Apart then from the cottages and houses of better class, there are the Roman Catholic chapel, the Protestant church, the schools, the post-office—which is an ordinary cottage with two holes in it, one where you buy stamps, the other where you post letters—there is the lifeboat house and the court house, the latter used mostly by the butcher, and last of all, there is that record of forty years' stern and persistent agitation, the pier. Like a breakwater, it runs out some thirty yards or so into the sea, locking in a little strip of water where the fishing-boats lie at rest. For forty years they agitated for its construction and when, after a year's labor, the last block of cement was laid, the fishermen turned and looked into each other's faces.

"Shure, what in the name of God do we want a pier for?" they said. "If they'd had the sinse to buy us a few boats!"

But no one yet who has provided for Ireland has ever had the "sinse." Sense in fact is not the quality that is required. One ounce of heart would do more for Ireland than a whole bushel load of sense. And the one man who had it, lost it to a woman! Is not that ever the way?

This then is Ballysheen. I feel I have discharged a duty in describing it, however poorly. In the first ten minutes as I walked with Bellwattle towards the Miss Fennells' houses, I was able to absorb it all, to realize at the same time that I knew nothing whatever about it.

It is ever the people one must know; seldom the place. I made the acquaintance of three of them that morning. It was as we took the broad lane which connects the church road with that leading to the cliff, that we saw the figure of a man approaching us. At such distance he would have been undistinguishable to me, but Bellwattle knew him at once.

"Let's turn and go the other way through the village," said she.

I asked her why.

"Here comes General Ffrench. He's a most terrible bore. Directly he sees I'm with a visitor—a stranger—he'll want to be introduced. He'll force us to stop and speak to him."

"As you like," said I, but I was disappointed. I was not sure that anybody could bore me there. "What sort of a dog is that he has with him?" I added. It was a hazard, but it was my only chance.

"Is Pepper with him?" said she.

"If that black Aberdeen is Pepper—" said I.

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