Read Ebook: Grania The Story of an Island (Complete) by Lawless Emily

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Amongst the women gathered together on this celebrated occasion, Delia Joyce, of Maam in Connemara, had borne away the palm, as a Queen's yacht might have borne it away amongst an assembly of hookers and canal barges. Not a young man present on the spot--little as most of them were apt to be troubled with such perturbations--but felt a dim, unexplained trouble awake in his breast as the young woman from Maam swept past him, or danced with measured, stately steps down the centre of the stone floor; her red petticoat slightly kilted above her ankles, her head thrown back, her great, dark, slumberous eyes sweeping round the room, as she looked demurely from one strange face to another. Upon Con O'Malley--not amongst the category of young men--the effect was the most marked, most instantaneous, most overwhelming of all! Delia Joyce, as everyone in the room discovered in ten minutes, had no fortune, and, therefore, obviously was no match. She was the orphan niece of a man who had seven living children of his own. She had not a cow, a gridiron, a penny-piece, an inch of land, not a possession of any sort in the world.

Regardless of this utterly damning fact, regardless of his own age, regardless of the outrage inflicted upon public opinion, regardless of everything and everybody, Con O'Malley fell hopelessly in love with her; clung to her skirts like a leech the whole evening; followed her the next day as she was about to step on board her curragh for the mainland; carried her, in short, bodily off her feet by the sheer vehemence of his love-making. He was still a good-looking man at the time; not bent or slouching, but well set up; a 'warm' man, 'well come' and 'well-to-do;' a man whose pleadings no woman--short, that is, of a bailiff's or a farmer's daughter--would disdain to listen to.

Delia Joyce coyly but gladly consented to respond to his ardour. It was a genuine love-match on both sides--that rarest of rare phenomena in peasant Ireland. That it would, as a matter of course, and for that very reason, turn out disastrously was the opinion, loudly expressed, of every experienced matron, not in Inishmaan alone, but for forty miles around that melancholy island. A 'Black stranger,' a 'Foreigner,' a girl 'from the Continent,' not related to anyone or belonging to the place! worse than all, a girl without a penny-piece, without a stool or a feather-bed to add to the establishment! There was not a woman, young or old, living on the three islands but felt a sense of intense personal degradation whenever the miserable affair was so much as alluded to before her!

Marriages, however, are queer things, and the less we prophesy about them the less likely we are perhaps to prove conspicuously wrong. So it was in this case. A happier, more admittedly successful marriage there never was or could be, save, indeed, in one important and lamentable respect, and that was that it came to an end only too soon. About a year after the marriage little Grania was born, two years after it a boy; then, within a few days of one another, the mother and the baby both died. From that day Con O'Malley was a changed man. He displayed no overwhelming or picturesque grief. He left the weeping and howling at the funeral, as was proper, to the professional mourners hired upon that occasion. He did not wear crape on his hat--the last for the excellent reason that Denny O'Shaughnessy made none, and Denny O'Shaughnessy was much the most fashionable of the weavers upon Inishmaan. He did not mope, he did not mourn, he did not do anything in particular. But from the day of his wife's death he went to the dogs steadily and relentlessly--to the dogs, that is, so far as it is going to the dogs to take no further interest in anything, including your own concerns. He did not even do this in any very eminent or extravagant fashion: simply became on a par with the most shiftless and thriftless of his neighbours, instead of being rather noticeably a contrast to them in these respects. Bit by bit, too, the 'Cruskeen Beg,' which had hitherto regarded him as only a very distant and unsatisfactory acquaintance, began to know him better. He still managed to keep the hooker afloat, but what it and his farm brought him in nearly all found its way across the counter of it or some kindred shebeen, and how Honor O'Malley contrived to keep herself and the small Grania, not to speak of a tribe of pensioners and hangers-on, upon the margin left was a marvel to all who were acquainted with the family. Nine years this process had been going on, and it was going on still, and, as the nature of things is, more and more rapidly of late. Poor Con O'Malley! He was not in the least a bad man; nay, he was distinctly a good man: kindly, religious, faithful, affectionate, generous--a goodly list surely of the virtues? But he had set his foot upon a very bad road, one which, all over the world, but especially in Ireland, there is rarely, or never, any turning back upon.

