t some years in Ballyferriter, and had good English.
The evening was peculiarly fine, and after a while, when the crowd
had scattered, I passed up through the cottages, and walked through
a boreen towards the north-west, between a few plots of potatoes and
little fields of weeds that seemed to have gone out of cultivation
not long ago. Beyond these I turned up a sharp, green hill, and came
out suddenly on the broken edge of a cliff. The effect was
wonderful. The Atlantic was right underneath; then I could see the
sharp rocks of several uninhabited islands, a mile or two off, the
Tearaught further away, and, on my left, the whole northern edge of
this island curving round towards the west, with a steep heathery
face, a thousand feet high. The whole sight of wild islands and sea
was as clear and cold and brilliant as what one sees in a dream, and
alive with the singularly severe glory that is in the character of
this place.

As I was wandering about I saw many of the younger islanders not far
off jumping and putting the weight--a heavy stone--or running
races on the grass. Then four girls, walking arm-in-arm, came up and
talked to me in Irish. Before long they began to laugh loudly at
some signs I made to eke out my meaning, and by degrees the men
wandered up also, till there was a crowd round us. The cold of the
night was growing stronger, however, and we soon turned back to the
village, and sat round the fire in the kitchen the rest of the
evening.

At eleven o'clock the people got up as one man and went away,
leaving me with the little hostess--the man of the house had gone
to the mainland with the young men--her husband and sister. I told
them I was sleepy, and ready to go to bed; so the little hostess
lighted a candle, carried it into the room beyond the kitchen, and
stuck it up on the end of the bedpost of one of the beds with a few
drops of grease. Then she took off her apron, and fastened it up in
the window as a blind, laid another apron on the wet earthen floor
for me to stand on, and left me to myself. The room had two beds,
running from wall to wall with a small space between them, a chair
that the little hostess had brought in, an old hair-brush that was
propping the window open, and no other article. When I had been in
bed for some time, I heard the host's voice in the kitchen, and a
moment or two later he came in with a candle in his hand, and made a
long apology for having been away the whole of my firs