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COMPANY. 
 
 'RAIM.R.AIM, G /vn IARMMBOW on THE. LEA 
 
 AND TRVTH I/ THf/ TO /AL .&> THAT T THtE; 
 AMD -TRVTH OR. CLPTHtD OK HAKED LET IT BC" 
 
All Rights Reserved. 
 
MARTIN5 COMPANY 
 
 AND OTHER JTORIEJ 
 
 BY JANE BARLOW 
 AVTMOR OF'^' 
 
 IDYLLS" 
 
 WITH ILLV^TRATIONJ^ 
 BY BERTMA NEWCO/v\BE 
 
 (Iteit) 
 MACMILLAN AND CO. 
 
 i 896 
 
: Ein Kleiner Ring 
 Begranzt unser Leben" 
 
 GOETHE, 
 
 13239339 
 
NOTE 
 
 " Mrs Martin's Company " and " A Very 
 Light Railway " appeared in The National 
 Review, "A Lost Recruit" and "A Case of 
 Conscience," in The Pall Mall Magazine. I am 
 indebted to the Editors of these periodicals 
 for permission to reprint the stories here,, 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 MRS MARTIN'S COMPANY (Illustrated p. 21) PAGE i 
 
 A LOST RECRUIT (Illustrated] . 27 
 
 AFTER SEVEN YEARS (Illustrated Frontispiece) 59 
 
 A CASE OF CONSCIENCE (Illustrated) . ,, 103 
 
 A PROVIDENT PERSON (Illustrated) . 132 
 
 A VERY LIGHT RAILWAY (Illustrated) . 171 
 
 ROSANNE . . . 195 
 
MRS MARTIN'S COMPANY 
 
 MRS MARTIN lived down a high-banked lane, 
 which, as it led no whither in particular, was 
 subject to little traffic, and which she occupied 
 all by herself, though her cabin stood the middle 
 one in a row of three. You could see at a 
 glance that the left-hand dwelling was vacant, 
 for the browned thatch had fallen in helplessly, 
 and the rafters stuck up through it like the ribs 
 of a stranded wreck. The other was less 
 obviously deserted ; still its plight could be 
 easily perceived in weedy threshold and cobweb- 
 curtained window. It testified strongly to the 
 lonesomeness of the neighbourhood that no 
 child had yet enjoyed the bliss of sending a stone 
 crash through the flawed greenish pane. Both 
 of them had, in fact, been empty for many 
 months. From the ruined one the Egan family 
 had gone piecemeal, following each other west- 
 ward in detachments, until even the wrinkled 
 parents were settled in California, where they 
 blinked by day at the strange fierce sunshine, 
 
Mrs Martin's Compan 
 
 back again under the 
 soft-shadowed skies of the ould counthry. 
 Soon after that, the O'Keefes had made a more 
 abrupt flitting from next door, departing on the 
 same day, all together, except little Kate and 
 Joe, whose death of the fever was what had 
 " given their poor mother, the crathur, a turn 
 like agin the place." Since then no new tenants 
 had succeeded them in the row, which was, to 
 be sure, out of the way, and out of repair, and 
 not in any respect a desirable residence. 
 
 The loss of her neighbours was a very serious 
 misfortune to Mrs Martin, as she had long 
 depended upon them for a variety of things, 
 which she would have herself summed up in 
 the term " company." She had been early 
 widowed and left quite alone in the world, so 
 that through most of the inexorable years which 
 turned an eager-eyed girl into a regretful- 
 looking little old woman, she had found 
 herself obliged to seek much of her interest in 
 life outside her own small domestic circle all 
 forlorn centre. This was practicable enough 
 while she lived under one thatch with two large 
 families, who were friendlily content that their 
 solitary neighbour should take cognisance of 
 their goings out and comings in. Upon 
 
Mrs Martin's Company 3 
 
 occasion, indeed, she had unforebodingly 
 grumbled that the young Egans and O'Keefes 
 " had her moidhered wid the whillaballoo they 
 would be risin' continyal." But when they 
 were gone a terrible blank and silence filled 
 up their place, as well might be, since her 
 kind had thus suddenly receded far beyond 
 her daily ken. A weary Irish mile intervened 
 between her and the nearest cottages of Clon- 
 macreevagh, and it was only " of a very odd 
 while" her rheumatics had allowed her to 
 hobble that far, even to Mass. Seldom or 
 never now did she make her way at all down 
 the windings of the lane, where the grass from 
 its tall banks encroached monthly more and 
 more upon the ancient ruts ; and other passengers 
 were hardly less infrequent. The lands about 
 lay waste, or in sheep-walks, so that there was 
 nothing to bring farm-carts and horses and 
 men lumbering and plodding along it, and to 
 attract anybody else what was there but a 
 mournful little old woman in a dark cavernous 
 kitchen, where the only bright objects were 
 the fire-blink and the few bits of shining 
 crockery on the dresser, which she had not 
 often the heart these times to polish up ? So 
 week out and week in, never a foot went 
 
4 Mrs Martin's Company 
 
 past her door, as a rule with just one excep- 
 tion. 
 
 Michael O'Toole, a farmer on the townland, 
 did her the kindness of letting his cart drive 
 out of its way every Saturday and leave at her 
 house the "loaves and male and grains of tay," 
 which her lameness would have otherwise made 
 it difficult for her to come by. This was, of 
 course, a great convenience, and ensured her 
 one weekly caller. But, unluckily for her, 
 Tim Doran the carter was a man quite singularly 
 devoid of conversational gifts, and so grimly 
 unsociable besides, that her provisions might 
 almost as well have been washed up by the 
 sea, or conveyed to her by inarticulate ravens. 
 If he possibly could, he would always dump 
 down the parcels on the road before her door, 
 and jog along hurriedly unaccosted ; and though 
 Mrs Martin could generally prevent that by 
 keeping a lookout for him, she never succeeded 
 in attaining to the leisurely gossip after which 
 she hungered. Beyond monosyllables Tim 
 would not go, and the poor little wiles by 
 which she sought to inveigle him into discourse 
 failed of detaining him as signally as if they 
 had been gossamer threads stretched across 
 his road. She had so often tried, for instance, 
 
Mrs Martin's Company 5 
 
 to lengthen his halt by telling him she thought 
 "the horse was after pickin' up a stone," that 
 at last he ceased even to glance at the beast's 
 feet for verification, but merely grunted and 
 said : " Oh, git along out of that, mare." 
 Then the mud-splashed blue cart, and sorrel 
 horse, and whity-brown jacket, would pass out 
 of sight round the turn of the lane, and the 
 chances were that she would not again set eyes 
 on a human face, until they reappeared jogging 
 from the opposite direction that day week. 
 
 In the long afternoons, which sometimes 
 began for her before twelve o'clock if she got 
 expeditiously through her " readyin' up," the 
 lag-foot hours seemed dismally empty, and 
 during them she was especially prone to crown 
 her sorrow with memories of her happier things : 
 of the time when she need only slip out at 
 her own door, and in at Mrs Egan's or Mrs 
 O'Keefe's, if she wanted plenty of company, 
 and when "themselves or the childer would 
 be runnin' in to her every minute of the day. 
 If there was nothin' else," she mused, "the 
 crathurs of hins and chuckens foostherin' about 
 the place looked a thrifle gay like." Mrs Martin 
 herself kept no fowl, for " how would she get 
 hobblin' after them, if they tuk to strayin' on 
 
6 Mrs Martin's Company 
 
 her ? " And she had attempted vainly to adopt 
 the O'Keefe's cat, which became unsettled in 
 its mind upon the departure of its late owners, 
 and at length roamed desperately away into 
 unknown regions. Thus, nowadays, when the 
 little old woman gazed listlessly over her half- 
 door, all she could see was the quiet green 
 bank across the road, with perhaps a dingy 
 white sheep inanely nibbling atop. Then she 
 would sometimes feel at first as if it were only 
 a dreary Sunday or holiday, when the silence 
 and solitude being caused by her neighbours' 
 absence at Mass would end on their return ; 
 but presently she would be stricken with the 
 recollection that they were irrevocably gone, 
 and that, watch as long as she might, she 
 would never more hear their voices grow 
 louder and clearer coming up the lane, pre- 
 luding their appearance anon, a cheerful com- 
 pany, round the turn fast by. 
 
 One afternoon, however, her hopeless lookout 
 did result in something pleasant. It was a 
 Christmas Eve, and dull, chilly weather, over- 
 clouded with fleecy grey, thinned here and 
 there into silvery dimness, a sheath from which 
 a fiery rose might flush at sun-setting. She 
 was just turning away with a shiver from the 
 
Mrs Martin's Company 7 
 
 draughty door when she caught a glimpse of 
 Father Gilmore's long coat flapping between 
 the banks. It was a welcome sight, which 
 she had missed through six tedious months 
 and more, for his Reverence, after a severe 
 illness in the spring, had been somehow pro- 
 vided with funds to go seek lost health abroad, 
 and had fared southward upon that quest. His 
 travels, indeed, seemed to have been inconceiv- 
 ably extended. When to Mrs Martin's question : 
 " And was your Riverence, now, any thin' as 
 far as Paris ? " he replied, with a touch of 
 triumph, " A long step further ," her imagination 
 recoiled from so wild a track, and she could 
 only stare at him as if astonished to see no 
 visible traces of such wanderings, except maybe 
 a slight tawny tinge like the rust-wraith of 
 many hot sunbeams, superimposed on the normal 
 greenish hue of his well-worn cloth. 
 
 Father Gilmore spared her half-an-hour of 
 delightful discourse, to which his own foreign 
 adventures and the home news from Clonmac- 
 reevagh gave an animated flow. But when 
 Mrs Martin's turn came to give an account of 
 herself the conversation fell into a minor key. 
 And the theme that ran through all her despon- 
 dence was the plaint that she did be terrible 
 
8 Mrs Martin's Company 
 
 short of company. "She had middlin' good 
 health, barrin' the rheumatiz, thanks be to 
 God, but sure she did be cruel lonesome. It's 
 lost she was there, wid niver sight nor sound 
 of man or mortal from mornin' till night ; she 
 might as well be an ould wether left fallen in 
 a gripe for all she seen or heard of anythin'. 
 'Deed now 'twas just the one way wid her as 
 wid the waft of smoke there up her ould 
 chimney that went fluttherin' out on the width 
 of the air, and sorra another breath anywheres 
 nigh it, since ever the crathurs quit. Many 
 a mornin' she'd scarce the heart to be puttin' 
 a light to her fire at all, she was that fretted, 
 ay bedad, she was so." 
 
 To these laments Father Gilmore listened 
 with a patience made more difficult by his 
 consciousness that he could suggest no remedy 
 of the practically appropriate sort which is to 
 general consolatory propositions as a close and 
 cordial hearth-glow to the remote and mocking 
 sunshine of a wintry sky. If you want to 
 warm your cold hands those league-long flames 
 some millions of miles away are so much less 
 immediately to the purpose than your neigh- 
 bouring screed of ruddy coals. This drifted 
 mistily through his mind, as for lack of a more 
 
Mrs Martin's Company 9 
 
 satisfactory remark he said: "You wouldn't 
 think of moving into the town ? " But he was 
 well aware that he had spoken foolishly, even 
 before Mrs Martin answered : " Ah, your 
 Riverence, how would I, so to spake, be 
 runnin' me head out from under me penny of 
 rint ? " For her husband, a gamekeeper up at 
 the Big House of the parish, had lost his 
 life by accident at a shooting party, and the 
 family had pensioned off his widow with 
 five weekly shillings and her cabin rent 
 free. 
 
 " True for you, Mrs Martin," said Father 
 Gilmore, standing up. "But sure, lonely or 
 no, we're all under the protection of God 
 Almighty, and I've brought you a little 
 ornament for your room." Mrs Martin's eyes 
 sparkled at the last clause of his sentence, 
 while he took out of his pocket a small parcel, 
 and began to strip off its wrappages, which 
 were many folds of bluish tissue-paper, with 
 layers of grey-green dried grass between. 
 " The man I got it from at Marseilles," he 
 said, "told me a lot of them came from Smyrna, 
 and I never stirred these papers that were on 
 it, thinkin' I mightn't be able to do it up so 
 well again. I only hope it's not broke on us." 
 
10 Mrs Martin's Company 
 
 As the thin sheets and light grass-wisps fell 
 off, the blast whistling under the door-sill 
 whisked them about the uneven floor, and 
 Mrs Martin drew in her breath expectantly. 
 At last the treasure was discovered in perfect 
 preservation, an alabaster statuette of the 
 Virgin, some two fingers high. 
 
 I do not know that it was a very fine work 
 of art, but at worst you cannot easily make 
 anything ugly out of alabaster. The Child lay 
 placidly asleep, and the Mother looked young 
 and happy and benignant. For a few moments 
 Mrs Martin's admiration was quite incoherent, 
 and when she found words Father Gilmore 
 sought to stem the tide of ecstatic gratitude 
 by saying, " And where will you put it ? 
 Why, here's a niche looks as if it might have 
 been made for it." The place he pointed to 
 was a little recess beneath a tiny window-slit, 
 formed partly by design, but enlarged by the 
 chance falling out of a fragment from the 
 stone-and-mud wall. A long ray, slanted from 
 the clearing west, reached through the half- 
 door, quivered across the dark room, and just 
 touched the white figure as he set it down. 
 Against the background of grimy wall it shone 
 as if wrought of rosed snow. 
 
Mrs Martin's Company 1 1 
 
 " Bedad, then, it's there I'll keep her, and 
 nowhere else," said the little old woman, and 
 he left her in rapt contemplation. As he 
 trudged home he felt sure that his few 
 francs had been well bestowed, and his con- 
 viction strengthened with each tedious twist 
 of the deserted ways which lay between 
 Mrs Martin and her company. By the time 
 he had gained his own house his uppermost 
 thought was a regret that such a trifle had been 
 all he could do for the poor ould dacint body 
 the Lord might pity her. 
 
 It was, however, by no means a trifle to the 
 poor old body herself. For the first few days 
 after her acquisition of the image it took up a 
 wonderful deal of her time and thoughts. 
 Even when she was not standing at gaze in 
 front of it she but seldom lost it from her sight. 
 Her eyes were continually turning towards the 
 niche, whence it seemed strangely to dominate 
 the room. Its clear whiteness made a mark 
 for the feeblest gleam of ebbing daylight or 
 fading embers ; it was the last object to be 
 muffled under bat's-wing gloom, and the first 
 to creep back when morning glimmered in 
 again. She dusted it superfluously many times 
 a day, with a proud pleasure always some- 
 
12 Mrs Martin's Company 
 
 what dashed by the remembrance that she 
 could exhibit it to no neighbours, who would 
 say, with variations, " Ah ! glory be among 
 us, Mrs Martin, ma'am, but that's rael iligant 
 entirely. Och woman, dear, did you ever see 
 the like of that now at all, at all ? " 
 
 Still, the most marvellous piece of sculpture 
 ever chiselled would probably betray deficiencies 
 if adopted as one's sole companion in life ; and 
 Mrs Martin's little statuette had obvious short- 
 comings when so regarded. As the winter 
 wore on the weight of her solitude pressed 
 more and more heavily. The bad weather 
 increased her isolation. Some days there were 
 of bitter frost and snow, and some of streaming 
 rain, and many of wild wind. Once or twice 
 Tim Doran brought her a double supply of 
 provisions, and did not return for a fortnight, 
 and then she felt indeed cut adrift. By-and- 
 bye her vague disconsolateness began to take 
 shape in more definite terrors. She was beset 
 with surmises of ill-disposed vagrants tramping 
 that way to practise unforbidden on her 
 wretched life, and she crept trembling to and 
 from the pool where she filled her water-can. 
 Or ghostly fears overcame her, and she thought 
 at night that she heard the little dead children 
 
Mrs Martin's Company 13 
 
 keening in the deserted room next door, and 
 that mysterious shadows went past the windows, 
 and unseen hands rattled the latch. But 
 through all her shifting mist of trouble the 
 alabaster Virgin shone on her steadily with 
 just a ray of consolation. Every night she 
 said her Rosary before the niche, and almost 
 always her devotions ended in a prayer of her 
 own especial wishing and wording. 
 
 " Ah, Lady dear," she would say, " wouldn't 
 you think now to be sendin' me a bit of com- 
 pany ? me that's left as disolit as the ould top 
 of Slieve Moyneran this great while back. Ah, 
 wouldn't you then, me Lady ? Sure if that's a 
 thrue likeness of you at all, there's the look on 
 you that it's plased you'd be to do a poor body 
 e'er a good turn, ay, is there, bedad. And I 
 couldn't tell you the comfort 'twould be to me, 
 not if I was all night tellin'. Just a neighbour 
 droppin' in now and agin', acushla, I wouldn't 
 make bold to ax you for them to be livin' con- 
 venient alongside of me the way they was. 
 Sure I know the roof's quare and bad, and 'twas 
 small blame to them they quit ; but to see an 
 odd sight of one, Lady jewel, if it wouldn't go 
 agin you to conthrive that much. Ah, darlint, 
 supposin' it was only a little ould poor ould 
 
14 Mrs Martin's Company 
 
 wisp of a lone woman the same as meself, it's 
 proud I'd be to behould her ; or if it was Crazy 
 Christy, that does be talkin' foolish, the crathur, 
 troth, all's one, the sound of the voice spakin' 
 'ud be plisant to hear, no matter what ould 
 blathers he tuk the notion to be gabbin'. For 
 it's unnathural still and quiet here these times, 
 Lady dear, wid sorra a livin' sowl comin' next 
 or nigh me ever. But sure 'tis the lonesome 
 house you kep' yourself, Lady dear, one while, 
 and belike you'll remimber it yet, for all you've 
 got back your company agin, ay have you, 
 glory be to God. And wid the help of the 
 Lord it's slippin' over I'll be meself one of these 
 days to them that's gone from me, and no fear 
 but I'll have the grand company then. Only 
 it's the time between whiles does be woeful 
 long and dhrary-like. So if you wouldn't 
 think too bad, Lady honey, to send me the 
 
 sight of a crathur ." Thus she rambled on 
 
 piteously, but in answer seemed to come nothing 
 more companionable than the wide-winged gusts 
 of the night wind roving the great grass lands 
 at the back of her cabin where the tiny window- 
 slit peered out. And day followed day with 
 not a step or voice. 
 
 It was on a mild-aired morning midway in 
 
Mrs Martin's Company 15 
 
 February that Mrs Martin, when dusting her 
 precious image, noticed a vivid green speck 
 dotted on the grey wall near its foot. Looking 
 closer, she saw two atoms of leaves pricked up 
 through the cracked mud, belonging no doubt 
 to some seedling weed, she thought, and she 
 would have brushed them away had not some 
 other trifle just then diverted her attention. A 
 few days afterwards, when she happened again 
 to take heed of them, they were crowning a 
 slender shoot, fledged with other delicate leaflets, 
 film-frail, and semi-transparent. She thought 
 the little spray looked pretty and "off the 
 common," and next morning she was pleased to 
 see that it had crept a bit further on the dark 
 wall. Thenceforward she watched its growth 
 with a deep interest. It throve apace. Every 
 day showed a fresh unfolding of leaf-buds and 
 lengthening of stalks, which seemed to climb 
 with a purpose, as if moved by a living will. 
 Their goal was indeed the narrow chink which 
 let a wedge of light slant in just above the 
 Virgin's glistering head, and in making for it 
 they caught boldly at anything that offered 
 tendril-hold. One morning the little old woman 
 untwisted a coil of fairy cordage that was en- 
 ringing the Virgin's feet, and often after this 
 
1 6 Mrs Martin's Company 
 
 she had to disengage the figure from the first 
 beginnings of wreathings and windings amongst 
 which it would speedily have disappeared. As 
 it was, they soon filled up the niche with a 
 tangled greenery, and overflowed in long trails 
 and festoons drooping to the floor. Never was 
 there a carven shrine wrought with such intri- 
 cate traceries. When the early-rising sun 
 struck in through them, the floor was flecked 
 with the wavering shadows of the small fine 
 leaves, whilst they themselves took a translucent 
 vividness of hue that might have been drawn 
 from wells of liquid chrysoprase and beryl ; 
 and amid the bower of golden-green steadily 
 glimmered the white-stoled Virgin. 
 
 All this was the work of but a few weeks, 
 scarcely stepping over the threshold of Spring. 
 The little old woman watched its progress with 
 pleasure and astonishment. She had never, she 
 said, seen the like of any such a thing before. 
 As the wonder grew, she felt more and more 
 keenly the lack of someone to whom she might 
 impart it. She did try to tell Tim Doran, but 
 the opposite turf-bank would not have received 
 the intelligence much more blankly, and could 
 not have grunted with such discouraging in- 
 difference in reply. The man, she thought 
 
Mrs Martin's Company 17 
 
 bitterly, was " as stupid as an ould blind cow. 
 If you tould him you had the Queen of Agypt 
 and the Lord Lieutenant sittin' in there colloguin' 
 be the fire, he wouldn't throuble himself to take 
 a look in at the door." However, no less stolid 
 listeners were forthcoming. Father Gil more 
 was paying the penalty for his ill-timed return 
 to northern climes in a series of bad colds, and 
 the other neighbours never set foot up the lane. 
 At last she bethought her of communicating 
 with Father Gilmore by a letter, which Tim 
 Doran might carry, and she laboriously com- 
 posed one in time for his next weekly call. 
 Whether he would deliver it or not was a point 
 which his manner left doubtful ; but he actually 
 did so. Mrs Martin's letter was "scrawmed" 
 on a bit of coarse brown paper, which, when I 
 saw it some time ago, still smelt so pungently 
 of tea, that I think it must have wrapped one 
 of her parcels. The writing on it ran as 
 follows : 
 
 " YOUR REVERENCE, Hopin' this finds you in good health, 
 thanks be to God. Plase your Reverence, the Quarest that 
 ever you witnessed has got clamberin' inside on the wall. I 
 dunno what at all to say to it ; never the like of it I seen. 
 But the creelin* of it and the crawlin' of it would terrify you. 
 Makin' offers now and agin it does be to smoother the Houly 
 Virgin, but sure I'd be long sorry to let it do that bad thrick, 
 B 
 
1 8 Mrs Martin's Company 
 
 after all the goodness of your Reverence. And I was thinkin' 
 this long while your Reverence might be maybe steppin' our 
 way yourself some day, for creepin' over all before it it is 
 every minute of time. Such a terrible quare thing I never 
 heard tell of, and the sorra another sowl except meself have I 
 about the place. 
 
 " Your obedient, 
 
 " MARY MARTIN." 
 
 This letter caused Father Gilmore consider- 
 able uneasiness, for it filled him with misgivings 
 about the mental condition of the writer. Her 
 account of " the Quarest that ever you wit- 
 nessed," sounded, he feared, painfully like the 
 hallucinations of a mind distempered by over 
 long solitude. " Indeed it's no way for the 
 poor ould body to be left, if one could help it," 
 he mused. Even in his meditations I am sure 
 that Father Gilmore must have used his soft 
 southern brogue " I've thought many a time it 
 was enough to drive her demented and now 
 there's some quare sort of delusion she's taken 
 into her head, that's plain, goodness pity her. 
 I'd have done right to go see after her before 
 this, as I was intendin', only somethin' always 
 happened to hinder me." 
 
 He was determined now against any further 
 delay, and he set out that very afternoon to visit 
 his afflicted parishioner. The expedition was 
 
Mrs Martin's Company 19 
 
 rather formidable to him, as he had a natural 
 shrinking from stormy scenes, and he fully 
 expected that he would find poor little Mrs 
 Martin if not downright "raving in no small 
 madness," at least labouring under some fright- 
 ful delusion, in the shape, apparently, of a 
 hideous monster infesting her abode. This 
 prospect made him so nervously apprehensive 
 that he was glad to fall in with a small youth, 
 one Paddy Greer, who seemed inclined to 
 accompany him upon his walk. All the way 
 along, between the greening hedges of the lane, 
 he remonstrated with himself for letting the 
 gossoon share unwittingly in such an errand, 
 yet he could not make up his mind to dis- 
 miss Paddy, or to feel otherwise than relieved 
 by the continued bare-foot patter at his 
 side. 
 
 But his relief was far greater when on 
 reaching the cabin he saw its mistress in her 
 little green plaid shawl and black skirt and 
 white cap, standing at her door among the long 
 westering sunbeams, without any signs of 
 excitement or aberration in her demeanour ; and 
 his mind grew quite easy when he ascertained 
 that the creeping thing indoors was no horrible 
 phantasmal reptile, but only a twining tapestry 
 
2o Mrs Martin's Companl 
 
 of bright leaves and sprays, which trailed a fold 
 of Spring's garment into the dark - cornered 
 room. Still, satisfactorily as the matter had 
 been cleared up from his former point of view, 
 he could suggest nothing to lessen Mrs Martin's 
 wonder at the mysterious appearance of the 
 creeper on her wall. His acquaintance with 
 such things was slight, and he merely had an 
 impression that the fashion of the delicately 
 luxuriant foliage seemed unfamiliar to him. So 
 he promised to return on the morrow with the 
 national school-teacher, who was reputed a 
 knowledgeable man about plants* Before that 
 came to pass, however, Mrs Martin had another 
 visitor. For little Paddy ran home to his 
 mother with the news that " the Widdy Martin 
 was after showin' his Reverence a green affair 
 she had stuck up on her wall, and that he said 
 it was rale super-exthrornary altogether, and 
 he'd get Mr Colclough to it." At that hearing 
 the curiosity of Paddy's mother incited her to 
 call without losing a moment at Mrs Martin's 
 house, where she inspected the marvellous 
 growth as well as the falling twilight permitted, 
 and admired the gracious-looking little image 
 quite to its owner's content. Thus Mrs Martin 
 enjoyed a sociable cup of tea, and an enthralling 
 

Mrs Martin's Company 21 
 
 gossip, which sent her to bed that evening in 
 much better spirits than usual. 
 
 Next morning arrived Father Gilmore with 
 the schoolmaster, who was unable to identify 
 the strange creeper, but called its appearance a 
 phenomenon, which seemed somehow to take 
 the edge off the admission of ignorance. His 
 failure only served to heighten a sense of awe 
 and wonderment among several of the neigh- 
 bours, who also looked in on her during the 
 day. For the village rapidly filled with reports 
 of "the big wrathe of green laves that was 
 windin' itself round the Widdy Martin's grand 
 image of the Blessed Virgin, and it inside on 
 her wall, mind you, where 'twould be a sur- 
 prisin' thing to see e'er a plant settlin' to grow 
 at all." And about the same time they discov- 
 ered that the Widdy 's house was " no such 
 great way to spake of onst you turned down the 
 lane ; you could tramp it aisy in a little betther 
 than ten minutes or so from the corner, if you 
 had a mind." In the days which followed 
 numbers of them were so minded, vastly to the 
 comfort of the little old woman, who welcomed 
 them with unbounded joy, and as many cups of 
 tea as she could by any means compass. She 
 harboured no resentment on the score of their 
 
22 Mrs Martin's Company 
 
 long and dreary defection. That was all ended 
 at last. For as the spring weather mellowed 
 into April, and the imprisoned creeper daily 
 flung out profuser sprays and tendril-spirals, the 
 fame of it spread far and wide over the town- 
 lands, until its habitation became quite a place of 
 resort. So many people now turned down the 
 lane that they soon wore a track, which you 
 could see distinctly if you looked along a stretch 
 of its grass-grown surface. The Doctor came, 
 and the District-Inspector, and the Protestant 
 clergyman. Even " higher-up Quality " arrived, 
 and satin-coated steeds have been seen tossing 
 their silver-crested blinkers at the little old 
 woman's door under the supervision of grooms 
 resplendently polished. Seldom or never in 
 these times had she to weary through a long, 
 lonely afternoon ; more often she held a 
 crowded reception, when the clack of tongues 
 and clatter of thick-rimmed delft cups sounded 
 cheerily in her kitchen. They scared away all 
 her fears of tramps and ghosts ; and she no 
 longer ended her Rosary with mournful petitions 
 for company. Her company had duly assem- 
 bled. 
 
 Towards the beginning of June a fresh de- 
 velopment of the marvel occurred, for then 
 
Mrs Martin's Company 23 
 
 the creeper blossomed. Thickly clustered 
 bunches of pale green buds broke swiftly into 
 fantastic curven-throated bugles of a clear- 
 glowing apricot colour, which made gleams as 
 of beaded light in the dark places where they 
 unsheathed themselves. Mrs Martin said it 
 looked " like as if somebody was after tyin' 
 knots in a ray of the sunshine." Just at this 
 crisis a Professor from one of the Queen's 
 Colleges, chancing to be in the neighbourhood, 
 was brought to pronounce upon the case. As 
 behoved a learned man, he gave it an ugly 
 name, which we may ignorantly forget, and 
 he said that it belonged to a species of plants, 
 rare even in its far off oriental habitat, but totally 
 unexampled beneath these northern skies. 
 
 However, soon after he had gone, leaving 
 no luminous wake behind him, the little old 
 woman made a brilliant discovery. It was on 
 that same evening, while she was drinking tea 
 with a few of her good gossips, for whom she 
 entertained as strong a regard as did Madam 
 Noah in the ancient Morality. Naturally 
 enough, the " quareness " and general inscruta- 
 bility of the strange creeper had been under 
 discussion, when Mrs Martin suddenly said : 
 " Ah ! women, dear, what talk have we then 
 
24 Mrs Martin's Company 
 
 at all, at all ? Sure now it's come clear in me 
 own mind this instaint minute that whatever it 
 may be, 'twas the Virgin herself, Heaven bless 
 her, set it growin' there wid itself, just of a 
 purpose to be fetchin' me in me company. 
 For, signs on it, ne'er a day there is since folk 
 heard tell of it, that there doesn't be some 
 comin' and goin' about the place, and makin' 
 it plisant and gay-like. And sorra a thing else 
 is it brought them, except to be seein' the quare 
 new plant ; aye, bedad, 'twas them twistin' 
 boughs on it streeled the whole lot along in 
 here to me, same as if they were a manner of 
 landin'-net. And sure wasn't I moidherin' her 
 every night of me life to be sendin' me some 
 company ? 'Deed was I so, and be the same 
 token ne'er a word of thanks have I thought 
 of sayin' to her, after her takin' the throuble to 
 conthrive it that-away, more shame for me, 
 but I was that tuk up wid it all." 
 
 " Thrue for you, Mrs Martin, ma'am," said 
 Mrs Brennan ; " aiten bread's soon forgotten, 
 as the sayin' is. Howane'er there's nothin' 
 liker than that that was the way of it as you 
 say. What else 'ud be apt to make it go 
 clamber all round the image of her, as if 'twas 
 her belongin' ? And didn't the gintleman tell 
 
Mrs Martin's Company 25 
 
 you 'twas nothin' that grows be rights next or 
 nigh this counthry ? Ah, for sure 'tis from 
 far enough it's come, if 'twas the likes of Them 
 sent it. And a kind thought it was too, glory 
 be to God." 
 
 Mrs Martin's theory gained almost unanimous 
 approval, and was generally accepted by her 
 neighbours, Father Gilmore sanctioning it with 
 a half wistful assent. It had the effect of 
 enhancing the interest taken in the flourishing 
 creeper and the little withered dame, the pledge 
 and recipient of so signal a favour from those 
 who are still the recognised powers that be in 
 such places as Clonmacreevagh. The idea 
 gave a tinge of religious sentiment to the soon 
 established custom of visiting Mrs Martin, and 
 on the weekly market days you often might 
 have supposed some kind of miniature pattern 
 in progress at her cabin, so great was the resort 
 thither of shawled and cloaked and big-basketed 
 country - wives. These guests seldom came 
 empty handed a couple of fresh eggs, or a 
 roll of butter, or a cake of griddle-bread would 
 be reserved for her at the bottom of the roomy 
 creel. Other visitors were fain to carry off 
 slips of the many trailing sprays, and would 
 leave payment for them in silver coin, which 
 
26 Mrs Martin's Company 
 
 sometimes had the comfortable portliness of 
 half-crowns. But I do not believe that the 
 little old woman valued these very highly, and 
 I think most of them went in providing the 
 strong black tea with which she loved to refresh 
 her friends. And there was never an evening 
 that she did not add to her Rosary : " And 
 the Lord bless the kind heart of you then, Lady 
 jewel, for sendin' me the bit of company." 
 
