ght. He thanked him, and three weeks afterwards he landed
in Cork.

As he sat in the railway carriage he recalled his native village--he
could see it and its lake, and then the fields one by one, and the
roads. He could see a large piece of rocky land--some three or four
hundred acres of headland stretching out into the winding lake. Upon
this headland the peasantry had been given permission to build their
cabins by former owners of the Georgian house standing on the pleasant
green hill. The present owners considered the village a disgrace, but
the villagers paid high rents for their plots of ground, and all the
manual labour that the Big House required came from the village: the
gardeners, the stable helpers, the house and the kitchen maids.

He had been thirteen years in America, and when the train stopped at
his station, he looked round to sec if there were any changes in it. It
was just the same blue limestone station-house as it was thirteen years
ago. The platform and the sheds were the same, and there were five
miles of road from the station to Duncannon. The sea voyage had done
him good, but five miles were too far for him to-day; the last time he
had walked the road, he had walked it in an hour and a half, carrying a
heavy bundle on a stick.

He was sorry he did not feel strong enough for the walk; the evening
was fine, and he would meet many people coming home from the fair, some
of whom he had known in his youth, and they would tell him where he
could get a clean lodging. But the carman would be able to tell him
that; he called the car that was waiting at the station, and soon he
was answering questions about America. But Bryden wanted to hear of
those who were still living in the old country, and after hearing the
stories of many people he had forgotten, he heard that Mike Scully, who
had been away in a situation for many years as a coachman in the King's
County, had come back and built a fine house with a concrete floor. Now
there was a good loft in Mike Scully's house, and Mike would be pleased
to take in a lodger.

Bryden remembered that Mike had been in a situation at the Big House;
he had intended to be a jockey, but had suddenly shot up into a fine
tall man, and had had to become a coachman instead. Bryden tried to
recall the face, but he could only remember a straight nose, and a
somewhat dusky complexion. Mike was one of the heroes of his childhood,
and his youth floated before him, and he caught