Chapter 9

But, alas, as she spoke the light faded away, the boy's figure disappeared, the sea and the shore and the sky were all as they had been before, lighted only by the faint, strange gleaming of the stars. Only the boat remained. Griselda saw it close to her, in the shallow water, a few feet from where she stood.

"Cuckoo," she exclaimed in a tone of reproach and disappointment, "where is Phil gone? Why did you send him away?"

"I didn't send him away," said the cuckoo. "You don't understand. Never mind, but get into the boat. It'll be all right, you'll see."

"But are we to go away and leave Phil here, all alone at the other side of the moon?" said Griselda, feeling ready to cry.

"Oh, you silly girl!" said the cuckoo. "Phil's all right, and in some ways he has a great deal more sense than you, I can tell you. Get into the boat and make yourself comfortable; lie down at the bottom and cover yourself up with the mantle. You needn't be afraid of wetting your feet a little, moon water never gives cold. There, now."

Griselda did as she was told. She was beginning to feel rather tired, and it certainly was very comfortable at the bottom of the boat, with the nice warm feather-mantle well tucked round her.

"Who will row?" she said sleepily. "_You_ can't, cuckoo, with your tiny little claws, you could never hold the oars, I'm----"

"Hush!" said the cuckoo; and whether he rowed or not Griselda never knew.

Off they glided somehow, but it seemed to Griselda that _somebody_ rowed, for she heard the soft dip, dip of the oars as they went along, so regularly that she couldn't help beginning to count in time--one, two, three, four--on, on--she thought she had got nearly to a hundred, when----

XI

"CUCKOO, CUCKOO, GOOD-BYE!"

"Children, try to be good! That is the end of all teaching; Easily understood, And very easy in preaching. And if you find it hard, Your efforts you need but double; Nothing deserves reward Unless it has given us trouble."

When she forgot everything, and fell fast, fast asleep, to wake, of course, in her own little bed as usual!

"One of your tricks again, Mr. Cuckoo," she said to herself with a smile. "However, I don't mind. It _was_ a short cut home, and it was very comfortable in the boat, and I certainly saw a great deal last night, and I'm very much obliged to you--particularly for making it all right with Phil about not coming to play with me to-day. Ah! that reminds me, I'm in disgrace. I wonder if Aunt Grizzel will really make me stay in my room all day. How tired I shall be, and what will Mr. Kneebreeches think! But it serves me right. I _was_ very cross and rude."

There came a tap at the door. It was Dorcas with the hot water.

"Good morning, missie," she said gently, not feeling, to tell the truth, very sure as to what sort of a humour "missie" was likely to be found in this morning. "I hope you've slept well."

"Exceedingly well, thank you, Dorcas. I've had a delightful night," replied Griselda amiably, smiling to herself at the thought of what Dorcas would say if she knew where she had been, and what she had been doing since last she saw her.

"That's good news," said Dorcas in a tone of relief; "and I've good news for you, too, missie. At least, I hope you'll think it so. Your aunt has ordered the carriage for quite early this morning--so you see she really wants to please you, missie, about playing with little Master Phil; and if to-morrow's a fine day, we'll be sure to find some way of letting him know to come."

"Thank you, Dorcas. I hope it will be all right, and that Lady Lavander won't say anything against it. I dare say she won't. I feel ever so much happier this morning, Dorcas; and I'm very sorry I was so rude to Aunt Grizzel, for of course I know I _should_ obey her."

"That's right, missie," said Dorcas approvingly.

"It seems to me, Dorcas," said Griselda dreamily, when, a few minutes later, she was standing by the window while the old servant brushed out her thick, wavy hair, "it seems to me, Dorcas, that it's _all_ 'obeying orders' together. There's the sun now, just getting up, and the moon just going to bed--_they_ are always obeying, aren't they? I wonder why it should be so hard for people--for children, at least."

"To be sure, missie, you do put it a way of your own," replied Dorcas, somewhat mystified; "but I see how you mean, I think, and it's quite true. And it _is_ a hard lesson to learn."

