"Where's your spectacles?" asked Effie, after they had conversed for a while, tucking the rug round herself and speaking with the jocularity and familiarity which generally is associated with long acquaintanceship.

"I beg your pardon," said Miss Grimshaw.

"Father said you'd be in spectacles."

"Oh, my spectacles—they are coming by the next train. Also my snuffbox and a birch-rod."

"Get out with you!" said Miss French, moving under the rug, as if someone had tickled her. "Your snuffbox and your birch-rod! Get out with you!"

It was the first time that Miss Grimshaw had come across a child brought up almost entirely by servants—and Irish servants at that—but there was an entire good humour about the product that made it not displeasing.

"So that's how you welcome me, telling me to get out almost as soon as I have come! Very well, I am going."

"Off with you, then!" replied the other, falling into the vein of badinage as easily as a billiard ball into a pocket. "Patwallop, along with you. I don't care. Hi! come back."

"What is it?" inquired Miss Grimshaw, now at the door, with her hand on the door handle.

"I want to tell you somethin'."

"Well?"

"I want to whisper it."

Miss Grimshaw came to the couch.

"Bend down closer."

She bent. Two small arms flung themselves tentaclewise round her neck, and she was nearly deafened by a "Boo!" in her ear, followed and apologised for by a moist and warm-hearted kiss.

* * * * *

Extract from a letter addressed by Miss V. Grimshaw to a friend:

"Since I last wrote to you, young Mr. Dashwood has left. He stayed three days. Mr. French insisted on his staying, sent for his luggage to the inn at Cloyne, put him up in the best bedroom, where I believe Dan O'Connell once slept, and kept him up till all hours of the morning, drinking far more whisky than was good for his constitution, I am sure.

"We had an awfully good time while he was here, and the house seems a little dull now that he is gone. He asked me before he left if he might write to me and tell me how he was getting on. But he hasn't written yet. He was a nice boy, but irresponsible. And, talking of irresponsibility, the word does not even vaguely describe the affairs of this household.

"I told you of the bailiff man. Well, he arrived in a closed carriage from Cloyne next day, and has been in bed ever since with influenza, caught by exposure on the moors. He is convalescent now, and I met him in the garden this morning, 'taking the air on a stick,' to use Mr. French's expression. I believe the debt is paid to Mr. Harrison, but the bailiff is staying on as a guest. Mr. French gets me at night sometimes to help him in his accounts. He tells me all his affairs and money worries. His affairs are simply appalling, and he has a mad scheme for running a horse next spring in a big English race, the Suburban something or other, by which he hopes to make a fortune. When I point out the impossibility of the thing, he closes up his account-books and says there is no use in meeting troubles half-way.

"Effie is a bright little thing, but there is something about her I can't quite understand. She has a secret, which she tells me she is going to tell me some day, but what it is I can't make out. Now I must stop. Oh, but I forgot. How shall I say it? How shall I tell it? I have an admirer. He is a little mad, a cousin of Mr. French's. You remember those pictures of Sunny Jim we used to admire on the posters? Well, he is not like that; much stouter and more serious looking, and yet there is a family resemblance. He has taken to haunting me.

"Mr. French has warned me not to mind him. He says he is sure to propose to me, but that I'm not to be offended, as it's a disease 'the poor creature is afflicted with, just as if he had epileptic fits,' and that he would make eyes at a broomstick with a skirt on it if he could get nothing else; all of which is interesting, but scarcely complimentary. Things are so dull just at present that I really think I must lead him on. I am sure when he does do it it will be awfully funny. His name is Giveen. Everything is queer about him.

"It rained yesterday and the day before, but to-day is simply glorious. And now I must stop in earnest.—Ever yours lovingly,

Violet."

Miss Grimshaw had been writing her letter at the writing-table in the sitting-room window. The sitting-room was on the ground floor, and as she looked up from addressing the envelope, Mr. Giveen, at the window and backed by the glorious September afternoon, met her gaze.

He was looking in at her. How long he had been standing at the window gazing upon her it would be impossible to say. Irritated at having been spied upon, Miss Grimshaw frowned at Mr. Giveen, who smiled in return, at the same time motioning her to open the window.

"Well?" said Miss Grimshaw, putting up the sash.