B isl 
 
A LOST RECRUIT 
 
 WHEN Mick Doherty heard that there was to be 
 route-marching next day in the neighbourhood 
 of Kilmacrone, he determined upon going off for 
 a long "stravade" coastwards over the bog, 
 where there were no roads worth mentioning, 
 and no risks of an encounter with the military. 
 In this he acted differently from all his neigh- 
 bours, most of whom, upon learning the news, 
 began to speculate and plan how they might see 
 and hear as much as possible of their unwonted 
 visitors. Opinions were chiefly divided as to 
 whether the Murghadeen cross-roads would be 
 the best station to take up, or the fork of the 
 lane at Berrisbawn House. People who, for one 
 reason or another, could not go so far afield, 
 consoled themselves by reflecting that the band, 
 at any rate, would be likely to come through the 
 village, and would no doubt strike up a tune 
 while passing, as it had done a couple of years 
 ago, the last time the red-coats had appeared in 
 Kilmacrone. And, och, but that was the grand 
 
28 A Lost Recruit 
 
 playin' intirely ! It done your heart good just 
 to be hearin' the sound of it, bedad it did so. 
 Old Mrs Geoghegan said it was liker the sort 
 of thunderstorms they might be apt to have in 
 Heaven above, than aught else she could think 
 of, might goodness forgive her for sayin' such a 
 thing ; and Molly Joyce said she'd as lief as not 
 have sat down and cried when was passed 
 beyond her listening it went that delightful, 
 thumpety-thump, wid the tune flyin' up over 
 it. 
 
 The military authorities at Fortbrack were not 
 ignorant of this popular sentiment, and had con- 
 sidered it in the order of that day. For 
 experience had shown that a progress of troops 
 through the surrounding country districts gener- 
 ally conduced to the appearance before the re- 
 cruiting officer of sundry long-limbed, loose- 
 jointed Pats, Micks, and Joes ; and a recent 
 scarcity of this raw material made it seem expedi- 
 ent to bring such an influence to bear upon the new 
 ground of remote Kilmacrone. Certain brigades 
 and squadrons were accordingly directed to move 
 thitherward, under the general idea that an in- 
 vading force from the south-east had occupied 
 Ballybeg Allan, while in pursuance of another 
 general idea, really more to the purpose, though 
 
Lost Recruit 29 
 
 not officially announced, the accompanying band 
 received instructions to be liberal and lively in 
 its performances by the way. 
 
 All along their route through the wide brown 
 land the soldiers might be sure of drawing as 
 much sympathetic attention as that lonesome west 
 country could concentrate on any given line. 
 Probably there would be no one disposed like 
 Mick Doherty to get out of the way, unless 
 some very small child roared and ran, if of a size 
 to have acquired the latter accomplishment, at 
 the sound of the booming drums. To the great 
 majority of these on-lookers the spectacle would 
 be a rare and gorgeous pageant, a memory resplen- 
 dent across twilight-hued time-tracts as a vision 
 of scarlet and golden gleams, and proudly-pacing 
 horses, and music that made you feel you had 
 never known how much life there was in you all 
 the while. Some toll, it is true, had to be paid 
 for this enjoyment. When it had passed by 
 things suddenly grew very flat and colourless, 
 and there was a tendency to feel more or less 
 vaguely aggrieved because you could not go a- 
 soldiering yourself. In cases, however, where 
 circumstances rendered that obviously impossible, 
 as when people were too old or infirm, or were 
 women or girls, this thrill of discontent, seldom 
 
30 A Lost Recruit 
 
 very acute, soon subsided, by virtue of the self- 
 preserving instinct which forbids us to persist in 
 knocking our heads hard against our stone walls. 
 But it was different where the beholder was so 
 situated that he could imagine himself riding or 
 striding after the rapturous march-music to fields 
 of peril and valour and glory, without diminish- 
 ing the vividness of the picture by simultaneously 
 supposing himself some quite other person. The 
 gleam in young Felix M'Guinness's eyes, as he 
 watched the red files dwindle and twinkle out 
 of sight, was to the brightening up beneath his 
 grandfather's shaggy brows as the forked flash 
 is to the shimmering sheet lightnings, that are 
 but a harmless reflection from far-off storms. 
 And there indeed pleasure paid a ruinous duty. 
 If those who were liable to it did not imitate 
 Mick Doherty's prudence and hold aloof, the 
 reason may have been that they had not fortitude 
 enough to turn away from excitement offered on 
 any terms, or that their position was less des- 
 perately tantalising than his ; and the latter 
 explanation is the more probable one, 
 since few lads in and about Kilmacrone can 
 have had their martial aspirations baulked 
 by an impediment so flimsy and yet so 
 effectual. 
 
Lost Recruit 31 
 
 There was nothing in the world to hinder 
 Mick from enlisting except just the un- 
 reasonableness of his mother, and that was an 
 unreasonableness so unreasonable as to verge 
 upon what her neighbours would have called 
 " quare ould conthrariness." For though a 
 widow woman, and therefore entitled to occupy 
 a pathetic position, its privileges were defined 
 by the opinion that " she was not so badly off 
 intirely as she might ha' been." Mick's depar- 
 ture need not have left her desolate, since she 
 had another son and daughter at home, besides 
 Essie married in the village, and Brian settled 
 down at Murghadeen, where he was doing 
 well, and times and again asking her to come 
 and live with him. Then Mick would have 
 been able to help her out of his pay much more 
 efficaciously than he could do by his earnings 
 at Kilmacrone, where work was slack and its 
 wage low, so that the result of a lad's daily 
 labour sometimes seemed mainly the putting of 
 a fine edge on a superfluous appetite. All 
 these points were most clearly seen by Mick 
 in the light of a fiercely-burning desire $ but 
 that availed him nothing unless he could set 
 them as plainly before some one else who was 
 not thus illuminated. And not far from two 
 
32 A Lost Recruit 
 
 years back he had resolved that he would 
 attempt to do so no more. 
 
 The soldiers had been about in the district 
 on the day before, scattered like poppy beds 
 over the bog, and signalling and firing till the 
 misty October air tingled with excitement. 
 When you have lived your life among wide- 
 bounded solitudes, where the silence is oftenest 
 broken by the plover's pipe, or the croak of 
 some heavily flapping bird, you will know the 
 meaning of a bugle call. Mick and his con- 
 temporaries had acted as camp-followers from 
 early till late with ever intensifying ardour ; 
 one outcome whereof was that he heard his 
 especial crony, Paddy Joyce, definitely decide 
 to go and enlist at Fortbrack next Monday, 
 which gave a turn more to the pinching screw 
 of his own banned wish. It was with a con- 
 certed scheme for ascertaining whether there 
 were any chance of bringing his mother round 
 to a rational view of the matter that he and his 
 friend dropped into her cabin next morning, 
 on the way to carry up a load of turf. Mrs 
 Doherty was washing her couple of blue- 
 checked aprons in an old brown butter-crock, 
 and Mick thought he had introduced the sub- 
 ject rather happily when he told her " she 
 
A Lost Recruit 33 
 
 had a right to be takin' her hands out of the 
 suds, and dippin' the finest curtsey she could 
 conthrive, and she wid the Commander-in- 
 Gineral of the Army Forces steppin' in to 
 pay her a visit." Of course this statement 
 required, as it was intended to require, elucida- 
 tion, so Mick proceeded to announce: "It's 
 himself's off to Fortbrack a Monday, 'listin' 
 he'll be in the Edenderry Light Infantry ; so 
 the next time we set eyes on him it's blazin' 
 along the street we'll see him, like the boys we 
 had here yisterday." 
 
 " Ah ! sure now, that'll be grand," said Mrs 
 Doherty, unwarily complaisant ; " we'll all be 
 proud to behold him that way. 'Tis a fine 
 thing for any young man who's got a fancy to 
 take up wid it." 
 
 " Och, then, bedad it is so ! " said Mick 
 with emphasis, promptly making for the open- 
 ing given to him. 
 
 " Bedad it is," said Paddy. 
 
 "There's nothin' like it," said Mick. 
 
 " Ah, nothin' at all," said Paddy. 
 
 Mrs Doherty made no remark as she twisted 
 a dripping apron into a sausage-shaped roll to 
 wring the water out. 
 
 " How much was it you were sayin' you'd 
 c 
 
34 A Lost Recruit 
 
 have in the week, Paddy, just to put in your 
 pocket for your divarsion like ? " inquired Mick, 
 with a convenient lapse of memory. 
 
 " Och, seven or eight shillin's anyway," said 
 Paddy, in the tone of one to whom shillings 
 had already become trivial coins, " and that, 
 mind you, after you've ped for the best of 
 aitin' and dhrinkin', and your kit free, and no 
 call to be spendin' another penny unless you 
 plase. Sure, Long Murphy was tellin' me he 
 was up in the town a while ago, on a day when 
 they were just after gettin' their pay, and he 
 said the Post Office was that thick wid the 
 soldier-lads sendin' home the money to their 
 friends, he couldn't get speech of a clerk to 
 buy his stamp be no manner of manes, not if 
 he'd wrecked the place. 'Twas the Sidmouth 
 Fusiliers was in it that time ; they're off to 
 Limerick now." 
 
 " But that's a grand regulation they have," 
 said Mick, " wid the short service nowadays. 
 Where's the hardship in it when a man 
 can quit at the ind of three year, if he's 
 so plased ? Three year's no time to speak 
 of." 
 
 " Sure, not at all ; you'd scarce notice it 
 passin' by. Like Barney Bralligan's song that 
 
Lost Recruit 35 
 
 finished before it begun isn't that the way of 
 it, ma'am ? " 
 
 " It's a goodish len'th of a while," said Mrs 
 Doherty. 
 
 " But thin there's the lave : don't be forgettin' 
 the lave, Paddy man. Supposin' we " 
 
 " Tub-be sure, there's the lave. Why, it's 
 skytin' home on lave they do be most continial. 
 And the Edenderrys is movin' no further than 
 just to Athlone ; that's as handy a place as you 
 could get." 
 
 " You'd not thravel from this to Athlone in 
 the inside of a week, if it was iver so handy," 
 said Mrs Doherty. 
 
 " Is it a week ? Och ! blathershins, Mrs 
 Doherty ma'am, you're mistook intirely. Sure, 
 onst you've stepped into the town yonder, the 
 train'll take you there in a flash. And the 
 trains do be oncommon convenient." 
 
 " Free passes ! " prompted Mick. 
 
 " Ay, bedad, and free passes they'll give to 
 any souldier takin' his furlough ; so sorra the 
 expense 'twould be supposin' Mick here had a 
 notion to slip home of an odd day and see you." 
 
 " Mick ! " said Mrs Doherty. 
 
 " Och well, I was just supposin'. But I'm 
 tould " the many remarkable facts which Paddy 
 
36 A Lost Recruit 
 
 had been tould lost nothing in repetition 
 " that they'll sometimes have out a special train 
 for a man in the army, if he wants to go any- 
 where partic'lar in a hurry there's iligance for 
 you. And as for promotion, it's that plinty 
 you'll scarce git time to remimber your rank 
 from one day to the next, whether it's a full 
 private you are, or a lance-corporal, or maybe 
 somethin' greater. Troth, there's nothin' a man 
 mayn't rise to. And then, Mrs Doherty, it's 
 the proud woman you'd be anybodfd be that 
 they hadn't stood in the way of it. And 
 pensions he might be pensioned off wid as 
 much as a couple of shillin's a day." 
 
 " Not this long while yet, plase the pigs," 
 broke out Mick, squaring his shoulders, as if 
 Time were a visible antagonist, and momentarily 
 forgetting the matter immediately in hand. 
 " But there's chances in it splendid och, it's 
 somethin' you may call livin'." 
 
 " And," said his friend, " the rations I'm 
 tould is surprisin' these times. The top of 
 everythin' that's to be got, uncooked, widout 
 bone." 
 
 Paddy and Mick discoursed for a good 
 while in this strain about the dignities and 
 amenities of a military life, and Mrs Doherty 
 
Lost Recruit 37 
 
 had not much to say on the subject. During 
 the conversation, however, she continued to 
 rinse one of her aprons, and wring it dry very 
 carefully, and drop it back into the water, like a 
 machine slightly out of gear, which goes on 
 repeating some process ineffectually . The two 
 friends read in her silence an omen of 
 acquiescent conviction, and congratulated one 
 another upon it with furtive nods and winks. 
 Mick went off to the bog in high feather, 
 believing that the interview had been a great 
 success, and that his mother was, as Paddy put 
 it, " comin' round to the notion gradual, like an 
 ould goat grazin' round its tetherin' stump." 
 His hopes, indeed, were so completely in the 
 ascendant that he summed up his most serious 
 uneasiness when he said to himself: " She'll do 
 right enough, no fear, or I'd niver think of it, 
 if Thady was just somethin' steadier. But 
 sure he might happen to git a thrifle more 
 wit yet ; he's no great age to spake of." 
 
 But when he came home about sunsetting, 
 his mother was feeding her few hens outside 
 their cabin, the end one of a mossy-roofed row, 
 with its door turned at right angles to the others, 
 looking out across the purple-brown of the 
 bogland to the far-off hills, faint, like a blue 
 
38 A Lost Recruit 
 
 mist with a waved pattern in it, against the 
 horizon. Mick, brought up short by the group, 
 woke out of his walking dream, in which he 
 had been performing acts of valour to the tune 
 of the " Soldier's Chorus " in Gounod's Faust, 
 the last thing the band had played yesterday ; 
 and he noticed a diminution in the select circle 
 of fowls, who crooned and crawked and pecked 
 round the broken dish of scraps. 
 
 " I see the specklety pullet's after stray in' on 
 you agin," he said : " herself 's the conthrary 
 little bein' ; I must take a look about for her 
 prisintly." 
 
 " Ah, sure she's sold," said his mother ; " it's 
 too many I had altogether. I was torminted 
 thryin' to get feedin' for them. So I sold her 
 this mornin' to Mrs Dunne at Loughmore, that 
 gave me a fine price for her. 'Deed she'd have 
 took her off of me this while back, on'y I'd just a 
 sort of notion agin partin' from the crathur. But 
 be comin' in to your supper, child alive; it's 
 ready waitin' this good while. Molly's below 
 at her sister's, and I dunno where Thady's off to, 
 so there's on'y you and me in it to-night." 
 
 In the room the more familiar odour of turf- 
 smoke was overborne by a crisp smell of baking, 
 and Mrs Doherty picked up a steaming plate 
 
Lost Recruit 
 
 39 
 
 which had been keeping warm on the hearth. 
 " Isn't that somethin' like now ? " she said, 
 setting it on the table triumphantly. " Rale 
 grand they turned out this time, niver a scorch 
 on the whole of them. I was afeard me hand 
 might maybe ha' got out o' mixin' them, 'tis so 
 long since I had e'er a one for you, but sure I 
 bought a half-stone of seconds wid the price of 
 the little hin, and that'll make a good few, so it 
 will, jewel avic, and then we must see after 
 some more. Take one of the thick bits, honey." 
 Probably most of us have had experience of 
 the unceremonious methods which Fate often 
 chooses when communicating to us important 
 arrangements. We have seen by what a little- 
 seeming triviality of an incident she may intimate 
 that our cherished hope has been struck dead, 
 or that the execution of some other decree has 
 turned the current of our life away. It is some- 
 times as if she contemptuously sent us a 
 grotesque and dwarfish messenger, who makes 
 grimaces at us while telling us the bad news, 
 which is ungenerous and scarcely dignified. So 
 we need not wonder if Mick Doherty had to 
 read the death-warrant of his darling ambition 
 in a pile of three-cornered griddle-cakes. At 
 any rate, he did read it there swiftly as clearly. 
 
40 A Lost Recruit 
 
 Most likely he knew it all before the plate was 
 set on the table, and his heart had already gone 
 down with a run when he replied to his mother's 
 commendations that they looked first-rate. As 
 he endorsed this praise with what appetite he 
 could, being, indeed, mechanically hungry, the 
 uppermost thought in his mind was how he 
 should at once let his mother understand that 
 she had got the price she hoped for her pet hen ; 
 and after considering for a while, he said : " Did 
 you ever notice the quare sort of lane-over the 
 turf-stack out there's takin' on it ? I question 
 hadn't we done righter to have took a leveler 
 bit of ground for under it. But I was thinkin' 
 this mornin'" of what a different subject he 
 had been thinking " that next year I'd thry 
 buildin' it agin the back o' th' ould shed, where 
 there does be ne'er a slant at all." 
 
 " Ay, sure that 'ud be grand," said Mrs 
 Doherty, much more elated than if she had 
 heard of a large fortune ; " you couldn't find an 
 iliganter place for it in the width of this world." 
 She felt quite satisfied that her craftily-timed 
 treat had dispelled the dreaded danger, which 
 actually was the case in a way. But if Mick 
 would stay at home with her, she was perfectly 
 content to suppose that she came after a griddle- 
 
A Lost Recruit 41 
 
 cake in his estimation. Her relief made her 
 unusually talkative ; but Mick was reflecting 
 between his answers how he must now tell 
 Paddy Joyce that they were never to be com- 
 rades after all. 
 
 He went out on this mission immediately after 
 supper. The sun had gone down and the cold 
 clearness left showed things plainly, yet was 
 not light. In front of the cabin-rows the small 
 children of the place were screeching over their 
 final romp and quarrel, as they did every even- 
 ing ; fowls and goats and pigs were settling 
 down for the night with the squawks and bleats 
 and squeals which also took place every even- 
 ing ; on the brown-hollowed grass-bank between 
 Colgan's and O'Reilly's, old Morissy, the blind 
 fiddler, was feebly scraping and twangling, 
 according to his custom every evening, and, for 
 that matter, all day long. Even the wisps of 
 straw and scraps of paper blowing down the 
 middle of the wide roadway seemed to have 
 whirled over and over and caught in the rough 
 patches of stone, just so, as often as the sun had 
 set. Close to the Joyces', Mick met Peter 
 Maclean driving home a brood of ducklings. A 
 broad and burly man, who says " shoo-shoo" to 
 a high-piping cluster of tiny yellow ducks, and 
 
42 A Lost Recruit 
 
 flourishes a long willow wand to keep them from 
 straggling out of their compacted trot, does 
 undoubtedly present rather an absurd appear- 
 ance ; yet I cannot explain why the sight should 
 have seemed to prick like a sting through the 
 wide weary disgust which Mick experienced as 
 he stood in the twilit boreen waiting for Paddy 
 to come out. He had scarcely a grunt to ex- 
 change for Peter's cheerful "Fine evenin'." 
 What does it signify in a universal desert 
 whether evenings be fine or foul? 
 
 Altogether, it had been a bad time ; and Mick 
 acted wisely in taking precautions against its 
 recurrence, especially as the obstacles which had 
 confronted him nearly two years back were now 
 more hope-baffling than ever. For the inter- 
 vening months had not brought the desirable 
 " thrifle more wit " to his unsteady brother 
 Thady, who, on the contrary, was developing 
 into one of those people whose good-for- 
 nothingness is taken as a matter of course even 
 by themselves ; and a bolt was thus, so to speak, 
 drawn across Mick's locked door. 
 
 He set off betimes on his long ramble. It 
 was a cloudless July morning the noon of 
 summer by air and light as well as by the 
 calendar. Even the barest tracts of the bogland, 
 
Lost Recruit 43 
 
 which vary their aspect as little as may be from 
 shifting season to season, were flecked with 
 golden furze-blossom, and whitened with 
 streaming tufts of fairy-cotton, and sun-warmed 
 herbs were fragrant underfoot. Mick rather 
 hurried over this stage of his " stravade," partly 
 because he foresaw a blazing hot day, and he 
 wished to be among more broken ground, where 
 there are sheltered hollows scooped in the 
 " knockawns," and cool patches under their 
 bushes and boulders. He entered the region of 
 these things before his shadow had shrunk to its 
 briefest ; for not so very far beyond Kilmacrone 
 the smooth floor of the big bog crumples itself 
 into crests and ridges, as if it had caught the 
 trick from its bounding ocean ; and the nearer it 
 comes to the shore the higher it heaves itself, 
 until at last it is cut short by a sheer cliff wall, 
 with storm-stunted brambles and furzes cower- 
 ing along the edge, fathoms above a base-line 
 of exuberant weed and foam. The long sea- 
 frontage of this rock-rampart is fissured by only 
 a few narrow clefts. On the left hand, facing 
 oceanwards, the coast is a labyrinth of mountain- 
 fiords, straits, and bays, where you may see 
 great craggy shoulders and domed summits 
 waver in their crystal calm at the flick of a gull's 
 
44 A Lost Recruit 
 
 dipping wing, or add to the terror of the tem- 
 pest, as they start out black and unmoved behind 
 rifts of swirling mists. On the right there is the 
 same fretwork of land and water, but wrought 
 in less high relief. A tract of lonely strands, 
 where shells and daisies whiten the grass, and 
 pink-belled creepers trail entangled with tawny- 
 podded wrack, across the shingle. You are apt 
 thereabouts to happen on clattering pebble-banks 
 and curling foam, when you are apparently deep 
 among meadows and corn-land, or to come on 
 sturdy green potato-drills round some corner 
 where you had confidently supposed the unstable 
 furrows of the sea. And the intricate ground- 
 plan of the district must be long studied 
 before you can always feel sure whether the 
 low-shelving swarded edges by which you are 
 walking frame salt or fresh water. 
 
 Mick was bound eventually for one of those 
 ravines which cleave the clifPs precipitous wall 
 and give access to the shore, generally by a deep- 
 sunken sandy boreen. Here, under a tall bank, 
 there are a couple of cabins, besides another 
 which, having lost its roof, may be reckoned as 
 a half ; so that Tullykillagin is not a large place, 
 even as places go in its neighbourhood. He 
 knew, however, that he could count upon get- 
 
Lost Recruit 45 
 
 ting something to eat at aither of the two cabins 
 first mentioned, and, indeed, at the bare-raftered 
 one also if, as often chanced, it was occupied by 
 Tim Fottrel, the gatheremup ; and this prospect 
 served for an incentive, feeble enough, though 
 it strengthened a little as the hours wore on. 
 So languid, in fact, was his resolution that at one 
 moment he thought he would just sthreel home 
 again without going any further ; if he went aisy 
 everybody would have cleared out of Kilmacrone 
 before he got back. But at this time he was 
 sitting among some broom bushes, under which 
 last year's withered black pods were strewn, and 
 he determined that if there were an odd number 
 of seeds in the first one he opened he would go 
 on to Tullykillagin. There were nine in it, and 
 he logically continued to loiter seawards. 
 
 He dawdled so much that when he came to 
 the cliff the sun already hung low over the water, 
 and as he walked along the edge, his shadow 
 stretched away far inland across the dappled pale 
 and dark green of the furze-fretted sward. The 
 sea unrolled a ceaseless scroll of faint wild- 
 hyacinth colour, on which invisible breeze-wafts 
 inscribed and erased mysterious curves and 
 strokes like hieroglyphics. Here and there it 
 showed deep purple stains ; for a flight of little 
 
46 A Lost Recruit 
 
 snowflake clouds were fluttering in from the 
 Atlantic, followed at leisure by deep-folded, 
 glistering drifts, now massed on the horizon-rim 
 to muffle the descending sun. Yet that tide, 
 with all its smoothness, showed a broad band of 
 foam wherever it touched the pebbles, which lay 
 dry before its sliding for it was on its way in. 
 It had nearly reached the clifPs foot in most 
 places ; but Mick presently came to a point 
 where he looked down on a small field of very 
 green grass, set as an oasis between the waves 
 and the walling rock, with a miniature chaos of 
 heaped-up boulders to left and right. A few of 
 them were scattered over it, and even the 
 highest of these wore a scarf of leathery flat sea- 
 ribbon, in token of occasional submergence ; but 
 amongst them grew hawthorn and sloe bushes, 
 and a clump of scarlet-tasselled fuchsia. To 
 heighten the incongruity of its aspect, this 
 pasture was inhabited by a large strawberry 
 cow, who seemed to be enjoying the alternate 
 mouthfuls of seaweed and woodbine, which she 
 munched off a thickly-wreathed boulder, un- 
 troubled by the fact that the meal bade fair 
 to be her last, since the rising spring tide had 
 already all but cut off access on either hand, and 
 would still flow for some hours. 
 
Lost Recruit 47 
 
 " Musha, now I'll be skivered," said Mick, 
 standing still, " if that's not Joe McEvoy's ould 
 cow. You'll be apt to experience a dampin,' 
 ould woman, if you don't quit out of there. 
 Whethen, it's a quare man he is to lave the 
 baste sthrayin' about permiscuous in the welther 
 of the tide." 
 
 He peered over the edge of the cliff, evidently 
 mistrusting its smooth face ; and then he threw 
 several stones and clods at the cow, with shouts 
 of " Hi ! out of that," and " Shoo along ! " but 
 his missiles fell short of their mark, and if his 
 voice reached her, she treated it with the placid 
 disregard of which her kind are mistress on such 
 occasions, and never raised her crumple-horned 
 head. 
 
 " Have it your own way, then," said Mick 
 cynically ; " it's nothin' to me if you've a mind to 
 thry a taste of swimmin' under wather." 
 
 He had not, however, strolled much farther, 
 when he met with somebody who was vastly 
 more concerned about the animal's impending 
 fate. This was old Joe McEvoy himself, who, 
 out of the mouth of a steep sandy boreen, sprang 
 up suddenly, like a Jack-in-the-box, one of the 
 shock-wigged, saturnine-complexioned pattern. 
 But no Jack-in-the-box could have looked so 
 
48 A Lost Recruit 
 
 Hurriedly distracted, or have muttered to itself 
 such queer execrations as he did, hobbling along. 
 
 " A year's loadin' of bad luck to the whoule 
 of thim ! " he was saying with gasps when Mick 
 approached ; " there's not a one of thim but 'ud 
 do desthruction on herself sooner than lose a 
 chanst to be annoyin' anybody, if she could con- 
 thrive it no other way." 
 
 "If it's th' ould cow you're cursin'," said 
 Mick, " she's down below yonder." 
 
 "Och, tell me somethin' I dunno, you 
 gomeral, not but what I'm nigh as big a one 
 meself as can be, to go thrust her wid that 
 little imp of mischief. Bad scran to it ; I must 
 give me stiff leg a rest, and she'll be up here 
 blatherin' after me before you can look round, 
 you may bet your brogues she will." 
 
 " Gomeral yourself and save your penny," 
 said Mick, whose temper was not at its best 
 after his long day of hungry discontent. 
 " And the divil a call you have to be onaisy 
 about the crathur follyin' you anywheres. 
 Stayin' where she is she's apt to be, until she 
 gets the chanst of goin' out to say wid the 
 turn of the tide, and that's like enough to 
 happen her." 
 
 " And who at all was talkin' of the cow 
 
Lost Recruit 49 
 
 folly in' ? It's ould Biddy Duggan down below 
 that niver has her tongue off of me, nagglin' 
 at me for lettin' the poor crathur pick her 
 bit along the beach, and it a strip of the finest 
 grass in the townland, when it's above wather, 
 just goin' to loss. A couple of pints differ 
 extry it does be makin' in the milkin' of a 
 day she's grazed there. But it's threatenin' 
 dhrownin' and disthruction over it th' ould 
 banshee is this great while; and plased she'll 
 be, rael plased and sot up. Sure that's what 
 goes agin me, to be so far gratifyin' her, and 
 herself as mischevious, harm-hopin' an ould 
 toad as iver I hated the sight of Och bejabers, 
 didn't I tell you so ? It's herself comin' gabble- 
 gobblin' up." 
 
 As he spoke, a very small meagre ragged 
 old woman emerged swiftly from the lane, 
 accompanied by one younger and stouter and 
 less nimble of foot, her temporary neighbour, 
 Mrs Gatheremup. Mrs Duggan seemed to 
 bear out Joe's character of her ; for now, like 
 Spenser's hag Occasion, " ever as she went 
 her tongue did walk," and the path it took 
 was not one of peace. Maybe, after this 
 happenin', some she could name might have 
 the wit to believe what other people tould 
 D 
 
50 A Lost Recruit 
 
 them, who knew better than to be thinkin' to 
 feed a misfortnit crathur of an ould cow on 
 sand and sayweed as if she was a sayl or a 
 saygull, and it a scandal to the place to behould 
 her foostherin' along down there wid the 
 waves' edges slitherin' up to her nose, and she 
 sthrivin' to graze, and the slippery stones fit 
 to break her neck. Such was the purport of 
 Mrs Duggan's remarks, which were punctuated 
 by Joe McEvoy's peremptory requests that 
 she would lave gabbin' and givin' impidence, 
 and his appeals to the others to inform him 
 whether they weren't all to be pitied for 
 havin' to put up wid the ould screech-owl's 
 foolish talk. 
 
 " Sure, that's the way they do be keepin' it 
 up continial, Micky lad," Mrs Fottrel called to 
 him, shrilly, as if athwart gusts of high wind. 
 " I'll pass you me word the two of them 'ill 
 stand at their doors of an evenin' an give bad 
 langwidge to aich other across the breadth of 
 the road till they have us all fairly moidhered 
 wid the bawls of them, and I on'y wonder the 
 thatch doesn't take and slip down on their ould 
 heads." 
 
 " Belike it's lave of the likes of you I ought to 
 be axin' where I'm to git grazin' for me own 
 
Lost Recruit 51 
 
 cattle ? " a growl of sarcastic thunder was just 
 then observing, to which flashed a scathing 
 response : " And bedad, then, it's lave you had 
 a right to be axin' afore you sent off me poor 
 son Hughey's bit of a Pat, to be wastin' his 
 time mindin' your ould scarecrow and gettin' 
 himself dhrownded in the tide. It's no thanks 
 to you if the innicent child isn't as like as not 
 lyin' this minute under six fut of could wather, 
 instead of fetchin' me in the full of me kettle 
 that I'm roarin' to him for this half-hour, and 
 ne'er a livin' sinner widin sight or " 
 
 " Saints above ! is little Pat strayin' along 
 wid the cow ? " said Mrs Fottrel, much aghast. 
 " I was noticin' I didn't see him anywheres this 
 evenin'. What's to become of him down there, 
 and it risin' beyond the heighth of iverythin' as 
 fast as it can flow? Sure this mornin' 'twas 
 wallopin' itself agin the wall, back of our place, 
 fit to swally all before it." 
 
 " Why didn't you tell me the child was 
 below ? " said Mick. " I'd lep down there and 
 fetch him up aisy enough ; on'y there was no 
 mortial use goin' after the cow, for ne'er a 
 crathur that took its stand on four hoofs 'ud 
 git its own len'th up the cliff, unless it 
 might be some little divil of a goat. And 
 
52 A Lost Recruit 
 
 the wather's dhrowndin'-deep alongside it afore 
 now." 
 
 " Musha, good gracious, sure all I done was 
 to bid the spalpeen be keepin' an eye on her 
 now and agin while he would be playin' about 
 there," said Joe ; " and it's twinty chances if 
 iver he did at all. Trapesed off wid himself 
 somewheres ; he'll be right enough be this time. 
 'Tisn't the likes of him go to loss, it's the 
 quare five-poun' note he'd fetch at Athenry 
 fair." 
 
 " He might ha' broke his legs climbin' disp'rit 
 on the rocks," said Mrs Fottrel, unconvinced by 
 the argument from unsaleability, " and be lyin' 
 there now waitin' for the say-waves to wash the 
 life out of him. Heaven pity the crathur ! " 
 
 " Sure I'll step down and see what's gone 
 wid him," said Mick. 
 
 The descent of the cliff, though not riskless, 
 was no great feat for an active youth, and Mick 
 accomplished it safely, but to little purpose, he 
 thought at first, since the irreclaimable cow 
 appeared to be the sole denizen of the shrinking 
 beach. However, when he had shouted and 
 scrambled for some time without result, he 
 came abruptly upon a nook among the piled-up 
 rocks, where a very small black-headed boy in 
 
Lost Recruit 53 
 
 tattered petticoats was digging the sandy floor 
 with a razor-shell. 
 
 " Och, it's there you are," said Mick, stepping 
 down from a weedy ledge ; " and what have 
 you in it at all that you didn't hear me bawlin' 
 to you ? " 
 
 " Throops," said Pat gloatingly, almost too 
 absorbed to glance off his work ; " it's Bally- 
 clavvy, the way it did be in the school readin'- 
 book at Duffclane. There's the Roossian 
 guns," he pointed to a row of black-mouthed 
 mussel-shells, mounted on periwinkle carriages 
 " and here's the sides of the valley I'm 
 makin' ; long and narrer it was. Just step 
 round and look at it from where I am, Micky, 
 but don't be clumpin' your fut on the French 
 cavalary." 
 
