CHEOPS IN CONNEMARA 81 



incongi'uity of her own face and elaborate fringe, 

 framed in the whitewashed aperture, with immensities 

 of horizon and wind and soHtude overwhelming her. 



It is not many miles now to the Atlantic ; its salt- 

 ness is already in the wind, and the chains of the 

 traces clank loosely as the horse leans back against 

 his harness on the long downward stretch of road 

 that will find its ending in a little street, a strip of 

 civilisation existing and gi-owing between the wilder- 

 ness and the sea, with a kind of vegetable persistence 

 and stillness. The last half-hour of jolting does not 

 seem long, and the mind is no longer affaired with 

 speculations as to the empty silences and void places 

 of the earth. It is filled instead with the clatter of 

 school hours, with the solitary voice reciting carefully 

 the possibilities of the mummy's previous life, and 

 with a great wonder as to the shape in which such 

 things stow themselves away in the brain of such 

 childhood as is here. It is not easy to picture the 

 guise in which Cheops, Osiris and the rest pass before 

 the minds that can give them no other stage than the 

 native bog and moor — ^the necessary background for 

 all imaginations of theirs — ^no better stage -properties 

 than the furniture of a two-roomed cabin, and the 

 flannel and frieze of Connemara. Like solitary 

 enigmas, these and kindred things must show them- 

 selves, uncomprehended and unquestioned as is the 

 evening glimmer of stars by the eyes that, looking 

 dully upwards from cabin doors, see the points of 

 light kindhng where all before was impenetrable blue. 



A sea fog has begun to cling about the expanses 

 of heather and bog, and the white rocks show through 

 the grcyness like touches of foam on a wide and 

 gloomy sea. The desolation behind is wrapped in 

 a more mysterious desolateness ; the sense of remote- 

 ness is quickened, till something is felt of the true 