The hooker had by this time got into the North Sound, known to the islanders as Bealagh-a-Lurgan. Tradition talks here of a great freshwater lake called Lough Lurgan, which once covered the greater part of Galway Bay. This may be so or it may not, the word anyhow is one for the geologist. What is certain, and more important for the moment, is, that from this point we gain the best view that is to be had of the three Aran isles as a whole, their long-drawn, bluntly-peaked outlines filling the whole eye as one looks to westward.

Taken together in this fashion, the three isles, with the two sounds which divide them, and an outlying fringe of jagged, vicious-looking rocks and skerries, make up a total length of some fifteen miles, containing, roughly speaking, about eleven thousand acres. Acres! As one writes down the word, it seems to rise up, mock, gibe, laugh at, and confound one, from its wild inappropriateness, at least to all the ideas we commonly associate with it. For, be it known to you, oh prosperous reader--dweller, doubtless, in a sleek land, a land of earth and water, possibly even of trees--that these islands, like their opposite neighbour, the Burren of Clare, are rock, not partially, but absolutely. Over the entire surface, save the sands upon the shore and the detritus that accumulates in the crannies, there is no earth whatsoever, save what has been artificially created, and even this is for the most part but a few inches deep. The consequence is, that a droughty season is the worst of all seasons for the Aranite. Drench him with rain from early March to late November, he is satisfied, and asks no more. Give him what to most people would seem the most moderate possible allowance of sun and dry weather, and ruin begins to stare him in the face! The earth, so laboriously collected, begins to crack; his wells--there are practically no streams--run dry; his beasts perish before his eyes; his potatoes lie out bare and half baked upon the stones; his oats--these are not cut, but plucked bodily by hand out of the sands--wither to the ground; he has no stock, nothing to send to the mainland in return for those necessaries which he gets from there, nothing to pay his rent with; worse than all, he has actually to fetch the water he requires to drink in casks and barrels from the opposite shore!

A cheerful picture, you say! Difficult perhaps to realise, still more difficult, when realised, to contemplate placidly. Who so realising it can resist the wish to become, for a moment even, that dream of philanthropists--a benevolent despot, and, swooping suddenly upon the islands, carry off their whole population--priests, people, and all--and set them down in a new place, somewhere where Nature would make some little response, however slight, to so much toil, care, love, so fruitlessly and for so many centuries lavished upon her here?

'But would they thank you?' you, as an experienced philanthropist, perhaps, ask me. I reply that, it is, to say the least, extremely doubtful. Certainly you might carefully sift the wide world, search it diligently with a candle from pole to pole, without hitting upon another equally undesirable, equally profitless place of residence. Climate, soil, aspect, everything is against it. Ingenuity might seek and seek vainly to find a quality for which it could be upheld. And yet, so strangely are we made, that a dozen years hence, if you examined one of the inhabitants of your ideal arcadia, you would probably find that all his, or her, dreams of the future, all his, or her, visions of the past, still clung, limpet-fashion, to these naked rocks, these melancholy dots of land set in the midst of an inhospitable sea, which Nature does not seem to have constructed with an eye to the convenience of so much as a goat!

The four occupants of our hooker naturally troubled their heads with no such problems. To them their islands--especially this one they were approaching, Inishmaan--were to all practical purposes the world. Even for Con O'Malley, whom business carried pretty often to the mainland, the latter was, save on the merest fringe, to all intents and purposes an unknown country. The world, as it existed beyond that grey wash of sea, was a name to him, and nothing more. Ireland--sometimes regarded by superior persons as the very Ultima Thule of civilisation--hung before his eyes as a region of dangerous novelties, dazzling, almost wicked in its sophistication, and he had never set foot on a railroad in his life.

Inishmaan has no regular harbour, consequently it was necessary to get the curragh out again so as to set little Grania ashore. The child had been hoping the whole way back that Murdough Blake, too, would have come ashore with her, but he remained sitting, with the same expression of sulky dignity, upon the deck of the hooker, and it was the hated Shan Daly who rowed her to the land; which done, with a quick, furtive glance towards a particular spot a little to westward, he turned and rowed as quickly as he could back to the larger vessel again.

