Part 18
The Silver Lane twists through an undulating sea of softly heaped-up mounds, scantily clad with bent-grass, pale and dry, and dark, harsh-textured furzes. These are rooted in almost pure sand, silvery hued, yet under strong sunbeams yielding dim golden glimmers that give a faint purple to the shadow in its curves and folds. But the touch of this March evening’s twilight left it all cold white and grey. It lies deep and powdery on the narrow roadway, so that a man has not even the sound of his own footsteps to reassure him, should he be disposed to feel lonesome and apprehensive. Larry Behan was feeling both as he passed the second sharp turn of the lane and came to a place where a crevice-like path pierced the sandhill on his left. Here he noticed several huge hoof-prints, some of them impressed with violence upon the low buttresses and ledges of the banks, which, in the ordinary course of things, no horse would have trodden.
“Hereabouts it is they seen whatever it was frighted them,” he said to himself, “and set the mare prancin’ and dancin’. ’Twas the quare capers she had. Between us and harm--look where she flounced right across the road, and scraped herself up agin the furze bush: her hair’s thick on it.”
He was hastening on, longing and dreading to be round the next corner, when he heard close by a sound--such a homely, commonplace one that he experienced hardly a moment of panic before out of the little by-path ran a very small boy, swinging a large tin can. As a general rule Larry would have seen nothing particularly attractive about the black-headed, bare-footed, flannel-petticoated gossoon, and would probably have allowed him to pass on unaccosted. But in the present circumstances he could have desired no better company, for an innocent child is the most efficacious safeguard possible when uncanny things are about. Another encouraging reflection also occurred to him immediately: “’Twas that now, and divil a thing else scared the two of them--the little brat skytin’ by, clatterin’ his can, and the light shinin’ off it on a suddint.” Still, this view of the matter, though plausible and rational, was not quite certain enough to justify him in letting slip the chance of an escort, and he therefore set about engaging the child in conversation. He did so rather clumsily, for lack of the familiarity with children’s society which would have enabled him to fill up the gap between thirty odd and five years old with appropriate small-talk.
“Is it goin’ for water you was, sonny?” he said.
“She sent me to the well again,” said the gossoon, stopping his trot and pointing up the little path to a tangle of briars and long grass in a slight hollow.
“And is it gone dry on you?” said Larry, looking into the empty can.
The reply was a turning of it upside down to show a crack that ran for several inches round the bottom rim. “I can put the top of me littlest finger right through it,” the gossoon said and proved. “It won’t hould e’er a sup at all. And the big jug’s broke too.”
“That’s a bad job,” said Larry.
“There’s nothin’ she can be sendin’ now unless the black kettle itself, that’s as much as I can do to lift when it’s empty inside, let alone full--it’s the size of meself, bedad,” averred Larry’s protector.
“Sure then, she couldn’t ax you to be carryin’ that. Is it far you come?” Larry inquired with some anxiety.
“I dunno,” said the gossoon. “But it’s a terrible ould baste of a big kettle for always wantin’ to be filled. I hate the sight of it sittin’ there on the fire, wid the dirty ould sutty lid tryin’ to lep off it; and then Herself does be bawlin’ to me to run out agin and bring the water before it’s boiled dry. I do be sick and tired of goin’ up the lane wid the heavy can pullin’ out the arm of me all the way back; fit to destroy me, Katty Lonergan says it is. And a while ago I was givin’ it a couple of clumps agin’ a stone, where I seen a weeny crack comin’; so maybe that’s what beginned it. But you needn’t let on, or I’ll be kilt. Sorra a sup it ’ill hould.”
He dropped some small handfuls of the fine sand into the can, and holding it up watched the grains sift slowly out. This experiment he repeated more than once, and Larry, albeit in a hurry, looked on with prudent patience. But at last he suggested: “Mightn’t she be mad if you’re too long delayin’?”
“She does be mad most whiles,” his companion said philosophically, “and I don’t so much mind if she won’t be sendin’ me back wid the ugly ould kettle.”
However, he began to walk on, rattling a couple of cockle-shells that had remained in the can. Larry kept close beside him, and meekly waited when he occasionally stopped to pick up pebbles, or explore rabbit-holes, or start sand-avalanches and cascades by tugging at the colourless roots of the grasses in the slithery banks. It was a slow progress, and the dusk had grown perceptibly greyer by the time that Larry emerged from between them, at a place where the road branches, on the right towards Clochranbeg, on the left towards the great Bog of Greilish.
