'What a lovely spot!' Doreen exclaimed, as she sniffed the brisk breeze; 'how wild--how desolate--how weirdly fair! Not the vestige of a dwelling as far as eye can reach--except that speck below us.' Unpoetic Shane had been busy counting the wildfowl, watching the hawks, marking the sublime slow wheeling of a pair of eagles far away in ether heavenward. At the call of his cousin he brought his thoughts down to earth, and cried out: 'By the Hokey! a nice coast for the French to land upon. I wish them joy of it if they try. If they do we shall be in the thick of it, for look! You can just discern Glas-aitch-é---that dot in the sea, no bigger than a pin's point--between Dunaff and Malin. A fleet would have to pass close by us that was making either for Lough Swilly or Lough Foyle. But come--a canter down the hill, and we will see what we can get to eat. This sharp air gives one a plaguy appetite!' Doreen spoke truly, for Ennishowen is weirdly fair. The atmosphere of winter gave the desolation she had passed through a special charm. The ponderous banks of rolling steel-grey clouds, which had only just been conquered by a battling sun, gave a ghastly beauty to its wildness. Dun and steel-grey, sage-green and russet-brown, with here and there a bit of genuine colour--a vivid tuft of the Osmunda fern. Such chromatic attributes were well in harmony with the intense stillness, broken only by the rustle now and then of whirring wings, or the sharp boom of the frightened bittern. But beyond Carndonagh the face of nature changed--or would have, if it had been summer--for bleak elevated moorland and iron gorge vary but little with the season, whilst lower-lying districts are more privileged. During the warm months the track between Carndonagh and Malin is like a garden--an oasis of rich, damp, dewy verdure from the ever-dripping vapours of the Atlantic--an expanse of emerald mead saturated with the moisture of the ocean. Every bush and bank breaks forth in myriad flowers. Each tarn is edged with blossom, each path is tricked with glory. It is as if Persephone had here passed through the granite-bound gates of hell, and had dropped her garland at its portals. White starry water-lilies clothe the lakelets. The bells of the fuschia-hedges glow red from beneath a burthen of honeysuckle and dog-roses; orange-lilies and sheets of yellow iris cast ruddy reflections into the streams, while purple heather and patches of wild heartsease vie with each other in a friendly struggle to mask the wealth of green.