ndle of kindling,
whereupon a gentleman inside the carriage leaned out and swore, and then
the brutal coachman, lashing out at the bare-headed woman with his whip,
struck the boy on his naked legs.

At the next moment the carriage had gone. It had belonged to the head of
the O'Neills, Lord Raa of Castle Raa, whose nearest kinsman, Captain
O'Neill, had killed my grandfather, so my poor grandmother said nothing.
But her little son, as soon as his smarting legs would allow, wiped his
eyes with his ragged sleeve and said:

"Never mind, mammy. You shall have a carriage of your own when I am a
man, and then nobody shall never lash you."

His mother died. He was twenty years of age at that time, a
large-limbed, lusty-lunged fellow, almost destitute of education but
with a big brain and an unconquerable will; so he strapped his chest and
emigrated to America. What work he found at first I never rightly knew.
I can only remember to have heard that it was something dangerous to
human life and that the hands above him dropped off rapidly. Within two
years he was a foreman. Within five years he was a partner. In ten years
he was a rich man. At the end of five-and-twenty years he was a
millionaire, controlling trusts and corporations and carrying out great
combines.

I once heard him say that the money tumbled into his chest like crushed
oats out of a crown shaft, but what happened at last was never fully
explained to me. Something I heard of a collision with the law and of a
forced assignment of his interests. All that is material to my story is
that at forty-five years of age he returned to Ellan. He was then a
changed man, with a hard tongue, a stern mouth, and a masterful lift of
the eyebrows. His passion for wealth had left its mark upon him, but the
whole island went down before his face like a flood, and the people who
had made game of his father came crawling to his feet like cockroaches.

The first thing he did on coming home was to buy up his mother's croft,
re-thatch the old house, and put in a poor person to take care of it.

"Guess it may come handy some day," he said.

His next act was worthy of the son of "Neale the Lord." Finding that
Captain O'Neill had fallen deeply into debt, he bought up the braggart's
mortgages, turned him out of the Big House, and took up his own abode in
it.

Twelve months later he made amends, after his own manner, by marrying
one of the Captain's daughters. There were two of them. I