The echoes squealed the inquiry from rock to rock. Even Sibbie looked round with a cold surprise; but the stonebreaker had not heard.
“Oh, is it throut?” in a tone of complete comprehension; “Divil sich throuts in all Connemara as what’s in that lake! Ye’d shtand in shnow to be looking at Capt’in Thompson whippin’ them out of it!”
“Thank you,” said my second cousin very politely; “Good morning!”
We thought it better to chance the by-road than to try conversation. It was the first really bad road we had come upon in Connemara; but, though there was only a mile of it, it was enough to throw discredit on the whole district. Half a mile of walking and of pushing the trap from behind brought us to the top of the hill, and when there an equally steep descent was in front of us before we could get down to the level of the little arrow-head shaped bay that thrust its long glittering spike between the mountains of Salruck. To hang on to the back of a trap as a kind of improvised drag is both exhausting and undignified, so much so that we did not drive quite down to the bottom of the valley, but paused on a perch of level ground outside the gates of a shooting-lodge, and asked a woman what the further road was like.
“Indeed, thin, God knows, it’s a conthrairy road,” she said, with a sympathetic glance at our heated faces, “but whether or no ye can go in it.”
We thanked her, but made up our minds to throw ourselves on the kindness of the shooting-lodge, at whose gates we were standing; and the trap and Sibbie having been hospitably given house room there, we were free to explore Salruck. We went down through a tunnel composed of about equal parts of trees and midges, and, following the conthrairy road over a bridge that crossed a little river, we sat ourselves down by the sea-shore and looked about us.
It may be said at once that Salruck is a place which would almost infallibly be described as “spot.” A spot should be wooded, sheltered, sunk between mountains if possible, and, failing a river, a brook of respectable size should purl or babble into a piece of