“Saints above! is little Pat strayin’ along wid the cow?” said Mrs. Fottrel, much aghast. “I was noticin’ I didn’t see him anywheres this evenin’. What’s to become of him down there, and it risin’ beyond the heighth of iverythin’ as fast as it can flow? Sure, this mornin’ ’t was wallopin’ itself agin’ the wall, back of our place, fit to swally all before it.” “Why didn’t you tell me the child was below?” said Mick. “I’d lep down there and fetch him up aisy enough; on’y there was no mortial use goin’ after the cow, for niver a crathur that took its stand on four hoofs ’ud git its own len’th up the cliff, unless it might be some little divil of a goat. And the wather’s dhrowndin’-deep alongside it afore now.” “Musha, good gracious! sure, all I done was to bid the spalpeen be keepin’ an eye on her now and agin while he would be playin’ about there,” said Joe; “and it’s twinty chances if ivir he did at all. Trapesed off wid himself somewheres; he’ll be right enough be this time. ’T is n’t the likes of him to go to loss, it’s the quare five-poun’ note he’d fetch at Athenry fair.” “He might ha’ broke his legs climbin’ disp’rit on the rocks,” said Mrs. Fottrel, unconvinced by the argument from unsaleability,” and be lyin’ there now waitin’ for the say-waves to wash the life out of him. Heaven pity the crathur!” “Sure, I’ll step down and see what’s gone wid him,” said Mick. The descent of the cliff, though not riskless, was no great feat for an active youth, and Mick accomplished it safely, but to little purpose, he thought at first, since the irreclaimable cow appeared to be the sole denizen of the shrinking beach. However, when he had shouted and scrambled for some time without result, he came abruptly upon a nook among the piled-up rocks, where a very small black-headed boy in tattered petticoats was digging the sandy floor with a razor-shell. “Och, it’s there you are,” said Mick, stepping down from a weedy ledge; “and what have you in it at all that you didn’t hear me bawlin’ to you?” “Throops,” said Pat, gloatingly, almost too absorbed t o glance off his work; “it’s Ballyclavvy, the way it did be in the school readin’-book at Duffclane. There’s the Roossian guns” (he pointed to a row of black-mouthed mussel-shells, mounted on periwinkle carriages), “and here’s the sides of the valley I’m makin’; long and narrer it was. Just step round and look at it from where I am, Micky, but don’t be clumpin’ your fut on the French cavalary.” “The divil’s in it all,” said Mick, with a sudden bitter vehemence, which he accounted for to himself by adding, as he pointed toward the seething white line: “D’ you see where that’s come to, you little bosthoon? And you sittin’ grubbin’ away here as if you were pitaty-diggin’ a dozen mile inland.”