ove, and so is
let go to drift, him and his boat, while we return to shore."

"A fine way of treating trespassers, bedad!" exclaimed Connell; "but
all the same, there is folks who would call it murder."

"Yes, was it not? But wait. All that was three days ago; and yet, but
one hour since, two of us have seen the ghost of this beast Per'l
standing on the black rocks, with the white face of death, the wet
hair of the drowned, and his clothing torn by the teeth of fishes. He
said not one word, but waited for us, and would have dragged us to the
bottom if we had not fled in time. Now, with such things allowed, we
can no longer work in this place, and so, for the second time, has he
driven us from our good job."

"It's a cruel shame and an outrage on dacency, nothing less!" cried
Connell, in pretended indignation. "At the same time, Rothsky, man,
I'd like to have been with you, for do you know I've never laid eyes
on a ghost at all, but would like mightily to have the exparience.
Would ye mind tellin' me now where could I find this one, just for the
pleasure of the sensation?"

"No, no, Mist Connell! Don't go near it, for you'll be going to your
death if you do."

"But, if I'm willing to risk it why not?"

So the Irishman insisted that they should permit him to share with
them the glory of having seen a ghost, and finally won from them full
directions how to discover the place from which they had fled in
terror. The sly fellow even made pretence of wishing them to go back
with him, and, when they declined to consider his invitation, declared
them to be a set of cowards, and set forth alone.

"It's my belief," he said to himself, as he made his way towards the
place where they had told him he would find a boat, "that them divils
of Dagos have played some dirty trick on Mister Peril. If there'd been
but two of them I'd found some way of extorting a confession from
their lying mouths, but odds of three to one is too big to risk. So I
had to blarney them; but maybe I'll be able to help the lad some way;
and, anyhow, here's for the trying."

It was dusk when Connell, having found the boat, pulled unobserved out
of the land-locked basin, and by the time he reached the ledge, where
he had been told he would find Peveril's ghost, darkness had so closed
in that he could not tell whether it was occupied or not until he had
left his craft and explored its limited area.

"Mister Peril!" he called, softly; "come out, if you're