that I might get away from the more dangerous locality before the clouds overtook me.  In spite of my haste I had not gone half a mile when an edge of fog whisked and circled round me, and in a moment I could see nothing but a grey shroud of mist and a few yards of steep, slippery grass.  Everything was distorted and magnified to an extraordinary degree; but I could hear the moan of the sea under me, and I knew my direction, so I worked along towards the village without trouble.  In some places the island, on this southern side, is bitten into by sharp, narrow coves, and when the fog opened a little I could see across them, where gulls and choughs were picking about on the grass, looking as big as Kerry cattle or black mountain sheep.  Before I reached the house the cloud had turned to a sharp shower of rain, and as I went in the water was dripping from my hat.  ’Oh! dear me,’ said the little hostess, when she saw me, ’Ta tu an-rhluc anois’ (’You are very wet now ’).  She was alone in the house, breathing audibly with a sort of simple self-importance, as she washed her jugs and teacups.  While I was drinking my tea a little later, some woman came in with three or four little girls—­the most beautiful children I have ever seen—­who live in one of the nearest cottages.  They tried to get the little girls to dance a reel together, but the smallest of them went and hid her head in the skirts of the little hostess.  In the end two of the little girls danced with two of those who were grown up, to the lilting of one of them.  The little hostess sat at the fire while they danced, plucking and drawing a cormorant for the men’s dinner, and calling out to the girls when they lost the step of the dance.

In the evenings of Sundays and holidays the young men and girls go out to a rocky headland on the north-west, where there is a long, grassy slope, to dance and amuse themselves; and this evening I wandered out there with two men, telling them ghost stories in Irish as we went.  When we turned over the edge of the hill we came on a number of young men lying on the short grass playing cards.  We sat down near them, and before long a party of girls and young women came up also and sat down, twenty paces off on the brink of the cliff some of them wearing the fawn-coloured shawls that are so attractive and so much thought of in the south.  It was just after sunset, and Inishtooskert was standing out with a smoky blue outline against the redness of the sky.  At the foot of the cliff a wonderful silvery light was shining on the sea, which already, before the beginning of autumn, was eager and wintry and cold.  The little group of blue-coated men lying on the grass, and the group of girls further off had a singular effect in this solitude of rocks and sea; and in spite of their high spirits it gave me a sort of grief to feel the utter loneliness and desolation of the place that has given these people their finest qualities.