To this Nellie gladly assented, and between them they conducted Lord Netterville to the boat. Roger arranged the heather so as to form a sort of couch, and, with the mantle thrown over him to protect him from the damp, the old man found himself so comfortable that he settled himself quietly for slumber. Then Roger put up his sail, and with a fresh and favorable wind they glided down the creek.
Nellie would not lie down, but she sat back in the boat with a lazy kind of gladness in her heart, which, rightly interpreted, would probably have been found to mean perfect rest of body and mind. Such rest as she had not felt for months! The waters widened as they approached the bay, and Nellie marked each new feature in the scene with an interest all the keener and more enjoyable, that everything she saw was so unlike anything she had ever seen before. Accustomed as she had been to the tamer cultivation of her native country, the savage grandeur of that wild west, with its poverty in human life, its wealth in that which was merely animal, took her completely by surprise, and she gazed with unwearied interest, now on the undulating ranges of blue mountains which crossed and recrossed each other like network against the sky, then on the broad, black tracts of peat and bog land which covered the country at their feet like a pall; listened now to the bittern and plover as they answered each other from the marshes, then to the shrill screams of the curlews as they rose before the boat, darkening the air with their uncounted numbers; or she watched a heron sweeping slowly homeward from its distant fishing-ground—or a grand old eagle soaring solemnly upward, as if bent on a visit to the departing sun; and her delight and astonishment at last reached their climax in the apparition of a seal, which, just as they cleared the creek, popped its head up above the waves, leaving her, in spite of Roger's laughing assurances to the contrary, well-nigh persuaded that she had seen a mermaid. The wind continuing steady, Roger shook out his last remaining reef, and, responding gayly to the fresh impulse, the boat sprang forward at a racing pace. They were in Clew Bay at last, and Nellie uttered a cry of joy—never had she seen anything so beautiful before. Masses of clouds, with tints just caught from the presence of the sun, soft greens and lilacs, and pale primrose and delicate pearly white, so clear and filmy that the evening star could be seen glancing through them, hung right overhead, shedding a thousand hues, each more beautiful than the other, upon the bay beneath, until it flowed like a liquid opal round its multitude of tribute isles. Opposite, right in the very mouth of the harbor, stood Clare Island, all alight and glowing, as if it were in very deed the pavilion of the setting sun, which, as it sank into the waves beyond it, wrapped tower, and church, and slanting cliff, and winding shoreline, in such a glory of gold and purple as made the old kingdom of Grana Uaille look for the moment like a palace of the fairies. Nellie was still straining her eyes for a glimpse of the Atlantic on the other side, when the deep baying of a hound came like sad, sweet music over the waters, and Roger slightly touched her shoulder. They were close to the island; in another moment he had run his boat cleverly into the little harbor and laid her alongside the pier. A huge wolf-dog, of the old Irish breed, instantly bounded in, nearly oversetting Nellie in his eagerness to greet his master.
Roger laid one restraining hand on the dog's massive head, and removing his cap with the other, said, smiling courteously:
"You must not be afraid of Maida, Mistress Netterville, she is as gentle as she is strong, and has only come to add her voice to her master's, and to bid you welcome to the outlaw's home."
Chapter VIII.
Nellie slept that night the peaceful slumbers of a child; but the habits of long weeks of care were not to be so easily shaken off, and the first ray of sunshine that found its way through the narrow window of her chamber roused her from her well-earned repose. Her first impulse was, as it had ever been of late, to spring from her couch with a painful sense of hard duty to be accomplished that very day; her next was to thank God with all the fervor of a young and innocent heart for the haven of safety into which he had guided her at last. Then she lay back upon her pillow, and, yielding to the delightful consciousness that there was now no immediate call upon her for exertion either of body or mind, glanced languidly round the dimly-lighted room, and endeavored to make a mental inventory of its contents. It was a square chamber, forming the second story of the old tower in which Roger had taken up his abode, and which was all that was yet remaining of the old stronghold of Grana Uaille. The apartment had evidently no furniture of its own to boast of, but, having been used as a sort of lumber-room, was abundantly supplied with articles brought hither from more favored mansions. Nellie soon perceived that much of this so-called lumber was of the costliest description, and represented probably the sum total of all that had been saved from the wreck of Roger's fortune. There were cabinets of curious workmanship, a table carved in oak as black as ebony, a few high-backed chairs of the same material, ornaments in gold and silver, some of ancient Celtic manufacture, others in their more delicate workmanship bearing marks of artistic handling, which, even to Nellie's unaccustomed eye, betrayed their foreign origin. There were pictures, too, most of them with the dark shadow of a Spanish hand upon them, and swords, bucklers, weapons, and armor of all kinds, old and new, defensive and offensive, piled up here and there in picturesque confusion in the corners of the turret. Nellie had been amusing herself for some minutes scanning all these treasures over and over, and guessing at their various uses, when her attention became suddenly riveted upon a huge coffer with bands and mouldings of curiously-wrought brass, which stood against the wall exactly opposite to the foot of her bed. She was still quite girl enough to be willing to amuse herself by imagining all sorts of impossibilities respecting the contents of this mysterious looking piece of furniture, and she was watching it as anxiously as if she half expected it to open of itself, when the door of the chamber was cautiously unclosed, and the old woman, who represented the office of cook, valet, and everything else in Roger's establishment, crept up to her bedside as quietly as if she fancied her to be sleeping still.
"God's blessing and the light of heaven be on your sweet smiling face," she ejaculated, as Nellie turned her bright, wide-open eyes with a grateful smile upon the old hag. "Lie still a bit, a-lannah, lie still, and take a sup of this fresh goat's whey that I have been making for you. It will bring the color, may be, into your pretty cheeks again; for troth, a-lannah, they are as pale this morning as mountain roses, and not at all what they should be in regard to a young and well-grown slip of a lassie like yourself."
Nellie took the tempting beverage, which Nora presented to her in an old-fashioned silver goblet, readily enough; but checking herself just as she was about to put it to her lips, she said, gayly:
"Thanks, a thousand times, my dear old woman, but I do not feel that I need it much, and this whey would be the very thing for my poor old grandfather. He was always accustomed to something of the sort in the days when we were able to indulge ourselves in such luxuries."