The day was bright and warm, and after breakfast we walked in to the town to take a look at our films. We found the road even more beautiful in the morning than it had been in the evening, and, since we knew how long it was, it did not seem long at all. But we were rather disappointed in the films. I had not appreciated how much the moisture in the atmosphere diminished the intensity of the sun, and so most of the films were under-exposed. Amateur photographers in Ireland will do well to remember that they must use an aperture twice as large or an exposure twice as long as is necessary anywhere else.

We walked on in to the town, and were sauntering along looking in the windows, when some one touched me on the elbow.

"Hello, comrade," said a voice, and I swung around to find myself looking into the face of a tall, thin American whom we had met at Dublin looking at the Book of Kells in Trinity College Library. We had fallen into talk upon that occasion, and he had confided to us that he was from Massachusetts, that he was a bachelor, that he had started out by himself to see Europe, and that he was very lonely. He looked lonelier than ever, standing on this Killarney street corner, and he said that he was getting disgusted with Ireland, that it seemed to be raining all the time, that Killarney wasn't half as beautiful as he had been led to believe, and that he had about made up his mind not to go up the west coast, as he had intended, but to go straight to the continent. We remarked that we intended going up the west coast, and I saw his eye light with anticipation, but there are some sacrifices too great for human nature, and I didn't suggest his coming along.

Perhaps the most interesting show-place in the vicinity of Killarney is Muckross Abbey, and we spent that afternoon exploring it and its grounds. Muckross is far surpassed in interest by many other Irish ruins, but it is very beautiful, embowered as it is in magnificent trees and all but covered with glistening ivy. It is not very old, as Irish ruins go, for it dates only from the latter half of the fifteenth century, when it was founded for the Franciscans. The gem of the place is undoubtedly the cloister, with its arcade of graceful arches ranged around a court and lighting a finely-vaulted ambulatory. In the middle of the court is a giant yew, many centuries old, which spreads its branches from wall to wall. It is encircled with barbed wire, and I don't know whether this is to protect it from vandals, or to protect vandals from it—for the legend is that whoever plucks a spray of this tree dies within a twelvemonth.

The adjoining graveyard is crowded with interesting old tombs, and as we were wandering about looking at them, a funeral arrived. The priest walked in front, reading the burial service, while his assistant walked beside him, holding an umbrella over him, for it had begun to rain. Both of them wore black and white scarfs draped over one shoulder and strips of black and white cloth tied about their hats. Behind them came the coffin, carried on the shoulders of four men, the pair in front and the pair behind gripping each other about the waist so as not to be thrown apart by the inequalities of the path. Then came the mourners, about a dozen men, each with a black streamer about his hat. A number of women came last, their shawls over their heads.

The coffin was placed on the ground, and every one knelt in the dripping grass, bareheaded under the drenching rain, until the service was concluded. One of the mourners, at the proper moment, produced from beneath his coat a little black bottle which proved to contain the holy water, and with this the priest sprinkled the rude black casket, with little crosses for the screw-heads. Then the priest and his assistant went away, and the men hastened to get to their feet and clap on their hats, and then there was a general production of black clay cutties, and in a moment a dozen deep puffs of smoke were floating away before the breeze.

The women of the party retired behind a corner of the abbey to eat a bite of lunch, and the men stood around talking and smoking; and finally the caretaker produced four long-handled spades, and there was an animated discussion as to just where the grave should be dug. As is usually the case with Irish graveyards, this one was so crowded that it was no easy matter to find room for a fresh grave, but at last the spot was fixed upon, and four of the men fell to with the spades. When they grew tired, four others took up the work, and in half an hour the shallow grave was dug, the coffin placed in it, and the earth heaped back upon it. There was no keening.

One of the women who was with the party told us that the funeral procession had come all the way from the end of the upper lake, more than fourteen miles away, and that the deceased was a woman of ninety-six. Fancy the tragedies she must have seen! For she was a woman of twenty-six, married, no doubt, with children, in the famine of '47. How many of them died, I wondered, and how had she herself managed to survive the awful years which followed? Her home beyond the upper lake—I could close my eyes and see it—the dark little cabin with its thatched roof and dirt floor and single room; I could picture the rocky field from which she and her husband had somehow managed to wring a livelihood; I could see her running with her poor bare feet through mud and over stones beside some laughing tourist in the hope of getting a penny or two—

But it is too tragic to think about!

