drought upon him, and thought an apple
would put him in spirits for his walk home. Then he swore he would
never come over the wall again if I would let him off, and that he
would pray God to have mercy on me when my last hour was come. I
felt sure his whole story was a tissue of lies, and I did not want
him to have the crow of having taken me in. 'There is a woman
belonging to the place,' I said, 'inside in the house helping the
girl to cook the dinner. Walk in now with me, and we'll see if
you're such a stranger as you'd have me think.' He looked infinitely
troubled, but I took him by the neck and wrist and we set off for
the gate. When we had gone a pace or two he stopped. 'I beg your
pardon,' he said, 'my cap's after falling down on the over side of
the wall. May I cross over and get it?' That was too much for me.
'Well, go on,' I said, 'and if ever I catch you again woe betide
you.' I let him go then, and he rushed madly over the wall and
disappeared. A few days later I discovered, not at all to my
surprise, that he lived half a mile away, and was intimately related
to a small boy who came to the house every morning to run messages
and clean the boots. Yet it must not be thought that this young man
was dishonest; I would have been quite ready the next day to trust
him with a ten-pound note.

Glencree

THIS morning the air is clear, and there is a trace of summer again.
I am sitting in a nook beside the stream from the Upper Lake, close
down among the heather and bracken and rushes. I have seen the
people going up to Mass in the Reformatory, and the valley seems
empty of life.

I have gone on, mile after mile, of the road to Sally Gap, between
brown dykes and chasms in the turf with broken foot-bridges across
them, or between sheets of sickly moss and bog-cotton that is unable
to thrive. The road is caked with moss that breaks like pie-crust
under my feet, and in corners where there is shelter there are sheep
loitering, or a few straggling grouse.... The fog has come down in
places; I am meeting multitudes of hares that run round me at a
little distance--looking enormous in the mists--or sit up on their
ends against the sky line to watch me going by. When I sit down for
a moment the sense of loneliness has no equal. I can hear nothing
but the slow running of water and the grouse crowing and chuckling
underneath the band of cloud. Then the fog lifts and shows the white
empty roads winding everywhere, with