shaker of Ulster'; here, too, are those who fell in
the great fight at Slieve-an-Aura up in Glen Shesk, when the Macdonnells
finally routed the older lords, the M'Quillans. A clansman once went to
the Countess of Antrim to ask the lease of a farm.

"Another Macdonnell?" asked the countess. "Why, you must all be
Macdonnells in the Low Glens!"

"Ay," said the man. "Too many Macdonnells now, but not one too many on
the day of Aura."

From the cliffs of Antrim we can see on any clear day the Sea of Moyle
and the bonnie blue hills of Scotland, divided from Ulster at this point
by only twenty miles of sea path. The Irish or Gaels or Scots of 'Uladh'
often crossed in their curraghs to this lovely coast of Alba, then
inhabited by the Picts. Here, 'when the tide drains out wid itself
beyant the rocks,' we sit for many an hour, perhaps on the very spot
from which they pushed off their boats. The Mull of Cantire runs out
sharply toward you; south of it are Ailsa Craig and the soft Ayrshire
coast; north of the Mull are blue, blue mountains in a semicircle,
and just beyond them somewhere, Francesca knows, are the Argyleshire
Highlands. And oh! the pearl and opal tints that the Irish atmosphere
flings over the scene, shifting them ever at will, in misty sun or
radiant shower; and how lovely are the too rare bits of woodland!
The ground is sometimes white with wild garlic, sometimes blue with
hyacinths; the primroses still linger in moist, hidden places, and there
are violets and marsh marigolds. Everything wears the colour of Hope. If
there are buds that will never bloom and birds that will never fly, the
great mother-heart does not know it yet. "I wonder," said Salemina, "if
that is why we think of autumn as sad--because the story of the year is
known and told?"

Long, long before the Clandonnell ruled these hills and glens and cliffs
they were the home of Celtic legend. Over the waters of the wee river
Margy, with its half-mile course, often sailed the four white swans,
those enchanted children of Lir, king of the Isle of Man, who had been
transformed into this guise by their cruel stepmother, with a stroke of
her druidical fairy wand. After turning them into four beautiful white
swans she pronounced their doom, which was to sail three hundred years
on smooth Lough Derryvara, three hundred on the Sea of Erris--sail, and
sail, until the union of Largnen, the prince from the north, with Decca,
the princess from the south; until t