EEO 
aYCE’S’ ADVENTURE 297 
flats of Dundalk Bay, but on the other they tumbled down 
most precipitously, to as beautiful a little sea lough as even 
the Irish coast can boast. Carlingford Lough, with the 
hanging woods of Rostrevor on one side and its line of ruined 
robber castles on the other, battered into submission, as 
most Irish castles are fancifully supposed to have been, by 
the great Protecter’s cannon, or so the local tradition had it. 
We boys used to be permitted sometimes, as a great treat, 
to take the long walk from Dundalk to the little inn at 
Carlingford, where no one ever seemed to stop, over the 
mountaintop. We chose of course the highest and most 
difficult point for our crossing. 
Coming down those steep two thousand feet we would 
incontinently plunge, all heated as we were, into the cool 
waters of the lough. ‘Then, a great supper of fresh herrings 
followed by another swim. Oh, those golden days! For- 
tunate is any one who can look back on such, when 
—‘‘ lads that thought there was no more behind 
But such a day to-morrow as to-day, 
And to be boy eternal.” 
Those days had their sorrows and pains and disappoint- 
ments, seemingly irrevocable disasters. Things you could 
never see right. Wrong bitterly eternal. The tears of chil- 
dren are very bitter tears while they flow. But some kindly 
alchemy in life passes a gently obliterating hand over them 
all. You cannot remember the dark things if you would, 
while the golden days still shine for you with that ‘“‘light 
that never was on land or sea.”’ 
““ Now the beauty of the thing when the children play is 
The terrible wonderful length that the day is. 
Up you jumps and out in the sun, 
And you fancy the day will never be done.” 
T. E. Brown, when he wrote those lines, had the very 
secret of boyhood in him still! But I must come back from 
far away prairie and vanished Indian hunters, back from 
