The result of this joint tenure was an extraordinary tangle,

particularly when it went so far as the subdivision of 'one cow's
grass,' or even of a horse, which, being owned jointly by three men,

ultimately went lame, because none of them would pay for shoeing the
fourth foot.

We have been here five days, and instead of reproving Benella, as we
intended, for gross assumption of authority in the matter, we are

more than ever her bond-slaves. The place is altogether charming,
and here it is for you.

Knockcool Street is Knockcool village itself, as with almost all
Irish towns; but the line of little thatched cabins is brightened at

the far end by the neat house of Mrs. Wogan Odevaine, set a trifle
back in its own garden, by the pillared porch of a modest hotel, and

by the barracks of the Royal Irish Constabulary. The sign of the
Provincial Bank of Ireland almost faces our windows; and although it

is used as a meal-shop the rest of the week, they tell 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 cordialwelcome, 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 fifty bicycle prizes; and no

stranger can come to Knockcool without inspecting the brave show of
silver, medals, and china that adorn the bedroom, and make the

O'Rourkes the proudest couple in ould Donegal. Phelim O'Rourke
smokes his dudeen on a bench by the door, and invites the passer-by

to enter and examine the trophies. His trousers are held up with
bits of rope arranged as suspenders; indeed, his toilet is so much a

matter of strings that it must be a work of time to tie on his
clothing in the morning, in case he takes it off at night, which is

open to doubt; nevertheless it is he that's the satisfied man, and
the luck would be on him as well as on e'er a man alive, were he not

kilt wid the cough intirely! Mrs. Phelim's skirt shows a triangle
of red flannel behind, where the two ends of the waistband fail to

meet by about six inches, but are held together by a piece of white
ball fringe. Any informality in this part of her costume is,

however, more than atoned for by the presence of a dingy bonnet of
magenta velvet, which she always dons for visitors.

The O'Rourke family is the essence of hospitality, so their kitchen
is generally full of children and visitors; and on the occasion when

Salemina issued from the prize bedroom, the guests were so busy with
conversation that, to use their own language, divil a wan of thim

clapt eyes on the O'Rourke puppy, and they did not notice that the
baste was floundering in a tub of soft, newly made butter standing

on the floor. He was indeed desperately involved, being so
completely wound up in the waxy mass that he could not climb over

the tub's edge. He looked comical and miserable enough in his
plight: the children and the visitors thought so, and so did

Francesca and I; but Salemina went directly home, and kept her room
for an hour. She is so sensitive! Och, thin, it's herself that's

the marthyr intirely! We cannot see that the incident affects us so
long as we avoid the O'Rourkes' butter; but she says, covering her

eyes with her handkerchief and shuddering: "Suppose there are other
tubs and other pup-- Oh, I cannot bear the thought of it, dears!

Please change the subject, and order me two hard-boiled eggs for
dinner."

Leaving Knockcool behind us, we walk along the country road between
high, thick hedges: here a clump of weather-beaten trees, there a

stretch of bog with silver pools and piles of black turf, then a
sudden view of hazy hills, a grove of beeches, a great house with a

splendid gateway, and sometimes, riding through it, a figure new to
our eyes, a Lady Master of the Hounds, handsome in her habit with

red facings. We pass many an 'evicted farm,' the ruined house with
the rushes growing all about it, and a lonely goat browsing near;

and on we walk, until we can see the roofs of Lisdara's solitary
cabin row, huddled under the shadow of a gloomy hill topped by the

ruins of an old fort. All is silent, and the blue haze of the peat
smoke curls up from the thatch. Lisdara's young people have mostly

gone to the Big Country; and how many tears have dropped on the path
we are treading, as Peggy and Mary, Cormac and Miles, with a wooden

box in the donkey cart behind them, or perhaps with only a bundle
hanging from a blackthorn stick, have come down the hill to seek

their fortune! Perhaps Peggy is barefooted; perhaps Mary has little
luggage beyond a pot of shamrock or a mountain thrush in a wicker

cage; but what matter for that? They are used to poverty and
hardship and hunger, and although they are going quite penniless to

a new country, sure it can be no worse than the old. This is the
happy-go-lucky Irish philosophy, and there is mixed with it a deal

of simple trust in God.
How many exiles and wanderers, both those who have no fortune and

those who have failed to win it, dream of these cabin rows, these
sweet-scented boreens with their 'banks of furze unprofitably gay,'

these leaking thatches with the purple loosestrife growing in their
ragged seams, and, looking backward across the distance of time and

space, give the humble spot a tender thought, because after all it
was in their dear native isle!

'Pearly are the skies in the country of my fathers,
Purple are thy mountains, home of my heart;

Mother of my yearning, love of all my longings,
Keep me in remembrance long leagues apart.'

I have been thinking in this strain because of an old dame in the
first cabin in Lisdara row, whose daughter is in America, and who

can talk of nothing else. She shows us the last letter, with its
postal order for sixteen shillings, that Mida sent from New York,