’Loneliness begets sleeplessness, and sleeplessness begets a sort of madness.  I suffer from nightmare, and I cannot find words to tell you how terrible are the visions one sees at dawn.  It is not so much that one sees unpleasant and ugly things—­life is not always pretty or agreeable, that we know—­but when one lies between sleeping and waking, life itself is shown in mean aspects, and it is whispered that one has been duped till now; that now, and for the first time, one knows the truth.  You remember how the wind wails about the hilltop on which I live.  The wailing of wind has something to do with my condition of mind; one cannot sit from eight o’clock in the evening till twelve at night staring at the lamp, hearing the wind, and remain perfectly sane.

’But why am I writing about myself?  I want to escape from myself, and your letters enable me to do so.  The names of the cities you are going to visit transport me in imagination, and last night I sat a long while wondering why I could not summon courage to go abroad.  Something holds me back.  I think if I once left Garranard, I should never return to the lake and its island.  I hope you haven’t forgotten Marban, the hermit who lived at the end of the lake in Church Island.  I visited his island yesterday.  I should have liked to have rowed myself through the strait and along the shores, seeing Castle Cara and Castle Burke as I passed; but Church Island is nearly eight miles from here, and I don’t know if I should have been man enough to pull the fisherman’s boat so far, so I put the gray horse into the shafts and went round by road.

’Church Island lies in a bay under a rocky shore, and the farmer who cuts the grass there in the summer-time has a boat to bring away the hay.  It was delightful to step into it, and as the oars chimed I said to myself, “I have Marban’s poem in my pocket—­and will read it walking up the little path leading from his cell to his church.”  The lake was like a sheet of blue glass, and the island lay yellow and red in it.  As we rowed, seeking a landing-place under the tall trees that grow along the shores, the smell of autumn leaves mingled with the freshness of the water.  We rowed up a beautiful little inlet overhung with bushes.  The quay is at the end of it, and on getting out of the boat, I asked the boatman to point out to me what remained of Marban’s Church.  He led me across the island—­a large one, the largest in the lake—­not less than seven acres or nine, and no doubt some parts of it were once cultivated by Marban.  Of his church, however, very little remains—­only one piece of wall, and we had great difficulty in seeing it, for it is now surrounded by a dense thicket.  The little pathway leading from his cell to the church still exists; it is almost the same as he left it—­a little overgrown, that is all.