The shower passed, after a time, and we went on along a beautiful walk leading toward the lake—the Friars' Walk, it is called, and it is bordered by century-old beeches, yews, pines and limes, the most magnificent trees that I have ever seen, so glorious and inspiring that we were lured on and on. We came to the shore of the lake, at last, where the waves have carved the rocks into beautiful and fantastic shapes, and we followed the shore a long way, stopping at every jutting headland for a long look out over the grey, wind-swept water. Then the path turned inland and came out upon the middle lake, and here we found the fishermen from our hotel just getting to land, in a very drenched and disconsolate condition, for the water had been too rough for good sport.

That evening before the fire, the old Englishman, of whom I have already spoken, relieved his mind to me upon the subject of Ireland and the Irish. He said it was no use to try to help the Irish: in the first place, they didn't deserve any help; in the second place they took your help with one hand and bludgeoned you with the other; and in the third place any attempt to help them only made matters worse. Take the old age pensions, for example. They were a farce. Hundreds and hundreds of farmers had given their property to their children, so that they could go into court and swear they possessed nothing and claim a pension. Thousands more who were nowhere near seventy were drawing pensions because there was no way to prove just how old they were. And most of the pension money went for drink. Every pensioner had credit at the public houses, and his pension was usually drunk away long before it was received. The only effect of the act had been to make the Irish worse drunkards than ever—and they were already the worst in the world. That was the cause of their poverty; that was the reason they lived in filth and wretchedness. They were without ambition, without pride, without any sense of manhood or decency—all they wanted was whiskey, and they would do anything to get it. All this, I dare say, is the honest belief of a great many Englishmen; and there is in it just that small grain of truth which makes it sting.

But I grew tired of listening, after a time, and went out to the bar, where a very loquacious Ulsterman with the broadest of Scotch accents was explaining his woes to the grinning barmaid. He had just been dismissed, it seemed, from some position in the neighbourhood because he had "been out with a few friends" the night before. He was convinced that his late employer was no gentleman, because a gentleman would have understood the circumstances and overlooked them; he pronounced Kerry the most God-forsaken of counties, and announced his intention of getting back to Ulster as soon as he could. No doubt his experience in the south of Ireland made him a more rabid Orangeman than ever, and I suppose he lost no time in signing the covenant and enlisting in Ulster's "army."

We had planned to spend our last day at Killarney walking and driving about the neighbourhood, and we were delighted, when we came down to breakfast that Saturday morning, to find the weather all that could be desired, with the sun shining from a brilliant sky, and not a cloud upon it, except high, white, fair-weather ones flying before the wind. So as soon as we had eaten, we started away on a car for a drive through the deer-park of the Earl of Kenmare, a walk along the "fairy glen" which traverses it, and then another drive up along the heights to the ruins of Aghadoe.

We met many little carts driving in to Killarney, for it was market day—the identical type which had already grown so familiar: a flat cart with a man driving, his legs hanging down, and his women-folks crouched behind him under their shawls, with their knees drawn up to their chins, and the shaggy donkey which furnished the motive power, trotting briskly and alertly along. I don't know what the poor Irish would do without this serviceable little beast, long lived and useful in so many ways, able to exist on stones and nettles, and costing only a pound or two. Betty was so impressed with their usefulness that she wanted to buy one and send it home, but that speculation fell through.

As we climbed higher and higher up the heights, the wind grew cold and cutting, but the view below us over the lakes to the south opened more and more—a glorious panorama of wood and hill and white-capped water, with ever-varying light and shade under the drifting clouds. But what a contrast between this smiling landscape and the one which met our eyes when we turned them to the north, where one bleak and desolate hill towered behind another, away and away as far as the eye could see, a wilderness of grey boulders and black, fissured crags.

The car stopped at last before some stone steps leading over a wall, but as we started to mount them, a woman came running out of a near-by cottage and insisted on unlocking the gate for us, in the hope, of course, of getting a tip. She was the caretaker in charge of the ruins of Aghadoe, and she tried to tell us something about them, but the visitor who has to rely on her for information must content himself with very little.

The story, as I piece it together, is something like this: About the middle of the seventh century, there dwelt at Killarney a very holy man named St. Finian the Leper, and on Inisfallen, the largest of the Killarney islands, he founded an abbey, whose ruins may yet be seen there; and here at Aghadoe, the Field of the Two Yews, he built a church, which became the seat of a bishop. As was often the case, the original church proved, in time, to be too small, and an addition was tacked on to it. A round tower was also built as a protection against the Danes, and a little farther down the slope, a rude castle was put up as a residence for the bishop.

