Mike made an excellent landing in an open space in a beautiful park beside Westpoint. A small crowd soon gathered around us when we lit, but Mike and I paid little attention to them. I stepped out on the ground and looked at my watch. It was one o’clock. We had been in the air four hours. Mike felt the strain of this long aerial journey also, but not so much as I did. He was more accustomed to aeroplaning.
Our motor had been acting well, on the whole. It was a new style motor, without carburetor, and I had been suspicious of it, but it surpassed any motor I had ever seen in reliability.
We had just finished stretching out our tired limbs when a middle-aged man, with a kindly, honest face, but an important air, came hurrying along the driveway of the park in our direction.
We heard several in the crowd exclaim: “The Keeper, the Keeper.” The new comer looked at us in astonishment and then he inspected our aeroplane. Then he looked at us again, and exclaimed: “By the Powers.”
We did not know what kind of a salutation this might be, but Mike told what we were doing and why we had alighted in the Park.
The “Keeper,” as they called him, at once became friendly and introduced himself as the Steward of the Marquis of Sligo, in whose park we had alighted and whose mansion was close at hand. The Steward resided at the mansion, as the Marquis did not spend much time on his Irish estate.
He invited us to come up to the mansion, which invitation we gladly accepted. Following the Steward, we soon arrived at the stately home of the Marquis of Sligo, who owns the greater part of this section of Ireland. He is an absentee landlord, but he comes to Westpoint occasionally, and he treats his tenants liberally, for an Irish landlord. The large park around his mansion is open to all Westporters. We noticed, from the signs, that automobiles were not allowed to enter the park, but aeroplanes were not excluded, at least, not yet.
The Steward served us a good lunch, and sent a boy with a pony-cart to town to get the petrol. The Sligo Mansion is luxuriously furnished, and Mike and I felt like royal travellers.
The Steward’s kindness was explained when he began to talk about America. He had two brothers in the New World, and told us that tens of thousands of Irishmen from County Mayo and County Galway had left Ireland for America in the past twenty years.