Wading through mud and slush coming over our shoe-tops, we bent our heads and entered. The room, if so it could, by a stretch of the imagination, be called, was so low that we could not stand erect. The cold bare earth that constituted the floor was damp and slippery as the rain came trickling down through the broken thatch and formed little pools on the ground. Near a suggestion of a fire, were huddled a woman and four children, the eldest not more than eight years of age. As we entered they all arose. We were horrified to see that they were as usual without stockings or shoes, and their clothing was so torn and ragged that it afforded no warmth whatever. The mother and her little girls were blue with cold. Their features were pinched with hunger. Their whole appearance indicated the want and suffering they had been patiently enduring for years. Over in one corner of the room was what they called a bed. It consisted of four posts driven into the ground. On stringers were laid a few rough boards; on these boards were dried leaves and heather, covered by a few old potato sacks. There was where this family of six persons slept. There was no window in the house, the only light and ventilation being furnished by the door and the cracks in the thatched roof. It was too horrible and we went out again into the rain--there we could at least get a breath of fresh air. We asked our guide how these people managed to keep the breath of life in them. He said they lived as their neighbors did, on potatoes and "stirabout." "What is 'stirabout'?" "It is a sort of a mush made of Indian meal and skimmed milk. They have that occasionally, for a little luxury, or when the potatoes are so scarce that they think they must husband them." "You don't mean to say that these people actually live on that fare? that they have nothing else? They at least have meat with their potatoes?" "God bless you, sir," and the honest man's eyes filled with tears, "they never know the taste of meat. There has not been a bit of meat in my house since last Christmas, when we were fortunate enough to get a bit of pig's head. But up here they don't even have that." [Sidenote: A TERRIBLE SEVEN HOURS.] Surely this must have been an exceptional case. It was impossible that even in that country there could be more than one or two instances of such utter and abject woe and misery. But Mr. Duggan told us to the contrary. He said that the house we had just left was only a fair sample of what was to be seen all over the Galtee Mountains. To be convinced, we trudged painfully through the rain for seven long hours.