Ulick smiled at such a fond delusion, bred up as he had been upon the wildest sea-coast, exposed to the full sweep of the Atlantic storm!  She set him off upon his own scenery, to the destruction of his laborious English, as he dwelt on the glories of his beloved rocks rent by fierce sea winds and waves into fantastic, grotesque, or lovely shapes, with fiords of exquisite blue sea between, the variety of which had been to him as the gentle foliage of tamer countries.  Not a tree stood near the ‘town’ of Ballymakilty, but the wild crags, the sparkling waters, the broad open hills, and the bogs, with their intensely purple horizon, held fast upon his heart; and he told of white sands, reported to be haunted by mermaids, and crevices of rock where the tide roared, and gave rise to legends of sea monsters, and giants turned to stone.  He was becoming confidential and intimate when, in a lowered voice, he mentioned the Banshee’s crag, where the shrouded messenger of doom never failed to bewail each dying child of the O’More, and where his own old nurse had actually beheld her keening for the uncle who was killed among the Caffres.  Albinia began to know how she ought to respect the O’Mores.

They were skirting the side of the hill, with a dip of green meadow-land below them, rising on the other side into coppices.  The twang of the horn, and the babbling cry of the hounds, reminded Albinia that the hunting season had begun, and looking over a gate, she watched the parti-coloured forms of the dogs glancing among the brushwood opposite, and an occasional red coat gleaming out through the hedge above.  Just then the cry ceased, the dogs became silent, and scattered hither and thither bewildered.  Ulick looked eagerly, then suddenly vaulted over the gate, went forward a few steps, looked again, pointed towards some dark object which she could barely discern, put his finger in his ear, and uttered an unearthly screech, incomprehensible to her, but well understood by the huntsman, and through him by the dogs, which at once simultaneously dashed in one direction, and came pouring into the meadow over towards him, down went their heads, up went their curved tails, the clatter and rushing of hoofs, and the apparition of red coats, showed the hunters all going round the copse, while at the same moment, away with winged steps bounded her companion, flying headlong like the wind, so as to meet the hunt.

’Ask me not what the lady feels,
Left in that dreadful hour alone,’

laughed Albinia to herself.  ’Well done, speed!  Edmund might be satisfied there’s not much amiss!  Through the hedge—­over the meadow—­a flying leap over the stream—­it is more like a bird than a man—­up again.  Does he mean to follow the hunt all the rest of the way?  Rather Irish, I must say!  And I do believe they will all come down this lane!  I must walk on; it wont do to be overtaken here between these high hedges.  Ah!  I thought he was too much of a gentleman to leave me—­here he comes.  How much in his way I must be!  I never saw such a runner; not a bit does he slacken for the hill—­and what bright cheeks and eyes!  What good it must have done him!’