“You see, mother,” said Dennis (to whom Mrs. Connor was administering a private lecture on practical jokes), “we’d never have done it, only he was such an awfully conceited chap. We told him some stories the other day, and he tossed up his nose and talked about Irish ignorance and superstition. I knew he was a hollow sham all the while; and you see, directly he heard the hag’s story he was carried away by his fright, and never stopped to reason about anything. He’ll never lord it over Major and Minor again, that’s one comfort; the former has twice his sense, and Harry’s a plucky little fellow, and will be sure, if he tries it, to give him a reminder about Con Condon the headless, and the white cow’s skull.” [3] Oilioll Olum was king of Munster in the second century. He was a ferocious and powerful monarch. The story here told of him is recorded in the ancient annals of Ireland. [Illustration] THE “BLACK DRAGOON.” _By SIDNEY DARYL._ “Thro’ the black night that sits immense around, Lash’d into foam the fierce contending brine, Seems o’er a thousand raging waves to frown.” _Thomson._ Somewhere under the cliffs, on the South Coast, lay the little fishing village of Gunnerstone, at least, if some dozen ricketty huts and a tumble-down jetty deserve the appellation. Isolated and cut off from anything like familiar intercourse with the rest of the world, its inhabitants led a wild, precarious existence, and some ugly stories were told of their predilection for plunder and wrecking. Many vessels had been known to go upon the Gunnerstone reef in comparatively calm weather, when all hands might have been saved with little difficulty, but by some unaccountable mishap or other none were ever known to survive, and by the time the Coastguard men arrived they were astonished to find how quickly the ship herself had gone to pieces. Nature had made Gunnerstone almost inaccessible from the sea, save to the natives of the place, to whom alone a certain narrow passage was known through which they could navigate their boats in safety up to the jetty. From the very edge of the beach to some half mile out to sea stretched a long reef of sunken rocks, which the blue jackets on board the revenue cutter were wont to call the real Gunnerstone fishing nets. Many and fatal had been the wrecks in this particular locality, and Homeward and Outward bound always wished themselves well past it. It became obvious that the establishment of a lighthouse here was absolutely necessary, and after the usual amount of official circumlocution, and the preparation of a great many surveys and plans, things at length took a business-like turn, and the building of a lighthouse was commenced on a large rock at the extremity of the reef, which rose abruptly out of the water as if specially intended by nature to assist in the work of humanity. The construction proceeded but