tion seemed less utterly beyond everybody's reach.

Next to his cousin, Joe Egan, a stunted, starved-looking sprissawn of a
lad, perhaps the most appreciative of his admirers was big Hugh
McInerney, whom people were apt to call an omadhawn. He also was,
comparatively speaking, a stranger at Lisconnel, having come there only
that spring to give John O'Driscoll a hand with the building of his mud
cabin, after which he stayed about doing what odd jobs offered at that
slack season of the year. Now and then he tramped on distillery business
for Felix O'Beirne, and generally acquitted himself in a manner which
appeared worthy of contempt to young Ody Rafferty, who was his companion
on these expeditions. Ody expressed his opinion in unqualified terms,
saying, "Sure it 'ud disgust you to see him moonin' along like an ould
donkey strayed out of a fair." But his senior partner, rather to his
annoyance, persisted in replying, "But, mind you, the chap's no fool."
He had nobody belonging to him at Ballybrosna, whence he came, and some
people said that he had been a workhouse child.

At the time of Denis O'Meara's arrival, he was darning the widow Joyce's
thatch for her, and "not killin' himself ever the job," as people said,
when they reckoned how many days he had been visible crawling about on
the top of her little house, a conspicuous position in which he looked,
Mrs. Con Ryan remarked, "a quarer great gawk than he did on dry lan'."
He was occupied thus on the first afternoon that Denis walked up there
with some of the other lads, and while they talked to Mrs. Joyce and
Theresa underneath, the thatcher took a leisurely and critical survey of
the scarlet and golden newcomer, from his wonderfully polished boots to
his sleek dark head and fierce moustache. The verdict he pronounced to
himself with unfeigned satisfaction was, "Grandeur's no name for him."
Hugh himself, of large and lumbering frame, had a shag of reddish
flaxen hair, which made thatch-like eaves above his small, light-blue
eyes and high burnt-brick-coloured cheek-bones. He wore whitey-brown
rags. After the rest had gone on and in, he slithered down to the ground
and told Theresa, who was still standing by the door, that she didn't
look the size of a bit of a lady-bird beside the soldier fellow. If
anybody else had made this personal remark, Theresa might have been a
little hurt by it, as she wished herself of more imposing stature; but
sure nobody minded poor Hugh McIn