"Why, of course," said Mac, "so that people mayn't understand what they mean. Savages is uncommonly cunning."

"Oh, I see," Aylmer said. But when they had gone a few steps further he added: "If I wanted people not to know what I meaned, I just wouldn't say anything at all." Aylmer, who was fat, and rather lazy, often considered about ways of saving trouble.

It was not far to the lough, along a path smooth under thick evergreens, and rougher presently under hazel and hawthorn bushes, and then soft and springy where it crossed the corner of a bog. However, Mac and Aylmer luckily did not stray into any of the treacherous places where black-looking holes lurked among mossy patches sprinkled with dim white blossoms. They followed the faint track until it brought them to the brow of a grassy slope leading down to the lough. One end of the long, narrow lake curved round there and met a wide band of greensward. Rainy weather had filled it fuller than usual, so that the clear water came brimming up over the gravelly rim, which generally bounded it with a sharp gleam, and it lay amongst the fi, short grass-blades in silvery-edged streaks, as if it had been spilt on a carpet. If you looked down into it, you could see drowned daisies and speedwell at the bottom, strangely mixed with the drifting blue and snow of the sky. A lane, overhung by steep woods, skirted the opposite shore, but nothing was moving on it. The little boys thought they had come to a delightful place, especially when Mac remembered that savages never wore shoes and stockings, and they put theirs on the flat top of a boulder. It was very luxurious wading, with the soft grass underfoot, and the sun-warmed ripples lapping about their ankles, and nobody to be shocked no matter how much they splashed each other. They had made their way along by the margin nearly round to the lane, before either of them had had enough of the amusement. Then Aylmer, who was carrying the fishing-rod, stepped on a pebble, which hurt

full of troutses. I'll begin fishing now."

"That's only the wind in the water," said Mac. "Fishes make round circles, and hop up out of the middle of them like big, shiny frogs. I don't believe there's any in that place. But you may have the first turn of fishing at them."

Aylmer sat down on a gray boulder, which looked as if it had been badly cracked long ago and stuck together with strips of the greenest velvet; and le began to fish steadily. His hook was a tin tack, and his fly a buttercup. "They might think it was a yellow, very fat wasp," he said. Mac was for a while quite content to go on with his wading. He went in deliciously deep, and once, falling down, partly by accident, got thoroughly wet, which was most enjoyable. And he hopped on one leg to and fro between several islanded tufts of bracken and clumps of furze. But when both his ankles began to ache, he thought he would like a change, and, standing beside Aylmer, he said, affably: Now you're tired holding it. I'll take it for a bit, and you can be playing about."

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Aylmer, however, only wagged his head slowly, and waved one of his hands in the air.

"You great gaby," said Mac, "we're not going to be savages except to other people. And you know you were talking like anything just this minute."

Aylmer nodded three times, and kept a firm hold on the fishing-rod.

"Look here," said Mac, "you might be finding sticks to light the fire with, when we want to cook them."

Still Aylmer said nothing, but flourished his hand in a way which evidently meant, "Find them yourself." He looked comfortable and aggravating, and as if he did not intend to stir. So Mac said: Give it to me, will you? and get out of that!" and made a clutch at the rod. "You beast!" said Aylmer. "I'd just got the feel of a beautiful bite, and you've went and shook it off!"

"I wouldn't mind if I had shook off your stupid head," Mac said. Whereupon they scuffled so violently that Aylmer's

hat, which was a large straw one, fell into the water, and began to float quickly away. This accident dismayed them so much that they stood still immediately; for to a small boy the loss of his head-covering seems as serious as the destruction of a roof. Aylmer lay face downwards on the flat boulder, and made a grasp at the hat as it went bobbing by, but all he did was to soak one of his jacket-sleeves right up to the shoulder. "There now !" he said, turning up a countenance full of wrath; "it's swum away to drown itself, and here am I in the blazing sun, enough to kill me."

"I don't believe savages ever do wear hats, now that I think of it," Mac said, putting a bold face on the matter," and I won't, anyway." He flung down his straw hat so roughly that the brim cracked nearly off the crown, and a tuft of water forget-me-not stuck up through the chink. And dripping wet I am, too," Aylmer went on, "getting my death, most likely." He'd be welcome to a loan of the ould sack," a voice said startlingly close behind them; and there stood two little girls, who had come quietly over the grass, on bare feet, though they had not been wading. One of them held in her hand a long rope with a small white goat grazing at the end of it, and the other was carrying a couple of brownish sacks and a reaping-hook. They wore short, ragged skirts, and over their heads coarse gray shawls, under the shadow of which their narrow faces looked all eyes. The biggest of them was perhaps as much as nine years old, so that to Mac and Aylmer she seemed an experienced person.

