ould be clear in everybody's
recollection."

Mrs. Joyce, however, said: "Ah, sure maybe the crathur wasn't intindin'
any such great harm all the while, God be good to him. And, anyway,
where he's gone he'll find plinty ready to be spakin' up for him, and
puttin' the best face they can on the matter."

"Ay will he," said old Biddy Ryan, who was calling too, "and bedad it's
one great differ there is, be all accounts, between that place and this.
For here if a misfort'nit body does aught amiss, the first notion the
rest of us have, God forgive us, is to be axin' what worser he was
manin', like as if it was some manner of riddle, that there's bound to
be an answer to, if one could find it."

"'Deed, and I dunno if they haven't very far to look, ma'am," said Mrs.
Carbery, with dignity, "when a chap does his endeavours to take the head
off another man wid a rapin'-hook, ma'am."

"And _I_ dunno, ma'am, for that matter," said old Biddy, also with
dignity, "if it's any such a great dale better to have one's mind took
up wid invintin' other people's bad intintions than if it was wid one's
own."

"Ah, well! I wouldn't be thinkin' too bad of poor Hugh McInerney, at all
events," said Mrs. Joyce. "'Twas maybe a sort of accident, for he seemed
a dacint crathur afore that. Och now, to think it's on'y a few odd weeks
since he was creepin' about over our heads up there, mendin' th' ould
thatch! You'd whiles hear him hummin' away, talkin' to himself like some
sort of big bee--and in his grave to-day! But isn't it a lucky thing
that he's lavin' nobody belongin' to him to be breakin' their hearts
frettin' after him? Theresa, child dear, you've ne'er a stim of light to
be workin' in, sittin' there in the corner."

But Theresa said she had light enough to blind her, and was only
winding a skein, and could see better to do that in the dark. So Mrs.
Carbery passed on to her second piece of news, which, though less
tragical than the first, was not likely to sound very cheerfully in the
ears of some among her audience. It ran that her son Ned was "after
seein' Denis O'Meara down beyant, and that he was doin' finely, next
door to himself again: and that the people in the Town did be sayin' he
was coortin' Mary Anne Neligan, the people's daughter that he was
lodgin' wid--a terrible fortin she was said to have--and that he'd be
very apt to be takin' her along wid him prisintly when his lave was up."
Mrs. Carbery supposed they were none of the