Although Laraghmena is no great distance from Lisconnel as the crow flies, but little intercourse takes place between the two hamlets. For the crow's flight would be over a rugged mountain ridge, sinking into a trackless expanse of bog, which often spreads rough and wet walking before wayfarers who have to experience it at closer quarters than those who merely throw down a flapping shadow as they pass. And round by the road is a good long tramp, not to be lightly undertaken. So it does not happen half a dozen times in the year, perhaps, that anybody comes from thence to Lisconnel, and our visits thither are fewer still. The neighbours say that the people up there do be very poor entirely, and are wont to use a commiserating tone when speaking of them. But their knowledge of the locality and its inhabitants is by no means intimate, and would be even less so, were it not that Theresa Joyce and her brother Mick, the remnant of Mrs. Kilfoyle's family, are now living there, which makes a connecting link.

Laraghmena is scattered rather wildly over the slopes of a grey mountain that shoulders the sea at the point where its foam comes nearest to Lisconnel. Some of the cabins stand so low along the shore that the shingle knocks clatteringly at their doors when the tide is full and rough; and other some are perched so high up on the hillside that they constantly disappear from view behind a curtain of the pale mists which haunt its summit, creeping to and fro. When one of these little white dwellings, with its field-fleck beside it, emerges from the clouds, you feel as if the slightly improbable had happened, since at such a height you would have expected nothing but the appropriate rocks and swampy patches. There was once a French princess who would no doubt have wondered why on earth any people should choose to live and farm in such unchancy places. Rather than that she would have ploughed herself up a little bit of the rich green land which spreads in broad tracts round about, with sometimes sheep nibbling over it, and here and there a few deer. But the views of this young lady are represented as having been so far in advance of her age that she seems hardly possible as an historical personage, and withdraws into the myth-mists. To that region certainly belongs the ancient chronicle in which we read how the Irish Nemedians, revolting against the intolerable deal of cream and butter and wheaten meal exacted from them by their oppressors, the Fomorians, those ferocious African pirates, emigrated to Hellas, in hope of better things, but were at last driven back home to escape the heavier yoke of the Athenians, who compelled them to: "Dig clay in the valleys, and carry it in leathern bags to the top of the highest mountains, and the most craggy rocks, in order to form a soil upon those barren places, and make them fruitful, and able to bear corn." That history should repeat itself is, of course, to be recognised as merely a commonplace fact; but a myth reproducing itself in the shape of events happening visibly before our eyes, is a rarer phenomenon. And it seems to be occurring whenever a string of Laraghmenians come plodding up their winding mountain-path under the burden of heavy creels filled with earth, or oftener with slippery brown sea-wrack and leathery weed. For it is in this way that whatever scanty foothold their starveling crops may find, has been fashioned and maintained in the stony little fields. Year by year, as the blustery days of late autumn darken into winter, the steep-ledged path is wetted all along with sea-water, and bestrewn with dark trails and tough tawny pods out of the dripping creels, until it grows as sharply ocean-odorous as the beach, while the many bare feet are continually toiling slowly up and quickly pattering down it. Yet their efforts are rewarded by only meagre and stunted growths; so intractable is the material upon which they are expended. Micky Joyce has been heard to declare, as he took a despondent bird's-eye view of his holding, that "you might as well be thryin' to raise crops in the crevices of the stone walls."

However, as we were just now shown, these dwellers at Laraghmena have another resource to fall back upon. In fact, they have nothing less than the wide sea as a supplement to their bit of land. The queer small boats hauled up on the strand, and the dark-brown net festooning the rafters, betoken that, as does also the bit of salt-fish hung against the wall, pallid and juiceless, a shadowy, wraith-like looking viand. But the bounty of the sea has limits; it does not yield up its stores for nothing, but takes as well as gives. And it helps itself sometimes on a liberal scale. Some years ago, for instance, it took poor Thady Joyce and several of his companions, who had gone off in a couple of luggers after the herrings. The event is remembered with awe at Laraghmena, because in that wild March gloaming Con the Quare One had met Thady himself face to face stepping up the winding path, and had given him good evening, and asked him how he had got all dripping wet, just at the very time when the unlucky lad must have been lying drowned miles and miles from there, among the surges of Galway Bay. Other such toll has often been levied since then; for the curraghs and pookawns in which Laraghmena goes to sea are frail craft to cope with the billows come rolling, maybe, from the fogbanks of Newfoundland, and blasts that have cooled their breath among hills of ice before they sweep across the Atlantic. Now and then a boat comes to grief even on the short voyage made for the purpose of cutting wrack from the shelves of the black-reef that lies a bit off the shore. So, on the whole, the inhabitants of Laraghmena may be considered to pay dearly for their supplies of fish and seaweed; and we at Lisconnel, though we live beyond reach of such things, and have few substitutes for them, are not far wrong in speaking of the people up there as "rael poor entirely."

