need object thereto.

Losing sight of the lakes as they entered the shabby little town, they
sprang off the car before a small inn, and ere their feet were on the
ground were appropriated by one of a shoal of guides, in dress and speech
an ultra Irishman, exaggerating his part as a sort of buffoon for the
travellers. Rashe was diverted by his humours; Cilla thought them in bad
taste, and would fain have escaped from his brogue and his antics, with
some perception that the scene ought to be left to make its impression in
peace.

Small peace, however, was there among the scores of men, women, and
children within the rude walls containing the most noted relics; all
beset the visitors with offers of stockings, lace, or stones from the
hills; and the chatter of the guide was a lesser nuisance for which she
was forced to compound for the sake of his protection. When he had
cleared away his compatriots, she was able to see the remains of two of
the Seven Churches, the Cathedral, and St. Kevin's Kitchen, both of
enduring gray stone, covered with yellow lichen, which gave a remarkable
golden tint to their extreme old age. Architecture there was next to
none. St. Kevin's so-called kitchen had a cylindrical tower, crowned by
an extinguisher, and within the roofless walls was a flat stone, once the
altar, and still a station for pilgrims; and the cathedral contained two
broken coffin-lids with floriated crosses, but it was merely four rude
roofless walls, enclosing less space than a cottage kitchen, and less
ornamental than many a barn. The whole space was encumbered with regular
modern headstones, ugly as the worst that English graveyards could show,
and alternating between the names of Byrne and O'Toole, families who, as
the guide said, would come 'hundreds of miles to lie there.' It was a
grand thought, that those two lines, in wealth or in poverty, had been
constant to that one wild mountain burying-place, in splendour or in
ruin, for more than twelve centuries.

Here, some steps from the cathedral on the top of the slope was the chief
grandeur of the view. A noble old carved granite cross, eight or ten
feet high, stood upon the brow, bending slightly to one side, and beyond
lay the valley cherishing its treasure of the twin lakelets, girt in by
the band across them, nestled in the soft lining of copsewood and meadow,
and protected by the lofty massive hills above. In front, but below, and
somewhat to the right, lay