 " The divil's in it all," said Mick, with a 
 sudden bitter vehemence, which he accounted 
 for to himself by adding, as he pointed towards 
 the seething white line: "D'you see where 
 that's come to, you little bosthoon ? And you 
 sittin' grubbin' away here as if you were 
 pitaty-diggin' a dozen mile inland." 
 
 Pat looked in the desired direction, but 
 misapprehended the object to be the western 
 sky, where an overblown fiery rose seemed to 
 
54 A Lost Recruit 
 
 have scattered all its petals broadcast. "Sure 
 that's on'y the sun settin' red like," he explained 
 indifferently, and would have resumed his ex- 
 cavations if he had not been seized and hustled 
 half-way up the cliff before he could disengage 
 his mind from his brigades and batteries. Both 
 heads soon bobbed up over the edge without 
 accident ; for Pat climbed like a monkey when 
 once he had grasped the situation. His grand- 
 mother's attitude towards Joe McEvoy con- 
 strained her to receive him effusively as prey 
 snatched from the foaming jaws of death ; but 
 it was out of Mrs Fottrel's pocket that a 
 peppermint drop came to sweetly seal his new 
 lease of life. 
 
 "And what are you after now, Mick?" she 
 said, observing that, instead of drawing himself 
 up to level ground, he stood poised on an 
 uncomfortable perch, and looked back the steep 
 way he had come. 
 
 "I'm thinkin' to slip down agin," he said, 
 " and see if be any manner of manes I could 
 huroosha th' ould baste round the rocks yonder. 
 The wather mightn't be altogether too deep 
 there yit ; at all evints she's between the divil 
 and the deep say where she is now; it's just 
 a chanst." 
 
A Lost Recruit 55 
 
 "Sorra a much," said Joe disconsolately, 
 " scarce worth breakin' your bones after, any 
 way." 
 
 " Bones, how are you ? Sure, there's no 
 call to be breakin' bones in the matter," said 
 Mick, beginning to descend. This was true 
 enough, if he had minded what he was about ; 
 but then he did not. So far from it, he was 
 saying to himself: "One'ud ha' thought now 
 she might ha' took a sort of pride in it," when 
 the bottom of the world seemed to drop away 
 from under his feet, and his irrelevant medita- 
 tions ended in a shattering thud down on the 
 rocky pavement a long way below. He never 
 heard the shouts and shrieks which the incident 
 occasioned above his head. Once only he 
 became dimly conscious of a quivering network 
 of prismatic flashes, which he could not see 
 through, and a booming throb in his ears, 
 which made him murmur dazedly : " Wirra, 
 I thought I'd got beyond hearin' of them 
 drums." In another moment : " What's took 
 me ? " he said, with a start. But the depths 
 he sank among remain always dark and silent. 
 
 Next day messengers from Tullykillagin told 
 Mrs Doherty that the Lord had took her son 
 Mick, and that " he had gone out to say wid 
 
56 A Lost Recruit 
 
 the tide, before they could get anybody to him, 
 aud there was no tellin' where he might be 
 swep' up, if ever he came to shore at all." 
 
 "And the quarest part of it was that Joe 
 McEvoy's ould cow that he went after had 
 legged herself up, somehow, on the rocks out 
 of reach, and niver a harm on her when they 
 found her in the mornin'. But she'd been all 
 of a could quiver ever since, and himself doubted 
 if she'd rightly git over it, might the divil 
 mend her, and she after bein' the death of a 
 fine young man. Sure, every sowl up at Tully- 
 killagin was rael annoyed about it. Even ould 
 Biddy Duggan, that was as cross-tempered as 
 a weasel, did be frettin' for the lad; and Joe 
 McEvoy was sittin' crooched like an ould wet 
 hen, over his fire black out, that he hadn't the 
 heart to be lightin'." 
 
 Mrs Doherty said she didn't know what talk 
 they had of the Lord and the say and the ould 
 cow ; but she'd known well enough the way 
 it was when Mick niver come home last night. 
 He'd just took off after the souldiers, as he'd 
 a great notion one time. 
 
 She was, as may have been observed, rather 
 a dull-witted woman, and proportionately hard 
 to convince against her will. 
 
A Lost Recruit 57 
 
 " A great notion intirely," she said ; " on'y 
 I'd scarce have thought he'd go do such a 
 thing on me in arnest. And I runnin' away 
 indoors yisterday out of the heighth of the 
 divarsion, when the band-music was a thrate 
 to be hearin', just to see his bit of supper 
 wouldn't be late on him. And the grand little 
 pitaty-cake I had for him ; I may be throwin' 
 it to the hins now, unless Molly might fancy 
 a bit ; for we'll not be apt to set eyes on him 
 this three year. Och wirra ! and he that contint 
 at home, and ne'er a word out of him about 
 the souldierin' this long while. If it had been 
 poor Thady itself, 'twould ha' been diff'rint ; 
 but Mick I'd scarce ha' thought it of him ; 
 for he'd a dale of good-nature, Mrs Geoghegan, 
 ma'am." 
 
 " He had so, tub-be sure, woman dear," said 
 Mrs Geoghegan, "or he might be sittin' warm 
 in here this minnit." 
 
 " The back of me hand to thim blamed ould 
 throopers," said Mrs Doherty, "that sets the 
 lads wild wid their thrampin' around." 
 
 "Poor Mick would be better wid them than 
 where he is now God have mercy on his soul," 
 said a neighbour solemnly. 
 
 But Mick's mother continued to bewail her- 
 
58 A Lost Recruit 
 
 self: "And I missin' the best of all the tunes 
 they played, so Molly was tellin' me, for 'fraid 
 he'd be kep' waitin' for his supper, and he comin' 
 
 home to me hungry ; and now There's a 
 
 terrible len'th of time in three year. I wouldn't 
 ha' believed he'd ha' done it on me." 
 
AFTER SEVEN YEARS 
 
 LOOKING southward from the strand at Clonalty, 
 you can see Wade's house still making an opaque 
 white gleam at the sharp-pointed end of the 
 sandy spit, which, a wedge of silver and green 
 on sunny days, thrusts itself out from the 
 opposite shore into the shallow-rippling estuary. 
 Viewed from such a distance, its aspect is just 
 that of the other whitewashed cabins, which are 
 dotted about on the Clonalty side ; but at closer 
 quarters, signs of its many years' desertion peer 
 out of its small blank windows, and perch on 
 its too-ruffled thatch, and rustle in its deep 
 border of weeds. These latter are not so 
 luxuriant a growth as they would be in most 
 places, because the soil of the little peninsula is 
 so nearly pure sand that vegetation has a hard 
 struggle on it for a stunted existence. Old 
 Billy Wade used to have the work of the world 
 over his potato-patch, which, however, in most 
 years did much credit to his admixture of " care- 
 
 59 
 
60 After Seven Years 
 
 ful dirt." All about it the sand spreads un- 
 adulterated, heaving and sinking in hillocks and 
 hollows, where little grows except dry grey- 
 green bent grasses, which look as if they had 
 been withered in some earlier state of life, and, 
 close to the water's edge, tufts of faint-coloured 
 sea-pinks, whose very scent is faded. In wild 
 weather the flying sand tinkled against the panes 
 like fine-ground hail, and made sloping drifts in 
 the sills of window and door. From the land- 
 ward side the cottage is approached (very 
 seldom) by a rude track sunken between high 
 banks, which come slipping down in spreading 
 slides if anybody scrambles up them, in hopes 
 of finding firmer ground a-top, so that he gets 
 there with many additional grains in his gritty 
 shoes. A few perches from the door this track 
 dips down to the shore at a place which is 
 a miniature bay at full tide. At other times it 
 is a quicksand, and since, long ago, one Larry 
 Keogh's stray horse blundered into it and was 
 swallowed up, it became locally known as 
 Larry's horse-pond. Nowadays the shadow of 
 a more tragical event broods over it, but it 
 keeps the old name. 
 
 Inhabitants of Clonalty have been heard to 
 express their belief that the tide comes in there 
 
After Seven Years 61 
 
 only once a week or so ; and undoubtedly its 
 visits to this extreme end of the long sea-arm 
 are of but brief duration, scarcely more pro- 
 tracted than an orthodox morning call. During 
 the greater part of the four and twenty hours 
 a brown flat lies between shore and shore, 
 looking as if nothing could be simpler than to 
 tramp across it. Moderately prudent people, 
 however, do not attempt the passage, for it is 
 full of " quick" and " soft" places, death-traps 
 which have from time to time taken a victim, 
 who has left nothing behind him except his 
 name to commemorate the disaster. Murphy's 
 and Bowling's and Cassidy's respective "holes" 
 are a salutary warning to unwary walkers. The 
 Wades, therefore, and their few visitors had to 
 go a long step round on the way to and from 
 Clonalty, and as the mainland at their back was 
 for several miles mostly sand-hills, where the 
 residents were chiefly rabbits, the cottage was 
 a lonesome place to live in, and as inconvenient, 
 Mrs Wade used to complain on market-days, 
 " as the desert of the wilderness, with every 
 hap'orth you wanted to be carried from the 
 world's end." In fact, the residence offered 
 scanty attractions to anybody save old Billy 
 Wade, whose heart was usually in his lobster- 
 
62 After Seven Years 
 
 pots, or at the end of his fishing-lines, and who, 
 paddling off complacently, whenever the tide 
 served, in his broad-bottomed black boat to see 
 after them, spent at least half his time afloat. 
 Often he took his only child Hannah along with 
 him, a proceeding to which his wife objected 
 more and more as the girl grew old enough to 
 be serviceable and companionable indoors. But 
 her objections were always over-ruled by 
 Hannah, who had no taste for domestic affairs, 
 and who was so thoroughly spoilt that she knew 
 she need only dance desperately on the water's 
 edge to make her father pull back for her, no 
 matter how nearly he had got out of sight. 
 This had happened on occasions when he had 
 tried to slip away unbeknownst, thinking the 
 weather doubtful. Her mother said she was as 
 stubborn as a young buffalo-bull an animal of 
 whose dispositions she can have had no personal 
 experience when she took a notion into her 
 head ; but Hannah was not a whit abashed by 
 the comparison, nor moved to relinquish her 
 voyages, and Mrs Wade's discontent with her 
 dwelling had many a long solitary day in which 
 to strike deeper roots. 
 
 So when old Billy Wade died, just about 
 Hannah's fifteenth birthday, everybody thought 
 
After Seven Years 63 
 
 that his widow would surely quit the sandy 
 peninsula, and seek some less isolated home. 
 But everybody was mistaken, for, on the con- 
 trary, Mrs Wade stayed on at the cottage, 
 and in six months married Mr Miles Roche, 
 whom she had met at Crutwell the lawyer's 
 office, where she had gone on business. This 
 marriage was probably the first step of any 
 importance that she had ever ventured on 
 spontaneously in all her life; as the match 
 with Billy Wade, thirty years her senior, had 
 been made up for her quite independently, 
 and ever since she had taken her orders duti- 
 fully from husband and child. Unfortunately, 
 it could not be called a prudent measure. Miles 
 Roche was a middle-aged man, whose journey 
 through the world had all been downhill. He 
 had started in life as a sort of squireen, his 
 family being just on the borderland of quality, 
 not over well reputed, and with steadily 
 dwindling resources. Towards maintaining 
 himself in even this position young Miles 
 had never done anything more to the purpose 
 than drink rather too much whisky, and lose 
 what money he could at horse-races, and other 
 events chronicled in the sporting intelligence. 
 These pursuits he carried on industriously 
 
64 After Seven Years 
 
 enough, though on a small scale, during a 
 long series of years, and the process of de- 
 terioration, physical, moral, and social, which 
 they involved was leisurely and gradual. But 
 at last bad times and other adverse circum- 
 stances began to co-operate with them, and his 
 decline then became more rapid, so that by the 
 time when Mrs Wade, in her new black clothes, 
 passed him lounging on CrutwelPs steps, he 
 had, as his neighbours expressed it, " lost him- 
 self entirely." By this they meant that he had 
 sunk out of the class in which birth had placed 
 him. Time was when he had walked with 
 something of a swagger over his own fields, 
 among his own not very thriving flocks and 
 herds, and had ridden, on rather sorry nags, 
 to the meets of the Harveystown Hunt, where 
 he could, without undue presumption, join the 
 party at the breakfast, spread for all acquaint- 
 ances by old Colonel Meade of Meade Court. 
 Nowadays, though he still kept his swagger, 
 except when his gait was controlled by influ- 
 ences more potent than self-conceit, not a rood 
 of land remained in his possession, not a four- 
 footed beast owned him for master, not a hat 
 was touched to him in the country-side, and 
 Peter Molloy, of the general shop, dropped the 
 
After Seven Years 65 
 
 " mister " as often as not when asking him 
 gruffly if he was thinking of settling that 
 account. In fact, Miles Roche had degenerated 
 into a needy loafer, who felt in no way above 
 his company of a Saturday night at Donnelly's 
 bar, whither resident labourers brought their 
 dole of wages, and passing tramps their more 
 variable gains. And his pride had so far fallen 
 with his fortunes, that he did not disdain the 
 expedient of mending them by a marriage with 
 old Billy Wade's widow, who was reported to 
 have been richly left in a small way. The old 
 man had, so rumour ran, both inherited and 
 amassed savings of indefinite amount some 
 said " pounds," and some said " hundreds." 
 Everybody said, " There was never a one of the 
 Wades yet but was as close and naygurly as 
 could be consaived." " Sure, the money stuck 
 to them," Peter Molloy averred, " like the flies 
 on a dhrop of treckle." These considerations 
 were undoubtedly the mainspring of Miles' 
 design, though Mrs Wade's faded sea-pink-like 
 prettiness may have helped to bring about his 
 eventual perseverance in it. For her part she 
 felt that she had drawn a prize. Miles was big 
 and burly, and by any friendly observer might 
 still have been described as a fine figure of a 
 E 
 
66 After Seven Years 
 
 man, especially when he had on the respectable 
 hat and coat, which he had borrowed, and the 
 new scarf, which he had bought on credit, to do 
 his "coortin"' in. His manners, too, could be, 
 upon occasion, softly insinuating, and had not 
 wholly lost the stamp of his better days. 
 Perhaps this is nearly all that could be said 
 in his favour ; but it sufficed to make Mrs Wade 
 a proud woman the first time she walked 
 through Clonalty with Miles Roche as her 
 accepted suitor, and this albeit she was well 
 aware how many of the neighbours were of the 
 same opinion which old Mrs Cleary, who, having 
 attained to " a won'erful great age entirely," 
 could say anything she liked, expressed with 
 much candour in lieu of congratulations. It ran 
 as follows : " Ay, woman dear, but it's the 
 quare gaby you're about makin' of yourself, 
 takin' up wid that big slouchin' son of ould 
 Charley Roche, that was good for little enough 
 himself. Sure, he'll be dhrinkin' you out of 
 house and home as fast as the say flows, and 
 sorra a bit 'ill you pacify him wid it all 
 not if you had the full of it to be givin' 
 him." 
 
 Nevertheless, willing as she was to be wooed, 
 the negotiations all but fell through when, upon 
 
After Seven Years 67 
 
 more exact enquiry, Miles ascertained that the 
 widow's fortune had been grossly exaggerated, 
 as she really possessed an income of dimensions 
 which prescribe the plainest of plain living, and 
 only a life interest in the little bit of property 
 that produced it. The discovery, as I have 
 said, nearly terminated the courtship, and quite 
 put an end to all its pleasantness. For the 
 mixture of motives which determined Miles to 
 fulfil his promise was only just strong enough 
 to effect this, without leaving any margin for 
 a good grace. His disappointment, indeed, 
 sometimes expressed itself with such brutal 
 frankness that Mrs Wade now and then wished, 
 before the wedding day arrived, for strength 
 of mind to pluck up a spirit, and send him 
 about his business. But Mrs Roche reiterated 
 the wish much more fervently when it was 
 too late ; and in course of time the sentiment 
 became as habitual as her husband's alternations 
 of uproarious frenzy and ferocious gloom. For 
 Miles's unsteadiness increased from year to year, 
 until she grew to regard the remote situation of 
 their cottage as an advantage, because it with- 
 drew them beyond the neighbours' close ob- 
 servation of their miserable life. It could not, 
 however, remain a secret, and at length wore 
 
68 After Seven Years 
 
 into so open a one that she could bewail herself 
 with little reserve to sympathising matrons on 
 market-days. 
 
 Now it is tolerably certain that none of these 
 things would have come to pass if Hannah 
 Wade had been living with her mother. Her 
 will, though only fifteen years old, would 
 effectually have asserted itself against that of 
 her elders, and Miles Roche's suit would have 
 been short and unsuccessful. But Hannah had 
 moped and fretted so after her father's death, 
 that she had been sent to stay for a change with 
 his sister away at Lettercrum. There she re- 
 ceived the news of the match with an intense 
 wrath, which her mother trembled at, even 
 in remote imagination. For a few days follow- 
 ing, she was haunted with apprehensions of her 
 daughter's immediate return to upbraid and pro- 
 hibit ; but it presently appeared that the girl's 
 indignation had taken the shape of a resolve 
 to stay away permanently ; and during more 
 than five years she never set foot next or nigh 
 Clonalty. At the end of that time, her step- 
 father's habits took a turn for the worse, leading 
 him to behave in a manner which the Clonalty 
 folk described as "beyond the beyonds alto- 
 gether ; " while her mother, who, according to 
 
After Seven Years 69 
 
 the same authorities, was "to be pitied wid 
 the drunken baste, the crathur," fell ill, and 
 wrote miserably, begging Hannah to come 
 home. 
 
 Whereupon, one thundery summer evening, 
 Hannah Wade arrived with the mail-bags and 
 two or three packages, on Patsy Flood's car. 
 She had grown into a tall, stalwart lass of 
 twenty or so, with black hair and black eye- 
 brows ruled very straight over her dark grey 
 eyes, which looked clear and resolute. Neigh- 
 bours who saw her pass along the street, 
 remarked among themselves that " yon looked 
 to be a fine, clever, sturdy girl, and Miles Roche 
 was maybe apt to find he'd met wid somebody 
 who'd make him behave himself a thrifle more 
 dacint ; he was aisy enough frightened, for all 
 his crackin' and braggin', whenever he'd raison 
 to know he wouldn't be put up wid." And 
 they added that it would be " a rael charity if 
 he was purvinted of bargin' and bullyraggin' 
 the misfort'nit little ould wisp of a woman, 
 who'd been the great fool to have anythin' to 
 say to the likes of him." 
 
 However, as it turned out, Hannah had very 
 little opportunity for testing her powers of 
 coercion, as the day but one after her return, 
 
70 After Seven Years 
 
 Miles Roche suddenly disappeared, and Clonalty 
 saw him no more. Where he had taken himself 
 off to nobody wasted much time in conjecturing. 
 The neighbours were unanimously of the opinion 
 that he was apt to be after no good, and that 
 the best thing could have happened his wife 
 and step-daughter was to be rid of him. Some- 
 times they congratulated Hannah jocularly upon 
 the promptitude which she had shown in 
 " puttin' him out of it," but the pleasantry 
 was not apparently to her taste. This was 
 when Mrs Roche and her daughter had quitted 
 their old home, and settled in Dunphy's Row at 
 Clonalty, which they did only a week after the 
 event. Mrs Roche was down-hearted and com- 
 plaining, a state probably due to her bad health, 
 rather than to regret at her desertion, since it 
 was obvious that she would be far better off as 
 a widow bewitched, if she were allowed to 
 remain so. Mrs Tuohy and Mrs Maguire, now 
 her next-door neighbours, used to drop in 
 occasionally and tell her re-assuring]y of their 
 conviction that she would never be troubled 
 with setting eyes on him again : " For as like as 
 anythin' he'd run off to the States, and at all 
 events, he wouldn't be very long drinkin' him- 
 self out of this world, the way he was goin' on 
 
After Seven Years 71 
 
 when he quit." But Mrs Roche did not respond 
 with much cordiality to their well-meant con- 
 solations. In fact, both she and her daughter 
 showed a disposition to keep themselves to 
 themselves, which is a very sure way of laying 
 one's conduct and character open to hostile 
 criticism. 
 
 During her stay with her aunt, Hannah had 
 forsaken her out-of-door life, and learned to sit 
 for long hours over embroidery and other needle- 
 work. But now she resumed her earlier more 
 active habits, and saw little daylight indoors. 
 Her boating, however, had come to an end, and 
 she never cared to go near the shore, where her 
 father's old Mary Anne might still be seen afloat, 
 owned now by Micky Devlin, to whom Miles 
 Roche had sold her at a price which did not 
 keep him in whisky for the inside of a week. 
 Hannah's occupation lay inland among the 
 hedge-screened fields and lanes, where the sea 
 betrays its neighbourhood only by sending flocks 
 of snowy gulls to gleam through the black 
 cloud of crows that hover in the wake of the 
 sliding ploughshare. At first she weeded and 
 picked stones, and did other such field work in 
 a flapping sunbonnet, but after a while the 
 Cochranes up at Donamoate Farm employed 
 
72 After Seven Years 
 
 her about their dairy : and it was there that she 
 made the acquaintance of their nephew Francis 
 Conroy. 
 
 Yet nearly seven years had gone by since her 
 return to Clonalty, when her great day dawned 
 upon her. That is to say, Francis Conroy 
 proposed and was accepted. Some of the 
 neighbours, indeed, maintained the opinion 
 that it was no fault of hers he'd been so long 
 over his courting. It wasn't, they said, for 
 want of getting every encouragement. Ay, 
 bedad, she'd done some of it for him ; trouble 
 enough she'd took, and maybe she'd got no 
 such great things after all. Commentaries of 
 this kind, however, were only to be expected 
 under the circumstances, and they neither had 
 nor merited any weight with the community at 
 large. On the same principle these critics 
 averred that it was downright ridiculous of a 
 young chap like Francey Conroy to be thinking 
 of a girl like Hannah Wade, who was growing 
 old as fast as a dog could trot. They wondered 
 he didn't ask old Batt Hearn's sister Judy 
 while he was about it. The innuendo contained 
 in this sarcasm had only a very slender founda- 
 tion in facts, for the disparity of age between 
 the sweethearts did not exceed a couple of 
 
After Seven Years 73 
 
 years, and Hannah's dark comeliness was of a 
 sort that wore well and had lost nothing with the 
 passing of her first youth. As for the young 
 man himself, he was a straight-featured, curly- 
 haired lad, of a rather slight make than other- 
 wise, both physically and mentally, whose worst 
 enemies, just then the people who would have 
 liked to call him son-in-law, found nothing 
 seriously bad that they could call him instead 
 with any plausibility. He worked with his 
 uncle Arthur Cochrane, who, being childless, 
 would, it was confidently expected, do some- 
 thing for him stock a little farm, maybe. 
 Altogether, no dispassionate onlookers could 
 deny that Hannah was in luck, and they 
 generally said so with the addition that she was 
 " a dacint hard-workin' girl, and apt enough to 
 make the lad a good wife." 
 
 It was on a warm long-lighted summer 
 evening that Francis spoke out : just when they 
 were bundling up the last row of lap-cocks in 
 the shady corner of Little Fortyfurzes. At 
 first she felt as if she must be dreaming ; and 
 then as if she had never had anything but 
 dreams until that very moment. Glad she was 
 to waken from some of them. When she went 
 home a while later through the hushed meadows, 
 
74 After Seven Years 
 
 her heart was as full of rest and calm as the 
 soft air was full of the scent of dewy hay. A 
 more rapturous and jubilant mood might have 
 been expected in her by anybody acquainted 
 with her somewhat strenuous and stirring ways. 
 Hannah did not take life easily. Only that 
 morning a fellow-worker had said to her re- 
 monstrantly: "It's yourselPs the quare onaisy 
 crathur, Hannah Wade. If you're not doin' 
 one thing, you're doin' another. I declare to 
 goodness, one might think the Old Fellow him- 
 self was drivin' you ; but if I was you I'd give 
 him the go by now and agin anyway." Thus 
 a spell of quietude may have been her most 
 needed and enjoyable refreshment. But as the 
 days went by, her spirits did begin to rise above 
 the level of serenity. She felt not simply at 
 peace with all the world, but also entrenched 
 in a position where she need fear no challenge 
 nor assault from any quarter, not even from 
 Fortune, whom she had long accounted her foe. 
 Therefore she only laughed good-humouredly, 
 and said, sure people would be talking when 
 some officious clashbag repeated to her the 
 sundry strictures upon her engagement. And 
 she accepted the congratulations of her acquaint- 
 ances with cordiality, as if they pleased her and 
 
After Seven Years 75 
 
 she had no wish to shun them. She actually 
 asked Mrs Coleman to step in and see her 
 mother on the way back from Mass, a thing she 
 had never been known to do before in all the 
 years they had lived in Dunphy's Row. " You 
 might ha' thought," somebody once had said, 
 affronted, " that every fut in at their ould door 
 was a penny out of their pockets, they were 
 that delicate about lettin' a person inside it." 
 To which somebody else naturally had rejoined : 
 " That there was no such great things to be 
 seen when you got there, as Thady Bourke said 
 when the train he was travellin' on stopped in 
 the middle of the dark tunnel." 
 
 Mrs Roche, too, in her little old woman's 
 degree, was cheered and pleased by the event. 
 She had long been an ailing, complaining person, 
 whose grey days had often taken a bleak east- 
 windy atmosphere from a certain austere con- 
 straint in Hannah's demeanour towards her. 
 But now happiness substituted for this an un- 
 wonted softness and geniality, and Francis 
 Conroy, dropping in of an evening, was found 
 by his mother-in-law elect to be " very friendly 
 and agreeable." So that she took heart of 
 grace, and ventured upon several small sayings 
 and doings from which she had been refraining 
 
76 After Seven Years 
 
 for fear of a rebuff. For instance, she re- 
 arranged all the crockery on the dresser, and 
 she remarked that if Hannah had had any sense, 
 she'd ha' reared a brood of turkey-poults ; 
 there was nothing so profitable of a dry saison, 
 and they might ha' got a grand run in Saunder's 
 bit of stubble. To which Hannah responded 
 hopefully: " Ah, sure, you may ha' turkeys 
 and all manner yit." Then the Cochranes, 
 whose liking of the match was an important 
 and somewhat doubtful point, proved to be 
 well affected, and did talk of giving a hand 
 with stocking a little farm. Altogether, the 
 hot haymaking fortnight which followed was 
 made up of halcyon days for both daughter 
 and mother, with many hopes hatching un- 
 molested. But at the end of that time a 
 shadow and a ripple came by, nothing of much 
 consequence indeed, yet it broke up the season 
 of calm weather. 
 
 One evening Francis Conroy, who had been 
 working for the day away at Portallen, found 
 himself towards sunset on the shore, where 
 a high-brimmed tide quivering its clearness 
 under the green cliff-shadow tempted him and 
 three or four comrades to take a dip. It was 
 one half of the mishap that he left his much- 
 
After Seven Years 77 
 
 prized watch in the pocket of his vest, and the 
 completion of it that Bob Flynn, when they 
 were dressing, picked up the garment, unaware 
 of its valuable freight, and tossed it across a 
 deep pool to the rock-ledge whereon Francis 
 stood aghast. For during the transit there 
 was a silvery flash, fleeting as the jump of a 
 trout, a dismayed howl from Francis, and the 
 watch had vanished irretrievably, sunk among 
 oozy rock-crannies in many fathoms of water. 
 The loss was a serious one in those times 
 when a watch cost a couple of months' wages ; 
 and Francis bemoaned himself over it next 
 morning to Hannah and all his friends coming 
 and going to Mass. He seemed much depressed 
 all the afternoon, and when she asked him if 
 he was going to play hurley, he replied mourn- 
 fully : " 'Deed no, and me wid me poor grand- 
 father's good watch sittin' there at the bottom 
 of the say, beyond raich of man or mortal, 
 unless them little ugly crabs skytin' over it." 
 Hannah was disposed to think it a harsh and 
 inscrutable decree of Fate that Francey Conroy 
 should lack anything he desired, and she would 
 blithely have despoiled a whole constellation to 
 provide him with what he wanted. But this 
 measure being out of her power, she began 
 
78 After Seven Years 
 
 to frame a resolve, one which, a few weeks 
 before, would have seemed dreadfully impossible 
 to her, and which even now needed all her 
 newly-acquired sense of security and belief 
 in good luck to make it look practicable. 
 
 Monday morning was as warm and bright 
 as ever, and when the Egans' cochin china 
 cock roused Mrs Roche at an early hour, she 
 woke up to it with no presentiment of trouble. 
 The hot weather always made her feeble and 
 lazy, a state which she herself described as not 
 being worth tuppence, and she thought she 
 would lie where she was, in the recess beside 
 the hearth, until she had had her cup of tay, to 
 the arrival of which she looked forward with 
 drowsy patience as a pleasant conclusion to a 
 series of many naps. But it came to her along 
 with a terrible announcement, which set the 
 cup and saucer clattering in her hand more 
 violently than a moderate shock of earthquake 
 would have done. " I was thinkin'," Hannah 
 said, carelessly, as she stood by the little square 
 window, and twitched a yellow leaf or so off 
 the geranium plants which filled it, " I might 
 maybe take a run over to the ould place there 
 this mornin', and fetch back me father's watch 
 out of it." 
 
After Seven Years 79 
 
 There was a dead silence for a few moments, 
 and then Mrs Roche said in a slow, dull way, 
 as if she were still half-stunned : " Ah no 
 to be sure you wouldn't ever go for to do such 
 a thing." 
 
 "And what for wouldn't I then?" said 
 Hannah, "it's the greatest pity to have a grand 
 watch lyin' there all these years stuck in an 
 ould crevice, like a dead beetle supposin' it 
 isn't stole out of the place before now wid 
 some tramp passin' by." 
 
 " And so it is, long ago, you may depind 
 stole away it would be," said Mrs Roche, 
 with a clutch at the idea. " Sorra a bit of it 
 you'd git wid goin'. Och be aisy, for God's 
 sake, and let it alone." 
 
 "It's aisy talkin' that way," said Hannah, 
 " but all the while it's maybe lyin' there just 
 to me hand, you may say ; and other people 
 at a loss for it ... And I'm thinkin' it's a 
 quare way to be servin' a thing me poor father 
 was after givin' me in a prisint." 
 
 " Oh ay, and it's fine talk you have about 
 your poor father and prisints," said Mrs Roche, 
 bitterly, "and I knowin' as well as if I was 
 inside of you this minute, that you're on'y 
 wantin' to get it to give to Francey Conroy. 
 
8o After Seven Years 
 
 Och, but there's plenty of fools in this 
 world." 
 
 " And meself was one of them, then," said 
 Hannah, " that I didn't take care to bring me 
 watch over meself, instead of trustin' it to 
 you. But sure who'd ever ha' thought you 
 could conthrive to forget it and it the raison 
 of the whole thing happenin' unless you left 
 it behind on purpose maybe." 
 
 " I wish it was lyin' at the bottom of the 
 say," said Mrs Roche, " and meself along wid 
 it, the way I wouldn't be hearin' you talkin' of 
 destroyin' us this black day." 
 
 "Whist, whisht, mother, and don't be sayin' 
 such things," said Hannah. " 'Deed now, 
 ne'er a word would I ha' tould you about the 
 matter, on'y I amn't clear in me mind which 
 side of the fireplace you had it kep' in, so I 
 thought I'd ax you first. But a fut I won't 
 go after it, if you think that bad of it there 
 now. I'll let it stop where it is, goin' to loss, 
 and gettin' stolen, if that 'ill satisfy you. I 
 dunno what notion you have about bein' 
 destroyed. Howane'er, I'll let it alone." 
 
 But Mrs Roche said : " Goin' you'll be for 
 sure and for sartin, goodness may pity the two 
 of us. What notion have I ? Och, I couldn't 
 
After Seven Years 81 
 
 be tellin' you I dunno. But goin' you'll be 
 and destroyin' us, that I know right well." 
 
 This, and the like, she continued to reiterate, 
 and Hannah found counter-protestations on 
 her part as ineffectual as they would have been 
 against some low-moaning wind that had come 
 keening about the house. At last, in hopes 
 that deeds might prove more convincing than 
 words, she took out a long neglected strip of 
 white embroidery, and sat down to stitch at 
 her over-casting. She had given up her dairy- 
 work in favour of her wedding-clothes, and 
 was meditating an expedition to the shops of 
 Glasmena-, however, she said to herself that 
 she had better stay at home this morning and 
 keep her mother pacified. " I won't torment 
 her, if she's that set against it," she thought, 
 with an impatient regret at the weakness which 
 had been, no doubt, the cause of her mother's 
 whim, and was a reason for humouring it. 
 Yet she was not perhaps without a sense of 
 relief and escape in deciding thus. 
 
