'
'Peace be with him and with the Bishop! The flight to Italy seems a
very needless precaution to a man who owned this corner of the world.
A bailiff would have had even less chance here then than in Connemara
a hundred years ago.'
'He certainly would have fed the crabs and rock-cod in two hours
after his arrival. Nevertheless, I believe the Cosenza story is the
safer one.'
'What a chaos of rock-ridges!--Old starved mother Earth's bare-worn
ribs and joints peeping out through every field and down; and on
three sides of us, the sullen thunder of the unseen surge. What a
place for some "gloom-pampered man" to sit and misanthropize!'
'"Morte," says the Devonshire proverb, "is the place on earth which
heaven made last, and the devil will take first."'
'All the fitter for a misanthrope. But where are the trees? I have
not seen one for the last four miles.'
'Nor will you for a few miles more. Whatever will grow here (and
most things will) they will not, except, at least, hereafter the sea-
pine of the Biscay shore. You would know why, if you had ever felt a
south-westerly gale here, when the foam-flakes are flying miles
inland, and you are fain to cling breathless to bank and bush, if you
want to get one look at those black fields of shark's-tooth tide-
rocks, champing and churning the great green rollers into snow.
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