"Why should you be so anxious to leave this beautiful country?" I said.
"Why?" exclaimed Barney, casting a shrewd glance at me. "Oh, then, sure it's meself that's had enough of beauty without profit. I want to go where I'll get paid for my work, and be able to hold up my head with a dacent hat upon it."
As he spoke he took off and surveyed his own head-covering, which was of the kind described but too accurately as a caubeen. I could not help laughing at the gleam of humor which shot out of his eyes—good eyes they were, too.
"Oh, you villain of the world, is it straight into the hedge you want to drive the lady from America? What'll she be thinkin' of you at all for an unmannerly beast?"
The animal, being unable to answer these reproaches, shook out his mane again, and resumed his jog-trot till he came up with the two girls, who, out of breath from their exertions, were glad to jump into the cart. And so we drove on till we came at last to the bog. It was a strange, wild scene, with the moon shining over it in broad patches of silver, showing the green turf here and the black ground there, with mounds of earth arising ghost-like, and clamps of turf left drying for use, and the clusters of trees, fragments of old-time forests.
We all got down from the cart, whence Barney produced a slane, or turf-spade. He wanted to cut and leave to dry a bernum of sods, and so set to work without delay. He cut around till the sods were of sufficient depth; then he dug them up, and, turning them over, he left them to dry. He explained to me that they had afterward to be "footed "—that is, made into parcels,—and then put into rickles, which are turf-sods piled upon each other to a certain height; and lastly into clamps, which are tall stacks.
Moira took a turn at the spade, her face growing redder with the exertion. Winifred ran over to her.
"Let me have a turn," she said; "you know I like to dig."
And dig Winifred did, in spite of the protestations of Barney and Moira. The former said to me: