The Project Gutenberg EBook of Tony Butler, by Charles James Lever

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Title: Tony Butler

Author: Charles James Lever

Illustrator: E. J. Wheeler

Release Date: September 1, 2010 [EBook #33604]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK TONY BUTLER ***

Produced by David Widger

TONY BUTLER.

By Charles James Lever

With Illustrations By E. J. Wheeler.

Little, Brown, and Company.

1904.

Copyright, 1896

TONY BUTLER

CHAPTER I. THE COTTAGE BESIDE "THE CAUSEWAY"

In a little cleft, not deep enough to be a gorge, between two grassy
hills, traversed by a clear stream, too small to be called a river,
too wide to be a rivulet, stood, and, I believe, still stands, a little
cottage, whose one bay-window elevates it above the condition of a
laboring-man's, and shows in its spacious large-paned proportions
pretensions to taste as well as station. From the window a coast-line
can be seen to which nothing in the kingdom can find the equal. It
takes in the bold curve of shore from the "White Rocks" to the Giant's
Causeway,--a sweep of coast broken by jutting headland and promontory,
with sandy bays nestling between gigantic walls of pillared rock, and
showing beneath the green water the tessellated pavement of those broken
shafts which our superstition calls Titanic. The desolate rock and ruin
of Dunluce, the fairy bridge of Carrig-a-Rede, are visible; and on a
commonly clear day Staffa can be seen, its outline only carrying out the
strange formation of the columnar rocks close at band.

This cottage, humble enough in itself, is not relieved in its aspect
by the culture around it A small vegetable garden, rudely fenced with a
dry-stone wall, is the only piece of vegetation; for the cutting winds
of the North Sea are unfriendly to trees, and the light sandy soil of
the hills only favors the fern and the foxglove. Of these, indeed, the
growth is luxuriant, and the path which leads down from the high-road to
the cottage is cut through what might be called a grove of these leafy
greeneries. This same path was not much traversed, and more than once
within the year was the billhook required to keep