and baskets, and
disappeared slowly among the trees fringing the path that led to the
hotel.

“What are we going to do?” Jim asked.

“I’m going to Gortbeg,” Norah said. “I want some pins.”

“Pins?” Jim echoed. “Why ever must you walk two miles for pins? I’m sure
you don’t use one in a year.”

“No, and so I haven’t got any,” Norah said. “And I must have some,
because I want to shorten my bog-lepping skirt, and I can’t turn up the
edge without pins to keep it in place.”

“But you sew that sort of thing, don’t you?” Jim asked, wrestling with
masculine obtuseness.

“Of course—after you’ve pinned it in place. Jimmy, you had better let
me attack that skirt in my own way!” said Norah, justly incensed. “If
you’d tried climbing a mountain in a too-long skirt you wouldn’t argue
about making it shorter.”

“I guess I would cut a foot off it without arguing at all,” said Jim,
laughing. “Skirts are fool-things out of a house. Well, lead on, my
child: I suppose we’re all going pin-hunting.”

The road to Gortbeg lay between high banks, with occasional gaps through
which could be seen pleasant moors and fields, and sometimes an old
mansion, almost hidden by enormous beech-trees. Most of the great houses
of the country were silent and closely-shuttered; the men of the family
away fighting, the women doing Red Cross work in London, or nursing as
near the firing-line as they could manage to establish themselves. In a
few were faint signs of occupation: a white-haired old lady on a lawn,
an old man, surrounded by a number of dogs, of many breeds, wandering
through the woods; but even in these houses there was an air of brooding
quiet and expectancy, of silent daily watching for news. The gardens
were gay with summer flowers, and nothing could spoil the beauty of the
trees; but there were weeds in the mould, and the paths were unkempt and
moss-grown. The district was never a rich one, and now the war had taken
all its men and money.

Down the road, to meet them, came a boy on a donkey: a cheery small boy,
sitting very far back with his knees well in. The donkey was guiltless
of bridle or saddle, obeying, with meekness, if not with alacrity,
suggestions conveyed to it by the pressure of the bare knees and
occasional blows with an ash cudgel.

“The asses of Ireland are a patient race,” remarked Wally.

“They had need to be,” Jim answered.

“It’s up to the ass to be patient in most places,” remarked Mr. Linton.
“Life isn’t exactly a picnic to him anywhere. On the whole, the Irish
donkeys seem well enough cared for; I have seen their brothers in other
countries far worse treated. That’s a nice donkey you have, sonny”—to
the small rider, who passed them, grinning cheerfully.

“He is, sorr”; and the grin widened.

“They’re such jolly kids in these parts,” Wally said. “They always greet
you as if you were the one person they had wanted to see for years; and
they’re so interested in you. It doesn’t seem like curiosity, either,
but real, genuine interest.”

“So it is, as far as it goes,” Jim said.

“Well it may not go far, but it’s comforting while it lasts—and it
generally lasts as long as one is there oneself. It’s just as well it
doesn’t go deeper, or visitors would leave an awful trail of unrequited
affection behind them. As it is, one feels they recover after one has
gone, after doing all they can to make one’s stay pleasant. Yes, I think
Ireland’s a nice, friendly country,” Wally finished. “And there’s
Gortbeg, looking as if it had forgotten to wake up for about five
hundred years.”

There was not much of Gortbeg. A busy little river flowed past it
hurriedly, and the village had sprung up along one bank: one winding
street, with a few cottages and a whitewashed inn which called itself
the Fisherman’s Arms. Some boats were moored in the stream near the inn,
where a crazy landing-stage jutted out. Scarcely anyone was to be seen
except a few children, playing on the green, which they shared with
numerous geese, a few donkeys, and some long-haired goats; while over
the half-door of one of the cabins a knot of shawled women gossiped.

“There’s your shop, Norah,” Mr. Linton said, indicating a dingy building
which bore in its window a curious assortment of cheap sweets, slates,
apples, red flannel, and bacon.

“It looks a bit queer,” Norah commented, regarding the emporium rather
doubtfully. “However, it’s sure to have pins.”

The shop was prudently secured, by a bolted half-door, against the
ravages of predatory geese or goats. Within, it was very dark, and
prolonged hammering on the counter failed to bring any response. Finally
Jim found his way into a back room and cooee’d lustily, returning in
some haste.

“Phew-w! There’s a gentleman in corduroys, asleep on a bed, and two dead
pigs hanging by their heels,” he said. “None of them took any notice of
me; but some one out at the back answered. Here he comes.”

The proprietor of the shop entered hurriedly: a plump little man, very
breathless and apologetic, and more than a little damp.

“I left a bit of a young gossoon to mind the shop,” he said—“and I
washin’ meself. It’s gone he is, playin’ with the other boys—sure I’ll
teach him to play when I get a holt of him. Pins, miss? Is it hairpins,
now, you’d be wanting?”

“No, just ordinary pins,” Norah told him.

“H’m,” said the shopman, doubtfully. “I dunno would I have them, at all.
If it was hairpins, now, there’s not a place in Donegal where you’d get
a finer selection. Pins . . .” He pondered deeply, and rummaged in a box
that seemed sacred to extremely sticky bull’s eyes. “Well, well, we’d
better look for them. It might be they’d be in some odd corner.”

The wall behind him was divided into innumerable little compartments,
and he looked faithfully through them all, striking match after match to
illumine his progress. There were assorted goods in the compartments:
nails and screws, tin saucepan-lids, marbles, boots, soap, oranges,
reels of cotton, biscuits, socks, and ass’s shoes; he searched them all,
turning over the contents of each until the match burned down to his
fingers, when he would throw it hastily on the floor, strike another,
and move on to the next collection. The box of matches was nearly
exhausted when at length he gave up his quest.

“They’re not in it at all,” he said, despondently. “I did have some, one
time, but I expect they’re sold on me. When the traveller comes I could
be getting some in from Belfast, if there was no hurry.”

Norah indicated that there was hurry, and asked if there were another
shop.

“There’s Mary Doody’s,” said the man of business, sadly; “at the least,
you might call it a shop, though it’s only herself knows what she sells.
That’s the only one.” He came to the doorway, and pointed down the
street. “The last house, it is. If ’twas anything in the wurruld now,
except pins, I’d have it.”

A little way from the shop, he caught them up, breathless, but aflame
with business enterprise.

“Is it from Moroney’s ye are? Would ye tell Mrs. Moroney that I’ve the
grandest bit of pork ever she seen—killed yesterday, an’ they me own
pigs that I rared on the place. Peter Grogan—sure, she’ll know me.”

“Thank you,” Jim said, hurriedly. “Good night.”

“Good night,” responded Mr. Grogan. “Tell her to-morrow’s early closing
day, an’ I could bring one over in the little ass-cart as aisy as not.”
The last words were uttered in a high shriek as the distance widened
between himself and the Linton party.

“Pork is a good thing,” said Mr. Linton, sententiously. “Isn’t it, Jim?”

“If you’d seen the room I saw!” said his son, with feeling. “Such a
bedroom: and the gentleman in bed, and I should say very drunk. No, I
don’t think I’ll deliver that message.”

“I wouldn’t,” said Mr. Linton.

Mary Doody’s place of business stood back a little from the road. There
was no window for the display of goods, and the door was shut. The
uninitiated might, indeed, have been pardoned for failing to regard it
as a shop, or for passing by, unnoticed, the brief legend over the door
which stated that Mrs. Doody’s residence was a Generil Store, and added
that she was further empowered to sell stout and porter. The inhabitants
of Gortbeg, however, were clearly to be numbered among the initiated,
for sounds of conviviality came, muffled, from within, and once a voice
broke into a snatch of a song. Norah hesitated.

“I suppose I needn’t knock.”

“They might not hear you, if you did,” Jim said. He opened the door.

Within, a long, low room was dim with a mixture of turf and tobacco
smoke, and heavy with the fumes of porter. A swinging lamp shed a
depressed ray over the scene. As her eyes grew accustomed to the smoky
twilight, Norah made out a number of men and a few women sitting on
benches near the fire, each with a mug that evidently held comforting
liquor. Every one seemed to be talking at once; but a dead silence fell
as the door opened on the unfamiliar figures. Norah resisted an
inclination to turn and seek fresh air. An immensely fat woman, with a
grimy shawl pinned across her bosom, waddled forward.

“Good evening, dear,” she said, dividing the greeting impartially
between Jim and Norah.

“Good evening,” Norah responded. “This is a shop, isn’t it?”

“It is, dear,” Mrs. Doody said, bridling a little at any doubt being
cast on her emporium. “Were you wantin’——?”

“Pins,” Norah said hastily. “Do you keep them?”

“I dunno would I,” said Mary Doody, unconsciously echoing Mr. Grogan.
“Pins. Would they be small pins, now?”

“Yes—just common pins.”

“Pins,” said Mary Doody, reflecting deeply. She turned and sought in
unsavoury boxes which held a stock as varied, if not so numerous, as
that of Mr. Grogan. The porter-drinkers became immensely interested.
Some of the women came nearer and stared at the strangers, and one or
two, catching Norah’s eye, smiled a greeting.

Mary Doody heaved her mighty form up from the box over which she had
been crouching.

“I had some, wanst,” she said. “But ’tis gone they are, or may be them
gerrls has them taken. Wouldn’t anything else do for you, dear?”

“No, thank you,” Norah said, hastily. She turned to go, pursued by Mrs.
Doody, who suddenly became interested in the case.

“Did you try Peter Grogan?” she asked. “He have a little shop up
yonder.”

Norah admitted having tried and failed.

“My, my!” said Mary Doody. “’Tis puttin’ a bad direction on a counthry
when you can’t buy a paper of pins in it, isn’t it, dear?”

Norah laughed. “I’m sorry you haven’t got them,” she said.

“No. There’s no call for them here, dear. We do be using buttons,” said
Mary Doody, blandly.

Under cover of this broadside Norah made a confused exit, to find Jim
and Wally helpless with laughter without.

“Never did I see anyone taught her place so beautifully!” said Jim,
ecstatically. “That will teach you to be tidy, young Norah!”

“Buttons!” said Norah, laughing. “I’d like to see Mary Doody shorten a
skirt with the aid of buttons. Anyhow, I’ve got to do it without the aid
of pins, that’s evident. Come home, you unsympathetic frivollers!”

It was two days later, that, coming in late and ravenously hungry after
a long tramp across the bog, the Lintons made a hurried toilet and a
still more hurried descent to the dining-room. Dinner had been kept
waiting for them, and they applied themselves to it with an energy born
of a long day in the open air and a sandwich lunch. It was when the
first edge of appetite had been taken off, and they were toying with a
mammoth apple-pie, that Mrs. Moroney bore down upon them.

“I’m afraid we were very late, Mrs. Moroney,” said Mr. Linton.

“Ah, ’tis no matter,” said the lady of the house, waving away the
suggestion. “In the heighth of the season there’s many a one roaring for
dinner, and it ten o’clock at night. Did you enjoy your dinner, now?”

“We did, indeed,” said Mr. Linton; “it was most excellent pork——”

He stopped, catching Jim’s eye, into which had come a sudden light of
comprehension.

“Pork!” said Jim faintly. “Yes, it _was_ pork. Mrs. Moroney, . . . I
wonder . . . did you . . . ?”

“Don’t tell me there was anything wrong with it,” said Mrs. Moroney,
aflame in the defence of the pork. “I never see better pigs than them
ones of Peter Grogan’s; and he after killing them only last Tuesday!”




                               CHAPTER X
                            THE ROCK OF DOON


                   “Hills o’ my heart!
 Let the herdsman who walks in your high haunted places
   Give him strength and courage, and weave his dreams alway:
 Let your cairn-heaped hero-dead reveal their grand exultant faces.
   And the Gentle Folk be good to him betwixt the dark and day.”
 ETHNA CARBERY.

SIR John O’Neill paid his formal call on the Australians, tactfully
choosing a day so hopelessly wet as to forbid any thought of fishing or
“bog-lepping.” Bog excursions had a peculiar fascination for Norah and
the boys, who loved rambling among the deep brown pools, leaping from
tuft to tuft of sound grass, and making experiments—frequently
disastrous—in mossy surfaces that looked sound, but were very likely to
prove quagmires which effectually removed any lurking doubt in Norah’s
mind that an Irish bog could be boggy. They sought the bogs in almost
all weathers. But the day that brought Sir John to the old house on
Lough Aniller was one of such pitiless rain that prudence, in the shape
of Mr. Linton, forbade any excursion to patients so newly recovered as
Jim and Wally.

Even in the most homelike of boarding-houses a wet day is apt to be
depressing to open-air people. It was with relief, mingled with
amazement, that they saw the motor coming up the dripping avenue in the
afternoon; and a moment later Bridget, obviously impressed, ushered Sir
John into the drawing-room. The Lintons were established as favourites
in the household on their own merits; but it was placing them on quite a
different standard of respect to find that they were visited by the
“ould stock.”

Every one enjoyed the visit. Sir John was better, the lines of pain that
Wally had seen nearly gone from his face. There was an almost boyish
eagerness about him; he was keen to know them all, to hear their frank
talk, to make friends with them. David Linton and his son liked him from
the moment they met his eyes; brown eyes, with something of the mute
appeal that lies in the eyes of a dog. As for Norah, in all her life she
had not known what it meant to be so sorry for anyone as she felt for
this brave, crippled man, with his high-bred face and gallant bearing.
Afterwards, when John O’Neill looked back at heir meeting, one of his
memories of Norah was that she had never seemed to see his misshapen
shoulders.

That first visit had stretched over the whole afternoon, no one quite
knew how. Outside, the rain streamed down the window-panes and lashed
the lough into waves; but within the old house a fire of turf and
bog-wood blazed, casting ruddy lights on the furniture, and sending its
pleasant, acrid smell into the room. They gathered round it in a
half-circle and “yarned”—exchanging stories of Ireland, and Australia,
and London and war. There could be no talk in those grim days without
war-stories and war-rumours; but after a time they drifted away to
far-off times, and Sir John, beginning half-timidly with an old Irish
legend, found that he had a suddenly enthralled circle of listeners, who
demanded more, and yet more—tales of high and far-off times and of the
mighty heroes of Ireland: Finn MacCool and the Fianna, Cuchulain, Angus
Og, and the half-real, half-legendary past that holds Ireland in a mist
of romance. He knew it all, and loved it, telling the stories with the
quiet pride of a descendant of a race whose roots were deep in the soil
of the land that had borne them: and the children of the country that
had no history hung upon his words.

“What must you think of me?” he said at last, when, in a pause, the
clock in the hall boomed out six strokes. “I come to call, and I remain
to an unseemly hour spinning yarns. The fact is, you—well, you just
aren’t strangers at all, and I certainly knew you before. Were you in
Ireland in a previous incarnation, Miss Norah?”

Norah laughed.

“I would love to think so,” she said. “One would like to have had some
part in the Ireland you can talk about. Will you come again and tell us
more, Sir John?”

His eyes were grateful.

“If I don’t bore you. I fastened upon this poor boy”—indicating Wally
with a friendly nod—“the other day when I was desperately sick of my
own company, and now I seem to have done the same to you all; and you’re
very good to a lonely man. But I want all of you at Rathcullen.”

“We’re coming,” said Wally, solemnly.

“Will you? I timed my call to-day, because I didn’t think even
half-amphibious Australians would be out in such weather—and see what
luck I’ve had!” He looked no older than the boys, his eager face glowing
in the firelight. “But please don’t come to Rathcullen formally, Mr.
Linton; if I bring the car over can I carry you all off to-morrow for
lunch? There are horses simply spoiling to be ridden, Miss Norah.”

“Oh-h!” said Norah. “But I’ve no riding-things with me.”

“That doesn’t matter: I have two young cousins who occasionally pay me a
visit, and their riding-kit is at Rathcullen, since they can’t use it in
London. I’m sure you can manage with it; details of fit don’t signify
much in Donegal.” He rose, and stood on the hearthrug looking eagerly at
them. When he was sitting, his finely-modelled head and clever face made
it easy to forget his dwarfed body: standing, among the lithe, tall
Australians, it was suddenly pitifully evident. He felt it, for he
flushed, and for a moment his eyes dropped; then he faced them again,
bravely. Mr. Linton spoke, hurriedly.

“We would be delighted to go to you. But are we not rather a numerous
party? I think we ought to send a detachment!”

“No, indeed—I wouldn’t know which to choose!” returned the Irishman,
whimsically. “You see, you are just a godsend to me, if you will spare
me a little of your time; I have been so long shut up alone. And it’s
not good to be alone when one is spoiling to be in the thick of things;
I grow horribly bad-tempered. When I know that these young giants are
out of the hunt, too, I become more reconciled to circumstances. You see
my complete selfishness!” He smiled at them delightfully. “So, may I
come for you all to-morrow?”

“Thanks—but there is really no reason why we should trouble you to
bring the motor. We can easily walk over.”

“There’s every reason; I’ll get you earlier!” said O’Neill, laughing.

The motor slid down the avenue in the driving rain, and the Australians
looked at each other.

“Did you ever make friends so quickly with anyone, dad?” Jim asked.

“I don’t think I did,” David Linton answered. “There’s something about
him one can’t quite express: so much of the child left in the man. Poor
fellow—poor fellow!”

“I think he’s the bravest man I ever saw,” said Norah.

The day at Rathcullen House was the first of many. Sir John was so
frankly eager to have them there, and his welcome was so spontaneous and
heart-felt, that the Australians suddenly felt themselves “belong,” and
the beautiful old house became to them an Irish version of their own
Billabong. Ireland, always many-sided, showed them a new and fascinating
face. They had loved the lanes and bogs and moors where they had been
free to wander. But now they found themselves free of a wide demesne
where wealth and art had done all that was possible to aid Nature, with
a perfect understanding of where it was best to leave Nature alone. The
park, with its splendid old trees, and the well-kept fields around it,
gave opportunities for trying Sir John’s horses; and Norah and the boys
were soon under the spell of jumping the big banks that the hunters took
so cleverly,—although, at first, to see them jump on to a bank, change
feet with lightning rapidity, and leap down the far side, seemed to
Antipodean eyes more like a circus performance than ordinary riding!
Beyond the park stretched miles of deer-forest, unlike an ordinary
forest in that it had no trees,—being a great expanse of heathery hills
and moor, seamed and studded with rocks, streams babbling here and
there, half-hidden in deep channels fringed with long grass and heather
and ling. As land, it Was worthless; nothing would grow in the stony
barren soil save the moorland plants; but it formed a glorious ground
for long rambles. O’Neill was fast recovering his normal strength, and
his energy was always like a devouring fire; he could not, however, walk
far, and he and David Linton would find rocky seats on the moor while
Norah and the boys rambled far over the deer-forest, often stalking
patiently for an hour, armed with field-glasses, to catch a glimpse of
the shy red-deer.

“A don’t know why people want to shoot them,” Norah said, after a long
crawl through the rough heather, which had resulted in a splendid view
of a magnificent stag. “They’re so beautiful; and it’s just as much fun
to stalk them like this!” To which Jim and Wally returned non-committal
grunts, and exchanged, privately, glances of amazement at the
strangeness of the feminine outlook.

