than a passage-room leading to the tapestried saloons. She likes it for its brightness, and because it looks out on the garden front, known as "Miss Wolfe's Plot," a little square fenced in at one end by the hall, on the further side by the dining-room, while at the other end there is a tall gilt grille of florid design, through which you may wander, if it pleases you, into the pleasaunce. This small quaint inclosure is Doreen's favourite haunt. She has laid it out with her own hands in strange devices of pebbles and clipped box, with a crazy sundial for a centre, and sits there for hours with needlework that advances not, dreaming sombrely, and sighing now and then, as her eyes travel along the cut beech hedges, smooth leafy walls, which spread inland in vistas beyond the golden gate, like the arms of some giant star-fish. These hedges are the most remarkable things about a very remarkable abode. They are each of them half-a-mile long, thirty-six feet high, and twelve feet thick, perforated at intervals by arches; and they form together a series of triangular spaces sheltered from sea-blasts, in which flourish such a wealth of roses as is a marvel to all comers. Obese, old-fashioned roses, as big as your fist, hang in cataracts from tottering posts which once were orchard trees; large pink blossoms or bunches of small white ones, whose perfume weighs down the air; balls of glorious colour, which, when a rare breeze shakes them, shower their sweet petals in a lazy swirl upon the grass, whence Doreen gleans and harvests them for winter, with cunning condiments, in jars. From time to time the perfume varies, as the wind sets E. or w., from that of Araby the blest to one of the salt sea-a tarry, seaweedy, nautico-piratical odour, with a strong dash of brine in it, which seems wafted upward from below to remind the dwellers in the Abbey of their long line of corsair ancestors.

The most sumptuous of all the apartments is undoubtedly the tapestried saloon, nicknamed by wags my lady's presence-chamber; for there, looking out upon the roses, she loves to sit erect surrounded by ghostly Crosbies whose mighty deeds are recorded on the walls, portrayed by the most skilful hands upon miracles of Gobelin manufacture. Mr. Curran often wondered, as he played cribbage with the chatelaine, whether those deeds were fabulous; for if not, he reflected, judging the present by the past-then were the mighty grievously come down. Here was Sir Amorey alone on a spotty horse, trouncing a whole

army with his doughty sword. There was Sir Teague at the head of his Kernes, making short work of the French at Agincourt. Further on, the first earl-prince of salt-water thieves, with a vanquished Desmond grimacing underneath his heel. How different were these from the present and last Glandores, whose lives were filled up to overflowing with wine and with debauchery; whose sins lacked the picturesque wickedness of these defunct seafaring murderers. Then, perceiving the countess's eye fixed on him, her crony would feel guilty for his unflattering reflections, and rapidly pursue the game; for my lady as she aged grew just the least bit garrulous, and as he loved not the aristocracy as such, it was afflicting to listen to long-winded dissertations upon the family magnificence, which he declared she invented as she went along. He was never tired though, when he could snatch a rare holiday from his professional labours, of exploring the dungeons and chimney recesses and awful holes and crannies. He it was who ferretted out the long lost secret way beneath the sea from the water-tower to Ireland's Eye; and bitterly he repented later that he had not kept that discovery to himself; for by means of it he might have brought about the vanishing of many of the proscribed, instead of-but we travel on too fast.

Shane and Doreen arrived by and by at the summit of a hill-crest, from which the northern half of the promontory lay spread like a map before them. Just below was a white speck— the village of Carndonagh-beyond, a row of lakes, tiny mirrors set in the hill-flank-ou either side the jagged lines of Loughs Foyle and Swilly, varied with many a peaked headland and jutting point and shelving bay scooped out of the living rock. In front, a flat stretch on which cloud-shadows were playing hide-and-seek-a bopeep dance of subtlychequered tones; and away still, farther, looming through the mist, the bluffs of Malin Head, the extreme limit, to the north, of Ireland. As they looked the mists melted in eddying swirls of gold, unveiling an expanse of immense and lonely sea, dotted with fairy islets strewn in a ravelled fringe the long span of the blue-green Atlantic, marked with a line of white where it seethed and moaned

"What a lovely spot!" Doreen exclaimed, as she sniffed the brisk breeze; "how wildhow desolate how weirdly fair! Not the vestige of a dwelling as far as eye can reachexcept that speck below us."

