of my characters are purely imaginary.
Of the men who really lived and acted in 1798 only one--James
Hope--appears prominently in my story. In his case I have taken pains
to understand what manner of man he was before I wrote of him, and I
believe that, feeble though my presentation of his character may be, you
will not find it actually untruthful._

_I am your friend,_

_GEORGE A. BIRMINGHAM._

THE NORTHERN IRON

CHAPTER I

The road which connects Portrush with Ballycastle skirts, so far as any
road can and dare, the sea coast. Sometimes it is driven inland a mile
or so by the impossibility of crossing tracts of sandhills. The mounds
and hollows of these dunes are for ever shifting and changing. The
loose sand is blown into new fantastic heights and valleys by the winter
gales. No road could be built on such insecure foundation. Elsewhere the
road shrinks back among the shelterless fields for fear of mighty cliffs
by which this northern Antrim coast is defended from the Atlantic. No
engineer in the eighteenth century, when the road was made, dared
lay his metal close to the Causeway cliffs or the awful precipice
of Pleaskin Head. Still, now and then, in places where there are no
sandhills and the cliffs are not appalling, the road ventures, for a
mile or two, to run within a few hundred yards of the sea, before it is
swept, like a cord bent by the wind, further inland. Thus, after passing
the ruins of Dunseveric Castle, the traveller sees close beneath him
the white limestone rocks and broad yellow stretch of Ballintoy Strand.
Here, when northerly gales are blowing, he may, if he is not swept off
his feet, cling desperately to his garments and watch the great waves
curl their feathered crests as they rush shorewards. He may listen,
awestruck, to the ocean's roar of amazement when it batters in vain the
hard north coast, the rocks and sand which defy even the strength of the
Atlantic.

A quarter of a mile back from this piece of road there stood, in 1798,
the meeting-house of the Presbyterians and their minister's manse.
The house stands on the site of a bare, shelterless hill. It is three
storeys high--a narrow, gaunt building, grey walled, black-slated. Its
only entrance is at the back, and on the shoreward side. This house
has disdained the shelter which might have been found further inland or
among its fellow-houses in the street of Ballintoy. It faces due north,
preferring an outlook upon the se