I was going along the road this evening when I came on a clock (some would call it a black beetle), travelling in the direction of Narin. The poor thing seemed to have its mind set on getting there before dark—a matter of three miles, and half an hour to do it in! The sense of tears in me was touched for the clock, and I stooped down to watch it crawling laboriously along in the dust, over a very rough road, tired and travel-stained, as if it had already come a long way; climbing stones (miniature Errigals) twenty times as high as itself; circumventing others, falling into ruts headlong, and rising again none the worse for its awful experience; keeping on, on, on, “with a mind fixed and a heart unconquered.” I couldn’t help laughing at first, but after five minutes I felt a sort of strange kinship with the clock—it was a wayfarer like myself, “a poor earth-born companion and fellow-mortal”—and I stood watching it, hat in hand, until it disappeared out of view. The last I saw of it was on the top of a stone on rising ground, silhouetted against the sunset. Then it dropped over ... and I resumed my journey, thinking.