nt to move."

"'Tis too short," said the maiden, "we shall be friends, I hope, long
enough to hear more of it."

"Meanwhile, Sir Poet," said Ludar, who chafed at these civilities, "go
forward again, and keep the watch. Call if you spy aught, and keep your
eyes well open."

Fortune favoured us that day, as she had handled us roughly in the days
before. The wind held good, and filled our slender canvas. The pilot's
charts deceived not; nor did friend or enemy stand across our path.
Before night we had swept round the rock and found the channel of the
Forth, up which, on a favouring tide, we dropped quietly that evening;
and at nightfall let go our anchor with grateful hearts, albeit weary
bodies, in Leith Roads, where for a season the _Misericorde_ and we had
rest from our labours.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN.

HOW WE BROUGHT THE MAIDEN TO HER FATHER'S HOUSE.

A month later, Ludar and the maiden and I stood on a cliff in Cantire
which overlooks the Irish coast. The September sun was dipping
wrathfully on the distant Donegal heights, kindling, as he did so, the
headlands of Antrim with a crimson glow. Below us, the Atlantic surged
heavily and impatiently round the rugged Mull. Opposite--so near, it
seemed we might almost shout across--loomed out, sheer from the sea, the
huge cliff of Benmore, dwarfing the forelands on either hand, and
looking, as we saw it then, anything but the Fair Head which people call
it. Scarcely further, on our right, lapped in the lurid water, lay the
sweet Isle of Raughlin, ablaze with heather, and resounding with its
chorus of sea-birds. A finer scene you could scarce desire. A scene
which one day, when the sun is high and the calm water blue, may glisten
before you like a vision of heaven; or, on a wild black day of storm,
may frown over at you like a prison wall of lost souls; or (as it seemed
to-night), like the strange battlements of a wizard's castle, which,
while you dread, you yet long to enter.

We looked across the narrow channel in silence. I could mark Ludar's
eyes flash and his great chest heave, and knew that he thought of his
exiled father and his ravished castle. The maiden at his side, as she
turned her fair face to the setting sun, half hopefully, half
doubtfully, thought perhaps of her unknown home and her unremembered
father. As for me, my mind was charged with wonder at a scene so
strange and beautiful, and yet with loneliness as I recalled that for
me, at least