s to do, and lied as tenderly as an epitaph about my
disappearance from London, I cut them up and burned them. But when they
forgot me, and began to treat of other people's triumphs, I made Neilus
my waste-paper basket, on the understanding that the papers were to go to
the fishermen just home from Kinsale. Then from time to time he told me
they were 'goin' round, miss, goin' round,' and gave me other assurances
of 'the greatest circulation in the world,' which was true enough
certainly, though the old thief omitted to say it was at the paper-mill,
where they were being turned into pulp.

"But, heigho! I don't need newspapers to remind me of London. Like St.
Paul, I have a devil that beats me with fists, and as often as a clear
day comes, and one can see things a long way off, he makes me climb to
the top of Slieu Whallin [* A mountain in Man.] that I may sit on the
beacon by the hour and strain my eyes for a glimpse of England, feeling
like Lot's wife when she looked back on her old home, and then coming
down with a heavy heart and a taste of tears in my mouth as if I had been
turned into a pillar of salt. Dear old London! But I suppose it is going
on its way just as it used to do, with its tides of traffic and its
crowds and carriages, and wandering merchants and hawkers crying their
wares, and everything the same as ever, just the same, although Glory
isn't there!

* * * * *

"10.30 P. M.--I had to interrupt the writing of my letter this morning
owing to an alarm of illness seizing grandfather. He had been taken with
a sudden faintness. Of course we sent for the doctor, but before he
arrived the faintness had passed, so he looked wise at us, like a prize
riddle which had to be guessed before his next visit, left us his
autograph (a wonderful hieroglyphic), and went away. Since then
grandfather has been in the hands of a less taciturn practitioner, whom
he calls the 'flower of Glenfaba' (that's me), and after talking nonsense
to him all day and playing chess with him all the evening I have to put
him to bed laughing, and come back to my own room to finish my letter
with an easier mind. For the last half-hour the aurora has been pulsing
in the northern sky, and I have been thinking that the glorious
phantasmagoria must be the sign of a gale in heaven, just as sleet and
mist and black wind are the signs of a gale on earth. But it has tripped
off into nothingness and only the dark night i