“And what way are you goin’, avic?” Larry inquired with less anxiety now, having left behind the Silver Lane, which he knew to be the most perilous stage of his journey.
The child pointed to a small cabin standing opposite, a stone’s throw back from the road; a reply that somewhat surprised Larry. For even through the gathering dimness the place looked quite ruinous and deserted, with rifted roof, and rank weeds peering in at frameless windows.
“She’s screechin’ to me,” said the gossoon, and darted off, making for the door. Larry heard nothing but the cockle-shells clattering in the can. “There’s no sort of people,” he said to himself, “would be livin’ in the likes of that, unless it was tinkers stoppin’ awhile. But I see ne’er a sign of an ass or a cart in it. Well now, he was the quare little imp--himself and the big kettle.”
A bit further on he overtook the Widow Nolan, who was going his way, and as they walked along together he casually asked of her how the Silver Lane had come by its bad name. “For,” he said, “since I’m in this parish I met wid many that do be afeared of it, but what’s wrong wid it I niver happint to hear tell.”
“Sure it was before my time,” said Mrs Nolan. “There used to be a woman livin’ in th’ ould empty house you seen at this end of it, and a little boy belongin’ to her, that she gave bad treatment to. Huntin’ him off she was continual to fetch her in big cans full of water out of the well up near the far end of the lane, that you might be noticin’ goin’ by. So one day she sent him wid a great heavy lump of a kettle he couldn’t rightly lift, and tryin’ to fill it the crathur over-balanced himself and fell in after his head, and was got dead-drowned. And ever since then it does be walkin’ there now and agin; and folks say there’s no worser bad luck goin’ than for a body to see a sight of it, or to so much as hear the clink of the can--well, man alive, what’s took you at all?”
“The Lord have mercy on me this day,” said Larry, “and meself just after walkin’ alongside of it, and talkin’ to it, the len’th of the boreen.”
And thenceforward neither of them had any breath to spare for conversation until they at last reached distant--still cruelly distant--Clochranbeg.
THE END
EDINBURGH COLSTON AND COMPANY LTD PRINTERS
Mr T. FISHER UNWIN’S
POPULAR NOVELS
=MR T. FISHER UNWIN= has much pleasure in announcing the publication of the following Novels. Notes thereon will be found overleaf:--
SIX SHILLINGS EACH.
THE DAYSPRING. A Romance WILLIAM BARRY. A DRAMA OF SUNSHINE--Played in Homburg MRS AUBREY RICHARDSON. THE SITUATIONS OF LADY PATRICIA W. R. H. TROWBRIDGE. THAT FAST MISS BLOUNT ROY HORNIMAN. ANGLO-AMERICANS LUCAS CLEEVE. THE MISCHIEF OF A GLOVE MRS PHILIP CHAMPION DE CRESPIGNY. HELEN ADAIR LOUIS BECKE. ROSEMONDE BEATRICE STOTT. LAURA’S LEGACY E. H. STRAIN. THE BLACK SHILLING AMELIA E. BARR. THE VINEYARD JOHN OLIVER HOBBES. THE MIS-RULE OF THREE FLORENCE WARDEN. THROUGH SORROW’S GATES HALLIWELL SUTCLIFFE. KITTY COSTELLO MRS ALEXANDER. NYRIA MRS CAMPBELL PRAED. COURT CARDS AUSTIN CLARE. THE KINGDOM OF TWILIGHT FORREST REID. A BACHELOR IN ARCADY HALLIWELL SUTCLIFFE. THE FILIGREE BALL ANNA K. GREEN. MYRA OF THE PINES HERMAN K. VIELE. THYRA VARRICK AMELIA E. BARR. THE SONG OF A SINGLE NOTE AMELIA E. BARR. A BUSH HONEYMOON LAURA M. PALMER ARCHER. THE WATCHER ON THE TOWER A. G. HALES. THE CARDINAL’S PAWN K. L. MONTGOMERY. TUSSOCK LAND ARTHUR H. ADAMS. THE FOOL-KILLER LUCAS CLEEVE. LOVE TRIUMPHANT MRS L. T. MEADE. MOTHERHOOD L. PARRY TRUSCOTT. HE THAT HAD RECEIVED THE FIVE TALENTS ANGUS CLARK. CHINKIE’S FLAT AND OTHER STORIES LOUIS BECKE.