Yet they themselves would not by any means have it supposed that they "think bad," as they call it, of their fortunes and habitation. On the contrary, whatever their private opinion may be, they are disposed to uphold the merits of the place in public, and to prove themselves sudden and quick in resentment of any outsiders' disparaging criticism. The most deadly insult that can be offered to a Laraghmenian as such, is an allusion to the libellous report which has somehow become current to the effect that his Riverence at Drumroe, the nearest parish, always sends over a special messenger on Saturday night to remind them of the morrow's Mass; the innuendo being that Laraghmena's out-of-the-way situation, and general want of culture, preclude its inhabitants from knowing the day of the week. This is why an innocent-seeming remark such as, "Well, boys, it's Tuesday this mornin'," has been known to set blackthorns whirling wildly.

Something of the sort occurred at Sallenmore fair, one day in last September, when Matt Doyne and Andy Sheridan from Lisconnel fell in with their acquaintances, Larry Sullivan and Felix Morrough, from Laraghmena. After they had fought as long as seemed good to them, they exchanged what news they had. The most important piece was that Larry and Felix were presently setting off to the States. They were rather urgent in advising the other two lads to join their party; but Andy said that everything would go to sticks at home if he was out of it, and Matt averred that his mother would be of the opinion she was lost and kilt entirely, if he so much as mentioned any such an idea. "And herself wid your brother Terence at home to be keepin' her company," objected Felix. "Sure there's me mother wid ne'er another crathur in the world, you may say, but meself, and she's never done this last six months persuadin' me to go along."

"Then it's the quare woman she must be, bedad," said Matt, "unless it's yourself's the quare bosthoon on her entirely, and maybe that's liker;" a rejoinder which brought on a renewal of hostilities.

Just at this time a spell of fine weather, very bright and serene, had been brooding over Lisconnel. It was the early spring of autumn, when leaves and berries here and there were taking a blossom-like vividness; the frost-touched brier-sprays seemed to have found and dipped in the same red that had dyed the young buds and shoots of April. The air was so still that the seeded dandelions stood day after day with their fairy globes unbereft of a single downy dart, like little puffs of vapour among the grasses. A soft mist rounded off all the bogland, holding in a drowse the sunbeams that steeped it, and letting them waken to their full golden glory at the very heart of noon. But one morning the haze began to thicken and darken on the horizon, as if wafts of murky smoke were blown through it, and towards evening massy shapes of black clouds came slowly lifting themselves up, some with outlines curved like bosky clumps of wood, some ruggedly ledged and angled like a drift of begrimed icebergs. By sunset the far west was all a sullen gloom veined with lurid, tawny streaks, and mottled with deeper stains. Old Peter Sheridan, who is reputed to have "a great eye for the weather," turned it forebodingly upon the prospect, and said the sky was "the moral for all the world of the back of an ould brindled bull, and he'd never known any good come of that manner of apparance."

And true for him. Before sunrise next morning Lisconnel was roused by the rÉveille of a crashing thunder-peal, which preluded a violent storm. It is seldom that one booms and rattles so loudly over our bogland, or glares with so fierce a flame. Brian Kilfoyle, taking a rapid observation through his door, said, "Be the powers of smoke, I never seen the aquil of that. You might think they was after whitewashin' the whole place wid blindin' fire. Here's out of it, sez I." And he retreated blinking to his dark corner. At the height of it, even Andy Sheridan, who is probably our freest thinker, felt secretly relieved to know that his stepmother and his sisters were saying their prayers. The arrangement seemed to give him a sense of security without claiming any concessions from his superior strength of mind. But in the end the perilous clouds rolled away growling and gleaming towards the mountains and the sea, leaving only one victim behind—the Quigley's little goat, who had been struck dead by a lightning flash, to the sorrow of her owners, and the awe of all Lisconnel in contemplation of the black and white body stretched out still on her wide grazing-ground.