 But when they had finished their early 
 dinner, to which Mrs Roche got up dis- 
 consolate, Hannah grew so thoroughly tired 
 of her long morning indoors, that she felt as 
 if she must run out for a bit into the strong 
 
 F 
 
82 After Seven Years 
 
 sunshine that was making veined green trans- 
 parencies of the geranium leaves in the 
 window, and dulling the embers on the hearth 
 into a wreath of pink and white blossom. 
 She had really for the time being forgotten 
 all about the watch ; but when her mother 
 saw her get up and put her grey shawl over 
 her head, she groaned despairingly and said : 
 "She's goin' Holy Virgin, she's goin', for 
 all I could do or say cruel headstrong, she 
 always was, goodness forgive her, and now 
 the Lord knows what she'll bring on us wid 
 it." This reminded Hannah again of the plan 
 which she had given up, and at the same time 
 proved that her renunciation had failed in its 
 object ; and she flung angrily out of the house 
 without replying. Just at the door she heard 
 her mother calling her, but she ran down the 
 street and did not look back. 
 
 The little old woman, left comfortless, sat 
 a while crouched in the shadowiest corner of 
 the dimly-lit room, beyond the reach of the 
 longest sunbeam. One might have fancied 
 that she was hiding from some dreadful thing ; 
 but whatever it was had got at too close 
 quarters with her to be thus eluded. Then, 
 as the glowing afternoon wore on, she grew 
 
After Seven Years 83 
 
 drowsy and chilly, and thought she would 
 cheer herself with a cup of tea, only the big 
 black kettle seemed so heavy that it was not 
 worth the trouble of lifting, and she lay down 
 instead under her scarlet-diamonded patch- 
 work quilt, where sleep presently accepted 
 her invitation, and with it dreams that came 
 unbidden. 
 
 Dunphy's Row lies at the foot of a gentle 
 slope that shuts out the shore, but a few 
 perches up the road the sea comes into sight. 
 Hannah went first in the opposite direction 
 to the Cochranes' to see if there was anything 
 she could do in the dairy, her successor having 
 turned out an inefficient person, and being 
 spoken of by her superiors as "that great 
 gawk." But Mrs Cochrane said : " Ah, no 
 thank you, kindly, Hannah, there'll be nothin' 
 wantin' to-night. The pans is just sittin' and 
 gatherin' paiceable, and that great gawk can't 
 hinder them of doin' that anyways, so long 
 as she lets them alone and I've got the kay 
 of the door safe in me pocket. The hay's all 
 up, and Francey's went off somewheres wid 
 his gun, after the rabbits I'm thinkin'." So 
 Hannah said: "It's the worth of him;" and 
 soon turned back seawards. 
 
84 After Seven Years 
 
 On a sun-bright day when there are many 
 little foam-crests curling between the swarded 
 shores, and glistering cloudlets flit by, Clonalty 
 looks very blue and white and green. It was 
 doing so when Hannah came to the beach, for 
 a high tide had flowed in further than usual, 
 and ripples were sparkling and bickering among 
 swathes of tangled wrack that had long lain 
 dry and stirless. As she looked across the 
 water she saw, just opposite, her old home 
 gleaming with its white back-wall, for it faces 
 away from the sea ; and to left and right lay 
 the silvery hollows of the sand-hills. Ever 
 since she had run away from her mother's call 
 she had been wishing more and more eagerly 
 to make the venture, to visit the deserted 
 house, and reclaim from it the long forgone 
 bit of property, the gold watch and chain 
 which her father had given to her on his death- 
 bed, and which she believed to be still hidden 
 in the wall-niche where her mother had by a 
 strange oversight left it behind at the time of 
 their flitting. They had come away hurriedly 
 one still, wet July evening, when the grey 
 water was fretted with large drops, and the 
 mist trailed thick and low. Seven years were 
 past since then, and they had never made the 
 
After Seven Years 85 
 
 same journey, nor talked nor thought of doing 
 so, not even in the first dismay of the discovery 
 that the watch was missing. But now Hannah, 
 for more than one reason, was of a different 
 mind. Francis Conroy was coming to see her 
 that evening, and she imagined a delightful 
 moment if she could surprise him with the 
 gift of a watch in place of his lost one a gold 
 watch and a real silver chain, whereas he had 
 hitherto had nothing better than a makeshift 
 contrived out of an old curb bit. The 
 possibility had flashed into her mind when, 
 on bidding him good-night the evening before, 
 he had remarked dejectedly that it might be 
 any hour at all for anything he could tell, 
 unless he could go look under the waves of 
 the sea. Whereupon she had allowed her- 
 self to drop a mysterious hint that he might 
 be owning a better one than ever he had yet 
 before long. Francey, she thought, had not 
 minded her ; but the remembrance made her 
 all the more anxious to carry out her design. 
 " Me mother's safe to be thinkin' all the while 
 I'm gone over, whether or no," she said to 
 herself, " and if I could get hould of a boat, 
 I'd be there and back in no time at all." 
 
 So thinking, she became aware that her 
 
86 After Seven Years 
 
 father's old boat was moored close by, its 
 black shape the one blot on the glittering blue, 
 white and green, with its present owner, old 
 Micky Devlin, and his wife sunning themselves 
 on the little boatslip at the water's edge. 
 Hannah reflected for another minute, and then 
 ran down to them. " I wonder, ma'am," she 
 said to Mrs Devlin, " would himself think 
 bad of loanin' me the boat for half an hour 
 maybe ? I was wantin' to slip over yonder." 
 This request was conveyed to Micky by his 
 wife, her familiar cracked voice alone being 
 easily accessible to his bothered ears. But 
 in answer he only said, with a many-wrinkled 
 grin : " Ah, dear, and is it himself she's 
 expeckin' to meet over there ? " Hannah 
 gave a great start, and turned from scarlet 
 to white so quickly that Mrs Devlin said 
 remonstrant ly to her husband : " Arrah, man, 
 don't be talkin' ridic'lous. It's glad enough 
 we are to get shut of the likes of yous now 
 and agin, let me tell you, widout any notion 
 of runnin' after yous over land and say cock 
 you up ! Sure never mind him, Hannah." 
 
 "Well, for the matter of that, I'd pull her 
 over meself, if she's wishful ; the tide 'ill take 
 us backwards and forrards handy," said Micky, 
 
After Seven Years 87 
 
 waiving the point. He had two motives in 
 making the offer. For he was glad to grasp 
 an excuse for getting afloat on a day when 
 no fishing could be pleaded, and holding 
 decidedly antiquated views about the capabilities 
 of womenkind, he regarded the suggestion 
 that a lass should handle his boat herself with 
 a disfavour which would have made him loth 
 to grant her request in its original form. 
 " Come along wid you, then," he said, putting 
 his pipe into his pocket, and scrambling away 
 over the clattering stones. Hannah looked after 
 him doubtfully for a moment, and then followed. 
 Old Mrs Devlin remained where she was, 
 knitting away at her coarse grey sock, her 
 quick needles glancing in and out of it like 
 lightning at play about a sullen cloud. As 
 the boat pushed off she called after it : " Don't 
 be delayin' too long, or you might stick fast 
 comin' home." And her husband replied : 
 " Ay, bedad, the tide runs out wid itself that 
 treacherous, before you know where you are, 
 you might as well be ofFerin' to row through 
 a bit of wet bog." But Hannah, looking back 
 wistfully to where the old woman sat placidly 
 turning her heel, felt herself little disposed 
 to linger over that errand. 
 
88 After Seven Years 
 
 On this same afternoon, Francis Conroy, as 
 we have heard, had gone out shooting. The 
 sand-hills were his hunting-grounds, and their 
 abounding rabbits his quarry, in the pursuit 
 of which he had no luck. In every case the 
 scurry and whisk occurred so punctually that 
 the pellets plopped fruitlessly into the sand 
 like over-impetuous hail. By the time that 
 his ammunition was running out he had come 
 along, doubling round the head of the estuary, 
 till he was near the Wades' deserted cottage. 
 Then it struck him that he was thirsty, and 
 that there must have been water somewhere 
 about the premises. Accordingly, he sought 
 out a badly choked-up well in the precincts 
 of the obliterated garden, and having taken 
 a brackish draught sparingly, he perched him- 
 self with dangling legs on a ledged bank which 
 commanded a reach of the little lane running 
 between the cottage door and Larry's Horse- 
 pond. 
 
 As he sat looking idly round him in the 
 lengthening rays, a faint cloud of discontent 
 was on his countenance. He was considering 
 some unredressed grievances, amongst which 
 his submerged watch just then lay uppermost, 
 because he was at the same time considering 
 
After Seven Years 89 
 
 what o'clock it might be. Presently a sand- 
 muffled tread sounded close by, and a shadow 
 came wavering round the turn of the sunken 
 boreen. Following it came a figure, which 
 at once impressed Francis as somehow familiar, 
 and which he speedily identified only too 
 surely. It was no other than Miles Roche, 
 reeling along just as he probably had reeled 
 home on that very road many an evening 
 before his abrupt departure. Though Francis 
 had not set eyes on him for the last seven 
 years, their acquaintance was too old a one 
 for any mistakes to be possible now, especially 
 as his absence had seemingly left him un- 
 changed. Thick-set frame and threadbare suit, 
 battered hat and red, coarsened face, all had 
 just the same aspect as when they were last 
 seen lounging in front of Donnelly's. Equally 
 characteristic was the unsteadiness of his steps 
 as he lurched along between the shelving 
 banks, till, with a stumble at the threshold, 
 and a resentful roar, he vanished into the dark 
 doorway of the cottage. Francis watched his 
 progress with an expression of deepening 
 disgust, for this unexpected reappearance of 
 his future step-father-in-law opened a long 
 vista of mortifying annoyance. "It's the fine 
 
90 After Seven Years 
 
 times we'll be havin' wid him he didn't lead 
 them the life of a dog, be all accounts. Och, 
 bad luck to you, you drunken baste," he said 
 to himself, as the sound of a thick voice 
 bawling came from the cottage, where Miles 
 Roche was apparently soliloquising in a bad 
 temper. Being minded to postpone the re- 
 newal of their acquaintance, Francis thought 
 he would take himself off before the other 
 emerged, and he was getting up to go when 
 another surprising appearance stopped him. 
 He saw Hannah Wade come through the 
 cottage door, which was perhaps fifty yards 
 from him, and stand outside it, where in a 
 minute she was joined by her mother. And 
 this was astonishing indeed, since, to his certain 
 knowledge, Mrs Roche had not left her house 
 once in the past twelvemonth, not even to 
 creep as far as Mass ; and she had of late 
 been more than usually complaining. How, 
 then, had she got here, and what was she 
 doing ? Taken in connection with the return 
 of her husband, her presence was all the 
 stranger. Had she and Hannah known of it 
 beforehand ? In that case, Francis thought, 
 Hannah " had a right to ha' tould him, instead 
 of to be lettin' on they were quit of the ould 
 
After Seven Years 91 
 
 rapscallion for good and all 'twould ha' been 
 only fairity. It was no sort of thing for 
 Hannah to have done. But as for the ould 
 woman bein' over there, that wasn't better 
 able to travel than a jelly-fish off the shore, 
 he didn't know what to say to it at all." 
 
 In the midst of his conjectures, puzzled and 
 indignant, Hannah and her mother withdrew 
 into the cottage, and then he began to ask 
 himself whether he should not join them there. 
 They might have come over to fetch some- 
 thing, and want a helping hand ; or their tipsy 
 relation might become troublesome and violent, 
 though for the time being he seemed to have 
 fallen quiet. He was still hesitating between 
 the promptings of chivalry, edged with curiosity, 
 and his reluctance to hurry on his introduction 
 to this undesired family connection, when 
 Hannah and her mother reappeared in the 
 doorway. 
 
 It seemed to him that he had surmised their 
 errand rightly, for they were hauling along 
 between them a large, unwieldy looking 
 bundle, wrapped in folds of some weather- 
 beaten stuff, which might have been an old 
 sail. It was evidently a heavy, cumbrous 
 burden, beyond their powers to lift they 
 
92 After Seven Years 
 
 could only tug and pull it. But Francis 
 observed that Mrs Roche appeared to exert 
 far more strength in dragging it over the thres- 
 hold than anybody would have supposed her 
 to possess. " Faith, then, herselPs the great 
 little ould schemer, lyin' there at home lettin' 
 on she's scarce able to breathe, and as limber- 
 some as a sandhopper when she takes the 
 fancy. Bedad you're well mended, ma'am," 
 he said to himself, watching her activity with 
 a certain dissatisfaction. A few paces outside 
 both women paused to rest, and Hannah 
 standing up straight and tall, twisted together 
 her thick black locks, which had shaken loose, 
 and wound them round her head, just as he 
 had seen her do the other day in the hayfield. 
 But she looked, he fancied, slimmer and more 
 girlish than usual, perhaps only by reason of 
 the rough task she had set herself. He was 
 jumping up to go and help, when she said a 
 word to her mother, and ran back into the 
 cottage. She came out again immediately 
 with something in her hand; something that 
 flickered a fierce cold gleam in the warm 
 sunlight ; it was a long, broad-bladed knife, 
 such as is used for cutting up meat. This 
 she thrust out of sight swiftly in among the 
 
After Seven Years 93 
 
 folds of the wrapping cloth, and he heard 
 her say : " Now come on make haste." 
 
 Francis could not have accounted rationally 
 for the feeling of helpless horror which at this 
 moment came over him ; but it did seize him 
 with such paralysing effect that, if a quick- 
 sand had been making mouths all round him, 
 he could have stirred hand nor foot to escape 
 from his peril. Like one in a dream he sat 
 watching mother and daughter toil along with 
 their load, whatever it might be. For a few 
 yards the track ran straight towards the place 
 where he sat, and as they came nearer he 
 could hear the older woman panting and 
 groaning over her efforts " We'll never do it, 
 Hannah," she repeated again and again, " the 
 Saints have mercy on us we'll never do it." 
 Hannah made no answer, and was stooping 
 so low that he could not see her face; but 
 she tugged desperately. The ponderous 
 weight furrowed the loose sand as it passed 
 trailing on, and a brisk breeze, which seemed 
 to be blowing after them, sent a thin cloud 
 scudding by, but where Francis sat not a 
 breath was stirring except his own. They 
 were in full view of him as they approached, 
 but they did not notice him, and when they 
 
94 After Seven Years 
 
 came where the sunken boreen turned rather 
 sharply to the left, the high banks began to 
 interpose, so that only glimpses could be 
 caught of anybody moving between them. 
 
 Then feeling a sudden impulse of rebellion 
 against the spell which kept him staring 
 blankly after the figures as they receded, he 
 turned to look in the opposite direction, and 
 thereupon began to utter an exclamation, 
 which broke off strangled as if a hand had 
 clutched him by the throat. For close by 
 Hannah Wade was standing Hannah herself 
 so near to him that he could have touched 
 her and yet at that very moment there was 
 that same that other dark head appearing 
 ever and anon above the silvery banks of the 
 boreen. His world spun round for a minute, 
 and then stood still again with a jerk. 
 
 Hannah and Francis looked at one another 
 without a word. How long she had been 
 there, and whence she had come, he did not 
 know, but her eyes, dark with fear, told him 
 that she knew what he had seen. The silence 
 seemed to have lasted a long while before 
 it was broken by neither of them. A voice 
 came from seaward, shouting in the sustained 
 roar which mariners learn to oppose to the 
 
After Seven Years 95 
 
 howling-down of winds and waves. " Hi then, 
 Hannah, girl," it said, "Is it stoppin' there 
 you'd be till every sup of the say's dhrained 
 out on us to beyant the Iting Pharaoh's 
 Islands ? Come along wid you out of that, 
 before we have th' ould boat crawlin' in the 
 black mud like a man-keeper in a ditch- 
 bottom. 
 
 " That's ould Micky Devlin rowed me over," 
 said Hannah, with a hoarse endeavour to 
 speak naturally. " I mustn't be keepin' him 
 any longer." She waited a moment, as if 
 hoping for something, and then turned away 
 alone \ but Francis did follow her a few steps 
 behind. To do so seemed to him more 
 possible than to make his solitary way home 
 through the sand-hills amongst which those 
 two forms had disappeared. 
 
 Old Micky smoking in his boat was a homely 
 and reassuring sight. He greeted their joint 
 appearance with laughter loud and long, and 
 much jocular comment. What they responded 
 to it they never knew, and neither did he ; but 
 his deafness was complaisant in its conjectures, 
 and he subsided into chuckles of unabated 
 satisfaction. On embarking Francis asked 
 eagerly to be allowed to row, but the old 
 
96 After Seven Years 
 
 man thrust him back sportively with the butt- 
 end of an oar, and said : " Och no, boyo ; 
 sure I wouldn't be separatin' yous be any 
 manner of manes. Sit you down beside her, 
 and lave th' ould paddles to meself that's got 
 nothin' better to mind." Francis, however, 
 took a seat as far aloof from his fellow- 
 passenger as the limits of the stern-benches 
 would allow. 
 
 As they slid out into the soft mother-o-pearly 
 water, Hannah felt unspeakably forlorn. It 
 seemed to her that all her hopes were slipping 
 away from her along with the strand she was 
 leaving, and that her landing on the other side 
 would be to find a world grown desolate for 
 evermore. The feeling strengthened with the 
 dwindling distance, while old Micky pulled 
 and poked his unappreciated fun, and Francis 
 sat silent and did not look at her. The good 
 luck but now so safely in her keeping, had 
 turned into a thing wild and winged, that 
 hovered on the point of taking flight. Within 
 a few fleeting minutes, if ever, she must grasp 
 and re-capture it; and yet the attempt failing 
 would scare it from her irretrievably. Thus 
 it came to pass that, although her better judg- 
 ment admonished her that she was acting over- 
 
After Seven Years 97 
 
 hastily and at an ill time, she could not forbear 
 any longer, but moving down the bench till 
 she sat opposite to her sweetheart, she held 
 out to him what she had all this while been 
 hiding under her shawl something that 
 glistened in the sun much as the knife-blade 
 had glittered. 
 
 "It was me poor father's watch," she said, 
 " I went over of a purpose to fetch it back for 
 you. It's as good and better than the one 
 you're after losin', Francey, and you're kindly 
 welcome to it. There it is you'd a right to 
 be puttin' it on before we're landin'. The 
 chain's rael silver look, Francey." 
 
 But, alas ! he shrank away from her proffered 
 gift as if it had been a scaly serpent, and said 
 hurriedly, with hardly veiled repugnance : " Ah 
 no, Hannah, I wouldn't be takin' it off you I've 
 no use for e'er such a thing keep it yourself." 
 
 She withdrew her hand with a sinking heart, 
 but she only half obeyed him. For she 
 suddenly turned from him and dropped watch 
 and chain with their golden gleams and silver 
 overboard into the sea. Neither she nor 
 Francis felt that there was anything reckless 
 or strange in the action. The old man did 
 not observe it. 
 
 G 
 
98 After Seven Years 
 
 But albeit sadly cast down by this repulse, 
 Hannah would not yet face despair. She still 
 clung passionately to the hope that her sweet- 
 heart was not going to fail her at this sore 
 pinch, and leave her wandering forsaken in 
 a world haunted with mysterious horrors, new 
 and old. So presently she leaned forward to 
 pluck him by the sleeve, and began speaking 
 again in an eager undertone : " Francey 
 Francey I never touched him before God 
 I never did nor she either. He run agin it 
 himself. I'll tell you the way it was. You 
 see, that evenin' after I come back from me 
 aunt, I was gettin' a look at me poor father's 
 watch that me mother kep' for me, and so be 
 chance she had it in her hand when that awful 
 man Miles Roche he come bawlin' home 
 wid dhrink taken, and when he seen a sight 
 of the watch he let a roar, and was for grab- 
 bin' a hould of it and wranchin' it away from 
 her. So to scare him off of her, I caught up 
 the big knife was lyin' on the table, where we 
 had it slicin' the bacon for the supper and 
 wid that he come runnin' at me, and reeled up 
 agin it I never touched him. But down he 
 dropped, and ne'er a word out of him after 
 that. It was no doin' of ours, God knows this 
 
After Seven Years 99 
 
 minute but we couldn't tell what the people 
 'ud be sayin' to it we got that afeard, and 
 we thought maybe But sure you seen you 
 seen what we done wid it there in Larry's 
 Horsepond Francey, man, it's the truth I'm 
 tellin' you." 
 
 " Ah, to be sure it is, Hannah, jewel," said 
 Francis, soothingly. Her heart leaped up at 
 the kind word, but when she looked into his 
 face for ratification of it, she saw that he was 
 merely frightened which was a very great dis- 
 appointment. 
 
 Just then old Micky, who had been looking 
 over his shoulder as he rowed, said: "There's 
 a quare clanjamfry of people waiting on the 
 shore, beckonin' to us as if we was a ferry- 
 boat, and they after bein' left behind. What 
 would they be wantin' wid us at all." 
 
 A knot of the neighbours were, as he said, 
 gathered on the shore, evidently to meet the 
 boat, and as they came within earshot, Hannah 
 heard her name called with rueful ejaculations. 
 She had scarcely set foot on the shingle when 
 Mrs Maguire seized hold of her. " Och, 
 Hannah, girl dear, what took you out of it 
 this mislucky day ? And we sendin' after you, 
 high ways and low ways, and thinkin' you was 
 
ioo After Seven Years 
 
 up at Cochranes, but not a bit of you could 
 we find and now your poor mother's died on 
 you, the crathur may the Lord have mercy 
 on her sowl." 
 
 " Why what ailed her ? " Hannah said dully. 
 
 " Sure the sorra a one of us knows till the 
 doctor comes. But not so long ago I called in 
 at your house to borry a pint-mug, and there 
 she was lyin' asleep on the bed, and lookin' 
 none too well, I thought, nor wake her I couldn't. 
 So I bid Mrs Tuohy come in and see her, and 
 she was of the opinion the crathur was as bad 
 as could be, and we ought to be gettin' his 
 Reverence to her and Dr Hamilton. And the 
 two of us stopped wid her while the lads was 
 runnin' wid the messages ; but there was never 
 a sign of her wakin'. Dhramin' somethin' ; she 
 was, that's sure, for whiles she'd be moanin' and 
 sayin' : ' She's goin' to desthroy us desthroyin' 
 us she'll be' and other whiles she'd keep on 
 sayin' : * We'll never do it, Hannah, we'll never 
 do it.' But after a bit she got aisy and quite, 
 and then, before we rightly knew anythin', she 
 was gone och, the crathur, God be good to 
 her. Sure it was the Lord's will, Hannah, and 
 nobody could ha' tould it 'ud happen." 
 
 The neighbours thought it natural enough 
 
After Seven Years ici 
 
 that Hannah should run off home " in a great 
 distraction entirely." But they were surprised 
 to see that Francis Conroy did not accompany 
 her, and made no offers of consolation or assist- 
 ance. However, greater marvels awaited them. 
 For Hannah's conduct that night was extra- 
 ordinary indeed. Not a soul would she have to 
 sit up with her, or let inside the door. And on 
 the morrow she was no longer there. She must 
 have slipped away during the brief darkness of 
 the summer night, and nobody at Clonalty ever 
 heard of her again. Of course the affair became 
 warp and woof for a web of strange stories, 
 some of them so uncanny that when, after much 
 delay, the Wades' household effects were 
 auctioned off for the benefit of Hannah's old 
 aunt, who eventually claimed them, many of the 
 neighbours averred that they would be long 
 sorry to have anything coming out of that house 
 inside theirs. 
 
 All this happened many years back, and 
 Francis Conroy, who probably knew more than 
 anybody else, and yet not a great deal, about 
 the matter, went off soon afterwards to the 
 States, without having given any full account of 
 his experiences on that sunny summer afternoon 
 among the sand-hills at the Wades' old home. 
 
' After Seven Years 
 
 But he may have let a word fall here and there, 
 and rumours, all the more portentous for their 
 vagueness, got about. To this day they hover 
 darkly round the lonely sand-pit ; and in all 
 Clonalty which numbers, perhaps, not much 
 less than three score of souls you would not, I 
 believe, find a man or woman, hardly even a 
 child, who would venture to linger towards 
 dusk anywhere within sight of Larry's Horse- 
 pond. 
 
A CASE OF CONSCIENCE 
 
 To Dick O'Neill, sauntering about his neglected 
 gardens, came a message that " the sergint from 
 the polis was above at the house, and would be 
 obligated if he might throuble his Honour for 
 a minute," a summons which he reluctantly 
 obeyed, apprehensive of hated magisterial busi- 
 ness. During his short residence at Portrosna 
 Castle, two or three experiences of it had 
 befallen him, and on these occasions he had 
 shown a strong tendency to pay everybody's 
 fines himself, and to apologise impartially all 
 round, which could not but speedily establish 
 his reputation as the most popular J.P. on the 
 commission. In fact, the local constabulary had 
 already agreed among themselves that young 
 Mr O'Neill was too easy-going altogether, and 
 they'd do better in future to bring cases before 
 Captain Marsh, or Mr Digby - Johnstone at 
 Crossmaclone, who'd a righter notion how to 
 deal with them lads. Sergeant McEvoy at the 
 same time expressed some wonder that " a 
 
 IQ3 
 
104 A Case of Conscience 
 
 gentleman who, it was understood, had travelled 
 as much abroad as any regiment on foreign 
 service, shouldn't have got more world-learning 
 like than to be took aback by every slieveen 
 might come blathering at him." This morning, 
 however, they had departed from their rule, 
 under stress of an urgent case and the absence 
 or illness of the more competent authorities; 
 so that when Mr O'Neill entered the library, 
 he saw his forebodings fully justified. For the 
 room seemed to be crammed with people from 
 the village, though in reality the throng was 
 thickened by the fact that all the domestic staff 
 were lighting the fire ostentatiously, in their 
 anxiety to witness the official investigation of a 
 crime which had scandalised Portrosna. 
 
 It was nothing less enormous than that one 
 Mattie M'Niffe, an elderly woman of doubtful 
 character, had been caught almost in the act of 
 purloining an article from the wash which Mrs 
 Duffy had put out to bleach in " the little grass 
 slip alongside of the road forenint the Widdy 
 Quinn's." Almost, but unluckily not quite. 
 For though Mattie had been seen to scramble 
 through a gap in the dyke at the one end of the 
 field, and to " lep like an ould froghopper on 
 wires " down the bank at the other, just before 
 
Case of Conscience 105 
 
 Mrs Duffy came out and noticed the theft, no 
 testimony was producible with respect to Mattie's 
 proceedings exactly in the corner where the 
 clothes were sunning themselves. And the 
 stolen shirt, which was picked up immediately 
 afterwards on the roadside, had been artfully 
 dropped close to Mad Bell, as she sat under the 
 lee of the bank, " sortin' through the bits of 
 things she had in her ould basket, the crathur." 
 This attempt to shift suspicion was in Portrosna's 
 eyes the blackest feature of the affair. 
 
 " I wouldn't have thought so bad of it, your 
 Honour," said Mrs Brennan, " if she hadn't 
 done her best to be puttin' the discredit on Mad 
 Bell, the poor little ould respectable diminted 
 body, that niver laid a finger on a pin's point 
 didn't belong to her in all the years she's comin' 
 and goin' among us." 
 
 " And who's offerin' to pass a remark agin 
 Mad Bell at all, at all ? It's great ould talk the 
 woman has," said Mrs Autolycus, with half- 
 abashed defiance. She was a small shrivelled 
 person, wearing the expression of a magpie; 
 and she now looked on wistfully, as that bird 
 might have eyed a rescued fork, while Mrs 
 Duffy, the washer-woman, spread out the re- 
 covered shirt over an Atlas and a Greek lexicon, 
 
io6 A Case of Conscience 
 
 upon the library table, bewailing with an artist's 
 chagrin the destruction of her handiwork. 
 
 " Och to goodness sure I wouldn't ha' 
 minded on'y nothin' 'ud suit her but one out 
 of the finest set of all your Honour owns. 
 And the ilegant colour 'twas blachin' ; the 
 foam of the say was yalla to it and to go 
 wisp it up like an ould dish-clout and sling it 
 in the puddles och, look at it, all erases and 
 mud. The loveliest bowl of could-water 
 starch I was after mixin' for the front of it, 
 wid a lump o' sugar in it to smoothen it, 
 and left it to thicken on the windy ledge, 
 while I'd step out to fetch me things in and 
 there if this one wasn't gone off of the grass 
 before me eyes ! But, bedad, I well knew 
 where it had travelled, as soon as iver I 
 beheld yon little-good-for leggin' away down 
 the road ; and I let a yell to me son Tim 
 there, that was spreadin' top-dressin' in the 
 meadow, to be stoppin' her. Troth, when 
 she heard that she took off wid herself for 
 her life, till be luck she run full tilt into 
 constable Molloy comin' round the corner. 
 So here we'd have her grabbed as nate as an 
 ould mackerel in a creel, if she's as slithery 
 itself as a one of them, except 'twas for the 
 
Case of Conscience 107 
 
 contrariness of Widdy Quinn, that's set 
 her mind agin spakin' a word she that seen 
 it took and nobody else. For Katty Mahon 
 noticed Mattie slinkin' through the gap and 
 more betoken if the girl had a grain of wit, 
 she'd ha' tould me, and I'd ha' kep' me eye 
 on the things and Tim can swear he seen 
 her tumblin' down the bank, wouldn't you 
 avic ? " 
 
 " Ay would I," averred Tim, " agin forty." 
 "Musha then it's your self's the great man 
 whativer, Tim Duffy; fit to swear the hind 
 leg off of a dog any day," remarked Mattie, 
 with sarcastic effrontery. 
 
 " And if he would, there's plenty besides 
 him would be ready enough to swear agin any 
 M'Niffe that iver walked," retorted Mrs Duffy, 
 " for sorra a one of the lot of them you could 
 trust the len'th of your little finger. Och, 
 bejabers, niver a mother's son of them yet but 
 was as full of villainy as he could stick together. 
 Wasn't there her brother up at Cloughdrum 
 went be the name of Look-out M'Niffe, because 
 the people would be biddin' one another look 
 out they weren't robbed, wheniver they seen 
 the ould miscreant slingein' their way ? Ah, 
 sure, and didn't O'Farrell below say he'd liefer 
 
io8 A Case of Conscience 
 
 see his haggard black wid rats than have one 
 of them thievin' permiscuous about his place ? " 
 
 " He said right, ma'am. And the trick her- 
 self played me the time I was stookawn enough 
 to loan her me " 
 
 Here the sound of a shrill voice came in 
 a waft, as if through a door opened at some 
 distance. It seemed to be alternately using 
 strong language, and breaking into skirls of 
 song. 
 
 " That's poor Mad Bell herself," said some 
 one explanatorily. " Constable Long's keepin' 
 her pacified at the hall-door, the crathur. 
 She's waitin' to take Mrs M'Niffe's life when 
 she comes out ; she said she'd knock sauce- 
 pans out of her for thryin' to do her that bad 
 turn; ay did she, and small blame to her. 
 Begorrah, if Mad Bell was as big as she's 
 little, it's long sorry I'd be to get contendin' 
 wid her ; for she's a terrible wicked woman 
 sometimes, when she's set a-goin' ; and bad 
 cess to them that sets her, the misfortnit 
 bein'." 
 
 " I call it rael outrageous and scandeelious 
 of Widdy Quinn to be that unmannerly about 
 comin' up along wid us," protested Mrs Duffy, 
 " and let tin' on be this and be that she niver 
 
Case of Conscience 109 
 
 seen a sight, as if Mattie there was aught to 
 her. And me that's obliged her many a time, 
 so I have. And she knowin' right well 'tis 
 on'y the shed-wall and the end of the stack 
 hindered me of seein' the ould rogue at her 
 thievin' wid me own eyes, so as I might be 
 swearin' informations meself, and no thanks 
 to anybody. But sure maybe his Honour 
 might conthrive to make her spake out 
 conformable, and tell the truth what she 
 seen. And it his Honour's own grand 
 shirt that was widin an ames ace of goin' 
 to loss." 
 
