"Shiny Wall? Who should know better than I? We all came from Shiny Wall, thousands of years ago, when it was decently cold, and the climate was fit for gentlefolk; but now, what with the heat, and what with these vulgar-winged things who fly up and down and eat everything, so that gentlepeople's hunting is all spoilt, and one really cannot get one's living, or hardly venture off the rock for fear of being flown against by some creature that would not have dared to come within a mile of one a thousand years ago--what was I saying? Why, we have quite gone down in the world, my dear, and have nothing left but our honour. And I am the last of my family. A friend of mine and I came and settled on this rock when we were young, to be out of the way of low people. Once we were a great nation, and spread over all the Northern Isles. But men shot us so, and knocked us on the head, and took our eggs--why, if you will believe it, they say that on the coast of Labrador the sailors used to lay a plank from the rock on board the thing called their ship, and drive us along the plank by hundreds, till we tumbled down into the ship's waist in heaps; and then, I suppose, they ate us, the nasty fellows! Well--but--what was I saying? At last, there were none of us left, except on the old Gairfowlskerry, just off the Iceland coast, up which no man could climb. Even there we had no peace; for one day, when I was quite a young girl, the land rocked, and the sea boiled, and the sky grew dark, and all the air was filled with smoke and dust, and down tumbled the old Gairfowlskerry into the sea. The dovekies and marrocks, of course, all flew away; but we were too proud to do that. Some of us were dashed to pieces, and some drowned; and those who were left got away to Eldey, and the dovekies tell me they are all dead now, and that another Gairfowlskerry has risen out of the sea close to the old one, but that it is such a poor flat place that it is not safe to live on: and so here I am left alone." This was the Gairfowl's story, and, strange as it may seem, it is every word of it true. "If you only had had wings!" said Tom; "then you might all have flown away too." "Yes, young gentleman: and if people are not gentlemen and ladies, and forget that _noblesse oblige_, they will find it as easy to get on in the world as other people who don't care what they do. Why, if I had not recollected that _noblesse oblige_, I should not have been all alone now." And the poor old lady sighed. "How was that, ma'am?" "Why, my dear, a gentleman came hither with me, and after we had been here some time, he wanted to marry--in fact, he actually proposed to me. Well, I can't blame him; I was young, and very handsome then, I don't deny: but, you see, I could not hear of such a thing, because he was my deceased sister's husband, you see?" "Of course not, ma'am," said Tom; though, of course, he knew nothing about it. "She was very much diseased, I suppose?"