The storm, however, seemed to have broken up the fair weather, and the days that followed it were blustery and rainy. On the next of them Larry Sullivan and Felix Morrough were seen passing through Lisconnel, evidently equipped for a journey. Larry, who had parted from no near friends, was apparently in good spirits; but Felix looked so much cast down that his contemporaries refrained from any references to the days of the week, and the pair went on their way unmolested amongst the lengthening shadows. They reported the storm to have been terrific altogether up at Laraghmena. The Widdy Bourke's thatch was set in a blaze, "and it was a livin' miracle that the whole of them wasn't frizzled up like a pan of fryin' herrin's."

It may have been ten days or so after this that a good many of the neighbours had dropped in one evening at Mrs. Doyne's. She had been ailing of late, and old Dan O'Beirne had stepped up from the forge to prescribe for her, and cheer her with accounts of how finely young Dan and her daughter Stacey were getting on at their place down below in Duffclane. The rest of the party had assembled merely for company and conversation. It included members of nearly all our families—Kilfoyles and Quigleys and Ryans and Raffertys and the Widdy M'Gurk and Big Anne. Presently Judy Ryan, who was looking out of the door, had an announcement to make.

"Whethen now, and who might yous be when you're at home? There's two women comin' along the road from Sallinbeg ways, I dunno the looks of at all, I should say; but the rain's mistin' thick between me and them. Carryin' bundles they are. If they're not any of the Tinkers we're right enough. One of them's a little ould body, and the other's a good size bigger. Strangers they are. Och, mercy on me, have I eyes in me head at all? How strange she is! Sure it's Theresa Joyce herself. But we haven't seen her this great while, and who she has along wid her I couldn't be tellin' you. A feeble sort of crathur she looks to be, accordin' to the way she's foostherin' along."

When these two travellers arrived at the Doynes' door, nobody failed to recognise Theresa Joyce, notwithstanding the estrangement of a long absence; and she hastened to introduce her unknown companion, who kept a tight clutch on her arm, as if afraid to let go, and looked at nobody's face, but seemed to listen from one to the other. She was, it appeared, the widow Morrough from Laraghmena, who had been struck blind by the lightning in the great storm Friday was a week—the sight of her eyes clean destroyed with one flash as she was throwing a bit of food to the fowl at her door. And the last child she had belonging to her set off the next morning to the States. And now she herself was going into the Union down at Moynalone, for what else could she be doing, that couldn't see her hand before her face? So Theresa was bringing her down, and they thought they might have got as far as Duffclane against night; but the creature wasn't well used yet to walking in the dark, so they were slow coming, and they'd hardly do it.

Such was the outline of Mrs. Morrough's history up to date, and its rehearsal had at once the effect of arousing a sympathetic bustle about her, which did not subside until she sat a wet and wayworn guest, in the most comfortable hearth-corner, and had been provided with a cup of the tea that Mrs. Doyne had made herself in her character of an invalid. She now sat on one side of the blind woman, and stirred her tea for her, and on the other Dan O'Beirne shook his head in regretful confirmation of the opinion pronounced by the Drumroe doctor, which was reported to be that mortal man couldn't do her a thraneen of good. Meanwhile Theresa Joyce, who was likewise bedrenched and weary, found a seat in the opposite corner, where her nearest neighbours were Ody Rafferty, and her niece-in-law, Mrs. Brian Kilfoyle, with her daughter Rose.

"Well, Theresa, it's the long while since you've stepped over to see us," Ody said, starting the conversation, "and it's the soft evenin' you've chose to be comin'. Your shawl's dhreeped. Take it off, and I'll give it a shake above the fire. Bedad, Theresa, the two of us has been wearin' the dusty male-bags on our heads since the time I seen you first. As black as a sloe you was; but now it's liker the blossom it's turned."

