ed with red plaid, remained monumental in height and
stillness, but there was that in the tremor of the steel spray in her
bonnet that told of a high pressure of narrative. The bearded Dublin
tourist on her left was but little behind her in the ardour of giving
information. His wife, a beautifully dressed lady with cotton-wool in
her ears, remained abstracted, whether from toothache, or exclusiveness,
or mere wifely boredom, we cannot say. Among the swift shuttles of Irish
speech the ponderous questions and pronouncements of an English
fisherman drove their way. The talk was, we gathered, of sport and game
laws and their administration.

"Is it hares?" cried the Dublin tourist, perorating after a flight or
two into the subject of poachers; "what d'ye think would happen a hare
in Donegal?"

His handsome brown eye swept his audience, even, through the spokes of a
bicycle, gathering in our sympathies. It left no doubts as to the
tragedy that awaited the hare.

The east wind hunted us along the shore of the wide, bleak bay, rimmed
with yellow sea-weed, and black and ruffled like the innumerable
lakelets that lay along our route. The tall mountain over it was hooded
in cloud. It seemed as threatening and mysterious as Sinai; ready to
utter some awful voice of law to the brown solitudes and windy silences.

Far ahead of us a few houses rose suddenly above the low coast line, an
ugly family party of squat gables and whitewashed walls, with nothing
nearer them to westward than the homesteads of America.

Far and near there was not a tree visible, nor a touch of colour to tell
of the saving grace of flowers. The brown mares swung the car along with
something resembling enthusiasm; Letterbeg was the end of their stage;
it was the end of ours also. Numb with long sitting we dropped
cumbrously to earth from the high footboard, and found ourselves face to
face with the problem of how to spend the next three hours. It was
eleven o'clock in the morning, too early for lunch, though, apparently,
quite the fashionable hour in Letterbeg for bottled porter, judging by
the squeak of the corkscrew and the clash of glasses that issued from
the dark interior of the house in front of which we had been shed by the
mail-car. This was a long cottage with a prosperous slate roof, and a
board over its narrow door announcing that one Jas. Heraty was licensed
for the retail of spirits and porter.

The mail-car rolled away; as it crawled over the