When the good ship _Lady Eglinton_ had puffed and scraped her way through the tortuous shallows of Lough Corrib to Cong, she was received by a large meeting of the country folk assembled on the pier. Fortunately I had secured a car from Ballinrobe to await my arrival, and the driver, a perfect "gem of the sea," received me with high good humour. "To Ballinrobe, your honour?" he said, and drove off like a true son of Nimshi. As soon as he was fairly on the way, I said that I should like to drive to Ballinrobe by Lough Mask House. "It's not on our way, your honour," was the first and civil objection. I then observed that I wished to go that way in order to call on Mr. Boycott. "Sure it's a different way altogether, your honour," was the answer. "A long way round, your honour." Then I said, after the brutal Saxon fashion, "Go that way, nevertheless." No answer, but the speed of the car relaxed until two other cars came up. Then a particularly wild Irish conversation was kept up among the drivers, and I observed a pleasant commercial gentleman who was bound for the village, as distinguished from the landing-place of Cong, laughing consumedly as his car branched off and left me to pursue my way in the twilight. Then my car-driver, evidently backed by a brother car-driver, put his case plainly. He had been engaged to drive a gentleman from Cong to Ballinrobe, and would do what he had engaged to do cheerfully, but he had not engaged himself to go to Lough Mask House. It was not, as a notorious claimant said, "in the contract." I hinted that a mile or two out of the way, even Irish miles, could not matter; that at complete sundown there would be a moon; that increased pay would be given. Not the slightest effect was produced.