Sometimes there were days on the lough at the far end of the Rathcullen
bog: a well-stocked lough where no outside fishing was permitted, and
which yielded them trout of a weight far beyond their dreams; and there
were motor-drives far afield, exploring the country-side, with Sir John
always ready with legends and stories of the “ould ancient” times. Even
on wet days the big Rolls-Royce would appear early in the morning,
bearing an urgent invitation; and wet days were easy to spend in
Rathcullen—in the great hall, the well-stocked library, the
conservatories, or the picture-gallery, where faces of long-dead
O’Neills, some of them startlingly like their host, stared down at them
from the panelled walls. In the billiard-room Wally and Jim fought
cheerful battles, while Mr. Linton would write Australian letters in the
library, and Norah and Sir John explore other nooks and corners of the
great house, or discourse music after their own fashion. His friendship
seemed fitted to each: with Mr. Linton he could be the man of affairs,
deeply-read and thoughtful; while to the boys and Norah he was the most
delightful of chums, as full of fun even as Wally.

“He fits in so,” said Jim. “He’s never in our way, and—what is a good
deal more wonderful—I don’t believe we’re ever in his!”

Many times Sir John begged them to transfer themselves altogether to
Rathcullen. But something of Australian independence held them back;
they preferred to retain their rooms at the Lough Aniller house, though
it saw less and less of them in the daytime, and Timsy openly bewailed
their constant absence—until the sergeant came home on furlough, when
Timsy promptly forgot every one else in the world, and walked with his
head in clouds of glory.

“Indeed,” Mr. Linton said, one day, in answer to a renewed
invitation—“I am frequently ashamed to think how completely we seem to
have quartered ourselves on you, O’Neill. It’s hardly fair to inflict
you still further.”

“If you could but guess what you have done for me, you might be
surprised,” Sir John answered.

They were in the motor, running along a smooth high road near the little
narrow-gauge railway line. Ahead, Norah and the boys could be seen
across a field, riding; they had come across country, taking banks and
ditches as they came, and were making towards a point where they were
all to meet. John O’Neill looked at the racing trio with a smile.

“I was in a pretty bad way when Wally dropped on me in the boreen that
morning,” he said, presently.

“He said you were suffering terribly,” David Linton said.

“Oh—that was nothing. I’m fairly well used to pain when my stupid
attacks come on, though that had certainly been a stiff one. But—well,
I think I was beginning to lose heart. My physical disadvantages have
always been in my way, naturally; but I have managed to keep them in the
background to a certain extent and live a man’s life, even in a
second-rate fashion. But since the war began I couldn’t do it. I was so
useless—a cumberer of the ground, when every man was needed. My people
have always been fighters, until——until I came, to blot the record.”

“You have no right to say that,” said David Linton, sharply. “You did
more than thousands of men are doing.”

“I did what I could. But I wanted to fight, man—to fight! If you knew
how I envied every private I saw marching through London! every lucky
youngster with a sound heart and a pair of straight shoulders. I had
always set my teeth, before, and got through a man’s work, somehow or
other. But here was something I couldn’t do—they wouldn’t have me. And
even over what work I was able to tackle, I went to pieces. When I came
back to Ireland I felt like rubbish, flung out of the way—out of the
way of men who were men.”

“It’s not fair to feel like that,” David Linton said. “And it is not
true.”

“Well—you have all helped me to believe that perhaps I am not
altogether on the dust-heap. You came when I was desperate; every day in
Rathcullen was making me worse. I couldn’t go into the picture-gallery;
the fighting-men on the walls seemed to look at me in scorn to see to
what a poor thing the old house had come down. And then you all came,
and you didn’t seem to notice that anything was wrong with me. You made
me one of you—even those youngsters, full of all the energy and
laughter and youth of that big young country of yours. They have made a
chum of me: I haven’t laughed for years as I’ve laughed in the last
fortnight. And I’m fitter than I’ve been for years—I’ve forgotten to
think of myself, and when you all go I also am going back, to work.
There must be work, even for me.”

“For you! Why, you’re a young man, full of energy, even if you can’t
have active service,” said David Linton. “And I am a grey old man, but
there’s work for me. Don’t think that you have no job, because you can’t
get the job you like; that’s an easy attitude to adopt. Every man can
find his job if he looks for it with his eyes open.”

“Well, you have helped mine to open,” O’Neill said. “I was miserable
because I had hitched my wagon to a star and had found I couldn’t drive
it. The old servants—bless their kind hearts!—were purring over me and
pitying me, and I was feeling raw; and then you all walked into my life
and declined to notice that I was a useless dwarf——”

“Because you aren’t,” said the other man, sharply. “Don’t talk utter
nonsense!”

O’Neill laughed.

“Well—I won’t forget,” he said. “But I am grateful; only I sometimes
wonder if I ask for too much of your time. Do you think the youngsters
are bored?”

“Bored!” Mr. Linton said in amazement. “Why, they are having the time of
their lives! I could not possibly have given them half the pleasure you
have Put in their way. You talk of gratitude, but to my mind it should
be entirely on our side.”

“No,” said O’Neill firmly. “Still, I’m glad to think they are enjoying
themselves,—not merely being polite and benevolent!” Whereat David
Linton broke into laughter.

“I trust they’d be polite in any circumstances,” he said. “But even
politeness has its limits. You wouldn’t call that sort of thing forced,
would you? Look.”

He pointed across a field. Norah and the boys were galloping to meet
them. They flashed up a little hill, dipped down into a hollow, and
scurried up another rise, where a stiff bank met them, with a deep drop
into the next field. Norah’s brown pony got over it with the cleverness
of a cat, and she raced ahead of the boys, who set sail after her,
vociferating quite unintelligible remarks about people who took unfair
short cuts. Their merry voices brought echoes from the hills. Norah
maintained her advantage until a low bank brought them out into the
road, and all together they trotted towards the waiting motor. Their
glowing faces sufficiently answered Sir John’s doubts.

“Why, of course you beat them, Norah—easily!” he said, shamelessly
ignoring the boys’ side of the race. “Didn’t I tell you that pony could
beat most things in Donegal, if she got the chance?”

“I did cut a corner,” Norah admitted, laughing. “But ’tis themselves has
the animals of great size—and they flippant leppers!” She dropped into
brogue with an ease born of close association with Timsy and his
parents. “Sir John, is that the Doon Rock?”

She pointed with her whip to a great rocky eminence half a mile away.

“Yes, that’s the Rock,” O’Neill answered. “It’s rather a landmark, isn’t
it? We’ll wait for you at the foot, if you’ll jog on after us.”

The riders followed the motor slowly. The road led past the great mass,
half hill, half rock, that towered over the little fields. It was about
three hundred feet high, with sparse vegetation endeavouring to find a
footing on its rugged sides, and grey boulders, weather-worn and clothed
with lichen, jutting out, grim and bleak. The motor halted under its
shadow, and the groom who occupied the front seat with Con, the lame
chauffeur, led the horses away to a cottage close by.

A few hundred yards away a curious sight puzzled the Australians. On a
little green, where some grey stones marked a well, was a little
plantation of sticks stuck in the ground. Fluttering rags waved from
many of them, and ornamented the ragged brambles near the well.

“You haven’t seen a holy well, have you?” O’Neill asked. “That is one of
the most famous—the Well of Doon.”

“But what are the sticks?” Wally asked.

“Come and see.”

They walked over to the well. A deeply marked path led to it, and all
about it the ground was beaten hard by the feet of many people, save in
the patch of ground where the sticks stood upright. There were all kinds
of sticks; rough stakes, cut from a hedge, ash-plants, blackthorns—some
of no value, others well-finished and costly. Rags, white and coloured,
fluttered from them. And there was more than one crutch, standing
straight and stiff among the lesser sticks.

“But what is it?” breathed Norah.

“It’s a holy well. Hundreds of years ago there was a great sickness in
the country, and the people sent to a saint who had originally come from
these parts, begging him to come and help them. The saint was in Rome,
and he could not come. But he was sorry for the people; and the legend
goes that he threw his staff into a well in Rome, and it sank, and
emerged from the water of the Well of Doon here: and ever since then the
people believe that the water has healing power, and that it will heal
anyone who pilgrimages to it barefoot.”

“But does it?” asked Wally, incredulously.

“Well—they say the age of miracles is past. But the age of
faith-healing is not; and you won’t find an Irishman, whatever his
religion, sneering at the old holy places of Ireland. I don’t pretend to
understand these things, but I respect them. And then—there is no doubt
whatever as to the genuineness, and the permanence, of many of the
cures.” He pointed to the little forest of sticks. “Look at those
sticks: each one left here by a grateful man or woman who came leaning
on the stick, and went away not needing it.”

“Great Scott!” said Wally. “And the rags?”

“They are votive offerings. If you look on that flat stone near the well
you’ll find hundreds of others—tokens, medals, little ornaments, even
hairpins: all valueless, but left by people too poor to give even a
penny. They believe the saint understands: and I think he would be a
hard saint if he did not.”

The stone was almost covered with tiny offerings.

“Does no one touch them?” Jim asked.

“They’re sacred. If you left money there it would not be touched.” He
pointed to a handful of wilting daisies. “I expect those were left by
children on their way to school. All the poor know that it is the
spirit, not the letter, of an offering that counts: and even those
daisies are left in perfect faith that the saint will see to the matter
if trouble should come to them.”

“I never thought such beliefs still existed,” said Mr. Linton, greatly
interested. “Look at this crutch—it’s quite good, and looks
newly-planted.”

A woman, barefooted and with a shawl over her head, had come across the
grass from the cottage. She curtseyed to O’Neill.

“It was left this morning, sir,” she said, indicating the crutch. “Sure,
the man that owned it was in a bad way: he come from Dublin, an’ he
crippled in his hip. On a side-car they brought him, and there was two
men to lift him on and off it, and he yellow with the dint of the pain
he had. I seen him limping on his crutch across to the well. And when he
went away he walked over to the car as aisy as you or me, and not a limp
on him at all, and him throwing a leg on to the car like a boy.”

“You mean to say he went away cured?” exclaimed Mr. Linton.

“Sure, there’s his crutch,” said the woman, simply. “He’d no more use at
all for it.”

“Well-l!” The Australians looked blankly at each other.

“’Tis fourteen years I’ve been living over beyant,” said the woman.
“I’ve seen them come on sticks and on crutches; some of them carried,
and some of them put on cars: but they all walked away—all that had
faith in the saint. Why wouldn’t they?”

It was a brief question that somehow left them without any answer, since
simple faith is too big a thing to meddle with. They said good-bye to
the woman and went back to the Rock, where the groom was waiting to help
his master in the climb—an old groom with a face like a withered rosy
apple. The ascent was not difficult: a winding path led to the summit of
the Rock, and they were soon at the top.

“Between them, Elizabeth and Cromwell didn’t leave us many of our old
monuments,” said O’Neill, looking away across the country. “But thank
goodness they couldn’t touch the Doon Rock!”

The summit was almost flat; a long narrow plateau with soft grass
growing in its hollows. One end was wider than the other, with a kind of
saddle connecting the two: and in the middle of the smaller end was a
great flat stone that looked almost like an altar. All about the high,
precipitous eminence the country lay like an unrolled map far beneath
them: a wide expanse of flat moor and field and fallow, in the midst of
which the great Rock showed, almost startling in its rugged steepness.
Little villages were dotted here and there, and sometimes could be seen
the blue gleam of water. The white smoke of a train made a creeping line
against the dark bog.

Con and the groom had placed the luncheon-basket in a grassy hollow
where there was shelter from the breeze that swept keenly across the
high Rock; and had retreated with the instinctive delicacy of the Irish
peasant, who never intrudes upon “the genthry” when eating, and himself
prefers to eat alone. After lunch, Norah and Wally collected the débris
of the feast and burned it under the lee side of a boulder, in the
belief that no decent person leaves such things as picnic-papers for the
next comer to see: and then they strolled across the narrow saddle to
the stone on the farther side, where the others had already wandered.

“Tell us about it, Sir John, please,” Norah begged.

“It was here that the old O’Donnell chiefs were inaugurated,” O’Neill
said. “They were the rulers of Tyrconnell, which is now north-west
Ulster: the old name is still used in a good deal of Irish poetry. All
the clan used to gather when a new leader was to be installed, the
people clustering down in the plain below, and the chieftain and his
principal men up here on the Rock. It must have been worth seeing.”

Jim drew a long breath.

“I should just think so,” he said, “Tell us more, O’Neill: I want to
reconstruct it. This old Rock must have looked just the same as it does
to-day. It’s something to have seen even that!”

“Just the same,” said Sir John, his eyes kindling at the boy’s
enthusiasm. “The Inauguration Stone may have been in better
preservation, but a few dozen centuries can’t do much to the Rock.
Well—you can picture the people down below, thousands of them. All the
country would be a great unfenced plain—no banks and hedges such as you
see to-day, and very likely no roads worth calling roads. There would be
forests, most probably, and, in them, animals that became extinct long
ago, like the wild boar and wolf. The ground below would be a great
camp—every one making merry and dressed in their best.”

“I should think that even in those days it wouldn’t take much to make an
Irish crowd merry,” Wally said.

“They would have plenty of entertainment: jugglers, fortune-tellers,
buffoons in painted masks, and champions, showing feats with weapons and
strength—probably ‘spoiling for a fight.’ Music there would be in
abundance: pipes, tube-players, harps, and bands of chorus-singers.
There would be any amount of fun in the crowd. But, of course, the Rock
would be the centre of everyone’s thoughts.”

“It’s all coming quite distinctly,” said Norah, who was sitting on the
grass, gazing out over the plain. “If you look hard you can see them
all, in saffron kilts and flowing cloaks like you told us, Sir John. Now
tell us who is up here on the Rock.”

“The new chief is where Wally is, sitting on the great stone,” said
O’Neill, smiling at her. “Do you want to know what he’s wearing?”

“Oh, please!”

“Well, you can picture him a goodly man, to begin with, for no chief
could reign unless he were a champion, free from the slightest physical
defect. ‘He was graceful and beautiful of form, without blemish or
reproach,’ one old chronicle says. ‘Fair yellow hair he had, and it
bound with a golden band to keep it from loosening. A red buckler upon
him, with stars and animals of gold thereon, and fastenings of silver. A
crimson cloak in wide descending folds around him, fastened at his neck
with precious stones. A torque of gold round his neck’—that’s a broad
twisted band: you can see them to-day in the Museum in Dublin. ‘A white
shirt with a full collar upon him, intertwined with red gold thread. A
girdle of gold, inlaid with precious stones, around him. Two wonderful
shoes of gold, with golden loops, about the feet. Two spears with golden
sockets in his hands, with rivets of red bronze.’ There—can you see
him, Norah?”

“I’m trying, but he dazzles me!” Norah said. “Go on, please. Who else is
there?”

“All his nobles and councillors, dressed almost as splendidly as the
chief himself. The old books are full of details of the richness of
their apparel: gold and silver and fine clothing must have been an
ordinary thing with them—and not only was it so, but the workmanship
was exquisite. They had ‘shirts ribbed with gold thread, crimson fringed
cloaks, embroidered coats of rejoicing, clothing of red silk, and shirts
of the dearest silk.’ They wore helmets, and carried spears, ’sharp,
thin, hard-pointed, with rivets of gold and silk thongs for throwing’;
‘long swords, with hilts and guards of gold; and shields of silver, with
rim and boss of gold.’ One man is described as ‘having in his hand a
small-headed, white-breasted hound, with a collar of rubbed gold and a
chain of old silver’: and a horse had a bridle of silver rings and a
gold bit. They had shoes of white bronze, and great golden brooches,
with ‘gold chains about their necks and bands of gold above them
again.’”

O’Neill stopped and laughed.

“I could go on for a long time,” he said. “But I’m afraid it begins to
sound like the description of Solomon’s Temple!”

“And to think,” said Jim, unheeding him, “that we had a vague idea that
Ireland had been inhabited only by savages!”

“Schools don’t teach you anything about Ireland,” said O’Neill,
contemptuously. “A few hours among the exquisite old things in the
Dublin Museum would open your eyes: the finest goldsmiths and
silversmiths of the present world cannot touch the beauty of the
workmanship of the treasures there;—and some of them were dug up out of
bogs, after lying there no one knows how many hundred or thousand years.
They were craftsmen in those days, and they loved the work. You don’t
get that spirit in Trades Union times!”

“Oh, don’t talk about Trades Unions!” Norah cried. “We’re on the Doon
Rock, and I can see all those people round the chief, and the crowd on
the plain below, looking up. What else, Sir John?”

“There would be white-robed Druids,” O’Neill said; “and the King’s bards
or poets would be about him. The bard was a very important person and a
high functionary, with wide powers. In a sense he was the
war-correspondent of his day: he never fought, but he was always present
at a battle, and very much in it, noting the heroic deeds of the
warriors, and afterwards recording them in his songs. Poetry in those
days was a most business-like and practical thing, for everything of any
importance was written in verse, such as the laws, the genealogies of
the clans, and their history. The poet held an exalted position, and was
educated for it from his boyhood by a course of careful study: and the
chief poet ranked next to the king, and went about with almost as fine a
retinue. They were the professors of their day, and kept schools for
training lads for their order. A man had to be very careful not to
offend one, or he would write a satire against the culprit; and these
satires were dreaded extremely, since they were believed to cause
disaster and desolation to fall not only on a man but on his whole
family. Nowadays, editors are said to keep special wastepaper baskets
for dealing with poets, but it wouldn’t have done in the ould ancient
times—the post of an editor would have been too unhealthy!”

“I suppose it is through them that the old stories have come down,” Jim
said.

“Of course. They had to write the verse-tales, and they had to tell
them, too; they were obliged to learn and teach three hundred and fifty
kinds of versification, and an Ollave, or chief poet, could recite at
any moment any of three hundred and fifty stories. They did a lot of
harm, because they abused their power; and at last, in the sixth
century, were nearly banished from Ireland altogether. Columcille saved
them from that fate, but they were made much less important. However,
the poets that you are looking at with your mind’s eye, Norah, were ages
before that, and you can imagine them as gorgeous and as haughty as
possible, and every one is very polite to them.”

“I’m going to get off this stone and make room for the chief,” said
Wally, solemnly, rising. “There’s the ghost of a poet, glaring at me,
and he’s going to burst into a satire.” He subsided on the grass beside
Norah. “Go on, please.”

“Well, that is the crowd on top of the Rock,” Sir John said: “nobles,
councillors, poets, and Druids, all in order of rank: the Rock would
hold three or four hundred, all told. And the crowd below, gazing up.
I’m glad you got off the stone, Wally, because the chief wants it now.
He takes off his wonderful shoes of gold, and places one foot on the
stone, and swears to preserve all ancient customs inviolable, to deliver
up the rulership peaceably, when the time comes, to his successor, to
rule the people with justice, and to maintain the laws. Then he puts
away his weapons, and the highest of his nobles, an hereditary official,
gives him a straight white rod in token of authority—straight, to
remind him that his administration should be just, and white, that his
actions should be pure and upright. Then he gives him new sandals: and
keeping one of the golden shoes, he throws the other over the new
chief’s head and proclaims him O’Donnell. All the nobles repeat the
title—can’t you hear the mighty shout, and the crowd below taking it
up, so that it rings over Tyrconnell!”

“Oh-h!” breathed Norah. “And it was here, where we are sitting!” She put
her hand on the ground that had felt the tramp of the hosts of ancient
days. “Was that all, Sir John?”

“That ended the ceremony; except that each subject paid a cow as
rod-money, a sort of tribute to the new chief. But of course there was
high feasting and festival, probably for days. They had splendid feasts,
too. Once, when one of the great nobles entertained the chief and all
the men of Tyrconnel, the preparations took a whole year. A special
house was built, surpassing all other buildings in beauty of
architecture, with splendid pillars and carvings: in the banqueting-hall
the wainscotting was of bronze thirty feet high, overlaid with gold. It
took a wagon-team to carry each beam, and the strength of seven men to
fix each pole; and the royal couch was set with precious stones ‘radiant
with every hue, making night bright as day.’”

O’Neill broke off, and hesitated.

