to the scene. We pass under a kind of arboreal archway formed by the golden-green branches of a drooping larch-tree heavily hung about with more sombre dark clusters of ivy, and now find that what was once a road or cartway is dwindling into a narrow foot or bridle-path leading us heaven knows where. We turn a corner and suddenly come face to face with a scene of utter desolation and loneliness, two ancient and untenanted farmhouses standing cheek-by-jowl in a little open space, their thatched roofs sodden, moss-grown, and tempest-tattered, their mouldering walls grimy and weather-stained, the grass growing thickly about window-ledge and door. It gave one something of a chill, and after one glance around the deserted spot, where desolation saddens all the green," one hurries on as though the place were spectre-haunted or accursed.

Now we find ourselves transported at once into a most beautiful little woodland path thickly overhung with tall trees, gorgeously red and golden in their luxurious autumnal dress. By our side is a wealth of trailing bramble and blackberry, hardly hiding tall clusters of ferns and the still verdant leaves of primroses and foxgloves that in a few months, time will be lusciously green and lovely, starred with primrose blossoms, fragrant and "moonlight pale," and the hanging bells, purple and white, of the stately and beautiful foxglove. Higher and ever higher the pathway leads us till at last we leave the darkness of the tree-sheltered glade behind us, and emerge into the wild and grateful breeziness of a high upland country, with delicious little sheltered nooks amongst the furze brakes and bracken banks that would make truly ideal bivouacing places for a picnic. Here, too, the blackberry is everywhere in evidence-none of your commo. lowland blackberries, mind you, but the much larger and more delicious "wheaten-berried trailing blackberry vine of the kindly hillside country.

Climbing on higher and higher, and stopping now and again, as much to take breath as to watch the steadily widening and entrancing view, we at last find ourselves emerging from our pretty bypath on to the Mount Seskin Road-we might have reached it much sooner by a stile and a path through the fields, by the way; but it would not be half so interesting as this. A splendid road it is, too, clear and level and well made, as it sweeps past its encompassing hills to the music of running water flowing merrily under little bridges through banks made wondrously green and cool by their clustering clumps of fern.

Higher on the hill the bracken glows faded and brown,

shining goldenly red and warm and radiant against the blue, cloud-flecked sky on this glorious autumnal Sabbath evening. Far away and below us, and yet not so far away, the smoke hangs low over the city, and the little yachts shine like dim white butterflies on the grey-blue waters of Dublin Bay. But here one could well believe oneself many hundred miles from a city or a town. We pass a few cottages, not many, some comfortable and well cared for, others poverty-stricken and decayed; and soon we find ourselves close to the De Selby stone quarries on the side of a lovely green gorse and heather and furze-clad hill, where not so long ago Madame de Selby had the design-frustrated, I believe, only by the disinclination of the present rural tenants to sell their little holdings-of instituting a wonderful "Garden City."

While the boys and girls of our party investigate the workings and machinery here, a couple of their elders fare further afield up the hill with the object, be it admitted-for like John Gilpin's wife, "although they were on pleasure bent, they had a frugal mind "-of buying, if possible, a few of the newlaid eggs just then so scarce on the plains.

There were only "four houses on the townland," we were told, and in the second of those, a comfortable and homely slated cottage at the head of a narrow boreen, we were lucky in finding not only what we wanted, but a brace of fresh rabbits as well, and a kindly welcome and a warmly proffered invitation to a cup of tea from the pleasant-faced, hospitable woman of the house.

We have paid several other visits to her since, bringing with us books and papers to while away the loneliness of the long evenings on the hillside, for our hostess has an exceeding love of and a most excellent taste in literature. As we turned our face homewards again, swinging down the narrow boreen and the clean wind-swept road with an ease born of a pleasant experience and the exhilarating mountain air, a small boy of our party turned and looked back regretfully at the hill behind us, glowing warmly red under its cover of bracken and heather in the rays of the setting sun.

"Ah, mother!" he said wistfully, "I wish we were not going down! I'd just love to be going up there again!" And despite the call of home and fireside in the valley below us, I think that all of us echoed the wish in our hearts.

NORA TYNAN O'MAHONY.

THE BROOCH OF LINDISFARNE

By JESSIE A. GAUGHAN

Author of "The Plucking of the Lily"

CHAPTER XXIJ

HOW MALCOLM FARED

THERE was little sleep for Janet of Mull after the chief of Clan MacLean left her, and the dawn saw her leave her dwelling on her way to carry water from a spring. In the hut lay Ian, fast asleep where he had thrown himself.

The wind had fallen away, and Loch Indaal was quiet. The daylight showed that the soothsayer's hut was built against the side of a smooth rock, just at the edge of the woods. Its walls were formed of stones put loosely together. Heavy pieces of drift-wood lay on the thatched roof, secured there by a network of ropes held down by large stones. Ropes and wood were half hidden by clumps of grass and daisies, and even young gorse bushes that had obtained a roothold in the thick thatch and flourished there. Except on near inspection the abode looked like part of the rock behind it, a piece of Nature's handiwork, rather than a human habitation. A sand-strewn track ran between it and the shore.