While the boat was still on its way, before it had actually touched shore, a woman who had been waiting for it on the edge might have been seen to move hastily along the rocks, so as to be ready to meet them upon their arrival. This woman wore the usual red Galway flannel petticoat, with a loose white or yellowish flannel jacket above, known as a 'baudeen,' and worn by both sexes on the islands, a handkerchief neatly crossed at her neck, with blue knitted stockings and pampooties upon her feet. At first sight it would have been difficult to guess her age. Her hair, better brushed than usual, was of a deep, unglossy black, and her skin clear and unwrinkled; yet there was nothing about her which seemed to speak of youth. It was a plain face and a sickly one, with little or nothing of that play of expression which redeems many an otherwise homely Irish face, yet, if you had taken the trouble to examine it, you would have been struck, I think, with something peculiar about it, something that would have arrested your attention. Elements not often seen in combination seemed to find a meeting-place there. A look of peculiar contentedness, an indescribable placidity and repose, had stamped those homely features as with a benediction. The mild brown eyes, lifting themselves blinkingly to the sunlight, had something about them, chastened, reposeful, serene, an expression hardly seen beyond the shelter of the convent; yet, at the same time, there was something in the manner in which the woman ran down to the shore to meet the child, and, lifting her carefully over the edge of the boat, set her on her feet upon the rocks, a manner full of a sort of tender assiduity, a clinging, caressing, adoring tenderness, not often, hardly ever indeed, to be found apart from the pains and the joys of a mother.

This was Honor O'Malley, little Grania's half-sister, the only surviving daughter of Con O'Malley's first marriage. She had been little more than a half-grown girl when her mother died, but for several years had kept house for her father. Then had come the short-lived episode of his second marriage and his wife's death, since which time Honor's one aim in life, her whole joy, her pride, her torment, her absorbing passion, had been her little sister.

The child had been an endless trouble to her. Honor herself was a saint--a tender, self-doubting, otherwise all-believing soul. The small sister was a born rebel. No priest lived on Inishmaan, or, indeed, lives there still, so that this visible sign of authority was wanting. Even had there been one, it is doubtful whether his mere presence would have had the desired effect, though Honor always devoutly believed that it would. The child had grown up as the young seamew grows. The air, the rocks, the restless, fretting sea; a few keen loves, a few still keener and more vehement hates; the immemorial criss-cross of wishes, hindrances, circumstances--these and such as these had made her education, so far as she had had any. As for poor Honor's part in it! Well, the child was really fond of her, really loved her, and that must suffice. There are mothers who have to put up with less.

Taking her by the hand the elder sister now attempted to lead her from the shore. It was a slow process! At every rock she came to little Grania stopped dead short, turning her head mutinously back to watch the hooker, as, with its brown patched sails set almost to the cracking point, it rounded the first green-speckled spit of land, on its way to Aranmore. Whenever she did so, Honor waited patiently beside her until her curiosity was satisfied and she was ready to proceed on her way. Then they went on again.

There were rocks enough to arrest even a more determined laggard. The first barnacle-coated set crossed, they got upon a paler-coloured set, out of reach of the tide, which were tumbled one against another like half-destroyed dolmens or menhirs. These stretched in all directions far as the eye could reach. The whole shore of this side of the island was one continuous litter of them. Three agents--the sea, the weathering of the air, the slow, filtering, sapping action of rain--had produced the oddest effect of sculpturing upon their surface. From end to end--back, sides, every atom of them--they were honey-combed with holes varying from those into which the two clenched fists might be thrust to those which would with difficulty have accommodated a single finger. These holes were of all depths too. Some of them mere dimples, some piercing down to the heart of the blocks, five, six, seven feet in depth, and as smooth as the torrent-worn troughs upon a glacier.

Ten minutes were spent in clearing this circumvallation; then the sisters got upon a waste of sand sprinkled with sickly bent, through which thin patches of white flowering campion asserted themselves. Here, invisible until you all but brushed against its walls, rose a small chapel, roofless, windowless, its door displaced, its gable ends awry--melancholy to look at, yet not without a certain air of invitation even in its desolation. Sand had everywhere invaded it, half hiding the walls, completely covering the entrance, and forming a huge drift where once the altar had risen. Looking at it, fancy, even in calm weather, seemed involuntarily to conjure up the sweep of the frightened yellow atoms under the flail of the wind; the hurry-scurry of distracted particles; the tearing away of the frail covering of bent; the wild rush of the sand through the entrance; and, finally, its settling down to rest in this long-set-aside haven of the unprotected.

