Grace O'Malley returned to Ireland loaded with princely gifts. It is not recorded in history that Elizabeth ever returned her visit, though at parting, Grace gave her Majesty a cordial invitation to come over to Connaught and see some hunting and fighting that were no shams. "The O'Malley," as Grace called herself, after the fashion of great Irish chiefs, landed first at Howth, intending to pay the Earl a visit. But it happened to be dinner time, and the castle gates were shut, as they always were at that hour, by command of his lordship, who was a high liver, and had a particular objection to being disturbed at his meals. When Grace haughtily demanded admittance, the warder not having a proper sense of the honor she was intending to do his master, sturdily refused. This surly, inhospitable reception so enraged the chieftainess, that she was quite ready to storm the castle, and slay the fat Earl at his own dinner-table, with all his guests and retainers. But she had not with her a sufficient force for this; so was obliged to return to her ship, where she strode up and down the deck in a terribly wrathful state, and made all ring again with her threats and imprecations against the Earl, for the insult she had received. Suddenly a gleam of malicious joy flashed over her dark face. She commanded her men to land her again, and as soon as she reached the shore, she rushed up to a cottage, where she remembered that the nurse of the young lord, the Earl's little son, was living. She caught the child from the woman's arms, telling her to tell her master that _she_ would take charge of his heir, and bring him up to have better notions of hospitality and good manners than could be learned at Howth Castle. Then she hurried back to her ship, with the poor little lordling who seemed too frightened to cry, and hid his face against her bosom, as though shrinking from the look of her dark, angry eyes. Immediately she ordered all sails to be set, and sped away toward Connaught. The nurse ran up to the castle with the news, but as she could not be admitted till the Earl had dined and drunk his punch, so much time was lost that, before his galley could be manned and sent on, Lady Grace's sails were already glimmering down the horizon, and the pursuit was hopeless. Tristram St. Lawrence, the little lord, was a handsome child, between two and three years old, with a look of brave, yet quiet dignity in his face, which roused some kindly feeling in the sternest mariners and warriors, on board the piratical ship, and even touched the heart of the Lady Grace herself--that unsuspected womanly heart, which she had kept sternly pressed down so many years under her breastplate of steel.