e by very careful steering to make a little by tacking if the
breeze is good and the tide is running favourably. With a light wind and
in the slack water of the ebb the most that can be done is not to go to
leeward. Priscilla, with the necessity of meeting a train present in her
mind, unstepped the mast and took her oars. In twenty minutes she was
alongside the slip where Peter Walsh stood waiting for her.

"I was talking to Joseph Anthony Kinsella," he said, "since you were
out--him that lives beyond in Inishbawn."

"Were you?" said Priscilla. "I saw him in his boat as I was going out,
with a big load of gravel on board. He says the baby's all right."

"It may be," said Peter. "Any way, he said nothing to the contrary when
he was with me. It wasn't the baby we were speaking of. Will you mind
yourself now, Miss. That slip is terribly slippery at low tide on
account of the green weed that does be growing on it Take care but you
might fall."

The warning came a little too late. Priscilla stepped from the boat and
immediately fell forward on her hands and knees. When she rose there was
a large, damp green patch on the front of her dress.

"Will you look at that, now?" said Peter. "Didn't I tell you to go easy?
Are you hurted, Miss?"

"If it wasn't the new baby you were talking about," said Priscilla,
"what was it?"

"Joseph Anthony Kinsella is just after telling me that he's seen that
young fellow that has Flanagan's old boat out beyond among the islands."

"Which island? I asked him, but he wouldn't tell me."

"Joseph Anthony didn't rightly know, but it's his belief that he's on
Ilaunglos, or Ardilaun, or one of them to the north of Carrowbee."

"He can't be living there, then. There isn't a house on any of those
islands."

"Joseph Anthony was saying that he might maybe have a tent with him
and be sleeping in it the same as the tinkers would. I've heard of the
like."

"Did he see the tent?"

"He did not; but there could be a tent without his seeing it. What I
seen myself was the things the young fellow bought in Brannigan's and
put into Flanagan's old boat. He had a can of paraffin oil with a cork
drove into the neck of it, and he'd two loaves of bread done up in
brown paper, and he'd a couple of tins that might be meat of one kind
or another, and along with them he had a pound of tea and maybe two of
sugar. I misdoubted when I saw him carrying them down the quay, but it
was some kind of a picnic he was ou