ust be worth, I'm thinking, close on one hundred pounds to-day."
As the priest did not answer, he said, "I wouldn't be surprised if she
was worth another fifty."

"Hardly as much as that," said the priest.

"Hadn't her aunt the house we're living in before mother came to
Kilmore, and they used to have the house full of lodgers all the
summer. It's true that her aunt didn't pay her any wages, but when she
died she left her a hundred pounds, and she has been making money ever
since."

This allusion to Biddy's poultry reminded the priest that he had once
asked Biddy what had put the idea of a poultry farm into her head, and
she had told him that when she was taking up the lodgers' meals at her
aunt's she used to have to stop and lean against the banisters, so
heavy were the trays.

"One day I slipped and hurt myself, and I was lying on my back for more
than two years, and all the time I could see the fowls pecking in the
yard, for my bed was by the window. I thought I would like to keep
fowls when I was older."

The priest remembered the old woman standing before him telling him of
her accident, and while listening he had watched her, undecided whether
she could be called a hunchback. Her shoulders were higher than
shoulders usually are, she was jerked forward from the waist, and she
had the long, thin arms, and the long, thin face, and the pathetic eyes
of the hunchback. Perhaps she guessed his thoughts. She said:--

"In those days we used to go blackberrying with the boys. We used to
run all over the hills."

He did not think she had said anything else, but she had said the words
in such a way that they suggested a great deal--they suggested that she
had once been very happy, and that she had suffered very soon the loss
of all her woman's hopes. A few weeks, a few months, between her
convalescence and her disappointment had been all her woman's life. The
thought that life is but a little thing passed across the priest's
mind, and then he looked at Pat Connex and wondered what was to be done
with him. His conduct at the wedding would have to be inquired into,
and the marriage that was being arranged would have to be broken off if
Kate's flight could be attributed to him.

"Now, Pat Connex, we will go to Mrs. M'Shane. I shall want to hear her
story."

"Sure what story can she tell of me? Didn't I run out of the house away
from Kate when I saw what she was thinking of? What more could I do?"

"If Mrs. M'Shane t