Doubtless some of our readers are acquainted with the noble “coast road” that skirts round the north-eastern corner of Ireland, extending, it might almost be said, from Belfast to Londonderry. The characteristic features of this noble esplanade (for such it is) are chiefly to be seen between the little town of Larne, where the railway ends, and Cushendall. Throughout this drive of forty miles you are never out of sight or sound of the sea. The almost level road is seen far ahead of the traveller, like a white boundary line between cliff and wave. You wonder at first if the road was made merely to gladden the tourist, for it does not seem likely that there could be much traffic other than that of pleasure-seekers thus along the margin of the sea. The configuration of this part of the County Antrim, however, explains the position of the road, and justifies the engineer who was so happily enabled to combine the utilitarian with the romantic. A series of deep cut gorges, locally known as “The Glens,” intersect the country, running at right angles to the coast-line and thus forming a succession of gigantic ridges, over which it would be impossible to drive a road. For this reason it has been found necessary to wind round the mouths of these romantic valleys, which are guarded and shut off from each other by a number of formidable and noble headlands, foremost among which ranks the beautiful Garron Point. Thus a succession of surprises await the tourist. Having fairly made your way between the foot of the towering cliff and the inflowing tide, with no prospect in front but huge and grotesque-shaped rocks, which look bent on opposing all further advance, you suddenly find that you have doubled the point. A blue bay opens before you, shut in at its farther side by the next promontory, at the base of which you can distinctly trace the white streak of dusty road, that sweeps round the bay in a graceful semicircle. To your left or while you are speaking, almost directly ahead is the wide opening of one of the “Glens” sweet, retired abodes of peace, sheltered and happy as they look out forever on the sea. The barren and rocky highlands, terminated by the wild bluffs that so courageously plunge themselves into the waves, become gradually softened and verdure-clad as they slope downward, while the narrow valley itself is studded with trees and pretty homesteads.

The people of “The Glens” are peculiar, primitive, and distinct. In these shut-in retreats the ancient Irish and Roman Catholic element largely prevails. When, in consequence of frequent rebellions, the original inhabitants were well-nigh exterminated, and their places taken by Scotch and English settlers, the natives found a refuge in the wilder and more remote parts of the country. Thus, here and there in Ulster generally known as “Protestant Ulster” we come upon little nooks and nests where for two centuries the primitive Irish race has survived. Naturally, living in the presence of their more pushing and prosperous Presbyterian neighbours, these last representatives of a conquered nationality are for the most part of a retiring and suspicious disposition. In quiet country places there is seldom any manifestation of open hostility, and intermarriages and neighbourly feeling have done much to smooth away the edge of bitter memories, but at bottom there remains a radical difference of sentiment, as of creed, which constitutes an impassable, though for the most invisible, barrier.

Michael McAravey was a good specimen of the old Ulster Roman Catholic. He was a tall, powerful man, of nearly seventy at the time when our story opens, while he did not look sixty. His hair was long, iron-grey, and wiry, and it was only when uncovered that the high, bald, wrinkled forehead gave indication of his real age. A rebel at heart, the son of a man who had been “out” in ’98, Michael had gone through life with a feeling that every man’s hand was against him. Sober, self-reliant, and hard-working, the man was grasping and hard as flint. By tradition and instinct a bitter enemy to Protestantism, he was not on that account a friend of the priest, or a particularly faithful son of the Church. He had his own “notions” about things, and though a professed “Catholic,” his neighbours used to speculate whether age or sickness would ever have power to bend that proud spirit, and bring Michael to confession and a humble reception of the “last rites” of the Church. Early in life McAravey had married a Presbyterian girl, and the almost inevitable estrangement that results from a “mixed marriage” had cast its shadow over the lives of the pair. The Kanes had belonged to the small and rigid body of “Covenanters,” and never a Sabbath from childhood till her marriage had ’Lisbeth failed to walk the four rough, up-hill, dreary miles that separated her father’s home from the meeting-house that rose alone, and stern as the Covenant itself, on the bleak moorland above Glenariff. But her last Sabbath-day’s journey was taken the week before her wedding. Michael had gloomily announced that no wife of his should be seen going to a “meeting-house,” and though he never sought to bring her to mass (perhaps in part because it might have involved going himself), his resolution never varied. Nor did his wife contend against it. The habit once broken, she felt no inclination to undertake those long and wearisome journeys. But a Covenanter she meant to live and die. Nothing would have tempted her into the Presbyterian chapel close by. And thus when there came two children to be baptized the difficulty as to religion was compromised, and a triumph allowed to neither side, by the babes being solemnly received into the compassionate and truly Catholic fold of what was then the Established Church. That both these little ones had been taken away by death was a misfortune, and tended to harden even more the somewhat disagreeable and rigid lines that marked the individuality of both Mr. and Mrs. McAravey.

Not that the home thus early laid desolate was altogether unblessed by young faces. For many years the McAraveys had had charge of two little children, who called them father and mother. But, as it was quite evident that no such relationship as this could exist, so it came to be generally understood that there was no tie of blood at all. What connection there might be, or who the children were, was a mystery none had ever solved, nor was it likely that any inquiries if such had ever been ventured upon had met with much encouragement on the part of “auld Mike” or his equally taciturn wife.

Though the Antrim glens had been the scene of such courtship as it is possible to conceive of between Michael McAravey and Elizabeth Kane, they had for many years ceased to be the place of their abode. Previous to the opening of our tale, McAravey had fallen into the tenant-right and goodwill of a farm held by an elder and unmarried brother, and hither he had accordingly moved with his wife, now past middle-age, and the two little ones that called her mother. To find the spot where the McAraveys now lived a spot yet more retired and more lovely than any in the glens properly so called we must once more return to the great “coast road.” Having reached Cushendall, the scenery becomes more imposing, and the high background almost deserves the name of a mountain. Here, at length, the rugged and towering coast-line successfully defies further violation of its lonely majesty. Accordingly the baffled road bends abruptly to the left, and turning its back upon the sea proceeds to climb the long, dreary slope of a flat-topped, uninteresting mountain, and then, having reached the highest point (which is scarcely to be discerned), descends, till once more the sea is come upon at the secluded little country town of Ballycastle. The extreme northeast point of Ireland is thus cut off, and thus the ordinary tourist is cut off too, from one of Nature’s most fairy-like retreats. On looking back from Ballycastle you at once perceive the necessity for your bleak and tedious mountain drive. The eye immediately catches and rests fascinated upon the gigantic and literally overhanging precipice of Fair Head, as it rears its peculiar and acute-angled summit against the sky. One look, and you are convinced that no road could wind its way round the base of that frowning monster. 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.