 His Honour, even thus incited, recoiled 
 from the task of reducing the Widdy Quinn 
 to conformity, and suggested that she possibly 
 had seen nothing after all. 
 
 " Och, musha, divil a fear of that ! Sure 
 how would she help seein', if she'd her eyes 
 shut, wid her open door star-gazin' right into 
 the bit of green ? And, faix, there's divil a 
 much goin' the road that the Widdy Quinn 
 doesn't see if she so plases. Saints above, if a 
 little ould weevil went aisy be her door on its 
 stockin' feet, it's lookin' out she'd be to spy 
 what was passin'. Ay, she seen right enough ; 
 but the fact of the matter is, it's quare and set- 
 
no A Case of Conscience 
 
 up she's been iver since the notice the Quality 
 took of her what little while they were here ; 
 them that your honour put out of it, or I'd a 
 right to say your Honour's father Heaven be 
 his bed a couple o' year back, and a good job 
 too, for th' ould Gineral was an ugly-tempered 
 man. Often we would be sayin' Miss Una was 
 to be pitied wid him, for nobody had a word 
 agin her, the quite, soft-spoken young lady. 
 Howsome'er, she'd a great opinion entirely of 
 the Widdy Quinn ; times and agin she'd be 
 down to her wid sugar and tay. And now 
 since they're quit, what wid lavin' her the 
 mindin' of her baste, and writin' her letters 
 continyal " 
 
 " Miss Ellis writes ? " 
 
 " Bedad, yis, your Honour, as reg'lar as the 
 month comes round. And unless it's that has 
 cocked the Widdy up wid the idea she's a great 
 one, I dunno what else the rason is. But, any- 
 way, I'd have her to know she's no call to be 
 disobligin' dacint neighbours, and colloguin' wid 
 thieves and vagabones." 
 
 Mrs M'Niffe ducked an ironical curtsey, and 
 said : " Thank 'ee kindly, ma'am." 
 
 " And wid them that has the imperence of a 
 throop of horse-dragoons," went on Mrs Duffy, 
 
A Case of Conscience 1 1 1 
 
 modulating abruptly into a key of shriller 
 exasperation, " and that knows better than any 
 one could be tellin' them what went wid the 
 patchwork quilt me sisther-in-law was at the 
 loss of last Easter ; and that this day owns a 
 top-knotty hen belongs to them be rights as 
 much as the crows in the sky." 
 
 When evidence of this very discursive nature 
 is gone into thoroughly, proceedings take their 
 time. A long time it seemed to Mr O'Neill 
 before he was able to arrive, by devious ways, 
 at the regretful conclusion that, considering 
 the vexatious flaw in the evidence caused by 
 the Widdy Quinn's contrariness, and the com- 
 plications which might arise from Mad Bell's 
 entanglement in the affair, the charge against 
 Mattie M'Niffe must be dismissed. Whereupon 
 the party dispersed, Mattie, perkily triumphant, 
 being smuggled out by back ways, to frustrate 
 Mad Bell's purpose of " doin' murther on " her 
 wily defamer, a sequel which duty rather than 
 inclination urged their neighbours to forbid. 
 
 Dick was thus at liberty again, but he re- 
 verted to his sauntering with a shadow on his 
 mood. His visitor's references to " the Quality 
 who had been put out of it " had jarred a 
 memory aching-ripe ever since, on his return 
 
H2 A Case of Conscience 
 
 from a long tour two or three years ago, he 
 had found his family enmeshed in a lawsuit 
 with their kinsman, General Ellis, then 
 provisionally in possession of Portrosna Castle, 
 but presently to be ousted by judicial decree. 
 For sundry reasons Dick had much deplored 
 this augmentation of his patrimony, but his 
 disregarded protests could not turn the law 
 from its course, which ran remorselessly as the 
 share of a steam-plough through growths of 
 ancient amity and intimacy, leaving the furrow 
 behind it of a family feud, that any regrets of 
 his seemed powerless to efface. His father's 
 death, a year back, had not appreciably altered 
 the situation, which Dick now found so unsatis- 
 factory a theme for reflections that he deter- 
 mined to shake off his depressing thoughts by 
 taking a walk through the village. 
 
 The February afternoon was flighty and 
 tricky, prone to lay booby-traps with sudden 
 down-pelting showers for any wayfarer who 
 walked without regard to the disposition of the 
 swiftly shifting cloud-masses over his head. 
 Dick did so, and had just passed along the main 
 street, when all the lights twinkling in the 
 rippled puddles went out abruptly beneath a 
 sliding black shadow, which straightway hissed 
 
Case of Conscience 113 
 
 and hummed with drops blown aslant. Now, 
 Dick O'Neill was so constituted that from no 
 ordinary convulsion of nature would he seek 
 refuge voluntarily in a stranger dwelling, be it 
 high or low. But on this occasion the matter 
 was taken out of his hands ; for the same gust 
 that brought the rain whisked his hat off his 
 head, and wheeled it in at the door of 
 the nearest cabin, whither he was fain to 
 pursue. 
 
 " Ah, then ! step inside, your Honour step 
 in out of the teems of rain," said the mistress of 
 the house, Widdy Quinn, whose white apron 
 gleamed in the dusky little entry where she 
 stood, a dark-eyed woman, with an anxious 
 expression and a comeliness wearing somewhat 
 smoke-dried. 
 
 Dick would most likely have declined the 
 invitation had he been in possession of his head- 
 gear ; but that was in the hands of the Widdy, 
 who continued to wipe it vigorously with her 
 apron's end, and to ask for it seemed rather 
 more difficult than to step in. Therefore, 
 following the line of least resistance, he stooped 
 into the turf-scented room, where the corners 
 were vaguely rounded off with blue haze, and 
 the crockery on the dresser caught shimmering 
 H 
 
H4 A Case of Conscience 
 
 flushes from the crumbling red hearth-glow, 
 and a lank geranium stalk was dying in a jam- 
 pot against the meagre pane. 
 
 " Arrah now, bad manners to you, wouldn't 
 you be stirrin' to lave the gentleman a sate ? " 
 said Widdy Quinn, apparently to somebody 
 sitting in the high-backed chair beside the 
 fire ; but she had to add joggles and pokes 
 to her remonstrance before its occupant 
 emerged. 
 
 To Dick's relief it was only an unusually 
 large grey cat, which, descending with a sullen 
 flop, stretched itself inordinately, and then went 
 and ostentatiously sharpened its claws on the 
 leg of the table. 
 
 " Sure, it's thinkin' to terrify us you are, 
 bedad," said Widdy Quinn. " Sit you down, 
 sir, and don't let on to notice. That's the 
 thrick it has if iver I do aught to disoblige it : 
 off it takes, and puts a polish on its ould croo- 
 beens, as much as to say it's gettin' itself ready 
 to reive all before it. Not that 'twould raise 
 hand or foot agin anybody, the crathur, all the 
 while. Sure you wouldn't, then, would you, 
 ould Triptolemus ? " 
 
 " Triptolemus ? " repeated Dick, pricking up 
 his ears. " Is that what you call him ? Rather 
 
Case of Conscience 115 
 
 a queer name for a cat ; but I happen to know 
 of another called so." 
 
 "Well, your Honour, 'twas the name Miss 
 Una had for hers," said the Widdy, with obvious 
 embarrassment. 
 
 " And is that her Miss Ellis's cat ? " 
 
 "Well, your Honour, she left me the mindin' 
 of him when she quit : she did so ; that's the 
 truth I'm tellin' you and a quare name it was 
 till you got used to it Triptolemus och, yis, 
 that's what I said sure enough unless 'twas 
 somethin' difPrint be mistake." The Widdy 
 was growing more and more flurried and guilty 
 in manner ; to judge by it you might have 
 taken poor Dick for a bullying counsel on the 
 other side. So great, in fact, was her discom- 
 posure that, having finished wiping the mud 
 off his hat, she went and hung it up on the 
 corner of the dresser, instead of restoring it 
 to him. But she turned round after this 
 aimless action with a purpose suddenly full 
 grown. 
 
 "Troth, sir, I'll tell you the whole of the 
 matter," she said, " faix will I, for on me con- 
 science I'll keep it blackenin' no longer. And 
 be the same token it's maybe the nearest I can 
 go to tellin' Miss Una herself, for Quality's in 
 
n6 A Case of Conscience 
 
 a manner all the one thing ; and many's the 
 time she's sat in that same chair, when she'd be 
 bringing me the sugar and tay. The more ould 
 reprobate I to go chatin' her, and the crathur 
 
 lyin' underground this two year Och to 
 
 goodness, no, sir, not Miss Una at all at all; 
 she's well and hearty, glory be to God but the 
 mislucky ould cat. Be sittin' down agin, your 
 Honour, for the rain's outrageous, and I'll tell 
 you the way of it all. 
 
 " Sure she had the baste wid her when first 
 she came to the Castle, and a hape she con- 
 sidhered of him. They say some one had 
 brought him home to her from the inds of the 
 earth : an Angory they called him I believe, but 
 for aught I could see he was just the very 
 moral of me own Minnie that's sittin' over there, 
 may goodness forgive me, lookin' as bitter as 
 sut for bein' put out of the chair. A thrifle 
 longer-haired he might be, and had a sort of 
 fulness on him round the neck, but nothin' 
 much to notice, and a quare notion he had that 
 he wouldn't dhrink his milk could, except 'twas 
 warmed up wid a sup of hot wather through it ; 
 and he might have a few more fantigues I dis- 
 remember. Howsome'er I'm tould th' ould 
 Gineral niver could abide the thoughts of the 
 
A Case of Conscience 117 
 
 baste, whativer the rason might be " (Dick 
 believed he could surmise), " and if he met wid 
 it comin' along the passages, he'd jump and clap 
 his hands, and let yells at it, till he had it 
 skytin' about distracted like a rabbit that's lost 
 its houle. And Mick Denny, that helped the 
 footman, says that a couple of days afore they 
 quit, the Master says at dinner : ' And, mind 
 you, that brutes not comin' along wid us,' sez 
 he. * And what will I do wid him then at 
 all ? ' sez Miss Una. ' Och, sling it in the 
 pond, or wheriver else you plase,' sez he, 
 1 but wid a blessin' we'll be shut of it any- 
 way.' 
 
 "So the next day Miss Una come here, wid 
 the two eyes of her cried out of her head, the 
 crathur, to ax me would I take and keep the 
 bastie for her, and a couple of shillins a week 
 I'd be ped for it. And I tould her I would and 
 welcome, and nary the shillins I'd look after, 
 for proud I'd be to have him for company to me 
 and Minnie ; and sorra a lie was in it, for I 
 would so. But she said 'twould be a sort of 
 pleasure to her to pay for his board and lodgin', 
 and she'd send it every month, and then I'd a 
 right to scrawm her a line to say what way he 
 was. So she let the baste out of the covered 
 
n8 A Case of Conscience 
 
 basket, and down she knelt on the floor to un- 
 buckle a grand red leather collar he had on him 
 wid little silver conthrivances shinin' all over it 
 ilegant. ' Sure you're doin' right, Miss Una 
 jewel,' sez I to her, * to not be lavin' that fine 
 little affair on him here, where the smoke and 
 dirt 'ud on'y ruinate it. 'Tis too good entirely 
 for us,' sez I. 
 
 " ' 'Deed then, Mrs Quinn,' sez she, ' niver a 
 bit too good it is at all, but 'twas an ould friend 
 gave it to me,' sez she, and she turnin' as pink 
 as me spark of geranium-blossom there, the 
 crathur, thinkin' she'd done somethin' uncivil 
 like, * a very ould friend,' sez she, ' and that's 
 why I'd liefer keep it. But I'll send you down 
 some bright ribbons for collars,' sez she, 
 4 to-morra.' And sure enough she remembered 
 to send down some len'ths of the beautifullest- 
 coloured ribbons I ever witnessed, unless it 
 might be in a rainbow. Bedad, sir, there's the 
 butt end of a one archin' itself agin the door, so 
 the shower's apt to be clearin'. But it's little 
 she thought, or I either, that they'd be in a 
 manner the death of the poor thing the way it 
 happint. 
 
 " For it might be a week after they'd quit, a 
 letter come for me from Miss Una wid an order 
 
Case of Conscience 
 
 119 
 
 to pay for Triptolemus a month beforehand; 
 ten shillins it was, that came as near as anythin' 
 to fluttherin' up the chimney on me, and I 
 openin' the cover in me flurry at the fire. And 
 somehow the notion took me that the least I 
 could do was to put a new collar on him, so I 
 cut him a piece of the green ribbon, and tied it 
 on him in the grandest big bow. Saints alive, 
 but the baste was sot up and consaited over it ! 
 He wouldn't look the way one of us was, but 
 out of the house he trapesed, to show himself 
 off belike. You'd mind the figure of him yit, 
 if you'd seen him stompin' slow across the street 
 there, wid his tail like a church steeple, and 
 liftin' up his ould feet as if he was steppin' 
 over hot pitaties. But presently I heard <wurra- 
 tuurra-ivurra-'woof-oof settin' up outside, that 
 would be Barney Keogh's rough terrier dog, the 
 greatest little divil after huntin' cats , howane'er 
 I niver thought to mind, because I well knew 
 that any cat wid four legs to it had nothin' to 
 do but skyte handy up th' ould thorn-bush, and 
 defy the nation. But when the <wurra- e wurrain > 
 seemed goin' on onnatural, out I run and och, 
 murdher alive, if the poor unlucky baste hadn't 
 slipped a crooky thorn-twig under his collar, 
 that was a thrifle loose on him, and there he 
 
120 A Case of Conscience 
 
 stuck caught fast, till the little rogue of a dog 
 had got a woeful grip of him be the scruff of 
 the neck, and was after givin' him a shake that 
 shook the life clane out of him. Kilt dead he 
 was afore iver I could part them. Och now, 
 your Honour, that was a rael unchancy thing to 
 go happen a body ; and the whole botheration 
 of it came sloppin' through me mind, like spilt 
 wather when it's widenin' itself over the floor. 
 For directly I got considherin' how I'd have to 
 be writin' to tell Miss Una desthruction was 
 done on her baste, and how she'd be frettin' 
 after him, and belike thinkin' I'd took no heed 
 to him ; and how I'd a right to be sendin' back 
 the ten-shillin' order, and ne'er another one 
 comin', and I countin' on it towards Ray's 
 bill, and the pitaties middlin', and pigs goin' 
 
 low 
 
 " And then somehow the divilmint come all 
 of a suddint into me head, and the first thing I 
 knew I'd whipped the green ribbon off of poor 
 ould Triptolemus, and clapped it on to Minnie 
 there, and I'd got the fire-shovel to scrape out a 
 buryin'-hole under the hedge, and all the while 
 I was sayin' to meself, same as if I was at me 
 beads, 'It's Minnie's kilt it's Minnie's kilt it's 
 Minnie's kilt,' and ivery sowl that come along 
 
A Case of Conscience 121 
 
 the road Fd let a bawl to that Keogh's dog was 
 after murdherin' me ould Minnie on me. Be- 
 gorrah, if I bawled the same big lie once that 
 day, I bawled it twinty times ; but if I'd known 
 rightly the tormint 'twould be to me, I'd niver 
 ha' let it off me tongue. For ochone, your 
 Honour, the way one thing grows out of another 
 does be terrific. Sure the very next day I had 
 to be gettin' Foxy Doran's lad to do a letter for 
 me to poor Miss Una, tellin' her Triptolemus 
 was keepin' finely, and I wondherin' to meself 
 that the ink didn't dhry into sut in his pen wid 
 the inventions I was biddin' him write and 
 thankin' her kindly for the order I was as good 
 as stealin' off of her. So now your Honour can 
 persaive the rason why I couldn't be spakin' agin 
 poor Mattie M'Niffe this mornin', no matter 
 what I may ha' seen her doin'. How'd I have 
 the face, and I thievin' away reg'lar this two 
 year, and she on'y pickin' up an odd thrifle now 
 and agin ? Mrs 'Duffy did be castin' it up to 
 me that I was colloguin' wid the likes of such 
 a notorious ould good-for-nought ; and thinks I 
 to meself, * Sure if I do so, sorra the hap'orth 
 better I am, or worse, if there's any differ 
 between us.' It's heart-scalded I am," quoth 
 Widdy Quinn, so piteously that Dick plunged 
 
122 A Case of Conscience 
 
 hurriedly into an attempt to set matters in a 
 pleasanter light. 
 
 " Oh, of course you were reluctant to vex 
 Miss Una with the bad news ; nobody could 
 blame you for that." 
 
 "Nary the use there's in that," said the 
 Widdy, disconsolately. " Thried it I have 
 often, but the more I'd let on 'twas Miss Una's 
 frettin' I did be mindin', the more sartin-sure 
 I'd get that niver a thraneen I cared about her 
 frettin', or anythin' else except the shillins. 
 And the same way I kep' on thinkin' to per- 
 suade meself 'twas Minnie got kilt after all 
 niver a bit of me could. D'ye see the white 
 forepaw she has on her, your Honour ? That's 
 the most of the differ there was between her 
 and Triptolemus ; and it seemed to me when- 
 iver I'd get anywhere's near mixin' the two of 
 them up in me mind, out she'd cock her ould 
 fut, same as if she was callin' me a liar to me 
 face. I got to hate the sight of it. Or she'd 
 come and rub her head agin' me, and I talkin' 
 to any of the neighbours, till they'd be passin' 
 the remark that the baste was grown as friendly 
 wid me as if I'd had it as long as me own poor 
 Minnie; and then, goodness forgive me, I'd 
 wish she was choked. Ay, often enough I do 
 
Case of Conscience 123 
 
 be wishin' she'd just die away wid herself, and 
 lave me a chanst to quit the sin off of me 
 conscience, for all she's been the greatest 
 company to me these ten year. Sure of an 
 evenin' when she'll be rowled up forenint 
 me in the chair, blinkin' her two eyes at me, 
 and carryin' on like an ould cushion wid a 
 creak in it, I do whiles git past me patience, 
 and ' Bad luck to you then,' I'll say, * sittin' 
 cocked up there in contintment, purrin' and 
 purrin', and damnin' me sowl.' 'Twas on'y 
 th' other night the notion came into me head 
 I'd ax Constable Long for the loan of a bit of 
 the quare poison stuff they got at the barracks 
 for slaughtherin' the rats. Stiffened them up 
 it did, I heard tell, like so many ould shoes. 
 For if once I'd Minnie stiffened, there'd be an 
 end of writin' lies and thievin' ten-shillinses 
 for good and all. But, och, I hadn't the heart 
 to go do such a thing, and that's a fac'. More- 
 betoken, wheniver I take any account con- 
 sidherate of the crool idees I'm gettin' to have 
 in me mind, it's terrified in a way I do be, for 
 sez I to meself: * What sort of ould divil 
 am I comin' to at all? It's apt I am to be 
 doin' murdher on some unlucky bosthoon of 
 a human crathur, let alone an innicent 
 
124 A Case of Conscience 
 
 brute-baste, afore I rightly know what Fm 
 at. 
 
 " Many's the time I've had it on the furthest 
 end of me tongue to be tellin' the whole 
 consarn to his Riverence at confession. But 
 then I know right well the first thing he'd bid 
 me would be to lave off the lyin' and desaivin', 
 and stop them orders a-comin' ; and whatever 
 he'd say I couldn't go agin for me life ; so 
 tellin' him would be all the same thing as 
 openin' a door you couldn't shut to : and niver 
 a word I've let on. And himself not long 
 since offerin' to give me a character to the 
 new agint for an honest respectable tinant ! 
 Troth, if it's meself's not the deceptionable 
 ould haythen, get me one. And dozens of 
 times I'd me mind made up strong that any- 
 how niver a penny more comin' that road 
 would I touch to be spendin' it. Keepin' it 
 safe in me ould glass-lidded box I'd be, and 
 perhaps sendin' it back cliver and clane, as 
 I'd on'y a right, to Miss Una one of these 
 days. But musha goodness help us, what 
 wid this thing and the other, when the starva- 
 tion does be in it and the poor crathurs 
 borryin' loans and meself took bad now and 
 agin the end of it was the order 'd slip out 
 
Case of Conscience 125 
 
 of the box agin afore I'd fairly clapped down 
 the lid on top of it. And changed at the post 
 office 'twould be, your Honour; and onst it 
 was broke, sure you might as well thry to 
 hould a crumbled clod of clay a horse is after 
 settin' his fut on, in your hand, as think to be 
 keepin' it. And the same way 'twill be wid the 
 one come yisterday. A bit late it come, 
 because of Miss Una bein' laid up this long 
 while, she sez, wid a could wondherin' she 
 was, the crathur, whether Triptolemus re- 
 mimbered her yit and the ould Gineral took 
 rael mortal bad on her now and I to be 
 chatin' her in the middle of her misfortins " 
 
 " By Jove ! " said Dick, diving suddenly out 
 of his chair, which was so constructed that it 
 could be quitted only by a vigorous header, 
 " can you tell me where she is at present ? 
 where she writes from ? " 
 
 The mere aspect of the note which Widdy 
 Quinn produced from her glass-lidded box 
 made Dick feel vaguely as if he had received 
 a bit of disquieting information. It was dated 
 from a street in the town of Galway, and its 
 few hurried lines were written palely upon a 
 sheet of thin limp paper, such as might be 
 used by some struggling retailer, fain to 
 
126 A Case of Conscience 
 
 minimise his trade expenses. " Look here, 
 Mrs Quinn," he said, when he had read it 
 through several times, "if you'll leave the 
 matter to me, I think I could explain it to 
 Miss Una, she's my cousin, and I used to 
 know her very well. It might, perhaps, be 
 a mistake to tell her just now, when she's so 
 uneasy about her father, since she seems to 
 have thought a great deal of the beast by 
 Jove she does. I daresay I could get her 
 another from the same fellow. But anyhow, 
 I'll see what's best to be done." 
 
 " The blessin' of God be on your Honour, 
 then," said the Widdy with fervour, "for the 
 load 'twould take off of me ould conscience 
 couldn't be tould in speech." 
 
 As she watched him splash down the glister- 
 ing roadway with the note in his pocket, the 
 anxious pucker into which an obliquely dazz- 
 ling ray gathered her countenance, really belied 
 a sense of relief such as follows the transference 
 of some hopelessly bungled-over business to a 
 person who you feel indefinitely confident will 
 somehow make a good job of it for you. That 
 sense would no doubt have strengthened in 
 her, had she known how promptly and ener- 
 getically Dick acted under his new responsi- 
 
A Case of Conscience 127 
 
 bility. As a matter-of-fact, he that evening 
 posted a long letter to Galway, and followed 
 to the same address at an early hour on the 
 next morning. 
 
 About a fortnight afterwards, Mrs Duffy 
 called on Mrs Quinn. The Widdy was glad 
 of it, for the neighbours had all been more or 
 less stiff with her since the affair of the stolen 
 shirt. Hence the effusiveness of her welcome 
 was such that Mrs Duffy's manners broke 
 down so far as to ignore more than one " And 
 what way's the childer ? " and " What news 
 do you be gettin' from Moyglish this long 
 while back ? " in her impatience to arrive at 
 her own "Did you hear tell who's comin' home 
 to the Castle ? " 
 
 " Niver a tell I heard of comin' or goin', 
 forby I know Mr O'Neill's took off wid him 
 to Galway the week afore last." 
 
 " Sure Brian M'Clusky, that went wid him, 
 come home this mornin', and brought word 
 there's a match made between his Honour him- 
 self and Miss Una, and the weddin'-day fixed 
 and all. Quite as quite 'tis to be, because th' 
 ould Gineral's had a stroke, and is broke 
 entirely to what he was. Brian would scarce 
 ha' known him, he's that failed, on'y some 
 
128 A Case of Conscience 
 
 one let the door slam, and then 'twas all the 
 * blamed blunderin' brutes,' and ' confounded 
 mischievous ijjits' wid him, just the same as 
 iver. But two it takes to help him across 
 the room." 
 
 "Well, now, that's a pity," said Widdy 
 Quinn sympathetically ; " and himself that 
 was always a fine " she cast about for an 
 appropriate adjective "a fine free-spoken 
 gentleman." 
 
 "It's quare altogether he's got, Brian sez. 
 Took up wid the idee, he has, that it's he 
 owns the Castle and all, and the others do 
 be humourin' him, and lettin' on 'tis the way 
 he thinks. And he's comin' here to live 
 when Miss Una's married, that's to be in next 
 to no time. None too well, Brian sez, she 
 looked. Sure, she'll ha' fretted about the 
 Gineral. But Mr O'Neill was in great spirits 
 whatever. Some message there was he called 
 after Brian to be givin' you that you were 
 to be mindin' the cat till Miss Una 'd come 
 for it sure, he'll tell you himself. Belike 
 she'll be takin' it back." 
 
 " Belike will she," said Mrs Quinn evasively. 
 
 But when she was alone, she stood for a 
 while at her door in rueful contemplation 
 
A Case of Conscience 129 
 
 of the pseudo-Triptolemus, who sat enjoying 
 the March sunshine under the writhen black 
 boughs and crimped green buds of the thorn- 
 bush. 
 
 "'Twill be a sort of judgment on me," 
 she mused, "if Miss Una takes her away in 
 the misbelief 'tis raelly himself; for 'tis lone- 
 some I'd be widout the little ould crathur. 
 But I scarce know whether I'd liefer she done 
 that, or heard tell of the villainy I'm after 
 conthrivin' on her. Sure, anyway, she'll be 
 apt now to set less store be cats. To think 
 of her takin' up wid his Honour here ; but, 
 bedad, I might ha' made a guess after seein' 
 the caper he cut when he misconsthrued me 
 to say somethin' had happint Miss Una. Troth, 
 be the lep he gave in his chair, I thought a 
 could dhrip off the roof must ha' caught him 
 in the back of his neck. Och, but I'm the 
 schemin' ould sinner ! Howsome'er, sorra a 
 penny of the last money of hers have I touched ; 
 and don't intind. But all the while I wouldn't 
 wondher if that's on'y just because I'm after 
 hearin' she's comin' back, and she so charitable 
 to a body, I'm apt to not be so hard set. 
 Bedad, now, there's no gittin' to the end of 
 the divilment does be in one's mind j and it's 
 i 
 
130 A Case of Conscience 
 
 maybe no use thryin'. 'Tis the same way as 
 when there's a sidiment of turf-mould at the 
 bottom of your bucket of wather. If you 
 keep stirrin' it up, 'twill bide ugly and black 
 on you ; but if you let it stand aisy and 
 settle itself for a while, you'll be able 
 to prisently pour it off as clane as you 
 plase." 
 
 This piece of natural philosophy may have 
 been suggested to the Widdy by a tin pan 
 of water, which was flashing in the sun a few 
 paces from her door. Just then a water- 
 wagtail lit daintily on the rim, a most 
 unsubstantial-looking " smal fowle," hardly 
 worth the attention, one would have supposed, 
 of any pot-hunter. Minnie, however, was of 
 a different opinion, and uncoiled herself from 
 her compact fur roll for a trailing crawl and 
 a darting pounce, by which she gained nothing 
 but two wet paws, as the wagtail took unscathed 
 flight in airy undulations, with a derisive 
 chirrup at every dip. 
 
 "Bad manners to you, Minnie," said the 
 Widdy: "can't you let grabbin' after the 
 little birds alone ? Musha, good gracious ! 
 I'm thinkin' the two of us is scarce anythin' 
 better than a pair of ould rapscallions. And, 
 
A Case of Conscience 
 
 bedad, we put our fut in it now and agin. 
 But sure, if we niver done worse, we might 
 be right enough yit." 
 
 A sentiment which, under the circumstances, 
 leads us to infer that the fable rather than its 
 moral was the Widdy Quinn's forte. 
 
A PROVIDENT PERSON 
 
 MAC BARRY said that he wished he had a steam- 
 yacht, a hunter, a rifle, and a pound ; if he had 
 those, he wouldn't want anything else. A 
 pound was the largest sum that the financial 
 experiences of nearly six years enabled him to 
 imagine himself as owning, and he considered 
 that it would be quite adequate to the mainten- 
 ance of the rifle, the hunter, and the steam- 
 yacht. His cousin Ethel, who was two years 
 older, and inclined to be consequential, said 
 that some people had more than a pound ; she 
 believed her papa had a hundred a year, and she 
 hoped she would too, when she was grown up. 
 Whereupon her sister Frances, Mac's con- 
 temporary, solemnly said : " But when we're 
 growed up, perhaps we'll all be old beggar-men 
 and beggar-women." A tramp, lately seen 
 passing the window, had no doubt suggested 
 the mention of this possibility, which was to 
 
 Mac a new and startling idea. 
 
 13* 
 
Provident Person 133 
 
 Ethel said confidently : " What nonsense ; 
 it's only poor people who are beggars, not 
 people like us." But Frances replied, " Maybe 
 they were like us when they were little ; and 
 then they growed and growed and growed into 
 old beggars. I wonder if we will. It won't 
 be very nice." Frances's grey eyes were so 
 large and cloudily dark that they would have 
 looked melancholy, even if she had been taking 
 a cheerful view of things, which she seldom did. 
 " I hope I won't be the sort that is lame, and 
 has big bags," she said ; " they're the nastiest 
 of all." 
 
 These speculations were taking place towards 
 the end of luncheon at Rathbawn Castle, where 
 Mac Barry and his cousins, and their respective 
 parents, were spending part of the summer on a 
 visit to his grandfather, Lord Ballyduff. The 
 subject was changed at this point by Frances's 
 mother asking Mac whether he would like to 
 drive with her that afternoon, when she went 
 to see Mrs Fletcher at Manor Vaughan. He 
 said, " The knees of me knickerbockers is too 
 dirty to go anywhere in the carriage, thank 
 God ! " 
 
 " My dear Mac," said his Aunt Marjory, 
 " you really should not use such expressions." 
 
134 A Provident Person 
 
 l'' said Mac, " I'm sure I'm a great deal 
 thankfuller for being too dirty to go visiting 
 people, than for having me dinner luncheon, I 
 mean. I went with Lil sometimes, and they 
 squawked like hens, and gave one bad little 
 biscuits with caraway seeds in them, at tea. 
 I didn't want anything, but they can't ever 
 let a person alone, and I'd rather stay at home, 
 thanks." 
 
 So Mac, having successfully resisted this 
 distasteful entertainment, it was settled that 
 the little girls should go, and he resumed his 
 meditations upon the future and its possibilities. 
 The particular one spoken of by Frances had 
 taken rather a hold on his mind, being both 
 novel and unpleasant. He had never formed 
 any theory about the origin of old beggar men, 
 and he now could think of no facts that struck 
 him as satisfactorily inconsistent with their 
 evolution out of a person like himself. Ethel's 
 argument did not reassure him in the least, 
 because he thought very poorly of her sense. 
 Just at that moment she was teasing her mother 
 to let her put on a new frock, which seemed to 
 him exceedingly despicable folly. But he was 
 not disposed to agree with Frances in accepting 
 the possibility as an inevitable fate ; he would 
 
Provident Person 
 
 135 
 
 rather look upon it as a peril to be guarded 
 against. And for this reason he thought he 
 would, in the first place, consult any people 
 upon whose judgment he at all relied, as to 
 whether they believed it to be really impending. 
 The number of these persons was small, the 
 more so because his father and mother had 
 both gone away for a few days ; however, 
 he presently found his Uncle Herbert writing 
 in the library, and jogged his elbow as a pre- 
 liminary to a conversation. This caused a blot 
 on Colonel Barry's letter, and perhaps on the 
 record of his language for the day, but Mac 
 said with a sort of bland surprise, "By Jove, 
 that's a big black one. But you must have had 
 a great deal too much ink in your pen, you 
 know. You needn't prod it down to the 
 bottom of the bottle every time, as if you were 
 fishing with it." 
 
 "Well, what do you want?" inquired the 
 ungrateful recipient of this good advice. 
 
 "Look here," said Mac, "would you think 
 that a person like me would be an old beggar- 
 man when he growed quite up ? " 
 
 Colonel Barry had just been looking over a 
 highly unsatisfactory account, and what with 
 that and the blot, felt pessimistic about things 
 
136 A Provident Person 
 
 in general. " Upon my word," he said, " as 
 far as I can see, it's beginning to look as if we 
 were all uncommonly likely to come to that 
 one of these fine days. But run off, young 
 man, for I'm busy." 
 
 " I should have thought," said Mac, moving 
 towards the door, elaborately at his leisure, 
 " that you were too old to grow into anything 
 else ever. And I am going out, as it happens, 
 to speak to young O'Sullivan." 
 