West of the chapel, and a little to the left of the ruined entrance, stood a cross, though one which a casual glance would hardly have recognised as such, for there were no cross arms--apparently never had been any--and the figure upon the upright post was so worn by weather, so utterly extinguished, rubbed, and lichen-crusted by the centuries, as hardly to have a trace of humanity left. Honor never passed the place without stopping to say a prayer here. For her it had a special sanctity, this poor, shapeless, armless cross, though she would probably have been unable to explain why. Now, as usual, she stopped, almost mechanically, and, first crossing herself devoutly, bent her head down to kiss a small boss or ridge, which apparently once represented the feet, and then turned to make her sister do the same.

This time Grania would willingly have gone on, but Honor was less compliant than before, and she gently bent the child's reluctant head, coaxing her, till her lips at last touched the right place. Grania did not exactly resist, but her eyes wandered away again in the direction of the hooker, now fast disappearing round the corner. Why had Murdough Blake gone to Aranmore, instead of coming back with her? she thought, with a sense of intense grievance. The disappointment rankled, and the salt, gritty touch and taste of the boss of limestone against her small red lips could not, and did not, alter the matter an atom, one way or other.

Leaving the chapel they next began to climb the slope, first crossing a sort of moraine of loose stones which lay at its foot. Like all the Aran isles, Inishmaan is divided into a succession of rocky steps or platforms, the lowest to eastward, the highest to westward, platforms which are in their turn divided and subdivided by innumerable joints and fissures. This, by the way, is a fact to be remembered, as, without it, you might easily wander for days and days over the islands without really getting to know or understand their topography.

A curious symmetry marked the first of these steps, that up which the sisters were then mounting: you would have been struck in a moment by its resemblance to the backbone of some forgotten monster, unknown to geologists. A python, say, or plesiosaurus of undetermined species, but wholly impressive vastness, stretching itself lazily across about a third of the island, till its last joint, sinking towards the sea, disappeared from sight in the general mass of loose stones which lay at the bottom of the slope.

It was at the head of this monster that the O'Malleys' cabin stood, while at the other--the tail-end, so to speak--was hidden away that foul and decaying hovel in which the Shan Daly family squatted, lived, and starved. Though far above the level of the average stamp of Aran architecture, the O'Malleys' house itself would not, perhaps, have struck a stranger as luxurious. It was of the usual solid, square-shaped, two-roomed type, set at the mouth of a narrow gorge or gully, leading from the second to the third of those steps, steps whose presence, already insisted upon, must always be borne in mind, since they form the main point, the ground lines upon which the whole island is built.

Blocking the mouth of the already narrow gully stood a big boulder of pink granite, a 'Stranger' from the opposite coast of Galway. Leaning against this boulder as the sisters mounted the pathway, a group of five figures came into sight. Only one of these was full grown, the rest were children--babies, rather--of various ages from five years old to a few weeks or less. Seen in the twilight made by the big rock you might have taken the whole group for some sort of earth or rock emanation, rather than for things of living flesh and blood, so grey were they, so wan, so much the same colour, so much apparently the same texture as what they leaned against.

Honor started forward at a run as soon as she caught sight of them, her pale face lit with a warm ray of kindliness and hospitality.

'Auch, and is it there you are, Kitty Daly?' she exclaimed. 'But it is the bad place you have taken to sit in, so it is, and all your poor young children too! And it is you that look bad, too, this day, God love us!--yes indeed, but bad! And is it long that you have been sitting there? My God, I would have left the door open if I had thought you would come and I not in it! Yet it is not a cold day either, praise be to God!--no it is a very fine, warm day. There has not been a finer day this season, if so be it will last till his reverence comes next week for the pathern. But what brings you up this afternoon at all, at all? It is too soon for you to be coming up the hill, and you so weak still--too soon altogether!'

While she was speaking the woman had got up, her whole little brood, save the baby which she held in her arms, rising with her as if by a single impulse. Seen in the strong light which fell upon their faces over the top of the gully they looked even more piteous, more wan and wobegone than when they were squatting in the comparative shadow at the base of the rock. She made no direct reply to Honor's question, but looked up at her with a dumb, wistful appeal, and then down at the children, who in their turn looked up at what, no doubt, was in their eyes the embodiment of prosperity standing before them. There was no mistaking what that appeal meant. The answer was written upon every face in the whole group. Hunger was written there; worse--starvation; first, most clamorous of needs, not often, thank Heaven! seen so clearly, but when seen terrible--a vision from the deepest, most elemental depths, a cry to pity, full of ancient primordial horrors; heart-rending; appalling; impossible not to hasten to satisfy.