“Do I tell you too much?” he asked. “I’m afraid my tongue runs away with
me—but I did want you to realize something of what Ireland was. There
were great men in those days, and the fighting-men had high ideals of
what great champions should be. It is what kept us all through our
lifetime,’ one said—‘truth that was in our hearts, and strength in our
arms, and fulfilment on our tongues.’”

He was silent, looking away. The proud soul, pent in the misshapen body,
found comfort in turning from the present, that held so little for him,
back to the mighty past when the O’Neills, too, had been chieftains and
champions.

Presently he stood up, with a shrug.

“Time we went down, I’m afraid,” he said, cheerfully. “Before we go,
Norah, I will proceed to relate for your benefit the six womanly gifts
which were demanded of properly-brought-up young women in the high and
far-off times in Ireland. They were, the gift of modest behaviour, the
gift of singing, the gift of sweet speech, the gift of beauty, the gift
of wisdom, and the gift of needlework!”

“Wow!” said poor Norah, in dismay. “Perhaps it’s as well I got born in
Australia!”




                               CHAPTER XI
                               NORTHWARD


        “Says he to all belongin’ him, ‘Now happy may ye be!
        But I’m off to find me fortune,’ sure he says, says he.”
        MOIRA O’NEILL.

‟IS Mr. Linton in, Timsy?”

“He is, sir. Leastways, he’s out, down by the lough, and all of them
with him.” The small boy looked up at Sir John O’Neill with more awe
than he was wont to regard most people. “Will I get him for you, sir?”

“No—I’ll go down, myself. Is your father well, Timsy?”

“He does be splendid, sir,” said Timsy, his eye brightening. “Only
they’ll be takin’ him back soon, to fight them ould Germans.”

“I expect Lord Kitchener can’t do without him,” said Sir John,
confidentially. “Never mind,—we’ll have him back in Donegal altogether,
before long, please goodness. And whisper, Timsy—when he comes back for
good, he’ll have a splendid medal on his coat!” He patted the small boy
on the head and left him speechless before a prospect so tremendous.

The Linton party was discovered by the well on the lough shore, where
Wally was scratching the nose of the patient donkey and talking to him,
as Norah said, as man to man. He had his back to the path down from the
garden, and did not hear Sir John’s approach.

“If you’d come back to Australia with us, acushla machree,” he said,
“I’d guarantee you the best of grass and you wouldn’t have any water to
draw at, all.” The ass drooped his head lower, and appeared, not at all
impressed by this dazzling future. “And Murty would love you, and Norah
would ride you after cattle.” (“I would _not_!” from Norah.) “And you
could tell the horses about Ireland, and we’d tie green ribbons round
your neck on St. Patrick’s Day, and let you wave a green flag with a
harp on it in your pearl-pale hand. Oh, lovely ass——!”

“Were you speaking to me?” asked Sir John, politely, near his ear; and
Wally jumped, and joined in the laugh against himself.

“We’re twin-souls, this patient person and myself,” he explained. “I’ve
found it out, and I’m trying to make the ass see it. Never mind, old
chap; we’ll continue this profitable conversation when we are alone;
unfeeling listeners only make you bashful.” He produced a carrot from
his pocket, and the ass ate it, despondently.

“I’m awfully sorry to have interrupted your heart-to-heart talk; but the
fact is, Mr. Linton, I’m simply bursting with an idea, and I had to
hurry over and put it before you.” Sir John spoke eagerly, turning to
Norah with a laugh. “Is it a good moment to approach him, Norah? I want
him to promise to do something.”

“He ate a noble breakfast,” said Norah, gravely. “And he’s nearly
finished his pipe. I should think the moment’s favourable. Anyway, it
will have to be now, because I simply can’t wait to hear what it is!”

“You see, we know your ideas, O’Neill,” Mr. Linton said, laughing. “They
generally combine a great deal of trouble for yourself with something
quite new in the way of entertainment for us. This must be particularly
outrageous, as you want me to promise beforehand. I think you had better
make a clean breast of it.”

“Well, it’s this,” Sir John answered. “The weather is glorious, and the
glass is high; it’s useless weather for fishing, and I think you have
explored this neighbourhood pretty thoroughly. The motor holds six quite
easily. What do you say to a trip north—a little tour, to last about a
week?”

Subdued gasps came from Norah, Jim, and Wally. Mr. Linton laughed
outright.

“What did I tell you?” he demanded.

“Not at all,” responded Sir John. “I think”—unblushingly—“that Con
needs a change; and it would be an excellent way to give him one, if you
would only be kind enough to help me. You surely wouldn’t refuse poor
Con such a little thing!”

“I’ve re-cast a good many of my ideas about Ireland,” David Linton said.
“But to utilize five people to take one chauffeur for a change is
certainly what I was brought up to call an Irish way of doing things!
Seriously, however, O’Neill, your proposal is a very tempting one. Shall
we put it to the committee?”

“The committee says, ‘Carried _nem. con._’ I should say,” said Jim. “It
would be simply top-hole. But isn’t it putting rather a strain on you
and the motor?”

“Certainly not—as far as I am concerned, a run in sea-air is all I need
to make me quite fit again,” O’Neill answered. “What do you say about
it, Norah?”

“I’m speechless; and as for Wally, he’s leaning up against the ass for
support,” said Norah, indicating Mr. Meadows, who grasped the hapless
donkey fondly. “It’s the most glorious plan, Sir John; and it’s just
like you, to think of it.”

O’Neill’s delicate face flushed with pleasure.

“You’re all such satisfactory people, because you’re never bored,” he
said. “And then, you like Ireland, which makes everything delightful.
Well, I thought we might have a look at Horn Head and Sheep Haven, Mr.
Linton, and perhaps get across to The Rosses; or would you rather have
no fixed plan, but just wander about, seeking what we may find? There
are innumerable little bays and inlets up there, all rather fascinating;
we should be between mountain and sea scenery, and the inns here and
there are fairly good.”

“I think we will leave it entirely to you, so far as planning the route
goes,” Mr. Linton answered. “You know the country, and we don’t; and as
for us, any part of Ireland is good.”

“I vote for having no fixed plan at all,” Jim said. “It’s when you have
no plans that the best things happen to you!”

“We’ll leave it at that, then,” said Sir John. “Can we start to-morrow?”

“We have only two weeks more leave,” said Jim. “So the sooner we go the
better.”

“And you can be ready, Norah?”

“Me? Oh, certainly,” said Norah, who, Wally declared, was always ready
at any time for anything.

“Then, I’ll be off,” Sir John declared. “I left Con hard at work on the
car, giving her a thorough overhaul—we could not believe that you would
be so hard-hearted as to refuse him the trip! But I have a good many
things to see to, and I’ll have a busy day.”

“Could I help you?” Jim asked. “I’m handy at odd jobs.”

“Would you care to? I’ll be awfully glad of your company,” said Sir John
warmly. They went off together, the boy’s great shoulders towering above
O’Neill’s dwarfed form.

Jim did not return until late that night. Norah, just about to blow out
her candle, heard his light step on the stair and called to him softly.

“Not asleep yet, kiddie?” Jim said, sitting down on the bed. “You should
be; you’ll be tired to-morrow.”

“I’m all right,” said Norah, disregarding this friendly caution. “Jim, I
packed your bag; and there’s a list of things just inside it, in case I
made any mistakes.”

“Well, you are a brick!” said Jim, who was accustomed to stern
independence, but, like most people, greatly appreciated a little
spoiling now and then. “I was looking forward rather dismally to a
midnight packing; O’Neill wants to get off quite early in the morning.”

“We guessed that was likely. Did you have a good day, Jim?”

“Quite. I don’t think I was any particular help to O’Neill; he found a
few jobs for me, but I fancy he had to rack his brains for them. But we
pottered about together all day, and had a very jolly time; he’s such
fun when he’s in good form, and he was like a kid to-day. Made me laugh
no end.” Jim pondered, beginning to unlace his boots. “I think it’s only
when he is alone that those bitter fits get hold of him; and he just
dreads being alone. That’s why he took me over, of course.”

“I thought so,” nodded Norah. “But I do think he’s happier than he was,
Jim.”

“I believe he is. Well, we’ll try to keep him laughing for the next week
or so, anyhow,” said Jim. “Now, you go to sleep, old kiddie.”

The fine weather held, making it easy to leave trout which would have
nothing to do with them; and next day the motor took them away into
bypaths of Ireland, with new beauty and new legend at every turn. They
passed Gartan, and saw the birthplace of Saint Columba, a tiny stone
cell with a curiously indented stone; and Columba’s ruined church of
grey stone, roofless, and with almost-effaced carvings on its walls.
Near it a tall, narrow stone stood crookedly—all that remained of a
cross. The ground before it, hard as iron, was hollowed where the knees
of thousands of pilgrims had knelt in prayer, and the stone itself was
smooth from kisses that had been pressed upon it through century after
century. Sir John knew many legends of the hot-tempered, fighting saint,
whose warlike proclivities eventually led to his banishment from the
Ireland he loved, to work and suffer home-sickness until Death came at
last to release him.

“The emigrants pray to him specially, since he, too, knew what it meant
to be lonely for Ireland,” Sir John said. “He was a worker: he wrote
three hundred books and founded the same number of churches. So he came
to be called Columcille—_cille_ meaning church. An O’Donnell he was:
one of the old house. He made a famous copy of the Psalms, the disputed
ownership of which caused the fight that led to his leaving Ireland: and
this copy—it was called The Cathach, or Battler—was an heirloom in the
O’Donnell family, who always carried it with them into battle, in a
shrine. One hates to think of him, exiled, working, and longing for
home. The first monastery he founded was near Derry; he was only a young
man then, but long afterwards he wrote that the angels of God sang in
every glade of Derry’s oaks. I always think one can see him in this
queer little church—big and powerful, with the fighting face and
toilworn hands.”

For a time they kept near the railway that creeps through the heart of
Donegal: a quaint, narrow-gauge line where the trains saunter, forgetful
of time. Its way runs through deep bogs, which made its construction no
light matter, since solid foundation was in some places only found
eighty feet below the surface, and great causeways, embankments, and
viaducts had to be built to carry it. Sometimes, in contrast, the way
had to be hewn through solid rock. On one hand lay wild and rugged
mountains, with some fine dominating peaks: Muckish—“the hog’s
back”—with its long, flattened ridge, changing from every angle of
vision; and the great peak of Errigal, bare and glistening, the highest
mountain in Donegal.

“It’s a great old peak,” said Sir John, looking at it affectionately.
“You can see Scotland from the top—and all over Donegal, and southward
to the Sligo and Galway hills.”

“How it glistens!” said Norah, watching the great cone as the motor went
slowly along. “What makes it so white?”

“That’s white quartz; it gives it its name, ‘the silver mountain.’ It
looks a single peak from here, but as we round it you’ll see that there
are really two heads close together; there is a narrow ridge, with a
track about a foot wide, connecting them. Some day, when you all come
back to stay with me at Rathcullen, we must arrange an expedition for
you to climb it.”

Their wandering way led them from the railway line, after a time; and
they struck northward into lonely country of moors and bogs, dotted with
tiny cabins from which blue turf-smoke curled lazily. Once they passed
an old man riding a grey mare, with his wife perched behind him on a
pillion, holding under her shawl a turkey in a sack, from the mouth of
which protruded the head of the indignant bird, making loud protests.
None of the women they met, whether young or old, wore hats: all had the
heavy Irish shawl round head and shoulders,—and whether the face that
looked from the folds were that of a withered old woman or a fresh and
smiling colleen, somehow the shawl seemed the best setting that could
have been devised for it.

Often, for miles and miles, they met no one and passed no habitation: or
perhaps the loneliness of the way would be broken by a little thatched
cabin, where ragged children ran to the doorway, to gaze, round-eyed, at
the strangers. In one little town, however, a fair was in progress, and
the cobbled street presented a lively spectacle. Men, women and
children; asses, ridden and driven; horses, cattle, sheep, and pigs, and
a few stray geese, mingled in loud-voiced confusion, while dogs slipped
hither and thither, managing to intensify the urgency of any situation.
To get the big Rolls-Royce through such a concourse was no easy task,
and even with a people so good-humoured, a tactless driver would have
achieved swift unpopularity. Sir John, however, was at the wheel
himself, and he slowed down to a crawl, sounding the hooter
occasionally, more in the manner of a gentle suggestion than anything
else. His Irish accent was a shade more in evidence than usual as he
exchanged greetings with the crowd.

“’Tis a fine season we’re having, thank God!”

“It is, your honour. G’wan now, Mary Kate; get the little ass out of the
way of the mothor.”

“Ah, don’t be hurrying her. I have plenty of time.”

“Sure ye’d need it, your honour, the place is that throng.”

“And that’s a good sign; it’s a great fair you’re having!”

“Well indeed, sir, it is not bad, thank God!”

O’Neill swerved to avoid an old woman in an ass-cart, who was talking
volubly to some neighbours, while the ass took its own direction among
the crowd. Voices broke into swift upbraidings.

“Take a howld of the ass there, will you, Maria Cooney!”

“Oh, wirra, it’s desthroyed she’ll be!”

“She will not, but the great mothor!”

“Is it to scratch the beautiful paint ye would, with the cart!” cried a
wrathful man hauling the ass aside bodily, while the unhappy Mrs. Cooney
stammered out excuses that no one heard, and blinked feebly at the
Rolls-Royce—which was pardonable, since she had never seen one before.

“God help us, ’tis the heighth of a house!”

“I’m sorry to disturb you, ma’am,” said O’Neill, smiling at her
distressed face. The crowd broke into smiles in answer.

“’Tis not like the Englishman he is—the one that galloped his machine
over Ellen Clancy’s gander, an’ he goin’ to Rosapenna!” shrilled a
voice.

“Watch him now—and the bonnivs under the wheels of him!”—as a drove of
fat pink pigs broke through the crowd, scattered, in the infuriating
manner peculiar to pigs, and resisted all efforts to collect them out of
harm’s way. Their owner, a lean, black-whiskered man, lifted up his
voice and bewailed them.

“Yerra, he have them thrampled! No—aisy, sir, just a moment, till I get
at him with a stick. That one do be always in the wrong place.” He
hauled a pig bodily from beneath the car, retaining it by one leg, while
it drowned any other remarks with its shrieks, and its companions
scattered through the crowd, pursued hotly by the dogs.

“Sorry—I ought not to bring a motor through a fair,” said O’Neill,
willing to concede the right to the road to the “bonnivs.”

“An’ why wouldn’t you?” said their owner, cheerfully. “Many’s the time
I’d not so much as the one left to me when I’d brang ’em through, an’ I
scourin’ every boreen after them. Let you go on, sir—it’s all right.”

The motor wormed its way along. When the crowd grew less congested,
O’Neill ventured to increase the speed. Just as he did so, a small
child, escaping from its mother, who was driving a wordy bargain over a
matter of geese, toddled into the road in pursuit of a fat puppy; and
having caught it, sat down suddenly, right in the path of the motor.

A girl shrieked, and O’Neill wrenched the car to a standstill, the
bonnet not two yards from the baby. Jim was out in the road in a flash,
and picked up the urchin, who showed considerable annoyance at the
escape of the puppy, but was otherwise quite unmoved, and accepted a
penny with a composure worthy of a duke. The crowd collected anew with
unbelievable swiftness, and O’Neill groaned.

“’Tis Maggie O’Hare’s baby. Woman, dear, where are ye? an’ he after
being nearly kilt on ye?”

“Did ye see his honour pull up? An ass wouldn’t have done it, an’ he
dhrawin’ a cart!”

“I seen him sit down in the road, in-under the mothor, an’ I knew he was
dead, only I’d not time to let a bawl out of me!”

“Is it dead? Sure, look at him, an’ the big gentleman carryin’ him, no
less!”

“Grinning he is, the way you’d say he was the best boy in Ireland. Ah,
that’s the dotey wee thing!”

“Sure, that one has no fear at all. _He_’ll be the boy for the
trenches!”

At this point Maggie O’Hare arrived breathlessly, having just become
aware of her son’s peril—with some difficulty, owing to six of her
friends having excitedly explained the matter together. To an
unprejudiced onlooker, it would have seemed that her principal maternal
emotion was horror at finding her offspring perched on Jim’s shoulder.

“Come down out of that, Micky—have behaviour, now, an’ don’t be
throublin’ the gentleman! Put him down, sir—I’d not have you annoyed
with him.” She received Micky with much apparent wrath, but her arms
were tight round the little body. “Isn’t it the rascal he is!—an’ I but
lettin’ him out of me hand that minute, the way I’d be feedin’ the
goose!”

In England, Jim had learned to give tips; and for a moment his hand
sought his pocket. Fortunately, he checked the impulse in time. The
woman’s eyes met his with the good breeding that lends something of
dignity to the poorest Irish peasant.

“He’s a great boy,” he said, in his pleasant voice. “Not a bit of fear
in him—have you, Micky?” He lifted his cap, and said “Good-bye,”
striding back to the motor. They moved on, slowly, leaving the little
town seething behind them.

“It isn’t altogether without incident to drive through a fair!” said
O’Neill, dreamily.

Towards evening they came to their halting-place for the night—a grey
village, nestling among brown hills.

“The inn used to be very fair, but one can’t guarantee anything in
war-time,” Sir John remarked. “Of course it isn’t big enough to suffer
from the complaint that suddenly affected all the important hotels—the
hurried departure of French cooks and German waiters. Many hotel-keepers
will speak until the end of their lives, with tears in their voices,
about the awful day when Henri and Gaston, and Fritz and Karl, the props
of their establishment, dropped their aprons and fled to their
respective Fatherlands. You can’t convince those hotel-keepers that they
do not know all about the horrors of war!”

“This little place doesn’t suggest imported cooks and waiters,” said Mr.
Linton.

“No, as I remember it, the landlady was the cook, and her daughter the
housemaid; and a nondescript gentleman of the ‘odd-boy’ type doubled the
parts of boots, barkeeper, groom, and waiter, with any other varieties
of usefulness that might be demanded of him. And there he is still, by
the same token, bringing in a load of turf.” Sir John indicated a wiry
little man leading a shambling old black horse bearing two creels slung
across his back, piled high with sods. He turned into the back gateway
of the inn as they drew up at the front door; and, hearing the motor,
cast a glance over his shoulder, realized the presence of guests, and
administered a sounding slap on the black horse’s quarter, disappearing
hurriedly. They heard his voice, shrilly summoning the unseen.

“Is himself within?—let ye hurry! There’s a pack of gentry at the door,
in a mothor-car!” And a voice yet more shrill:

“Wirra! An’ me fire black out—an’ what in the world, at all, ’ll I give
’em for their dinners!”

They made acquaintance with the problem a little later when, hungry and
cheerful, they gathered in the long, low dining-room, where last year’s
heather and ling filled the fireless grate. The “odd-boy,” cleansed
beyond belief, awaited them.

“What can we have for dinner?” O’Neill inquired.

“Is it dinner? Sure, anything you’d fancy, sir,” said the “odd-boy,”
with a nervous briskness that somehow induced disbelief.

“H’m,” said Sir John, remembering the cry of woe that had floated
through the air, earlier. “Chops or steaks?”

The “odd-boy” shifted from one foot to the other.

“I’m afeard there’s none in the house, sir,” he said. “’Tis the way the
butcher——”

“Oh well—cold meat,” O’Neill said, cutting short the butcher’s
iniquities.

“Yes, sir—certainly, sir!” said the “odd boy,” and disappeared. There
was an interval during which the party admired the view and endeavoured
to repress the pangs of hunger. Finally the messenger reappeared.

“I’m sorry, sir,” he said, nervously. “Cold meat is off, they do be
tellin’ me.”

