The Blue Lagoon: A Romance

e dining-room, a room oak-panelled like the libr

e room, hunt breakfasts and dinners, rousing songs, laugh

t out with Councillor Kinsella and shot him through the lungs by the Round House on the Arranakilty Road. The diminutive Tom Moore had sung his songs here "put standing on the table" by the other guests, and the great Dan had held forth and the wind had dashed the ivy a

ng a cod's "head and shoulders" whilst a female servant appeared with a

old Irish way is, honestly, a ghastly sight. The thing has a

default of the proper one, had given Phyl a turn and now she was wonderin

small refinements. Phyl was conscious of the fact that Byrne had placed several terrible old knives on the table, knives that properly belonged to the kitchen, and when the second course, consisting of a boiled chicken, faced by a piece

idea that it could take no hold upon the conversation. Pinckney was talking of the States; he might just as well have been talking about Timbuctoo for all the i

bristles in the service of the Berknowles who had cl

yl's father had made on it once, just as though he were casually refe

umbs being swept up, she watched the cloth being taken off and the wine and dessert placed in the good old fashi

rom over the water, notwithstanding her dislike for him, had the power to disturb her mind as few other people had disturbed it in the course of her short life. Other people had put her into worse te

e of them, took her place in the window-seat and pressed her forehead against the glass. The rain had ceased and the clouds had risen, but the moon was not yet high enoug

es in the dark were akin to shapes in the fire in their power over the fancy of the gazer. Ph

o Ireland on the business of the will and he had come into the dead man's house as unconcernedly as tho

f delicacy, not of indifference, but she was not in the humour to hold things up to the light of reason. She had dec

dislike him long

world, but she had none. Philip Berknowles was the last of his race, the few distant connections he had in Ireland lived away in the south and we

minute shewed the parkland clearly defined, the leafless oaks standing here and there, oaks that of a summer afternoon stood in ponds of shadow, the clumps of h

ies. Victims had been slaughtered there in the old days, a vein of ironstone in the great slab had become the bloodstain of men sacrificed by the Druids; the glen was avoided by day and there were very few of the coun

become friends and, someti

and crossing the hall to the library. Going out on the landing she caught a glimpse of them as they stood for a momen

her thin shoes, put on a cloak and hat and came out

change that her father's death had brought in her life, not till now did she fully know that her past was dead as well

sible to imagine anything further removed from the ideas of Coldness and Fate than the idea of the cheerful and practical Pinckney. However, the

ellously; nearly every vestige of cloud had vanished, blown away by the wind. The win

ts windows glittering in the moonlight, then she st

river and she knew the woods by dark as well as by day. She was out now for nothing but a breath of fresh air, she did not in

a fox, a fox caught in a trap. She was confirmed in her knowledge by the barking of its mates;

o means of freeing it without being bitten, she started off at a run in the direction of the sound, entering the woods by a

in her veins; better than that, she had a trace of the wood instinct that leads a man about the fore

and in the vast silence of the night this place seemed unreal as a dream. The fox had evidently succeeded in

e Arranakilty road, the bark of a dog from near the Round House, the shaky bleat of a sheep from the fold at Ross' farm came distinct yet diminished almost to vanishing point. It was lik

a doubt, for only the other day he had been complaining of the foxes having raided the chickens, but there was no use in hunting for the thing by this light a

following her with the fish creel, but she had never seen the place like this with the moonlight on

dness in her composition, she, still, was given to fits of melancholy-not depression, melancholy. It is in the air of Ireland

played as a child on many a warm summer's afternoon, gave h

soulful, sinful, frightful, old rag doll with the inked face, true friend in affliction and companion in joy, and even more, a Ju-ju to be propitiated. That thing had stirred in her a sort of religious sentiment, had caused in her a thrill of worship real, though faint, far more real than th

and practical people; there are others in which the doors of division are a wee crack open, or even aj

ed death, but the Westerners are denied this. In Phyl's mind as a child one might suppose that through the doors ajar some recollections of forgotten gods onc

ation of concrete images into a vague and pleasant state, an absolute

and her chin in the palms of her hands giving herself up

denly started and turned.

yli

r head, one of those sounds we hear when we are half asleep, one of those hails from dreamland that

g along the glen to the open park, yet s

yli

r head. She had been thinking about him more than about any one else that evening and that easily accounted for the matter. Fancy had mimicked him-yet why

and she felt almost irritated at the imp

ne might lock the hall door before she could get back drove every other thought

ed from the grass land proper by a Ha-ha,