“But I thought all the country was in arms about the trials at Dunfanaghy,” I said.

“In arms about the trials at Dunfanaghy?  Oh no; they’ll never be locked up, Father M’Fadden and Mr. Blane.  And the people here at Letterkenny, they’ve more sinse than at Dunfanaghy.  Have you heard of the champagne?”

Upon this he proceeded to tell me, as a grand joke, that Father M’Fadden and Mr. Blane, M.P., having declined to accept the tea offered them by the authorities during their detention, they had been permitted to order what they liked from the local hotel-keeper.  After the trial was over, and they were released on bail to prosecute their appeal, the hotel-keeper demanded of the authorities payment of his bill, including two bottles of champagne ordered to refresh the member for Armagh!

A conspicuous, smart, spick-and-span house on the main street, built of brick and wood, with a verandah, and picked out in bright colours, was pointed out to me by this amiable citizen as the residence of a “returned American.”  This was a man, he said, who had made some money in America, but got tired of living there, and had come back to end his days in his native place He was a good man, my informant added, “only he puts on too many airs.”

A remarkably handsome, rosy-faced young groom, a model of manhood in vigour and grace, presently brought us up a wagonette with a pair of stout nags, and a driver in a suit of dark-brown frieze, whose head seemed to have been driven down between his shoulders.  He never lifted it up all the way to Gweedore, but he proved to be a capital jarvey notwithstanding, and knew the country as well as his horses.

Not long after leaving the town by a road which passes the huge County Asylum (now literally crammed, I am told, with lunatics), we passed a ruined church on the banks of a stream.  Here the country people, it seems, halt and wash their feet before entering Letterkenny, failing which ceremony they may expect a quarrel with somebody before they get back to their homes.  This wholesome superstition doubtless was established ages ago by some good priest, when priests thought it their duty to be the preachers and makers of peace.

We soon left the wooded country of the Swilly and began to climb into the grand and melancholy Highlands of Donegal.  The road was as fine as any in the Scottish Highlands, and despite the keen chill wind, the glorious and ever-changing panoramas of mountain and strath through which we drove were a constant delight, until, just as we came within full range of Muckish, the giant of Donegal, the weather finally broke down into driving mists and blinding rain.

We pulled up near a picturesque little shebeen, to water the horses and get our Highland wraps well about us.  Out came a hardy, cheery old farmer.  He swept the heavens with the eye of a mountaineer, and exclaimed:—­“Ah! it’s a coorse day intirely, it is.”  “A coorse day intirely” from that moment it continued to be.