But what was his astonishment at beholding, just at the foot of that rock, a beautiful young creature combing her hair, which was of a sea-green colour; and now, the salt water shining upon it, appeared, in the morning light, like melted butter upon cabbage.

Dick guessed at once that she was a Merrow, although he had never seen one before, for he spied the cohuleen driuth, or little enchanted cap, which the sea people use for diving down into the ocean, lying upon the strand, near her; and he had heard, that if he could possess himself of the cap, she would lose the power of going away into the water: so he seized it with all speed, and she, hearing the noise, turned her head about as natural as any Christian.

When the Merrow saw that her little diving-cap was gone, the salt tears-doubly salt, no doubt, from her came trickling down her cheeks, and she began a low mournful cry with just the tender voice of a new-born infant. Dick, although he knew well enough what she was crying for, determined to keep the cohuleen driuth, let her cry never so much, to see what luck would come out of it. Yet he could not help pitying her; and when the dumb thing looked up in his face, and her cheeks all moist with tears, 'twas enough to make any one feel, let alone Dick, who had ever and always, like most of his countrymen, a mighty tender heart of his own.

"Don't cry, my darling," said Dick Fitzgerald; but the Merrow, like any bold child, only cried the more for that.

Dick sat himself down by her side, and took hold of her hand by way of comforting her. "Twas in no particular an ugly hand, only there was a small web between the fingers as there is in a duck's foot; but 'twas as thin and as white as the skin between egg and shell.

"By all the red petticoats and check aprons between Dingle and Tralee," cried Dick, jumping up in amazement, "I'd as soon eat myself, my jewel! Is it I eat you, my pet ?-Now, 'twas some ugly ill-looking thief of a fish put that notion into your own pretty head, with the nice green hair down upon it, that is so cleanly combed out this morning!"

'Man," said the Merrow, "what will you do with me if you won't eat me?”

Dick's thoughts were running on a wife he saw, at the first glimpse, that she was handsome; but since she spoke, and spoke too like any real woman, he was fairly in love with her. Twas the neat way she called him man, that settled the matter entirely.

"Fish," says Dick, trying to speak to her after her own short fashion; "fish," says he, "here's my word, fresh and fasting, for you this blessed morning, that I'll make you Mistress Fitzgerald before all the world, and that's what I'll do."

"Never say the word twice," says she; "I'm ready and willing to be yours, Mister Fitzgerald; but stop, if you please, till I twist up my hair.”

It was some time before she had settled it entirely to her liking; for she guessed, I suppose, that she was going among strangers, where she would be looked at. When that was done the Merrow put the comb in her pocket, and then bent down her head and whispered some words to the water that was close to the foot of the rock.

Dick saw the murmur of the words upon the top of the sea, going out towards the wide ocean, just like a breath of wind rippling along, and, says he, in the greatest wonder, "Is it speaking you are, my darling, to the salt water?"

"It's nothing else," says she, quite carelessly. "I'm just sending word home to my father, not to be waiting breakfast for me; just to keep him from being uneasy in his mind."

"And who's your father, my duck?" says Dick. "What!" said the Merrow, 66 did you never hear of my father? he's the king of the waves, to be sure!"

"And yourself, then, is a real King's daughter?" said Dick, opening his two eyes to take a full and true survey of his wife that was to be. "Oh, I'm nothing else but a made man with you, and a king your father:-to be sure he has all the money that's down in the bottom of the sea!"

"Money," repeated the Merrow, "what's money?" "Tis no bad thing to have when one wants it,"

understanding to bring up whatever you bid them?" "Oh yes," said the Merrow, "they bring me

each other, that a person when they'd have the one need never ask for the other."

However, bed or no bed, money or no money, Dick Fitzgerald determined to marry the Merrow, and the Merrow had given her consent. Away they went, therefore, across the strand, from Gollerus to Ballinrunnig, where Father Fitzgibbon happened to be that morning.

"There are two words to this bargain, Dick Fitzgerald," said his reverence, looking mighty glum. "And is it a fishy woman you'd marry? the Lord preserve us!-Send the scaly creature home to her own people, that's my advice to you, wherever she came from."