"And time for it," said Theresa. "Sure I'm over sivinty year of age now, any way, every day of it—and the long days there was among them, God knows."

"But wid all that, ne'er a one of them was long enough for you to be findin' a man to your mind in it," said Ody. "And I declare to goodness I dunno but maybe it's the very sinsible woman you were for that same. Sure meself was a great while afore ever I thought of axin' Biddy, and for anythin' I can tell I might ha' done better if I'd held me tongue a bit longer and then said nothin', as the sayin' is. I was ould enough to know me own mind any way. But, musha, for that matter, Rose there 'ill prisintly be settin' up to think she's ould enough to know hers, and it's twinty chances if she has as much wit as you."

"And why would she," said Theresa, "or anybody be wishin' it to her? Oh, let that alone. There's a dale of diff'rint sorts of wit, and no raison why one of them shouldn't be as good as another. Look at her grandmother, me sister Bessy, it's plinty of paice and comfort she had wid her marryin'."

This was quite true, as although she had been rather early widowed, and her only daughter had married an emigrant, her son and his wife had taken such care of her, and made so much of her, that the neighbours had never thought of calling her the widdy, a title reserved for a woman left struggling alone; and she had remained Mrs. Kilfoyle to the end of her days.

"And look at the poor crathur there, what she's come to," said Ody, instancing the tragical figure of the widow Morrough.

"Ah, the saints may pity her," said Theresa. "But the likes of such bad luck happins few people married or single, thank God."

"It's a quare unnathural young villin her son must be," said Mrs. Brian, "to skyte off and lave her that-a-way. Sorra the bit he can be good for."

"'Deed, now, Norah woman, that's the very notion is disthressin' me," said Theresa, "for I dunno but it's after usin' him ill, I am. You see the way of it was the poor sowl—poor Mrs. Morrough—had the great dread of the say upon her, be raison of her husband and her father gettin' dhrowned at the fishin', so she'd always the fear in her mind of the same thing happ'nin' her couple of boys. Howane'er, the eldest of them went off to California a good few years back, and was doin' pretty middlin' well out there the last she heard of him, but that's a long while ago now; about gettin' married he was. But Felix, the lad she had at home wid her until the other day, often enough he was bound to be on the wather, after the fish and the sayweed, if he was to get his livin' at all. And disthracted she was seem' him goin' out in their ould boat, that's laiks enough in her to sink the biggest ship ever set sail, and herself wid scarce the width to hould a sizable flounder. Sez I to Felix one wild evenin', when we was argufyin' wid him, that sure the little loadin' he could be puttin' in her 'ud never be worth losin' his life for. But sez he to me, the bit of food they'd put in their mouths was littler agin, and yet they might be losin' their lives for want of it. And ne'er a word had I to say to that. But one night last winter he was as nearly lost as anythin' in a squall, and after that his mother would be tormintin' herself worse than she was before. So she set her heart entirely on gettin' him to take off to the States, and be out of the way of fishin' and dhrowndin'. She'd ha' gone wid him herself, on'y they said she was too ould, and spoilin' his chances she'd be. A long while it was before he'd hear any talk of it. The whole summer she was persuadin' him; but at last he made up his mind he would. 'Twas no notion of his own to be lavin' her, I'll say that for him."

"Whethen now, but that was as curious a plan as ever I heard tell of for keepin' a person from dhrowndin'," said Ody; "to be sendin' him off over the rowlin' says, sailin' goodness can tell you how many hunderds and tousands of miles. What was she dhramin' of at all at all to go do such a thing?"

"Ah, but sure it's a diff'rint sort of sailin'," said Theresa. "Why, they say one of them big stamers 'ud carry a couple of our little boats along wid her, and you'd scarce notice she had them on board. Terrible safe they must be if they're that size."

"And morebetoken," said Mrs. Brian, "there's such a sight of ships comin' and goin' between this and the States, wouldn't you think that agin now they'd ha' got a kind of track line, crossin' over, as if it was a manner of road they was follyin' that nothin's apt to happen them on, and not sthrayin' about permisc-yis in the storms?"

