nyit. Don't let go of me." And he leant such a heavy dead weight on
him that all Dan could do was to let it slip down and down as softly as
might be, until the snowy earth took it from him.

Ned had followed in spite of the crathurs at home.

CHAPTER X

CON THE QUARE ONE

Among the unfamiliar faces that show themselves now and then at
Lisconnel, some make no second appearance, never coming our way again,
but passing out of our ken as utterly as if their route lay along a
tangent, or the branch of an hyperbola, or other such unreverting line.
We seldom, it is true, get proof positive, as in the case of the
Dermodys, father and son, that they will no more return. Generally their
doing so any day may be supposed possible as long as anybody remembers
to suppose it. But some come back at more or less regular intervals,
like periodic comets, so that if a certain time elapses without bringing
one of them, the neighbours say they wonder what's took him at all,
while some reappear erratically enough to preclude any calculations upon
the subject. Of this latter class was Con the Quare One, who, after his
first arrival, on a summer's evening, now more than a quarter of a
century since, became a rather frequent visitor, usually stopping for a
few days at least, before he resumed his travels. It was conjectured
that these were very extensive, though perhaps less so than Mad Bell's.
But it was even more difficult to obtain a satisfactory report of them
from him than from her. Mrs. M'Gurk said he was "so took up with his own
notions, that he mostly knew no better where he'd been, or what he'd
been doin', than a baste drivin' home from a fair; you might as soon be
axin' questions of one as the other; though when Con chose to give his
mind to it, he knew what he was about as well as anybody else. Sure if
you wanted to know which way he was after comin', as likely as not he'd
talk about nothin' on'y the sorts of clouds he'd been watchin' goin' by
over his head; and 'twould take a cliver body to tell from that what
road he might ha' had under his feet." This incommunicativeness made him
a disappointing guest sometimes by the firesides, where he was finding a
night's lodging; though he might eke out his conversation with a little
twangling on his fiddle, in which the melody would be quite as vague as
his narratives. As for his own earlier history, he never gave any clear
account of it, probably having none to give, and the neigh