 Mac found young O'Sullivan, who was rather 
 a crony of his, raking gravel not far from the 
 house. It did not accord with his sense of 
 the fitness of things to consult this friend 
 point-blank about his own future prospects, 
 and he therefore said, after a while, with a 
 view to leading up : " Do you think, Dan, that 
 you'll ever grow into an old beggar ? I s'pose 
 you'd rather not a raggety old beggar-man, 
 you know." 
 
 But young O'Sullivan replied curtly : " 'Deed 
 then, sir, I never heard tell of any of me name 
 but was very dacint, respectable people. I dunno 
 what talk you have about beggars." And col- 
 lecting his rake, hoe, and brush into a bunch, he 
 dumped them down across his wheelbarrow, 
 and trundled it huffily into a shrubbery walk. 
 
Provident Person 137 
 
 This source of information being thus prema- 
 turely stopped, Mac had begun to wonder why 
 young O'Sullivan went off in such a hurry, when 
 he saw coming along the avenue the same old 
 man who had passed by the window at luncheon, 
 and who since then had been visiting the regions 
 of the kitchen. He seemed to be a very typical 
 beggar-man, with a mysterious-looking leathern 
 wallet, a long beard, and garments that flapped 
 in large square tatters ; and it struck Mac that 
 here was a favourable opportunity for obtaining 
 knowledge from the fountain-head. Conse- 
 quently he said in reply to the new-comer's 
 salutation : "I can't assist anybody, because 
 I've left all my money upstairs in a drawer 
 that locks. What used you to do before 
 you began to walk about ? " This appeared 
 to him the most delicate way of describing 
 the other's profession. " Hadn't you ever any 
 money of your own ? Or had you as much 
 as a florin and a sixpence, and a silver mug 
 belonging to you any time, only then you 
 growed up different ? " 
 
 Old Joe Gafney had never been endowed 
 with great conversational gifts, and was not 
 now capable of much beyond his professional 
 litanies, but Mac's question chanced to touch 
 
138 A Provident Person 
 
 a theme upon which he still always waxed 
 eloquent, and he said : " Is it money ? Och, 
 begor, sir, it's the grand little bagful I had 
 saved up, that I kep' unbeknownst under the 
 hearthstone at home, till one day me rogue 
 of a wife she ups and robs me of it, and 
 I away at Dunardmore Fair. On'y for her 
 doin' that on me, the divil a fut 'ud I ever 
 ha' took to thrampin' the road. Plenty I had 
 saved. Ah now, sir, wasn't she the quare 
 thief of the world to go rob me that way ? " 
 
 The appeal somewhat embarrassed Mac, to 
 whom it seemed unmannerly either to con- 
 trovert or endorse this opinion of Mrs Old- 
 Beggarman. As for the bag, it had never 
 indeed existed save in Joe's imagination ; but 
 he believed quite as firmly in it as in the 
 hot sun shining on his bewildered old head, 
 and he maundered on volubly, until at last 
 he abruptly broke off, and began to shuffle 
 along with a whining request that a poor 
 man might be relieved for the love of God. 
 
 " Oh, it's the grand-governor," said Mac, 
 rather glad to see his grandfather approaching. 
 Lord Ballyduff relieved all the parties con- 
 cerned by means of a penny, and Mac joined 
 him on his stroll. The prospect of growing 
 
Provident Person 139 
 
 into an old beggar-man had somehow become 
 gloomier in Mac's eyes during this interview, 
 and now looked so ugly that he did not like 
 to speak of it to anybody. He was meditating 
 deeply upon plans of precaution a hoard of 
 savings might, apparently, be efficacious, if 
 inaccessible to one's wife and when Lord Bally- 
 duff said : " What were you talking to that 
 old fellow about ? " he waved the question away 
 with a preoccupied, " Oh, business business, 
 that you couldn't possibubly understand." 
 
 His grandfather was accustomed to such 
 rebuffs, and they continued their walk without 
 any more interruptions. They were going to 
 the haggard, where a new rick was being built 
 up in fragrant bundles under its shiny zinc 
 hood. Outside the broad-leaved doors Lord 
 Ballyduff threw away the end of his cigar, 
 and carefully stamped out the red spark with 
 his heel. " It wouldn't do to have a flare-up in 
 there," he said. 
 
 " What would you do if you burnt it all up ? " 
 said Mac. 
 
 "Well, for one thing," said Lord Ballyduff, 
 " the Insurance Company would have to pay me 
 five hundred pounds." 
 
 "For burning up all that hay?" said Mac 
 
140 A Provident Person 
 
 with interest. " Then why on earth don't you ? 
 Would they pay all the same if it was me burnt 
 it up ? Yes, did you say ? When you speak 
 so indistinctually, you make a person quite 
 deaf." It seemed to Mac that here was a very 
 easy and enjoyable mode of securing a provision 
 against an indigent old age, and the idea charmed 
 him so much that his blue eyes gleamed in his 
 small sun-browned face. " How many is five 
 hundred ? " he said. 
 
 " Oh more than you'd know what to do 
 with, at anyrate," said his grandfather. 
 
 "Wouldn't I just?" said Mac. "Well 
 enough I'd know. I'd keep it in the same place 
 with me cartridges. I should think one's wife 
 would be afraid to go meddling with it then. 
 When ladies and girls see a person looking at 
 a gun or anything, they all say : ' Oh yawpy, 
 yaivpy dotit touch it ifs very dangerous ' great 
 idiots. But I declare there's Mrs Knox at the 
 gate. If she's going to John Loughlin's, I'm 
 going with her to see the new calf," and he ran 
 off with his mind for the time being diverted 
 from provident cares. 
 
 Mrs Knox, housekeeper at the Castle, was 
 a sister of John Loughlin, who held a goodish 
 little bit of land over towards Alanmore, and 
 
Provident Person 141 
 
 had long been wondered at by neighbouring 
 farmers for his persistence in keeping it under 
 meadow year after year, till some of the fields, 
 they said, were got that thick with moss, you 
 might think he was after laying it down like 
 a carpet at so much a yard. He had a right 
 to plough them all up, and not have e'er a 
 haycock sitting in a one of them for the next 
 half dozen years. But John Loughlin continued 
 to disregard their advice, and with the excep- 
 tion of a field or so of oats which he was 
 suspected of growing only for the sake of 
 the thatching straw had every rood of his 
 holding waving with the long grass as sure 
 as June came round. His haggard was a sight 
 to be seen. It contained the accumulations 
 of many a season, for grudgingly and of 
 necessity did he consume or sell any part of 
 his garnered crop. In the sheltered corner, 
 against a screen of tall elms, rose up the long- 
 ridged ricks " with wedge sublime," flanked 
 by sharp-peaked pikes like gigantic peg-tops, 
 all in capes of golden straw surmounting their 
 soft umbers and greys. One small rick of 
 very old clover hay which had been cut in 
 smooth slices, looked as close and dark in 
 grain as a brown loaf. To pace up and down 
 
142 A Provident Person 
 
 at the end of the paddock, whence he had 
 a good view of their array, was his favourite 
 recreation, and he indulged in it for some 
 time on that brilliant July afternoon, while 
 his sister and Mac were making their way 
 towards him over the sunny fields. The view 
 was even more than usually interesting to him 
 just then, because the joy of building a new 
 rick would so soon begin. All his meadows 
 were down, and some of them up again in 
 large cock, ready to be drawn in: the others 
 were turning themselves into hay under the 
 hot sunshine, with the least possible demand 
 for labour. There would be, he calculated, 
 barely room for one more big rick at the 
 north-west angle of the walls. That would 
 fill the haggard chock-full, not another ton 
 would it hold. However, when Grace married 
 Ned Lawlor and the wedding might take 
 place before next Shrove-tide two ricks must 
 go for her dowry, which would, alas, make 
 some room. It said a very great deal for the 
 sincerity of John's feelings towards his grand- 
 daughter that he could endure to anticipate 
 such a woeful gap. He had for a long while 
 past been reconciling himself to the prospect, 
 and commonly wound up his self-conflict with 
 
Provident Person 143 
 
 the reflection : "Ah well, sure it's the best 
 thing I can do for the crathur, and that's 
 one good comfort anyway. She'll be as 
 plased and content as anything at all events." 
 
 Therefore the contrariness of things, and 
 the differences in people's points of view, are 
 clearly exemplified by the fact that all the 
 while Grace was looking askance upon his 
 beloved haggard, and could not bear the 
 thoughts of Edward Lawlor. This Grace 
 was the eldest child of his favourite daughter, 
 who had been afflicted by matrimony with a 
 struggling husband and a long family. To 
 diminish those burdens he had some years 
 before adopted Grace, and taken her to live 
 at the farm, on the understanding that in due 
 time her marriage portion should be provided. 
 She found favour in his eyes, and it became 
 rumoured in the parish that the portion would 
 be, at least, " a very tidy little bit of money." 
 So much so that Robert Lawlor, who was a 
 warm man, when in quest of a suitable alliance 
 for his son Ned, thought it worth while to 
 consult John Loughlin on the subject. The 
 result of the negotiations had been satisfactory, 
 though not decisive. There was no need 
 for hurry, as the little farm old Robert had 
 
144 A Provident Person 
 
 in his eye for Ned would not fall vacant yet 
 a while, and the fortune of another not 
 impossible daughter-in-law required cautious 
 and deliberate investigation ere a final choice 
 could be made. Neither was John unwilling, 
 for his part, to indefinitely postpone the 
 removal of his granddaughter and his two 
 stately ricks. But that the affair was being 
 talked of everybody knew, Grace herself 
 among the rest, and she had unhappily taken 
 a strong dislike to Ned Lawlor from the first 
 moment that she beheld him sitting with the 
 sun shining through his red whiskers in his 
 pew near the pulpit at ten o'clock Mass. She 
 now said to herself that she would never 
 marry him, whatever anybody might do or 
 say. Yet she was so used to seeing matches 
 made up as a matter of course that she felt 
 almost as if she were resolving vainly against 
 a sort of fate which would overtake her 
 whatever she might say or do. The project 
 had not reached a stage at which her grand- 
 father would mention it to her; and being 
 a shy and silent girl, she had never expressed 
 any sentiment that could give him a clue to 
 the state of her mind. He never guessed at 
 the steady growth of her abhorrence for Ned 
 

 Provident Person 145 
 
 Lawlor and everything connected with him, 
 even the touch of his hand on the gate-latch, 
 which she was wont to rub up with an old 
 duster after he had gone through. But she 
 knew right well that no such proposal would 
 ever have troubled her had it not been for 
 her bit of fortune, and she was also quite 
 aware that this lay stored up among the tall 
 ricks, and nowhere else. Often enough she 
 had heard it said that every penny her grand- 
 father was worth was in his hay. Consequently 
 it was natural that she should look upon the 
 haggard as a grievance and a bane. " Bad 
 luck to them," she would say, "I wish the 
 whole of them was burnt to dust and ashes 
 out of that." (Grace may be excused, since 
 there are few of us who have not at some 
 time or other been ready to follow the example 
 of the swineherd Ho-ti and his lubberly son.) 
 And on days when she had happened to fall 
 in with Ned Lawlor, it must be owned that 
 she frequently added : " and himself in the 
 middle of them." 
 
 This did occur on the morning of the day in 
 question, when he stepped over to see about 
 the loan of a hay-shaker, and had rather a long 
 interview with her, at which he considered 
 K 
 
146 A Provident Person 
 
 himself to have behaved with an agreeable 
 mingling of gallantry and facetiousness. He 
 would have been much surprised, poor man, 
 to learn that fright and detestation were the 
 sentiments which he had inspired ; but so it 
 was. In fact, Grace's spirits did not soon 
 recover from the dejection caused by his jokes, 
 and when the shadows were beginning to 
 lengthen she was glad to see the portly figure 
 of her good-natured great-aunt Lizzie coming 
 along under the hedge of Killenbeg's Corner. 
 A little company might help her to shake off 
 the odious recollection. 
 
 Mrs Knox and Mac had had a somewhat 
 perplexing walk. Hitherto, Mac's experience 
 of nature had been gathered exclusively at the 
 sea-side. He had not yet quite unlearned the 
 instinct to seek in the gravel for shells, and 
 he still felt disappointed at its unproductive- 
 ness of any desirable varieties. Lanes and 
 yards and fields abounded for him in extra- 
 ordinary objects, concerning which his curiosity 
 was only restrained by his constant wish to 
 pose as one of those who know. But to-day 
 his ignorance was complicated by a theory 
 which he had based upon his grandfather's 
 remark about the fire insurance. He had 
 
A Provident Person 147 
 
 understood the grand-governor a mode of 
 address adapted from his father's to announce 
 a reward of great magnitude offered for the 
 destruction of hay in large quantities ; whence 
 he inferred that hay was esteemed a worthless 
 substance, to be got rid of summarily like 
 weeds and other rubbish. Now therefore, as 
 they took their way through the scented 
 meadows among the silvery-green swathes 
 and encampments of peaked cocks, he puzzled 
 Mrs Knox by suggestions which seemed to 
 argue rash and destructive propensities in 
 Master Mac, whom she had heretofore re- 
 garded as an unusually reasonable and peace- 
 able child. "Why, it 'ud be a sinful pity 
 to go do such a thing, Master Mac," she 
 replied to a plan which he had propounded 
 for clearing a newly-mown field by sweeping 
 it all into the big horsepond at one end, " It 
 'ud be no good for man or baste, after soakin' 
 that way in the water. But maybe the child's 
 thinkin' of flax, that has to be steeped, sure 
 enough. Is that it, honey ? Ah, dear now, 
 it's the quare botch you'd make of your hay 
 crop if you gave it the same thratement as 
 flax 'Deed and I remember the stink of it, 
 when they would be steepin' it in the bog- 
 
148 A Provident Person 
 
 holes up at me poor father's place. But hay's 
 another pair of shoes. I must tell John the 
 notion you had. But sure it's the fine little 
 farmer you'll be one of these days," 
 
 " It's very vulgar to daffaw at everything 
 a person says," Mac observed with dignity, 
 for Mrs Knox's remarks had been threaded 
 on a creaking laugh. Among farming people, 
 even a small lay blunder supplies matter for 
 infinite jest. " I daresay it is better to burn 
 it up," he said. They were just then passing 
 a gap in the hedge, on the other side of which 
 lay a newly-weeded turnip-field, and close by, 
 a withered heap was crackling and sending up 
 a blue-writhing column, through which the 
 flames could hardly make a wraith-like glimmer 
 against the strong sunshine. The white flakes 
 of the ashes came fluttering across and sprinkled 
 him, as two blissful small boys stirred up the 
 fire with sticks. Mac would have liked to 
 stand and look on, but Mrs Knox said : " Ah, 
 come along out of the blindin' smoke, Master 
 Mac dear, or we won't have time to get Gracie 
 to wet us a cup of tay." 
 
 When they reached the farm, Mrs Knox 
 was glad to sit down and wait for that refresh- 
 ment in the cooler parlour, while Mac pre- 
 
Provident Person 149 
 
 ferred to accompany Nellie Reilly, the plough- 
 man's daughter, on her mission styeward with 
 the pig's bucket. He did not, however, con- 
 sider himself under her surveillance, and she 
 being intent upon collecting eggs, and gossiping 
 over the yard-wall with some friends returned 
 from the hay-fields, made no attempt to ex- 
 ercise any. So he presently strayed down to 
 the far end of the farm-yard, where he made 
 a most important discovery. Sitting on the 
 top of the broken door-post belonging to a 
 ruined shed, he found a little green and yellow 
 match-box. It had a portrait of Parnell on 
 one side, and a political cartoon on the other, 
 and it contained a single slender pink-headed 
 match. Mac had so often been warned against 
 meddling with matches, that to strike one 
 seemed an exquisite pleasure. But just now 
 his mind was occupied with more serious 
 matters than mere present enjoyment. Close 
 by was the open door of the haggard, and it 
 immediately occurred to him that this gave him 
 a grand opportunity for securing the splendid 
 sum which his imperfect knowledge of the 
 insurance system led him to look upon as the 
 meed of the incendiary. Here was quite as 
 much hay as up at the Castle, and here were 
 
150 A Provident Person 
 
 the means of setting it all in a magnificent 
 blaze ; and with five hundred pounds warily 
 stowed away, safe from a Mrs Mac of pre- 
 datory habits, he felt that the fear of the old 
 beggar-man's fate need no longer trouble him. 
 "For," he reasoned, "if a person had even 
 as much as one pound, one wouldn't go about 
 after people saying : < Och, your Honour's 
 glory, give a poor man a copper, and the 
 blessin' of God be wid you.' " And thereupon, 
 with his precious box in hand, he proceeded 
 to the haggard. 
 
 Some loose bundles of hay scattered near 
 where one of the largest ricks stood on its 
 low platform of stones and logs, seemed to 
 him a suitable starting-point for the conflagra- 
 tion. The striking of the match took place 
 successfully, and the delightful fizz and splutter 
 and sulphureous odour left nothing to be de- 
 sired. But to the eye the result was decidedly 
 disappointing. Even under the shadow of the 
 big rick, the air was so full of light that the 
 little artificial flame could make only a faint 
 bluish quivering in it, hardly visible, and Mac 
 at first thought with dismay, " It's gone and 
 went out." When it touched the hay, how- 
 ever, matters improved. Small golden stars 
 
Provident Person 151 
 
 began to kindle, and run twinkling along the 
 fibres, and now and then a tiny red tongue 
 flickered perceptibly through a puff of white 
 smoke like a tuft of thistle-down. John 
 Loughlin, sauntering in the paddock not many 
 hundred yards distant, might well have been 
 smitten with a foreboding of ill, but he con- 
 tinued to gaze complacently upon his treasury, 
 recking naught of the destroyer, who at that 
 moment was squatting in the midst of it, clad 
 in a brown holland suit and a broad-brimmed 
 straw hat several sizes too large. 
 
 And after all, Mac's triumph was but brief. 
 For a while the fiery golden stars increased and 
 multiplied, and hurried hither and thither like a 
 raid of luminous ants. But soon they began to 
 dwindle and diminish, vanishing with a blink as 
 bubbles do, until at length their bright array 
 had been reduced to a solitary spark, the pro- 
 gress of which he watched with the deepest 
 concern. It ducked and dived in and out of 
 sight among the soft grey-green tangle, alarming 
 him by prolonged disappearances, and then gleam- 
 ing forth again, after he had almost given it up 
 for lost. But finally it sped and hid itself in the 
 heart of a more intricate wisp, and thence he 
 was never to see it re-emerge, though he 
 
152 A Provident Person 
 
 watched for it long and earnestly, as a cat 
 watches the hole's mouth in at which an ex- 
 peditious mouse has slid. At last he had 
 sorrowfully to abandon the hope that it would 
 ever come gliding and glimmering back. His 
 grand design had failed, and for the moment he 
 perhaps regretted the glorious blaze that had 
 been frustrated more than the accession of 
 wealth which should have therefrom accrued. 
 As he trotted back into the yard he resolved to 
 say nothing about the matches. Mac's experi- 
 ence of life had not been very great, yet it 
 sufficed to teach him that success justifies the 
 means, and throws a handsome cloak over sins 
 which would have worn a far less reputable 
 habit if things had turned out otherwise. If he 
 had burned John Loughlin's ricks down to the 
 ground, he would have proudly owned the deed, 
 and would have expected to receive not only his 
 five hundred pounds, but also many praises 
 unqualified by any moral reflections upon the 
 impropriety of meddling with matches. Whence 
 it appears that, although his premises were not 
 altogether founded upon fact, he reasoned from 
 them correctly enough. As it was, he could 
 only rejoin Nellie rather crestfallen, and soon 
 afterwards he set out for home. His little 
 
Provident Person 153 
 
 cousins had returned before him ; Ethel out of 
 humour at her relapse into private life and an 
 old frock, and Frances preoccupied with her 
 own affairs, so the evening closed dully. 
 
 Yet all the while, had he but been aware, the 
 fire-seed he had sown was thriving to his heart's 
 desire. At first, indeed, a dampness in the 
 lock of hay had most gravely menaced it with 
 extinction, but it survived this peril and kept its 
 hold on existence with gradually strengthening 
 grip, until about sunset a waft of breeze came 
 ruffling lightly over the littered floor of the hag- 
 gard, and at a critical moment fanned the spark 
 into a delicate flame. As the dusk fell this 
 grew from the dimness of a wild violet's petal 
 to the vividness of a scarlet poppy of a great 
 glowing cactus-cup and then flared into a many- 
 leaved brilliance such as never yet endowed any 
 blossom sprung from the black earth. 
 
 John Loughlin had slept only a short while 
 when he awoke to the consciousness of a fierce 
 red light streaming into his little bedroom, and 
 fluttering against its white wall like the reflection 
 of a flaming wing. His window looked over 
 the yard to the haggard, but he hardly needed 
 the sight to assure him, he knew so well what 
 must have happened. The nightmare of many 
 
154 A Provident Person 
 
 a sleep had come true. Those awful pinions 
 were indeed flapping and soaring around his 
 ricks, with pale smoke rolling and rushing 
 between, against the massed shadow of the 
 trees and the smooth-vaulted dark of the moon- 
 less sky. From the first moment when the 
 glare met his dazed eyes he felt that his fate 
 was sealed, and the knot of onlookers who 
 gathered about the doomed stacks were unani- 
 mously of the opinion that " wid the hould the 
 fire had took on them, and the quare dryness of 
 everything you'd as much chance of puttin' them 
 out as of puttin' out the stars in the sky." 
 There was some running about with bucketfuls 
 from the failing pump, and some futile splashing 
 of water, but everybody recognised the bootless- 
 ness of the attempt, and soon desisted from it. 
 
 The spacious night all around him was very 
 dark and still as John Loughlin stood watching 
 his ricks burn away. A belated corncrake far 
 off across the fields creaked faintly, as if the 
 wheels of time needed oiling, and a star looked 
 down a long way, here and there ; else the fire 
 alone made sound and light. It roared and 
 crackled as it leaped and soared, scaling the 
 carefully heaped-up hay mounds ; sometimes it 
 dragged down from their sides, as if with a 
 

 Provident Person 155 
 
 giant hand, great masses that came slipping and 
 flaring to the ground, and sometimes it plucked 
 off flaming plumes and bore them up into the 
 air. Some of these were caught on the overhang- 
 ing boughs of the elms, where they hung like 
 strange fruit, which shrivelled and blackened the 
 fresh green leaves. The scattered litter of hay 
 and straw underfoot burst every now and then 
 into a blaze, so that the whole haggard seemed 
 to be paved with a fiery sheet, presently 
 smothered beneath a heavy rug of woolly smoke 
 beaten back by some caprice of the breeze. 
 All spectators had to keep on the dark side of 
 the low surrounding wall; not even a dog 
 ventured in, though rats could be heard flopping 
 desperately off the rick-stands, and rustling as 
 they fled. But shrill yelps at a prudent distance 
 showed that the fugitives were not escaping 
 unmolested, and green, blinking eyes peered out 
 of ambushes whence many a productive pounce 
 was made. 
 
 So hungrily swift was this fire, and found fare 
 so much to its mind in the drought-parched 
 stacks, that it had well-nigh made an end of 
 consuming them before the prompt midsummer 
 dawn came back, cold and grey as a lingering 
 remnant of the sunset. It showed sundry shape- 
 
156 A Provident Person 
 
 less black heaps, which lay with white smoke 
 straining up through them, and shook into 
 spangles of crumbling gold if they were stirred. 
 John Loughlin's ricks, in short, had resolved 
 themselves into materials over which he could 
 no longer exercise any owner's rights, and he 
 was a ruined man. Not a penny of them was 
 insured. He had obstinately refused to take 
 this precaution, not because he grudged the 
 expense, but from a superstitious prejudice 
 against acting on the hypothesis of so intolerable 
 a calamity. If his death had seemed as odious 
 to him, he would never have made the will 
 which was locked up in a drawer with his lease, 
 and a few things that had belonged to his wife. 
 But now that the dreadful event was an actually 
 accomplished fact, he seemed to contemplate it 
 with rather surprising equanimity. He made no 
 comment when Tim Mahony, close beside him, 
 said to Andy Farrell : " Bejabers, it's plenty of 
 room we'll have there, and we drawin' in 
 to-morra," and Andy replied : " To-morra ? 
 Faix then we'd be the fine fools to go about 
 that job to-morra, or next day, and the place as 
 thick wid red sparks lyin' as a hayloft wid seeds 
 wouldn't we, sir ? " Only as he turned back 
 through the cold dimness to his house a meagre 
 
Provident Person 157 
 
 little white-washed box, originally a barn, and 
 hardly so big as his most sizeable rick had been 
 a cock hard by uttered a drowsy crow, where- 
 upon he looked round at the men who were 
 following him and said : " Some of yous wring 
 th' ould screech-owl's neck." And they muttered 
 among themselves : "Och, the poor man to be 
 sure he would be greatly knocked about." 
 
 It seemed, indeed, as if his granddaughter 
 Grace were more crushed by the misfortune 
 than he. After they had finished their dreary 
 breakfast, she retreated into a dark corner of the 
 kitchen, where she sat such a picture of despon- 
 dency, that the old man, watching her, began 
 vaguely to wish he could offer her any consola- 
 tion. He recalled her long visit yesterday from 
 Ned Lawlor, and it suggested to him how pro- 
 bably she was fretting over the lost prospect 
 of that alliance. This notion somehow touched 
 his pride, and set a spring of energy stirring 
 through the dull lethargy in his mind. To him- 
 self he said : " Sure I might be conthrivin' as 
 good a match for her one of these days yet ; " 
 and to Grace he observed encouragingly: 
 "Well, it's a grand warm mornin' anyway." 
 Grace only murmured something dolorously, 
 and in a while he got up and went out of 
 
158 A Provident Person 
 
 doors. As he did so the first object he 
 noticed was Daddy Yellowman set on a window- 
 ledge in the sun. Daddy Yellowman was a very 
 large canary-coloured delft jug, which had lived 
 for a long time on the Loughlin's dresser, and 
 had become quite an institution at hay making, 
 when carried afield with the froth of porter at 
 its lips. John Loughlin now took it up, and 
 filled it, for conveyance to Long Leg, where he 
 knew there were people working. By the act 
 he seemed to turn and face the possibility of 
 going on. 
 
 Not long afterwards, Grace, who for her part 
 had recognised the necessity of putting on the 
 potatoes for dinner, was startled as she made 
 up the languishing summer fire by the entrance 
 of Nellie Reilly, wearing an expression of very 
 contagious alarm. She had run at full speed 
 through two or three fields, and was much out 
 of breath as she clutched Grace's arm and said, 
 between frequent pants : " I'm just after meetin' 
 himself the poor master up in Killenbeg 
 Corner widin a stone's throw of the pond. 
 It's there he was goin' as sure as anythin' 
 och saints and about dhrowndin' himself he 
 might be as like as not, that's what I'm thinkin 
 for the lads was sayin' he's clane ruinated 
 
A Provident Person 159 
 
 entirely and indeed he was lookin' as black 
 and as bitter as sut, and I passin' him by, the 
 poor man, he was so. But mercy on us all, 
 there's ten fut of wather standin' in the deep 
 pool up under th' ould thorn-bushes and the 
 botthom all a mask of thick mud if a body got 
 in there you'd never see sight nor light of him 
 agin." 
 
 The two girls stared dumbly at one another 
 for a few moments, with a sort of horror 
 reflecting itself to and fro between their faces, 
 and growing on its way. Then Grace rushed 
 out of the house, retaining the fire-shovel 
 unawares, and Nellie followed at her heels. 
 They raced on over the pale-green of the 
 lately shorn meadows, catching their feet in 
 scattered wisps of hay, and stooping their heads 
 against the dazzle of the sunbeams. And as, 
 cresting the slope in Kilbeggan corner, they 
 came close upon the pond, the first thing they 
 beheld was Daddy Yellowman shining very 
 brightly set beside the edge. At sight of it 
 Nellie gave a scream. " The Lord be good 
 to us all," she said, " carryin' it he was ; he's 
 after throwin' himself in." But Grace flung 
 herself down on the bank under the hedge, 
 with her apron over her face and her fingers 
 
160 A Provident Person 
 
 in her ears, and rocked herself as if she would 
 lull her remaining senses to sleep. Where- 
 upon Nellie broke into a wailful lament. 
 She had an unsuspected listener, whose 
 emergence from behind a curve of the hedge 
 struck her overawedly mute ; and Grace heard 
 a voice enquiring: "What's the matter with 
 her?" It was no less than Lord Ballyduff, 
 who had come across the fields upon the 
 report of the disaster befallen his old 
 acquaintance and tenant John Loughlin. 
 Grace recognised the voice, but through too 
 stormy a cloud of trouble to leave her any 
 constraining respect for persons, not even for 
 Quality in the shape of a lordship and a 
 landlord. So she continued to rock and 
 bemoan herself. " What'll I do at all at all ? 
 Och me heart's broke. Sure it's meself's the 
 wickedest crathur this day in the width of 
 Ireland that's as good as took and burnt up 
 me poor grandfather's haggard on him, forby 
 dhrownin' of him in the black pool. But 
 sure if I'd ha' thought he'd go for to do that, 
 I wouldn't ever ha' let the big rick get on fire, 
 'deed and I wouldn't, not if there was forty 
 Ned Lawlors botherin' one in it. Dhrownded 
 dead he is be this time, and it all along of 
 
A Provident Person 161 
 
 me burnin' his ricks, that dhruv him dis- 
 tracted." 
 
 But the voice that replied : " Musha good 
 gracious, what talk have you, girl alive, 
 about burnin' and dhrowndin' ? " made her un- 
 cover her face, to confront a refutation of 
 her despair. For her grandfather, safe and 
 sound, stood beside Lord Ballyduff, with 
 whom, indeed, he had merely been conversing 
 just round the corner. He was eyeing Grace 
 with some disapproval. It seemed to him 
 all of a piece a small piece of course with 
 his other misfortune that his granddaughter 
 should be discovered by his lordship sitting 
 keening under a hedge, bare-headed, holding 
 an irrelevant sooty shovel in her lap, and 
 accusing herself vehemently of disastrous 
 crime. "What ails you, then, to be sittin' 
 there makin' a show of yourself wid our ould 
 shovel ? " he said to her in a mortified under- 
 tone, " Faix, one might ha' thought you'd 
 had enough of fires at home to contint you." 
 An appeal to regard for appearances was, 
 however, thrown away upon Grace, whom 
 more tragical thoughts were engrossing wholly. 
 " Glory be to goodness if you're not 
 dhrownded," she said, " but sure it's no thanks 
 
 L 
 
1 62 A Provident Person 
 
 to me, after lettin' the whole place burn to 
 black cinders. For there it was, when I run 
 down to the haggard late last night after 
 the supper, to see had e'er a one of the hins 
 been layin' in it somethin' I noticed shinin' 
 alongside the big rick, and sure enough, the 
 bit of ground was creepin' all over wid sparks 
 and wee flames of fire, like as if somebody'd 
 dropped a lightin' match among the hay. 
 And first of all I was goin' to let a yell for 
 the lads to come and put it out; but then 
 I thought to meself 'twas a good chance to be 
 gettin' shut of him, if I just let it alone. So 
 I slunk in wid me, and never a word I said 
 about it." 
 
 " And what the mischief at all made you go 
 do that ? " said her grandfather, feeling himself 
 threatened with the disclosure of fresh afflictions. 
 
 "It was it was Ned Lawlor," said Grace, 
 beginning to stammer a little over her explana- 
 tion. " You see I knew his father and you 
 had talk of him and me. And in course 
 it was on'y the bit of money they was after, 
 you would be givin' wid me and every 
 penny of that in the ricks and I can't abide 
 the thoughts of Ned Lawlor I hate the name 
 of him," 
 
A Provident Person 163 
 
 " Then the divil's in it that you couldn't 
 ha' said so," her grandfather said bitterly. 
 " Sure if you'd tould me, never a word more 
 talk would there ha' been about the matter. 
 Sorra the match 'ill I make up for a girl agin 
 her will, not if the other folk was offerin' 
 to stock the counthry-side for her troth no 
 wouldn't I. There was me poor sister Maggie, 
 her they gave to an ould feller up at Annalone, 
 whether she would or no, and if they did, 
 it's follyin' at her buryin' we were widin a 
 twelvemonth of the weddin'. Sez I to meself 
 that same day, it was neither art nor part 
 I'd have in any such a thing in the len'th 
 of me life, and I hadn't, nor I wouldn't. 
 Your mother plased herself. But bedad now 
 a lass is more conthrary to ha' doins or 
 dalins wid than a dumb baste of the field, 
 for sooner than spake a sensible word to you, 
 she'll take and set house and home flarin' in a 
 blaze about your ears." 
 