"Thrack?" said Ody, shrilly. "Bedad, then, its the quare thrack, and the quare places it brings them into. D'you know that, for one thing, they go slap through the Bay of Bisky?"'

"And is that an ugly bay?" said Mrs. Brian.

"You may call it that. I wouldn't be sayin' so to herself over there," said Ody, with much careful mystery. "For it might be on'y discouragin' the crathur worse than she is already. But it's the place where the Seven Oceans of the World meet. Ay, indeed, ma'am—but don't be lettin' on to her. I was spakin' to a man who had a brother went through it, and he said the ragin' and tearin' of them all flowin' together 'ud terrify the sinses out of King Solomon. They had the great big stamer he was in whirlin' round and round and round, the same as if it was a float on one of its own paddlewheels, he couldn't tell how many days and nights. Thracks, how are you. It's a very ready one there is in it to the bottom of the say."

"Still a good few people gets through it safe enough," said Theresa, "ay, and comes back through it of an odd while."

"But how many's lost in it that you never hear tell of?" said Ody. "And besides that, the man I was talkin' to tould me his brother was never right in his head after the tossin' he got. It's a poor case to be landin' ravin' mad in a sthrange counthry, supposin' you get there itself. But me own notion is that if people's well off, they've a right to stop where they are, and if they're misfort'nit, they've a chance any way of better bad luck stayin' at home."

Ody stated his own notion authoritatively, and Theresa looked depressed by the dilemma in which it seemed to place the emigrant.

"'Deed, now, maybe it's a bad turn I'm after doin' the two of them," she said; "but poor Mrs. Morrough, many a time she sez to me it 'ud be the greatest comfort to her at all to get quit of the fear she was in continyal wheniver he went out wid the ould boat. Sure she might be a bit lonesome, she'd say, but after all what great company was he to her when half the time she would be drowndin' him under the rowl of the say, like his poor father and grandfather? And wid the most he could do it's hard set he was to make what 'ud keep him. So she'd planned she'd be able to conthrive well enough wid her hins and her spriggin' work, till Felix could be sendin' her over a thrifle. A very cliver woman she was at the spriggin'; the handkercher corners she'd work was rael iligant. Pence a-piece she got for them, and I've known her finish a dozen in three days.

"Och, but I got a turn on the Friday mornin' when I stepped down to her place to see what way they were after the storm, and there she was sittin' crouched up in a corner, and screechin' to me to know who was comin' in, and I standin' before her eyes in the middle of a sun-bame. And 'Glory be to God,' sez she, 'that it's yourself, for you'll have the sinse to give me a hand wid endeavourin' to keep the knowledge of what's after happenin' me from Felix, the way he won't be purvinted of goin' to-morra. Sorra a fut would he if he knew aught ailed me; and then sure he might stay at home for good and all; and dhrownded he'll be, and meself'ill go deminted.' And sure I thought it was maybe no thing to be doin', and so I said to her. But it seemed the heart of her was to be broke altogether if anythin' 'ud hinder him gettin' out of it. And then I was mindin' the father and grandfather of him, the way they went, and me brother, poor Thady, and I couldn't tell but I might ha' raison to think bad of biddin' him stay; and if he did, sure perhaps he couldn't be keepin' her at all, and she so helpless; it's better able he might be to help her out in the States. And sorry I'd ha' been to disappoint the crathur of the first wish she'd took a thought of sittin' in the dark of her misfortin. So the ind of it was I settled I'd stop wid her for that day, and thry could we let on there was nothin' amiss when Felix come in, that was out somewhere since early in the mornin' before the storm began.

"But 'deed now it was the quare conthrivin' we had after he'd come home. And where'd he been but off down to Drumroe gettin' her an iligant big taypot for a keepsake? So the sorra a stim of it, in coorse, could she see; and I done me best biddin' her look at the grand gilt handle, and the wrathe of pink roses on it, and she'd say the same thing after me; but sure its noways very aisy to fall into an admiration of a taypot you've never set eyes on; and I misdoubt the poor lad thought she wasn't so much plased with it as he expected. And then he'd be walkin' in and out, and axin' for this and that he was to put in his bundle; and she could on'y be tellin' him where to look for them, instid of readyin' them up for him herself. And the pair of socks she'd promised him she couldn't get to finish—rael fretted she was wid it all. Howsome'er one way or the other we made a shift, till poor Felix went off in the grey of the mornin' wid ne'er a notion of anythin'. Sez he to her: 'You'll be seem' me steppin' in agin one of these days;' and sez she: 'Ay will I—as sure as I'll see the sun shinin';' so he consaited she was well enough contint—but the two of them was thinkin' diff'rint things.

