le,
such as used by the peasantry for carrying wicker paniers creels,
which are hung upon two wooden pins, that stand up out of its sides.
Underneath was a straw mat, to prevent the horse's back from being
stripped by it. On one side of this hung a large creel, and on the other
a strong sack, tied round a stone merely of sufficient weight to balance
the empty creel. The night was warm and clear, the moon and stars all
threw their mellow light from a serene, unclouded sky, and the repose of
nature in the short nights of this delightful season, resembles that of
a young virgin of sixteen--still, light, and glowing. Their way, for the
most part of their journey, lay through a solitary mountain-road; and,
as they did not undertake the enterprise without a good stock of poteen,
their light-hearted songs and choruses awoke the echoes that slept in
the mountain glens as they went along. The adventure, it is true, had
as much of frolic as of seriousness in it; and merely as the means of a
day's fun for the boys, it was the more eagerly entered into.

It was about midnight when they left home, and as they did not wish to
arrive at the village to which they were bound, until the morning should
be rather advanced, the journey was as slowly performed as possible.
Every remarkable object on the way was noticed, and its history, if
any particular association was connected with it, minutely detailed,
whenever it happened to be known. When the sun rose, many beautiful
green spots and hawthorn valleys excited, even from these unpolished and
illiterate peasants, warm bursts of admiration at their fragrance and
beauty. In some places, the dark flowery heath clothed the mountains
to the tops, from which the gray mists, lit by a flood of light, and
breaking into masses before the morning breeze, began to descend into
the valleys beneath them; whilst the voice of the grouse, the bleating
of sheep and lambs, the pee-weet of the wheeling lap-wing, and the
song of the lark threw life and animation the previous stillness of the
country, sometimes a shallow river would cross the road winding off into
a valley that was overhung, on one side, by rugged precipices clothed
with luxurious heath and wild ash; whilst on the other it was skirted
by a long sweep of greensward, skimmed by the twittering swallow, over
which lay scattered numbers of sheep, cows, brood mares, and colts--many
of them rising and stretching themselves ere they resumed their pastu