"I want to learn it _well_, Dorcas," said Griselda, resolutely. "So will you please tell Aunt Grizzel that I'm very sorry about last night, and I'll do just as she likes about staying in my room or anything. But, if she _would_ let me, I'd far rather go down and do my lessons as usual for Mr. Kneebreeches. I won't ask to go out in the garden; but I would like to please Aunt Grizzel by doing my lessons _very_ well."

Dorcas was both delighted and astonished. Never had she known her little "missie" so altogether submissive and reasonable.

"I only hope the child's not going to be ill," she said to herself. But she proved a skilful ambassadress, notwithstanding her misgivings; and Griselda's imprisonment confined her only to the bounds of the house and terrace walk, instead of within the four walls of her own little room, as she had feared.

Lessons _were_ very well done that day, and Mr. Kneebreeches' report was all that could be wished.

"I am particularly gratified," he remarked to Miss Grizzel, "by the intelligence and interest Miss Griselda displays with regard to the study of astronomy, which I have recently begun to give her some elementary instruction in. And, indeed, I have no fault to find with the way in which any of the young lady's tasks are performed."

"I am extremely glad to hear it," replied Miss Grizzel graciously, and the kiss with which she answered Griselda's request for forgiveness was a very hearty one.

And it was "all right" about Phil.

Lady Lavander knew all about him; his father and mother were friends of hers, for whom she had a great regard, and for some time she had been intending to ask the little boy to spend the day at Merrybrow Hall, to be introduced to her god-daughter Griselda. So, _of course_, as Lady Lavander knew all about him, there could be no objection to his playing in Miss Grizzel's garden!

And "to-morrow" turned out a fine day. So altogether you can imagine that Griselda felt very happy and light-hearted as she ran down the wood-path to meet her little friend, whose rosy face soon appeared among the bushes.

"What did you do yesterday, Phil?" asked Griselda. "Were you sorry not to come to play with me?"

"No," said Phil mysteriously, "I didn't mind. I was looking for the way to fairyland to show you, and I do believe I've found it. Oh, it _is_ such a pretty way."

Griselda smiled.

"I'm afraid the way to fairyland isn't so easily found," she said. "But I'd like to hear about where you went. Was it far?"

"A good way," said Phil. "Won't you come with me? It's in the wood. I can show you quite well, and we can be back by tea-time."

"Very well," said Griselda; and off they set.

Whether it was the way to fairyland or not, it was not to be wondered at that little Phil thought so. He led Griselda right across the wood to a part where she had never been before. It was pretty rough work part of the way. The children had to fight with brambles and bushes, and here and there to creep through on hands and knees, and Griselda had to remind Phil several times of her promise to his nurse that his clothes should not be the worse for his playing with her, to prevent his scrambling through "anyhow" and leaving bits of his knickerbockers behind him.

But when at last they reached Phil's favourite spot all their troubles were forgotten. Oh, how pretty it was! It was a sort of tiny glade in the very middle of the wood--a little green nest enclosed all round by trees, and right through it the merry brook came rippling along as if rejoicing at getting out into the sunlight again for a while. And all the choicest and sweetest of the early summer flowers seemed to be collected here in greater variety and profusion than in any other part of the wood.

"_Isn't_ it nice?" said Phil, as he nestled down beside Griselda on the soft, mossy grass. "It must have been a fairies' garden some time, I'm sure, and I shouldn't wonder if one of the doors into fairyland is hidden somewhere here, if only we could find it."

"If only!" said Griselda. "I don't think we shall find it, Phil; but, any way, this is a lovely place you've found, and I'd like to come here very often."

Then at Phil's suggestion they set to work to make themselves a house in the centre of this fairies' garden, as he called it. They managed it very much to their own satisfaction, by dragging some logs of wood and big stones from among the brushwood hard by, and filling the holes up with bracken and furze.

"And if the fairies _do_ come here," said Phil, "they'll be very pleased to find a house all ready, won't they?"

Then they had to gather flowers to ornament the house inside, and dry leaves and twigs all ready for a fire in one corner. Altogether it was quite a business, I can assure you, and when it was finished they were very hot and very tired and _rather_ dirty. Suddenly a thought struck Griselda.

