for the first time since their troubles, the
girl began to sing "Moll Dhuv in Glanna" while she coiled up her long
tresses.

All that forenoon Mrs. Joyce had happy dreams about the mending of the
family fortunes, which would be effected by Bessy's marriage with Jerry
Dunne. When her neighbour, Mrs. Ryan, looked in, she could not forbear
mentioning the expected call, and was further elated because Mrs. Ryan
at once remarked: "Sure, 'twill be Bessy he's after," though she
herself, of course, disclaimed the idea, saying: "Och musha, ma'am, not
at all." The Ryans were tenants who had also been put out of Clonmena,
and they occupied a cabin adjoining the Joyces', these two dwellings,
backed by the slopes of the Knockawn, forming the nucleus of Lisconnel.

About noon, Paddy, the eldest boy, approached at a hand gallop,
bestriding a donkey which belonged to the gang of men who were still
working on the unfinished road. As soon as the beast reached the
open-work stone wall of the potato-field it resolutely scraped its rider
off, a thing it had been vainly wishing to do all along the fenceless
track. Paddy, however, alighted unconcerned among the clattering stones,
and ran on with his tidings. These were to the effect that he was "after
seein' Jerry Dunne shankin' up from Duffclane ways, a goodish bit below
the indin' of the road, and he wid a great big basket carryin', fit to
hould a young turf-stack."

The intelligence created an agreeable excitement, which was undoubtedly
heightened by the fact of the basket. "Very belike," said Mrs. Ryan,
"he's bringin' somethin' to you, or it might be Bessy." And while Mrs.
Joyce rejoined deprecatingly: "Ah sure, woman alive, what would the poor
lad be troublin' himself to bring us all this way?" she was really
answering her own question with a dozen flattering conjectures. The
basket must certainly contain _something_, and there were so few by any
means probable things that would not at this pinch have come acceptably
to the Joyces' household, where the heavy pitaty sack grew light with
such alarming rapidity, and the little hoard of corn dwindled, and the
childer's appetites seemed to wax larger day by day. She had not quite
made up her mind, when Jerry arrived, whether she would wish for a bit
of bacon--poor Andy missed an odd taste of it so bad--or for another
couple of hens, which would be uncommonly useful now that her own few
had all left off laying.

Mrs. Ryan having discreetly