"Ne'er a word of it we said to anybody before Felix was gone, or else somebody 'ud ha' been safe to ha' tould him, for there's plinty of people couldn't be goin' about widout tellin' everythin' they hear any more than a wasp could fly widout buzzin' its wings. And then we got the docther to her, but he couldn't do e'er a hand's turn. Sure what could anybody do agin the lightnin', that's a sort of miracle, you may say, unless it was wid another one?"

"And I dunno has people any call to be settin' themselves up to thry do them," said Mrs. Brian. "We'd better lave the like to Them that understands the nathur of such things."

"Ah, I should suppose we'd a right to be thryin' whativer we get the chance to," said Theresa, "and that's little enough, the Lord knows. Plinty of things there is kep' up out of the raich of our meddlin' wid them."

"Ay bedad, or else it's the quare regulatin' we'd be givin' them now and agin—we would so," said Ody, regretfully. "Och, but there's an odd few good jobs I'd give more than a thrifle to be puttin' me hand to this minyit if I could get a hould of them."

"And that's the way it is, I'm afeared, wid the lightnin'-blindin'," said Theresa. "Howane'er, up at Laraghmena we'd ha' done the best we could for her, if she'd ha' been contint to ha' sted there; we'd ha' conthrived among us all to keep her well enough. But not a bit of her would for all we could do or say. She wouldn't be a burden on the neighbours she said. You see she's proud in her mind, the crathur, that's what it is, goodness help her."

"And when a body has that sort of a notion," said Ody, "you might as aisy crack an egg ind-ways as get it out of their head."

"So that's the way of it," said Theresa. "But if you could be tellin' me whether it's wrong I done or right, you know more than meself. Felix 'ud be for killin' me if he knew, that's sartin, and small blame to him I was thinkin' part of the while comin' along. For bad work there's apt to ha' been, sure enough, in anythin' that inds in landin' a body in the Union."

The blind woman in her corner across the hearth seemed to have caught the last word, for she abruptly said, "Ay, ay, it's there I'm goin', and the first of the Morroughs iver wint on the rates, or the Conroys aither. But I'm not takin' their name along wid me; troth no; sorra the Ellen Morrough 'ill they find in it."

"Sure not at all, woman dear," said Theresa. "Why, Mrs. Doyne, it's great work the two of us had this day comin' along the road, plannin' a fine name for Mrs. Morrough to have in the Union', for she sez it's none any dacint poor people own she'll be bringin' into it. So we've settled she's to be Mrs. Skeffington Yelverton. That's an iligant soundin' one, isn't it, ma'am?"

Everybody expressed admiration, and a forlorn glimmer of complacency at the arrangement passed over even the sorrowful countenance of Mrs. Skeffington Yelverton herself, as she sat in her ragged old wisp of a shawl. She was holding under it her grand new delft teapot, whose beauties she should never see; though by this time much fingering had made her familiar with the outlines of its raised pink-rose wreath. Then Theresa Joyce said, "We ought to be steppin' on wid ourselves, if we're to get to Duffclane before dark. The evenin's took up a bit. I see the sky there turnin' like goulden glass agin the windy-pane." But the neighbours protested against their setting forward again; and it was agreed that they should sleep the night at the Kilfoyles'.

When this point had been decided, Mrs. Morrough said, "Would that be the say—the rustlin' I hear outside there?"

Upon this people looked ruefully at her and at each other, as if the question had given them a glimpse into the darkness in which she was sitting.

"Ah, no, ma'am," said Mrs. Doyne, "that's on'y the sedge-laves in the win' round the big pool just back of the house. Few days of the year there is, summer or winter, but they'll be shoosh-sooin' that way. A dhrary sort of noise it is to my mind. I do be tired listenin' to it in the night sometimes."

