d next, with a rough shock of dismay, that her
cloak no longer lay on the window seat where she had left it. From that
moment she never felt any real doubts about what had befallen her,
though for some time she kept on trying to conjure them up, and searched
wildly round and round and round her little room, like a distracted bee
strayed into the hollow furze-bush, before she sped over to Mrs.
O'Driscoll with the news of her loss.

It spread rapidly through Lisconnel, and brought the neighbors together
exclaiming and condoling, though not in great force, as there was a fair
going on down beyant, which nearly all the men and some of the women had
attended. This was accounted cruel unlucky, as it left the place without
any one able-bodied and active enough to go in pursuit of the thief. A
prompt start might have overtaken him, especially as he was said to be a
"thrifle lame-futted"; though Mrs. M'Gurk, who had seen him come down
the hill, opined that "'twasn't the sort of lameness 'ud hinder the
miscreant of steppin' out, on'y a quare manner of flourish he had in a
one of his knees, as if he was gatherin' himself up to make an offer at
a grasshopper's lep, and then thinkin' better of it."

Little Thady Kilfoyle reported that he had met the strange man a bit
down the road, "leggin' it along at a great rate, wid a black rowl of
somethin' under his arm that he looked to be crumplin' up as small as he
could,"--the word "crumpling" went acutely to Mrs. Kilfoyle's
heart,--and some long-sighted people declared that they could still
catch glimpses of a receding figure through the hovering fog on the way
toward Sallinbeg.

"I'd think he'd be beyant seein' afore now," said Mrs. Kilfoyle, who
stood in the rain, the disconsolate centre of the group about her door;
all women and children except old Johnny Keogh, who was so bothered and
deaf that he grasped new situations slowly and feebly, and had now an
impression of somebody's house being on fire. "He must ha' took off wid
himself the instiant me back was turned, for ne'er a crumb had he
touched of the pitaties."

"Maybe he'd that much shame in him," said Mrs. O'Driscoll.

"They'd a right to ha' choked him, troth and they had," said Ody
Rafferty's aunt.

"Is it chokin'?" said young Mrs. M'Gurk, bitterly. "Sure the bigger
thief a body is, the more he'll thrive on whatever he gits; you might
think villiny was as good as butter to people's pitaties, you might so.
Sharne how are y