Before long Mary began to seek some amusement for the servants, though as far as I could see they always appeared thoroughly amused with each other, and probably with us, judging from the screams of delight (chiefly female, certainly) one heard at any time of day or night in the kitchen and servants' hall.

So it was settled that a dance should be given, the details to be arranged by Mary with Patsey's help, which meant that Patsey would command and we obey.

The great hay - barn was swept and garnished; Patsey made a journey to the little town of Eastport, engaged two fiddlers for the dance, and returned long after dinner-time with a cart-load of porter and provisions, singing at the top of his voice the "Wearing of the Green." Mary said each servant might bring a guest.

For days before the dance none of the servants did a stroke of work, while we seemed to spend most of our time in the dining-room, the table pushed into a corner, practising the steps of some weird dance called a square set," with which Patsey insisted that we must open the ball. Patsey was to partner Mary, Charles the cook, and I was to lead out Robert's wife; for music we had Maria with a fulltoned "to-and-fro."

The night of the dance came, and with it a crowd which filled the hay-barn to overflowing : they must have run a fine comb

over that wild countryside to collect so many people, young and middle-aged.

Patsey, resplendent in & boiled shirt, a violent green tie, and what looked suspiciously like a pair of my best pumps, quickly cleared a space in the middle of the barn. Gripping Mary by the waist with a great red paw, he started off full split on the intricate steps of that awful square set, followed meekly by Charles and the cook in a black satin dress, and by Mrs Robert and myself.

The two Eastport fiddlers, well primed by Patsey, and Maria armed with a huge new extra powerful "to-and-fro," soon got into their stride and set a tremendous pace.

At one part of the performance we had to waltz our partners round as fast as they could go, and Patsey would give the signal for this with a terrific yell, louder each time, and greeted always with shouts of applause from the delighted audience. Charles found the pace too hot for his liking, but the cook saw to it that he never flagged for an instant; and when at last the band stopped from sheer exhaustion or possibly want of drink, we were only able to stagger blindly to some chairs along the wall, which some of the onlookers kindly vacated for us. Once Charles had recovered his wind he disappeared, to be seen no more that evening.

Directly the band had recuperated, Porgeen appeared, and

I could see at once that he was what Patsey would describe as "nicely"; the band struck up "Pop goes the Weasel," and the old villain started to caper slowly about in the middle of the barn with steps like a cat on hot bricks.

I don't believe that he knew a single dance step, nor had he the slightest idea of time; but he gave a comic show which would have earned him in a month at any London musichall enough money to keep him in ease and poteen for the rest of his days.

He was always out of time, and would give the band a withering look every few seconds, to explain to us that it was the musicians' fault and not his.

The audience-every chair held a boy with a girl sitting on his knee, which appeared to be the accepted custom (a pity Charles did not wait to entertain the cook in this fashion)-cheered the old man to the echo, and he carried on until he came to a complete standstill, when Patsey seized and removed him, to be revived with poteen for a further performance.

Jigs, waltzes, polkas, and sets followed in quick succession, the only pauses being to hearten up the hardy fiddlers; then, in response to loud cries for a song, Porgeen appeared once more, and sang his only song, "The Kerry Recruit."

By now he was solemn tight, and if possible funnier than before. He took quite a minute

to remember each line, in spite of Patsey's hoarse promptings, and when not singing took funny little mincing steps across the floor, pretending to be dancing with a napkin, which he carried twisted across his right arm, and holding one end with his left hand as though clasping his partner.

Gradually Porgeen grew quieter and quieter, and his capers became slower and slower, until at last he could hardly raise a foot from the floor. And just as we expected to see him collapse, Patsey and Maria rushed at him, gripped him by the head and feet, and amidst the delighted shouts of the rest carried him off to bed. And Mary and I seized the opportunity to slip away unobserved, leaving the company to enjoy themselves unrestrained by our presence. Patsey told us next morning that they carried on until nearly breakfast time, when the two fiddlers tucked their fiddles under their arms and set out to walk back to Eastport, a matter of sixteen Irish miles, and that he had to hunt the guests out of the place with a stick.

Our Ford turned up the day after the dance, and looking none the better for the journey. The driver's excuse for the delay was that he had been afraid to drive a new car fast. Robert said afterwards that the man told him he had spent several days fishing on the way, and had good sport too. Mary wanted to keep the

man on as chauffeur, but Charles declared that if another servant was brought into the place, he would leave the next day for England, and would wash his hands of us; and, moreover, that the brute would probably spend the greater part of his time poaching.

Spring fishing being temporarily at a standstill owing to fine weather, we determined to take a drive through the country to the south, and see a hotel on the coast of which Mary had read great accounts in the Irish papers.

When about four miles from the coast the road ran along the shores of a lake in a valley, with high mountains rising up at each side, and at a sudden turn we came upon a magnificent castle of whitish stone built into the side of the mountain. Above, and on both sides of it, great woods ran right up the face of the mountain, until they met the bare rock near the top. In front lay a lake surrounded by grounds full of fine shrubs, and all along the road fuchsia hedges.