"Come out with me," said Mr. Giveen. "Michael is off at Drumboyne, and there's no one to know. Put on your hat and come out with me."

"Go out with you? Where?"

"I'll get the boat and take you to see the seals on the Seven Sisters Rocks. The sea is as smooth as a—smooth as a—smooth as a what's-its-name. I'll be thinking of it in a minit. Stick on your hat and come out with me."

"Some other day, when Mr. French is at home. I don't understand your meaning at all when you talk about nobody knowing. I never do things that I want to hide."

"Sure, that was only my joke," grinned Mr. Giveen; "and if you don't come to-day you'll never come at all, for it's the end of the season, and it's a hundred to one you won't find another day fit to go till next summer; and I'll show you the big sea cave," finished he, "for the tide will be out by the time we've had a look at the seals. It's not foolin' you I am. The boat's on the beach, and it won't take ten minutes to get there."

"I'll come down and look at the sea," said Miss Grimshaw, who could not resist the appeal of the lovely afternoon, "if you'll wait five seconds till I get my hat."

"Sure, I'd wait five hundred years," replied the cousin of Mr. French, propping himself against the house wall, where he stood whistling softly and breaking off every now and then to chuckle to himself, after the fashion of a person who has thought of a good joke or has got the better of another in a deal.

Five minutes later, hearing the girl leaving the house by the front door, he came round and met her.

"This way," said Mr. Giveen, taking a path that led through the kitchen-garden and so round a clump of stunted fir trees to the break in the cliffs that gave passage to the strand. "Now, down by these rocks. It's a powerfully rough road, and I've told Michael time out of mind he ought to have it levelled, but much use there is in talking to him, and him with his head full of horses. Will you take a hold of my arm?"

"No, thanks. I can get on quite well alone."

"Well, step careful. Musha, but I was nearly down then myself. Do you know the name they give this crack in the cliffs?"

"No."

"It's the Devil's Keyhole."

"Why do they call it that?"

"Why, faith, you'll know that when you hear the wind blowing through it in winter. It screeches so you can hear it at Drumboyne. Do you know that I live at Drumboyne?"

"That's the village between here and Cloyne is it not?"

"That's it. But do you know where I live in Drumboyne?"

"No."

"Well, now, by any chance, did you see a bungalow on the right after you left Drumboyne, as you were driving here that day on the car with the young chap—Mr. What's-his-name?"

"Dashwood. Yes, I did see a bungalow."

"That's mine," said Mr. Giveen with a sigh. "As nice a house as there is in the country, if it wasn't that I was all alone in it."

"Don't you keep a servant?"

"A servant! Sure, of course I keep a servant—two. But it wasn't a servant I was meaning. Shall I tell you what I was meaning?"

"I'm not much interested in other people's affairs," said Miss Grimshaw hurriedly. "Ah! there's the sea at last."

A turn of the cleft had suddenly disclosed the great Atlantic Ocean.

Blue and smooth as satin, it came glassing in, breaking gently over and around the rocks—huge, black rocks, shaggy with seaweed, holding among them pools where at low tides you would find rock bass, lobsters, and crabs.

In winter, during the storms, this place was tremendous and white with flying foam, the waves bursting to the very cliff's base, the echoes shouting back the roar of the breakers, the breakers thundering and storming at the echoes, and over all the wind making a bugle of the Devil's Keyhole; but to-day nothing could be more peaceful, and the whisper of the low tide waves seething in amidst the rocks was a lullaby to rock a babe to sleep.

Just here, protected by the rocks, lay a tiny cove where French kept his boat, which he used for fishing and seal shooting. And here to-day, on a rock beside the boat, which was half water-borne, they found Doolan, the man who looked after the garden and hens and did odd jobs, among which was the duty of keeping the boat in order and looking after the fishing tackle.

"What a jolly little boat!" said the girl, resting her hand on the thwart of the sturdy little white-painted dinghy. "Do you go fishing in this?"

"Michael does," replied Mr. Giveen, "but I'm no fisherman. Doolan, isn't the sea smooth enough to take the young lady for a row?"

He shouted the words into the ear of the old weatherbeaten man, who was as deaf as a post.

"Say smooth enough to take the young lady for a row?" replied Doolan in a creaky voice that seemed to come from a distance. "And what smoother would you want it, Mr. Dick? Say smooth enough to take the young lady for a row? Sure, it's more like ile than say water, it is to-day. Is this the young lady you tould me you were going to take to say the sales?"

