ot wet his
feet.'

My companion was still unconvinced, so we went on. The rushes were
shining in the moonlight, and one flake of mist was lying on the
river. We looked into one bog-hole, and then into another, where a
snipe rose and terrified us. We listened: a cow was chewing heavily
in the shadow of a bush, two dogs were barking on the side of a
hill, and there was a cart far away upon the road. Our teeth began
to chatter with the cold of the bog air and the loneliness of the
night. I could see that the actual presence of the bog had shown my
companion the absurdity of her fears, and in a little while we went
home.

The older people in County Wicklow, as in the rest of Ireland, still
show a curious affection for the landed classes wherever they have
lived for a generation or two upon their property. I remember an old
woman, who told me, with tears streaming on her face, how much more
lonely the country had become since the 'quality' had gone away, and
gave me a long story of how she had seen her landlord shutting up
his house and leaving his property, and of the way he had died
afterwards, when the 'grievance' of it broke his heart. The younger
people feel differently, and when I was passing this landlord's
house, not long afterwards, I found these lines written in pencil on
the door-post:

In the days of rack-renting
And land-grabbing so vile
A proud, heartless landlord
Lived here a great while.
When the League it was started,
And the land-grabbing cry,
To the cold North of Ireland
He had for to fly.

A year later the door-post had fallen to pieces, and the inscription
with it.

On the Road

ONE evening after heavy rains I set off to walk to a village at the
other side of some hills, part of my way lying along a steep
heathery track. The valleys that I passed through were filled with
the strange splendour that comes after wet weather in Ireland, and
on the tops of the mountains masses of fog were lying in white, even
banks. Once or twice I went by a lonely cottage with a smell of
earthy turf coming from the chimney, weeds or oats sprouting on the
thatch, and a broken cart before the door, with many straggling hens
going to roost on the shafts. Near these cottages little bands of
half-naked children, filled with the excitement of evening, were
running and screaming over the bogs, where the heather was purple
already, giving me the strained feeling of regret one has so often
in th