“Well, what can we have?” O’Neill said, losing the finer edge of his
patience.

The “odd-boy” grew confidential.

“’Tis this way, sir,” he said. “The fair was yesterday: an’ them
cattle-jobbers have us ate out of the house. So there’s just three
things ye can have, sir: an’ the first eggs; an’ the second’s bacon; and
third is eggs and bacon. An’ ye can have your choice-thing of them
three!”




                              CHAPTER XII
                        ASS-CART _VERSUS_ MOTOR


     “The grand road from the mountain goes shining to the sea,
       And there is traffic on it, and many a horse and cart:
     But the little roads of Cloonagh are dearer far to me,
       And the little roads of Cloonagh go rambling through my heart.”
     EVA GORE-BOOTH.

THROUGH the tiny window of Norah’s room came the soft sunlight which
makes an Irish morning so perfect a thing that to stay in bed a moment
longer than necessary would be criminal. Norah woke up, and looked at it
sleepily for a few minutes, wishing the window were bigger. It had
altogether declined to remain open the night before, until she had
propped it with the water-jug, which now stood rakishly on the sill, and
had already excited considerable interest and speculation in the street
below. She dressed quickly, somewhat embittered by the fact that
investigation discovered no sign of a bathroom. The search was a nervous
one, since the corridor seemed principally to consist of shut doors; and
after cautiously opening one which looked promising, but which revealed
a tousled head on a pillow, with loud snores saluting her, she was
seized with panic, and fled back to her own room.

When she emerged, fully dressed, she still seemed the only person awake.
Downstairs, however, she encountered the “odd-boy,” who was sweeping the
hall with a lofty disregard of corners, wherein the dust of many
sweepings had accumulated in depressing heaps. Through a cloud of dust
he blinked in amazement at her.

“Were you wantin’ anything, miss?”

“No, thanks,” Norah answered; “I was going for a walk. Is there anything
to see in the village?”

The “odd-boy” thought deeply, and finally replied with gloom that he
didn’t know why anybody would be looking at it at all. Then, suddenly
inspired, he hastened to the door in Norah’s wake.

“There’s Willy Gallaher’s ould pig, miss, an’ she after having eleven of
the finest little ones yesterday. Ye’d ought to see them. Willy’s the
proud man. ’Twas himself was due for a bit of good luck, though, with
twins not a week old!”

“Thanks,” said Norah, laughing. “But I’d rather see the twins.” Which
astounding preference left the “odd-boy” gaping. Twins were a
regrettable everyday occurrence, but eleven “bonnivs” were the gift of
Providence, and not to be lightly regarded.

Norah made her way up the narrow street. The air was full of the
pleasant smell of newly-lit turf fires, and in the cottages the women
were beginning their day’s work. Children ran to peep over the half-door
at the stranger, and Norah, peeping over in her turn, saw fat babies
crawling about the earthen floors and made friends with them until their
mothers picked them up and brought them to the half-door for further
admiration. Thus her progress up the street was slow, and it was some
time before she came to the outskirts of the village and crossed a green
where asses, geese, fowls, and long-haired goats wandered sociably.

Beyond the green the high road curved, and, following it, Norah came
upon a narrow river that tumbled from the hills, racing under an old
bridge of grey stone in a mass of foaming rapids. On the other side was
a little ruined castle, upon which she advanced joyfully, with the
passion for anything old which gave the Australians the keenest
enjoyment of all their experiences of travel.

It was not much of a castle; the walls had long since collapsed into
heaps of broken stone, most of which had been carried away to build
cabins and were now concealed under the whitewash of years. A small
square tower yet stood, but was obviously unsafe, since the crumbling
stairway that wound upwards inside it had been shut off by rusty iron
bars. It was not easy to make out the outlines of what had been rooms,
for the stones had fallen in all directions, and grass and brambles grew
wildly over them. But everywhere, softening the cruelty and destruction
of time, ivy clambered; a kindly cloak of green that blotted out harsh
outlines and turned the whole into something exquisite.

Norah crossed the bridge and climbed upon a half-fallen wall, perching
herself on a huge flat stone that lay bathed in sunshine. Above her the
jackdaws which nested in the ivy-covered tower chattered and scolded,
flying in and out to their homes; below was no sound save the hurried
babble of the river, where now and then came the flash of a leaping
trout. It was very peaceful. She tried to “reconstruct” it in the way
they loved, seeing again the old days when the castle stood proudly, and
chieftains and fair ladies, richly clad, moved about the rooms and
looked through the narrow window slits at the river, running just as it
ran to-day. It was a fascinating employment; so that she did not hear a
light step, until a falling stone brought her back to the present with a
jump.

“Did I startle you?” Sir John asked, looking up at her. “They told me
you had gone out, and I guessed that if you weren’t somewhere playing
with a baby you would have found the ruin!”

“The babies and the ruin are both lovely,” Norah said, smiling. “I’m
taking them in turn.”

“Did you sleep well?” Sir John asked, climbing up to the wall, and
lighting a cigarette.

“Oh, yes, thanks; only the morning was too nice to stay in bed. I had
such a funny little room, all nooks and corners.”

“_I_ had a feather bed!” said Sir John, with a wry face. “Awful things;
I don’t know how people ever slept on them. It was very huge and puffy,
and I sank down into its depths, and felt as if the waters were closing
over my head. Then I dreamed wild dreams of battle. Altogether, I feel
as if I had an adventurous night.”

“I read once of an old woman who slept on a turkey-feather bed for
twenty years, until at last all the feathers stuck together in a solid
mass like a mat, and he had a sealskin coat made out of it!” said Norah.

“I’d love to believe it, but it beats any fishing-yarn I ever heard,”
said Sir John, regarding her fixedly. “Do you believe it yourself?”

“I don’t know anything about the ways of featherbeds,” Norah said,
laughing. “But I always thought she must have been an unpleasant old
lady, for it showed clearly that she hadn’t shaken up her mattress for
twenty years. Oh, Sir John, did you find a bathroom?”

“I did not; there isn’t one. I’m sorry, Norah. We ought to have better
luck at our stopping-place to-night.”

“I suppose one can’t expect baths everywhere,” Norah said. “The queer
part to us is being charged extra for one’s tub; no hotel in Australia
ever does anything so ungracious. They rather encourage one to take
baths there.”

“It’s a ridiculous charge, especially where a water-supply is no
trouble,” O’Neill answered. “Did I ever tell you the story of a friend
of mine who was staying in a very old-fashioned country-house, where his
early cup of tea was brought in by a very old butler? My friend asked
for a bath, and was told there was no hot water available—‘the pipes
have froze on us,’ said the butler, sadly. Next day it was the same; but
the third morning the butler came in with triumph in his eye.

“‘Sure, the bath will be all right this morning, sir,’ he said,
confidentially. ‘I have the hot wather beyant.’

“He went out, and returned panting under an enormous bath of the flat
tin-saucer variety, which he put down with pride, while my friend—who
happened to be as big as your father—watched him, much thrilled. Next
he laid down a smart bath-mat, and hung over a chair a bath-towel as
large as a sheet. Finally, he went out, and brought back a very small
can of hot water, which he poured very carefully into the bath; as my
friend said, it made a thin film of wet on its great flat surface. The
old butler straightened up, beaming.

“‘Now, sir,’ he said, proudly—‘ye can have your little dive!’”

Norah’s shout of laughter was echoed by Wally and Jim, whose heads
suddenly appeared over the ivy-covered wall.

“I don’t see why you retire to ruins to tell your best stories,
O’Neill,” Jim said. “Also, we feel that it’s breakfast-time, and we’ve
been scouring the country for you both.”

“I begin to feel that way myself,” Norah said, jumping down.

Mr. Linton was smoking in front of the hotel. In the dining-room, the
“odd-boy,” again thinly disguised for the moment as a waiter, hovered
about their table for orders, a procedure which seemed superfluous,
since the possibilities of the house did not exceed the inevitable bacon
and eggs. No one, however, was disposed to quarrel with the meal; and
very soon after, they were again on the road, leaving the friendly
little village by a winding highway that soon brought them within sight
and sound of the sea—one of the deep inlets that thrust themselves far
into the wild northern coast of Ireland. The road led, now close to the
shore, now striking across country to find a short cut over the neck of
a peninsula. They skirted little bays where a golden beach gleamed
invitingly, and ran out on rocky headlands, on which the sullen sea
thundered. Inland, the country grew more and more lonely and desolate.

“How on earth do these people get a living?” Jim ejaculated, looking at
the wretched cabins in a tumbledown village. “The soil is nearly all
stone—and how horribly bleak it must be in winter! This is July, and
still the wind is wild enough.”

“I don’t think they get much of a living at all,” Sir John said.
“Fishing helps, of course; and all the able-bodied men hire themselves
out for the harvesting to Scotch and English farmers, and bring home
what seems a big sum in these parts, together with stories of the wealth
across the water:

 “The people that’s in England is richer nor the Jews—
 There’s not the smallest young gossoon but thravels in his shoes!”

“Indeed, they don’t do that here,” said Mr. Linton, looking at the
ragged boy by the wayside.

“Not they—shoes only come with years of discretion, and often, not
then. But don’t they look rosy and well?—nothing of the pinched look of
the youngsters in a city slum.”

“No—I think the air must be nourishing!” remarked Wally.

“You’re quite right; it is. But they grow little crops, in tiny corners
between the stones. The soil is bad enough; they are lucky if they are
near the sea, for then they can bring up mussels and kelp as manure.
There’s a woman bringing some now”; and Sir John pointed to a bent
figure, bare-legged, a red shawl over head, and on her back a huge
basket, beneath which she was labouring up a steep cliff-path. “She has
a kish full of shell-fish there—you wouldn’t find it a light load, even
on the level, but they carry hundreds of them up these cliffs. There are
parts of Donegal so bleak that they have to warm the ground before
sowing the seed; they burn the dried sea-weed on the prepared soil, and
sow the crop while the ashes are still smoking.”

“Great Scott!” said Jim, feebly. “Fancy an Australian doing that!”

Sir John laughed grimly.

“I fancy an Australian would flee in horror if he were offered as a gift
a tract of land that supports hundreds of these people,” he said. “You
should see them reaping their tiny, pocket-handkerchief crops; they do
it with a little reaping-hook, and, upon my word, some of them are so
small that you might harvest them with a pair of scissors! Of course
they’re not worth much; but then these people are accustomed to live on
very little, and they scarcely need more than they have, if the sea is
kind and the fishing fair. They look wild enough; but they are
intelligent, even if ignorant, and you will always meet with courtesy
among them.”

“They would make great fighting men,” Jim observed, watching a
broad-shouldered, dark-faced young fellow who was digging in a tiny
field by the road. He had paused to look at the motor, one foot on the
spade, and his splendid young body upright.

“Oh, every sound Irishman is that naturally,” Sir John said, with a
laugh. “And the women could do their bit if occasion arose. Did you
hear, by the way, of the women of Limerick, when some of the disaffected
idiots of whom there are too many in the country made a pro-German
demonstration there lately? They chose a day when most of the loyal men
of the city were away; these fellows were from Dublin, and they made a
procession and planned quite a little show. But they reckoned without
the women.”

“What—did they take a hand?” asked Mr. Linton.

“They did, indeed, with sticks and stones and whatever other missiles
came handy. It was most effective: they broke up the procession
completely, and the gallant rebels had to be rescued by the police. The
women had a great day. I asked one why they didn’t leave the matter
entirely to the police, and she looked at me in scorn and asked why
would they accommodate themselves with the ignorance of policemen? And
indeed, I didn’t know. After all, some things are managed much better
without the law.”

The road had for some time been leading away from the sea, and now began
to climb up a steep cutting, between rock-walls fringed with ferns and
mosses. On the hills above them a few goats browsed, their kids cutting
capers among the boulders, with complete enjoyment of the game. They
mounted steadily for awhile; then, topping the rise, began to glide
downwards. The road turned and twisted as they neared the level ground,
following the course of a little stream that came rushing from some
unseen source. Sir John, who was driving, sounded his horn steadily.

“There are not many people on these roads,” he said, over his shoulder.
“But it doesn’t do to take risks with the country folk.”

“No. Still, I never saw a more desolate road, so far as traffic goes,”
Mr. Linton answered. “We have not seen a soul for miles on it.”

“I don’t think there _is_ a soul on it,” said Sir John, laughing.

The motor swung round a corner, with a prolonged hoot; and there, so
close that the bonnet of the car seemed almost to be touching the ass’s
nose, came an old woman, nodding sleepily in a cart. There was no time
to stop, and no room to turn. The ass planted all four feet stubbornly,
stopping dead, and they heard a faint cry from the shawled old figure.

“Sit tight,” said O’Neill between his teeth.

The brake jammed hard on as he spoke; they had been running down-hill
slowly, with the power shut off. The ass backed indignantly; and the
great motor swerved to one side, where there was a little more room in
the cutting, bumped heavily over dry channels worn by the winter rains,
and rammed her bonnet gently into the rock wall. The occupants of the
tonneau found themselves in a heap on the floor. The car throbbed to
silence, and the old woman in the ass-cart said, “God help us!” loudly.

“Well, indeed, He did,” said O’Neill, under his breath. “Are you all
right, all of you?”

“We’re mixed, but undamaged,” Jim answered. “What about you, O’Neill?”

“I’m all right. How is she, Con?”

Con had swung himself out before the car finally stopped, and was
examining the battered bonnet dismally, finally appealing for help to
push her away from the wall.

“In a minute,” O’Neill said.

He walked over to the old woman, who still sat motionless on the floor
of the ass-cart, her withered face pitifully afraid.

“Did you not hear the horn?” O’Neill asked.

“I did, sir—but I didn’t rightly know what it was, an’ I half asleep.”
She rocked herself to and fro, wretchedly. “Oh, wirra, the great mothor!
Is it desthroyed entirely, sir?”

“It is not—but it’s the mercy of Heaven we’re not all killed, and you
and the little ass, too. When you hear that horn, mother, get to one
side of a road quickly: and don’t be afraid to call out, if it happens
to be a narrow road.”

“I . . . I . . .” She looked at him helplessly, her voice breaking.

“Don’t worry—you’re all right,” he said gently. “Is it tired you are?”

“I been sittin’ up with my son these two nights,” she said, finding
words. “Mortal ill he was, an’ the woman he married no more use than a
yalla-haired doll. An’ when they’re sick they do be wantin’ their
mothers again, like as if they’d gone back to be little boys.” Just for
a moment he caught a gleam of triumph in her dulled eyes.

“And is he better?”

“He is, sir, God be praised, and I’m gettin’ home to me man; there’s no
knowin’ what he’ll have done to himself, not used to bein’ alone and
all.”

Something passed from O’Neill’s palm into the trembling, work-worn old
hand.

“That’s to bring you luck for your son,” he said, forestalling her
protests. “Let you get home, mother, and have a meal. Wait a moment.”

He unscrewed the cap of his flask, and made her drink out of the silver
cup, to her own great horror.

“If I’d a tin, itself!” she protested. “But your honour’s cup!”

“Drink it up,” said O’Neill, unmoved. He took back the cup and stood
aside; and the little ass moved on, the old woman calling down blessings
upon him, with tears finding well-accustomed furrows down her cheeks.

“Sitting up two nights, and probably doing the work of the house during
the day, in addition to nursing; and most likely on bread and stewed
black tea!” said O’Neill, indignantly, striding back to the motor. “You
wouldn’t wonder if she went to sleep in front of the car of Juggernaut.
Poor old soul! I say, you people have been busy!”

They had levered the heavy car back, chocking the wheels with great
stones, and the chauffeur was making explorations into her vital parts.
Sir John joined him, and they discoursed unintelligibly in technical
language.

“Well, it might be worse, but it’s not too good,” Sir John said, at
last, emerging from the investigation and wiping his hands on a ball of
cotton-waste. “There’s no moving her without men and horses, and no
getting her going again until we get some spare parts; and they’re no
nearer than Belfast or Dublin; possibly we shall have to telegraph to
London for them.”

“But she’s not desthroyed entirely?” Norah said, happily.

“She is not. Hadn’t we the luck of the world that it happened where it
did, just on level ground and where there was a little room to manœuvre!
If it had been three minutes earlier, on the side of the hill, in the
narrow cutting, we should simply have gone clean over the poor old soul
and her ass. Nothing could have saved them.”

“It might easily have been infinitely worse,” Mr. Linton said. “But I’m
sorry for the car, O’Neill.”

“Oh, the car’s nothing,” Sir John answered, cheerfully. “I’m only sorry
for the interruption to our trip. However, things might be more
uncomfortable. We’re only three or four miles from Carrignarone, where I
meant to stop the night: there is quite a passable inn there, small and
homely, but it’s clean and comfortable enough. We could stay there for a
few days, while Con goes to Belfast to get what is necessary—that is,
if you like. The coast is interesting, and we might get some
sea-fishing. Of course, if you thought that too slow, we could drive to
the railway, and get back to Killard.” He looked rather wistful. “I had
hoped this was going to be such a jolly trip,” he said.

“Why, so it is,” Jim responded. “I’m awfully sorry for the damage to the
motor, but we’re going to have plenty of fun all the same. It will be
rather good fun to be on a coast again, and we’re all keen on
sea-fishing. And you know, O’Neill, we wouldn’t make any definite plans,
so that the unexpected could take charge of us!”

“It has certainly done that,” Sir John said, laughing. “Well, I think
the next thing is lunch: a good thing I got the hotel to put us up
something, though it will probably be only hard-boiled eggs.”

It _was_ hard-boiled eggs, and they ate them merrily, sitting on the
bank of the little stream, where lichen-covered boulders, smooth and
weather-worn, made convenient seats.

“I am perfectly certain,” Mr. Linton said, “that if I were in London and
ate an enormous meal of soda-bread, eggs like bullets, and very black
tea out of a Thermos, I should have dyspepsia. Not that I ever had it;
but the mixture sounds dyspeptic when you couple it with London. But
sitting on the bank of a Donegal river it seems quite the proper thing,
and I shall be very well after it.”

“No one could be anything but well in Donegal,” Wally said, decisively.
“Whew-w, Jim! think of the trenches, in a fortnight!”

“I’d rather not, if you don’t mind,” said Jim, lighting his pipe. “I
want my little hit-back at Brer Boche, but I’d much rather it was in the
open: there’s no romance in war when you carry it on in an
over-populated ditch.”

“Lucky young animals!” said Sir John, openly envious—and the boys
flushed a little. As a rule, they were careful not to talk of the Front
in the presence of the man whose whole soul longed to be out there with
them. “But you’ll all come back, won’t you? and Mr. Linton, when the war
is over, or when these ancient campaigners next get leave, you will
bring them back to Rathcullen? I want to know that that is a settled
thing.”

“That is a matter which I don’t need to put to the committee,” Mr.
Linton replied, looking at the cheery faces. “We’ll certainly come,
O’Neill, since you are so good. And then, when we pack up finally for
Australia and Billabong, what about you? You know it’s high time you
visited that little country of ours.”

“He’s coming with us,” said Norah, with decision. “Say you are, Sir
John—please!”

“Well, indeed, I begin to think I am,” O’Neill answered. “I was getting
terribly old when you invaded Donegal, but now I believe I shall soon be
nearly as young as Mr. Linton! At any rate, I might follow you out.” But
the boys protested, arguing that there was no point in travelling alone
when they might make a family party.

“It would be miles jollier,” said Wally. “Then we could ‘personally
conduct’ you to Billabong, and you would have the unforgettable
experience of seeing Brownie go mad. I’m quite certain she and Murty
will be delirious on the day that Norah comes marching home again!” So
they planned happily, in gay defiance of the guns thundering across the
Channel. That sullen menace was only a fortnight ahead, and already
Norah dreamed of it at night. But in the daytime it was better to
pretend that it did not exist.