Unpoetic Shane had been busy counting the wild-fowl, watching the hawks, marking the sublime slow wheeling of a pair of eagles far away in ether heavenward. At the call of his cousin he brought his thoughts down to earth, and cried out:

“By the Hokey! a nice coast for the French to land upon. I wish them joy of it if they try. If they do we shall be in the thick of it, for look! You can just discern Glas-aitch-éthat dot in the sea, no bigger than a pin's point-between Dunaff and Malin. A fleet would have to pass close by us that was making either for Lough Swilly or Lough Foyle. But come-a canter down the hill, and we will see what we can get to eat. This sharp air gives one a plaguy appetite!"

Doreen spoke truly, for Ennishowen is weirdly fair. The atmosphere of winter gave the desolation she had passed through a special charm. The ponderous banks of rolling steelgray clouds, which had only just been conquered by a battling sun, gave a ghastly beauty to its wildness. Dun and steel-gray, sagegreen and russet-brown, with here and there a bit of genuine colour-a vivid tuft of the Osmunda fern. Such chromatic attributes were well in harmony with the intense stillness, broken only by the rustle now and then of whirring wings, or the sharp boom of the frightened bittern. But beyond Carndonagh the face of nature changed-or would have if it had been summer-for bleak elevated moorland and iron gorge vary but little with the season, whilst lower-lying districts are more privileged. During the warm months the track between Carndonagh and Malin is like a garden-an oasis of rich, damp, dewy verdure from the ever-dripping vapours of the Atlantic-an expanse of emerald mead saturated with the moisture of the ocean. Every bush and bank breaks forth in myriad flowers. Each tarn is edged with blossom, each path is tricked with glory. It is as if Persephone had here passed through the granite-bound gates of hell, and had dropped her garland at its portals. White starry water-lilies clothe the lakelets. The bells of the fuschia-hedges glow red from beneath a burden of honeysuckle and dog-roses; orange-lilies and sheets of

streams, while purple heather and patches of wild heartsease vie with each other in a friendly struggle to mask the wealth of green.

Strabagy Bay cuts deep into the peninsula. A rider must skirt its edge with patience, rewarded now and again by some vision of surprise, as he finds himself at a turn in the pathway on the summit of a precipice 1200 feet above the water, or in a sheltered cove where waves of celadon and malachite plash upon a tawny bed. At one point, if the tide happens to be in, he must sit and await its ebb; for the only passage is by a ford across the sand, which is dangerous to the stranger at high water. Not so to the dwellers in this latitude, for they speed like monkeys along the overhanging crags, or like the waddling penguins and sea-parrots that are padding yonder crannies with the softest down from off their breasts for the behoof of a yet unborn brood.

ore.

Towards Malin Head the ground rises gradually from a shingly beach till it breaks off abruptly to seaward in a sheer wall of quartz and granite-a vast frowning face, vexed by centuries of tempest, battered by perennial storms, comforted by the clinging embrace of vegetation, red and russet heath of every shade, delicate ferns drooping from cracks and fissures, hoary lichens, velvet mosses, warmtinted cranesbill; from out of which peeps here and there the glitter of a point of spar, a stain of metal or of clay, a sparkling vein of The white-crested swell which never sleeps laps round its foot in curdled foam; for the bosom of the Atlantic is ever breathing— heaving in arterial throws below, however calm it may seem upon the surface. Away down through the crystal water you can detect the blackened base resting on a bank of weed— dense, slippery citrine hair, swinging in twilit masses slowly to and fro, as if humming to itself under the surface, of the march of time, whose hurry affects it not; for what have human cares, human soul-travail, human agony, to do with this enchanted spot, which is, as it were, just without the threshold of the world? The winter waves, which dash high above the bluffs in spray, have fretted, by a perseverance of many decades, a series of caverns half-submerged; viscous arcades, where strange winged creatures lurk that hate the light; beasts that, hanging like some villanous fruit in clusters, blink with purblind eyes at the fishes which dart in and out, frag ments of the sunshine they abhor; at the

nesses of metropolitan life cannot be read without much amusement and without a certain degree of sadness.]

