"This way," said Mr. Giveen, taking a path that led through the kitchen-garden and so round a clump of stunted fir trees to the break in the cliffs that gave passage to the strand. "Now, down by these rocks. It's a powerfully rough road, and I've told Michael time out of mind he ought to have it levelled, but much use there is in talking to him, and him with his head full of horses. Will you take a hold of my arm?"
"No, thanks. I can get on quite well alone."
"Well, step careful. Musha, but I was nearly down then myself. Do you know the name they give this crack in the cliffs?"
"Why, faith, you'll know that when you hear the wind blowing through it in winter. It screeches so you can hear it at Drumboyne. Do you know that I live at Drumboyne?"
"That's the village between here and Cloyne is it not?"
"That's it. But do you know where I live in Drumboyne?"
"Well, now, by any chance, did you see a bungalow on the right after you left Drumboyne, as you were driving here that day on the car with the young chap--Mr. What's-his-name?"
"That's mine," said Mr. Giveen with a sigh. "As nice a house as there is in the country, if it wasn't that I was all alone in it."
"A servant! Sure, of course I keep a servant--two. But it wasn't a servant I was meaning. Shall I tell you what I was meaning?"
"I'm not much interested in other people's affairs," said Miss Grimshaw hurriedly. "Ah! there's the sea at last."
A turn of the cleft had suddenly disclosed the great Atlantic Ocean.
Blue and smooth as satin, it came glassing in, breaking gently over and around the rocks--huge, black rocks, shaggy with seaweed, holding among them pools where at low tides you would find rock bass, lobsters, and crabs.
In winter, during the storms, this place was tremendous and white with flying foam, the waves bursting to the very cliff's base, the echoes shouting back the roar of the breakers, the breakers thundering and storming at the echoes, and over all the wind making a bugle of the Devil's Keyhole; but to-day nothing could be more peaceful, and the whisper of the low tide waves seething in amidst the rocks was a lullaby to rock a babe to sleep.
Just here, protected by the rocks, lay a tiny cove where French kept his boat, which he used for fishing and seal shooting. And here to-day, on a rock beside the boat, which was half water-borne, they found Doolan, the man who looked after the garden and hens and did odd jobs, among which was the duty of keeping the boat in order and looking after the fishing tackle.