' wages. Good-night to you all."

To those in the room it seemed as if he dropped away back into the wan
dusk behind him, and next moment they saw him in motion a few paces
distant, limping fast, and gesticulating as though he were still
carrying on his monologue.

"That old crathur's asthray in his mind, I misdoubt," said old O'Beirne,
"and I wouldn't won'er if he was after gettin' bad thratement among his
own people."

"Goodness pity him," said his sister Bridget. "It's a cruel perishin'
night, and snowin' thicker. Where'll he get to at all? And carryin'
nought but an old stick. We'd better ha' kep' him."

"Sure we couldn't ha' stopped him anyhow," said the blacksmith, "no
more than one of them flustherin' blasts goin' by. When a body's took up
wid onraisonable notions, you might as well be hammerin' could iron as
offerin' to persuade him diff'rint. But he'll maybe turn in at the
Gallahers'."

They watched him until the dark imprints of his receding steps in the
thin snow-sheet could no longer be distinguished, and then Dan closed
the door, shutting out the wide world and the fortune seeker. "Things is
quare and conthrary," he said to himself.

Some two hours afterwards they were all sitting round the fire still. It
was nearly nine o'clock, which is late in Lisconnel, but they found it
hard to detach themselves from the cordial grasp of the warm glow.
Bridget, however, had put by her needles, and begun to tell her beads,
when another knock broke in upon them.

"He's come back belike," said old O'Beirne; but when Dan opened the
door, the person who stood there, though likewise tall and gaunt and
ragged, had grizzled black hair, and was not more than middle-aged. His
face was hollow-cheeked and drawn, and his eyes glittered while he
shivered and panted. The night had grown wilder as the moon sank low,
and the snow went past the door like rapid wafts of ghostly smoke. This
newcomer stumbled into the room without ceremony, as if half blinded,
and said breathlessly--

"Did any of yous be chance see an ould man goin' this road to-day? An
ould ancient man, somethin' lame; be the name of Christie Dermody?"

"Ay, sure enough, himself was in it not so long ago," said old O'Beirne.
"If it hadn't been you, 'twas very apt to ha' been him come back."

In the man's face one trouble seemed to be relieved by another at the
tidings.

"Glory be to goodness, then, that I've heard tell of him at last," he
said. "But God help