s indifferent to
his country's welfare, but every mind requires rest, and he wished
himself away in a foreign country, distracted every moment by new
things, learning the language out of a volume of songs, and hearing
music, any music, French or German--any music but Irish music. He
sighed, and wondered why he sighed. Was it because he feared that if he
once went away he might never come back?

This lake was beautiful, but he was tired of its low gray shores; he was
tired of those mountains, melancholy as Irish melodies, and as
beautiful. He felt suddenly that he didn't want to see a lake or a
mountain for two months at least, and that his longing for a change was
legitimate and most natural. It pleased him to remember that everyone
likes to get out of his native country for a while, and he had only been
out of sight of this lake in the years he spent in Maynooth. On leaving
he had pleaded that he might be sent to live among the mountains by
Kilronan Abbey, at the north end of the lake, but when Father Conway
died he was moved round to the western shore; and every day since he
walked by the lake, for there was nowhere else to walk, unless up and
down the lawn under the sycamores, imitating Father Peter, whose wont it
was to walk there, reading his breviary, stopping from time to time to
speak to a parishioner in the road below; he too used to read his
breviary under the sycamores; but for one reason or another he walked
there no longer, and every afternoon now found him standing at the end
of this sandy spit, looking across the lake towards Tinnick, where he
was born, and where his sisters lived.

He couldn't see the walls of the convent to-day, there was too much mist
about; and he liked to see them; for whenever he saw them he began to
think of his sister Eliza, and he liked to think of her--she was his
favourite sister. They were nearly the same age, and had played
together; and his eyes dwelt in memory on the dark corner under the
stairs where they used to play. He could even see their toys through the
years, and the tall clock which used to tell them that it was time to
put them aside. Eliza was only eighteen months older than he; they were
the red-haired ones, and though they were as different in mind as it was
possible to be, he seemed nearer Eliza than anyone else. In what this
affinity consisted he couldn't say, but he had always felt himself of
the same flesh and blood. Neither his father nor mother had inspi