"I don't want to see any seals," cut in Miss Grimshaw. "I only came down to look at the sea."

"There you are!" burst out Mr. Giveen, like a child in a temper. "After I get the boat ready for you, thinking to give you a bit of pleasure, and take Doolan away from his work and all, and now you won't go!"

"But I said I wouldn't go!" said Miss Grimshaw.

"You didn't."

"I did"—searching her memory—"at least, I didn't say I would go."

"Well, say you will go now, and into the boat with you."

"I won't!"

"Well, then, all the fun's spoiled," said Mr. Giveen, "and it's a fool you've been making of me. Sure, it's hundreds of girls I've taken out to see the caves, and never one of them afraid but you."

"I'm not afraid," said Miss Grimshaw, beginning to waver, "and I don't want to spoil your fun. How long would it take us to see the caves?"

"Not more than an hour or two—less maybe."

"Well," said the girl, suddenly making up her mind, "I'll come."

It was a momentous decision, with far-reaching effects destined to touch all sorts of people and things, from Mr. French to Garryowen, a decision which, in the ensuing April, might have changed the course of racing events profoundly.

So slender and magical are the threads of cause that the fortunes of thousands of clerks with an instinct for racing, thousands of sportsmen, and innumerable "bookies," all were swept suddenly that afternoon into the control of an event so simple as a boating excursion on the west coast of Ireland.

She stepped into the boat, and took her seat in the stern. Mr. Giveen and Doolan pushed the little craft off, and just as she was water borne Mr. Giveen tumbled in over the bow, seized a scull, and pulled her into deep water.

The rocks made a tiny natural harbour, where the dinghy floated with scarcely a movement while the oarsman got out both sculls.

"Isn't he coming with us?" asked Miss Grimshaw.

"Who?"

"The old man—Doolan—what's his name?"

"Sure, what would we be bothered taking him for?" replied the other, turning the boat's nose and sculling her with a few powerful strokes to the creek's mouth, where the incoming swell lifted her with a buoyant and balloon-like motion that brought a sickening sense of insecurity to the heart of the girl.

"Well, I thought he was coming with us, or I would not have got in."

"Well, you're in now," said Mr. Giveen, "and there's no use crying over spilt milk."

He had taken his hat off, and his bald head shone in the sun. Snow-white gulls were flying in the blue overhead, the profound and glassy swell, which was scarcely noticeable from the shore, out here made vales and hills of water, long green slopes in which the seaweed floated like mermaids' hair.

Far out now the loveliness of the scene around her made the girl forget for a moment her sense of insecurity. The whole beauty and warmth of summer seemed gathered into that September afternoon, and the coast showed itself league upon league, vast cliff and silent strand, snowed with seagulls, terns, guillemots, and fading away twenty miles to the north and twenty miles to the south in the haze and the blueness of the summer sky.

The great silence, the vast distances, the happy blue of sea and sky, the voicelessness of that tremendous coast—all these cast the mind of the gazer into a trance in which the soul responded for a moment to that mystery of mysteries, the call of distance.

"There's the Seven Sisters," said Mr. Giveen, resting his oars and pointing away to the north, where the peaked rocks stood from the sea, cutting the sky with their sharp angles and making froth of the swell with their spurs.

Broad ledges of rock occurred here and there at their base, and on these ledges the seals on an afternoon like this would be sunning themselves, watching with liquid human eyes the surging froth, and ready to dive fathoms deep at the approach of man.

Miss Grimshaw, coming back from her reverie, heard borne on the breeze, which was blowing from the north, the faint crying of the gulls round the rocks. It was the voices of the Seven Sisters for ever lamenting, blue weather or grey, calm or storm.

"Where are you going to?" asked she.

"Wherever you please," said he. "If we were to go on as we're going now, do you know where we'd land?"

"No."

"America. How'd you like to go to America with me? Say the word now," went on Mr. Giveen, with a jocularity that was quite lost on his companion. "Say the word, and on we'll go."

"Turn the boat round," said Miss Grimshaw, suddenly and with decision. "We are too far out. Row back. I want to go home."

"And how about the seals?"

"I don't want to see them. Go back!"

