ve to pass
the time, any way."

"I'm off to Murrah, as soon as I have eaten something," replied I.

"'Tis little you know what a road it is," said he, smiling dubiously.
"'Tis four mountain rivers you'd have to cross, two of them, at least,
deeper than your head, and there's the pass of Barnascorny, where you'd
have to turn the side of a mountain, with a precipice hundreds of feet
below you, and a wind blowing that would wreck a seventy-four! There's
never a man in the barony would venture over the same path, with a storm
ragin' from the nor'west."

"I never heard of a man being blown away off a mountain," said I,
laughing contemptuously.

"Arrah, didn't ye then? then maybe ye never tried in parts where the
heaviest plows and harrows that can be laid in the thatch of a cabin are
flung here and there, like straws, and the strongest timbers torn out of
the walls, and scattered for miles along the coast, like the spars of a
shipwreck."

"But so long as a man has hands to grip with."

"How ye talk; sure when the wind can tear the strongest trees up by the
roots; when it rolls big rocks fifty and a hundred feet out of their
place; when the very shingle on the mountain side is flyin' about like
dust and sand, where would your grip be? It is not only on the mountains
either, but down in the plains, ay, even in the narrowest glens, that
the cattle lies down under shelter of the rocks; and many's the time a
sheep, or even a heifer, is swept away off the cliffs into the sea."

With many an anecdote of storm and hurricane he seasoned our little meal
of potatoes. Some curious enough, as illustrating the precautionary
habits of a peasantry, who, on land, experience many of the vicissitudes
supposed peculiar to the sea; others too miraculous for easy credence,
but yet vouched for by him with every affirmative of truth. He displayed
all his powers of agreeability and amusement, but his tales fell on
unwilling ears, and when our meal was over I started up and began to
prepare for the road.

"So you will go, will you?" said he, peevishly. "'Tis in your country to
be obstinate, so I'll say nothing more; but maybe 'tis only into
throubles you'd be running after all!"

"I'm determined on it," said I, "and I only ask you to tell me what road
to take."

"There is only one, so there is no mistakin' it; keep to the sheep path,
and never leave it except at the torrents; you must pass them how ye
can, and when ye come to four big ro