Pat was the speaker, and the beautiful little boy the listener. They were sitting together in the hot sunshine, just beneath the south wall of the lighthouse, well sheltered from the wind; and the sun was shining with all the brilliance that it sometimes can in early February on the south coast, though the sea tumbled and foamed beneath the strong gale which still blew steadily day by day, and cut off Lone Rock from the mainland. But the weather began to show signs of modifying. The careful keeper of the lighthouse had that day told his wife that he believed a few more days would see the end of this bout of rough weather. The glass was beginning to rise after its long period of depression, and this was the third day on which the sun had shone out brightly and bravely, tempting the two children out upon the rocks for several hours, in the brightest part of the day. By this time the two boys were the best of friends. They were not happy for a moment if separated. Pat took the lead in devising amusement for his small guest, and was in one sense of the word the leading spirit, yet it was the little prince who really ruled the pair, for his word was law to his comrade, who could have sat and looked at him, or listened to his merry prattle for hours. The little gentleman had a way with him which had captivated every heart within the lighthouse. Nat and Eileen were almost as much his slaves as Pat. He could twist any one of the three round his chubby little fingers, and this was plainly no new art to him. Those merry ways of his, half-coaxing, half-commanding, had plainly been practised before. He was no novice in the art of getting what he wanted, this beautiful little prince (as Pat firmly and fully believed him to be); and it seemed to Eileen a pathetic thing that the little fellow should thus be cast among strangers, and those of a rank in life so much humbler than his own, without being able to explain to them who he was, nor whence he had come, although in other ways he could prattle away fast enough, and tell little stories, too, in his own peculiar fashion. Eileen had listened in vain for any illusions to his parents in his talk; but the name of father or mother was never on his lips. Once, when she asked him where mother was, he pointed vaguely out over the sea; but she could not make out whether he meant anything by the gesture; and the only relative he ever spoke of was "Auntie;" whilst he did not appear to be pining after anybody, but was as merry as a lark from morning to night; very different from what Pat would have been, even as a little child, if suddenly robbed of all those whom he had learned to love.