most strange disguises. A dead old gentleman robs the cabbages of his
own garden in the shape of a large rabbit. A wicked sea-captain stayed
for years inside the plaster of a cottage wall, in the shape of a snipe,
making the most horrible noises. He was only dislodged when the wall was
broken down; then out of the solid plaster the snipe rushed away whistling.




"DUST HATH CLOSED HELEN'S EYE"


I

I have been lately to a little group of houses, not many enough to be
called a village, in the barony of Kiltartan in County Galway, whose
name, Ballylee, is known through all the west of Ireland. There is the
old square castle, Ballylee, inhabited by a farmer and his wife, and a
cottage where their daughter and their son-in-law live, and a little
mill with an old miller, and old ash-trees throwing green shadows upon
a little river and great stepping-stones. I went there two or three
times last year to talk to the miller about Biddy Early, a wise woman
that lived in Clare some years ago, and about her saying, "There is a
cure for all evil between the two mill-wheels of Ballylee," and to find
out from him or another whether she meant the moss between the running
waters or some other herb. I have been there this summer, and I shall
be there again before it is autumn, because Mary Hynes, a beautiful
woman whose name is still a wonder by turf fires, died there sixty
years ago; for our feet would linger where beauty has lived its life of
sorrow to make us understand that it is not of the world. An old man