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Transcriber's Notes:

     1. Page scan source: Google Books
        http://books.google.com/books?id=GyAGAAAAQAAJ
        (Oxford University)






                            THE LAST CALL.






                            THE LAST CALL.


                              A Romance.



                                  BY

                           RICHARD DOWLING,

       AUTHOR OF "THE MYSTERY OF KILLARD," "THE WEIRD SISTERS,"
                         "SWEET INISFAIL," ETC.





                         _IN THREE VOLUMES_.

                               VOL. I.




                               LONDON:
             TINSLEY BROTHERS, 8, CATHERINE ST., STRAND.
                                1884.
                       [_All rights reserved_.]






                      CHARLES DICKENS AND EVANS
                        CRYSTAL PALACE PRESS.






                            THE LAST CALL.


                              * * * * *


                               Part I.






                            THE LAST CALL.


                              CHAPTER I.


The sun was low behind a bank of leaden cloud which stood like a wall
upon the western horizon. In front of a horse-shoe cove lay a placid
bay, and to the westward, but invisible from the cove, the plains of
the Atlantic.

It was low water, and summer. The air of the cove was soft with
exhalations from the weed-clad rocks stretching in green and brown
furrows from the ridge of blue shingle in the cove to the violet
levels of the sea.

On the ridge of shingle lay a young man, whose eyes rested on the sea.
He was of the middle height and figure. Twenty-seven or twenty-eight
seemed to be his age. He had a neat, compact forehead, dark gray eyes,
ruddy, full cheeks, a prominent nose, full lips, and a square chin.
The face looked honest, good-humoured, manly. The moustaches were
brown; the brown hair curled under the hat. The young man wore a gray
tweed suit and a straw hat.

He lay resting on his elbow. In the line of his sight far out in the
bay a small dot moved almost imperceptibly. The lounger knew this dot
was a boat: distance prevented his seeing it contained a man and a
woman.

Dominique Lavirotte, the man in the boat, was of the middle height and
figure, twenty-four years of age, looking like a Greek, but French by
descent and birth. The eyes and skin were dark, the beard and
moustaches black. The men of Rathclare, a town ten miles off, declared
he was the handsomest man they had ever seen, and yet felt their
candour ill-requited when their sweethearts and wives concurred.

With Dominique Lavirotte in the boat was Ellen Creagh. She was not a
native of Rathclare, but of Glengowra, the small seaside and fishing
town situate on Glengowra Bay, over which the boat was now lazily
gliding in the cool blue light of the afternoon.

Ellen Creagh was tall and slender, above the average height of women,
and very fair. She had light golden-brown hair, bright lustrous blue
eyes, and lips of delicate red. The upper lip was short. Even in
repose her face always suggested a smile. One of the great charms of
the head was the fluent ease with which it moved. The