She saw my movement of surprise, and went on: 

’There was a son of my own, as fine a lad as you’d see in the county—­though I’m his mother that says it, and you’d never think it t look at me.  Well, he was a keeper in a kind of private asylum, I think they call it, and when Michael was taken bad, he went to see him, and didn’t he know the keepers that were in charge of him, and they promised to take the best of care of him, and, indeed, he was always a quiet man that would give no trouble.  After the first three years he was free in the place, and he walking about like a gentleman, doing any light work he’d find agreeable.  Then my son went to see him a second time, and “You’ll never see Michael again,” says he when he came back, “for he’s too well off where he is.”  And, indeed, it was well for him, but now he’s come home.’  Then she got up to carry out some groceries she was buying to the ass-cart that was waiting outside.

‘It’s real sorry I do be when I see you going off’ she said, as she was turning away.  ’I don’t often speak to you, but it’s company to see you passing up and down over the hill, and now may the Almighty God bless and preserve you, and see you safe home.’

A little later I was walking up the long hill which leads to the high ground from Laragh to Sugar Loaf.  The solitude was intense.  Towards the top of the hill I passed through a narrow gap with high rocks on one side of it and fir trees above them, and a handful of jagged sky filled with extraordinarily brilliant stars.  In a few moments I passed out on the brow of the hill that runs behind the Devil’s Glen, and smelt the fragrance of the bogs.  I mounted again.  There was not light enough to show the mountains round me, and the earth seemed to have dwindled away into a mere platform where an astrologer might watch.  Among these emotions of the night one cannot wonder that the madhouse is so often named in Wicklow.

Many of the old people of the country, however, when they have no definite sorrow, are not mournful, and are full of curious whims and observations.  One old woman who lived near Glen Macanass told me that she had seen her sons had no hope of making a livelihood in the place where they were born, so, in addition to their schooling, she engaged a master to come over the bogs every evening and teach them sums and spelling.  One evening she came in behind them, when they were at work, and stopped to listen.

‘And what do you think my son was after doing?’ she said; ’he’d made a sum of how many times a wheel on a cart would turn round between the bridge below and the Post Office in Dublin.  Would you believe that?  I went out without saying a word, and I got the old stocking, where I keep a bit of money, and I made out what I owed the master.  Then I went in again, and “Master,” says I, “Mick’s learning enough for the likes of him.  You can go now and safe home to you.”  And, God bless you, avourneen, Mick got a fine job after on the railroad.’