Through the gap in the fuchsia hedge, whose tassels lay blood-red upon the lough’s blue background on a fine morning, I would first distinguish his boat in the offing, and walk down to the landing-stage to watch it nearing me between the shallows, where those coal-black little “cross” bullocks stood knee-deep on the emerald marshland. I can see him, skilfully throwing his line on the water to the last instant; then turning towards me with the welcoming smile on his face always, though I generally knew, before he had stepped ashore, whether he had had good luck or not. Yet the weather was not by any means always fine, and many a day I sat in our little parlour, not even seeing the fuchsia hedge, and certainly not the water. One wet day comes specially to my mind. It had rained steadily, and out of the soft, white mist that shrouded the lough, the sound of a tolling bell had come eerily to me all the afternoon. I knew of no church within two miles save the ruined one on the Island, and at last I asked the chambermaid what it might mean. “Sure, it’ll be a buryin’ on St. Finnan’s Isle,” said she, crossing herself, after listening for a minute. “The family will still have the right of it, and they keep a bell in the broken tower. But the corpse will have come from far, poor sowl!” She went her way, and soon the bell ceased, and almost at the same time the mist began to clear and the shapes of the black cattle to appear again on the sedgy marshes, browsing as usual; then I saw black boats--like phantom things--stealing away in the distance and--behind them--a streak of gold struck across the wet mountain-side and all the mist shrank away, and the purple ridge was set against that tender blue-green Irish sky, crossed with bars of rosy light. I went out and down the wet path to the landing-stage, and there was Joe’s boat pulling towards the shore, and he standing up in it with a smile upon his face. * * * * * That was our last holiday. We were often out of London again, and in lovely spots: in summer, at Studland in Dorset, at Broadway and Burford in Oxon, at Ditchling in Sussex; in winter, at Hastings and Bournemouth. But it was always in search of health and to escape the nerve-racking air-raids of War--never again in the boyish spirit of holiday. Yet let it not be supposed that Joe was ever dismal. “Comyns Carr is a good fellow and a boon fellow,” George Meredith wrote of him to another old friend, and so he was to the last. Depressed now and then, but hopeful again till near the end, and always thankful for every bright moment and for every kindness received. “Grumbling is so dull,” he would say; and when I was dismayed at the _contretemps_ of travel lest they should affect his comfort, he would beg me to “bridge it over”--as he did.