The east wind hunted us along the shore of the wide, bleak bay, rimmed with yellow sea-weed, and black and ruffled like the innumerable lakelets that lay along our route.  The tall mountain over it was hooded in cloud.  It seemed as threatening and mysterious as Sinai; ready to utter some awful voice of law to the brown solitudes and windy silences.

Far ahead of us a few houses rose suddenly above the low coast line, an ugly family party of squat gables and whitewashed walls, with nothing nearer them to westward than the homesteads of America.

Far and near there was not a tree visible, nor a touch of colour to tell of the saving grace of flowers.  The brown mares swung the car along with something resembling enthusiasm; Letterbeg was the end of their stage; it was the end of ours also.  Numb with long sitting we dropped cumbrously to earth from the high footboard, and found ourselves face to face with the problem of how to spend the next three hours.  It was eleven o’clock in the morning, too early for lunch, though, apparently, quite the fashionable hour in Letterbeg for bottled porter, judging by the squeak of the corkscrew and the clash of glasses that issued from the dark interior of the house in front of which we had been shed by the mail-car.  This was a long cottage with a prosperous slate roof, and a board over its narrow door announcing that one Jas. Heraty was licensed for the retail of spirits and porter.

The mail-car rolled away; as it crawled over the top of a hill and sank out of sight a last wave of the priestly hand seemed to include us.  Doubtless we were being expounded as English tourists, and our great economic value to the country was being expatiated upon.  The role is an important one, and has its privileges; yet, to the wolf, there is something stifling in sheep’s clothing; certainly, on the occasions when it was discarded by us, a sympathy and understanding with the hotels was quickly established.  Possibly they also are wolves.  Undoubtedly the English tourist, with his circular ticket and his coupons, does not invariably get the best of everything.  We write surrounded by him and his sufferings.  An earlier visit than usual to the hotel sitting-room has revealed him, lying miserably on the sofa, shrouded in a filthy duvet, having been flung there at some two in the morning on his arrival, wet through, from heaven knows what tremendous walk.  Subsequently we hear him being haled from his lair by the chambermaid, who treats him as the dirt under her feet (or, indeed, if we may judge by our bedroom carpet, with far less consideration).

“Here!” she says, “go in there and wash yerself!”

We hear her slamming him into a room from which two others of his kind have been recently bolted like rabbits, by the boots, to catch the 6 A.M. train.  We can just faintly realise its atmosphere.

This, however, is a digression, but remotely connected with Letterbeg and Mr. Heraty’s window, to which in our forlorn state we turned for distraction.