Con was left with the motor, to administer what “first-aid” was
possible: and after lunch the rest of the party set off along the road
to Carrignarone, which was reached after an easy walk of an hour and a
half. It was a little fishing-village, boasting a better inn than others
of its type, since in normal years the sport to be obtained brought a
small harvest of visitors. War, however, had meant lean times—wherefore
the people of the inn fell thankfully on the windfall afforded them by a
stranded party of six, and ran three ways at once in preparing for their
comfort. A cart, with a couple of strong horses, was forthcoming, and
under the charge of Jim and Wally, set off to the rescue of the
motor—which was eventually towed into the village, where it caused what
the war-reports term “a certain liveliness.” At the steering-wheel sat
Con, a picture of humiliation—deepening to disgust when the carter
politely offered him a whip!

“Them machines do be all very well to play with, for genthry an’ for
them that have too much money,” said the carter, drawing a distinction
that was not lost on his hearers. “But ’tis mighty glad they are of the
ould horses when annything goes wrong with the works!” Which was so
obviously true at the moment that no one had any spirit to contradict
him.




                              CHAPTER XIII
                        THE CAVE AMONG THE ROCKS


   “The great waves of the Atlantic sweep storming on their way,
     Shining green and silver with the hidden herring-shoal;
   But the Little Waves of Breffny have drenched my heart in spray
     And the Little Waves of Breffny go stumbling through my soul.”
   EVA GORE-BOOTH.

WALLY ran out upon a point of rock that ended abruptly in a sheer face,
under which the outgoing tide ran swiftly, deep and green. For a moment
he stood motionless, his slim body gleaming white against sea and rock;
then he curved forward and shot into the water in a clean dive that made
scarcely any splash. He reappeared, shaking the water from his eyes, his
brown face glowing.

“Coo-ee, Jim! Come on—it’s ripping!”

Jim appeared from a cave, shedding the last of his raiment. There was no
pause in his dive; his swift rush along the point ended in a leap that
carried him far out, and when he emerged, strong over-arm strokes
carried him quickly in towards a tiny bay where hard yellow sand made a
perfect landing-place. Wally gave chase, unavailingly: when his feet
touched the shore Jim was already racing again along the rocks, his dive
this time beginning with a complete somersault in the air, before, with
a mighty splash, he disappeared once more. Wally came hard upon his
heels, springing in, in a sitting position, his hands locked under his
knees; and for the next twenty minutes the chums sported in the water
like a couple of seals, racing, playing tricks upon each other, and
practising the dozen different dives taught them in schoolboy days in
Australia. Finally they rubbed themselves down with dry, warm sand,
donned their clothes, and subsided, glowing, on a sunny rock, to light
their pipes.

“What a perfect place for a swim!” Jim said, looking at the long, narrow
inlet with its twin headlands. “That point only needs one thing, Wal—a
really good spring-board.”

“Yes. Do you remember the big spring-board in the St. Kilda baths—the
one you broke when you were trying how high you could spring before
diving?”

“Do I not!” said Jim ruefully. “It was the pride of the baths, and
replacing it made me a poor man for the rest of the term!” He pitched a
shell far out into the sea. “Doesn’t that seem ages ago!”

“So it is: anything that happened before the war _is_ ages ago,” Wally
answered. “And I suppose, when we get back to Billabong, all this”—he
swept a comprehensive gesture that included Ireland and Europe—“will
seem a kind of prehistoric dream. Anyhow it’s a good dream while it
lasts.”

“Yes, it’s all too good to have missed it,” Jim said. “Ireland has been
jolly, beyond our hopes, thanks to O’Neill—what a brick that poor chap
is! Now if we can only finish up by a bit of real fighting, it will all
be a huge lark. I’m not a scrap sorry to have been in the trenches; it
was all good experience. But I say, Wal, I do want to get going above
ground!”

“Rather!” Wally answered. “I want to take a hand in a general worry, and
afterwards to be in it when we chase the lovely Hun back to his happy
home. And I specially want to be there when we chase ’em out of
Brussels: I’d like to see that plucky Belgian King marching down his
main street again. Won’t they howl!”

“We’ll all howl when that day comes,” said Jim. “You know, Ireland has
been just topping, and it’s jolly to be with old dad and Norah again;
but I’m beginning to think it’s about time we got back to work. We’re
fit as possible now; and we didn’t sign on to play about. This sort of
thing”—he touched his rough tweed clothes—“was all very well when we
were crocks. But we aren’t crocks now. I think, of course, that it was
only common sense to get quite fit; they don’t want half-cured people
over yonder. Still——”

“Still, being cured, it’s time we dug out our khaki again,” Wally said,
nodding. “I quite agree: one would begin to feel a shirker if one stayed
much longer. And Australians haven’t shown themselves shirkers in this
war.”

“No. It’s funny, you know,” Jim reflected. “I did hate the trenches—the
filth, and the flies, and the smells, and the vermin; and I used to
wonder if I was a tin-soldier, and had no business to have come at all,
because lots of chaps say they love it, no matter what the conditions
are. Well, I didn’t love it; I’d sooner have driven bullocks, any day.”

“Same here,” said Wally.

“It used to buck me that you felt the same,” Jim said, “because of
course I knew you weren’t any tin-soldier, and the other fellows used to
say how keen you were, and that you’d get on well.”

“But they said just the same to me about you, you old ass!” said Wally
laughing. “Who got a special pat on the back at the last inspection, I’d
like to know?”

“Oh, that was only luck,” said Jim, much embarrassed. “Bit of eye-wash
for the C.O. Anyway, I used to worry for fear I wasn’t any good at the
game; and it worried me that I was so awfully glad to come away, after
they gassed us. But lately, I’ve been a bit bucked, because I’m getting
no end keen to be back. We’ll hate it again, I’m certain. But one has
got to see the job through. You feel it too, don’t you?”

“’M,” nodded Wally. “I suppose it’s just the beastliness one hates, but
one likes one’s job.”

“I expect so. I used to get horribly annoyed with young Wilson, in my
platoon, but I’d like uncommonly to know how the little beggar is
shaping now, and who has the handling of him. He’s a queer-tempered,
obstinate, cross-grained varmint, but he’ll do anything for you if you
treat him like a human being. Only you can’t drive him. I hope we’ll get
our old crowds back—though I’m afraid it’s rather too much to hope
for.”

“I’m afraid so,” Wally agreed. “My corporal was a dear old thing; only
he would persist periodically in forgetting that I was grown-up. I don’t
blame them—the old N.C.O.’s know ever so much more than we do. That
chap had been all over the world, and seen no end of service; he’d have
had a commission if he could have kept off beer. It was when he was
drunk that he used to think I was his small boy. I had my own troubles
with him”—and Wally grinned reminiscently.

“They were such a good lot of fellows,” Jim said. “Oh, it will be pretty
good to get back; and to see Anstruther and Garrett and Blake, and all
the crowd again, and make them fight their battles over for us. It’s one
of the annoying parts about our dose of gas that I haven’t the slightest
recollection of our own little scrap. I used to remember the beginning;
but now my only memory is of you sitting on a biscuit-tin eating bully,
and I’m sure that happened before the fun began. I wonder if the other
fellows will have much to talk about?”

“Well, _we_ won’t, anyhow,” Wally said. “Ireland isn’t the place for
adventures. Let’s hope we may get some good specimens of our own in
Flanders—and in Germany—and then we needn’t envy any of ’em.”

“Rather!” assented Jim. “I say, suppose we move on—the sun isn’t as hot
as it was, or I’m colder than I was; and anyhow, we may as well
explore.” He sprang up, followed by his chum, and they strolled across
the rocks.

The party had been at Carrignarone for three days, and there was, as
yet, no word from Con, who had departed on an outside car, _en route_ to
Belfast, to obtain what was necessary to restore the motor to health.
Not that anyone minded the delay. The little inn was clean and
well-kept; the sea-fishing was good, and the bathing perfect; while the
shore, with its alternating strand and rock, was a never-failing
fascination. Wally and Jim had made friends with an old fisherman, who
had taken them out with him very early that morning; and luck had been
so good that they had come in some hours earlier than they were
expected, so that the big haul they brought could be taken to the
railway and landed in Dublin in time for the next morning’s market. At
the inn, they found that Sir John, Norah, and Mr. Linton had gone out,
leaving no word of their movements; so the boys, after an enormous
lunch, had departed to explore the shore farther than their previous
walks had led them, until the long narrow inlet had tempted them to
bathe.

They strolled round the beach from the point where they had dived, now
and then picking up a curious shell or some sea-treasure that might be
included in the parcels that went periodically to Billabong, where
Brownie would have cherished the veriest rubbish if only her nurslings
had gathered it for her. The tide was almost out, and at the farther
headland the rocks lay uncovered for a long way, full of alluring
rock-pools, gleaming with sea-anemones. It was impossible to round the
point, however, for it was higher than the other headland, and the water
roared at its base, even at low tide; so they strolled back across the
rocks, looking for the nearest place where it would be possible to climb
up and cross the point.

The crags above them grew more accessible presently, and they scrambled
up, slipping and clambering until they found themselves on a jutting
rock with a wide flat surface, which, bathed in sunshine, invited them
to stop and rest. Loose fragments of rock lay about the flat top, and
Wally perched on one, but rose hastily.

“That thing wriggled under me,” he said, “It’s just on the balance: I
believe I could push it over.”

“‘That Master Wally have the mischieviousness of ten boys,’ as Brownie
used to say,” Jim remarked, lazily. “Sit down, and don’t play tricks
with the landscape.”

“It would be considerably like hard work, so I don’t think I will,” said
Wally, sitting down on another fragment. “This old table of a rock wants
tidying up, I think—did you ever see so many loose chunks scattered
about?”

“I expect a bit of the cliff fell on it from above, and flew into bits,”
said Jim. “Anyhow, it’s warm and jolly. What’s that?”

Something tinkled on the rock, and Wally uttered a sharp exclamation of
annoyance.

“Botheration! That’s my knife.”

“Hard luck!” said Jim, looking at a cleft in the surface, down which the
knife had vanished. “Never mind; I’ve got two with me, and you can have
one.”

“Thanks, but I don’t want to lose that fellow,” Wally said, vexedly.
“It’s that extra-special knife Norah gave me when I was going out—the
big one she called ‘the lethal weapon.’ It’s full of all sorts of
dodges. I’d sooner lose a lot of odd things than that knife.”

He lay flat, and put his eye to the cleft in the rock, peering
downwards.

“Afraid it’s gone for good, old man,” Jim said. “It’s hard luck—but
Norah will understand. She’ll probably jump at the chance of giving you
another.”

“I want this one,” said Wally, his voice slightly muffled. He peered
harder. “I say, Jim, I can see daylight down here.”

“I don’t see how you can,” Jim said, leaning over in his turn. “This old
rock seems pretty solid. Let’s look.” He applied his eye to the cleft,
in his turn.

“Well, there is light,” he said presently, sitting up. “I wonder if
there’s some opening below, Wal?”

“Don’t know, but I’m going to see,” Wally answered. He swung himself
over the edge of the flat rock and climbed down, followed by his chum.
They hunted about the great pile, seeking for some opening that might
explain the glimmer of daylight that had greeted them above.

On one side of the mass was the long stretch of rock from which they had
first climbed up; but on the other they found smooth hard sand, only
lately under water. There were openings here and there among the
boulders, but they led to nothing, and had no communication with the
upper air; they explored them in turn, but found no solution of the
problem. Then, as Wally was backing out on hands and knees from one of
these false scents, he heard a low whistle from Jim, and hurried round a
boulder, to find him regarding what looked like a slit, about three feet
high, between two masses of rock.

“There’s some sort of a cave in there,” Jim said. “I’ve been in a little
way, and it looks rather interesting, so I came back for you. There’s
light far above one’s head; I believe we’ll find your knife there.”

They crawled into the narrow passage. Almost immediately it turned, so
sharply that a casual searcher might easily have been misled into
thinking it ended: and then it widened and they found themselves in a
long, narrow cave. They could see no roof; but far above, a faint bar of
light glimmered, and made it possible to see where they were going.
Underfoot was hard sand. The walls were dripping with wet and encrusted
with seaweeds and limpets.

“This is a real sea-cave,” Wally said cheerfully.

An echo took his voice and went muttering round the rocks, the mutter
rising at length almost to a cry. It was an eerie sound, in the wet dusk
of the cave, with the dark smell of a submerged place in their nostrils;
and the boys jumped.

“I guess this isn’t a place to raise one’s voice in,” Wally said,
dropping his to a whisper. “That’s a nice, tame echo; I’d like to take
it back to Billabong!”

“Would you!” uttered Jim, with feeling. “The blacks would say it was the
Bunyip come back; and anyhow, you’d get into trouble for bringing out a
prohibited immigrant.” He made a quick pounce on an object that
glittered faintly on the sand. “There’s your knife, old man!”

“Bless you!” said Wally, thankfully receiving his property. “I say, what
luck! and haven’t you the eye of a hawk?”

“Why, I kicked it,” said Jim. “A good thing it’s so big: I always
thought Norah gave it to you with the idea that you might club a few
Germans with it, if you got the chance—and scalp ’em afterwards. Get
out!—” as Wally tipped his cap off. “Remember that you’re in a
subterranean locality, and behave as such. Hark at that echo!”

He had raised his voice, unwittingly, and the echo had sent it shrieking
round the cave. It was quite a relief when the sound died away to a low
murmur.

“I’m not at all sure that it isn’t the Bunyip, an’ he livin’ here at his
aise, as Con would say,” Wally muttered. “Come on; we’ll see how far
this place goes.”

The light grew dimmer as they moved on, away from the crack overhead.
Fortunately, Jim was never to be found without a tiny electric torch in
his pocket, and its little beam of light was sufficiently to guide them.
But for the torch their explorations would certainly have come to an end
immediately, for it was not half a minute before they found themselves
against a wall that apparently ended the cave.

“Well, it isn’t much of a cavern, after all,” Jim remarked. “Not bad as
a dressing-room for Norah, if she wants to bathe from this
beach—there’s clear sand right down to the water from the entrance in
one place. She will have to come at low tide, though.”

He flashed his torch into the comers as they turned to retrace their
steps. One was plainly nothing but solid wall: but in the other
something caught his eye; a darker patch of shadow that was not quite
like the rock.

“Why, I believe there’s an opening in that corner,” he said. “It must be
another cave, communicating with this one. Come and see.”

The opening was only wide enough to admit one at a time, and so screened
by a jutting boulder that it was almost invisible. Within was a cave
very like the first one, though much larger; differing from it, too, in
that the sand ended, and the floor was of fairly smooth rock, which, in
the middle, held a great pool of water. This time there was no doubt
that they were at the end of their subterranean journey; Jim flashed the
light right round the wall, but there was no break in the solid rock,
glistening with wet.

“Well, that’s the finish,” Wally said. “It isn’t a wildly exciting
place, except for that demoniacal echo. We’ll bring Norah and the others
here and make it talk. I’d like to hear what its little efforts would be
like if one gave a football yell!”

“Something would break,” said Jim, suppressing a laugh. He strolled
across to the pool, and turned the light on its black surface.

“That is a deep and mysterious and probably, haunted water-hole and
you’d better be careful,” said Wally in a sepulchral whisper. “Most
likely the Bunyip lives there, and in a moment we shall see his grisly
head emerge from the unfathomed depths, and then all will be over with
two promising young officers of His Majesty’s Army.” He paused for
breath.

“Idiot!” said Jim, pleasantly. “I wonder if it’s deep. Lend me your
stick, Wal.”

He leaned over the pool and thrust the stick into its depths. It went in
for its full length. Then came a sound which made the boys look at each
other in bewilderment.

“It sounds as if the Bunyip had been chucking his old tins in,” Wally
said.

“It’s tin, I’ll swear,” Jim answered. “And solid at that; I can’t move
it.”

He took off his coat, rolled his shirt-sleeve to the shoulder, and
recommenced investigations. It was easy enough to feel the stick
scraping on tin; beyond that, he could make out nothing, save that there
was plenty of tin to scrape. Jim desisted at length, and stood
pondering.

“I think this is pretty queer,” he said, presently. “Wonder if we’ve
stumbled on a smuggler’s cave, Wal. Look here, I’m going to paddle.”

“Well, you don’t know the depth of that beastly place,” Wally said. “For
all we know it may be miles deep.”

“Well, can’t I swim?” Jim queried in amazement.

“Yes, a little. Anyhow, I’m coming, too.”

Jim laughed softly.

“I thought that was it,” he said. “Look here—you stay at the edge with
the light, and I’ll hold one end of the stick, and you can hang on to
the other. That will make it all right. There’s no sense in out both
paddling in.”

Wally assented, more or less reluctantly; and Jim took off his boots and
stockings and rolled his trouser-legs high. Then, he stepped carefully
into the black pool.

“By Jove, it’s cold!” he said.

“What’s the bottom like?”

“Fairly smooth.” He moved on, becoming less cautious. Then he uttered an
exclamation.

“What’s up?” came from Wally.

“I’ve stubbed my silly toe against something—my own fault.” Jim
answered. “Why, it’s another tin!”

He stooped, feeling in the water. Presently he let go of the stick, and
plunged both hands in: and in a moment turned, carrying something that
was evidently heavy. He put it on the rock at the edge of the pool, and
stepped out of the water. Wally flashed the light on the treasure-trove,
and then whistled softly.

“Petrol!”

Jim nodded.

“The pool is full of it, I believe: I felt lots of other tins.” He
turned the big square can over and over, finding no mark upon it. “H’m.
Now I’m going to put it back.”

“Why are you in such a hurry?”

“Because I don’t know whom we have to deal with,” Jim said. He waded in
again and replaced the heavy tin, returning quickly, and picking up his
boots and stockings.

“Slip out and reconnoitre, carefully,” he said. “Take care that you
aren’t seen. Find out if anyone is in sight.”

Wally returned in a few minutes.

“Not a soul,” he reported. “And there’s not a footmark visible on the
sand, except our own.”

“That’s good, anyhow,” Jim said. “We’ll get out of this.”

He led the way out, not speaking until they were clear of the rocks near
the cave. Then he sat down, and for the first time the two boys looked
at each other. Their faces were grave.

“It’s submarines, of course?” Wally asked. “Germans?”

“Couldn’t be anything else. And what a depôt! Look at this inlet—shut
in by the headlands, with a perfect sandy bottom: a submarine could come
in here and lie in complete safety, and no one would ever dream of
looking for her. The cave is not five minutes from the water’s edge,
even at low tide—of course, no one could get in to it at all unless the
tide were right out: when it is in there’s a foot of water over the
entrance.”

“Yes—and at low tide the sand is as hard as iron,” Wally said,
excitedly. “They could fill their collapsible boat with petrol tins in
ten minutes with two or three men to fish them out of the water and a
few more to carry them down. Oh, Jimmy, we’ve got to bag them!”

“Rather!” Jim answered. “The question is, how?”

He thought deeply.

“We must be awfully careful,” he said, at last.

“It’s much too big and important for us to mess up by trying to keep it
to ourselves. But there isn’t a policeman in the district, and if there
were, he might mess it up as badly as ourselves. We’ve got to get a
patrol-boat round to the inlet somehow; you know they’re all round the
coast, and it wouldn’t take long to bring one here. But one doesn’t know
whom to trust. The Germans may be getting help from on shore, for all we
can tell.”