There is very little left of the castle and the round tower, but the walls of the church are still standing. The early church built by St. Finian forms the western part, or nave, and is entered by a beautiful round-headed doorway, of the familiar Celtic type. The rain of centuries has washed away much of the carving, but enough remains to show how elaborate it was. The windows here are also round-headed, but the later portion, or choir, is lighted by narrow lancet windows, which prove that it was built some time in the thirteenth century, after the Normans came. These are the only things of interest left in the ruins, and the visit to them is worth making not so much on their account, as for the magnificent view over the lakes.

We drove back to Killarney along the border of the lower lake, through the Kenmare demesne, and past the many-gabled mansion of the Earl, which has since been destroyed by fire; and we spent a very pleasant hour wandering about the village. The main street at Killarney is unattractive enough, crowded as it is with shops whose principal stock in trade is post-cards and photographs and books of views and monstrosities in bog oak and Connemara marble—souvenirs, in a word, for Cook tourists to take home. But turn up any of the narrow lanes which branch off on either side, and there is authentic Ireland—the Ireland of plastered cottages and thatched roofs and half-naked children and gossiping women leaning over their half-doors.

As it was market day, the lanes were more than usually crowded, and I explored them one after another, to an accompaniment of much good-humoured chaffing from the girls and women, especially when I unlimbered my camera. Then we walked out and took a look at the cathedral, a towering structure, still uncompleted as to its interior and bare and cold, but an impressive proof of the influence of the church which could raise the money to build so great an edifice in this poverty-stricken land; and then we stopped at some of the shops and looked at the Irish homespun, and spent a little time at an auction-sale, where the bidding was very slow and cautious, and finally we caught the omnibus back to our hotel.

There was still one place we wished to see. That was the Torc cascade, and, after tea, we set out to walk to it. The road lay for about a mile along the road skirting Muckross Lake, and then we came to a gate where a boy was waiting to exact a fee of nine-pence. Then we mounted a steep path, under magnificent pines, close beside the brawling Owengarriff River, up and up, with a lovely view of the lakes opening below us; and finally we came to the cascade—a white welter of water slithering down over the black rocks, very beautiful and impressive.

We sat there for a long time, looking at it and at the stately wood which clothed the opposite hillside, and at the blue water lying far below us, and at the green hills away beyond, and we both agreed that, next to the view from the Kenmare road, this was the most glorious view to be had about Killarney. Subsequent reflection has not altered this, and, after the trip through the Gap of Dunloe and across the lakes, I should certainly place this one to the Torc cascade. Beside it, the view from Aghadoe is nowhere.

We went on reluctantly, at last, mounting still higher until we came to a path bearing away to the left through the woods, and we followed this until we came to a mountain road which we had been told was there. It is called the Queen's Drive, and I suppose Victoria passed this way during her visit to the lakes; and it led us past the reservoir which supplies Killarney with water, and on down through magnificent woods whose beauty is marred only by a lot of so-called "monkey trees"—a monstrosity which had annoyed us all through Ireland, but to which I have not yet referred.

The monkey tree is a sort of evergreen, with long, thin branches clad with close-growing foliage, and looking not unlike monkeys' arms. In fact, the tree itself resembles in a grotesque way a lot of monkeys swinging in midair, and hence its name. It is a hideous thing, and yet a specimen grows in every dooryard. There was one in front of our hotel, there were others along the road; here they had been planted in great numbers and reached an unprecedented size—but we were glad to observe that a few were dying. The monkey tree seems to be to Irish homes what the rubber-plant used to be to American ones, and it appalled us to see how many little ones were being started in tiny front yards, which they would one day overshadow and render abominable. I can only hope that, in some happy hour, a wave of reform will sweep over Ireland and carry these monstrosities before it.

We came out, at last, upon a little huddle of houses on the hillside above our hotel, and stopped to talk to some children and their mother, then went on downward, in the gathering dusk, very happy because of a beautiful and satisfying day. And just as we turned into the highroad, Betty saw something gleaming on the ground at her feet, and stooped and picked up a shilling. From what ragged pocket had it fallen, we wondered? How great a tragedy would its loss represent? We looked up and down the road, but there was no one in sight. So we decided to keep it for luck, and we have it yet.