T. FISHER UNWIN’S NEW NOVELS.
THE DAYSPRING--A Romance. By WILLIAM BARRY, D.D., Author of ‘The Wizard’s Knot,’ etc., etc.
This is the lite story of an eager, earnest young soul, rising at length above the illusion of the senses to the clear heights of faith. Noble aims, misconstrued in the mirage of modern Paris, under the charm of a deluding spirituality, bring us to the moment of choice between two paths, one that of so-called Free Love, the other that of supreme self-sacrifice. The dreamy mysticism, the sparkling humour, the sudden brilliances, the delicate fancies which characterise the work of the author of ‘The New Antigone’ are to be found in this newest and perhaps most fascinating of Dr. Barry’s books. A background of adventure is set by the last days of the Second Empire and the Commune of 1871.
A DRAMA OF SUNSHINE--Played in Homburg. By Mrs AUBREY RICHARDSON. (First Novel Library).
A dramatic episode of life in Homburg, at the height of the English season. The characters represent types of men and women actually to be met with in the high social and political world of to-day. A Society Beauty and a Sister of an Anglican Community personify the red Rose of Love, Pride and Gaiety, and the pale Lily of Purity, Aspiration and Repression. In the heart of the Rose, a lily bud unfolds, and in the calyx of the Lily, a rose blossoms. The incidents of the story succeed each other swiftly, reaching a strong _dénoûement_, and working out to a satisfying termination.
THE SITUATIONS OF LADY PATRICIA: A Satire for Idle People. By W. R. H. TROWBRIDGE, Author of ‘The Letters of Her Mother to Elizabeth.’
Lady Patricia is an Englishwoman of a noble but impoverished family, whose girlhood has been spent on the Continent. Left an orphan she comes to England with the independent intention of seeking her own living. Sometimes under her own, sometimes under an assumed name, she takes various situations in England and France, and is brought in contact with many different sets of society both in the upper and the middle classes. In this volume she relates her experiences, and comments upon them with caustic wit. The plan of the work affords the author of ‘The Letters of Her Mother to Elizabeth’ an excellent opportunity of satirising the aristocracy and the _bourgeois gentilshommes_ of England and France, and readers of the earlier volume will be prepared for a book full of piquancy and daring.
THAT FAST MISS BLOUNT. A Novel. By ROY HORNIMAN, Author of ‘The Living Buddha,’ ‘The Sin of Atlantis,’ etc.
There is nothing easier for a girl who has been born in a garrison town of hard-up Service parents than to drift, especially if, as in the case of Philippa, she has been disappointed in her first romance and is left a little soured and hardened. It is so easy to enjoy the tawdry amusements that come her way; and if, like Philippa, she is beautiful, flirtation follows flirtation, men come and go, till it becomes the habit to talk of her as ‘that fast Miss Blount.’ She is not the sort of girl as a rule who gets married. There is something in the atmosphere about her which makes marrying men fight shy of her. Philippa, however, is saved from social shipwreck by marrying in such a way as to rouse the envy of all those who have been her traducers. The background of the story is concerned with the family life of Captain and Mrs Blount’s household. There are also some exciting chapters dealing with the South African war.
ANGLO-AMERICANS. By LUCAS CLEEVE.
The main theme of this story is the fundamental antagonism existing between two characters--an American girl educated in ideas of freedom and independence, and of the subservience of man to woman, and her husband, an English Lord, who expects his wife to regard his career and interests as her own, and to devote herself to them even to the obliteration of herself. The girl’s father is a millionaire, and the story tells incidentally of the illicit means by which his pile was made.
THROUGH SORROW’S GATES. A Tale of the Wintry Heath. By HALLIWELL SUTCLIFFE, Author of ‘Ricroft of Withens,’ etc.
The scene is laid in Halliwell Sutcliffe’s favourite country, the moors of the West Riding, though in the present book he goes even further into the heart of the heath, nearer to that simplicity of feeling and passion which is the real mark of the moor-folk. His characters spring from the moor, as it were, and grow out of it; and not least of these characters is Hester, the impulsive, erring farm lass, who dreamed wild dreams at Windy Farm, and saw herself supplanted by a little, well-born woman rescued from the snow.
KITTY COSTELLO. By Mrs ALEXANDER.
