en Michael was taken bad, he went to see
him, and didn't he know the keepers that were in charge of him, and
they promised to take the best of care of him, and, indeed, he was
always a quiet man that would give no trouble. After the first three
years he was free in the place, and he walking about like a
gentleman, doing any light work he'd find agreeable. Then my son
went to see him a second time, and "You'll never see Michael again,"
says he when he came back, "for he's too well off where he is." And,
indeed, it was well for him, but now he's come home.' Then she got
up to carry out some groceries she was buying to the ass-cart that
was waiting outside.

'It's real sorry I do be when I see you going off' she said, as she
was turning away. 'I don't often speak to you, but it's company to
see you passing up and down over the hill, and now may the Almighty
God bless and preserve you, and see you safe home.'

A little later I was walking up the long hill which leads to the
high ground from Laragh to Sugar Loaf. The solitude was intense.
Towards the top of the hill I passed through a narrow gap with high
rocks on one side of it and fir trees above them, and a handful of
jagged sky filled with extraordinarily brilliant stars. In a few
moments I passed out on the brow of the hill that runs behind the
Devil's Glen, and smelt the fragrance of the bogs. I mounted again.
There was not light enough to show the mountains round me, and the
earth seemed to have dwindled away into a mere platform where an
astrologer might watch. Among these emotions of the night one cannot
wonder that the madhouse is so often named in Wicklow.

Many of the old people of the country, however, when they have no
definite sorrow, are not mournful, and are full of curious whims and
observations. One old woman who lived near Glen Macanass told me
that she had seen her sons had no hope of making a livelihood in the
place where they were born, so, in addition to their schooling, she
engaged a master to come over the bogs every evening and teach them
sums and spelling. One evening she came in behind them, when they
were at work, and stopped to listen.

'And what do you think my son was after doing?' she said; 'he'd
made a sum of how many times a wheel on a cart would turn round
between the bridge below and the Post Office in Dublin. Would you
believe that? I went out without saying a word, and I got the old
stocking, where I keep a bit of money, and I mad