"Stop him!" cried the girl. "He's insulted me! He has nearly drowned me! He frightened me into swearing I wouldn't tell!"
"I didn't," cried Mr. Giveen, now in the powerful grasp of his cousin. "It wasn't my fault. Let loose of me. Let up, or I'll have the law of you!"
"Didn't you?" replied French, who had caught his kinsman by the scruff of his neck and was holding him from behind, shaking him as a terrier shakes a rat, "we'll soon see that. Moriarty, run for a policeman. Take a horse and go for a constable at Drumboyne. Well, then, what do you mean, eh?--what do you mean, eh?--you blackguard, with your philandering? You bubble-headed, chuckle-headed son of a black sweep, you! Call yourself an Irish gentleman! Insulting a lady! Miss Grimshaw, say the word, and I'll stick the ugly head of him in the water and drown him!"
"No, no!" cried the girl, taking the words literally. "Perhaps he didn't mean it. I don't think he is quite right. He only wanted to kiss me. He rocked the boat. Perhaps it was only in fun."
"Now listen to me," cried French, accentuating every second word with a shake, "if I ever catch you within five miles of Drumgool again I'll give you a lambasting you won't get over in a month. That's my last word to you. Off you go!"
The last words were followed by a most explicit kick that sent Mr. Giveen racing and running across the bit of sand till he reached the rocks, over which he scrambled, making record time to the mouth of the Devil's Keyhole. Near that spot he turned and shook his fist at his kinsman.
"I'll be even with you yet, Mick French!" cried Mr. Giveen.
"Away with you!" replied the threatened one, making as if to run after him, at which the figure of Mr. Giveen vanished into the Devil's Keyhole as a rat vanishes up a drain.
French burst into a laugh, in which Miss Grimshaw joined.
"Now he'll be your enemy," said the girl as Moriarty flung the sculls over his shoulder and they prepared to return to the house.
"Much I care!" replied the owner of Garryowen.
The first and most pressing necessity of a woman's life is--what? Love? No, a home. A home implies love and everything in life worth having.
A girl without a home and without relations is the loneliest thing on earth, simply because she is a woman, and nothing has such a capacity for loneliness as a woman.