and a
sleeping closet, both open to the thatch, which was sooty with smoke.
The floor was of bare earth, trodden hard and shiny. There was one
little window in each apartment, but after the breakages of years,
the panes were obscured by rags stuffed into the gaps to keep out the
weather. The roof bore traces of damp, and I asked if the rain came into
the house. "Och, yes, and bad, bad, bad!" said the elder woman. "He left
us, sir, years ago." That was her way of saying that her husband was
dead, and that since his death there had been no man to do an odd
job about the place. The two women lived by working in the fields, at
weeding, at planting potatoes, at thinning cabbages, and at the hay in
its season. Their little bankrupt barn belonged to them, and it was all
they had. In that they lived, or lingered, on the mountain top, a
long stretch of bare hillside, away from any neighbour, alone in their
poverty, with mountains before and behind, the broad grey sea, without
ship or sail, down a gully to the west, nothing visible to the east
save the smoke from the valley where lay the habitations of men, nothing
audible anywhere but the deep rumble of the waves' bellow, or the chirp
of the birds overhead, or, perhaps, when the wind was southerly, the
church bells on Sunday morning. Never have I looked upon such lonely
penury, and yet there, even there, these forlorn women kept their souls
alive. "Yes," they said, "we're working when we can get the work, and
trusting, trusting, trusting still."

I have lingered too long over this poor adventure of losing my way to
Glen Rushen, but my little sketch may perhaps get you close to that side
of Manx life whereon I wish to speak to-day. I want to tell the history
of religion in Man, so far as we know it; and better, to my thinking,
than a grave or solid disquisition on the ways and doings of Bishops or
Spiritual Barons, are any peeps into the hearts and home lives of the
Manx, which will show what is called the "innate religiosity" of the
humblest of the people. To this end also, when I have discharged my
scant duty to church history, or perhaps in the course of my hasty
exposition of it, I shall dwell on some of those homely manners and
customs, which, more than prayer-books and printed services, tell us
what our fathers believed, what we still believe, and how we stand
towards that other life, that inner life, that is not concerned with
what we eat and what we drink, and wherewithal