A Child of the Glens | Page 3

But let us strive to penetrate this cut-off region either on foot across the moors, or by the rough mountain road that suffices for the wants of the few and scattered residents. Standing (sometimes not without difficulty) on the pitched-up edge of the mighty headland, and gazing on the remote sea beneath, you feel oppressed by the sense of Nature's vastness and your own insignificance. Nor does the dreary extent of rock and pool-dotted moor that stretches inland to the very horizon afford any relief to such feelings. So you turn away in search of rest and shelter. Then but a comparatively few downward steps and you find that the tempestuous wind has ceased to wrangle with you; already you are beneath the shadow of the great rock. Descending further, the bleak aspect of Nature is transformed. The heather gives place to dwarf shrubs; the bare, weather-beaten rocks are clothed with blackberry bushes, or hidden amid luxurious bracken. Dark hollies clinging to detached rocks present varied and life-like forms. The air has suddenly become still. The butterflies hover over the foxgloves. The wild strawberry is at your feet. The sloeberries ripen around you. The sea before you might be the Mediterranean, so gently does it ripple up to the very edge of the hundred tiny plants that force their way amid the sand. Great rock bastions shut you in on either side, and behind, the green slope you had descended rises upward till it meets the blue sky beyond. You might be in the south of England rather than in the "black north" of Ireland; and you are struck with the probably accidental suggestiveness of the name--Tor Bay. It was here that McAravey's lot was cast, and here that Elsie and Jim used in their leisure hours to gather the strawberries and stain themselves with sloes.
CHAPTER II.
Not that Elsie and Jim had many leisure hours. Like all else in the little household, they had their work to do. McAravey's "farm" was but a little patch of ten acres, part of it not even yet quite won back from rock and bracken. On this he toiled as only a man can toil who works for himself, and is assured of his interest in the soil on which he drops his sweat. That he had no grown-up son (as might have been) to aid his declining strength was a hidden sorrow to the old man. He worked on, however, and bravely did his uncomplaining wife assist him. Neither of them had ever known an hour of either ill health or idleness, and they were guiltless of any conscious or intentional cruelty when they early and sternly disciplined their young charges to the same laborious life. The duties of the children were manifold. Jim herded McAravey's two or three cows, or acted as scarecrow in the little patch of corn, each precious grain of which was grudged to the passing birds. Elsie scoured the house, and carried out milk to one or two somewhat distant neighbours. But the most arduous labour of the children was one that they shared together. When the weather suited--after a stormy night, or when there was a spring tide--they would stand for hours on the beach, often wet to the waists, dragging the tempest-tossed sea-weed to the shore with large wooden rakes. This occupation was not merely arduous but dangerous. More than once had little Jim, who was of lighter build than the girl, been fairly dragged off his feet by the force of the receding wave, as it wrestled with him for the possession of the mass of floating weed which he had hooked in his rake. The weed thus drawn to shore was subsequently sorted, the greater part being used for manure, while the rest was burned in one of those rough kilns that abound along the coast, and reduced to kelp, which is used in the manufacture of soap and glass, and from which iodine is extracted. Thus, almost from infancy, the children had been inured to labour, and alas! for them the sunny hours of idle rambling amid the tangled foliage of the glen were few and far between. Neither child had received any education. The only school was nearly four miles off, up on the open moorland. It was only in summer that the children could possibly attend, and even then their visits were infrequent and irregular. On all religious subjects their young minds were dark as night. Even a few days at school had taught them that such things as reading and writing existed, and Jim especially had developed in him vague ideas as to the power and wealth that might be obtained if once he could master these mysterious subjects. But religion was only known to them as being provocative of