"Phil," she said, "it must be getting late."

"Past tea-time?" he said coolly.

"I dare say it is. Look how low down the sun has got. Come, Phil, we must be quick. Where is the place we came out of the wood at?"

"Here," said Phil, diving at a little opening among the bushes.

Griselda followed him. He had been a good guide hitherto, and she certainly could not have found her way alone. They scrambled on for some way, then the bushes suddenly seemed to grow less thick, and in a minute they came out upon a little path.

"Phil," said Griselda, "this isn't the way we came."

"Isn't it?" said Phil, looking about him. "Then we must have comed the wrong way."

"I'm afraid so," said Griselda, "and it seems to be so late already. I'm so sorry, for Aunt Grizzel will be vexed, and I did so want to please her. Will your nurse be vexed, Phil?"

"I don't care if she are," replied Phil valiantly.

"You shouldn't say that, Phil. You know we _shouldn't_ have stayed so long playing."

"Nebber mind," said Phil. "If it was mother I would mind. Mother's so good, you don't know. And she never 'colds me, except when I _am_ naughty--so I _do_ mind."

"She wouldn't like you to be out so late, I'm sure," said Griselda in distress, "and it's most my fault, for I'm the biggest. Now, which way _shall_ we go?"

They had followed the little path till it came to a point where two roads, rough cart-ruts only, met; or, rather, where the path ran across the road. Right, or left, or straight on, which should it be? Griselda stood still in perplexity. Already it was growing dusk; already the moon's soft light was beginning faintly to glimmer through the branches. Griselda looked up to the sky.

"To think," she said to herself--"to think that I should not know my way in a little bit of a wood like this--I that was up at the other side of the moon last night."

The remembrance put another thought into her mind.

"Cuckoo, cuckoo," she said softly, "couldn't you help us?"

Then she stood still and listened, holding Phil's cold little hands in her own.

She was not disappointed. Presently, in the distance, came the well-known cry, "cuckoo, cuckoo," so soft and far away, but yet so clear.

Phil clapped his hands.

"He's calling us," he cried joyfully. "He's going to show us the way. That's how he calls me always. Good cuckoo, we're coming;" and, pulling Griselda along, he darted down the road to the right--the direction from whence came the cry.

They had some way to go, for they had wandered far in a wrong direction, but the cuckoo never failed them. Whenever they were at a loss--whenever the path turned or divided, they heard his clear, sweet call; and, without the least misgiving, they followed it, till at last it brought them out upon the high-road, a stone's throw from Farmer Crouch's gate.

"I know the way now, good cuckoo," exclaimed Phil. "I can go home alone now, if your aunt will be vexed with you."

"No," said Griselda, "I must take you quite all the way home, Phil dear. I promised to take care of you, and if nurse scolds any one it must be me, not you."

There was a little bustle about the door of the farm-house as the children wearily came up to it. Two or three men were standing together receiving directions from Mr. Crouch himself, and Phil's nurse was talking eagerly. Suddenly she caught sight of the truants.

"Here he is, Mr. Crouch!" she exclaimed. "No need now to send to look for him. Oh, Master Phil, how could you stay out so late? And to-night of all nights, just when your----I forgot, I mustn't say. Come in to the parlour at once--and this little girl, who is she?"

"She isn't a little girl, she's a young lady," said Master Phil, putting on his lordly air, "and she's to come into the parlour and have some supper with me, and then some one must take her home to her auntie's house--that's what I say."

More to please Phil than from any wish for "supper," for she was really in a fidget to get home, Griselda let the little boy lead her into the parlour. But she was for a moment perfectly startled by the cry that broke from him when he opened the door and looked into the room. A lady was standing there, gazing out of the window, though in the quickly growing darkness she could hardly have distinguished the little figure she was watching for so anxiously.

The noise of the door opening made her look round.

"Phil," she cried, "my own little Phil; where have you been to? You didn't know I was waiting here for you, did you?"

"Mother, mother!" shouted Phil, darting into his mother's arms.

