misting."

I gathered that he meant raining. But it was not raining, wherefore I said as much.

"Ah—well it will," said he, in a tone of fatality. "Ye see them clouds over there to the west, 'tis always wet when they be coming up from there. D'ye see the way the cattle have got their backs turned to ut? Yirra, don't I know a wet day when I see wan!"

"But, my God!" said I. "It's six o'clock and it isn't wet yet!"

"Wait a while," he replied, equably, "it will," and he put up the collar of his coat to prove it.

That was my first, my very first, impression of Ireland. Here this morning there was not a cloud in the sky, the sun was a flaming torch in the heavens, there had not been a drop of rain all night, yet in the heart, in the very spirit of James Quin there had poured down a veritable deluge. And they would understand Ireland who talk of a nation of light-hearted men and women. I think we must have driven three more miles of our journey before I said another word after that. Speaking truth, the greyness of it, the endlessness of those walls of mud and stone, the passing sight of a roofless cottage, the very soul of its past habitation starved and dead within it, they had all combined to close about me in a dull, impenetrable despair. Despair, I will admit, that was not of my own. I was thinking of Clarissa. I could see her gazing forth from the window of her prison, with those dark, Southern eyes of hers, gazing into that limitless mist of grey out of which, had a Banshee cried, upon my word, I should have felt no surprise.

Then from thought of her came the sudden wonder to my mind—how was I to help her? How, in the name of Heaven, set about the liberation of a woman who hugs to her heart the very chains that bind her? And not that obstacle only, but there were those two maiden aunts to face. It was then I turned once more to Quin.

"Who are the Miss Fennells who live in Ballysheen?" I asked.

"Is it Miss Mary and her sister, living at Janemount?"

"Are there others?" I inquired.

"There are not," said he, "'tis enough for one village to be havin' thim two. I wouldn't drive thim on this carr, not if they was to go down on their four knees bended."

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