“Don’t be afther breakin’ yer harrt, yer ’an’r. Divil mend the fairy girrul. Sure isn’t she vanished intirely? Mark me now! there’s no sahtisfaction at all, at all, in them fairy girruls. Faix! but I wouldn’t like to see a fine young gintleman like yer ’an’r, become like Yeoha, the Sigher, as they called him in the ould times.”
“And who might that gentleman be, Andy?” I asked, with what appearance of cheerful interest I could muster up.
“Begor! it’s a prince he was that married onto a fairy girrul, what wint an’ was tuk off be a fairy man what lived in the same mountain as she done herself. Sure thim fairy girruls has mostly a fairy man iv their own somewheres, that they love betther nor they does mortials. Jist you take me advice, Master Art, fur ye might do worser! Go an take a luk at Miss Norah, an ye’ll soon forgit the fairies. There’s a rale girrul av ye like!”
I was too sad to make any angry reply, and before I could think of any other kind, Andy lounged away whistling softly—for he had, like many of his class, a very sweet whistle—the air of Savourneen Deelish.
The following day Mr. Caicy turned up at the hotel according to his promise. He openly told Mrs. Keating, of whom he had often before been a customer, that he had business with Mr. Murdock. He was, as usual with him, affable to all, “passing the time of day” with the various inhabitants of all degrees, and, as if a stranger, entering into conversation with me as we sat at lunch in the coffee-room. When we were alone he whispered to me that all was ready; that he had made an examination of the title, for which Murdock had sent him all the necessary papers, and that the deed was complete and ready to be signed. He told me he was going over that day to Knockcalltecrore, and would arrange that he would be there the next day, and that he would take care to have some one to witness the signatures.
On the following morning, when Dick went off with Andy to Knocknacar, and Mr. Caicy drove over to Knockcalltecrore, where I also shortly took my way on another car.
We met at Murdock’s house. The deed was duly completed, and Mr. Caicy handed over to Murdock the letter from the bank that the lodgment had been made.
The land was now mine; and I was to have possession on the 27th of October. Mr. Caicy took the deed with him; and with it took also instructions to draw out a deed making the property over to Richard Sutherland. He went straight away to Galway; whilst I, in listless despair, wandered out on the hillside to look at the view.
CHAPTER X.
IN THE CLIFF FIELDS.
I went along the mountain-side until I came to the great ridge of rocks which, as Dick had explained to me, protected the lower end of Murdock’s farm from the westerly wind. I climbed to the top to get a view, and then found that the ridge was continuous, running as far as the Snake’s Pass where I had first mounted it. Here, however, I was not as then above the sea, for I was opposite what they had called the Cliff Fields, and a very strange and beautiful sight it was.