y, and at once broke into exhortation: "It's a
very short life we live; man that is born of woman is of few days, and
full of trouble. Well for them that are the children of light--if seeing
the light they sin not against it"; and so on with amazing volubility.

There are eighty-five of these Covenanters here. They touch not nor have
touched the accursed thing. To them all parties and all governments are
alike evil. The Whigs persecuted the Solemn League and Covenant--so did
the Tories. Nationalists and Unionists are to them alike abominable,
sold under sin. Withal they are shrewd, canny, successful farmers--and,
as I inferred from sundry incidents, before Lord Ernest confided the
fact to me, not averse from a "right gude williewaught" now and then.

Mr. Keyes, I thought, was not a blue-ribbon man, nor a ribbon-man of any
kind.

The Duchess told me afterwards she had vainly endeavoured more than once
to get these people to vote at elections.

We had a sprinkling of such people, and very good people in quiet times
they were, in the Shenandoah Valley during the Civil War, to whom
Federals and Confederates were alike anathema.

We wound up our drive to-day just beyond "the Duke's seat," a little
rustic bench put up by the late Duke on a hill range which commands a
magnificent view over the whole domain of hill and forest and lakes, and
far away to the mountains of Munterlony. There, in the bogs and woods
James Hamilton, "lord baron of Strabane," with "other rebels, unknown,
in his company," hid himself till, after the fall of Charlemont in
August 1650, he was captured by a party of the Commonwealth's
men--whereby, as the record here runs, "all and singular his manors,
towns, lands, and so forth were forfeited to the Commonwealth of
England." Under this pressure he sought "protection," and got it a
fortnight later from Cromwell's General, Sir Charles Coote, whose
descendants still nourish in Wicklow. But on the 31st of December 1650
he "broke the said protection, and joined himself with Sir Phelim
O'Neill, being then in rebellion."

Troublous times those, and a "lord baron of Strabane" needed almost the
alacrity in turning his coat of a harlequin or a modern politician! It
is a comfort to know that at last, on the 16th of June 1655, he found
rest, dying at Ballyfathen, "a Roman Catholic and a papist recusant." As
we came back into the gardens and grounds, Lord Ernest showed me,
imbedded in the earth, a huge anchor pre