sdays, unless a fair happens to fall on Tuesday, are quiet days.
On this particular Tuesday Dr. Lovaway was pleasantly aware that he
had nothing whatever to do and might count on having the whole day to
himself. It was raining very heavily, but the weather did not trouble
him at all. He had a plan for the day which rain could not mar.

He sat down at his writing table, took from a drawer a bundle of
foolscap paper, fitted a new nib to his pen and filled his ink bottle.
He began to write.

"_A Study of the Remarkable Increase of Lunacy in Rural Connaught_."

The title looked well. It would, he felt, certainly attract the
attention of the editor of _The British Medical Journal_.

But Dr. Lovaway did not like it. It was not for the editor of _The
British Medical Journal_, or indeed, for a scientific public that he
wanted to write. He started fresh on a new sheet of paper.

"_Lunacy in the West of Ireland: Its Cause and Cure_."

That struck him as the kind of title which would appeal to a
philanthropist out to effect a social reform of some kind. But Dr.
Lovaway was not satisfied with it. He respected reformers and was
convinced of the value of their work, but his real wish was to write
something of a literary kind. With prodigal extravagance he tore up
another whole sheet of foolscap and began again.

"_The Passing of the Gael Ireland's Crowded Madhouses_."

He purred a little over that title and then began the article itself.
What he wanted to say was clear in his mind. He had been three weeks in
Dunailin and he had spent more time over lunatics than anything else.
Almost every day he found himself called upon by Sergeant Ra-hilly to
"certify" a lunatic, to commit some unfortunate person with diseased
intellect to an asylum. Sometimes he signed the required document. Often
he hesitated, although he was always supplied by the sergeant and
his constables with a wealth of lurid detail about the dangerous
and homicidal tendencies of the patient. Dr. Lovaway was profoundly
impressed.

He gave his whole mind to the consideration of the problem which pressed
on him. He balanced theories. He blamed tea, inter-marriage, potatoes,
bad whisky, religious enthusiasm, and did not find any of them nor all
of them together satisfactory as explanations of the awful facts. He
fell back finally on a theory of race decadence. Already fine phrases
were forming themselves in his mind: "The inexpressible beauty of
autumnal decay." "Th