 Her grandfather's censure of her silence 
 might not have been unanswerable, but Grace's 
 mood was too remorseful to seek for justifying 
 arguments, and she resumed her lamentations 
 under her apron, saying, " Sure, I tould you I 
 was the wickedest crathur ever walked. Deed, 
 
1 64 A Provident Person 
 
 I wish I was after dhrowndin' meself in th' ould 
 pond there, and a better job it would ha' been." 
 This could not be permitted, and the old man 
 said soothingly, " Ah, whisht, then, whisht ; 
 that's no sort of talkin'. And sure now, maybe 
 there's no such great harm done after all. 
 Maybe it's foolin' meself I was, in a manner, 
 thryin' to fill up me mind wid the thought of 
 th' ould stacks. I'd do righter to be breakin' 
 up the meadows, and gettin' in the crops If I 
 could conthrive it," he added, brought up short 
 by the recollection that his ways and means had 
 largely become dust and ashes. 
 
 " Here's your sister, Loughlin," said Lord 
 Ballyduff, somewhat relieved by the diversion, 
 as Mrs Knox appeared at the neighbouring 
 gate. "And, by Jove, I believe there's that 
 young scamp." For a small figure scudding 
 along by the hedge developed itself into un- 
 mistakably Mac. 
 
 Mrs Knox arrived first. The business which 
 had brought her hurrying through the noontide 
 heat was so important that she did not hesitate 
 to enter upon it even in the presence of his 
 lordship. " Well, to be sure, John," she said 
 to her brother, " you're the unlucky man. 
 Howsome'er, it's unluckier you'd be this minute 
 
A Provident Person 165 
 
 if everybody else was as headstrong as yourself 
 Gracie, child, have you a mind to be ravin' 
 wid a sunstroke, that you've run out wid ne'er 
 a shadow of a shawl over your head ? But as 
 for your hay, John, that's clane destroyed and 
 gone to loss if there was nobody, only you, 
 mindin' it, that wouldn't put it under the 
 insurance for man or mortal, it's right enough 
 all the while, be raison of me payin' it into the 
 Alliance office for you this last five year as 
 regular as the clock. All the papers I have 
 belongin' to it up at the Castle. Four hundred 
 pounds they'll pay you on it, and if that doesn't 
 cover it all, 'twill make a good offer at it 
 any way." 
 
 " Troth and it's youself's the quare one," 
 said John Loughlin. 
 
 "I always said that Mrs Knox was one of the 
 most sensible women I knew, Loughlin," said 
 Lord Bally duff, " I believe the best thing I 
 could do would be to appoint her my man 
 of business. But you should come up to the 
 Castle at once and look at these papers. Mac, 
 you run up against one like a spent cannon-ball." 
 
 " Never mind," said Mac forbearingly, " I 
 suppose you weren't looking." 
 
 " As far as I can judge, your lordship," said 
 
1 66 A Provident Person 
 
 Mrs Knox, highly gratified, " all we have to do 
 is, send word of the fire to the Insurance 
 Company, and they're bound to pay us the 
 money, though whether to me brother or meself 
 I can't precisely say. To him, I should suppose, 
 but anyhow, it's all the one thing, for 'twas on 
 his account I done it." 
 
 " It's a great lie," said Mac. " Look here, 
 grand-governor, she's telling a most awful un- 
 truth." Although manners had indeed kept 
 him from breaking in upon Mrs Knox's speech, 
 excitement and impatience now made the tone 
 of his interruption all the more unconventional. 
 " She didn't burn them a bit, don't believe a 
 word she says," he asseverated, " It was me lit 
 them with a match, and I thought it had went 
 out on me, but it mustn't have, after all. So 
 it's me that they're to pay the four hundred 
 pounds to, and not to anybody else. Why 
 couldn't you stop and wait for a person ? I've 
 been running after you all the way to tell you 
 that you'll have to write for the money to those 
 people, because I don't exactually know where 
 they live. But mind you say it wasn't she 
 burnt them at all it was me with a pink- 
 headed match that I found in the yard. Young 
 O'Sullivan told me they were all destroyed." 
 
A Provident Person 167 
 
 " This is a very shocking story of yours, 
 Mac," said his grandfather, looking aghast, 
 " and I hope to goodness that you're only 
 romancing." 
 
 " Why, to be sure it is, your lordship," said 
 Mrs Knox with conviction, "Sure, how at all 
 would the innicent child get to do such a thing, 
 and he never next or nigh the place till yesterday 
 evening, when he came over wid me, and wasn't 
 out of me sight, except only a few minutes that 
 he ran out into the yard along wid Nellie Reilly 
 there, and she'd take good care of him, or else 
 I'd not have trusted " 
 
 " 'Deed then, we were only just through the 
 yard never set fut in the haggard, bad or 
 good ; and where'd he get matches, ma'am ? 
 Sorra a one was there," Nellie protested loudly, 
 recoiling scared by the sudden prospect of being 
 drawn into the meshes of responsibility. "I 
 never took me eyes off him the whole time," 
 she averred. 
 
 " Oh didn't you, my friend" said Mac, with 
 crushing, emphasis, "had you them on me 
 when you were talking to the people with 
 pitchforks in the lane over the wall, that you 
 said you wouldn't listen to gabbin' nonsense 
 out of them ? And I was in the hay-place, 
 
1 68 A Provident Person 
 
 and I did find some matches it was only one 
 match in a little yellow box with pictures on 
 it, that was near the calves' house. But it 
 went off beautifully against the scrapey stuff 
 on the side. And if you don't believe it, you 
 may go and see where it is, for I put the box 
 back there when I was coming in. Only 
 there' nuffin in it now, except itself. Grand- 
 governor, you'll have to write for my four 
 hundred pounds." 
 
 Lord Ballyduff looked perplexed and uneasy, 
 as Mac drummed impatiently on him to em- 
 phasise his injunction ; but everybody else took, 
 or professed to take, Mrs Knox's view of the 
 matter, and she said, ah sure, it couldn't have 
 been that way at all, for if Master Mac had had 
 anything to say to it, it would have been in 
 blazes of fire long and long before. A burn- 
 ing spark wasn't a sort of thing could go 
 crawling about any length of time unbeknownst 
 like a hayspider in a haycock. Their scepticism 
 aggrieved and enraged Mac, as it threatened 
 to filch from him the fruit of his successful 
 enterprise ; but his wrath seemed to avail 
 nothing, and presently his grandfather said 
 that they must be getting home, as it was 
 nearly luncheon-time. The group accordingly 
 
Provident Person 169 
 
 separated, John Loughlin with his sister and 
 the girls returning towards the devastated 
 farmstead, through the meadows, where he 
 imagined, reluctantly enough, the cold gleam 
 of the ploughshare shredding up their old 
 green mantle. Mac and his grandfather went 
 back to their somewhat out-at-elbows looking 
 little ancient Castle, but they proceeded 
 severally and silently, for Mac's resentment 
 led him to stalk on ahead and decline entering 
 into conversation. He was already sitting on 
 the steps at the end of the terrace when Lord 
 Bally duff arrived just as the luncheon bell 
 rang. 
 
 " Come along, Mac," said Lord Ballyduff. 
 
 But Mac replied without stirring : " If I 
 do be an old beggar-man, I can tell you I'll 
 never say ' Long life to your Honour,' and 
 * Heaven be your bed,' no matter hoiv many 
 pennies you give me." 
 
 The contemplation of this prospective re- 
 venge so far soothed his feelings that they 
 permitted him to follow his grandfather into 
 the dining-room. Yet, in the middle of his 
 sago-pudding he remarked to his neighbour, 
 Frances, with little apparent relevance, but 
 much scathing sarcasm : " Some people are so 
 
170 A Provident Person 
 
 wonderful fine and clever that they can't 
 believe anything a person tells them." 
 
 To which Frances, turning upon him wide 
 and melancholy eyes, made answer : " Maybe 
 some day you won't know any better, Mac, 
 yourself." 
 
 And Mac said reflectively, looking towards 
 his grandfather's end of the table : "I suppose 
 they get all the sense used up that they had 
 when they were rather youngish. Do you 
 think your mamma's a hundred, Frances ? A 
 person must make 'lowances for them. But 
 they may burn up their old ricks themselves 
 next time. / intend to get my own living in 
 another way." 
 
A VERY LIGHT RAILWAY 
 
 THE newly-finished railway ran by Mrs Dow- 
 dall's front door with only the breadth of the 
 narrow lane between. This was towards the 
 middle of May, the construction having begun 
 early in April, when the air first grew mild 
 enough to make sitting out on the bank seem 
 pleasant. An unusually long spell of fair weather 
 had favoured the work in its progress, and 
 hastened its completion ; more than a month of 
 innocent-looking daisy-and-speedwell skies had 
 surveyed it, and no flaws of wind and rain had 
 come to damage or delay. I am not sure 
 whether it could be correctly called a Relief 
 Work, but it undoubtedly did take the burden 
 of many a leaden hour off Johnny DowdalFs 
 mind. For, being so lame that the journey 
 from one end of the lane to the other was quite 
 beyond his powers, he rather often found him- 
 self hampered, when casting about for employ- 
 ment, by the meagreness of the resources within 
 his range. All the eight years of his life had 
 
 171 
 
172 A Very Light Railway 
 
 been dominated by the fact that one of his legs 
 was " quare," and tended constantly to become 
 " quarer " still. Indeed, upon the last occasion 
 when he and his mother had sought medical 
 advice, the doctor talked of such desperate 
 remedies that they had abruptly ceased to con- 
 sult him, and for many days after, Johnny's 
 master dread had been a vision of Dr Lawson's 
 trap drawing up at their door. But since their 
 removal out of the village row to the cabin 
 lonesome among bye-lanes, this terror had faded 
 from his thoughts, and did not molest him at 
 his railway works. Over these he presided in 
 every capacity, from chief engineer to delving 
 navvy, and he, therefore, regarded the design 
 and its execution with the fond delight which 
 the artist can feel only for the poor thing that is 
 all his own. 
 
 When finished, it was extremely complete, as 
 far as it went, which, however, was not beyond 
 two or three yards. The top of the grassy 
 roadside bank had been laboriously hollowed 
 out and levelled, and at one point even tunnelled 
 through by means of a superannuated fire-shovel. 
 Round willow twigs, deftly fitted together, 
 made rails laid on broader sticks for sleepers, 
 and other twigs set upright, peeled white, 
 
A Very Light Railway 173 
 
 blackened duly with soot, and connected with 
 cotton threads, were telegraph posts, so realistic 
 that you could almost hear the wind hum in the 
 wires. Orderly piles of stones and cinders and 
 timber flanked the line, where a junction was 
 indicated by a maze of confluent metals traced 
 in labyrinthine sidings. But his crowning 
 achievement was perhaps the tall signal-post, 
 whose arms of different coloured woods could 
 be moved up and down. Johnny had wrestled 
 long with a mechanism of crooked pins before 
 he attained to this delightful result. If he 
 prided himself more upon anything else, it was 
 his rolling stock, which consisted of a truck and 
 a carriage. They were both built of materials 
 derived from the small paper-covered match- 
 boxes, of which you can buy as many as six 
 for one penny in the Dublin streets, or even 
 seven so I am told if you craftily " let on " 
 to walk away from the ragged urchin without 
 coming to terms. In a happy hour Johnny 
 chanced upon an accumulation of these boxes 
 lying empty on the window-ledge, and he found 
 that their garish yellow and green gave very 
 effective touches of colour to his handiwork, 
 especially after he had fashioned one strip into 
 a flag, and had stuck poster-wise on the face of 
 
174 A Very Light Railway 
 
 a smooth stone the full-length portrait of a 
 popular statesman, which adorned the lids. At 
 a little distance it looked just like one of the 
 soap or mustard advertisements which were 
 inseparably associated with his idea of a rail- 
 way. 
 
 This accuracy in details was due to his 
 reminiscences of the time when he lived in 
 the village he called it the town of Bally- 
 hoy, and had been used to spend much of his 
 leisure on the parapet of the bridge, whence 
 he looked down into the little station, with 
 its periodical flurries of arriving and departing 
 and passing trains. A thunderous locomotive 
 charging the arch at full speed, and enveloping 
 him in a cloudy swirl of its wild white mane, 
 was a strong sensation, which he relinquished 
 with regret when they moved out of the village. 
 That flitting had followed the death of Johnny's 
 father, late head porter at Ballyhoy, and memories 
 of the railway were accordingly fraught for Mrs 
 Dowdall with the melancholy of good days done, 
 so that her son's engineering operations rather 
 distressed her when she first noticed them. Her 
 shrinking from the subject yielded, however, to 
 her conviction that " 'twas a good job the crathur 
 had somethin' to be divartin' its mind wid, and 
 
A Very Light Railway 175 
 
 she away in the fields the len'th of the day." 
 So she had fluent praises forthcoming upon 
 demand, and added with sincerity : " Sure now, 
 Johnny avic, it 'ud be a great convanience to us 
 of a Saturday, if it was a somethin' more com- 
 modious size." For now that two long miles 
 intervened between her and Ballyhoy station, 
 her weekly marketing became a serious item in 
 the recurrent fatigues of her life. It was a 
 terrible tag, she would remark disconsolately, as 
 having replaced the deep-eaved lilac sun-bonnet 
 in which she weeded turnips, or gathered 
 stones, or planted cabbages all the week, by the 
 small very old black straw reserved for town 
 wear, she trudged away with her large battered 
 basket. Sometimes when her wants were not 
 of a bnlky sort, her nearest neighbour spared 
 her the tramp by doing her errands along with 
 her own. This neighbour was a tall thin elderly 
 woman, who occupied the cabin just out of sight 
 round the turn. She lived quite alone, and as 
 she had never been married, was spoken of 
 unceremoniously as Maggie Ryan, a title to 
 which the younger people were now beginning 
 to prefix " ould." 
 
 There were no other dwellers in the lane and 
 very few passers by, facts which had been con- 
 
176 A Very Light Railway 
 
 solatory to Johnny ever since he set about laying 
 down his line. For it was of course accessible 
 to the public, and could hardly have been pro- 
 ceeded with in the face of much traffic. A few 
 random footsteps might have devastated it in all 
 its length, and equally fatal would have been 
 the pecketing of poultry and the nibbling of 
 goats. But none of those dangerous creatures 
 menaced the construction, which grew dearer to 
 Johnny with every day's new device. When 
 not actually working at it, he kept on it a 
 jealous eye, though the only practical precaution 
 he could take was to drag a trail of barbed 
 thorny briar across the low end of the bank, in 
 hopes that this would deter any wayfarer from 
 ascending. His most anxious moments were of 
 an evening when Tom and Peter Denny would 
 occasionally return home by that route from 
 their field-work, not always with the steadiest 
 gait. Johnny's grey eyes grew black with 
 trouble in his harassed face as he watched 
 apprehensively for the lurch or stagger that 
 might lay his permanent way in ruins. How- 
 ever, this threat of disaster always passed on 
 unfulfilled. 
 
 But all through these busy weeks an un- 
 recked-of peril was growing up against him. 
 
A Very Light Railway 177 
 
 It might have been tracked to a secluded corner 
 of Maggie Ryan's dark kitchen, where a lily- 
 white hen was sitting on a clutch of brown 
 eggs. She was a very comely fowl, whose 
 fleckless feathers looked as if they had been 
 carved out of a faery marble ; and in due time 
 she emerged triumphant, surrounded by a brood 
 of ten downy fluff-balls, who promised to wear 
 exactly the like snowy plumage in maturer 
 months. For the first few days the newcomers 
 confined their explorations of the wide world 
 which had opened upon them to the immediate 
 precincts of Maggie's little house ; but one fine 
 morning, when the sun was warm on the dewy 
 grass-banks, and grubs abounded, the whole 
 family were tempted to prolong their rambles 
 some way further up the lane. Thus it hap- 
 pened that Johnny, hobbling out of doors with 
 his head full of fresh plans, was sorely chagrined 
 to find the scene of his labours occupied by a 
 party, clucking and piping, and more banefully 
 scratching and bobbing about. The damage 
 they had as yet done extended only to the 
 knocking down of one telegraph-post ; it was 
 the future mischief too surely augured by their 
 appearance which caused his dismay. He could, 
 of course, drive them off for the time being, but 
 
178 A Very Light Railway 
 
 he knew that he could not keep perpetually on 
 guard against their incursions. So he scared 
 them with shouts, and then sat down to revolve 
 plans of defence. After some meditation an idea 
 occurred to him, and made him start on an 
 unwontedly long walk all the way, about a 
 hundred yards, to Maggie Ryan's house. 
 
 Maggie was hanging up her blue-rimmed 
 breakfast cup on the brass dresser-hook, when 
 she became aware of a small grey-ragged figure 
 halted at her threshold. " Och ! and is it your- 
 self, Johnny lad ? " she said, rather surprised, 
 for her dwelling lay almost beyond Johnny's 
 invisible tether, and he but rarely appeared 
 there ; " was your mother wantin' any thin' ? " 
 
 " I'm after seem' a big wild cat," said Johnny, 
 " up above under the hedge." He spoke in a 
 hoarse whisper, which the old woman heard 
 imperfectly, and she crossed over hurriedly 
 to the door, saying: "What was that, 
 sonny ? " 
 
 " A great big yella wild cat it was," said 
 Johnny, " sittin' yonder behind the bank. The 
 size of a calf it was. Watchin' for chuckens 
 it looked to be." 
 
 " Bedad, then ! that's like enough, and bad 
 luck to it," said Maggie Ryan, peering out 
 
A Very Light Railway 179 
 
 anxiously. " I wonder where at all the white 
 hin has streeled herself off to." 
 
 "If you had her shut up in the little shed, 
 there couldn't anythin' be gettin' at them," 
 Johnny observed pointedly. 
 
 "Thrue for you," said Maggie Ryan, "and 
 'twould be a good plan to keep them up till 
 they're a trifle grown anyway, if there's e'er 
 such a bastely brute slingein' about the place. 
 And you were an iligant child to come tell me. 
 Have a bit of flour-cake, honey," she continued, 
 casting about her for some impromptu reward 
 of merit, and finding nothing more appropriate 
 than a griddle-cake, "I'll be steppin' out and 
 drivin' in the hin." 
 
 Johnny heard her intention with unqualified 
 approval, and received her gift with more 
 mingled feelings. The three-cornered cake 
 looked inviting, but his conscience flavoured it 
 for him with a tincture of remorse, which is a 
 seasoning to nobody's taste. He took one bite, 
 still lingering at the door, and then said indis- 
 tinctly : " Plase, ma'am it wasn't maybe alto- 
 gether the size of a calf." However, he was 
 so uneasy about the possible effects of even this 
 grudging concession to veracity, that he hastened 
 to add: "But it's a terrible great bigness 
 
180 A Very Light Railway 
 
 entirely and lookin' out it is to catch 
 somethttf" 
 
 " Ah sure, child alive, calf or no, 'twould be 
 to the full big enough to swally down one of 
 them scraps of chuckens, if it got the chance," 
 said Maggie, " and Fll put them in out of the 
 way of it the next minute. . . . Ah now, 
 to think of the crathur comin' creepin' along all 
 that way to warn me," she said to herself, look- 
 ing ruthfully after the small figure as it limped 
 and dragged itself out of her ken down the 
 green and gold-spangled space between the 
 hedgerows, " 'tis a good-hearted poor little imp, 
 the Lord may pity it." But I fear that the 
 crathur was at this moment sophistically saying 
 in its good heart : " And sure there might aisy 
 be an odd wild cat in it all the while, and I 
 not seein' it. Very belike there is a one or 
 maybe a couple." 
 
 For a few days the result of Johnny's stratagem 
 was all that he could desire. The white hen 
 reluctantly found her wanderings circumscribed 
 by the mud walls of the lean-to shed with its 
 thatch of shrivelled potato-haulms, and Johnny 
 was thus enabled to continue his work secure 
 from harassing incursions. He gloatingly gave 
 it several new touches, the most notable being 
 
A Very Light Railway 181 
 
 the erection of a heap of old iron, gathered 
 from the bunches of rusty " keys," which the 
 willow-boughs had kept, like a cherished griev- 
 ance, to dangle among their fresh spring foliage. 
 But then rose a Saturday morning when Maggie 
 Ryan, rather late and flurried in setting out to 
 catch the train at Ballyhoy, failed to adequately 
 fasten the door of the shed where she had been 
 feeding her captive fowl, and the consequence 
 of this oversight was that five minutes after- 
 wards the whole brood were gleefully at large 
 in the lane. As ill-luck would have it, the 
 sedate stalk of the matron tended towards the 
 Dowdall's cabin, retarded but not deflected by 
 her incidental scrapings and pokings, and in her 
 wake the round downy chicks followed dis- 
 persedly, yet steadily as foam-bells bobbing 
 along in the current of a stream. So that the 
 prospects of the neighbouring light railway 
 became every moment more seriously imperilled, 
 and had it been vested in a company, its shares 
 might well have fallen with a run. 
 
 Meanwhile, Johnny was unaware of the 
 approaching danger, his attention being quite 
 engrossed by an unusual spectacle. A great 
 yellow furniture-van had come lumbering and 
 creaking by, bound for sea-side Quinton, and 
 
1 82 A Very Light Railway 
 
 threading a short cut thither through the lane- 
 labyrinth north of Ballyhoy. Just opposite Mrs 
 Dowdall's residence, which it could have stowed 
 away with ease, some part of the harness 
 collapsed, compelling a halt for repairs, and 
 while one of the two men in charge was splicing 
 and tying, the other opened the van-door to 
 make a change in the disposition of the load. 
 To Johnny, staring hard close by, there was 
 something rather awful about the aspect of the 
 dark interior thus revealed, with the legs and 
 other salient features of its freight dimly visible 
 against a background of cavernous gloom. He 
 thought those black recesses must hold some- 
 thing more mysterious ^than the indications of 
 tables and chairs which actually met the eye. 
 But he was diverted from his speculations on 
 this point by a very self-complacent clucking 
 croak, which sounded near at hand, and be- 
 trayed to him Maggie Ryan's white hen in the 
 act of knocking down his precious signal-post. 
 Her chickens were scattered out all along the 
 line. It was a grave disaster. 
 
 Johnny could not run fast to the rescue, 
 and his consciousness of this disability increased 
 the exasperation with which he sent on ahead 
 of his painful hobble his voice uplifted in 
 
A Very Light Railway 183 
 
 shrill railing. " Git along out of that, you 
 great ugly, dirty, big bastes of brutes ! " he 
 yelled at the little snow-ball chickens. 
 Perhaps also it gave force and precision to 
 his aim when he flung a stone after them. 
 At any rate, the missile came skimming in 
 among the scurrying cluster, and knocked 
 down one of the smallest chickens, which 
 had been running very fast across the road, 
 and chirping at the top of its voice. Its 
 brethren now continued their fleeing and 
 piping, but it remained lying still and silent 
 in the dust. The sight smote Johnny with 
 compunctious dismay, which deepened as he 
 picked it up, and felt how fluffily soft it was, 
 and saw its absurd beak finer than a thorn. 
 He had not thrown the stone with murderous 
 intent, for though he sincerely desired the 
 absence of the family, their slaughter had 
 never occurred to him as a means to that end. 
 Again, he remembered having heard Maggie 
 Ryan say to his mother that she hoped to 
 goodness she might rear the whole clutch, 
 an aspiration which could now never be 
 fulfilled "and she after often givin' him 
 bits of cake, and bringin' home sugar-sticks 
 from town." 
 
184 A Very Light Railway 
 
 These reflections, and not the wreckage of 
 his railway, were uppermost in his mind as he 
 sat on the grassy bank with the lifeless chicken 
 held carefully. It seemed to throw a shadow 
 over everything, although the May morning 
 was still radiant, and the dandelions were 
 glowing and blazing on the sod, like the suns 
 in old engravings, all translated and trans- 
 figured. Presently he began to consider how 
 he should best conceal his own rather large 
 share in the tragedy, the revelation of which 
 would, he thought, by no means mend matters. 
 What seemed the simplest plan was to hide 
 away the remains before his mother returned 
 from the fields and Maggie Ryan from town, 
 and let it be supposed that the yellow wild 
 cat had had a privy paw in the affair. This 
 would be merely a sequel to his former fiction, 
 demanding no further imaginative efforts, an 
 advantage, as Johnny did not from choice 
 exercise his ingenuity in that way. He looked 
 down into the tangle of weeds and briars at 
 the bottom of the ditch, which did no doubt 
 offer an obviously convenient sepulchre ; but 
 somehow he felt that he would hate to know 
 it was lying there, and he paused irresolute 
 on the brink of dropping it in. Just then his 
 
A Very Light Railway 185 
 
 eye was caught by the furniture-van, which 
 still stood with open door, while both its men 
 were round in front working at the harness. 
 Its black depths of darkness looked capable 
 of keeping any secret confided to them, and 
 the idea suddenly struck him that here was 
 a chance of ridding himself effectually of all 
 embarrassments connected with the presence 
 of the little dead bird. Whereupon he arose 
 hastily, hobbled his swiftest, and was barely 
 in time to thrust it as far as he could into 
 the gloomy interior before the vanman came 
 and banged the door. In another minute the 
 clumsy gaudy vehicle was crawling away 
 between the hedges, taking with it the most 
 urgent of Johnny's anxieties. This being 
 removed, he settled down to the repair of his 
 line, and soon became so deeply absorbed in 
 it that he nearly forgot the late catastrophe 
 and the trouble which the straying white hen 
 with her diminished brood threatened to cause 
 him in the future. 
 
 As for the yellow van, its depressed sorrel 
 pair dragged it at length out of the many 
 winding lanes, and drew up on the crunching 
 gravel in front of Marine View Villa, which 
 had a pinkish stucco face, and a mock ruin on 
 
1 86 A Very Light Railway 
 
 the lawn. Pat Magennis, the driver's sub- 
 ordinate, let down the board and opened the 
 door preparatory to unloading ; but he was 
 amazed, in a small way, to see a tiny round 
 white object emerge from the darkest corner, 
 and come running towards the light with an 
 interrogative chirp. 
 
 " Musha, good gracious ! and what at all 
 might you be offerin' to call yourself?" said 
 Pat; "may I land anywhere if one of them 
 white chickens there was skytin' about the 
 place we stopped at in the lane isn't after 
 leppin' in and comin' along wid us." 
 
 "I wish they'd throuble themselves, thin, 
 to keep their ould fowls and crathurs out of 
 streelin' into my loads, where they're not 
 wanted," said glumly the driver, who had 
 started that day in a captious temper. " Just 
 chuck it down out of that, and be gettin' at 
 them arm-chairs." 
 
 Pat obeyed this behest, with modifications, 
 for he deposited the stowaway chicken carefully 
 under a rose-bush in a round box-edged flower- 
 bed. " Sure 'twas the quare notion took you 
 to not be stoppin' paiceable in your own 
 place," he said to it with some sternness ; but 
 the white chicken cocked its eye at him 
 
A Very Light Railway 187 
 
 unabashed, and its self-confidence increased 
 when he shook a few bread-crumbs for it 
 out of the red handkerchief which held his 
 luncheon. He was so much interested in 
 watching its meal that he did not turn away 
 until bawled at by his chief to " lave foolin' 
 there and be mindin' his business," when he 
 had to take up the less congenial occupation 
 of carrying about heavy furniture. The 
 chicken, he thought, would surely have dis- 
 appeared before he was free again ; but having 
 got through his tasks, he found it where he 
 had left it, safe and brisk, and apparently 
 not loth to be recaptured. By this time 
 Gaffney, the driver's, bad temper had worsened 
 to such an intolerable degree that Pat pre- 
 ferred a journey home, sitting uncomfortably 
 with dangling legs on the board at the van 
 door, to the alternative share of the front seat. 
 The rather because he was now conveying the 
 chicken in his breast pocket, whence its alert 
 head protruded, and where it would, he knew, 
 be made a theme of morose sarcasms by his 
 grumpy companion. He half intended to 
 bestow it upon his sister's small children 
 when he got back; a prospect which might 
 have caused its friends to bless its stars 
 
1 88 A Very Light Railway 
 
 that it did not possess the faculty of looking 
 before and after. 
 
 While the empty van proceeded with un- 
 dulatory motion townwards, Mrs Dowdall and 
 Maggie Ryan on their way from field-work 
 and marketing, fell in with one another at the 
 end of the lane, and arrived home simultane- 
 ously. Johnny had forgotten all about them 
 in a rapt attempt to mimic, with bent twigs 
 and the bottom of an old tin mug, the marvel- 
 lous revolving turn-table which he had once 
 admired at the big Dublin terminus ; but when 
 he espied their two long-drawn shadows pre- 
 ceding them down the sun-set litten lane, his 
 thoughts immediately reverted to the morning's 
 mishap, and he glanced uneasily around in quest 
 of the white hen. He was annoyed to see her 
 approaching from the opposite direction, so 
 that the loss would most likely soon be noticed. 
 " There niver was such an ould crathur for 
 comin' where she isn't wanted," he said to 
 himself, regarding her with the gaze of con- 
 centrated bitterness so commonly encountered 
 by objects that manifest this unpopular pro- 
 pensity. Well for them if they can meet it 
 with the serene indifference of Maggie Ryan's 
 hen. 
 
A Very Light Railway 189 
 
 But Maggie's mind was evidently pre-occupied 
 just then to the exclusion of concern about her 
 poultry. She set down her old, broken-lidded 
 basket on the bank, and began to grope among 
 its contents with an air of exultant mystery. 
 "Well, Johnny lad," she said; "them's great 
 conthrivances you've got there entirely, but 
 I question now would you iver ha' put together 
 the likes of that." So saying, she produced 
 a toy tin railway carriage about two inches 
 long, and handed it to Johnny. It was painted 
 a strong green, picked out with scarlet, and 
 might be considered a very brilliant and highly- 
 finished pennyworth. If Johnny's conscience 
 had been clear, such a gift would have afforded 
 him the liveliest pleasure, stirring his imagina- 
 tion to fresh delightful activity ; as things were, 
 however, there at once arose before him a 
 piteous downy spectre, which poignantly up- 
 braided him with the loss sustained at his hands 
 by the bestower of such benefits. So he only 
 turned scarlet, and stared dumbly at the 
 carriage. The two women attributed his em- 
 barrassed silence to shyness and surprise. 
 " 'Deed now, ma'am, it was too good of you 
 altogether to be thinkin' of him," said his 
 mother ; " sure, he's fairly took aback wid 
 
i go A Very Light Railway 
 
 your kindness. Bad manners to you, Johnny, 
 haven't you so much as a thank you at all ? " 
 
 " Och, the crathur ! " said Maggie Ryan, 
 deprecatingly. " Thry will it run along on 
 the line for you, sonny." 
 
 Johnny set the toy on his twig-rails, and 
 found that the wheels fitted as exactly as if the 
 gauge had been made to suit them. This dis- 
 covery excited him a little ; yet in a moment 
 his eyes wandered towards the neighbouring 
 thorn-clump behind which the hen had tempor- 
 arily disappeared, to emerge presently at closer 
 quarters. But before that happened, a much 
 more imposing object arrived on the scene. 
 Round the corner came the great mustard- 
 coloured van, in which he had laid his victim 
 to find a vast and wandering grave. He 
 watched it lumber up, and speculated as to 
 whether the little white heap were still lying 
 in the dark angle by the door. Then a more 
 alarming surmise occurred to him. What if 
 the vanmen, enraged at the liberty taken with 
 their vehicle, should have traced the deed to 
 him, and would now stop and denounce it ? 
 The danger of this seemed to have passed 
 harmlessly by> but it suddenly returned with 
 a rush, for the man who had been sitting on 
 
A Very Light Railway 191 
 
 the board at the door, slid hastily off his low 
 seat, and came running back to the group at 
 the bank. His first words, too, were ominous. 
 " Might you happen to be missin' e'er a little 
 white chicken ? " he said. 
 
 " Not to my knowledge, we didn't," Maggie 
 Ryan began, but Pat interrupted her, as he 
 caught sight of the hen and chickens, which 
 by this time were close at hand. 
 