“Of course they may,” Wally cried. “People say there are plenty of
pro-Germans about; and they’d pay well enough to tempt these peasantry.
But all the people we’ve talked to in Carrignarone seem just as keen as
we are about the war. I don’t believe they’re in it.”

“Neither do I, but it’s hard to tell,” Jim answered. “Oh, it’s
maddening!—the brutes may come in to-night, for all we know! We can
telegraph to the nearest coastguard station, of course, or wherever one
can catch a patrol-boat—there are some sort of instructions about
submarines and aeroplanes posted up in every post-office. But she might
not be in time.”

“I suppose we can trust the postmistress?”

“If we can’t, we’re done,” Jim said. “If only the motor were all right
we needn’t trust anyone. Isn’t it simply sickening to think we may do
the wrong thing altogether? And if we make a mistake, and the submarine
gets away with a fresh supply of petrol, she may sink half a dozen
_Lusitanias_ before she is caught!”

“We’ve just got to get her,” Wally said, between his teeth. “It seems to
me there’s only one thing to do: we must telegraph for the patrol-boat,
and, meanwhile, watch every night at low tide. It’s a comfort that they
can’t get into the cave at any other time, isn’t it? I say, Jim, your
father said we were kids to bring our revolvers with us—but isn’t it a
mercy we did!”

“Rather!” Jim said. The revolvers had been new toys; they had not felt
able to part from them. “And O’Neill has one, too—you remember, he said
we might have some shooting-practice in these lonely parts and teach
Norah how to use one.” He became silent, suddenly, and Wally, watching
his thoughtful face, did not interrupt him. After a while he spoke,
half-apologetically.

“I say, Wal, old chap.”

“Yes?”

“Look here,” Jim said. “It’s your show as much as mine, of course, and I
won’t do anything to which you don’t agree. But——” he stopped again.

“Oh, do go on!” said Wally. “Say it!”

“Well, it’s just this. We’ll get lots of shows later on, if we’ve any
luck: not so important as this, perhaps, but still, there ought to be
chances. Anyhow, we’re able to go out to the Front and do our bit. And
that poor chap isn’t.”

“O’Neill?” Wally said. “No.”

“Well—do you see what I mean?”

“It takes brains,” said Wally, laughing. “But I think I do. You want to
make this his show?”

Jim nodded.

“It wouldn’t hurt us,” he said. “He is such a brick, and he’s eating his
heart out over the whole thing. It’s just the toughest sort of luck—and
here he is, knocking about with us and giving us a ripping time, and
you’d think that every time he looks at us it must remind him of what he
wants to have and can’t. And now here’s a thing he could be right in.”

“Rather!” Wally said. “I’m jolly glad you thought of it, old man. And it
isn’t any beautiful sacrifice on our parts, either, for he has tons more
brains than we have, and he’s a first-class shot. Let’s get him to run
it altogether, and we’ll be his subalterns.”

Jim sighed with relief.

“It seemed a bit hard to ask you to give up the credit,” he said.

“And what about you?” grinned Wally

“Oh, credit be hanged!” said Jim, laughing. “Anyhow, we’ll get all the
fun!”




[Illustration: “Wally flashed the light on the treasure-trove, and then
whistled softly.”]

      _Jim and Wally_]                                  [_Page_ 225




                              CHAPTER XIV
                            A FAMILY MATTER


                 “To count the life of battle good,
                   And clear the land that gave you birth,
                  And dearer yet the brotherhood
                   That binds the brave of all the earth.”
                 HENRY NEWBOLT.

JOHN O’NEILL was dressing for dinner: an operation which consisted in
putting on a clean soft collar and brushing his hair, since the
travellers’ possibilities of toilet were limited to one small kit-bag
apiece. To him there came a discreet knock on the door; and Wally and
Jim, suitably apologetic, appeared.

“You look like conspirators,” said Sir John, surveying the pair. “What’s
the matter?”

“We’ve struck a job that’s a size too large for us,” Jim answered. “So
we’ve come meekly to you.”

O’Neill’s short laugh was rather bitter.

“Too large for _you_!” he said. “If that’s the case, it would be rather
an out-size for me, I should say.” His look travelled over the two tall
lads, wiry and powerful. “Unless—it isn’t money, I suppose, Jim?”

“No, indeed; it’s brains!” Jim answered. “And we haven’t got any.
Anyhow, we don’t know how to handle this situation.”

“Well, I’m at your disposal,” Sir John said. “Fire away—there’s plenty
of time before dinner.”

“We’ve found a little submarine supply-depôt,” Jim said. “What does one
do?”

O’Neill dropped his brush, and stared at him.

“You say it much as you might say, ‘We’ve found a mushroom: how do we
cook it?’” he uttered. “It isn’t a joke, Jim?”

“Indeed it’s not,” the boy said, quickly. “It’s because it’s so horribly
serious that we’ve come to you.”

“But—where?”

“In a little inlet about a couple of miles up the coast,” Jim said.
“Funny little shut-in place: you could sail past it outside and never
notice it, the headlands are so close together.” He described their
discovery briefly.

O’Neill sat down on the side of his bed and knitted his brows.

“Of course, the first thing is to get a patrol-boat down,” he said. “As
it happens, I know Bob Aylwin, who is in command of one of them: his
headquarters are at Port Brandon, and he could get here quite quickly.”

“Then we must telegraph, I suppose,” Jim said. “But we were wondering if
it would be safe; things leak out so quickly in a tiny place like this,
and you know that people ashore are said to be helping the submarines in
some districts. One doesn’t like to misjudge anyone, but——” He paused,
knitting his brows.

“One has to suspect every one,” O’Neill said, shortly. “And telegrams
are horribly public things.”

“If only the motor were available!” Wally said, anxiously.

“But it is!”

They stared at him.

“Didn’t you know Con was back? He turned up early this morning, with the
things he went for: and he and a handy man he picked up have been inside
her bonnet ever since. He came in just now to report that she is ready
to start.”

“Oh, good business!” ejaculated Jim. “Will you send him?”

O’Neill thought swiftly.

“I can trust Con absolutely,” he said. “But he’s an ignorant lad, and he
is lame. Would your father go with him, do you think?”

“He’ll do anything,” Jim said, quickly.

“Wally, will you bring him here?” O’Neill asked. “Hurry!” He sprang to
the table and opened a touring map of Donegal. “Where’s your inlet,
Jim?”

“Here,” Jim replied, promptly, indicating a tiny indentation on the
rugged coast-line.

O’Neill drew a line round it with a red pencil.

“It will be quite clear on Aylwin’s charts, of course,” he said. “This
will be sufficient guide to begin with. Now can you draw a rough plan of
the cave and the path down to the water? I’ll explain to your father.”

Mr. Linton came hurrying in, and at Sir John’s request Wally told him
the story, illustrating it with Jim’s drawing.

“I know the inlet,” David Linton said; “I walked past it the other day
when I was out for an early-morning stroll. Queer, land-locked corner: I
marked it down as a good bathing-place for you youngsters.”

“That’s excellent, for you’ll be able to direct them by land, if
necessary. Now, will you go in the motor to Port Brandon, Mr. Linton?
it’s only twenty miles, and Con knows the roads. They’re not good, but
he’ll get you there quickly.”

“I’ll do anything you like,” David Linton said. “What will you do here?”

Sir John had taken instinctive command of the situation. For a few
moments he did not speak.

“Aylwin must use his own judgment about coming,” he said. “He may not
want to appear here in daylight, for fear of scaring the enemy away; on
the other hand, they may be here already, lying snugly on the bottom of
the inlet, and only waiting for night and low water to get the petrol.
You say the pool was full of it, Jim?”

“So far as I could tell. I poked with a stick from one side, and waded
in from the other. The tins are stacked in it; I don’t think they can
have taken any out.”

“All the more likely that they will soon be in,” O’Neill said. “I knew
they had been in the north lately; the brutes nearly got one of our
transports. But if Aylwin shows up off the mouth of the inlet he may
scare them away altogether. If one knew what was best to do! We’ve got
to bag them!” His eyes were dancing. “Great Scott! what a chance it is!”

There came a knock at the door, and Norah’s voice.

“Is dad here?”

The conspirators looked at each other guiltily.

“Norah must be told,” Jim said. “She’s perfectly safe; and we can’t
carry on this without explaining to her, poor kid. May she come in,
O’Neill?”

Sir John was already at the door. Norah, her face troubled, spoke
hurriedly.

“I’ve been looking everywhere for dad or the boys. Are they here, Sir
John?”

“Come in, if you don’t mind,” O’Neill said, holding the door open. He
closed it carefully behind her. “We’re having a council of war, Norah,
and——”

Jim interrupted him, watching his sister’s face.

“Is there anything wrong with you, Nor?”

“There’s something I thought I’d better tell you,” Norah said. “I went
along the road just now with some sweets for those babies in the end
cottage, beyond the village; and coming back I got over the bank into
the field to get some wild flowers. Just as I was going to climb back I
heard voices, and I peeped through the hedge and saw two men—men in
rough clothes. They had been buying things in the village, for they had
parcels, and some bread that wasn’t wrapped up. So I bobbed down behind
the hedge until they had gone past—they didn’t look nice, somehow.”

“Yes,” said Jim. “Did they see you?”

“No, it’s a lonely bit of the road, and there are no houses. I don’t
suppose they even thought of any one being there. And, Jim, they were
talking in German!”

“Are you sure?”

“Perfectly. I couldn’t make out what they said, for their voices were
very low—and anyhow I never learned enough German at school to
understand it when spoken. But I do know the sound of it, and I caught
one or two words.”

O’Neill drew a long breath.

“If that U-boat isn’t lying on the bottom of the inlet I’ll eat my hat!”
he said. “Probably they put up a collapsible boat last night and sent
her round to some other beach—they’ll take risks to get fresh food. And
to-night she’ll paddle back and get her cargo of petrol, and the
submarine will take her on board and slide out to do a little more
pirate-work. But we may have a few remarks to make first. If I only knew
what Aylwin would want to do!”

He sat down, and put his face in his hands. Presently he looked up.

“Jim—is there driftwood on the shore?”

“Lots,” said Jim, briefly.

“That’s all right. Could we get some up on one of the headlands?”

“Oh—easily. We were bathing off the northern point, and there’s quite
an easy way up—it isn’t nearly as high as the southern headland. Do you
mean enough for a fire?”

“Yes. Mr. Linton, will you tell Captain Aylwin that he need not come
right in to shore. We will build a signal-fire on the northern headland,
and watch the cave at low tide—that will be about two o’clock in the
morning. If the Germans come ashore, we’ll light the fire—we can carry
up a few bottles of petrol from the motor supply to soak the drift-wood.
Aylwin can have a boat ready and come in if he sees the blaze; unless he
sees it he will know they won’t land for another twenty-four hours, for
they’ll never try it in the daytime. Is that clear?”

“Quite. I have only to describe the place to Captain Aylwin, tell him
about the signal-fire, and accompany him if he needs me. Otherwise, I
suppose I may break the speed-limit in coming back?”

“Of course. There’s a wireless station up there—they’ll get Aylwin for
you. If he should be away they will know where to send a message.”

“Very well. And what will you three do?” David Linton’s eyes lingered
hungrily on his son.

“We can only get the beacon ready, and then watch. Two of us can hide
near the cave, and the third must be up on the point to light the fire
if he hears a shot. If they come—well, we must let them land and get to
the cave; and then we must try to prevent their getting back.”

“You will be heavily outnumbered.”

“Yes—but the advantage of surprise will be on our side, and we can take
cover. I do not dare to get help; it may not be safe to trust anyone.”

“Very well,” David Lint on said, quietly. “Will you order the motor,
O’Neill? I can be off in three minutes.”

He shook hands with the boys, wishing them luck very gravely knowing
that in all probability it was the last time he should speak to them.
Jim went downstairs with him, without a word.

Con and the motor were at the door.

“You’ll be there by eight o’clock, with luck,” O’Neill said. “Remember,
you’re racing, Con. And——” He dropped his voice. “I’ll keep him safe
for you if I can, sir.’

“Thanks,” said David Linton. He shook hands with his boy again. The
motor whirred off in a cloud of dust.

They went up the staircase in silence, to where Norah and Wally waited
for them.

“Wally has told me all about it,” said Norah, pale, but steady-eyed.
“Oh, Sir John, I could help! Do let me.”

“You can help by keeping out of harm’s way,” he told her, gently.

“And you all fighting!”

“Norah, dear, we can’t have you in it,” O’Neill said. “I know it’s hard:
far harder than anything we have to do. But you have too much sense not
to know that this isn’t woman’s work.”

Norah choked back a sob.

“I know you couldn’t have me where there’s shooting,” she said. “But I
can do something, if you’ll let me: and in Australia women always did
help men when there was need, and they didn’t talk about things being
‘women’s work.’ Women had to fight the blacks, too.”

“Norah, we _can’t_ let you fight,” Jim said. “Be sensible, old kiddie.”

“I don’t want to fight,” said poor Norah. “At least, I do, but I know
that’s out of the question. But why on earth shouldn’t I light the
beacon?”

“Because there would be risk,” O’Neill said roughly. “Norah, I hate
hurting you. Don’t make it harder for us.”

“I don’t want to, indeed I don’t,” Norah faltered. “But . . .” There was
a lump in her throat, and she turned away, fighting for her voice. Jim’s
arm round her shoulders steadied her.

“You know you’ll be outnumbered,” she said. “You can’t tell any of these
people, and there are only the three of you until daddy brings help. And
one of you is going to light the beacon! If you let me do it, it leaves
you all free to fight; and there’s no risk to me. No one will be on the
point. I’d only have to light a match and get out of the way.”

“No,” said Wally, his young voice strained. “You aren’t going to do it.”

“I know what it will be,” Norah said. “The one of you who lights the
beacon will come tearing down the rocks to help the others, and the
Germans will just shoot him easily. I needn’t do that; I can hide up on
the point. There isn’t any risk—not a bit.”

“Oh, Norah, Norah, I wish you’d gone to bed!” uttered Jim. “Don’t you
see we can’t let you?”

“No, I don’t,” said his sister. “You haven’t any right to stop me. You
know it will be only a chance if you three can stop the submarine going
out if help doesn’t come in time. And if there are only two of you, it’s
so much less chance. Dad’s gone away looking dreadful, only he wouldn’t
say a word, because he knows he hasn’t any right to hinder you.” Norah
was sobbing openly now. “And you have no right to lose any chances. We
can’t let that beastly thing go out, to sink other ships full of women
and kiddies like the _Lusitania_ babies. Goodness knows I’m f-fool
enough,” said poor Norah. “But at least I can put a match to a fire!”

“She’s quite right,” Jim said, quietly. “All serene, Nor. Buck up, old
kiddie!”

“Jim—you can’t——!” Wally burst out.

“I can’t agree to it,” John O’Neill said, wretchedly.

“She’s quite right,” Jim repeated. “The job is bigger than we are. It’s
only a question, as she says, if all three of us can check those people
at the cave: and if we can get the beacon lit in any other way, we
simply have no right to reduce our number by one-third. There really
should be no danger: she has only to put a match to it, and get away
before the firelight shows her up.” He spoke firmly, but his young face
was drawn and haggard. “I am quite sure dad would say the same.”

“I know he would,” Norah said.

“And I thought this was rather a lark!” said Wally, with a groan. He
turned and walked to the window.

“If you are certain your father would be satisfied, I have no more to
say,” O’Neill said. “It certainly makes an enormous difference: three
can stop a rush where two would be hopelessly outclassed. And the man
coming down from the headland wouldn’t have a chance: the people on the
submarine would get him in a minute.”

“Remember,” said Wally sharply, turning from the window, “as soon as
your match is lit, duck, and crawl away. That old wood will flare wildly
directly it’s lit, if it’s soaked in petrol. Don’t wait a second.”

“I won’t,” said Norah, and nodded at him cheerfully. “Don’t worry; I’ll
be all right.”

“All right! I think it’s awful to let you do it!” Wally uttered.

“Wally, I’ve _got_ to. Don’t you see I have?” Norah put her hand on his
arm.

“Yes, I suppose I do,” he said. “All our lives put together don’t matter
twopence if we can put an end to even one submarine. I know we must let
you. But I wish to goodness we’d left you in Australia!”

“Wally!” Norah flushed scarlet.

“I say . . . I didn’t mean to be a beast,” the boy said, contritely.
“Only—I just can’t stand it!” He went out, his swift strides echoing
down the corridor.

“Don’t mind him, little chap: he’s only worried about you,” Jim said,
gently. “He’ll be all right when he comes back.”

“At any rate, we mustn’t have you bothered,” Sir John said, patting
Norah’s shoulder. “You’ll need to be quite calm and cool for your job,
and for getting away quietly after it. And I really don’t believe you’ll
be in any danger; the Germans can’t possibly rake that point with
gunfire from the submarine. They might hit a standing figure, but not
one lying flat. And I hope the men on shore will be too busy to take
interest in beacons.” There was a grim note in his voice, but his face
was extraordinarily happy.

“The more I think of it,” Jim said, “the more likely it seems that we’re
here just in time. You see, they can’t get into the cave except at low
tide; and of course they want darkness. But there’s very little darkness
just now; it’s twilight until nearly ten o’clock, and then dawn comes
not long after three, or even earlier. The tide is out just before dawn:
the very best time for them to work. In a few days it would not suit
them nearly so well.”

“Quite so,” O’Neill said. “Everything seems to point to to-night or
to-morrow. I would hope with all my heart for to-night if I were sure of
Aylwin getting here in time; for every day means more risk of their
suspecting us, especially if they are in league with any of the people
on shore. The Irish peasants are very quick to suspect a stranger.”

“Oh, I hope it’s to-night!” Norah cried. “But, Sir John, supposing we
can—I mean, you and the boys can——”

“Not a bit of it—it’s certainly ‘we,’” said O’Neill, laughing.

“Well, supposing we can cut off the men who come ashore. What will the
submarine do? We can’t touch her.”

“There’s where Aylwin comes in, of course,” O’Neill said. “If we can cut
off the shore party and keep them from rejoining the submarine, I don’t
think she can get away. She would not have much fuel, for one thing; and
for another, she does not carry enough men to spare those we may have
the luck to bag. She would probably submerge; but she can’t remain below
more than twenty-four hours; and then the destroyer would get her
easily. Of course, there is a lot of supposition about it all. I am
calculating by the little I know of submarines, but the Germans may have
a later and more powerful pattern that I don’t understand, with a larger
crew. We can only do our best. It ought to be a good fight, anyhow.”

A knock came, and Jim opened the door.

“The misthress is afther sending me up to say the dinner’ll be spoilt on
ye,” said a patient voice. “Them little chickens do be boiled to rags;
’tis that tender they are they’d fall asunder if you did but prod them
with your finger!”

“We’ll hurry, Mary,” said Jim. “Come on, you people.”

“Dinner!” said Norah. “Oh, I don’t believe I could eat any.”

“Yes, you could,” said Wally, appearing suddenly. “Little girls who
won’t eat dinner can’t light bonfires!” He tucked her hand into his arm
and raced her down the staircase. At the foot, he stopped.

“Norah, I’m sorry,” he said. “Is it all right?”

“Of course it’s all right,” said Norah. “But you were never cross with
me before, in all your life, and don’t you do it again!”

“I never got you mixed up in a war before!” said Wally soberly. “Don’t
you do it again, either!”




                               CHAPTER XV
                           PLANS OF CAMPAIGN


 “They are fighting in the heavens: they’re at war beneath the sea—
 Ay, their ways are mighty different from the ways o’ you an’ me!”
 DUDLEY CLARK.

