discussed, it would be well to bear in mind that
the constabulary fairly represent the great
masses of the populace of the country. The
force is about divided into two-thirds Roman
Catholic and one-third Protestant: this again
fairly represents the country. I have myself
been the only Protestant in a party of six in a
country station in a parish in Connemara. With
all these matters I never knew religious differences
to exist amongst this force; although the
men are individually strict observers of their
own religious duties, and the most regular
attendants at church. They thus set an example
to their countrymen, who are too often found
to quarrel about creeds. The constabulary
and the populace are always on the best of
terms, and the men of the force are general
favourites in every home throughout the country.
They discharge their duties so uprightly and
honourably, that they retain the respect of even
those they have to act against.

Many of the constabulary improve themselves
greatly in education after they leave the depôt.
In country stations they frequently study closely
in leisure hours. They are, as a rule, well read
in the current literature of the day, and I knew
several fair classical scholars in the force as
"full privates," and others who understood
more than one continental tongue.

How are these men paid? When I joined,
I received one pound nineteen shillings a
month for the first six months, and two pounds
five shillings a month afterwards, with an
increase of three-halfpence a day when I had served
two years. This, with barrack accommodation
and uniform, formed my entire remuneration.
The pay of the non-commissioned officers and
officers was in proportion. Last year an act of
parliament was passed to increase their pay; but
as the cost of living has greatly increased of late
years, I do not think the men are better off than
in my years of service. The promotion is slow,
because of the sub-inspectors not being taken from
the ranks of the force. To make the constabulary
still more effective, officers ought to be
promoted from the ranks, and not have, as at
present, raw cadets placed over experienced first-
class head constables.

TWELVE MONTHS OF MY LIFE.

IN EIGHT CHAPTERS. CHAPTER I.

I HAVE promised my husband to write him a
detailed history of one year out of my life—a
year in which I wept more, laughed more,
suffered more passionate sorrow, and sunned
myself in more unearthly bliss, than ever I found
included in my experience before or since. That
I am happy now, and trying to be wise, I
thank Heaven; that I was not happy once, and
very far from wise, I am going to confess. I
will begin by relating how it came that I got
engaged to Luke Elphinstone. My father was
Seth Gordon, a millowner of high repute, not
alone in the quiet Border country where we
lived, but out in the world, in the banks and on
'Change. Luke Elphinstone was his junior partner,
who had lived with us for some years past.
Gordon and Elphinstone was the business firm.
The mills stood on one side of our river, and on
the other our dwelling, the Mill-house, a large
white building, with a great copper-beech lying
up against its front, darkening and saddening
all the chambers within, and with a rambling
orchard crowding behind it, where the trees
were bent with age, and every stone and trunk
was eaten up with a hoary lichen.

For the Mill-house was not then what it is
now. The billiard-room, and the ball-room, and
the new dining-room had not been built, the pleasure-grounds had not been made. There were
corn-fields within a stone's throw of the twig
summer-house in the garden. The hill that
sloped from the gable down to the river had not
been cut up into flower-beds; it had only a simple
garniture of sweet-peas and carnations at the
top, and was given up to the growth of green
abundant grass where the crimson tassels of the
clover-flower nodded in their season. But the
row of sycamores down by the river is just the
same; the leaves spread their broad palms to
catch the sun as ever, and the water flashes
behind their trunks with the same free race.

Now the house looks to the river, getting
glimpses through the sycamores of the mill
settlement on the other side, and over the heads
of the sycamores of the happy woods and fields,
the hills and dales—green and golden, purple and
brown—the church-spire, and handsome distant
homesteads which cluster on the rising and falling
land between the Mill-house and the horizon.
Then, the front of the house was turned sideways,
the best windows gazing straight into the
foliage of the huge copper-beech which grew so
lurid when the setting sun got into its branches.

The old-fashioned garden, built high on walls,
and ascended to by flagged steps inside a
narrow gate, is quite cleared away; but it was
there in the time of my story, with its hollyhocks,
its cabbage-roses, its cucumber-frames,
and its beehives, its raspberry hedges, always
found by the sun, and its sad murmur from the
burn that ran behind its lilac-trees, under old
iron gates that jangled and clashed when people
came or went in the direction of the village.
That, indeed, was but seldom, except when the
cook stepped into Streamstown to scold the
butcher, or I to pay a visit to my kind friend
Miss Pollard. Most people preferred to cross
the wooden bridge over the river to the mills,
and go round by the mill-avenue to the town.

The orchard is gone, with its crimson and
golden rain of apples over the drenched grass
after a stormy night, and inside, the house is
very grand. In the days I write of it was not
grand. It was comfortable, but darksome, with
blinds half raised, with thick carpets everywhere,
baize on every door, and a half-awake silence in
all the chambers, as if stealthy feet were
accustomed to cross the floors, and forms not good to
be seen were used to muffle themselves in the
shadows of the sad-coloured hangings at the
approach of anything human. This was the fault
of my father, who had an exaggerated horror of
noise and glare, though we shall be obliged to
hear Elspie on this subject.