since then to fetch in so close with the tide running against her."

"I wonder why she's doing it," said Maurice. "She'll have to run off again to clear Benmore."

"She looks a big ship," said Una.

"Maybe she's 250 tons," said Neal. "She's about the size of the brig that sailed from Portrush for Boston last summer year with two hundred emigrants in her."

"She's fetching closer in yet," said Maurice. "See, she's hoisted some flag or other, two flags, no, three, from the peak of her spanker. It's a signal. I wonder what they want. Now they've laid her to. She must want a boat out from the shore. Come on, Neal, come on, Brown-Eyes. We'll go out to her. We'll be first. There's no other boat nearer than those at the Port, and we've got a long start of them. Never mind the fish. Or wait. Fling them in. I dare say the men on the brig will be glad of them. She must be an American."

In a few minutes the boat was pulled clear of the little bay and out of the shelter of Rackle Roy. The mast was stepped and the sail set. The sheet was slacked out and the boat sped seawards before the wind. Maurice was all impatience. He got out his oar.

"It's no use," said Neal, "the breeze has freshened since morning. She'll sail quicker than we could row."

The brig lay little more than a mile from the shore. The boat soon reached her.

"Boat, ahoy," yelled a voice from the deck. "Lower your sail, and come up under my lee."

Maurice and Neal obeyed. The sea was rougher than it had been near the shore. The boat, when Maurice had made fast the rope flung to him, plunged up and down beside the brig, and needed careful handling to prevent her being damaged.

The crew looked over the side with eager curiosity.

"Say, boys," said the captain, "what will you take for your fish? I'll trade with you."

"I don't want to sell them," said Maurice. "I'll give them to you."

His voice and accent, his refusal to barter, betrayed the fact that he was a gentleman.

"I guess," said the captain, "that you're an aristocrat, a British aristocrat, too proud to take the money of the men who whipped you in the States. That's so."

"I'm an Irish gentleman," said Maurice.

"Well, Mr. Irish Gentleman, if you're too darned aristocratic to trade, I'll give you a present of a case of good Virginia, and you may give me a present of your fish. I'd call it a swap, but if that turns your stomach I'll let you call it a mutual present, an expression of international goodwill."

"Fling him up the fish, Neal," said Maurice.

Then another man appeared beside the captain on the quarter-deck. He was not a seafaring man. He was lean and yellow, and had keen grey eyes. His face seemed in some way familiar to Neal, though he could not recollect having ever seen the man before.

"Yon are the Causeway cliffs," he said, "and yon's Pleaskin Head, and the islands we passed are the Skerries?"

"You know this coast," said Neal.

"I knew this coast, young man, before your mother had the dandling of you. I know it now, though it's five and twenty years since I set foot on it. But that's not the question. What I want to know is this. Can you put me ashore? I could do well if you land me at the Causeway. I'd make shift with my bag if you put me out at Port Ballin-trae. I don't want to be going on to Glasgow just for the pleasure of coming back again."

"I'll land you at the Black Rock under Run-kerry," said Maurice, "if you can pull an oar. The wind's rising, and I've no mind to carry idle passengers."

"I can pull an oar," said the stranger.

"I guess he can pull enough to break your back, young man," said the captain. "He's an American citizen, and he's been engaged in whipping your British army. I guess an American citizen can lick a darned aristocrat at pulling an oar same as he did at shooting off guns."

"Shut your damned mouth," said Maurice, suddenly angry, "or I'll leave you to land your passenger yourself and see how you like beating the bottom out of your brig against our rocks. You'll find an Irish rock harder than your Yankee wood."

The passenger fetched a small hand-bag and lowered it into the boat. Under a shower of jibes from the captain, Maurice and Neal pushed off and started for the row home against the wind.

CHAPTER II

The passenger took his seat in the bow of the boat and stripped off his coat in readiness to pull an oar. But no oar was offered to him. Maurice St. Clair seemed to have entirely forgotten the stranger's presence. The remarks of the American captain had angered him, and his mind worked on the insults hurled at him in parting. Neal was angry, too. They pulled viciously at the oars. From time to time Maurice broke out fiercely—

"An unmannerly brute! I wish I had him somewhere off the deck of his brig. I'd teach him how to speak to a gentleman.

"Is that his filthy tobacco at your feet, Brown-Eyes? Pitch it overboard.

"I suppose he's a specimen of the Republican breed. That's what comes of liberty and equality and French Jacobinism and Tom Paine and the Rights of Man. Damned insolence I call it."

"I'd like to remind you, young man———." The words came with a quiet drawl from the passenger in the bow.

Maurice stopped rowing, and turned round.

"Well, what do you want to say? More insolence? Better be careful unless you want to try what it feels like to swim ashore."

"I'd like to remind you, young man, that Captain Hercules Getty, of the State of Pennsylvania, who commands the brig 'Saratoga,' belongs to a nation which has fought for liberty and won it."

"What's that got to do with his insolence?"

"I reckon that an Irishman who hasn't fought and hasn't won ought to sing small when he's dealing with a citizen of the United States of America."

Neal turned in his seat. The stranger's reproach struck him as being unjust as well as being in bad taste. Maurice St. Clair was the son of a man who had done something for Ireland.

"You don't know who you're talking to," he said, "or what you're talking about. Lord Dunseveric, the father of the man in front of you, commanded the North Antrim Volunteers, and did his part in winning the independence of our Parliament."

The stranger looked steadily at Neal for sometime. Then he said—

"Is your name Neal Ward?"

"Yes. How do you know me?"

"You're the son of Micah Ward, the Presbyterian minister?"

"Yes."

"Well, I just guessed as much when I took a good look at your face. Will you ask your father when you go home whether the Volunteers won liberty for Irishmen, and what he thinks of the independence of an Irish Parliament filled with placemen and the nominees of a corrupt aristocracy?"

"Who are you?" asked Neal.

"My name's Donald Ward. I'm your father's youngest brother. I'm on my way to your father's house now, or I would be if you two young men would take to your oars again. If you don't I guess the first land we'll touch will be Greenland. We'd fetch Runkerry quicker if you'd pass forward the two thole pins I see at your feet and let me get an oar out in the bow. The young lady in the stern can keep us straight with the helm."

"Give him the thole pins, Neal," said Maurice, "and then pull away."

"Just let me speak a word with you, Mr. St. Clair," said Donald Ward, as he hammered the thole pins into their holes. "You're angry with Captain Hercules Getty, and I don't altogether blame you. The captain's too fond of brag, and that's a fact. He can't hold himself in when he meets a Britisher. He's so almighty proud of the whipping his people gave the scum. But there's no need for you to be angry with me. I'm an Irishman myself, and not a Yankee. I fought in North Carolina, under General Nathaniel Greene, but I fought with Irishmen beside me, men from County Antrim and County Down, and they weren't the worst men in the