THREE DUBLIN ARABS.

(FROM "FLITTERS, TATTERS, AND THE COUNSELLOR.")

Ladies first. Flitters, aged eleven, sucking the tail of a red herring, as a member of the weaker and gentler sex first demands our attention. She is older and doubly stronger than either Tatters or the Counsellor, who are seated beside her on the wall of the river, sharing with her the occupation of watching the operations of a mud-barge at work some dozen yards out in the water. Of the genus street Arab Flitters is a fair type. Barefooted, of course, though, were it not for the pink lining that shows now and again between her toes, one might doubt that fact-bareheaded, too, with a tangled, tufted, matted shock of hair that has never known other comb save that ten-toothed one provided by nature, and which, indeed, Flitters uses with a frequency of terrible suggestiveness.

The face consists mainly of eyes and mouth; this last-named feature is enormously wide, so wide that there seemed some foundation for a remark of the Counsellor's, made in the days of their early acquaintance before time and friendship had softened down to his unaccustomed eyes the asperities of Flitters' appear ance, and which remark was to the effect that only for her ears her mouth would have gone round her head. The Counsellor was not so named without cause, for his tongue stopped at nothing. This mouth was furnished with a set of white, even teeth, which glistened when Flitters vouchsafed a smile, and gleamed like tusks when she was enraged, which she was often, for Flitters had a short temper and a very independent disposition. The eyes, close set, under overhanging, thick brows, were of a dark brown, with a lurid light in their depths. She was tall for her age, lank of limb, and active as a cat: with her tawny skin and dark eyes one might have taken her for a foreigner, were it not for the intense nationalism of the short nose and retreating chin, and the mellifluousness of the Townsend Street brogue that issued from between the white teeth.

For attire she had a princesse robe, a cast-off perhaps of some dweller in the fashionable squares. This garment was very short in

front, and disproportionately long behind, and had a bagginess as to waist and chest that suggested an arbitrary curtailment of the skirt. Viewed from a distance it seemed to have a great many pocket-holes, but on closer inspection these resolved themselves into holes without the pockets; underneath this was another old dress, much more ancient and ragged. However, as it was summer weather, Flitters felt no inconvenience from the airiness of her attire. Indeed, to look at her now with her back against a crate of cabbages which was waiting its turn to take its place on board the Glasgow steamer, one would think she had not a care in the world. She was sitting upon one foot, the other was extended over the quay wall, and the sun shone full in her eyes, and gilded the blond curls of Tatters, who, half lying, half sitting close beside her, was musingly listening to the conversation of the Counsellor. Tatters was about six years old, small and infantine of look, but with a world of guile in his far-apart blue eyes. He could smoke and chew, drink and steal, and was altogether a finished young reprobate. He wore a funny, old jerry hat, without any brim, and with the crown pinched out, doubtless with a view to its harmonizing with the rest of his attire, the most prominent portion of which was undoubtedly the shirt. The front part of this seemed not to reach much below his breastbone; but whether to make amends for this shortcoming, or to cover deficiencies in the corduroy trousers, the hinder part hung down mid-thighs at the back. One leg of the corduroys was completely split up, and flapped loosely in front, like a lug-sail in a calm. His jacket, which was a marvel of raggedness, was buttoned up tight; and seated, hugging both his knees with his hands, he looked a wonderfully small piece of goods. He had an interesting, sweet, little face; his little black nose was prettily formed; a red cherry of a mouth showed in the surrounding dirt, and gave vent to the oaths and curses of which his speech was mainly composed in an agreeable little treble pipe.

