SYCE'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 



