“Well—personally I’m an O’Mahony of Houghton County, Michigan, but my father was from around here, somewhere.”
“Do you hear that, Murphy?” she said, instinctively turning to the faithful companion of all her out-of-door life. But there was no Murphy in sight.
Kate stared blankly about her for an instant, before she remembered that Murphy had never rejoined her at the lakeside. And now she thought she could hear some vague sound of calling in the distance, rising above the continuous crash of the breakers down below.
“Oh, something has happened to him!” she cried, and started running wildly back again. The young man followed close enough to keep her in sight, and at a distance of some three hundred yards came up to her, as she knelt beside the figure of an old peasant seated with his back against a rock.
Something had happened to Murphy. His ankle had turned on a stone, and he could not walk a step.
CHAPTER XVII—HOW THE OLD BOATMAN KEPT HIS VOW.
Oh, what’s to be done now?” asked Kate, rising to her feet and casting a puzzled look about her. “Sure, me wits are abroad entirely.”
No answer seemed forthcoming. As far inland as the eye could stretch, even to the gray crown of Dunkelly, no sign of human habitation was to be seen. The jutting headland of the Three Castles on which she stood—with the naked primeval cliffs; the roughly scattered boulders framed in scrub-furze too stunted and frightened in the presence of the sea to venture upon blossoms; the thin ashen-green grass blown flat to earth in the little sheltered nooks where alone its roots might live—presented the grimmest picture of desolation she had ever seen. An undersized sheep had climbed the rocks to gaze upon the intruders—an animal with fleece of such a snowy whiteness that it looked like an imitation baa-baa from a toy-shop—and Kate found herself staring into its vacuous face with sympathy, so helplessly empty was her own mind of suggestions.