"Sure there's ne'er a dhrop of say-wather nearer us, ma'am, than the place you're after quittin' out of," said Judy Ryan, "it's the quare whillaloo it 'ud have to be risin' before we'd hear it that far."

"Well, well," said the blind woman, "yous are the very lucky people, I'm thinkin', all of yous, that see the shinin' of the sun, and live beyond the sound of the say."

Her remark was followed by a short silence, during which her hearers were, perhaps, questing for consolatory rejoinders rather than congratulating themselves upon their own luckiness. It was Big Anne who broke the pause, saying, with the best intentions, "Ah, sure, ma'am dear, plase God, you won't be so, and we won't be so;" a sentiment which apparently did not meet with the approval of Ody Rafferty, as he frowned bushily at her and said in a testy undertone, "Musha, good gracious, woman, what talk have you out of you at all?"

Just at this moment sounds, the nature of which could not easily be mistaken, rose up close by—shouts and laughter and thumps and trampling of feet. People who ran quickly to the door were in time to see a knot of youths fall confusedly out of the house over the way—the Quigleys'—obviously, to judge by their subsequent proceedings, for the purpose of continuing a scuffle with ampler elbow room. But it was only for a very brief space that their wrestling and skirmishing among the puddles held anybody's attention. That was speedily diverted to the far more extraordinary and astonishing behaviour of their visitor, Mrs. Morrough. For she suddenly sprang up off her chair, exclaiming, "Saints above—it's Paddy—that's Paddy's voice—him that I haven't set eyes on for nine year next Easter—and there's Felix yellin' too! The both of them's come back, glory be to God!" And so saying out of the house she ran, and across the road as straight as a dart, she who not an hour before had been led gropingly in, and would have put her foot among the glowing hearth-sods, if her guides had not pulled her away.

The neighbours could at first look on in only mute amazement, but in any case the two boys and she were for some time so intricately entangled that any attempt to elicit any explanation would have been futile. When at last questions and answers were possible, no very lucid account of the matter was forthcoming. To the many voices that demanded: "Is it seein' you are, woman alive? Is it seein' you are?" all Mrs. Morrough could answer was: "Ay, bedad am I, and as well as iver I done in me life—praise be to goodness. Sure I dunno what way it was, but me sight came back to me all of a flash, the same as it went, just the very minyit I was hearin' the lads shoutin'. Och, Paddy, avic, but you're the grand man grown; and Felix, och now, to be seein' you agin, and everythin' else as clear as clear. It's meself's the lucky woman this day—glory be to God and Mary."

In short, the marvellous restoration of her sight is to this day a miracle, very freshly in remembrance at Lisconnel and Laraghmena, where the inhabitants know little about paralysed optic nerves, and might perhaps continue to wonder none the less even if they knew more. Beside it the unexpected reappearance of the two young Morroughs seemed almost a commonplace incident, though Paddy's fine new suit and gold watch-chain were, indeed, very exceptional things at Lisconnel. His story ran that he had prospered highly of late out in California, having made enough to set him up grandly on a good bit of land in the old country, and give Felix a fair start, and keep the old mother in comfort all the rest of her life. With which objects in view they had landed at Queenstown, he and his wife, a girl belonging to very respectable, decent people in the county Wicklow. "So next mornin', walkin' along the Quay, who should I see but me gintleman there, and another chap along with him, and both of them lookin' as wild as if they'd been caught. And says I to Sally, 'You bet, that's Felix from our place at home;' and right I was, and just slick in time to stop him goin' on board." Paddy had then left his wife with her family in Wicklow, where he had seen a promising farm; and he and Felix were now on their way to fetch their mother thither.

"And it's in the quare consternation you'd ha' been," said Theresa Joyce, "if you'd landed up at Laraghmena, and found her quit out of it the way she was."

"And that would ha' happint us," said Felix, "if it hadn't been for young Dan Ryan in there just now passin' the remark that we couldn't expec' Father Martin to be sendin' us notices all the way to the County Cork, and supposin' I'd very belike missed the right day for the stamer be raison of it. For if we hadn't got fightin' and tumblin' out of the house, you might aisy ha' gone along wid yourselves, and niver known we were in the place at all. 'Twas great luck entirely."

