[PAT]
THE LIGHTHOUSE BOY
[CHAPTER I]
LONE ROCK LIGHTHOUSE
"O mother, mother, mother!" cried Pat, drawing a long breath of awe and wonder, "it seems like as if we had gone straight to heaven!"
"Nay, my son, not quite to heaven, for sure the blessed book tells us that there will be no more sea there;" and the woman looked out over the heaving expanse of grey-blue water with a strange soft wistfulness in her big grey eyes. One would have said to look at her then that she had known what it meant to lose those near and dear to her through the hungry cruel sea, as indeed in her young life she had done; for she was an Irish woman, and had lived all her young life beside the wild coast of Galway, and many of those who bore her name had found a last resting-place beneath the heaving tossing waves. Therefore it was small wonder if she had come to look forward to that bright land beyond the moaning waves, of which it has been expressly said that "there shall be no more sea."
But Patrick could scarcely enter at this moment into his mother's feelings on this score. He was wild with excitement and delight, as indeed he well might be, seeing that he had only just come from a close crowded alley in a smelling fishing and trading town to this lighthouse home, which seemed to lie alone in the very heart of the sea, with nothing above or around but sea and sky, the wild sea-birds for visitors, and the plash of the waves for one long "hush-a-by." No wonder if in these first moments of returning consciousness to outward things, little Pat felt as though some strange thing, almost like death, had befallen him, and that he had awakened to find himself either in heaven itself, or else in some beautiful and wonderful place very like to it indeed.