Each time that it was rolled out of its coach-house I
imagine that every fibre in its antique frame must have vibrated at
the thought that now it was to re-commence its wanderings. Conscious
though the old carriage doubtless was that its springs were less
lissom than they used to be, and that the axles which formerly ran so
smoothly now creaked alarmingly, and sent sharp twinges quivering
through its body, it must have felt confident that it could still
accomplish what it had done fifty years earlier. I feel certain that
it started full of expectations, as it felt itself guided along the
familiar road which followed the windings of the lake, with the high
wooded banks towering over it, and then along a mile of highroad
between dense plantations of spruce and Scotch fir, until the
treeless, stonewalled open country of Northern Ireland was reached.
The hopes of the old carriage must have risen high as the houses of
the little town came into view; first one-storied, white-washed and
thatched; then two-storied, white-washed and slated, all alike lying
under a blue canopy of fragrant peat smoke. The turn to the right was
the Dublin road, the road which ultimately led to the sea, and to a
curious heaving contrivance which somehow led over angry waters to new
and sunnier lands.
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