That this was the only possible answer to her question seemed to have immediately struck the kindly-natured Honor. For, without wasting further time, she ran to her own door, taking out a big key as she did so from her pocket. Another minute and she had rummaged out a half-eaten griddle-loaf, and was hacking big morsels off it with a blunt, well-nigh disabled dinner-knife.

Manners, however, had to be observed, let the need for haste be never so great, and no one was more observant of such delicacies than Honor O'Malley.

'Then, indeed, it is not very good bread to-day, so it is not,' she observed apologetically. 'It was last Tuesday week I would have wished to ask you to taste of it, Mrs. Daly. The barm did not rise rightly this time, whatever the reason was, still, after your walk you would, maybe, eat a bit of it, and I would be much obliged to you, and the young children, too. But it is some cow's milk that they must have. Run, Grania, run quick and fetch some out of the big mether, it is on the top shelf, out of the way of the cat. It is good cow's milk, Mrs. Daly, though it has been skimmed once; I skim it now in the morning, after Grania has had her breakfast. The child grows so fast it is the best milk she must have, but it is not at all bad milk, only skimmed once, or I would not offer it you, no, indeed, I would not, Mrs. Daly, ma'am.'

But the poor visitor was past responding to any such friendly efforts to shield her self-respect. She tried to thank her entertainer, but the tears came too fast, and fairly choked her. One after another they gathered and ran down her thin white cheeks, fresh tears continually brimming her poor eyes, once a brilliant blue--not a common colour in the west of Ireland--and which still, though their brightness had waned, seemed all too blue and too brilliant for the poor faded face they shone out of.

The boy she was addressing was the eldest of the pitiful little group, a wistful-faced, shadowy creature of about five. His eyes were blue, like his mother's, though of a paler shade and more prominent. Big, startled eyes they were--the eyes of a child that sees phantoms in the night, that starts in its sleep and cries out, it knows not why or about what. With those big eyes fixed full upon her face he was staring hard at Grania O'Malley, the pannikin of milk which had been put into his hands remaining untasted in the intensity of his contemplation.

'Indeed and indeed it is too good you are to them, Honor O'Malley--too good entirely!' poor Mrs. Daly managed to say, finding her voice at last, though still speaking through the sobs which choked her. 'But it is yourself knows where to look for the blessing so it is! And may God shield you and keep you in health and sickness, in joy and sorrow, in this world and in the world to come--yes, indeed, and beyond it too, if need be, amen! It is ashamed I am, sorry and ashamed, to be troubling you, and you not well yourself. But Shan, you see--it is very bad times Shan has had lately. There is no work at all to do, he says, not anywhere on Inishmaan, no, nor upon Aranmore even. There was some fish he was to bring in this afternoon, but he has not come back yet, and the evening it is late, and if he did catch the fish itself, it is not young children that can eat fish alone, so it is not. And me so weak still, it is but little I can do; for it is not, you know, till next Friday will be three weeks that--'

She stopped and looked bashfully down at the poor little bundle in her neighbour's arms. Though this was her fourth child she had a feeling of delicacy about alluding to the fact of its birth which would have seemed not merely inconceivable, but monstrous to a woman of another race and breeding. Honor, however, knew as much, or more, about the matter than she did herself. She had been with her at the time, although old Mrs Flanaghan, Phil Flanaghan's mother, was the chief official in command on the occasion. It was Honor, however, who had baptised the baby--this poor little white-faced object then in her arms, whose birth and death had seemed likely to be contemporaneous. It was an office for which she was in great demand on Inishmaan, where, as explained, there was no priest, and where her peculiar piety made her seem to her neighbours specially fitted for such semi-sacerdotal duties. Of course such a baptism was only meant as a preliminary, to serve till the more regular sacrament could be bestowed, but, from the difficulties of transport, it often happened that weeks and months passed before any other could be given; nay, not infrequently, the poor little pilgrim had found its way to the last haven for all such pilgrims, near to the old church of Cill-Cananach, unguarded from future perils by any more regular rite.

