No answer seemed forthcoming. As far inland as the eye could stretch, even to the gray crown of Dunkelly, no sign of human habitation was to be seen. The jutting headland of the Three Castles on which she stood--with the naked primeval cliffs; the roughly scattered boulders framed in scrub-furze too stunted and frightened in the presence of the sea to venture upon blossoms; the thin ashen-green grass blown flat to earth in the little sheltered nooks where alone its roots might live--presented the grimmest picture of desolation she had ever seen. An undersized sheep had climbed the rocks to gaze upon the intruders--an animal with fleece of such a snowy whiteness that it looked like an imitation baa-baa from a toy-shop--and Kate found herself staring into its vacuous face with sympathy, so helplessly empty was her own mind of suggestions. “’Tis two Oirish miles to the nearest house,” said Murphy, in a despondent tone. Kate turned to the young man, and spoke wistfully: “If you’ll stop here, I’ll go for help,” she said. The young man from Houghton County laughed aloud. “If there’s any going to be done, I guess you’re not the one that’ll do it,” he answered. “But, first of all, let’s see where we stand exactly. How did you come here, anyhow?” “We rowed around from--from our home--a long way distant in that direction,” pointing vaguely toward Dunmanus Bay, “and our boat was left there at the nearest landing point, half a mile from here.” “Ah, well, _that’s_ all right,” said the young man. “It would take an hour to get anybody over here to help, and that would be clean waste of time, because we don’t need any help. I’ll just tote him over on my back, all by my little self.” “Ah--you’d never try to do the likes of _that!_” deprecated the girl. “Why not?” he commented, cheerfully--and then, with a surprise which checked further protest, she saw him tie his game-bag round his waist so that it hung to the knee, get Murphy seated up on the rock against which he had learned, and then take him bodily on his back, with the wounded foot comfortably upheld and steadied inside the capacious leathern pouch. “‘Why not,’ eh?” he repeated, as he straightened himself easily under the burden; “why he’s as light as a bag of feathers. That’s one of the few advantages of living on potatoes. Now you bring along the gun--that’s a good girl--and we’ll fetch up at the boat in no time. You do the steering, Murphy. Now, then, here we go!” The somber walls of the Three Castles looked down in silence upon this strange procession as it filed past under their shadows--and if the gulls which wheeled above and about the moss-grown turrets described the spectacle later to the wraiths of the dead-and-gone O’Mahonys and to the enchanted horse-shaped woman in the lake, there must have been a general agreement that the parish of Kilmoe had seen never such another sight before, even in the days of the mystic Tuatha de Danaan.