"If he had it over the head of him," she said to Mac, "he could take the little wet coateen off of him, and let it get a chance to dry in the sun. There's a very handy hole in the end of this one," she said, unrolling the empty sacks. "And there's plenty of time yet to be fillin' them wid the grass. Rosy McClonissy owns it, but she'll loan it and welcome-wouldn't you, Rosy! Say, Ay, bedad !'"

6

"Ay, bedad!" Rosy said, in a hoarse, shy whisper.

Aylmer, who found his drenched sleeve uncomfortable, and the unshaded sun dazzling, thought he would try this plan, and, taking off his jacket, wisped himself up in the sack. Mac considered the costume

so appropriate that he put on the other one; and then they did both look as uncivilized as anybody could wish, with bare legs. and arms and dirty faces emerging from the rough, earth-colored folds. The elder little girl, whose name was Matty Shanahan, spread out the blue and white jackets to dry on the flat-topped boulder. "Bovver!" said Mac, feeling in his pocket, "I declare, my three matches has got quite wet, too. I suppose now all the fire's washed out of them; and how are we to cook the troutses, if we get some bites that stick on?"

"Is it a fire?" Matty said. "We do be sometimes gettin' the loan of a light off a man goin' by wid a pipe. But there's no sticks, unless you look up yonder under the trees. And I never heard tell of any troutses catchin' in it at all."

"What'll we be cookin', then?" said Aylmer, who was only half reconciled to the loss of his bite and hat, and felt disposed to make difficulties.

"Oh, potatoes," Mac said, cheerfully, though he did not really think this a very satisfactory substitute. "Do you happen to know if there are many about here?"

"Sorra a pitaty we've in it this long while back,” said Matty. "Sure we had the last of them ate before Easter."

"Then why on earth don't you get some more?" said Mac.

How at all would we," said Matty, "when the rest of them wasn't fit to throw to the hins? And ne'er a one saved for seed, for where'd be the sinse, me father was sayin', of puttin' them down, wid the whole of us starvin' fast while they would be growin' slow? So we ate them. frettin' he is now every day, since he was took sick, sittin' on the wall, to see the bit of field lyin' empty under the weeds, as yella as gould-frettin' bad he is."

But

"Well, but one must be cooking something; and it's getting pretty late," Aylmer remarked, sternly.

"Sure it isn't hardly hungry-time yet, glory be to goodness!" said Matty; "and I was tellin' you me mother's had no could pitaties to be givin' us to take along wid us, and we grazin' the little goat, or else yous 'ud be welcome to a bit. When we had them, we did be warmin' them up grand wid a fire lightin' in there under the trees. Only yous had a right to not be

" we

Matty continued to look puzzled. "Now and again," she said, after a pause, lights a fire, and sticks a few biggish-sized lumps of round stones in it be way of pitaties roastin'. But that's only lettin' on, and most whiles we go to the wishin'-well above there in the wood for our bit of dinner."

"I didn't know there was anything except water in wells," said Aylmer.

"She said a wishing one, didn't you hear?" Mac said, intending to convey an entirely false impression that this made the matter quite clear to him.

"Saint Brigid owns it," said Matty. "Grand she is. I seen her picture below at Father Daly's, in an iligant white gown. streelin' after her, and a gould sunbonnet blowin' out flat off the back of her head. And they say that if you drop a little bit of somethin' into the wather to remind her, she'll send you whatever you're wishin' for. So Rosy and I do be mostly wishin' a bit of dinner off of her."

a cool shade of green leaves above, and below a soft paving of dead ones, crossed here and there by roots, which made irregular steps in it. Mac accounted for his tripping over them by saying that they were a different pattern from the stairs in most places. However, all the children scrambled safely up them to Saint Brigid's Well, niched in its rounded rock basin under the high, steep bank. Moss, which seemed a golden green light among the flickering shadows, muffled its brim, and from the creviced stones behind it harebells trembled and hartstongue drooped. Large, shining drops swelled at the points of the long leaves, and plashed down slowly one by one as if a string of beads were broken into the transparent water, which they kept astir with a sliding, circling ripple. The little girls crossed themselves and said some queer-sounding words, which were Latin, Matty explained to Mac; but she could not answer him satisfactorily when he wanted to know, further, what they meant-a question which might indeed have puzzled the most scholarly-whether savages spoke Latin, and whether Saint Brigid was a savage. "I don't see how I'm to order dinner that way," he said, " because I happen not to remember the Latin for anything to eat." "Sure how could she help knowin' right enough what pitaties is," Matty said. "And a sup of buttermilk," Rosy whispered at her elbow.