Looking down at the small waxen face upturned in her lap, Honor O'Malley felt that such a consummation was not in this case far off. She did not say to herself that it was so much the better, for that would have been a sin, but her thoughts certainly ran unconsciously in that direction as, having given it back to its mother, she bustled to and fro in the cabin, putting together all the available scraps of food she could find; which done, she tied them into a bundle and deposited the bundle in the passive arms of little Phelim, who accepted it from her with the same dim, wondering stare of astonishment in his pale china-blue eyes--a stare with which every event, good or ill, seemed alike to be received by him. Five years' experience of a very troublesome world had evidently not yet accustomed him to any of its peculiar ways or vicissitudes.

The Daly brood departed with their booty, Honor next bustled about to get their own meal ready. Grania meanwhile had promptly dumped herself down upon her two small heels and sat doing nothing, except staring sulkily at the fire. The child was thoroughly cross. She wanted her playfellow, and poor Honor by no means filled the blank. An old hen, sitting upon a clutch of eggs in a hole in the wall a little to the left of the fire, put its head out, and uttered a friendly interrogative cluck, by way of suggestion that it was there and would not object to a handful of oatmeal if it came in its way. Grania, however, took no notice, but sat, with her small brows drawn close together, staring at the ash-covered heap of turf, below which a dull red glow still smouldered.

Inside the cabin everything was warm, turf-scented, chocolate-tinted. Walls, roof, hearth, furniture--what furniture there was--all was dim and worn, blackened with time, smoke, and much friction. Little light came in at the small, closely-puttied windows; much smoke down the wide, imperfectly-fashioned chimney. It suited its inmates, however, and that, after all, is the main thing. To them, as to the old speckled hen, it was home--the one spot on earth that was theirs, which made the difference between warmth, self-respect, comfort, and a desolate, windy world without. Solid at least it was. There was no scamped work about it: no lath and plaster in the walls; no dust and rubble in the foundations. Had there been it would not have stood out against the first of the ten thousand storms that had beat against its solid little walls since the first day that they were planted in the mouth of that wicked, squally gully.

Supper over, Grama watched her opportunity. With a sudden slide, a run, a quick scramble, and a dart through the open door, she managed, while Honor was scouring out the black pot, to escape and run off at the top of her speed to a spot where she knew she would be safe, for some time at least, from pursuit.

Clambering over the big blocks, excited with the sense of escape, and breathless from her run up the perpendicular, ladderlike face of the slope, she had just reached the innermost enclosure when, out of the darkest part of it, a figure bounced against her so roughly as to cause her to spring backwards, striking her foot, as she did so, against one of the sharp-pointed stones.

It was a big, red-headed lad of fourteen or, perhaps, fifteen years old, extremely, almost painfully, ugly, possessing one of those faces which confront one now and then in the west of Ireland, and which seem to verge to a cruel degree upon the grotesque. So freckled was he that his face seemed all freckle; an utterly shapeless, and at the same time ridiculously inconspicuous, nose; a shock head, tangled enough to suggest the historic 'glibbe' of his remote progenitors; with all that, a harmless, amiable, not even particularly stupid face, but so dull, and at the same time apprehensive-looking, that its very amiability seemed to provoke and invite attack. Attack was certainly not spared on this occasion.

She stopped, breathless, exhausted by her own volubility.

The boy so belaboured with words only stood still, his poor ugly face growing redder and uglier in his confusion.

'Arrah, is it hurt you are, Grania O'Malley?' he stammered sheepishly at last.

Poor Teige found apparently no effective rejoinder to these observations, for, after staring stupidly at her for about a minute, he turned and proceeded obediently to depart, his heavy feet--heavy even in their soft cow's skin pampooties--lumbering along over the rocks, the sound growing fainter and fainter as he disappeared down the stony hillside.

Little Grania waited where she was till he was out of sight, then she jumped up from the stone upon which she had thrown herself and clambered nimbly up, till she had reached her favourite perch on the top of the fort, where a small portion of the parapet still existed. Seating herself upon this she let her feet dangle out over the smooth flagged platform which stretched for some distance beyond.

She was still sobbing, from anger, however, rather than pain, her suffering being of the kind known in nursery parlance as a pain in the temper, the previous vexation about Murdough having been deepened and brought into fresh prominence by the recent encounter.

