Some years ago, in going down the valley of Foxdale, towards the mouth of Glen Rushen, I lost my way on a rough and unbeaten path under the mountain called Slieu Whallin. There I was met by a typical old Manx farmer, who climbed the hillside some distance to serve as my guide. "Aw, man," said he, "many a Sunday I've crossed these mountains in snow and hail together." I asked why on Sunday. "You see," said the old fellow, "I'm one of those men that have been guilty of what St. Paul calls the foolishness of preaching." It turned out that he was a local preacher to the Wesleyans, and that for two score years or more, in all seasons, in all weathers, every Sunday, year in, year out, he had made the journey from his farm in Foxdale to the western villages of Kirk Patrick, where his voluntary duty lay. He left me with a laugh and a cheery word. "Ask again at the cottage at the top of the brew," he shouted. "An ould widda lives there with her gel." At the summit of the hill, just under South Barrule, with Cronk-ny-arrey-Lhaa to the west, I came upon a disused lead mine, called the old Cross Vein, its shaft open save for a plank or two thrown across it, and filled with water almost to the surface of the ground. And there, under the lee of the roofless walls of the ruined engine-house, stood the tiny one-story cottage where I had been directed to inquire my way again. I knocked, and then saw the outer conditions of an existence about as miserable as the mind of man can conceive. The door was opened by a youngish woman, having a thin, white face, and within the little house an elderly woman was breaking scraps of vegetables into a pot that swung from a hook above a handful of turf fire, which burned on the ground. They were the widow and daughter. Their house consisted of two rooms, a living room and a sleeping closet, both open to the thatch, which was sooty with smoke. The floor was of bare earth, trodden hard and shiny. There was one little window in each apartment, but after the breakages of years, the panes were obscured by rags stuffed into the gaps to keep out the weather. The roof bore traces of damp, and I asked if the rain came into the house. "Och, yes, and bad, bad, bad!" said the elder woman. "He left us, sir, years ago." That was her way of saying that her husband was dead, and that since his death there had been no man to do an odd job about the place. The two women lived by working in the fields, at weeding, at planting potatoes, at thinning cabbages, and at the hay in its season. Their little bankrupt barn belonged to them, and it was all they had. In that they lived, or lingered, on the mountain top, a long stretch of bare hillside, away from any neighbour, alone in their poverty, with mountains before and behind, the broad grey sea, without ship or sail, down a gully to the west, nothing visible to the east save the smoke from the valley where lay the habitations of men, nothing