"Well now, listen to me. Do you see over there, behind us, that black hole in the cliffs, about a quarter of a mile, or maybe less, from the Devil's Keyhole?"

"Which? Where? Oh, that! Yes."

"Well, that's the big sea cave that everyone goes to see. Sure, you haven't seen Ireland at all till you've been in the Devil's Kitchen—that's the name of it. Shall I row you there?"

"Yes, anywhere, so long as we get close to the shore. It frightens me out here."

"Sure, what call have you to be afraid when I'm with you?" asked Mr. Giveen in a tender tone of voice, turning the boat's head and making for the desired shore.

"I don't know. Let us talk of something else. Why do they call it the Devil's Kitchen?"

"Faith, you wouldn't ask that if you heard the hullabaloo that comes out of it in the big storms. You'd think, by the frying and the boiling, it was elephants and whales they were cooking. But in summer it's as calm as a—calm as a—what's-its-name. Musha, I'll be remembering it in a minit."

Mr. Giveen grumbled to himself in thought as he lay to his oars. Sometimes the brogue of the common people with whom he had collogued from boyhood, and which underlay his cultivated speech as a stratum of rock underlies arable land, would crop up thick and strong, especially when he was communing with himself, as now, hunting for a metaphor to express the sea's calmness.

Miss Grimshaw, passionately anxious to be on land again, was not the less so as she watched him muttering and mouthing and talking to himself. She had now been contemplating him at close quarters in the open light of day for a considerable time, and her study of him did not improve her opinion of him, in fact, she was beginning to perceive that in Mr. Giveen there was something more than a harmless gentleman rather soft and with a passion for flirtation.

She saw, or thought she could see, behind the Sunny Jim expression, behind the jocularity and buffoonery and soft stupidity which made him sometimes mildly amusing and sometimes acutely irritating, a malignant something, a spirit vicious and little, a spirit that would do a nasty turn for a man rather than a nice one, and perhaps even a cruel act on occasion. Whatever this spirit might be, it was little—a thing more to dislike than fear.

They were now in close to the cliffs, and the entrance to the Devil's Kitchen loomed large—a semicircular arch beneath which the green water flooded, washing the basalt pillars with a whispering sound which came distinctly to the boat. The cliff above stretched up, immense, and the crying of the cormorants filled the air and filled the echoes.

Wheeling about the rocks away up, where in the breeding season they had their nests, they seemed to resent the approach of the boat. On a ledge of rock near the cove mouth something dark moved swiftly and then splashed into the sea and was free.

It was a seal.

"I'll take you into the cave to have a look at it," cried Mr. Giveen, raising his voice to outshout the cormorants. "You needn't be a bit afraid. The devil's not here to-day—it's too fine weather for him."

"Don't go far in," cried Miss Grimshaw, and as she spoke the words the boat, urged by the rower, passed into the gloom beneath the archway.

She saw the bottle-green water of the rising and falling swell washing the pillars and the walls from which the seaweed hung in fathom-long ribbons; then they were in almost darkness, and as Mr. Giveen rested on his oars, she could hear the water slobbering against the walls, and from far away in the gloom, every now and then, a bursting sound as the swell filled some hole or shaft and was spat out again.

After a moment or two, her eyes becoming accustomed to the darkness, the vast size of the place became apparent. Far greater than the inside of a cathedral, given over to darkness and the sea, the Devil's Kitchen was certainly a place to make one pause.

In the storms of winter, when, like the great mouth of some giant fighting the waves, it roared and stormed and spat out volumes of water, filled now almost to its roof, now blowing the sea out in showers of spray, the horror of it would be for a bold imagination to conceive.

Even to-day, in its best mood, it was not a place to linger in.

"Now I've brought you in," said Mr. Giveen, his voice finding echoes in the darkness, "and what will you give me to bring you out?"

"Nothing. Turn the boat. I don't like the place. Turn the boat, I say!"

She stamped on the bottom boards, and her voice came back to her ears with a horrible cavernous sound, as did the laughter of Mr. Giveen.

He turned the boat so that she was fronting the arch of light at the entrance, but he did not row towards it. Instead, he began rocking the boat from side to side in a boyish and larky way that literally brought the heart of Miss Grimshaw into her mouth.

"Stop it!" she cried. "We'll be upset. Oh, I'll tell Mr. French. Stop it! Do, please—please stop it."

