One of my first visits was to my brother's chief. He was a master of foxhounds and hunted the country. And I well remember my astonishment, when the door of this gentleman's residence was opened to me by an extremely dirty and slatternly bare-footed and bare-legged girl. I found him to be a very friendly and hospitable good fellow, and his wife and her sister very pleasant women. I found too that my brother stood high in his good graces by virtue of simply having taken the whole work and affairs of the postal district on his own shoulders. The rejected of St. Martin's-le-Grand was already a very valuable and capable officer. My brother gave me the choice of a run to the Killeries, or to Killarney. We could not manage both. I chose the former, and a most enjoyable trip we had. He could not leave his work to go with me, but was to join me subsequently, I forget where, in the west. Meantime he gave me a letter to a bachelor friend of his at Clifden. This gentleman immediately asked me to dinner, and he and I dined _tête-à-tête._ Nevertheless, he thought it necessary to apologise for the appearance of a very fine John Dory on the table, saying, that he had been himself to the market to get a turbot for me, but that he had been asked half-a-crown for a not very large one, and really he could not give such absurd prices as that! Anthony duly joined me as proposed, and we had a grand walk over the mountains above the Killeries. I don't forget and never shall forget--nor did Anthony ever forget; alas! that we shall never more talk over that day again--the truly grand spectacular changes from dark thick enveloping cloud to brilliant sunshine, suddenly revealing all the mountains and the wonderful colouring of the intertwining sea beneath them, and then back to cloud and mist and drifting sleet again. It was a glorious walk. We returned wet to the skin to "Joyce's Inn," and dined on roast goose and whisky punch, wrapped in our blankets like Roman senators!