Her thoughts swam, as she tried vainly to reconcile her own many experiences with this amazing changelessness. Then all need for such comparison was brushed aside, as a tall figure came striding down the platform, followed by a couple of dogs; and she recognised Laurence Asshlin. Her first conscious thought was, "How fine-looking he has grown!" her second, "How badly his clothes are made!" Then she laughed to herself from happiness, and from that sense of comradeship and clannishness to which the Irish nature is so susceptible. "Larry!" she cried a moment later, as she threw the carriage door open. But her dog Mick was the first to gain her side. Leaping forward at sound of her voice, he sprang into the carriage, whimpering with joy. "Mick!--darling Mick! Oh, you bad thing!" She laughed again delightedly; then she turned, flushed and radiant, to greet her cousin. "Hold him, Larry! That's better! Now, how are you?" She held out her hand and laid it in Asshlin's disengaged one. Larry flushed with excitement and embarrassment. "How are you, Clo? You're awfully unchanged! Let me help you out! The trap is waiting!" As in a dream, she passed through the little station that had seemed so large and imposing to her childish eyes in the time when a day's shopping in Cork had represented the acme of adventure and enterprise; but half-way down the narrow platform she paused. "Oh, the sea, Larry!" she exclaimed, drawing in a long, deep breath--"the heavenly smell of the sea!" Then she suddenly caught sight of Burke, waiting, as he might have waited six years ago, beside the high, old-fashioned trap. "The same trap!" she said, with a little gasp. Asshlin laughed. "The same, only for a coat of varnish. But won't you speak to Tim?" He added the last a trifle diffidently, with a shy glance at her costly clothes and her general air of refinement and distinction. Without a word she went forward. "Tim!" she said very softly. The old man turned quickly; then drew back. But Clodagh held out her hand, regardless of the staring summer visitors. "Tim! I'm not so changed that you don't know me?" The old man remained motionless. "I'd know you if I was under the sod, and the sound of your voice come anear me," he said almost solemnly. Clodagh felt her throat tighten, as the old horny hand was slowly extended to clasp her own. "I'm glad to be home, Tim!" she said impulsively--"I'm glad to be home!" There was a delay of several minutes while the porter extricated her luggage from the van; and during this interval, she found time to admire the young horse, which had been bred at Orristown, and to make friends with the Irish terrier that had been Mick's companion on the run to Muskeere, besides asking a dozen questions concerning people and things at Carrigmore. Then at last, the trunk was deposited under the roomy seat of the trap; and Asshlin stepped forward to help her into her place.