This country of the Glens, east of the river Bann, escaped 'plantation,' and that accounts for its Celtic character. When the grand Ulster chieftains, the O'Donnells and the O'Neills of Donegal, went under, the third great house of Ulster, the 'Macdonnells of the Isles,' was more fortunate, and, thanks to its Scots blood, found favour with James I. It was a Macdonnell who was created first Earl of Antrim, and given a 'grant of the Glens and the Route, from the Curran of Larne to the Cutts of Coleraine.' Ballycastle is our nearest large town, and its great days were all under the Macdonnells, where, in the Franciscan abbey across the bay, it is said the ground 'literally heaves with Clandonnell dust.' Here are buried those of the clan who perished at the hands of Shane O'Neill--Shane the Proud, who signed himself 'Myself O'Neill,' and who has been called 'the shaker of Ulster'; here, too, are those who fell in the great fight at Slieve-an-Aura up in Glen Shesk, when the Macdonnells finally routed the older lords, the M'Quillans. A clansman once went to the Countess of Antrim to ask the lease of a farm. “Another Macdonnell?” asked the countess. “Why, you must all be Macdonnells in the Low Glens!” “Ay,” said the man. “Too many Macdonnells now, but not one too many on the day of Aura.” From the cliffs of Antrim we can see on any clear day the Sea of Moyle and the bonnie blue hills of Scotland, divided from Ulster at this point by only twenty miles of sea path. The Irish or Gaels or Scots of 'Uladh' often crossed in their curraghs to this lovely coast of Alba, then inhabited by the Picts. Here, 'when the tide drains out wid itself beyant the rocks,' we sit for many an hour, perhaps on the very spot from which they pushed off their boats. The Mull of Cantire runs out sharply toward you; south of it are Ailsa Craig and the soft Ayrshire coast; north of the Mull are blue, blue mountains in a semicircle, and just beyond them somewhere, Francesca knows, are the Argyleshire Highlands. And oh! the pearl and opal tints that the Irish atmosphere flings over the scene, shifting them ever at will, in misty sun or radiant shower; and how lovely are the too rare bits of woodland! The ground is sometimes white with wild garlic, sometimes blue with hyacinths; the primroses still linger in moist, hidden places, and there are violets and marsh marigolds. Everything wears the colour of Hope. If there are buds that will never bloom and birds that will never fly, the great mother-heart does not know it yet. “I wonder,” said Salemina, “if that is why we think of autumn as sad--because the story of the year is known and told?”