"Well, what will you give me if I stop it? Come, now, don't be shy. You know what I mean. What will you give me?"

"Anything you like."

"Then we'll make it a kiss?"

"Yes, anything! Only take me out of this."

"Two kisses?" asked Mr. Giveen, pulling in his oars and making to come aft.

"Twenty. Only not here. You'll upset the boat. Don't stand up. You'll upset us."

"Well, when we get back, then?" said the amorous one.

"Yes."

"And you won't tell Michael?"

"No, no, no!"

"On your word of honour?"

"Yes."

"Swear by all's blue."

"Yes."

"But that's not swearing."

"I don't know what all's blue is. Ouch!"

The boat, drifting, had drifted up against the wall of the cave, and the swell, which had a rise and fall of eighteen inches or more, was grinding the starboard thwart lovingly against the seaweed and rock.

"I swear by all's blue," shrieked the girl. "Anything! Quick! Push her off, or we'll be over."

"Faith, and that was a near shave," said Mr. Giveen, shoving the boat off with an oar.

He got the sculls in the rowlocks, and a few strokes brought them out under the arch into daylight again.

"Mind, you've sworn," said Mr. Giveen, who evidently had a very present and wholesome dread of his cousin, Michael French.

"Don't speak to me," replied his charge, whose lips were dry, but whose terror had now, on finding herself in comparative safety, turned into burning wrath. "Don't speak to me, you coward! You—you beast—or I'll hit you with this."

A boat-hook of ash and phosphor-bronze lay at her feet, and she seized it.

Mr. Giveen eyed the boat-hook. It did not promise kisses on landing, but it was a very efficient persuader, in its way, to a swift return.

* * * * * * *

Now, Mr. French, that day after luncheon, had ridden into Drumboyne about some pigs he was anxious to sell. He had failed to come to terms with the pig merchant, and had returned out of temper.

In the stableyard he met Moriarty.

"If you plaze, sorr," said Moriarty, "I've just heard from Doolan that Mr. Giveen has taken the young lady out in the boat."

The contempt which Moriarty had for Mr. Giveen and the dislike were fully expressed in the tone of his words.

"D'you mean to say that idiotic fool has taken Miss Grimshaw out in the dinghy?" cried Michael French, letting himself down from the saddle.

"Yes, sorr."

"To blazes with Doolan! What the—what the—what the—did he mean not telling me!"

"I don't know, sorr. Here he is himself. Micky, come here! The master wants to speak wid you."

Mr. Doolan, who was passing across the yard with a tin basin of fowls' food—it had a wooden handle, and he was holding it by the handle—approached, deaf to what Moriarty said, but answering his gesture.

"What did you mean by letting Mr. Giveen take the young lady out in the dinghy without telling me, you old fool?" asked his master.

"Sure, he tould me not to tell you, sorr," creaked Micky.

"To the devil with you!" cried Mr. French, giving the tin basin a kick that sent the contents flying into Micky's face, spattering it with meal and soaked bread and finely chopped bits of meat till it looked like a new form of pudding. "Off with you, and clean your face, and not another word out of you, or I'll send you flying after the basin. Come on with me, Moriarty, down to the cove, till we see if we can get sight of them."

"Think of the fool letting the girl go out with that egg-headed ass of a Dick!" grumbled French, half to himself and half to Moriarty, as he made down the Devil's Keyhole, followed by the other. "He's been hanging after her for the last week, popping in at all hours of the day, and as sure as he gets a girl into the boat close with him, he's sure to be making a fool of himself, and maybe upsetting her, and the both of them drowned. Not that he'd matter; not that he'd drown, either, for that bladder of a head of his would keep him afloat. Do you see any sight of them, Moriarty?"

They had reached the shore, and Moriarty, standing on a rock and shading his eyes, was looking over the sea.

"No, sorr."

"Come on to the cove. He's sure to come back there, if he ever comes back. If you can't see them from there, they must have gone down the coast to the caves. I tell you what it is, Moriarty, relations or no relations, I'm not going to have that chap hanging round the premises any longer. He comes to Drumgool, and he sits and reads a newspaper, and he pretends to be a fool, and all the time he's taking everything in, and he goes off and talks about everything he sees, and I believe it's him and his talk that's knocked my bargain with old Shoveler over those pigs. He heard me say I'd take two pounds less than I was asking Shoveler, and to-day the old chap was 'stiff as a rock.'"