This story--the last that was written by Mrs Alexander--tells the experiences of a well-born, beautiful Irish girl suddenly plunged, somewhere about the ‘forties,’ into commercial circles in a busy English port. The attraction of the book consists rather in the brightly-drawn contrast of the Irish and English temperaments, with their widely differing views of life, than in exciting incidents, though the reader can hardly fail to feel the fascination of the heroine or to be interested in all that befalls her.
NYRIA. By Mrs CAMPBELL PRAED.
The author considers this the most important book she has yet written. Its preparation has engaged her for a long time, and in it she gives her readers the very best of herself. The scene is laid in Rome in the first century A.D., and among the characters are many historical figures. The period offers magnificent opportunities for the writer of romance, and of Mrs Campbell Praed’s imaginative gifts and power of vivid description it is, of course, needless to speak at this time of day. The story, which is a lengthy one, will be found to be full of dramatic situations and thrilling incidents.
COURT CARDS. By AUSTIN CLARE, Author of ‘The Carved Cartoon,’ ‘Pandora’s Portion,’ ‘The Tideway,’ etc.
A romance dated in the closing years of the sixteenth century, and placed on both sides of the border. The time, a stirring one, when the old order changing had not yet wholly yielded place to the new, admits of romantic incidents of every kind, from raiding, kidnapping and gaol-breaking, to mysterious love-making and midnight murder. The intrigues between the English and Scottish Courts form a plot sufficiently intricate, which is here likened to a game of whist, the court-cards chiefly used therein being Queen Elizabeth of England, James VI of Scotland, and the celebrated Archie Armstrong, called ‘The Knave of Hearts,’ who by a series of extraordinary adventures, rose from the condition of a wanderer and sheep stealer on the border side to the position of chief jester and ruling favourite at the Scottish Court.
THE KINGDOM OF TWILIGHT. By FORREST REID. (First Novel Library).
This is the history of the earlier half of the life of a man of genius, following him through boyhood and youth to maturity. It is a book in which the form, the atmosphere, count for much. Essentially the study of a temperament--a temperament subtle, delicate, rare--it has more in common, perhaps, with the work of D’Annunzio than that of any English novelist; the author’s aim, at all events, having been to describe, from within, the gradual development of a human soul--to trace the wanderings of a spirit as it passes from light to light in search of that great light ‘that never was on sea or land.’
A BACHELOR IN ARCADY. By HALLIWELL SUTCLIFFE, Author of ‘Ricroft of Withens,’ ‘Mistress Barbara Cunliffe,’ etc.
In this book Mr Sutcliffe abandons his strenuous manner of adventure, feud, swordplay and fierce wooing, and gives us an English idyll. The bachelor is a man of some thirty odd years, who dwells in rural peace among his animals, birds, fields and flowers, and, assisted by his faithful henchman, sows his seeds, mows and prunes in complacent contempt for such as have succumbed to the delights of matrimony. And so he fares through spring and summer, seedtime and harvest, his chief companions the squire across the fields and his young daughter, till as time goes on he discovers that the girl is all the world to him, and the curtain descends on the bachelor--a bachelor no more.
THE MISCHIEF OF A GLOVE. By Mrs PHILIP CHAMPION DE CRESPIGNY, Author of ‘From behind the Arras.’
This story deals with the adventures of a man and a maid in the time of Mary I of England. The heroine, the daughter of a wild and reckless father, inherits his bold spirit, and by her woman’s wit and courage, assists her lover to elude the pursuit of his enemies. She sallies forth in man’s attire for his sake, and has many adventures, both humorous and otherwise, before the end is attained.
HELEN ADAIR. By LOUIS BECKE.
This story, which is largely based on fact, describes the career of a young Irish girl whose father was transported to Botany Bay for being concerned in the publication of a ‘seditious’ newspaper. Helen Adair, so that she may follow her father to the Antipodes, and share, or at least alleviate, his misfortunes under the dreaded ‘Convict System,’ passes counterfeit coin in Dublin, is tried and convicted under an assumed name, and is sent out in a transport. Her adventures in Australia form an exciting romance.
ROSEMONDE. By BEATRICE STOTT. (First Novel Library).
This is the story of a gifted, sensitive woman, her husband who was a genius, and the unquenchable love for each other which was their torture and their bane.
LAURA’S LEGACY. By E. H. STRAIN, Author of ‘A Man’s Foes.’
