only to put out your hand from the window among roses and vines, and
the red wine grape; but there is all sorts in it, and the people is
better in this country, among the trees and valleys, and they
resting on their floors of mud.'

In Wicklow, as in the rest of Ireland, the union, though it is a
home of refuge for the tramps and tinkers, is looked on with supreme
horror by the peasants. The madhouse, which they know better, is
less dreaded.

One night I had to go down late in the evening from a mountain
village to the town of Wicklow, and come back again into the hills.
As soon as I came near Rathnew I passed many bands of girls and men
making rather ruffianly flirtation on the pathway, and women who
surged up to stare at me, as I passed in the middle of the road. The
thick line of trees that are near Rathnew makes the way intensely
dark even on clear nights, and when one is riding quickly, the
contrast, when one reaches the lights of Wicklow, is singularly
abrupt. The town itself after nightfall is gloomy and squalid.
Half-drunken men and women stand about, wrangling and disputing in
the dull light from the windows, which is only strong enough to show
the wretchedness of the figures which pass continually across them.
I did my business quickly and turned back to the hills, passing for
the first few miles the same noisy groups and couples on the
roadway. After a while I stopped at a lonely public-house to get a
drink and rest for a moment before I came to the hills. Six or seven
men were talking drearily at one end of the room, and a woman I
knew, who had been marketing in Wicklow, was resting nearer the
door. When I had been given a glass of beer, I sat down on a barrel
near her, and we began to talk.