"Is that all you're goin' to order?" said Mac. "Why, that's only a little bit of a dinner-there's lots of other things."

"Joggolates," suggested a familiar husky voice beside him.

Aylmer murmured, hopefully, "Joggolates, maybe.'

"Nothin'," Matty replied, disappointingly. But you can never tell she mightn't take the notion to some day. Rosy and me'll be slippin' up prisently." "We'll come along," said Mac.

"'Deed yous might better," said Matty, "than to be drowndin' of yourselves fightin' on the edge of the pool. The bits of coateens can be dryin' here till we come back. I'll tether the little goat the way she won't get swallyin' them."

The footpath to the well wound up with

wholesome enough for people's dinners."

"I'd liefer have pitaties than stirabout," said Matty. "The yella male's a quare, ugly brash, and there doesn't be more than a little dab of it for everybody when it's boiled. Me mother mostly has only the pot-scrapin's, but she says it's plenty. Pitaties is the best."

"Roast chicken," said Mac, "and mashed potatoes, and cold apple pie, and custard, might do. What shall I drop in ?"

"Thim little thimbles off of the fir-trees is handy, if you haven't e'er a pin or a button," Matty said; and several small cones were found without difficulty.

Aylmer dropped one in unobserved, and as he did so murmured, "Joggolates."

For nearly an hour after the children had gone into the wood, nobody came next or nigh the lough. Then over the brow of the steep grass-slope, and down the same path that Mac and Aylmer had taken, came a figure all in soft white, just tinged with a delicate lilac, as are some crocus-cups. Softly white, too, and plumed with faintly tinted feathers, was the large hat which shaded her golden-brown hair. So that she made a very high light in the strong sunshine as she passed through it. She was carrying a small hamper. Any body who had met her might have noticed that the lowest flounce of her pretty gown was a little bedraggled along its lacy edge, and that her pretty face looked a little unhappy and anxious. The facts were that she had driven over from Glenamber to bring a share of some wedding festivities to the exiles at Sheenagh House, where, arriving, she had found it deserted, for its master was out, and the servants had slipped down to McQueen's place at the cross-roads in hopes of a glimpse when the bridal carriage drove by honeymoonwards. Only old Moriarty was by this time scraping in front of the house, and told her how he had seen the young gentlemen a while ago in the shrubbery yonder, on their way to the lough he'd be bound, as they were carrying the master's old fishing-rod. "And you'll be apt to meet them comin' back by now, Miss," he added, "unless they're after drowndin' themselves somewheres-that's noways too unlikely."

"Is it far?" she asked.

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'Sure, not at all," he said. “You might sling an ould cabbage-stump into it from the end of the bit of a grove." And on the strength of this she had started. But she was not used to bogs, and consequently had the imprudence to step on a jewel-green mossy patch, with results harmful to her dainty bridesmaid's attire and little silver-buckled shoes. This accident caused her some vexation, but she forgot all about it when she reached the lough. For, as she ran down the green slope, the first thing she noticed was a straw hat floating on the water, and a few steps further brought her where she saw two pairs of long stockings and two pairs

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of small boots lying on the top of a flat stone. No living creature was in sight, except a white goat steadily browsing; and the thought flashed into her mind that the wearers of these things must have been the little boys she had come to look for a thought which made old Moriarty's conjecture seem dreadfully probable. In a great fright she ran along the water's edge calling, " Mac-Aylmer," and soon she was still more alarmed by a gleam of something blue and white a little way from the shore. It was Aylmer's jacket, which Matty had so carefully spread to dry, and which a breeze had whisked regardlessly into the water. But to Amy Barry it seemed likely to be something so terrible that she was afraid to look at it, and, dropping her hamper on the grass, she fled panic-stricken down the lane in search of help.

Very soon after she had gone, the four children descended the shadowy path between the tree-trunks, and stepped out again upon the sunny green margin-four as wild small figures in their ragged wrappings as you could have met in the width of Connaught. The little boys had wanted to linger up at the well, imagining their wishes more likely to be fulfilled upon the spot; but Matty, speaking with the authority of a much longer experience, assured them that Saint Brigid "was just as apt to lave them their dinners down below,” and at last persuaded them to come and see. She was anxious to reclaim her sacks and resume her grass-cutting. And, "I declare to goodness," Mac exclaimed, as they emerged from the wood, "she's left it-in a basket. There it is, near the big stones.

in it."

