m that it would be good for him to put some
strain on the muscles of his body, and thus relieve the muscles of
his mind. If his limbs could become thoroughly tired,--thoroughly
tired so that he might wish to rest--then he might hope that for a
moment he might cease to think of all this sorrow which encompassed
him.

So he started on his walk, taking with him a thick cudgel and his own
thoughts. He went away across the demesne and down into the road that
led away by Gortnaclough and Boherbue towards Castleisland and the
wilds of county Kerry. As he went, the men about the place refrained
from speaking to him, for they all knew that bad news had come to the
big house. They looked at him with lowered eyes and with tenderness
in their hearts, for they loved the very name of Fitzgerald. The love
which a poor Irishman feels for the gentleman whom he regards as his
master--"his masther," though he has probably never received from
him, in money, wages for a day's work, and in all his intercourse
has been the man who has paid money and not the man who received
it--the love which he nevertheless feels, if he has been occasionally
looked on with a smiling face and accosted with a kindly word, is
astonishing to an Englishman. I will not say that the feeling is
altogether good. Love should come of love. Where personal love exists
on one side, and not even personal regard on the other, there must be
some mixture of servility. That unbounded respect for human grandeur
cannot be altogether good; for human greatness, if the greatness be
properly sifted, it may be so.

He got down into the road, and went forth upon his journey at a rapid
pace. The mud was deep upon the way, but he went through the thickest
without a thought of it. He had not been out long before there came
on a cold, light, drizzling rain, such a rain as gradually but
surely makes its way into the innermost rag of a man's clothing,
running up the inside of his waterproof coat, and penetrating by its
perseverance the very folds of his necktie. Such cold, drizzling rain
is the commonest phase of hard weather during Irish winters, and
those who are out and about get used to it and treat it tenderly.
They are euphemistical as to the weather, calling it hazy and soft,
and never allowing themselves to carry bad language on such a subject
beyond the word dull. And yet at such a time one breathes the rain
and again exhales it, and become as it were oneself a water spirit,
ass