“Why not?” I asked.

“Oh, he didn’t like it.  He could get no work, but to be a porter, and it was too hard.  So he came back in three months’ time, and then he ’listed for a soldier.  He’s over in England now.  He likes it very well.  He’s getting very good pay.  They pay the soldiers well.  There’s a troop of Hussars here now.  They bring a power of money to the place.”

“What do they do with the wheat lands now?”

“Oh, they’re for sheep; they do very well.  Were you ever in Australia, sorr?” pointing to a place we were passing.  “There was a man came here from Australia with a pot of money, and he bought that place; but he thought he was a bigger man than he was, and now he’s found himself out.  I think he would have done as well to stay in Australia where he was.”

In quite a different vein he spoke of the landlord of another large seat, and of the way in which the people, some of them, had misbehaved—­breaking open the graves of the family on the place, “and tossing the coffins and the bones about, and all for what?”

The view as we crossed the long and very fine bridge over the Shannon after dusk was very striking.  It was not too dark to make out the course of the broad gleaming river, and the lights of the town made it seem larger, I daresay, than it really is.  As we drove up the main street I told my jarvey to take me to the Castle.

“To the Castle, is it?” he replied, looking around at me with an astonished air.

“Yes,” I said, “I am going to see Mr. Tener, the agent, who lives there, doesn’t he?”

“Oh, the new agent?  Oh yes; I believe he’s a very good man.”

“You don’t expect to be ‘boycotted’ for going to the Castle, do you?”

“And why should I be?  But I haven’t been inside of the Castle gates for twenty years.  And—­here they are!” he cried out suddenly, pulling up his horse just in time to avoid driving him up against a pair of iron gates inhospitably closed.  It was by this time pitch dark.  Not a light could we see within the enclosure.  But presently a couple of shadowy forms appeared behind the iron gates; the iron gates creaked on their hinges, a masculine voice bade us drive in, and a policeman with a lantern advanced from a thicket of trees.  All this had a fine martial and adventurous aspect, and my jarvey seemed to enjoy it as much as I.

We got directions from the friendly policeman as to the roads and the landmarks, and after once nearly running into a clump of trees found ourselves at last in an open courtyard, where men appeared and took charge of the car, the horse, and my luggage.  We were in a quadrangle of the out-buildings attached to the old residence of the Clanricardes, which had escaped the fire of 1826.  The late Marquis for a long time hesitated whether to reconstruct the castle on the old site (the walls are still standing), or to build an entirely new house on another site.  He finally chose the latter alternative, chiefly, I