Fortune, in truth, had seemingly taken Mrs. Morrough and her affairs into the highest favour. Even the luck-insurance of a trivial loss was not wanting to her, as in her hasty exit she had dropped her new teapot, which broke into many pieces on Mrs. Doyne's floor. So that, as has been said, she never beheld it in its beauty. But the very skies had cleared above her head, swept by a waft of wind that scattered the clouds faster and further than a drift of withered leaves, and the sinking sun broadened in splendour before the eyes that had lost sight of him through ten interminable days. The wet stones on the road glistened like jewels, and the shallowest pools between them held unfathomed deeps of blue, when the Morroughs set off for Laraghmena, where they intended to sleep the night, and bid their friends farewell. "And if it's themselves won't be in the fine astonishment when they set eyes upon you, woman dear!" said Theresa Joyce, "for if you'd been twenty year away thravellin' the world crooked and straight, you couldn't ha' come back a diff'rinter crathur from what you were, and we settin' out this woeful mornin'. Little notion you had what was comin' to you, and it all the while runnin' up your road, so to spake, like the sun racin' the shadows on a windy day. 'Deed now, I'd be goin' along wid you to hear what they'll say to it, but I'm ould you see, and ivery step I've thramped I have the feel of in ivery bone of me body; so I'll stop this night up at Brian's."

"And bedad, ma'am, it's well off you are, if you've the feel of nothin' worse in them," said the querulous voice of old Peter Sheridan, whose acquaintances describe him as being "terrible gathered up with the rheumatism this great while," so great, in fact, that everybody except himself has by this time become accustomed to his condition.

For the most part, however, they were rather pleased faces that watched the three strangers out of sight, the last long beams from the sunset making blink the eyes of nearly all Lisconnel. The west dispread its fiery golden bloom wider every moment as the swelling scarlet disc wheeled lower, burning with orbed flame a hollow path through the kindled haze. One laggard cloud, a great, soft nest of snow, drifted into the heart of it, and out of it again, flushed and glistering, and sailed on, a radiant shape, to meet and eclipse the misty white ghost-moon, faint and dim in the east. Far away over the level bog the light was stealing about in streams like water spilt on a floor.

"Well now, I declare," said Mrs. Brian, "it does one's heart good to see a bit of luck like that happenin' to a body."

"Ay, does it," said Judy Ryan, "the crathur to be gettin' back her sight just in the right minyit of time to see her son comin' home to her. Sure now one might take a plisure in plannin' such a thing, if one had the managin' of them."

"Ah, dear, but I wish somebody 'ud be conthrivin' a bit of good luck for us then," said Mrs. Quigley.

"Maybe there's plinty more where that's comin' from," suggested Brian Kilfoyle, hopefully.

"It's apt to stay there, then," quoth Mrs. Quigley, "for any signs I can see."

"Ay, ma'am, that's me own notion," said Peter Sheridan, bitterly; "I'm thinkin' we'll have to be goin' there, wheriver it is, and lookin' after it for ourselves, if it's good luck we're a-wantin'."

"And I dunno what better we could be doin'," said Theresa Joyce, "than goin' where it is, when we get the chance. Ah, there's the last of the sun," she said, as a quivering red shaft shot up suddenly, and trembled away into nothing on the air. "Ay, for sure, he goes down a great way off out on the bog; the crathur 'ud ha' been plased to see it. 'Deed no, I dunno anythin' better we could be doin' than goin' after our good luck."

So all through that gathering twilight Mrs. Morrough and her two sons were journeying away with their high fortune to Laraghmena. They were still on the road long after the clear moon had filled the air with shimmering silver, and sent their shadows stretching darkly far over the frosted grass. But Lisconnel had gone to seek, for the time being, its good luck in the land of dreams.

Transcriber's Notes

This book contains inconsistent use of "'ill" contracted with the previous word. See Page 29: "The lads 'ill be" and Page 87: "the Union'ill be shut." These have been left as in the original.

There are also some inconsistent spellings in the dialect that have been left alone. For instance, iligant and illigant.