“Drive! why, my dear Mr. Hankes, it is only a Kerry pony has either legs or head for the path we must follow. Cast your eye along this coast-line; Jagged and fanciful as it looks, it conveys no notion of its rugged surface of rock, and its wild and darksome precipices. Take my word for it, you have as much to learn of the scenery as of the temperament of the land.”
“But I'd like to go,” repeated he, his accent being marvellously little in accordance with the sentiment.
“Nothing easier, sir. I'll give orders to have a pony—a most reliable pony—ready for you here to-morrow evening, when I shall expect you at tea.”
Mr. Hankes bowed his grateful acknowledgments.
“I suspect, sir,” said she, playfully, “that I have guessed your reason for this journey.”
“My reason, my dear Miss Kellett,” said he, in confusion,—“my reason is simply the pleasure and honor of your company, and the opportunity of visiting an interesting scene with—with—with—”
“No matter for the compliment; but I began really to imagine that you wished to learn my secret of bargaining with the people; that you wanted to witness one of these contracts you have heard so much of. Well, sir, you shall have it: our sole secret is, we trust each other.”
CHAPTER XV. A BRIDLE-PATH
Sybella Kellett was less than just when she said that the country which lay between the Hermitage and Bantry Bay had few claims to the picturesque. It may possibly have been that she spoke with reference to what she fancied might have been Mr. Hankes's judgment of such a scene. There was, indeed, little to please an English eye,—no rich and waving woods, no smiling corn-fields, no expanse of swelling lawn or upland of deep meadow; but there was a wild and grand desolation, a waving surface fissured with deep clefts opening on the sea, which boomed in many a cavern far beneath. There were cliffs upright as a wall, hundreds of feet in height, on whose bare summits some rude remains were still traceable,—the fragment of a church, or shrine, or some lone cross, symbol of a faith that dated from centuries back. Heaths of many a gorgeous hue—purple, golden, and azure—clad a surface ever changing, and ferns that would have overtopped a tall horseman mingled their sprayey leaves with the wild myrtle and the arbutus. The moon was at her full as Sybella, accompanied by Mr. Hankes, and followed by an old and faithful groom,—a servant of her father's in times past,—took her way across this solitary tract.