ing, walking slowly, for it was
an evening of great beauty; but though I was well into Slish Wood by
bed-time, I could not sleep, not from the discomfort of the dry rock I had
chosen for my bed, but from my fear of the wood-ranger. Somebody had told
me, though I do not think it could have been true, that he went his round
at some unknown hour. I kept going over what I should say if I was found
and could not think of anything he would believe. However, I could watch
my island in the early dawn and notice the order of the cries of the
birds.

I came home next day unimaginably tired & sleepy, having walked some
thirty miles partly over rough and boggy ground. For months afterwards,
if I alluded to my walk, my uncle's general servant (not Mary Battle, who
was slowly recovering from an illness and would not have taken the
liberty) would go into fits of laughter. She believed I had spend the
night in a different fashion and had invented the excuse to deceive my
uncle, and would say to my great embarrassment, for I was as prudish as an
old maid, "and you had good right to be fatigued."

Once when staying with my uncle at Rosses Point where he went for certain
months of the year, I called upon a cousin towards midnight and asked him
to get his yacht out, for I wanted to find what sea birds began to stir
before dawn. He was indignant and refused; but his elder sister had
overheard me and came to the head of the stairs and forbade him to stir,
and that so vexed him that he shouted to the kitchen for his sea-boots. He
came with me in great gloom for he had people's respect, he declared, and
nobody so far had said that he was mad as they said I was, and we got a
very sleepy boy out of his bed in the village and set up sail. We put a
trawl out, as he thought it would restore his character if he caught some
fish, but the wind fell and we were becalmed. I rolled myself in the
main-sail and went to sleep for I could sleep anywhere in those days. I
was awakened towards dawn to see my cousin and the boy turning out their
pockets for money and to rummage in my own pockets. A boat was rowing in
from Roughley with fish and they wanted to buy some and would pretend they
had caught it, but all our pockets were empty. It was for the poem that
became fifteen years afterwards "The Shadowy Waters" that I had wanted the
birds' cries, and it had been full of observation had I been able to write
it when I first planned it. I had found again the wind