cut-off region
either on foot across the moors, or by the rough mountain road that
suffices for the wants of the few and scattered residents. Standing
(sometimes not without difficulty) on the pitched-up edge of the mighty
headland, and gazing on the remote sea beneath, you feel oppressed by
the sense of Nature's vastness and your own insignificance. Nor does
the dreary extent of rock and pool-dotted moor that stretches inland to
the very horizon afford any relief to such feelings. So you turn away
in search of rest and shelter. Then but a comparatively few downward
steps and you find that the tempestuous wind has ceased to wrangle with
you; already you are beneath the shadow of the great rock. Descending
further, the bleak aspect of Nature is transformed. The heather gives
place to dwarf shrubs; the bare, weather-beaten rocks are clothed with
blackberry bushes, or hidden amid luxurious bracken. Dark hollies
clinging to detached rocks present varied and life-like forms. The air
has suddenly become still. The butterflies hover over the foxgloves.
The wild strawberry is at your feet. The sloeberries ripen around you.
The sea before you might be the Mediterranean, so gently does it ripple
up to the very edge of the hundred tiny plants that force their way
amid the sand. Great rock bastions shut you in on either side, and
behind, the green slope you had descended rises upward till it meets
the blue sky beyond. You might be in the south of England rather than
in the "black north" of Ireland; and you are struck with the probably
accidental suggestiveness of the name--Tor Bay. It was here that
McAravey's lot was cast, and here that Elsie and Jim used in their
leisure hours to gather the strawberries and stain themselves with
sloes.

CHAPTER II.

Not that Elsie and Jim had many leisure hours. Like all else in the
little household, they had their work to do. McAravey's "farm" was but
a little patch of ten acres, part of it not even yet quite won back
from rock and bracken. On this he toiled as only a man can toil who
works for himself, and is assured of his interest in the soil on which
he drops his sweat. That he had no grown-up son (as might have been)
to aid his declining strength was a hidden sorrow to the old man. He
worked on, however, and bravely did his uncomplaining wife assist him.
Neither of them had ever known an hour of either ill health or
idleness, and they were guiltless of any conscious