The family home of the five brothers was Curraghmore, a noble estate lying some twelve miles west of Waterford. The great house stands in a cup of the hills, whose slopes are clothed with woods of oak, the primæval forest of Ireland. The oak woods adjoining the house were planted with the design of supplying timber to the Royal Navy. Built foursquare, like most houses in Ireland, the mansion faces upon a vast gravelled quadrangle, closed in on left and right by the long ranges of stables. Beyond the lawns of the terraced garden, beyond the hanging woods, the bony shoulders of the mountains of Comeragh hunch upon the changing sky; nearer hand, darkens the lone hill of Croughaun; and day and night the noise of running waters, the voice of the Clodagh River, flowing through tawny shallow and sombre pool, breaking white-maned upon rock and fall, rises upon the quiet air. Looking westward from the bare summit of the hill above the deer-park, you shall { xix} view the rich valley parcelled into garden and farm and paddock, which are set among deep groves; in the midst, flanked by a gleam of water, the house darkens upon the westering sunlight; and beyond, the sparkling landscape fades into the profound and aerial blue of the mountain wall. Eastward, the rounded bosses of the forest clothe the hills; and in the valley's gentle opening, the river Suir, like a scimitar laid on cloth of tapestry, glimmers dark and bright upon the plain, which, studded with woods and dotted with white specks of villages, stretches to where the dim sea-line merges in the sky.
Over yonder, cloven through the heart of the ancient woods, a green drive rises to the skyline, bordered on either side by rhododendrons, like huge ropes of jewels, three miles long. In the forest there is silence. Few birds or none nest in that deep labyrinth of silver-barked and shaggy trees, rooted for centuries in the mould of their own perennial decay. The martin-cat is lord of that hoary solitude. As a boy, Lord Charles trapped the martin-cats, and presented his mother with a muff made from their skins.
High on the hill rising to the north of the house of Curraghmore, set in a grove of beeches and enclosed within a wall, the last resting-place of the Beresfords opens upon a great and shining prospect of wood and mountain. Here is a wide and broad stone platform, like an ancient altar, the hue of rusty iron, compact of the granite slabs whereon the names of the dead are graven. On three sides it is walled with the tall silver stems of beeches, whose branches high overhead interlace in a green canopy.