we dandered down the road, through Masserene
and home.

I proposed to Anna a little trip to Lough Neagh in a jaunting car.

"No, dear, it's no use; I want to mind it jist as Jamie and I saw it
years an' years ago. I see it here in th' corner jist as plain as I saw
it then; forby Antrim wud never get over th' shock of seein' me in a
jauntin' car."

"Then I'll tell you of a shorter journey. You have never seen the
Steeple. It's the most perfect of all the Round Towers in Ireland and
just one mile from this corner. Now don't deny me the joy of taking you
there. I'll guide you over the strand and away back of the poorhouse,
out at the station, and then it's just a hundred yards or so!"

It took the combined efforts of Jamie, Withero, Mary and me to persuade
her, but she was finally persuaded, and dressed in a borrowed black
knitted cap and her wee Sunday shawl, she set out with us.

"This is like a weddin'," Jamie said, as he tied the ribbons under her
chin.

"Oh, it's worse, dear. It's a circus an' wake in wan, fur I'm about dead
an' he's turned clown for a while." In five minutes everybody in Pogue's
entry heard the news. They stood at the door waiting to have a look.

Matty McGrath came in to see if there was "aanythin'" she could do.

"Aye," Anna said, smiling, "ye can go over an' tell oul Ann Agnew where
I'm goin' so she won't worry herself t' death findin' out!"

"She won't see ye," Jamie said.

"She'd see a fly if it lit within a hundred yards of her!"

We went down the Kill entry and over the rivulet we called "the strand."
There were stepping stones in the water and the passage was easy. As we
crossed she said:

"Right here was th' first place ye ever came t' see th' sun dance on th'
water on Easter Sunday mornin'."

We turned to the right and walked by the old burying ground of the
Unitarian meeting-house and past Mr. Smith's garden. Next to Smith's
garden was the garden of a cooper--I think his name was Farren. "Right
here," I said, "is where I commited my first crime!"

"What was it?" she asked.

"Stealing apples!"

"Aye, what a townful of criminals we had then!"

We reached the back of the poorhouse. James Gardner was the master of
it, and "goin' t' Jamie Gardner" was understood as the last march of
many of the inhabitants of Antrim, beginning with "Totther Jack Welch,"
who was a sort of pauper _primus inter pares_ of the town.

As we passed the little graveyard, we stood and looked over