Dick had the cohuleen driuth in his hand, and was about to give it back to the Merrow, who looked covetously at it, but he thought for a moment, and then, says he—

"Please your reverence, she's a king's daughter." "If she was the daughter of fifty kings," said Father Fitzgibbon, "I tell you, you can't marry her, she being a fish."

"Please your reverence," said Dick again, in an undertone, "she's as mild and beautiful as the moon."

"If she was as mild and as beautiful as the sun, moon, and the stars, all put together, I tell you, Dick Fitzgerald," said the priest, stamping his right foot," you can't marry her, she being a fish!" "But she has all the gold that's down in the sea only for the asking, and I'm a made man if I marry her and," said Dick, looking up slily, "I can make it worth any one's while to do the job."

:

"Oh ! that alters the case entirely," replied the priest; "why, there's some reason now in what you say why didn't you tell me this before?-marry her by all means, if she was ten times a fish. Money, you know, is not to be refused in these bad times, and I may as well have the hansel of it as another, that maybe would not take half the pains in counselling that I have done."

So Father Fitzgibbon married Dick Fitzgerald to the Merrow, and like any loving couple, they returned to Gollerus, well pleased with each other. Everything prospered with Dick-he was at the sunny side of the world; the Merrow made the best of wives, and they lived together in the greatest contentment.

It was wonderful to see, considering where she had been brought up, how she would busy herself about the house, and how well she nursed the children; for at the end of three years there were as many young Fitzgeralds-two boys and a girl.

In short, Dick was a happy man, and so he might have continued to the end of his days, if he had only the sense to take proper care of what he had got; many another man, however, beside Dick, has not had wit enough to do that.

One day when Dick was obliged to go to Tralee, he left the wife, minding the children at home after him, and thinking she had plenty to do without disturbing his fishing-tackle.

Dick was no sooner gone than Mrs. Fitzgerald set about cleaning up the house, and chancing to pull down a fishing-net, what should she find behind it in a hole in the wall, but her own cohuleen driuth.

She took it out and looked at it, and then she thought of her father the king, and her mother the queen, and her brothers and sisters, and she felt a longing to go back to them.

She sat down on a little stool, and thought over the happy days she had spent under the sea; then she looked at her children, and thought on the love and affection of poor Dick, and how it would break his heart to lose her. "But," says she, "he won't lose me entirely, for I'll come back to him again, and who can blame me for going to see my father and my mother after being so long away from them?"

She got up and went towards the door, but came back again to look once more at the child that was sleeping in the cradle. She kissed it gently, and as she kissed it, a tear trembled for an instant in her eye, and then fell on its rosy cheek. She wiped away the tear, and turning to the eldest little girl, told her to take good care of her brothers, and to be a good child herself until she came back. The Merrow then went down to the strand. The sea was lying calm and smooth, just heaving and glittering in the sun, and she thought she heard a faint sweet singing, inviting her to come down. All her old ideas and feelings came flooding over her mind. Dick and her children were at the instant forgotten, and placing the cohuleen driuth on her head, she plunged in.

Dick came home in the evening, and missing his wife, he asked Kathleen, his little girl, what had become of her mother, but she could not tell him. He then inquired of the neighbours, and he learned that she was seen going towards the strand with a strange-looking thing like a cocked hat in her hand. He returned to his cabin to search for the cohuleen driuth. It was gone, and the truth now flashed upon him.

Year after year did Dick Fitzgerald wait expecting the return of his wife, but he never saw her more. Dick never married again, always thinking that the Merrow would sooner or later return to him, and nothing could ever persuade him but that her father the king kept her below by main force; "for," said Dick, "she surely would not of herself give up her husband and her children."

While she was with him, she was so good a wife in every respect, that to this day she is spoken of in the tradition of the country as the pattern for one, under the name of THE LADY OF GOLLERUS.