After leaving this valley we ran through open rocky country towards a mountain standing alone; and on a promontory to the north of this we found the hotel, a quaint old house standing almost on the very shore, with its sides slated to keep out the spray of the Atlantic gales in wintertime.

parently made a half-hearted effort to grow trees, but about fifteen feet seemed to be the limit they had been able to struggle up to, and on this fine spring day the rooks were busy building in them. The drive passed along this stunted rookery on higher ground, and we could look right down into the nests from the car.

The view from the house was wonderful. Looking across a bay of deepest blue, one could see range after range of mountains: the nearest vivid green and golden brown in the sunshine, and the distant deep purple, like the bloom on a grape. And while we watched, the lights and shades were ever changing as the clouds passed inland on the soft west wind.

We had tea served by a quaint old butler with a face like a harvest moon set in a fringe of fiery orange whiskers, called Martin, and then prepared to start for home; but

Lizzie" had other notions, and refused even to think of starting. Charles got in and under, but, as the old butler described it, "Divil a puff could he knock out o' her." Luckily we had brought some kit in case of accidents, as in the end we had to stay the night.

It was the queerest hotel I had ever seen. The bedrooms seemed to be everywhere and anywhere, up and down stairs, through each other, and even leading out of the sittingThe place gave one

66

We had roast chickens for dinner, extraordinary tough birds. Charles could not face them, and shuddered when they came to table. Afterwards he told me that his bedroom looked out into the kitchen-yard, and that when washing his hands after battling with Lizzie, he had been an unwilling witness to the last chapter in the chickens' lives. He had been watching them peacefully feeding when the kitchen door suddenly burst open, and out rushed a wildlooking, bare-footed, young woman, with her hair flying behind her, and brandishing a huge carving-knife in one hand. She had hunted the chickens round and round the yard, and finally cornered them, to finish the horrid job in a bath, where she also plucked them and removed their superfluous parts. He had told Martin that he would not require a bath in the morning, and advised me to do likewise.

Charles and I were smoking before going to bed, when Martin opened the door and peered into every corner of the room. Charles asked him if he was looking for anything, and received the extraordinary reply: "In troth I am, yer honour; sure Bridget's just after telling me the auld grey

Presently we retired for the night, and when I was half undressed there came a knock at my door, which opened to admit the face and whiskers of Martin. "She's found," said he with a grin. "Where?" said I. And where do ye think?" said he. "In the cow-house," I ventured, to be met with an indignant snort.

Not at all, but in the best bedroom beyond the billiardroom; and what's more, that same auld divil's after eating a blanket and the best half of one of the missus's fashionable countey-panes, bad cess to her, and good night to yer honour."

The chickens, or rather the remnants, appeared cold for breakfast, and at the sight of them Charles declared that if Lizzie was still not for it, he for one would walk home; but to our joy Lizzie started off first twist, as though she had never sulked in her life.

By now the spring fishing was practically over, and we hoped that the next flood would bring the grilse up the Glenowen river, but were disappointed. The flood came all right, but the watchers reported that they had not

seen a single grilse running. However, Robert was never defeated, and armed with a tin of worms and a ten-foot trout-rod, he and I set off to fish a mountain stream the morning after the flood.

We had a hard and wet walk round the spur of the mountain before we came to the stream, which ran down a ravine into the valley to join the Glenowen river, and, like all these mountain streams, only fished well after a flood. Robert produced some enormous hooks on gut fit to kill a spring fish on, and smiled a polite incredulity when I insisted on using the finest Stewart tackle and lightest gut.

Starting in the valley we fished steadily upwards, catching many beautiful small golden brown trout, about three to the pound. Robert had never seen Stewart tackle worked before, and when I gave him the rod he made a poor fist of it at first, being used to allowing the trout to swallow his big hooks before striking. But when I showed him how to cast the worm up-stream, and to give a quick but gentle strike with the wrist directly an obstruction was met with, he was delighted with this, to him, novel method of worming, and in a very short time was as expert as any angler to be met with in Berwickshire, so quick-witted is the Irish peasant. When the stream grew too small to fish we sat down under a big rock to eat our lunch and take in the view.

After a time the conversation turned on eels, and Robert told me how at one time eelfishers used to come every year from Athlone to fish all the lakes and rivers in the district. And he went on to describe them as terrible cros8 fellows but tremendous cute; and how they used to send all the eels they caught straight to Holland, where they were at once shipped back to the London market. It seemed a long way round from the West of Ireland to Billingsgate Market, but when Robert explained that Dutch eels fetched twice the price of Irish eels, then the tremendous cuteness of the cross eel-fishers was pretty obvious.

On our way home we met Charles and Jack O'Mara driving two weary asses laden with creels piled up with mussels. Charles had been very mysterious at breakfast-time about what he was going to do that day, and had disappeared with Jack directly the meal was over. It seems that Jack had told him some yarn about a "foreigner " (the mountain peasant's way of describing a fellow-countryman from a different part of the country to his own) who visited the district one very dry summer and had made a fortune, computed by Jack at £4, out of the pearls he had abstracted from mussels, which Jack said thronged every lake and river.

Charles must have thought by now that our fortune looked like going west in a short time,