Janet walked along the soft springy turf that edged the track, disturbing as she went many a rabbit from his morning feed. The spring was some distance away on the shore side of the path, but though very near the high-water mark was never brackish. A hollow had been dug deep enough for the water to collect. Janet dipped in her pitcher, rinsed it round, and emptied it, then filled it afresh, mechanically murmuring as she did so a time-honoured blessing on the maker of the well.

The tide was far out, and had left exposed a wide expanse of sand that stretched almost across the head of the loch. The bright sunbeams played upon the wet sand, making each tiny grain sparkle with a diamond's radiance. From where the woman stood, Loch Indaal scarce appeared an inlet of the sea. Gently sloping land, where yellow gorse made bright patches among the more sober greens and browns, rose on

either side of it, backed on the left side by the Islay hills, and the loch narrowed away to its entrance till it seemed to be entirely enclosed. Edging the sand was a border of short turf, interspersed with pools of sea-water. Tufts of sea-pinks flowered up to the very line of wrack that marked the ordinary limits of the tide. Sprawling jellyfish, washed up by the storm, lay helpless beyond those limits. Long-legged sea birds stalked over the sand worm hunting or waded at the edge of the sea. Farther from the tide than the adventurous sea-pinks, clumps of gowans-large white daisies-grew. A constant twittered chorus, and the occasional long-drawn call of game birds, came from the glades of the beautiful woods that spread out right and left in a broad belt. Close at hand the River Sorn, issuing from the woods, ran to lose its swollen waters in the loch. Over all was a fair summer sky.

The scene was most beautiful, but when one has drawn water from a well for close on thirty years and daily looked upon the same land and sea, the fairest view must pall; and as Janet stood beside her pitcher, she did not admire the sea or the hills or the woods, nor did her eyes seek the soft beautiful sky. Instead, they fixed themselves upon the figure of a man who was coming hastily along the track. Even in the distance there was something familiar about him. As he drew near she saw that his clothing was covered with clay marks, but here and there the MacLean colours were unsullied. His cap was gone, and his thick dark hair was wet and disordered. She knew him almost from the first sight for her son Malcolm, the only one of her children who had inherited her devotion to the MacLeans, and she awaited his coming with curiosity and impatience.

When at last they were together she greeted him with remarks on his condition and eager questions as to how he came to be in such a state, but he would not answer her beyond a brief salute. Like a good son he did not permit her to carry the pitcher, but took it up and set off towards the hut with the words: "It would take too long here; but come home, mother, and I will tell you how it came about. I wonder I'm a living man after spending the night beside Dun Brolchain."

After that he kept a tight silence, though she plagued him with questions as much as her breath allowed as she tried to keep up with his stride. As they entered the hut Ian awoke, and stretched himself lazily, but his slothfulness vanished when he caught sight of Malcolm framed in the doorway. Even

in daytime the light inside Janet's abode was uncertain, and the boy sprang up and rushed from the hut before Malcolm was aware of his presence. Then Malcolm began his tale, and his mother, expecting to hear some story of spectres walking in the night, took a fowl she had killed and sat down to pluck it, but first she filled pot with water and hung it on the hook over the fire. Her son recounted Ian's violence and his own compulsory journey to Dun Brolchain.

"The ungrateful fosterling! Oh, the revengeful heart of him!" Janet cried as she listened; but her anger against Ian gave place to a much more disquieting feeling as Malcolm told her of his experiences beside the haunted Dun.

"I lay I know not how long asleep in the heather," he concluded, "and awoke to find the point of a dirk at my throat. If it had not been held in the grasp of my own twin brother it would have been through me. Neill's hand fell when he recognised me, though for some time he knew not who I was, my face was so bedaubed with mud. Still, as he said, something he knew not what-stayed him from slaying me. It was just at dawn. I would have cried his name aloud, but he thrust his hand over my mouth. Then he cut my bonds, and bade me creep away silently and keep a still tongue. It's well to have a friend in the enemy's camp. If all your sons served MacLean, mother, Sir Lauchlan would be without his henchman to-day."

Janet could hardly hear him out. She guessed the truth, and when he finished she jumped to her feet with angry flashing eyes in a fever of indigna ion.

His henchman!" she exclaimed with contempt in her voice that made the young man shrink. "Malcolm MacDougal, are you son of mine, and do you call yourself the henchman of MacLean, and yet waste time telling me this tale instead of hasting with it to the chief? A bonnie henchman! Neill, you said. His post is at Dunyvaig. He has a wife this two months to keep him home as well as his duty. What brings him to Dun Brolchain? MacDonald's ghillie-more? And phantoms! Get yourself a bunch of white cock's feathers

for your bonnet instead of the prickly holly of Clan MacLean. Here they are for you. We'll get Morag to pin them in!" she exclaimed mercilessly, pointing to the scattered white plumage of the bird she had been preparing.

"If you were a lassie you might talk of phantoms," she ran on, regardless of the feelings of her son, who, enlightened