the four mud walls that are so often left in Wicklow as the only remnants of a farmhouse.  The desolation of this life is often of a peculiarly local kind, and if a playwright chose to go through the Irish country houses he would find material, it is likely, for many gloomy plays that would turn on the dying away of these old families, and on the lives of the one or two delicate girls that are left so often to represent a dozen hearty men who were alive a generation or two ago.  Many of the descendants of these people have, of course, drifted into professional life in Dublin, or have gone abroad; yet, wherever they are, they do not equal their forefathers, and where men used to collect fine editions of Don Quixote and Moliere, in Spanish and French, and luxuriantly bound copies of Juvenal and Persius and Cicero, nothing is read now but Longfellow and Hall Caine and Miss Corelli.  Where good and roomy houses were built a hundred years ago, poor and tawdry houses are built now; and bad bookbinding, bad pictures, and bad decorations are thought well of, where rich bindings, beautiful miniatures, and finely-carved chimney-pieces were once prized by the old Irish landlords.

To return to our garden.  One year the apple crop was unusually plentiful, and every Sunday inroads were made upon it by some unknown persons.  At last I decided to lie in wait at the dangerous hour—­about twelve o’clock—­when the boys of the neighbourhood were on their way home from Mass, and we were supposed to be busy with our devotions three miles away.  A little before eleven I slipped out, accordingly, with a book, locked the door behind me, put the key in my pocket, and lay down under a bush.  When I had been reading for some time, and had quite forgotten the thieves, I looked up at some little stir and saw a young man, in his Sunday clothes, walking up the path towards me.  He stopped when he saw me, and for a moment we gazed at each other with astonishment.  At last, to make a move, I said it was a fine day.  ‘It is indeed, sir,’ he answered with a smile, and then he turned round and ran for his life.  I realized that he was a thief and jumped up and ran after him, seeing, as I did so, a flock of small boys swarming up the walls of the garden.  Meanwhile the young man ran round and round through the raspberry canes, over the strawberry beds, and in and out among the apple trees.  He knew that if he tried to get over the wall I should catch him, and that there was no other way out, as I had locked the gate.  It was heavy running, and we both began to get weary.  Then I caught my foot in a briar and fell.  Immediately the young man rushed to the wall and began scrambling up it, but just as he was drawing his leg over the top I caught him by the heel.  For a moment he struggled and kicked, then by sheer weight I brought him down at my feet, and an armful of masonry along with him.  I caught him by the neck and tried to ask his name, but found we were too breathless to speak.