Teige O'Shaughnessy was an orphan, and lived with an uncle and aunt, an old brother and sister who inhabited a cabin upon one of the outlying rocks, one which became an island at high tide and therefore was then unapproachable. The two were twins, and earned their bread, or rather the old man earned it for both of them, by weaving. Apparently it was a sorry trade, for the cabin in which they lived was so twisted, sea-battered, brine-encrusted, and generally miserable that, by comparison, most of the other houses upon the island might have been regarded by their owners as quite architectural and dignified domiciles. This, one would say, ought to have been a source of popularity, but, for several reasons, the O'Shaughnessys were rather pariahs upon Inishmaan. This was not on account of their poverty, which is never a really damning reproach in Ireland, and probably, therefore, was due partly to the fact that, compared to most of its inhabitants, they were new-comers--at least, there were several very old people on Inishmaan who pretended to remember a time when there were no O'Shaughnessys there--partly to their extreme ill-favouredness, and, still more, to the fact that the two old people were deaf and dumb, and could therefore only communicate with their neighbours and the rest of the world by signs--a sufficient reason surely in a much less superstitious community than that of Inishmaan for regarding them as lying peculiarly under the disfavour of Heaven, and likely enough to bring that contagion or blight of disfavour upon other, and more fortunate, people if unduly encouraged and associated with.

Grania, a born aristocrat--all children are born aristocrats--shared this feeling in the strongest degree, and was well aware that Teige was in some way or other immensely inferior to herself, and therefore a person only to be tolerated when no more attractive company was to be had. She sat for some time longer with her feet dangling over the top of the fort, a quaint little red-petticoated figure, the solitary spot of colour in all that desolate greyness. Immediately beneath her the ridged platforms of rock showed their upturned edges, one below the other, fluted, worn, and grooved into every variety of furrow. Hardly a speck of green to be seen anywhere. Here and there an adventurous spray of honeysuckle or bryony, grown deep in the hollows, showed perhaps a few inches of foliage above the wrinkled surface of the rocks, but that was all.

The winds were all hushed for that evening, but their power and prowess was written at large upon every worn crag, torn fissure, and twisted stump; upon the whole battered, wind-tormented scene. Inishmaan might from this point have suggested some weather-beaten old vessel, a raft or hulk given over to the mercy of winds and waves, keeping afloat still, but utterly scarred and defaced, a derelict, past all possibility of recovery.

At the end of this platform, which served it for a terrace, stood a house--not a cabin, and the only habitable abode on Inishmaan that could be called by any other name. It was said to have been built for a relation of the owner of the islands, who, fifty years before, had found here an asylum from his creditors. Whatever its history may have been, it formed undoubtedly an odd contrast to every other form of architecture to be found in the place. In shape it seemed to have been intended to imitate some small Greek or Roman temple, the front consisting of four cut granite pillars supporting a roof, and led up to by three wide, shallow steps, which steps were also of granite, the reddish feldspathic granite of West Galway. The back and sides of the building, however, were only of the ordinary blue limestone of the island, once plastered with stucco, and white, but long since blistered and broken away. Damp and decay had, in fact, got possession of the whole building. Not only had the stucco almost entirely fallen off, but even the scrolled iron banisters of a flight of steps which led from the end of the terrace to the sea were in many places worn to a mere thread by the constant friction of water and rust-producing action of the spray.

No one lived there now, though an old woman, the grandmother of Murdough Blake, was paid a trifle for looking after it, and was pretty generally to be found there in the daytime. With Grama it had always been a chief haunt and playground, partly because Murdough Blake had a prescriptive right to go there to dig bait and loaf about generally, but also because there was a fascination for her in the tumble-down old house itself, so utterly unlike any other within the range of her experience.

As might have been expected, it was all shut up now; so, having vainly tried each of the doors and windows, and rapped impatiently at two or three of them, she went down the steps and squatted disconsolately upon a bit of rock at the foot of them.

The air, mild as milk, had something about it that evening which seemed to touch the cheek like a caress. There had been no sunset worth speaking of, but the western sky and sea above and below the rim of the horizon were tinged with faint salmon, through which the grey broke, and into which it was gradually melting. To the north, behind the child's head, the great grey profile of Dun Conchobhair lifted its frowning mass, well defined against the sky--a dark, sinister fragment of a long-forgotten past, looking gloomily down upon the poor, squat, and weather-worn habitations of to-day.

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