But Griselda drew back into the shadow of the doorway, and tears filled her eyes as for a minute or two she listened to the cooings and caressings of the mother and son.

Only for a minute, however. Then Phil called to her.

"Mother, mother," he cried again, "you must kiss Griselda, too! She's the little girl that is so kind, and plays with me; and she has no mother," he added in a lower tone.

The lady put her arm round Griselda, and kissed her, too. She did not seem surprised.

"I think I know about Griselda," she said very kindly, looking into her face with her gentle eyes, blue and clear like Phil's.

And then Griselda found courage to say how uneasy she was about the anxiety her aunts would be feeling, and a messenger was sent off at once to tell of her being safe at the farm.

But Griselda herself the kind lady would not let go till she had had some nice supper with Phil, and was both warmed and rested.

"And what were you about, children, to lose your way?" she asked presently.

"I took Griselda to see a place that I thought was the way to fairyland, and then we stayed to build a house for the fairies, in case they come, and then we came out at the wrong side, and it got dark," explained Phil.

"And _was_ it the way to fairyland?" asked his mother, smiling.

Griselda shook her head as she replied--

"Phil doesn't understand yet," she said gently. "He isn't old enough. The way to the true fairyland is hard to find, and we must each find it for ourselves, mustn't we?"

She looked up in the lady's face as she spoke, and saw that _she_ understood.

"Yes, dear child," she answered softly, and perhaps a very little sadly. "But Phil and you may help each other, and I perhaps may help you both."

Griselda slid her hand into the lady's. "You're not going to take Phil away, are you?" she whispered.

"No, I have come to stay here," she answered; "and Phil's father is coming too, soon. We are going to live at the White House--the house on the other side of the wood, on the way to Merrybrow. Are you glad, children?"

* * * * *

Griselda had a curious dream that night--merely a dream, nothing else. She dreamt that the cuckoo came once more; this time, he told her, to say "good-bye."

"For you will not need me now," he said. "I leave you in good hands, Griselda. You have friends now who will understand you--friends who will help you both to work and to play. Better friends than the mandarins, or the butterflies, or even than your faithful old cuckoo."

And when Griselda tried to speak to him, to thank him for his goodness, to beg him still sometimes to come to see her, he gently fluttered away. "Cuckoo, cuckoo, cuckoo," he warbled; but somehow the last "cuckoo" sounded like "good-bye."

In the morning, when Griselda awoke, her pillow was wet with tears. Thus many stories end. She was happy, very happy in the thought of her kind new friends; but there were tears for the one she felt she had said farewell to, even though he was only a cuckoo in a clock.

THE CASTLE IN THE LOUGH

THE CASTLE IN THE LOUGH

A LEGEND OF DONEGAL

"Father," little Dermot would say, "tell me something more about the castle in the lough."

Dermot M'Swyne was a little lad, with blue soft eyes and bright fair hair. He was the only son of Brian, the chief of the M'Swynes, and people used sometimes to say scornfully that he was a poor puny son to come of such a father, for he was not big and burly, as a M'Swyne ought to be, but slim and fair, and like a girl. However, Brian M'Swyne loved his fair-haired boy, and would have given up most other pleasures in the world for the pleasure of having the little fellow by his side and listening to his prattling voice. He was like his mother, those said who remembered the blue-eyed stranger whom Brian M'Swyne had brought home ten years before as his wife to Doe Castle, in Donegal, and who had pined there for a few years and then died; and perhaps it was for her sake that the child was so dear to the rough old chief. He was never tired of having the little lad beside him, and many a time he would carry him about and cradle him in his arms, and pass his big fingers through the boy's golden curls, and let the little hands play with his beard.

Sitting together in the firelight on winter nights, while the peat fire was burning on the floor, and the wind, sweeping across Lough Eske, went wailing round the castle walls and sighing in the leafless trees, the boy would often get his father to tell him stories of the country-side. There were many strange legends treasured up in the memories of all old inhabitants of the place, wild stories of enchantments, or of fairies or banshees; and little Dermot would never tire of listening to these tales. Sometimes, when he had heard some only half-finished story, he would go dreaming on and on to himself about it, till he had woven an ending, or a dozen endings, to it in his own brain.