Come along and look what's

"Musha good gracious, and there it is sittin' wid itself sure enough," Matty said. "Where's it come from at all-unless it's from Herself? A grand new little hamper.'

"If there's all our dinners in it," Aylmer remarked, discontentedly, when they had raced up to the hamper, “it doesn't look very big. The plates 'll take up nearly all the room."

"Of course she knew perfectly well that savages don't want plates," said Mac, who was fumbling with the fastening. "Which way do you pull the little peggy thing-do you know, Matty?"

"Suppose somebody owns it?" Matty said, hanging back. "And suppose the polis was comin' along the road there, and we meddlin' wid it?" Matty's eyes were enlarged and darkened by the horror of the imagined catastrophe.

"Savages and saints isn't any affair of the polis at all," Mac said, prescribing the constabulary their duties without hesitation, and throwing back the hamper-lid with a creaky jerk. "Whoof! Is it nothing but old flowers?"

On the top, indeed, lay some sprays of white frosted blossoms, tied with wonderful silvery satiny knots and bows. Mac flung them down on the grass disdainfully, but Matty and Rosy eyed them as reverentially as if they were feathers from an angel's wing. Under them was a paper bag full of small, sugary biscuits of all shapes and hues; and these the boys regarded with more respect. Then there came thick slices of dark plum-cake, iced and almonded, and a number of softly flushed peaches, and a heavy bunch of bloomy, purple grapes. Next an oval box of glistening crystallized fruits. And, lastly, a round box of bonbons. "Joggolates !" Aylmer said triumphantly on seeing this," and it was me ordered them. But you can have ones apiece."

When all these things were spread out on the grass, Mac said: "Let's have the biscuits first. You needn't grab them with your two hands at once, Aylmer, like a wolf "-Aylmer said something indistinctly about savages. "Come along, Matty and Rosy."

But Matty turned away, drawing her old shawl closer about a disappointed face. They're not our dinners, for sartin," she said. "Ne'er a pitaty is there at the bottom-ne'er a one. But belike she might send them another day, Rosy, when there's nobody in it only you and me. Themselves is some manner of Quality, so she wouldn't be mindin' the likes of us. It's time we got the grass cut, Rosy. Say, No, thankee." Rosy, however, on the contrary, said "Plase,” and accepted a handful of miniature stars and crowns and crescents, pink and white and yellow, at which she looked for a minute half doubtfully. It seemed like eating up things that were almost too pretty to touch. But after she had tasted the first grudging crumb, the rest very rapidly

vanished. Matty also was tempted irresistibly by a rose-and-apricot-colored cockle-shell, which Mac would make her take. It held cream flavored with something delectable; yet before it was finished she stopped as if she had remembered a trouble, and suddenly looked ready to cry. She was thinking of some people in a dark house-room not very far off, and this made her glance in the direction of the road leading to it. And her glance grew into a stare, for just then round the corner ran a figure whose white robes swept after her over the grass-one flounce was torn and trailing-as softly as foam, and whose bright head had a covering not in the least like any of the caps and hoods Matty was used to see. The feathery brim had got pushed far back in her haste, showing a fluff of golden hair and a flower-tinted face. Bedad, then it was Herself brought them their dinner," Matty said in an awe-stricken tone, while Rosy edged up to her, grasping a handful of her shawl, as if for protection, and both little girls began to retreat.

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It was really the bringer of the hamper, who, having met with young Lambert May on his bicycle, and sent him speeding to fetch assistance, had now been drawn back by the fascination of fear to the loughshore. The sight of the four ragged children there gave her a hope and dread of news, as she hurried up to the little girls with eager questions.

"Be curtsiyin', Rosy, be curtsiyin"," Matty meanwhile was exhorting. "Saints is a great sort of Quality."

"Do you know anything, please, about the hat floating there in the water?" said the stranger.

"Ay, Miss Saint Brigid," Matty said, curtseying extraordinarily low; "it fell off the little boy's head, and he fightin' wid the other. There's the two of them now," and she pointed to Mac and Aylmer squatting by the hamper in their sacks.

"Oh," the stranger said, looking much relieved. "And did you happen to see two other boys in blue-and-white sailorsuits anywhere about?"