DINNER at the Carrignarone Hotel, where the Australians and Sir John
were the only guests, was apt to be a lengthy and hilarious affair, with
everybody very hungry and very merry, and with jokes flying, much to the
disorganization of the waitress, who was wont to spend much of her time
in clapping her hand over her mouth and rushing from the room. When the
necessities of the meal forbade these hasty retreats, the waitress was
apt to explode in short, sharp gasps, greatly endangering whatever dish
she happened to be handing.

This evening, however, the younger members of the party were inclined to
be unusually silent. Mr. Linton’s vacant seat was in itself depressing;
and since it was impossible to talk of the subject seething in their
minds, conversation of any kind was not easy. But John O’Neill was like
a child; and before long they all fell under the spell of his merriment.
Never had they seen him in such a happy mood. Every line was smoothed
from his worn face, and his eyes danced with an eager joy that was
almost uncanny. All his being seemed transformed in the complete
contentment that had possession of him. Deliberately he set himself to
make the others laugh; and succeeded so well that they astonished
themselves by making an extremely good dinner and feeling, at its
conclusion, considerably reinforced for the work that lay before them.

O’Neill led the way out to the little landing-stage near the inn, where
the fishing-boats were anchored, their brown nets drying on rough fences
on the beach. They sat down on some upturned fish-boxes, looking
westward across the water, where the sun was preparing to set in a glory
of golden cloud.

“Now I’m going to be sensible,” Sir John said. “I’ve been thinking out a
plan of campaign, and I want your views.”

He brought out from his pocket a plan of the inlet, drawn by Jim—a
companion to the one Mr. Linton had carried to Captain Aylwin.

“You have ‘Flat Rock’ marked here over the cave,” he said. “Is that the
rock you were sitting on when Wally dropped his knife?”

“Yes, that’s the one,” Jim answered. “It has a cleft in it through which
the knife went down—just wide enough to admit the knife. It’s really a
kind of lid over the rocks that form the first cave.”

“And you said there were loose boulders lying on it?”

“Yes; big fragments of rock. I should think that a big chunk of the
cliff must have fallen on it once, probably splitting it and making the
crack, and breaking itself as well. A lot of it went down: the biggest
piece buried itself partly in the sand.”

“That’s the boulder that almost hides the entrance, then?”

Jim nodded assent.

“It’s about three feet from the entrance and a good deal wider than it,”
he said. “There are so many similar rocks lying about that it would be
quite easy to miss the cave altogether.”

“Then I take it that the top of the flat rock is above high-water mark?”

“Oh, yes,” Jim answered. “High-water mark is about a foot over the top
of the entrance, and the rock is quite four feet higher than that.
Otherwise I don’t fancy the waves would have left those big pieces of
loose rock lying on it.”

“That’s what I wanted to know. Now listen. Suppose the Germans land, and
most of them disappear into the caves, to fish for petrol. What is to
hinder two active people, armed with levers, from sending down from the
top of the rock enough boulders to block the entrance?”

Jim started, his pipe falling from his hand.

“By—Jove!” he uttered. “What a ripping idea!”

“Why, we could do it as easily as possible,” Wally said, excitedly. “The
rocks are quite close to the edge: one of them is so loose that we were
rocking it this afternoon. We’ve pretty hefty muscles—we could send
half a dozen over in no time with a couple of iron bars. Glory, O’Neill,
you _have_ a head!”

“Yes,” said Jim, his eyes dancing—“and they could hardly miss the
entrance, because the big boulder in front would prevent their rolling
out too far. What chumps we were, not to think of it, Wal!”

“Then you’d have the Germans like rats in a trap—and with no shooting
at all!” Norah cried, delightedly.

“Something like that: with luck,” said O’Neill. “Of course, they would
have a guard posted outside, and another at the boat. But the main crowd
would be inside, I should think.”

“It’s really rather a staggering notion, it’s so simple,” Jim said. “And
I don’t see how it can go wrong.”

“It certainly simplifies our plan of action,” O’Neill remarked. “And it
doesn’t beat us, even if it fails; you would have to jump down among the
boulders, in that case, and do the best you could with your revolvers as
the people inside came out—which they would do in a hurry. My own
little game must be the boat and the guard at it. It’s rather important
that it should not be allowed to get back; a submarine without a
collapsible is rather like a horse with a lame leg.” He turned his face
towards the sunset, its expression of child-like happiness stronger than
ever. “Wow! isn’t it going to be a jewel of a fight!”

Jim laughed.

“Aren’t you the Berserk!” he said. “But I don’t much like being
separated. You’ll be careful, O’Neill, won’t you, and keep well behind
cover? There are plenty of boulders near where they must land.”

“Rather!” Sir John answered. “For once in my life I have a job that
matters, and I’m certainly not going to risk carrying it out by getting
shot unnecessarily. They won’t leave a strong guard at the boat: a
submarine crew is too limited to use many men, and then, so far as we
know, they feel perfectly safe, and have no reason to take extra
precautions. Speed will be their main idea; they must make the most of
the short time between low-water and daylight.” He swung round towards
Norah, smiling at her. “How are you feeling, mate?”

“I’m feeling very cheerful,” said Norah, whose face bore out her words.
“There isn’t nearly so much danger for the boys on top of the rock, is
there, Sir John?”

“Certainly not; if they can block the entrance from above they may not
even have to use their revolvers—which will be a sad blow to them,”
O’Neill answered. “I’m always against promiscuous shooting, especially
when there are ladies present—even to satisfy fire-eaters like Wally
and Jim!”

“Are you sure you’ll be all right, Sir John?”

“I’ll be as right as possible,” he assured her, laughing at her anxious
face. “All I have to do is to sit comfortably behind my little rock and
pot at fat Germans; and when you hear me potting, you can light the
beacon and crawl away with discreet haste. I hope you realize that we
couldn’t carry out this plan at all if we hadn’t you as fire-lighter: we
couldn’t do without a fourth hand.”

“I’m so glad,” Norah said, happily. “When do we start, Sir John?”

“We’ll slip out about half-past nine,” he answered. “You and I will
stroll along in one direction, and the boys in another, and we can meet
near the northern headland where we must have the beacon. Each of us
must carry a bottle of petrol—I’ll see to getting them ready; and as we
go we can pick up stray bits of wood. There is driftwood everywhere on
the beach, and we can collect plenty beyond the inlet: I don’t want to
go there, nor do I want to show up on the north headland while there is
much light. We don’t know where the Germans you saw this evening may be
hiding—though I would think, judging from the direction in which they
were going, that their boat must be hidden in a tiny bay that lies south
of the inlet. Still, it doesn’t do to risk things.”

“I suppose,” said Wally, “those fellows with the boat will stay wherever
they are hiding until nearly low-water; then they’ll pull round to the
inlet, and the submarine will bob up, and they’ll take the other men on
board and go ashore after the petrol.”

“That’s the most likely thing,” O’Neill said. “We must be in position
long before that. A good thing it’s a warm night: still, we shall have
to lie still for a good while, and you’d better dress warmly, all of
you.” He looked at his watch. “Nine o’clock, and time we began to get
ready. There are crowbars in the old shed Con used as a garage, boys; I
noticed them this morning. I’m going after bottles for the petrol.”

He stood up, looking at the three young faces. They were all eager; but
it was as though a living light glowed in his own dark eyes. He held his
gallant head high, the twisted body forgotten.

“I’d like to say ‘Thank you,’ only I don’t know how,” he said. “If you
hadn’t come, this wouldn’t have happened; and now, whatever comes, I’ll
always have it to remember that just once in my life I had a chance of a
man’s job.” His light stride carried him quickly across the beach.




                              CHAPTER XVI
                         THE FIGHT IN THE DAWN


          “The fighting man shall from the sun
            Take warmth, and life from the glowing earth;
          Speed with the light-foot winds to run.
            And with the trees to newer birth;
          And find, when fighting shall be done,
            Great rest, and fulness after dearth.”
          JULIAN GRENFELL.

IN the little inlet, shadowed by the high rocks, everything was very
quiet. The tide was running out rapidly: foot by foot the smooth
boulders came out of the sea, to stand like sentinels until once more
the heaving green water should swing back and climb gently until it
rippled over their heads. Inch by inch the opening grew, forming the
entrance to the cave under the rocks, and the water slid out as though
rejoicing to escape from its dark prison within and to seek the laughing
freedom of the sea that tumbled beyond the headlands. Overhead a
half-moon sailed, now and then blotted out by drifting clouds; and in
the East was the faintest glimmer of the coming dawn. But the water of
the little bay lay black and formless, and though the sands showed,
visible and pale, the shadows that lay about the great boulders were
like pools of ink.

On the flat rock over the cave Jim and Wally crouched, now and then
moving cautiously to keep their tired limbs from stiffening. It was very
cold, in the silent hour before dawn. Two hours earlier they had climbed
down from above, making use of the scant moonlight or clinging like
limpets to the cliff when the clouds blotted out the moon’s faint
radiance: glad to arrive at their destination with nothing worse than
bruises and torn clothes.

Once on the rock, they had set about their preparations: crawling all
over it, making sure of knowing every inch in the dark, and becoming
acquainted with each boulder that lay upon its surface. They tested them
with their crowbars in the darkness, and found it possible to move all
but two or three. The great fragment that balanced near the edge they
levered nearer still, so that only a little effort would be needed to
send it crashing down; and then they moved others near it, working with
caution that was almost painful, lest even a scratch of rock on rock
should carry a warning across the dark water. Below them, the waves had
at first rippled and splashed against the crags; but gradually they
receded, and leaning over, lying flat on the stone, they could make out
the position of the great boulder that marked the entrance to the cave,
and so make sure that their balanced rock was in the right place. Then
there was nothing to do but wait.

How the minutes dragged! Far up on the northern headland, Norah crouched
among sparse furze and heather, unheeding the prickly branches that
forbade comfort. The edge of the low cliff prevented her seeing the
inlet; she could only watch the dim outline of the coast, stretching
northward, and the stormy sky with its hurrying clouds. Before her
loomed dimly the heap of petrol-soaked wood and furze which they had
roughly piled in the darkness behind a boulder that hid it from watching
eyes, should any be on the alert. She had expected to be afraid when at
last they had all shaken hands with her and wished her luck before
creeping away to their posts; but now she found that she had no sense of
fear. Jim had stayed behind for a moment and kissed her, calling her
“old kiddie” in the way she loved. In the agony of wondering if she
would ever hear his voice again there was no room for fear for herself.

John O’Neill had had longer to wait before climbing down to the beach.
He had lain on the edge of the high ground, motionless, taking advantage
of every moonlit moment to learn by heart the scene below as the tide
crawled backward. Jim’s plan was fresh in his memory: now he stared at
each boulder, studying opportunities for cover and making out the path
that the Germans must take to the cave. He knew where it was, though he
could not see it: it relieved him, too, that he was unable to discern
Jim and Wally, or to hear the faintest sound of their presence, although
he knew they must be on the rock. Finally, he made his cautious way to
the beach, and followed the tide out yard by yard, creeping from one
shadow to another: a shadow himself, white-faced and frail, among the
rugged boulders.

It was very cold, on the wet sand; he shivered, and his teeth chattered.
He fell to rubbing himself steadily, chafing his wrists and ankles; but
it seemed as though the long watch would never end. Once, when the
clouds suddenly blew apart and the moon shone more brightly, he fancied
he saw a dim shape outside the headlands: a shape that might have been a
ship. But before he had time to be certain the dark masses overhead
drifted together once more, leaving him in doubt as to whether it had
not been his imagination.

The shadow of dawn came in the east, and O’Neill felt his heart sink.
They were not coming, after all: soon it would be daylight and the tide
would turn and come creeping back to hide the cave for another twelve
hours. For a moment the keenness of disappointment made him shiver,
suddenly colder than he had ever been; and then his heart thumped and
the blood seemed to rush through his veins. Something, long, and grey,
and very faint was showing on the water. It was not a dream: he heard a
faint plash that he knew was an oar, muffled yet distinct in the deep
stillness: and then a low mutter of a voice, coming across the sea to
him. He drew a long, satisfied breath, and felt a hatchet that hung at
his belt, as he had felt it a hundred times, to make sure that it hung
where he could draw it easily. Then his hand closed on the revolver in
his coat-pocket and clung to it almost lovingly. For the first time in
his life it did not matter in the least that he was a hunchback.

The low sound of oars came nearer, and gradually, out of the darkness, a
boat loomed upon the water and grounded softly on the strand. They were
not half a dozen yards from where O’Neill crouched in a patch of black
shadow, watching between two rocks. The men in her stepped out, quietly,
but showing no sense of danger. They were more in number than he had
expected; there would be a stiff fight if Jim and Wally failed to trap
them. He crouched lower, scarcely daring to breathe. Then one who was
evidently in command gave a low curt order and they filed off along the
winding path between the strewn boulders, leaving two of their number in
the boat.

The rocks hid the main body for a moment. The guards worked the boat
round until her bow pointed outwards in readiness for the run back to
the submarine; then they came out, stamping on the sand to keep warm.
One of them, a thick-set fellow in oilskins, strode inland a few yards,
pausing so close to O’Neill that the Irishman could have touched him,
and for a sick instant he thought he was discovered; but the sailor
strolled back to his companion with a muttered curse at the cold, and
they stood by the boat, talking in low tones. O’Neill searched the rocks
with his eyes, straining to see the entrance to the cave. Surely it was
time for them to have reached it. Would the sound he longed for never
come?

Then came a long reverberating crash, and another, and yet another and a
long, terrible cry, and above it a shrill whistle. The men on the beach
swung round, breaking into a torrent of bewildered furious speech. On
the northern headland came a flicker of light that spread upwards and
soared in a sheet of flame; and simultaneously Sir John fired at the man
nearest him and saw him pitch into the water on his face. The second man
rushed at him as he rose from behind the rock, and he fired again, and
missed; and the German Was upon him, towering over the slight, misshapen
form, and firing as he came. O’Neill felt a sharp agony in his side. The
two revolvers rang out together, and the German staggered and fell
bodily upon him, crushing him to the sand, while his revolver flew from
his hand, splashing into a pool in a rock.

The Irishman twisted himself from under the inert weight, and struggled
to his feet. A German was rushing towards the boat, threading his way
among the rocks, his face desperate in its bewilderment and rage. The
sight gave strength to John O’Neill anew; he ran to the boat, staggering
as he ran, and pulling at his hatchet. There were dark stains on it as
he grasped it. The German saw his intention and shouted furiously, and
shots began to whistle past O’Neill. There was no time to look: he flung
himself into the boat, hacking wildly at the bottom, smiling as it split
under his blows and he felt the cold inrush of the water round his feet.
The German was upon him: just once he glanced aside from his work and
saw the cruel face and the levelled revolver very close, somewhere it
seemed that Jim and Wally were shouting. He smiled again, turning for a
final blow at the boat. Then sea and rock and sky seemed to burst round
him, with a deafening roar, in a blaze of white light that turned the
grey dawn into a path of glory.



He woke from a dreamless sleep. They were all about him: kind faces that
loved him, that bent over him speaking gently. Some one had propped his
head, and had spread coats over him: he was glad of it, for he was very
cold. The wavering faces steadied as his vision grew clearer, and he saw
them all: David Linton and the boys, and Norah kneeling by him, her eyes
full of tears. That troubled him, and he groped for her hand, and held
it.

“You mustn’t cry,” he whispered.

Some one raised his head a little, putting a flask to his lips. He drank
eagerly. Then he saw another face he knew.

“Hallo, Aylwin!” he said. “Did you get her?”

The sailor nodded. “Don’t talk, old man.”

O’Neill laughed outright. The brandy had brought life back to him.

“I’m perfectly well,” he said. “Tell me, Jim—quick!”

“We got them quite easily,” Jim said, his voice shaking. “The first rock
blocked the entrance, and they’re there yet. We sent down all the rocks,
and one fell on one of the two guards they left; the other managed to
wing Wally before he ran.”

O’Neill started.

“Is he hurt?”

“Only my arm,” said Wally. “It’s quite all right—don’t you worry. It
wasn’t much to pay for the haul we got—thanks to you.” The boyish face
twitched, and he put out his hand and took O’Neill’s in its grip.

“Go on, please,” Sir John begged.

“The other chap ran,” Jim said: “of course his idea was to get the boat
back to the submarine. The brute got a start of us while we were making
sure the others were blocked in securely.”

“Have you put a guard there?” O’Neill interrupted, anxiously. “They
might break out.”

“Half a dozen of my men,” Aylwin said, quickly. “It’s all right, old
chap.”

“We saw him begin to fire at you, and we did our best,” said Jim, with a
groan. “We didn’t dare fire, for fear of hitting you, until we were
close. Then we got him—but——” His strained voice ceased.

“You needn’t worry—his mate had fixed me first,” said O’Neill,
serenely. “It was great luck I had, to be able to get to the boat at
all: your man didn’t matter.” He laughed happily. “This makes up for
having lived. Tell me your part of it, Bob.”

“We got down in very good time,” Aylwin said. “The ship couldn’t come
in, of course; but I’ve a handy motor-boat with a gun rigged in her, and
we sneaked in and lay just under the south headland. It was quite
simple; we were into the inlet before the first flare died down, and
there was the submarine, with nothing doing. It was as easy as shelling
peas.”

“Then it was your gun . . . ?” O’Neill said.

“Yes. We’re on guard, of course; but she won’t come up again. When it’s
light we’ll deal with the gentlemen in the cave.” The sailor’s curt
voice became even more abrupt. “Never saw a show better planned—the
whole thing went like clockwork. I always knew you had the makings of a
general in you, Jack!”

O’Neill gave a quick, happy sigh.

“The boys and Norah did it all,” he said. “But it was splendid fun, to
be able to take a hand. I said it would be a jewel of a fight!”

A slow wave of weakness stole over him, and he closed his eyes.

“Is the tide coming in?” he said, presently. “I thought I felt
it—creeping.”

Jim took off his coat and put it on his feet.

“We’ll get you up to the motor presently,” he said, his young voice
unsteady. O’Neill laughed.

“Not before the finish,” he said. “It won’t be long.”

Norah’s head went down suddenly on his hand.

“You can’t die!” she said,—“we can’t spare you, dear Sir John. We’re
going to make you better!”

“Dying is only a very little matter, dear little mate,” O’Neill said.
“It’s living that hurts. And just think of what I have—a man’s finish!
That is a great thing, when one has lived a hunchback.”

He did not speak for a long time, lying with closed eyes. The dawn was
breaking: light grew on the surface of the inlet, where long streaks of
oil floated on the ripples. They watched the quiet figure. Under the
coats that covered him, all traces of deformity were lost. Something of
new beauty had crept into the high-bred features; and when he opened his
eyes again they were like the smiling eyes of a child. They met Jim’s,
and the lips smiled too, while his weak hand rested on Norah’s head.

“And I worrying,” he said, “because I was out of the war.”

“You had your own job,” said Aylwin. “And you pulled it off, old man.”

“It was great luck,” O’Neill said. “God had pity. Enormous luck . . . to
finish at a man’s job.” He did not speak again. The sun, climbing
upwards, shone tenderly upon the happy face.




[Illustration: “The German saw his intention and shouted furiously, and
shots began to whistle past O’Neill.”]

      _Jim and Wally_]                                  [_Page_ 253

                                THE END.

                   Butler & Tanner, Frome and London.




                            The Wonder Book

                         THE FAVOURITE PICTURE
                        ANNUAL FOR BOYS & GIRLS

      _Crown 4to, Picture Boards, 3s. 6d. net. In handsome Cloth_
      _Gilt Binding, 5s. net. Twelve Coloured Plates. 264 Pages._
                      _Hundreds of Illustrations._

From the first issue of this famous Annual the constant aim has been to
present for the delight and entertainment of the little ones THE BEST,
AND ONLY THE BEST, in picture, verse, and story. The COLOURED PLATES are
all dainty works of art. The full-page and other tinted drawings in the
text number several hundreds, making the volume the most sumptuous gift
book for children issued at a moderate price.