But of all the tales to which he used to listen there was one that perhaps, more than any other, he liked to hear--the story of the enchanted castle swallowed up by Lough Belshade. There, down beneath the waters of the dark lough, into which he had looked so often, was the castle standing still, its gates and towers and walls all perfect, just as it had stood upon the earth, the very fires still alight that had been burning on its hearths, and--more wonderful than all--the people who had been sunk in it, though fixed and motionless in their enchanted sleep, alive too. It was a wonder of wonders; the child was never tired of thinking of it, and dreaming of the time in which the enchantment should be broken, and of the person who should break it; for, strangest of all, the story said that they must sleep until a M'Swyne should come and wake them. But what M'Swyne would do it? And how was it to be done? "Father," little Dermot would say, "tell me something more about the enchanted castle in the lough."

The legend was thus: On the shores of the desolate lough there had once stood a great castle, where lived a beautiful maiden called Eileen. Her father was the chieftain of a clan, and she was his only child. Many young lovers sought her, but she cared for none of them. At last there came to the castle a noble-looking knight. He had traveled from a far country, he said, and he began soon to tell wonderful stories to Eileen of the beauty and the richness of that land of his; how the skies there were always blue, and the sun always shone, and lords and ladies lived, not in rough stone-hewn castles like these, but in palaces all bright with marbles and precious stones; and how their lives were all a long delight, with music and dancing and all pleasant things.

Eileen listened while he told these tales to her, till she began to long to see his country; and her heart yearned for something brighter and better than the sombre life she led by the shores of the dark lough; and so when, after a time, the knight one day told her that he loved her, she gave him her promise to go to his home with him and marry him.

She was very contented for a little while after she had promised to be the knight's wife, and spent nearly all her time in talking to her lover and in picturing to herself the new and beautiful things that she was going to see. She was very happy, on the whole; though now and then, to tell the truth, as time went on, she began to be a little puzzled and surprised by certain things that the knight did, and certain odd habits that he had; for, in fact, he had some very odd habits, indeed, and, charming and handsome as he was, conducted himself occasionally in really quite a singular way.

For instance, it was a curious fact that he never could bear the sight of a dog; and if ever one came near him (and as there were a good many dogs about the castle, it was quite impossible to keep them from coming near him now and then) he would set his teeth, and rise slowly from his seat, and begin to make a low hissing noise, craning his neck forward, and swelling and rounding his back in such an extraordinary way that the first time Eileen saw him doing it she thought he was going to have a fit, and was quite alarmed.

"Oh, dear, I--I'm afraid you're ill!" she exclaimed, getting upon her feet and feeling very uneasy.

"No, no, it's only--it's only--the dog," gasped the knight, gripping his seat with both hands, as if it needed the greatest effort to keep himself still. "Hiss--s--s--s! I've such a terrible dislike to dogs. It's--it's in my family," said the poor young man; and he could not recover his composure at all till the little animal that had disturbed him was carried away.

Then he had such a strange fashion of amusing himself in his own room where he slept. It was a spacious room, hung all round with arras; and often, after the household had gone to bed, those who slept nearest to the knight were awakened out of their sleep by the noise he made in running up and down, and here and there; scudding about over the floor, and even--as far as could be guessed by the sounds--clambering up the walls, just as though, instead of being a gracious high-bred young gentleman, he had been the veriest tomboy.

"I fear, Sir Knight, you do not always rest easily in your apartment," Eileen's old father said to him one morning after he had been making even more disturbance of this sort than usual. "We have rough ways here in the North, and perhaps the arrangement of your sleeping quarters is not exactly to your liking?"

But the knight, when he began to say this, interrupted him hastily, and declared that he had never slept more comfortably in any room in his life, or more peacefully, he said; he was seldom conscious of even so much as awakening once. Of course, when he said this, Eileen and her father could only open their eyes, and come to the conclusion that the poor young knight was a somnambulist, and afflicted with the habit of running and leaping in his sleep.