66 Do you think we've got all the traps, Larry?" Ivery one of thim, sor, for I counted thim up twicet, an' they're all locked up in the landlord's store, an' here's the kay. Bud he's a dirty-lookin' spalpeen, that same landlord, sor, an' I wouldn't stay in his place longer 'an I could help."

"I won't stay in the city any longer than I can help, Larry, for I'm about sick of this doing nothing but get over miles of water. Only let me get the business settled, and we'll soon be off and get to work."

The speakers were Larry Carey, a quaint looking Irishman, with screwed-up face that might have belonged to a man of any age between twenty-five and fifty; and Frank Adams, Englishman-a broad-shouldered Saxon fellow, six feet high, strong as a giant, and, in spite of the heat, dressed in velveteen jacket, cord breeches, and leather leggings, while his head was crowned by a natty brown wide-awake.

"Yeoman farmer," you said to yourself the moment you saw him; and directly after, "What does he do out of the shires, standing here in the hot sun, and looking over the waters of the wide Pacific?"

"Ye're right, masther dear; though it's an illigant place, an' ye might spind money here as aisy as pour out wather. Bud they're such a mixed-up lot. There's plinty of respectable gintlemen, bud as for some ov thim as stands about wid the inds of their throwsis tucked into their boots, an' a bit of a billy-goat's beard at the ind of their chin-good mornin' to ye, be the same token, an' ye may have the whole of the side-walk to yerselves."

"Good and bad everywhere, Larry," said Adams, thoughtfully, for he was gazing across the beautiful bay at the bright blue waters, dotted with boats, and thinking it was wondrous fair.

"Thin, save us! there's thim yaller-looking Chinees, wid their pigtails, an' their squinny eyes put in crooked, an' looking for all the world as if they were descinded from the bastes ov the field. Why, yer honour, we had a breed ov pigs in our place at Ballyslanner, wid such a Christian kind ov countenances ov their own that they might have been first cousins by their mother's side, pigtails an' all. I'd get out ov the place, though,

masther dear, for the manners of some cv the natives isn't illigant at all."

"What makes you say that?" said Adams, turning round sharply.

"Oh, nothin' much, masther dear; only whin ye left us to go on to the lodgin'-place-the Chishapake Hotel there-while you wint back to the staymer, two or three dirty-lookin' rapparees, wid great wide flappin' hats an' long hair, comes pushin' by me, an' wan ov thim sez something to the misthress, an' the others ups an' spakes to Miss Mary, an' they was that freckened that they shrank back to me, an' I thought there was goin' to be a bit of a wig-dustin', for I showed thim that same piece ov timber, an' I sez, sez I, 'that's headache wood,' I sez-'saplin',' I sez, 'an' it grows on blackthorn bushes in the County Cork,' I sez; an' they looked at it, curus like, an' thin they looked at me, an' wan ov thim spit about seven times; an' by thin we'd reached the hotel, an' the ladies wint in, and that's all."

"Thank you; you're a good fellow, Larry," said Adams, warmly; "and you're right-we won't stay long."

"I wouldn't be in too much of a hurry, if I was you, stranger," said a voice toned with rather a drawl.

Frank Adams turned sharply round, to confront a man of nearly his own height, as strongly built, but less exuberant of muscle; a firm, quiet-looking face he had-one that betrayed nothing-but there was a frank glance in his clear grey eyes; and, if he were a friend, the very kind of a man one would like to have for an ally in a time of trouble.

"I wouldn't be in too much of a hurry, if I was you, stranger," he said; and he rolled a cigar a little further into one corner of his mouth, where, being nearly smoked out, it began to singe the thick, close beard with which his face was half covered.

"Perhaps not," said Adams, gruffly; "but then, you see, I know my own affairs best."

"Now, that's where you're mistaken, stranger : you don't. And that's how it is you Britishers come to grief. You come over to this country, thinking you know everything, and a bit more; bring your own old ideas; set to work on 'em without taking a bit of advice, go wrong in six months, and then swear that the United States is one big windbag, and not worth a red cent."

"Well," said Adams, more gruffly still, "we do mind our own business."

"And set your backs up as soon as a stranger speaks to you."