NOT THE MAN FOR GALWAY. 311 



and O'Shaughnesseys been born ; and if she could 

 only persuade me to repurchase it with my wealth, 

 she would be the first lady in the barony. To Marc 

 Antony this project was enchanting. Ballybroney had 

 been roofless for the last twenty years, that being about 

 the period when the last of the * dirty acres,' which had 

 once appertained to the mansion, had slipped from the 

 fingers of the Bodkins ; therefore, to estabUsh himself 

 at Castle Toole, would suit my kinsman to a hair. In 

 short, the battery was unmasked ; and whether over- 

 persuaded by the eloquence of my wife, the arguments 

 of her cousin, or driven to desperation by a Hfe of 

 pleasure, I consented in due time ; and having 

 accompanied my honoured counsellors to Dublin, 

 found no competitor for Castle Toole — proposed for 

 the same — paid a large sum of money, and was declared, 

 by the legal functionaries, a gentleman of estate, and that, 

 too, in Connemara. 



" In my eyes, the value of the purchase was not 

 enhanced by a personal investigation. It had its 

 capabilities, it is true ; the house being a ruin, might be 

 repaired ; and as the lands were in their primeval state, 

 it was possible to reclaim them. Still, when one looked 

 at a huge, dismantled building of that mixed class in 

 architecture between a fortalice and a dwellinghouse, 

 with grey-flagged roof, lofty chimneys, embattled 

 parapets, and glassless windows, it was ill-calculated 

 to encourage an English speculator in Irish estates. 

 On every side a boundless expanse of barren moorland 

 was visible, with an insulated portion of green surface 

 on which the castle stood, and a few straggling trees 

 remained from what had once been a noble oak wood. 

 That some savage beauty did exist in the wild highlands, 



