confide in her the whole story. To that end she had taken the conversation most gently by the hand and was leading it persuasively as you lead a wilful child. But it had struggled free, and with my assistance had set off in an utterly unexpected direction. She was standing there, watching it, as it wandered out of sight. No wonder she was annoyed. For that matter, no wonder I smiled. I had done it, and nothing but force could bring it back again into the path where most she needed it. Now, force is no argument with a woman. She only makes use of it when everything else fails; then she breaks into tears or fans the storm of her anger till the clouds are heavy in her face, and the flashes of her eyes are more dangerous than any lightning.

But everything had not failed her. If she had lost in her first endeavor, I am perfectly sure she felt confident of ultimate victory. The frown soon faded from her forehead and, in another moment, I found it hard to believe that I had secured a victory at all.

"Cruikshank's not a person who knows much about women in any case," said she at length. "I think you understand women better than any man I've ever met."

Well—there was my victory gone from me for ever. It was the delivering up of her sword, of course, but she had sharpened her dagger on it before she placed it in my hands.

"But Cruikshank understands flowers," she went on, "and they are better than any woman. Come and see the cottage I told you about with the bit of field he's going to make into a garden. Or—I'm sorry—perhaps you want to read your letter!"

"That can wait," said I. "I'd sooner see the cottage." At which, both knowing it to be a most excellent lie, we smiled each to the other and set off through the garden.

Up a narrow boreen, banked on each side by low walls of grass-sod and stone where grew violets and primroses in the company of moss and ladder fern, we made our way to Cruikshank's little cottage on the high land above Ballysheen. Here there are fields of young wheat, breaking in brilliant green through the stony, unpromising ground. There are fields of pasture, too, that stretch away to the sheer cliff's edge where the sheep browse and the gulls go circling all day long. So high are you there, that only a mere ribbon strip of the far sea is visible, but the muted sound of it as it swells upon the rocks, comes to your ears in a sonorous sibilant note, which grows and grows into the very music of the place. So swiftly do your ears become attuned to it, that 

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