The ‘Innocent Impostor’ of the title is a very charming girl who has grown up in the full belief of herself and the world that she is Miss Barclay of Eaglesfaulds; her mother dotes on her, she is seemingly heiress to large property, even the Queen is interested in her, how can she guess that she is in reality the daughter of a beggar woman, and is keeping the rightful heir out of his inheritance? How this extraordinary situation came about and the trouble and tangle it brought into the life of a sensitive and noble-natured girl, is narrated by E. H. Strain after the fashion which has already endeared her to many readers.
THE BLACK SHILLING. By AMELIA E. BARR.
Critics who have read this novel in manuscript speak of it as the best story Mrs Barr has yet written. Its central character--Cotton Mather, preacher, scholar, philanthropist and persecutor--is one of the most picturesque figures in American history, while the period--that of the witchcraft scare at the opening of the eighteenth century, when numbers of men and women suffered cruel persecution for their supposed trafficking with the Evil One--is full of dramatic possibilities.
THE VINEYARD. By JOHN OLIVER HOBBES.
In this novel Mrs Craigie turns from the glittering world of finance, which she depicted so brilliantly in ‘Love and the Soul Hunters,’ and gives us a story of life in an English provincial town. As in all her books the love interest is strong, and under the ‘signoria d’Amore’ her characters are led into situations of the deepest interest, demanding for their treatment all the subtlety of insight which her previous works have shown her to possess.
THE MIS-RULE OF THREE. By FLORENCE WARDEN, Author of ‘The House on the Marsh,’ etc.
This is the story of three young men, living together in London lodgings, of the ideals of womanhood which they have formed, and of the singular fashion in which each falls a victim to the charms of a woman in all respects the opposite to his ideal. The story takes the reader from London to the most romantic region of the Channel Islands, and is connected with a mystery which surrounds the owner of one of these islands.
T. FISHER UNWIN, Publisher,
THE STICKIT MINISTER AND SOME COMMON MEN
BY S. R. CROCKETT
_Eleventh Edition. Crown 8vo., cloth_, =6s.=
“Here is one of the books which are at present coming singly and at long intervals, like early swallows, to herald, it is to be hoped, a larger flight. When the larger flight appears, the winter of our discontent will have passed, and we shall be able to boast that the short story can make a home east as well as west of the Atlantic. There is plenty of human nature--of the Scottish variety, which is a very good variety--in ‘The Stickit Minister’ and its companion stories; plenty of humour, too, of that dry, pawky kind which is a monopoly of ‘Caledonia, stern and wild’; and, most plentiful of all, a quiet perception and reticent rendering of that underlying pathos of life which is to be discovered, not in Scotland alone, but everywhere that a man is found who can see with the heart and the imagination as well as the brain. Mr Crockett has given us a book that is not merely good, it is what his countrymen would call ‘by-ordinar’ good,’ which, being interpreted into a tongue understanded of the southern herd, means that it is excellent, with a somewhat exceptional kind of excellence.”--_Daily Chronicle._
THE LILAC SUN-BONNET
BY S. R. CROCKETT
_Sixth Edition. Crown 8vo., cloth_, =6s.=
“Mr Crockett’s ‘Lilac Sun-Bonnet’ ‘needs no bush.’ Here is a pretty love tale, and the landscape and rural descriptions carry the exile back into the Kingdom of Galloway. Here, indeed, is the scent of bog-myrtle and peat. After inquiries among the fair, I learn that of all romances, they best love, not ‘sociology,’ not ‘theology,’ still less, open manslaughter, for a motive, but just love’s young dream, chapter after chapter. From Mr Crockett they get what they want, ‘hot with,’ as Thackeray admits that he liked it.”--Mr ANDREW LANG in _Longman’s Magazine_.
11, Paternoster Buildings, London, E.C.
T. FISHER UNWIN, Publisher,
Recent Volumes in the
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49. =Austria.= By SIDNEY WHITMAN.
50. =Modern England before the Reform Bill.= By JUSTIN MCCARTHY.
51. =China.= With a New Chapter on Recent Events. By Prof. R. K. DOUGLAS.
52. =Modern England under Queen Victoria.= By JUSTIN MCCARTHY.
53. =Modern Spain, 1878-1898.= By MARTIN A. S. HUME, F.R.H.S., Author of “Sir Walter Ralegh,” &c.
54. =Modern Italy, 1748-1898.= By PIETRO ORSI, Professor of History in the R. Liceo Foscarini, Venice. With over 40 Illustrations and Maps.
55. =Norway.= By Professor HJALMAR H. BOYESEN, Author of “Idylls of Norway.”