 " Bedad, yis ; it self's the livin' moral of one 
 of them," he said, "it must ha' hopped into 
 us the time we was stoppin' here this mornin'. 
 I'd a notion to bring it home wid me to the 
 childher, but like enough 'twould only die on 
 them, or else they might have it tore in pieces 
 contendin' over it, and besides that, it has the 
 heart of me broke conthrollin' it from fluttherin' 
 out of me ould pocket every minute of time." 
 As he spoke, he extracted the chicken, and set 
 it down on the ground, where it promptly 
 rejoined its brethren, after which they all ran 
 " through other" with such bewildering liveli- 
 ness, that in a moment or two no one could 
 have confidently singled out the travelled 
 member of the family. 
 
 " Why, thrue for you," said Maggie Ryan, 
 " one and one is two, and two is four sure 
 
192 A Very Light Railway 
 
 enough there'd be but nine widout it. Glory 
 be to goodness now, to think of it settin' up 
 to take off wid itself that way ! I'd ha' been 
 as sorry as anythin' to lose it, after me brother, 
 poor man, disthressin' himself sendin' herself 
 there up to me from his bit of a place in 
 the county Wicklow, along wid the clutch of 
 eggs, to make a beginnin' like of a few fowls 
 for me to be keepin'. And only a couple bad 
 out of the whole dozen, and not a coloured 
 feather but white on a one of them." 
 
 The end of this statement was lost upon 
 Pat Magennis, who had run off after the re- 
 ceding van. 
 
 " I dunno how they got strayin' out," Maggie 
 continued, " but I'll put them up safe now at all 
 events, before I wet me cup of tay. So good- 
 night to you kindly, ma'am, and, Johnny, don't 
 thravel away too far from us entirely on that 
 grand line of rails." She went her way, driving 
 in front of her the white hen and chickens, and 
 Johnny, who had witnessed this resurrection 
 with almost incredulous eyes, was left to gloat 
 over his latest acquisition, no longer now 
 poisoned for him by remorseful memories. It 
 was not until the last glimmer of clearness had 
 died out of the dusk that he shunted the new 
 
A Very Light Railway 193 
 
 carriage into a siding by his truck, and withdrew 
 lingeringly indoors. 
 
 At this point Johnny's light railway had 
 reached the highest pitch of perfection to which 
 it ever attained, and I wish I could append a 
 report of continued prosperity. But that was 
 not to be. An hour or so later, anybody who 
 had happened to be abroad in the lane might 
 have noticed a dimness steal over the stars to 
 the south-eastward, until they turned from 
 twinkling rosettes of light into the semblance 
 of tarnished silver nails, and anon were vanished 
 altogether as if they had dropped out of their 
 holes. The drifts of vapour blowing in from 
 the sea spread and thickened fast ; the hedge- 
 rows began to rustle, and large rain-drops made 
 dark wafers dispersedly in the shimmering white 
 dust on the road. Presently the night was all 
 filled with the sound and scent of rain, driving 
 and splashing and dripping. When the May 
 morning broke this downpour was over, and 
 the clouds were lifting to widen a chink of 
 glowing amber. But along the bank where 
 Johnny's railway had run, a brisk little stream 
 went rippling, and the only trace of craftman- 
 ship remaining there was the tin carriage, over- 
 set and lying on its side in the water, 
 
 N 
 
194 A Very Light Railway 
 
 Perhaps the ruin thus wrought sounds more 
 deplorable than it in reality was. Of one thing 
 we may feel certain ; that an inventive child 
 with ample puddles at his command, and no 
 authorities present to enforce decrees against 
 dabbling, would never, in the longest day, find 
 himself stinted of congenial occupation our 
 most unalloyed boon. The white hen, too, 
 and her family had again escaped, and were 
 thoroughly enjoying themselves on the track of 
 many small black and fawn-coloured slugs, 
 whom the wet grass had tempted forth. And 
 if these latter were not quite happy under the 
 turn affairs were taking, it is clearly impossible 
 to satisfy all parties, and when discontent is 
 confined to things which slimily creep and 
 crawl, we may at any rate hope that it has been 
 reduced to its very lowest power. 
 
ROSANNE 
 
 TOWARDS seven o'clock on a summer evening in 
 July, Rosanne should have been helping her 
 mistress in the dairy, instead of which she was 
 sitting under the shadow of the big water- 
 barrel at the kitchen-door and writing to her 
 sweetheart. She wrote to tell him how she 
 had been given leave to go home next Sunday, 
 and she did not stop to consider that she was at 
 this very moment risking the loss of her holiday, 
 by getting into disgrace for neglect of duty. 
 But it was not Rosanne's way to think of more 
 than one thing at a time, so when it occurred to 
 her that John Gahan, who had called about the 
 loan of a hay-shaker, might post a letter for her 
 as he went home, she acted upon the idea with- 
 out further reflection. She had her paper 
 spread out on the barrel stand, and craned her 
 curly head over it at unlikely angles as she 
 enjoined Dan McClean to meet her at Hunt's in 
 Kilbracken, where the gig would drop her next 
 
 Saturday evening. 
 
 195 
 
196 Rosanne 
 
 Meanwhile the dairy work had been going 
 on well enough without her. Mrs Conroy had 
 a pleased smile as she saw the ripe yellow cream 
 curl smoothly up under her skimmer, and added 
 it to the rich contents of her great wide-mouthed 
 gathering-crock. She thought they would have 
 a grand churning to-morrow, and at least a 
 dozen pounds of butter for Saturday's fair. 
 But when she had finished, she recollected that 
 Rosanne should have been there to carry the 
 pigs their supper of sour skim milk , and after 
 calling her in vain several times, she sent little 
 Ned to find her, and bid her come along out of 
 that this instant. Ned delivered this message, 
 with the pithy addition: "She's ragin'" ; and 
 so in frightened haste Rosanne finished address- 
 ing her envelope with wild blots, and overset 
 the ink bottle, and rushed away to fetch the 
 bucket. When she reached the dairy she was 
 relieved at finding nobody there to scold her, 
 and, still hurry-driven, she filled her bucket and 
 ran off with it across the yard. Rosanne rather 
 liked seeing the pigs at their supper, they 
 wriggled so all over with enjoyment, and she 
 now leaned against the stye-door to watch them. 
 She began to sing Norah Creina, but in the 
 middle of the first verse she stopped abruptly. 
 
Rosanne 197 
 
 A frightful misgiving had suddenly seized her, 
 come she knew not whence. She leaned for- 
 ward and looked into the trough ; she snatched 
 up her bucket and examined it carefully ; and 
 then she perceived that she had indeed done a 
 dreadful thing. In her haste she had emptied 
 the wrong crock, and had thrown a week's 
 gathering of cream to the pigs ! 
 
 How dreadful it was, she could estimate by 
 the pride her mistress took in the row of rich 
 yellow-topped milk-pans, the precautions with 
 which she surrounded them, her wrath if any 
 clumsiness imperilled them. What would that 
 wrath be now ? Rosanne made her mind up all 
 in a minute not to face it. She would run away 
 home. It was no such great distance across the 
 fields ; she might get there, she supposed, 
 before it was quite dark. She thought her 
 father would be glad to see her, and if so, her 
 stepmother must perforce acquiesce. But at all 
 events there was Dan McClean, who would be 
 certainly "as plased as any thin'," and make 
 much of her, and take her part whatever 
 happened Dan's stalwart frame held up the 
 whole fabric of Rosanne's future. Beyond a 
 doubt she had lost her chance of getting a 
 holiday in any other way, she thought, as she 
 
198 Rosanne 
 
 raced at full speed back to the house. For she 
 had no time to hesitate, as the discovery might 
 at any moment prevent her flight. Luckily 
 almost everybody was out in the hayfield, and 
 she got up to her attic unperceived. There she 
 collected her few most cherished little posses- 
 sions the rest might be fetched afterwards 
 threw on her shawl, and once more dared the 
 creaking clattering stairs, and the passage that 
 led by the awful dairy door. Fortune still 
 favoured her ; she escaped all their perils, and 
 was presently scrambling through the gap in the 
 briery hedge into the meadows at the back of 
 the haggard. She ran all the way through the 
 first field, because she had such a vivid picture 
 in her mind of what might be at that very 
 minute happening within doors. She could 
 almost see Mrs Conroy's face as she stared into 
 the empty cream crock, and hear her terrible 
 call, loud and peremptory, "Rosanne, Rosanne." 
 The mere thought of it made her scud along 
 like a rabbit. 
 
 But at the end of the field she heard real 
 voices, for the haymakers were returning to the 
 house, so she slipped out of their way, behind 
 a smooth-sided haycock. When they passed, 
 she stole back to the foot-path, and on again. 
 
Rosanne 199 
 
 About Rathcrumlyn Farm the land was all 
 down in meadow, and the fields were bordered 
 by thick bosky hedges. Tall cocks threw 
 shadows nearly across some of them, and the 
 interspaces were very goldenly green with fresh- 
 springing after-grass, under westering sunbeams. 
 On others the newly mown swathes still lay in 
 soft waves, and the shorn sward underneath 
 was paler hued, not having had time to thrust 
 up any young blades since the sweep of the 
 scythe went by. Along under the hedge the 
 remnant of the meadow made a fringe with 
 feathery crests drooping and creamy plumes, 
 tall stalks that unfurled white sunshades, and 
 here and there a scarlet poppy. The drops 
 of an earlier shower still twinkled beneath 
 them, and Rosanne's crisp pink calico skirt 
 grew limp and bedraggled as she brushed by. 
 But she did not heed this 5 for the one article 
 of dress that she much regarded her new hat 
 with its wreaths of curious buff and crimson 
 roses rested safely on her head, and her head 
 was full of pre-occupying speculations. She 
 began to think that perhaps, after all, no such 
 great harm was done. That is to say, it was, 
 of course, a woful pity about the beautiful 
 cream ; but for the matter of losing her place 
 
2oo Rosanne 
 
 thereby, she wasn't sure that she wouldn't as 
 lief as not quit being in service. And she 
 thought it as like as not that when she came 
 home this way, Dan McClean would again take 
 up the notion of their getting married after 
 the harvest. That was what he had wanted 
 to do in the spring, if her stepmother had not 
 put it into everybody's head that it would be 
 better for them to get together a few pounds 
 before they set up housekeeping. Rosanne 
 now said to herself that she did not see any 
 occasion for it. She wondered, too, what sort 
 of girl Maggie Walsh, her stepsister, who 
 had just come to live at home, was apt to be. 
 She had a presentiment that there would be 
 little love lost between them. However, that 
 didn't much signify by reason of Dan. 
 
 Through three or four fields Rosanne passed 
 without meeting anything to interrupt these 
 cogitations. Now and then the voices of home- 
 going hay-makers were wafted over a hedge, 
 and a belated corncrake was heard from a long 
 way off faintly " creak-creaking." The shadows 
 lengthened silently all about, and the sun-lit 
 interspaces seemed as they shrank to grow more 
 jewel-like in their shimmering emerald. From 
 a sheltering corner a large olive-mottled frog 
 
Rosanne 201 
 
 started up out of the tangled grass, and went 
 flinging himself on before her in a long series 
 of expanding leaps ; but at last she almost 
 trod on him as he stopped and sat suddenly 
 squatting. At the same moment somebody 
 called her name loudly, close by " Rosanne, 
 Rosanne." 
 
 A flappy white sun-bonnet was looking at 
 her over a gate in a hedge, a little way to the 
 right ; and in it she recognised her cousin, 
 Martha Reilly, who lived near them at home. 
 " And where might you be off to ? " Martha 
 said, as Rosanne came up to the gate, "and 
 wid fine grandeur on you," she added, referring 
 to the rose-wreathed hat. 
 
 " Sure I'm just streelin' about a bit," Rosanne 
 said with rather confused unconcern. She re- 
 gretted the encounter, and was not at all dis- 
 posed to confide in Martha, who had the name 
 of being " the greatest ould gossip you'd meet 
 in a long day's walk." " It's a fine warm 
 evenin'," she continued, to account for her 
 stroll. 
 
 " Warm enough, bedad," said Martha, " you 
 might say so if it was in the hay you'd been. 
 I come up yisterday to work above at Hilfirthy's, 
 and I was manin' to run over this evenin' and 
 
202 Rosanne 
 
 see you, on'y somethin' delayed me. And 
 what's the best good news wid you this long 
 while ? " 
 
 " I dunno is there any news in partic'lar, bad 
 or good," said Rosanne, with a guilty "I 
 could an' I would " in her mind as she thought 
 of the pigs' supper. 
 
 " Then you haven't heard tell about Dan 
 McClean ? " said Martha, suddenly craning her 
 neck over the topmost bar. 
 
 " What about him at all ? " said Rosanne 
 with a great start. 
 
 "You haven't heard?" Martha repeated in 
 a half incredulous tone. 
 
 " Can't you tell me ? " said Rosanne. 
 
 "I'll come over to you just wait?" said 
 Martha. She launched her pitchfork across the 
 gate, and began to scale its many bars with 
 remarkable agility. She had scarcely flopped 
 to the ground, on Rosanne's side of it, before 
 she said : " He's took up wid Maggie Walsh, 
 that's what it is." 
 
 " Took up wid her ? " said Rosanne, staring 
 up stupidly at her cousin. 
 
 " Ay, bedad and so he has," said Martha, 
 " but it come to my knowledge on'y last Sun- 
 day. About gettin' married they are after the 
 
Rosanne 203 
 
 
 harvest he and your stepmother's daughter. 
 And he be all account as good as promised to 
 you, Rosanne ! " 
 
 "Who was telling you so? He never set 
 eyes on her till she came home after Easter. 
 Dan's no affair of mine. I don't believe any such 
 thing," said Rosanne, rattling the rusty bolt of 
 the padlocked gate. 
 
 " Sure they was all talkin' about it after 
 Mass," said Martha, "and that evenin' I taxed 
 the young feller's mother wid it, and she didn't 
 deny it. Och, Rosanne, but you was a fine 
 fool to let your stepmother pack you off to 
 service that-a-way, wid Maggie just comin' 
 home. Earnin' money for yourself, bedad ! 
 'Deed now what notion she had in her mind's as 
 plain to see as the seeds in a ripe gooseberry. 
 Puttin' you out of it she was the way she'd have 
 the chance of gettin' young Dan for her own girl 
 and that's what she's after doin' on you." 
 
 " She's welcome," said Rosanne, desperately. 
 
 " Och, that's j ust talkin', Rosanne," said Mar tha, 
 " I was spakin' about it to your father on Tues- 
 day. I'd ha' thought he'd be none too well 
 plased, but he said nothin' agin it. I suppose 
 she had him persuaded, poor man. And Dan's 
 mother was axin' me had I heard tell anythin' 
 
204 Rosanne 
 
 about a young chap was coortin' you up here. 
 Mark my words, that's the story your step- 
 mother's been puttin' into their heads. But I 
 tould Mrs McClean there wasn't a iotum of truth 
 in it as far as I knew. And there isn't, in 
 coorse ? " Martha said, glancing again rather 
 suspiciously at the grand hat. 
 
 " Maybe there is, and maybe there isn't," said 
 Rosanne defiantly. " It's no affair of anybody's. 
 Let other people mind their own business, and 
 I'll mind mine. And let them plase themselves 
 the pack of them and they'll plase me. I 
 dunno which of them's the greatest liar ; but it's 
 little I trouble meself about them. And it's 
 time for me to be runnin' back, or else I'll be 
 too late. So good-night to you kindly och 
 don't be delayin' me, you ould tormint ! " 
 Rosanne whisked the corner of her shawl out of 
 Martha's detaining grasp, and ran away down 
 the field. As she went she struck up Norah 
 Creina, and sang it lustily as long as she thought 
 herself within hearing ; but her mind was not at 
 all occupied with that gentle bashful heroine. 
 The sun had disappeared behind the rounded 
 tops of Drumaree Wood while she talked to 
 Martha, and the vivid lights had gone out among 
 the haycocks and hedges. Everything had 
 
Rosanne 205 
 
 grown dimly green, soft and cool, and when she 
 left off singing, not a sound was to be heard. 
 But her thoughts were travelling through the 
 scorching, hissing, whirling chaos into which 
 this thunderbolt of tidings had shattered the 
 world before her. Dan, and the little house of 
 her own, and love and trust, and a fine wedding 
 and the Aylesbury ducks Mrs Conroy had 
 promised her, and her pride in old Tim Donagh's 
 remark that she had got the best lad on six 
 townlands all were swept away from her, and 
 in their places seethed a flood of jealousy, rage, 
 and despair. As its first rush subsided, she 
 recollected several things that seemed like dis- 
 regarded warnings of Martha's news. She had 
 wondered now and again that Dan had never 
 managed to get over and see her between this 
 and Easter; and then the last time old Biddy 
 Doran from his place was up at the Farm he hadn't 
 sent e'er a message by her at all. The reason 
 was plain enough now. And with that, Rosanne 
 bethought her of the letter which she had sent by 
 John Gahan, and which might be delivered by this 
 time. Perhaps Dan was at that minute of time 
 laughing with Maggie Walsh over the suggestion 
 that he should be wasting his evening streeling 
 off to meet Rosanne Tierney at Kilbracken. 
 
206 Rosanne 
 
 Cock her up. This possibility was the cruel 
 little barb of mortification by which the crushing 
 bulk of her misfortune caught hold of her mind, 
 and she raged at herself for having ignorantly 
 wrought it. 
 
 But circumstances seldom allow us to rage 
 long uninterrupted, and while Rosanne walked 
 on, the fields grew dimmer, and the green 
 greyer, and the breeze chillier, and the grass 
 wetter, until at last she found that the thorny 
 briers which twitched her by the shawl as she 
 passed them, were beginning to ask her where 
 she was going. It was a puzzling question. 
 To go home among those false, scheming, 
 triumphant creatures, could not for a moment 
 be thought of. It would be more tolerable 
 to return and face the storm in the dairy at 
 Rathcrumlyn Farm, and even that was quite 
 impossible. On such consideration as she could 
 give, only one answer occurred to her. She 
 would go to her aunt Lizzie Mahony, her 
 mother's sister, who had always been good- 
 natured and friendly. The Mahonys, it was 
 true, lived rather a long step off, somewhere 
 beyond Hewitstown ; still she thought she 
 could certainly contrive to get there in the 
 course of the next day, and she knew they 
 
Rosanne 207 
 
 would be glad to see her. After that, her 
 future was all drearily vague. She supposed 
 that she could get field work to do, and some- 
 times she even thought wildly of turning ballad- 
 singer. Dan used to say that she had a voice 
 fit to make her fortune ; but of course that 
 might only have been one of his lies, for it was 
 evident you could not believe a word that came 
 out of his head. The further her feet and her 
 reflections travelled, the more attractive grew 
 the picture of the Mahonys' little white 
 cottage, with her aunt looking out at the 
 door, and saying : " Glory be to goodness, if it 
 isn't little Rosanne." For the fields around her 
 spread lonelier, and stranger, and the moonlight 
 began to fill them cruelly with ghostly gleams 
 and shades. At last in a great fright she crept 
 under a haystack, and shivered and dozed in 
 unequal alternations till the dawn. 
 
 It found her bewilderingly miserable, but 
 delivered from the panic fears that had beset 
 her, while the world was black and white, and 
 she stole out of the yellow-mounded haggard 
 on to the high road close by. She hardly 
 noticed that she was hungry and cold, and damp 
 with dew, as she resumed her journey, upon 
 which the July sun soon began to glare strong 
 
208 Rosanne 
 
 and fierce. The way was much longer than she 
 thought, and she lengthened it by missing it 
 several times, finding intricate directions all the 
 more puzzling because she was dazed for the 
 want of food and sleep. Two women of whom 
 she had made inquiries, and who told her of 
 terribly many miles, gave her a drink of milk, 
 but that was all she had the whole day. With 
 her gaudy hat and her carelessly wisped on 
 shawl, and bedraggled pink gown, her curly 
 hair tossed and ruffled, and her eyes wild and 
 woebegone, she had become a forlorn, strange- 
 looking figure, which passers-by eyed curiously, 
 and on which they sometimes made remarks. 
 This alarmed her greatly, for solitary wanderings 
 were a new experience to her. She made up 
 her mind never to be a ballad-singer, and her 
 aunt's house grew a more and more desired 
 refuge. At last when the shadows stretched 
 very long, and the sunbeams had relaxed their 
 scorching grip, she came to a bit of road that 
 seemed familiar to her. Round the next turn, 
 if she was not mistaken, stood the little white 
 cottage at the foot of a steep field, in the angle 
 where two lonings met she remembered the 
 place very well. 
 
 And sure enough, round the corner, just as 
 
Rosanne 209 
 
 she had hoped, the little white cottage came into 
 view, a sight which for a few moments she 
 beheld with much comfort of heart. But she 
 had not taken many quick steps towards it, 
 before she perceived that something was amiss. 
 On the brown slope of the thatch a thick cloud 
 of smoke was brooding, dull and pale, and as 
 she looked, thicker black clouds came rolling up 
 through it in great heavy puffs, pierced here 
 and there by sharp thrusts of flame, which 
 even under the sunset flush of the sky gleamed 
 strong and red. Very clearly the house was on 
 fire, which was a dreadful thing ; but what 
 struck Rosanne with still more dismay, was that 
 there seemed to be nobody about to mind it. 
 Three small stranger boys were sitting on the 
 triangular grass-plot between the two lanes just 
 in front of the cottage, but they were busily 
 playing some game with bits of broken crockery, 
 and taking no interest in the fire. Nobody else 
 was to be seen. Rosanne ran up to the 
 children in a breathless scare. "Where's all 
 the Mahonys ? " she said, " sure they can't be 
 in it, wid the roof blazin' over their heads ? " 
 One of the boys glanced at her indifferently. 
 " Och, the Mahonys was put out of it yisterday 
 for the rint," he said, " and the Colonel's 
 o 
 
2io Rosanne 
 
 burnin' the ould bad houses to hinder the 
 people of comin' back to them, and squatters, 
 and tramps, and all manner. Give me the blue- 
 edged bit, Billy." 
 
 " And where's me uncle gone to ? " said 
 Rosanne. 
 
 " I dunno," said the boy, " unless it was to 
 the Union below at Hewitstown." 
 
 " Sure not at all," said Billy, " I heard them 
 sayin' Pat Mahony was gone to his brother's 
 place away at Tully lough." 
 
 The first boy, who was freckled, and blue- 
 eyed, and red-haired, put out his tongue in 
 acknowledgment of this correction, and the 
 third, who was like him, said : " No, he isn't. 
 They've all took off to the States." Rosanne 
 thought they looked quite fiendishly hideous. 
 She was turning towards the house when Billy 
 said : There's nobody in it ; " but his brother 
 said : " Yis, there is, after that agin. I seen 
 Alec Anderson and another of the bailiff's 
 men goin' round wid a pitchfork a while ago." 
 
 Rosanne ran desperately up to the door, and 
 looked in. It was all a smother of smoke inside, 
 and the flames might be heard gnashing their 
 teeth among the crackling rafters. Then she 
 ran on round the corner of the house, and there, 
 
Rosanne 2 1 1 
 
 sure enough, were two men, one of whom, 
 standing on the pig-stye wall, was poking a 
 pitchfork into the thatch. The fact was that 
 Alec Anderson, who had a thrifty turn, had 
 noticed a fresh golden patch where Pat Mahony 
 had lately darned his roof, and now deemed it 
 worth while to rescue the good bit of straw 
 from the conflagration for use on his own 
 premises. Burning cabins is hot and thirsty 
 work on a radiant July day, and Anderson's 
 mood had become irritable over it. So when a 
 dishevelled slip of a vagrant girl, wrapped in 
 an old rag of a shawl surmounted by an in- 
 congruous gay hat, came rushing up to him, and 
 in horror-stricken accents asked would he 
 plase be tellin' her where Mrs Mahony was 
 gone, he felt moved to reply by tossing down a 
 bundle of thatch on her off his fork, and saying : 
 " Ou spier that at somebody that kens or cares, 
 me hizzie, and dinna be bletherin' here awa'." 
 Unluckily the bundle had a red-hot smouldering 
 core, and as it dropped on Rosanne's head, it 
 knocked off her hat, and set her hair alight, and 
 fell in scorching flakes before her eyes. She was 
 fleeing away, blinded and terrified, but she tripped 
 over a stone, and fell with her head against 
 the wall, which stunned her into unconcern. 
 
212 Rosanne 
 
 By the time that her troublesome world came 
 back to her, she had been conveyed to the 
 infirmary ward of the Hewitstown workhouse, 
 a doleful white-washed place, where the last 
 red rays of the sunset were beating on the 
 grimy windows. Poor Rosanne's fortunes had 
 sunk so deeply within the last four and twenty 
 hours that you would hardly have recognised 
 her as the same girl who had talked to her 
 cousin Martha at the gate among the hay-fields, 
 while the sun went down behind a screen of 
 rounded tree-tops. For her clothes were 
 blackened and drenched with fire and water, 
 and, much worse, her pretty curling hair was 
 all burnt off, and one side of her face was 
 scorched. Next morning her neighbour in the 
 ward thoughtfully lent her a bit of broken 
 looking-glass that "she might see the quare 
 show she was ; " but she had scarcely energy 
 to glance at it, and was faintly shocked by the 
 disfigured image. For two days she lay in a 
 dull apathetic state, and took little heed of 
 anything. It seemed to her as if she had been 
 there always in a dreary sort of dream. 
 
 But on the Monday, when the creeping 
 shadow on the floor had shrunken almost to its 
 noontide skimpiness, she suddenly roused up 
 
Rosanne 213 
 
 quite awake. Just outside the door, which was 
 close to her bed, she heard a familiar voice 
 speaking the voice of Dan McClean. Rosanne 
 held her breath as the nurse, a square framed 
 stolid person, was called out to interview "a 
 young man from about Kilbracken, that was 
 come axin' after a girl." Dan's voice would 
 have sounded like heavenly music to her, if the 
 echo of Martha's had not come harshly through 
 it and jarred it into discord. 
 
 " Beg your pardon, ma'am," she heard him 
 say diffidently, " might there be a girl be the 
 name of Rosanne Tierney in it ? " 
 
 "Is it the name?" said the nurse, "sure I 
 couldn't be tellin' you the names of the half of 
 them that comes and goes. What sort is she ? " 
 
 " Och, a slip of a girl," said Dan, whose de- 
 scriptive powers were not great, " a slip of a 
 girl wid black hair and a smallish size she is." 
 
 " There's plenty of them like that, if that's 
 all," said the nurse, " we've a black-haired one 
 come in the other day, not over big. Some 
 sort of a tramp she is, and got a crack on the 
 head wid a bit of the roof slippin' down on her ; 
 but I could be axin' her her name. Rosanne 
 Tierney did you say ? And what might you be 
 to her supposin' she is ? Her brother maybe ? " 
 
214 Rosanne 
 
 It seemed to Rosanne as if an endless pause 
 followed this question ; yet Dan only hesitated 
 for a moment before he answered. " Och well, 
 ma'am," he said, " you might say I'm as good 
 as a brother anyway." 
 
 And with that a stormy darkness fell upon 
 Rosanne. For what could " as good as a 
 brother " signify, except marriage with the 
 stepsister Maggie Walsh ? She hoped to 
 goodness she might never have the misfortune 
 to set eyes on either of the two of them to the 
 end of her life's days and she'd as lief that 
 mightn't be very long a pair of black-hearted 
 rogues the villain might just go back the way 
 he came. 
 
 When a minute afterwards the nurse returned 
 to make her enquiry, the tramp kept her head 
 under the blanket, and would only mutter in 
 a husky mumbling way: "I dunno any such 
 people at all Bid him get along out of that 
 me name's Isabella Hill," facts which were at 
 once reported to Dan outside in the passage, 
 with the additional details that the crathur 
 seemed to be a cross-tempered one, and perhaps 
 not quite right in her senses. But at this 
 moment another visitor arrived, in the shape of 
 a small freckled and red-haired boy, who was 
 
Rosanne 215 
 
 carrying, with an averse expression of counte- 
 nance, a large, gaudily-wreathed straw hat. 
 " And what might you be wantin', Matthew 
 Flanigan ? " said the nurse. 
 
 " Me mother bid me be bringin' th' ould hat," 
 said Matthew. "It dropped off the girl that 
 got hurted up at Pat Mahony's on Friday, and 
 me brother brought it home, but she sez 
 it might be a loss to the crathur that owned 
 it, so she sent me along wid it, and it's him 
 she'd a right to ha' sent " 
 
 "Be the powers of smoke," Dan exclaimed, 
 seizing hold of the hat, " that's belongin' to 
 Rosanne Tierney ; she got it new at Easter, and 
 as proud of herself in it she was as a little 
 paycock. Sure I remember this tuft of yeller 
 roses wid red glass beads in them cocked up at 
 the side of it ; I was tellin' her it looked for 
 all the world like a one of our ould donkey's 
 ears ; and was axin' her why wouldn't she be 
 sticking up the other to match it." 
 
 " For the matter of that," said the nurse, 
 "there's dozens of quare hats goin' about the 
 world, and all of them that deminted lookin' 
 you'd be hard set to tell the one from the other. 
 The aquil of the outlandish gazaboes you see 
 on people these times I niver witnessed." 
 
2 1 6 Rosanni 
 
 " Ah, but I couldn't be mistook in this one be 
 any manes," said Dan, continuing to examine 
 the hat, " sure 'twas sittin' in front of me in the 
 trap all the way drivin' over from her place to 
 our place and back agin of Easter Sunday, an' 
 here it is the very same. Couldn't I be seein' 
 the girl, ma'am, just for a minyit, for if she isn't 
 Rosanne ." 
 
 But here a voice called loudly and clearly 
 through the half open door. " Don't you offer 
 to be comin' next or nigh me, Dan McClean. 
 I'm no such thing. Git away home to Maggie 
 Walsh," it said, and Dan's sunburnt face grew 
 two inches shorter at the sound. " Glory be 
 to goodness, it's herself," he said, " and me 
 heart broke thinkin' what had become of her 
 ever since Saturday mornin'. Sure, I'll not be 
 comin' in if you're not wishful, jewel," he said, 
 peering warily round the edge of the door, 
 "but what talk at all was that you had about 
 Maggie Walsh ? " 
 
 " It was me cousin Martha Reilly was tellin' 
 me all manner," said Rosanne, who felt as if she 
 were wakening up out of a very ill-favoured 
 nightmare. 
 
 " Trust Martha Reilly to be gabbin' about 
 what doesn't consarn her," said Dan. " Troth 
 
Rosanne 217 
 
 I well knew your stepmother was puttin' that 
 story about this while back, and divil a word 
 of truth in it. 'Deed Rosanne, that ould 
 woman isn't any too good I'm thinkin'. But 
 sure what matter about the pack of them ? 
 Your aunt Lizzie Mahony's stoppin' wid her 
 sister-in-law away at Drumcastle. I discovered 
 that much yisterday and they bid me be 
 bringin' you to stay up there till we would be 
 gittin' married afore raipin' begins. Maggie 
 Walsh bedad ! Is it idling me time I'd be trampin' 
 over the country after her on a Monday mornin' 
 in the middle of haymakin' ? So hurry up, 
 honey, and git all right agin, the way I can be 
 comin' to fetch you. I'll borry Jimmy Byrne's 
 side-car." 
 
 " And did you hear tell the quare awful thing 
 I done at the Farm throwin' all Mrs Conroy's 
 grand crame to the pigs ? " said Rosanne, the 
 recollection of this disaster now beginning to 
 emerge from the chaos of troubles which had 
 overwhelmed and obliterated it. But Dan 
 replied unappalled : " Why to be sure. And 
 was that any raison for you to be throwin' 
 yourself after it, so to spake ? Not if every 
 sup of crame in Ireland was spilt, and all the 
 pigs in the country swimmin' in the middle of it 
 p 
 
2 1 8 Rosanne 
 
 ay, and your stepmother, and her daughter, 
 and Martha Reilly, that can't be aisy unless 
 she's gabbin', along wid the lot of them." 
 
 So a few Sundays later Rosanne Tierney was 
 married in her gay buff and crimson wreathed 
 hat. It was slightly battered and the worse for 
 its travels, but it would have been ungrateful 
 of her to discard it, as only for its timely 
 turning up on a former critical occasion, it might 
 probably enough at that moment have been 
 worn by a forlorn little distracted vagrant, 
 instead of adorning the proud and happy head 
 of Mrs Daniel McClean. 
 
 THE END. 
 
 TURNBULL AND SPEARS, PRINTERS, EDINBURGH. 
 
YB 74188 
 
 R 
 
 M239399 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY