a view of several miles in every
direction, I stopped to gaze upon the scene where every object around was
familiar to me from infancy: the broad, majestic river, sweeping in bold
curves between the wild mountains of Connaught and the wooded hills and
cultivated slopes of the more fertile Munster, the tall chimneys of many a
house rose above the dense woods where in my boyhood I had spent hours and
days of happiness. One last look I turned towards the scene of my late
catastrophe ere I began to descend the mountain. The postboy, with the
happy fatalism of his country, and a firm trust in the future, had
established himself in the interior of the chaise, from which a blue curl
of smoke wreathed upward from his pipe; the horses grazed contentedly by
the roadside; and were I to judge from the evidence before me, I should say
that I was the only member of the party inconvenienced by the accident. A
thin sleeting of rain began to fall; the wind blew sharply in my face, and
the dark clouds, collecting in masses above, seemed to threaten a storm.
Without stopping for even a passing look at the many well-known spots
about, I pressed rapidly on. My old experience upon the moors had taught
me that sling trot in which jumping from hillock to hillock over the
boggy surface, you succeed in accomplishing your journey not only with
considerable speed, but perfectly dryshod.

By the lonely path which I travelled, it was unlikely I should meet any
one. It was rarely traversed except by the foot of the sportsman, or some
stray messenger from the castle to the town of Banagher. Its solitude,
however, was in no wise distasteful to me; my heart was full to bursting.
Each moment as I walked some new feature of my home presented itself
before me. Now it was all happiness and comfort; the scene of its ancient
hospitable board, its warm hearth, its happy faces, and its ready welcome
were all before me, and I increased my speed to the utmost, when suddenly a
sense of sad and sorrowing foreboding would draw around me, and the image
of my uncle's sick-bed, his worn features, his pallid look, his broken
voice would strike upon my heart, and all the changes that poverty,
desertion, and decay can bring to pass would fall upon my heart, and weak
and trembling I would stand for some moments unable to proceed.

Oh, how many a reproachful thought came home to me at what I scrupled
not to call to myself the desertion of my home! Oh, how many a prayer I
u