Rather than pass three hours waiting for a train at the little station of Ardrahan, it had been arranged to spend the time driving to Athenry; and, as the carriage rolled through the deliquefying country, the eyes of the man and the woman rested half fondly, half regretfully, and wholly pitifully, on all the familiar signs and the wild landmarks which during so many years had grown into and become part of the texture of their habitual thought; on things of which they would now have to wholly divest themselves, and remember only as the background of their younger lives.  Through the streaming glass they could see the strip of bog; and the half-naked woman, her soaked petticoat clinging about her red legs, piling the wet peat into the baskets thrown across the meagre back of a starveling ass.  And farther on there were low-lying, swampy fields, and between them and the roadside a few miserable poplars with cabins sunk below the dung-heaps, and the meagre potato-plots lying about them; and then, as these are passed, there are green enclosures full of fattening kine, and here and there a dismantled cottage, one wall still black with the chimney’s smoke, uttering to those who know the country a tale of eviction.  Beyond these, beautiful plantations sweep along the crests of the hills, the pillars of a Georgian house showing at the end of a vista.  The carriage turned up a narrow road, and our travellers came upon a dozen policemen grouped round a roadside cottage, out of which the furniture had just been thrown.  The family had taken shelter from the rain under a hawthorn-tree, and the agents were consulting with their bailiffs if it would not be as well to throw down the walls of the cottage.

‘If we don’t,’ one of the men said, ’they will be back again as soon as our backs are turned, and our work will have to be begun all over again.’

‘Shocking,’ Alice said, ’that an eviction scene should be our last glimpse of Ireland.  Let us pay the rent for them, Edward,’ and as she spoke the words the thought passed through her mind that her almsgiving was only another form of selfishness.  She wished her departure to be associated with an act of kindness.  She would have withdrawn her request, but Edward’s hand was in his pocket and he was asking the agent how much the rent was.  Five years’ rent was owing—­more than the travellers had in their purses.

‘It is well that we cannot assist them to remain here,’ said Edward.  ’Circumstances are different, and they will harden; none is of use here.  Of what use—­’

‘You believe, then, that this misery will last for ever?’

’Nothing lasts in Ireland but the priests.  And now let us forget Ireland, as many have done before us.’

* * * * *