On my return I found the owner of the house, a man of giant frame and noble features.  His dress bespoke a taste or pursuit incompatible with the wild mountain destiny stamped upon the external aspect of his home and family.  His wife spoke a few words in Irish, explaining my presence, to which he answered that I was welcome.  Supper was at length prepared, when he drew from a basket a few of the finest trout I ever saw.  He cleaned and fried them with his own hands, as if the operation were above the capacity of his wife, who performed the other culinary duties with silent assiduity.  It might be owing to hunger, it might be owing to the actual superiority of the fish, or it might be owing to the mode of cooking, but it seemed to me as if I never tasted anything of equal flavour to those trout.  The entertainment was ended with some boiled new milk, slightly curdled, a delicacy little known in the circle of fashion, but never surpassed either in that or any other.  Some fresh hay was procured and strewn on an article of furniture common in the houses of the Kerry peasantry, called a “settle.”  It is a sort of a rude sofa, made of common deal timber.  On this “settle” my host prepared my bed of new-mown hay, barricaded with old chairs and a table against the assaults of the hungry animals.  I had not long lain down when a man entered (the door consisted of a pair of tongs, so placed as to prevent the egress of the cattle), lay at full length on the table, and fell fast asleep.  In an hour or so afterwards, there came another, who groped his way over the cattle, and, sweeping the fire from the hearth, lay down to sleep in peace.  This man slept uneasily, and groaned heavily, as if some terrible sense of guilt or fear pressed against his heart.

I had a vague feeling of uneasiness, not free from alarm, but the hearty snoring of the one, and the fitful complaints of the other of my bedfellows died away on my ear, and I, too, shared their unconsciousness in deep sleep.  The man who brought my baggage arrived early next morning.  My host soon provided a good substantial breakfast—­excellent new potatoes, which had escaped the blight, butter, new milk, and a slice of the flesh of fried badger.  He then proposed to accompany us with his son, aged about thirteen, who by some inexplicable privilege seemed exempt from any portion of the drudgery which was the lot of the family.  The other man who brought the baggage was persuaded to leave his horse and car, and accompany us with my bundle, as far as the summit of the hill.  To climb the steepest mountain side had become an amusement to me, and we ascended the one then before us, merrily, our host relating many anecdotes of sportsmanship, and detailing the startling incidents and wild rapture of badger-hunting.  From the summit we commanded a view of the country for miles around.  “Here we are,” said our host, “higher than the proudest of your enemies.”  He then traced the route of the man with the bundle, through the open plain, and by