The Counsellor, or Hoppy, for he had two names, the second derived from a personal deformity which affected his gait, was nine years old, but might have been ninety, for the Weltkunst his wrinkled, pock-marked countenance portrayed. He had small, bright, black eyes, and a sharp, inquisitive nose. A keen, ready intelligence seemed to exude from every feature. He was the ruling spirit of the trio. Tatters' manner to him was undisguisedly

deferential, and Flitters only maintained her individuality at the expense of a bullying. ostentation of superior age and strength. They were all three orphans. Flitters' father had run off to America a year before;-her mother was dead. Tatters was a foundling, whose nurse had turned him loose on the streets when she found no more money forthcoming for his maintenance, and the Counsellor's antecedents were wrapped in complete obscurity. He sometimes alluded mistily to a grandmother living in Bull Lane; but he was one of those people who seem all-sufficient in themselves, and for whom one feels instinctively, and at the first glance, that no one could or ought to be responsible. He had on a man's coat, one tail of which had been removedby force, plainly, for a good piece of the back had gone with it, giving him an odd look of a sparrow which a cat has clawed a pawful of feathers out of. He had on a great felt hat of the kind known as billycock, which overshadowed well his small, knowing face. He wore shoes of very doubtful fit or comfort, but still shoes, and thus distinguishing him from his companions, who, to borrow a phrase from their own picturesque dialect, were both "on the road."

It may be asked whence they received their names. Hoppy knew of none but his nickname; his grandmother's name was Cassidy, which he did not scruple to appropriate if occasion required it. Flitters remembered to have been called Eliza once, and her father's name was Byrne; but nicknames in the Arab class are more common than names, which, in deed, are practically useful only to people who have a fixed habitation-a luxury these creatures know nothing of.

Flitters could not read. The Counsellor possessed all the education as well as most of the brains of the party. Nevertheless, Flitters was its chief support. She sang in the streets. The Counsellor played the Jew's harp, or castanets, and sometimes sang duets with her, while Tatters stood by, looking hungry and watching for halfpence. They had other resources as well: coal-stealing along the wharfs, or sometimes sifting cinders on the waste grounds about the outskirts of the city, to sell afterwards; messages to run for workmen a very uncertain and precarious resource, as no one ever employed them twice. Altogether, their lives were at least replete with that element so much coveted by people whose every want and comfort is supplied-to wit, excitement.

THE DEATH OF "FLITTERS."

["Flitters" has just been entertained by Mrs. Kelly, wife of Hugh Kelly, who had been a friend of her mother's, and who now remains alone kind to her of all people in the world. Flitters has left Mrs. Kelly's house, and this is what follows.]

She drew up and stopped on seeing a sudden rush of people down a side lane. Following them with her eyes, she saw two men who had just come out of a low groggery in the lane, rolling over each other in the mud, clutching and struggling for the upper hand.

A fight clearly: Flitters forgot all the world beside, flew down the lane, and in a few minutes reached the ring that was rapidly forming round the combatants.

Two great draymen, one half drunk and encumbered with his frieze coat; the other, in his shirt sleeves, wholly drunk and in a fury of rage. They staggered to their feet, striking and kicking like wild horses. Flitters was staring open-mouthed at the man in the big coat. She knew him, but she was so dazed with excitement, that, for an instant, her recollection was puzzled-Hugh Kelly. The name flashed before her in an instant-her friend's husband; and the next moment Flitters, seeing he was at a disadvantage in the fight, had thrown herself headlong between the combatants. Which of them struck her, or how it was, she alone knew; but the next moment the two men were dragged apart by the horrified bystanders, and she fell senseless, her head crashing against the stone step of the door.

Tatters and the Counsellor, meantime, had grown impatient, and had left the rendezvous to wander up and down in search of their partner. They knew the street, but not the house, and as the pair, angry and discontented, turned into it, they beheld in the centre of a crowd a stretcher borne by four policemen, and on it lying Flitters, quiet and silent as a stone.

Tatters fell back against the wall and gasped with terror, grief, and rage. What had happened? was she hurt, or had she "done anything?" To do anything that could bring them within the pale of the law meant five years in a reformatory. Magistrates are only too glad to clear the streets of such creatures, knowing that, however costly the reformatory system may be, it is a saving in the long run. But the recipients of the bounty are rarely in