                      THE CHILDREN =WILL= HAVE IT

The stories and verses—all by favourite writers—include fairy tales,
incidents of home and school life, stories of birds and animals,
adventures by land and sea, and quaint rhymes and jingles, and they have
the rare merit of appealing to children of all ages and conditions.

All young folk agree that there is

                    NO PRESENT FOR CHRISTMAS OR THE
                   BIRTHDAY TO EQUAL THE WONDER BOOK


                WARD, LOCK & CO., LIMITED, LONDON, E.C.




                            The Wonder Books

       _Each Crown 4to, Picture Boards, 3s. 6d. net. In handsome_
       _Cloth Gilt Binding, 5s. net. Twelve to Sixteen Coloured_
              _Plates. 264 Pages. Over 300 Illustrations._

These are _not_ Annuals, but gift books appropriate to every season of
the year and to every occasion—birthdays, prize-givings, Christmas,
etc. They are constantly revised and brought up to date and contain much
that is of interest not only to young people but to their elders.




                                  The
                       Wonder =Book of the Navy=

From the outbreak of War the Royal Navy may almost be said to have been
the pivot on which the world has turned. Yet how much is actually known
of the ways and manner of life of those who, even more than the ships
themselves, have proved as of old Britain’s “sure shield” in the hour of
trial? This new WONDER BOOK describes the Navy “from within,” and will
be found of absorbing interest to all classes of the community, to the
middle-aged citizen no less than to the boy or girl for whom it has been
primarily prepared. The articles are all by leading naval experts and
officers, and the pictures—of which there are over Three
Hundred—present every phase of life afloat and ashore, in War and in
Peace. The SIXTEEN COLOURED PLATES include several fine pictures of
naval engagements during the War.




                            The Wonder Books

                             (_continued_)


                                  The
                       Wonder =Book of Soldiers=

Now that the Army is practically the Nation, and there is scarcely a
family some members of which are not serving with the Colours, this
favourite volume is in greater demand than ever. By general consent it
gives a better idea of life in the British Army, both in Peace and War,
than any other book of its kind. The numerous pictures represent every
side of Army life and all branches of the Service. The Defence Forces of
the Empire are also described, and there are interesting accounts of the
great Continental Armies. The book is a veritable mine of entertainment
and instruction, both for young people and their seniors.




                                  The
                         Wonder =Book of Ships=

This fascinating volume, descriptive of “life on the ocean wave,” is now
in its 7th Edition, and is popular in every part of the world where our
sea-loving race is found. It tells in simple language all about the
great liners and those less showy vessels of the Mercantile Marine whose
services have proved to be of as vital importance to the Empire as those
of the Royal Navy itself.

                                  The
                       Wonder =Book of Railways=

is a great favourite with all boys and girls who are “keen” on railways,
and even the more elderly “season” holder will find in it much that will
amuse and interest. In addition to over 300 illustrations, there are
TWELVE COLOURED PLATES, representing some of the most famous of the
world’s trains. The interest is not confined to Great Britain, for there
are also pictures and articles concerning railways in Australia, Canada,
the United States, and elsewhere.

                WARD, LOCK & CO., LIMITED, LONDON, E.C.




                            The Wonder Books

                             (_continued_)


                                  The
                        Wonder =Book of Empire=

Recent events and pending developments alike render it of the utmost
importance that we should know more of the lands under the Union Jack,
of their peoples and resources, their wonders and attractions.
Especially it is important that the children of all parts of the Empire
should realise how glorious is their heritage.

                                  The
                       Wonder =Book of Children=

The War has taught us all the importance of knowing more of the ways of
life and modes of thought of other peoples, especially of those gallant
Allies who have stood by us in the fight for freedom. The articles,
though brimful of information, are brightly written and as thrilling as
any story, while the Illustrations are absolutely unique in their
variety and interest, having been garnered from every quarter of the
globe.

                                  The
                        Wonder =Book of Animals=

All children who love animals—are there any who do not?—hail this
handsome volume with delight. Amusement and instruction are so
interwoven that, while it can be truthfully said there is not a dull
page in the book, it is equally true that there is not a useless one.
The BOOK OF ANIMALS is suited to children of all ages.

                WARD, LOCK & CO., LIMITED, LONDON, E.C.




                                CHARMING
                    STORIES BY =Isabel M. Peacocke=

              _Fully Illustrated. Crown 8vo. 3s. 6d. net._


                             MY FRIEND PHIL

        With Six Illustrations in Colour by MARGARET W. TARRANT.

“QUEENSLAND TIMES.”—“A really delicious book . . . Phil is an eternal
questioner, quizzer and actor. He is no white-haired Willie, but a
natural, frank, unconventional young imp, who carries a golden heart and
withal is a perfect gentleman. There is no laying down this book when
opened until the end is reached, be the reader young or old.”

                          DICKY, KNIGHT-ERRANT

               With Six Illustrations by HAROLD COPPING.

“MISS ISABEL MAUDE PEACOCKE is heartily to be congratulated on the tone
and ability of her new book. She must take her place among that small
group of talented Australasian women who have already done so much to
create a children’s literature for the land where manly boys are the fit
heirs of sturdy pioneers.”—_The Age, Melbourne._

                              PATRICIA PAT

               With Six Illustrations by HAROLD COPPING.

This story is far and away the best book since Ethel Turner took the
reading world by storm with “Seven Little Australians.” The tale is
droll, sympathetic, bright and full of literary charm. All the author’s
fine qualities are reproduced in this story of a delightful child, who
flits through a love romance in a manner that will cheer the hearts of
young and old alike. The story is brimful of excitement and jollity, and
is altogether sweet.

                WARD, LOCK & CO., LIMITED, LONDON, E.C.




                       Charming Colour Books for
                                Children

         _Large Crown 8vo. Cloth Gilt. Handsome Binding Design_
          _with Pictorial Wrapper and Endpapers. 3s. 6d. net_

                      Each with 48 COLOURED PLATES

                         By MARGARET W. TARRANT


                             NURSERY RHYMES

Not since the days of Kate Greenaway have the old nursery favourites
been so daintily presented. Little Jack Horner, Jack Sprat, Tom Tucker,
Old King Cole and their illustrious company are all here. The type is
large and well-arranged, and by means of the full Index of First Lines
any rhyme can be found in a moment.

                              FAIRY TALES

Here again are all the immortals—old and yet ever new—Red Riding Hood,
Cinderella, Puss-in-Boots, the redoubtable Bluebeard and a host of
others. The text has been carefully edited in such a way that the
youngest child can understand and enjoy the stories.

                WARD, LOCK & CO., LIMITED, LONDON, E.C.




                       Charming Colour Books for
                                Children

         _Large Crown 8vo. Cloth Gilt. Handsome Binding Design_
          _with Pictorial Wrapper and Endpapers. 3s. 6d. net._

                      Each with 48 COLOURED PLATES

                         By MARGARET W. TARRANT


                         ALICE’S ADVENTURES IN
                               WONDERLAND

The edition of Lewis Carroll’s immortal masterpiece. Never has an artist
so successfully conceived the characters from a child’s point of view,
or given more happy expression to the sly humour and mock seriousness of
the story. This dainty volume, with its wealth of coloured plates, is
easily superior to editions published at three and four times the price.

                            HANS ANDERSEN’S
                             FAIRY STORIES

A selection of the stories which most appeal to younger children,
including such favourites as “The Ugly Duckling,” “The Little Mermaid,”
“The Tinder Box,” “The Emperor’s New Clothes,” “The Snow Queen,” and
others. The great Danish story-teller has a wonderful hold on the
affections of young people, and this book is sure to please.

                WARD, LOCK & CO., LIMITED, LONDON, E.C.




                               Stories by

                              ETHEL TURNER

       _Large Crown 8vo. Fully Illustrated. Cloth Gilt. 3s. net_

                      SEVEN LITTLE AUSTRALIANS
                      THE FAMILY AT MISRULE
                      THE LITTLE LARRIKIN
                      MISS BOBBIE
                      THE CAMP AT WANDINONG
                      THREE LITTLE MAIDS
                      STORY OF A BABY
                      LITTLE MOTHER MEG
                      BETTY AND CO.
                      MOTHER’S LITTLE GIRL
                      THE WHITE ROOF-TREE
                      IN THE MIST OF THE MOUNTAINS
                      THE STOLEN VOYAGE
                      FUGITIVES FROM FORTUNE
                      THE RAFT IN THE BUSH
                      AN OGRE UP-TO-DATE
                      THAT GIRL
                      THE SECRET OF THE SEA
                      THE APPLE OF HAPPINESS
                      FAIR INES
                      THE FLOWER O’ THE PINE
                      THE CUB
                      JOHN OF DAUNT
                      CAPTAIN CUB
                      PORTS AND HAPPY HAVENS

                WARD, LOCK & CO., LIMITED, LONDON, E.C.




                               Stories by

                            MARY GRANT BRUCE

       _Large Crown 8vo. Fully Illustrated. Cloth Gilt. 3s. net._


                                 POSSUM

Mrs. Bruce writes with a freedom and grace which must win hosts of
readers, and there is a lovableness about her Australian youths and
maidens which makes one never tired of their healthy and sociable views
of life.

                             JIM AND WALLY

“There can be no doubt about the success of Miss Bruce . . . real pathos
which gets hold of the reader, and her effects are obtained in a real
natural way that makes them all the more telling. She evidently knows
the up-country life . . . she grips the attention from start to
finish.”—_Melbourne Argus._

                           A LITTLE BUSH MAID

“It is a real pleasure to recommend this story to Australian
readers.”—_Perth Western Mail._

                           MATES AT BILLABONG

“The incidents of station life, its humours, festivities, and mishaps,
are admirably sketched in this vivid narrative.”—_Adelaide Register._

                          TIMOTHY IN BUSHLAND

“The writer understands all about the wonders of the Australian bush,
its wild horses, kangaroos, wombats, and infinitely various natural
life.”—_Daily Telegraph._

                               GLEN EYRE

“An admirable story, exquisitely told, full of gentle pathos, and
ringing true all through.”—_The Sportsman._

                           NORAH OF BILLABONG

“The story is written in a refreshing and lovable manner, which makes
instant appeal.”—_Manchester Courier._

                             GRAY’S HOLLOW

“A story always healthy and enjoyable in its sympathetic delineation of
unsophisticated nature.”—_The Scotsman._

                        FROM BILLABONG TO LONDON

“The story has many more incidents than Mrs. Bruce’s earlier books, and
though her style is quiet and matter-of-fact, she does succeed in
infusing reality into her exciting episodes.”—_The Melbourne Argus._

                WARD, LOCK & CO., LIMITED, LONDON, E.C.




                           C. G. D. Roberts’

                              NATURE BOOKS

           _Large Crown 8vo. Cloth Gilt. Fully Illustrated._
                  _Pictorial Endpapers. 3s. 6d. net._

A beautifully produced series of Animal Stories by a writer who has
succeeded in depicting the many thrilling incidents connected with
Animal Life with a reality unapproached by any other living Author.

                        HOOF AND CLAW
                        THE HOUSE IN THE WATER
                        THE BACKWOODSMEN
                        KINGS IN EXILE
                        NEIGHBOURS UNKNOWN
                        MORE KINDRED OF THE WILD
                        THE FEET OF THE FURTIVE

“Under the guidance of Mr. Roberts we have often adventured among the
wild beasts of the land and sea, and we hope to do so many times in the
future. It is an education not to be missed by those who have the
chance, and the chance is everyone’s. Mr. Roberts loves his wild nature,
and his readers, both old and young, should love it with
him.”—_Athenæum._

                               NEW VOLUME

                    _With 16 Plates by_ PAUL BRANSOM

                           THE SECRET TRAILS

                            _Price 5s. net_


                 WARD, LOCK & CO., LIMITED, LONDON E.C.




                                   A
                          Beautiful Gift Book

                            BIBLE STEPS FOR
                                CHILDREN

                           _Large Crown 8vo._

                Stories from the Old and New Testaments
                    simply re-told by H. G. EMERSON

          With Introduction by The Rev. Edward Shillito, M.A.

                              NET 2/6 NET

The sacred stories are here re-told in simple and reverent language
easily intelligible to young people. Sunday School teachers and others
will find this a most useful Gift Book. With

                           8 COLOURED PLATES

and many reproductions of the greatest pictures in Sacred Art.




                           WARD, LOCK & CO.’S

                          Favourite Gift Books

                        OF AUSTRALIAN CHILD LIFE

            _Crown 8vo. Cloth. 3s. net. Fully Illustrated._

                            By LILIAN TURNER

“We are glad to have a simple, wholesome, restful writer like Lilian
Turner upon whom to fall back for stories for our growing girls to read
. . . she helps to keep our young people’s tastes pure and
simple.”—_Melbourne Argus._

                      AN AUSTRALIAN LASSIE
                      BETTY, THE SCRIBE
                      PARADISE AND THE PERRYS
                      THE PERRY GIRLS
                      THREE NEW CHUM GIRLS
                      APRIL GIRLS
                      STAIRWAYS TO THE STARS
                      A GIRL FROM THE BACK BLOCKS
                      WAR’S HEART THROBS
                      NOUGHTS AND CROSSES

                            By VERA G. DWYER

“Miss Vera G. Dwyer is a clever story writer, who has the art of
exciting great interest in her characters.”—_Dundee Courier._

                           WITH BEATING WINGS
                           A WAR OF GIRLS
                           MONA’S MYSTERY MAN
                           CONQUERING HAL

                            BY OTHER AUTHORS

                  MAORILAND FAIRY TALES EDITH HOWES
                  MAX THE SPORT LILIAN M. PYKE
                  DAYS THAT SPEAK EVELYN GOODE
                  THE CHILDHOOD OF HELEN EVELYN GOODE




                          GIFT BOOKS FOR BOYS

           _Large Crown 8vo. Fully Illustrated. 3s. 6d. net._


                        Lord Roberts, K.G., V.C.

                        By CAPTAIN OWEN WHEELER

As a gift book for boys of all ages this story of a dauntless hero could
scarcely be surpassed, for long after his deeds as a soldier have lost
all but historical significance his character will remain as an example
to the manhood of Great Britain and the Empire, and indeed of all
English-speaking races.

The book is lavishly illustrated with portraits and drawings which
practically depict the battle-history of the British Empire during a
period of sixty years.

                       Dreadnoughts of the Dogger

                           By ROBERT LEIGHTON

             _With Eight full-page Illustrations in tints._

“This is an adventure book of a kind to which the boy whose instinct is
for the Navy will turn with rejoicing, as it tells a tale of modern
naval fighting in the North Sea.”—_Bristol Times and Mirror._

“Every adventurous lad should read this tale, for from it he will learn
something of a stern discipline and at the same time make the
acquaintance of a really able piece of literary
craftsmanship.”—_Reading Standard._




                           The Little Wonder
                                 Books

                A Dainty New Series of Humorous Stories
                  for the Little Ones by HARRY GOLDING

                     (_Editor of the WONDER BOOKS_)

                _Medium 16mo. Picture Boards. 1s. net._

The many children in all parts of the world who have grown accustomed
year by year to look for THE WONDER BOOK as the most welcome feature of
Christmas or the birthday will learn with interest that the big WONDER
BOOK has now a number of little brothers and sisters. The LITTLE WONDER
BOOKS are not for big boys and girls at all; they are the little ones’
very own. Each booklet contains about THIRTY ILLUSTRATIONS IN COLOUR,
printed on the very best art paper, and the type is so large and clear
that it will not baffle even the tiniest toddler. Best of all, the
stories are real stories, such as little people love and learn by heart
almost without knowing they do so.

                  1. BOBBY BUN AND BUNTY
                  2. THE BROWNIES’ BIRTHDAY
                  3. APPLE TREE VILLA
                  4. TIM TUBBY TOES
                  5. MOTHER GOOSE: Nursery Rhymes
                  6. TICK, TACK AND TOCK
                  7. BULLY BOY
                  8. ROBBIE AND DOBBIE
                  9. THE ANIMAL A.B.C.
                  10. BEN BO’SUN
                  11. THE TOY SOLDIERS
                  12. BUBBLE AND SQUEAK
                  13. OLD NOT-TOO-BRIGHT AND LILYWHITE
                  14. THE GOBLIN SCOUTS
                  15. WILLIE WINKIE




                     =_THE BOOK FOR THE HANDY MAN_=

                AN ENTIRELY NEW (REVISED AND RE-WRITTEN)
                               EDITION OF

                             Every Man His
                              Own Mechanic

      _Nearly 400 Illustrations. Over 500 Pages. Large Crown 8vo._

                             NET =3/6= NET

        The most complete and comprehensive guide ever published

                            FOR AMATEURS IN

                         CARPENTRY
                         JOINERY
                         BUILDING
                         TURNING
                         PAINTING
                         GLAZING
                         SMITHING
                         METAL WORKING
                         UPHOLSTERING
                         FRENCH POLISHING
                         PICTURE FRAME MAKING
                         FRETWORK
                         VENEERING
                         PLUMBING
                         CARVING
                         MASONRY
                         PAPERHANGING
                         PLASTERING
                         GRAINING
                         STENCILLING
                         STAINING
                         BELL HANGING, &c. &c.

“There is a fund of solid information of every kind in this work which
entitles it to the proud distinction of being a complete _vade mecum_ of
the subjects upon which it treats.”—_The Daily Telegraph._




         The New Stories by the Great Novelists, long and short
                        appear regularly in THE

                                WINDSOR

                                MAGAZINE

                     THE IDEAL ILLUSTRATED MONTHLY

which has achieved the Most Brilliant Success of the day. The list of
Contributors to THE WINDSOR is unrivalled, for it includes all the most
popular Novelist Writers and Artists. Here are the names of a few of
them:—

                         RUDYARD KIPLING
                         SIR H. RIDER HAGGARD
                         ANTHONY HOPE
                         MAURICE HEWLETT
                         SIR GILBERT PARKER
                         W. J. LOCKE
                         H. G. WELLS
                         HALL CAINE
                         I. ZANGWILL
                         MAARTEN MAARTENS
                         H. B. MARRIOTT WATSON
                         H. A. VACHELL
                         W. W. JACOBS
                         BARRY PAIN
                         BEATRICE HARRADEN
                         ARNOLD BENNETT
                         CUTCLIFFE HYNE
                         HAROLD BINDLOSS
                         A. E. W. MASON
                         SIR A. CONAN DOYLE
                         JEROME K. JEROME
                         MARY CHOLMONDELEY
                         JUSTUS MILES FORMAN
                         E. F. BENSON
                         MRS. F. A. STEEL
                         GERTRUDE PAGE
                         EDEN PHILLPOTTS
                         BARONESS ORCZY
                         HALLIWELL SUTCLIFFE
                         KEBLE HOWARD
                         CHARLES G. D. ROBERTS

Every Number of THE WINDSOR contains several splendid Complete Stories
by Famous Novelists, Important Articles by Authoritative Specialists and
Beautiful Pictures by distinguished Artists.

THE WINDSOR’S Illustrations represent the high-water mark of current
black-and-white art. In a word

                      The WINDSOR holds the Record
              For the BEST FICTION, ARTICLES and PICTURES

                          _Sevenpence Monthly_




                           TRANSCRIBER NOTES

Misspelled words and printer errors have been corrected. Where multiple
spellings occur, majority use has been employed.

Punctuation has been maintained except where obvious printer errors
occur.

Some illustrations were moved to facilitate page layout.