us that two thousand pounds in money is
needed there on fair-days. Next to it is a little house, the upper part
of which is used as a Methodist chapel; and old Nancy, the caretaker, is
already a good friend of ours. It is a humble house of prayer, but Nancy
takes much pride in it, and showed us the melodeon, 'worked by a young
lady from Rossantach,' the Sunday-school rooms, and even the cupboard
where she keeps the jugs for the love-feast and the linen and wine for
the sacrament, which is administered once in three years. Next comes the
Hoeys' cabin, where we have always a cordial welcome, but where we never
go all together, for fear of embarrassing the family, which is a large
one--three generations under one roof, and plenty of children in the
last. Old Mrs. Hoey does not rightly know her age, she says; but her
daughter Ellen was born the year of the Big Wind, and she herself was
twenty-two when she was married, and you might allow a year between that
and when Ellen was born, and make your own calculation.

She tells many stories of the Big Wind, which we learn was in 1839,
making Ellen's age about sixty-one and her mother's eighty-four. The
fury of the storm was such that it forced the water of the Lough far
ashore, stranding the fish among the rocks, where they were found dead
by hundreds. When next morning dawned there was confusion and ruin on
every side: the cross had tumbled from the chapel, the tombstones were
overturned in the graveyard, trees and branches blocked the roadways,
cabins were stripped of their thatches, and cattle found dead in the
fields; so it is small wonder old Mrs. Hoey remembers the day of Ellen's
birth, weak as she is on all other dates.

Ellen's husband, Miles M'Gillan, is the carpenter on an estate in the
neighbourhood. His shop opens out of the cabin, and I love to sit by the
Hoey fireside, where the fan bellows, turned by a crank, brings in an
instant a fresh flame to the sods of smouldering turf, and watch a wee
Colleen Bawn playing among her daddy's shavings, tying them about her
waist and fat wrists, hanging them on her ears and in among her brown
curls. Mother Hoey says that I do not speak like an American--that I
have not so many 'caperin's' in my language, whatever they may be; and
so we have long delightful chats together when I go in for a taste of
Ellen's griddle bread, cooked over the peat coals. Francesca, meantime,
is calling on Mrs. O'Rourke, whose son has taken more than