"I don't think he's any good about the place, sorr," said Moriarty. "Yesterday, when Andy was giving Garryowen his exercise on the four-mile track, there he was, pottin' about with his eye on the horse. You know, sorr, Andy has no likin' for him, and as Andy was passin' the big scrub, there was Misther Giveen, and he up and calls to Andy, 'That's a likely colt,' says he, 'and is me cousin thinkin' of runnin' him next year?' he says."

"Good heavens!" said Garryowen's owner, taking his seat on a rock. "I hope Andy didn't split?"

"Split, sorr! 'To h—— wid you,' says Andy and on he goes, and Buck Slane, who was up on the Cat, and be the same token, sorr, Garryowen can give the Cat two furlongs in a mile and lather him. Buck says the black blood come in his face, and he shuck the stick he was holdin' in his hand after Andy and the colt as if he'd like to lay it on thim."

"Well, I'll lay a stick on him," said French, "if he comes round asking his questions. Moriarty, only you and me and the young lady—she's safe—and Buck Slane—and he's safe—know what we're going to do with Garryowen, and where we're going to run him. If we want to keep him dark, we mustn't have fellows poking their noses about the place."

"That young gintleman from over the wather, sorr, is he safe?"

"Mr. Dashwood? Yes, he's a gentleman. Even so, I did not tell him anything about it. He saw the colt, and, by gad! didn't he admire him. But I said nothing of what I was going to do with him."

"Here they are, sorr," cried Moriarty, who was standing up, and so had a better view of the sea.

Mr. French rose to his feet.

The dinghy was rounding the rocks. Mr. Giveen, at the sculls, was evidently remonstrating with the girl, who, seeing help at hand, and vengeance in the forms of the two men on the beach, was standing up in the stern of the boat—at least, half standing up—now almost erect, now crouched and clutching the thwart, she seemed ready to jump on the rocks they were passing—to jump anywhere so long as she got free of the boat and her companion.

One might have thought that fear was impelling her. It was not fear, however, but anger and irritation.

French and Moriarty rushed into the water up to their knees, seized the dinghy on either side of the bow, and ran her up on the sand, while Mr. Giveen, with his coat in his hand and his hat on the back of his head, tumbled over the side and made as if to make off.

"Stop him!" cried the girl. "He's insulted me! He has nearly drowned me! He frightened me into swearing I wouldn't tell!"

"I didn't," cried Mr. Giveen, now in the powerful grasp of his cousin. "It wasn't my fault. Let loose of me. Let up, or I'll have the law of you!"

"Didn't you?" replied French, who had caught his kinsman by the scruff of his neck and was holding him from behind, shaking him as a terrier shakes a rat, "we'll soon see that. Moriarty, run for a policeman. Take a horse and go for a constable at Drumboyne. Well, then, what do you mean, eh?—what do you mean, eh?—you blackguard, with your philandering? You bubble-headed, chuckle-headed son of a black sweep, you! Call yourself an Irish gentleman! Insulting a lady! Miss Grimshaw, say the word, and I'll stick the ugly head of him in the water and drown him!"

"No, no!" cried the girl, taking the words literally. "Perhaps he didn't mean it. I don't think he is quite right. He only wanted to kiss me. He rocked the boat. Perhaps it was only in fun."

"Now listen to me," cried French, accentuating every second word with a shake, "if I ever catch you within five miles of Drumgool again I'll give you a lambasting you won't get over in a month. That's my last word to you. Off you go!"

The last words were followed by a most explicit kick that sent Mr. Giveen racing and running across the bit of sand till he reached the rocks, over which he scrambled, making record time to the mouth of the Devil's Keyhole. Near that spot he turned and shook his fist at his kinsman.

"I'll be even with you yet, Mick French!" cried Mr. Giveen.

"Away with you!" replied the threatened one, making as if to run after him, at which the figure of Mr. Giveen vanished into the Devil's Keyhole as a rat vanishes up a drain.

French burst into a laugh, in which Miss Grimshaw joined.

"Now he'll be your enemy," said the girl as Moriarty flung the sculls over his shoulder and they prepared to return to the house.

"Much I care!" replied the owner of Garryowen.