The wearer of the hat, as she stepped upon the deck and confronted this demonstration, confessed to surprise by stopping short and lifting her black brows in inquiry. Bernard sheepishly let his hands fall to his side before the cool glance with which she regarded him. “Is it viewing the vessel you are?” she asked. “Her jigger lug-sail is unusual, I’m told.” The young man’s blue eyes glistened in reproachful appeal. “What do I know about lugger jig-sails, or care, either,” he asked. “I hurried here the moment I heard, to--to see _you!_” “’T is flattered I am, I’m sure,” said Kate, dryly, looking away from him to the brown cliffs beyond. “Come, be fair!” Bernard pleaded. “Tell me what the matter is. I thought I had every reason to suppose you’d be glad to see me. It’s plain enough that you are not; but you--you _might_ tell me why. Or no,” he went on, with a sudden change of tone, “I won’t ask you. It’s your own affair, after all. Only you’ll excuse the way I rushed up to you. I’d had my head full of your affairs for days past, and then your disappearance--they thought you were drowned, you know--and I--I--” The young man broke off with weak inconclusiveness, and turned as if to descend the ladder again. But John Pat had rowed away with the boat, and he looked blankly down upon the clear water instead. Kate’s voice sounded with a mellower tone behind him. “I wouldn’t have ye go in anger,” she said. Bernard wheeled around in a flash. “Anger!” he cried, with a radiant smile chasing all the shadows from his face. “Why, how on earth _could_ I be angry with _you?_ No; but I was going away most mightily down in the mouth, though--that is,” he added, with a rueful kind of grin, “if my boat hadn’t gone off without me. But, honestly, now, when I drove in here this morning from Skibbereen, I felt like a victorious general coming home from the wars. I’d done everything I wanted to do. I had the convent business blocked, and I had O’Daly on the hip; and I said to myself, as we drove along: ‘She’ll be glad to see me.’ I kept saying that all the while, straight from Skibbereen to Muirisc. Well, then--you can guess for yourself--it was like tumbling backward into seven hundred feet of ice-water!” Kate’s face had gradually lost its implacable rigidity, and softened now for an instant into almost a smile. “So much else has happened since that drive of yours,” she said gently. “And what were ye doing at Skibbereen?”