parture of his earliest friend.

"Could you be keepin' it somewheres safe for me, ma'am?" he said,
showing the soft grey feather to Mrs. Kilfoyle, who was sitting by the
fire with her sons and her future daughter-in-law, and Ody Rafferty's
aunt, and the Widow M'Gurk. "I'll be wearin' it no more. 'Twas she
herself stuck it in for me, but sure I knew well enough all the while
she'd liefer I wouldn't be goin' about wid such things on me head, and
sorra a bit of me will agin."

"Whethen now but yourself's the quare man, Con," said Ody Rafferty's
aunt, "to be takin' up wid that notion these times, when ne'er a differ
it'ill make to her. There might ha' been some sinse in it, if you'd done
it to plase her, but now you're more than a trifle too late wid that. A
day after the fair you are. Sure she'll never set eyes on you or your
old caubeen agin," she said, as if announcing some unthought-of
discovery of her own, "no matter what ould thrash you might take and
stick in it. You might be wearin' a young haystack on your head for
anythin' she could tell."

"That may be or mayn't be," said Con. "But at all evints the next body
that goes there out of this countryside 'ill be very apt to bring her
word. Discoorsin' together they'll be of all the news, and as like as
not he--or it might be she--'ill say to her--'I seen Con the Quare One
goin' the road a while back, and he wid ne'er a thraneen of anythin' in
his hat, good or bad; the same way the other boys are; lookin' rael
dacint and sinsible.' Belike she might be axin' after me herself, and
that 'ud put it in the other body's head. Yourself it may be, Moggy.
Faix now, I wouldn't won'er a bit if it was, for there must be a
terrible great age on you these times. Sure you looked to be an ould,
ould woman the first day I ever beheld you, and that's better than a
dozen year ago."

"Troth then there's plinty of oulder ould people than me, let me tell
you," protested Moggy, who was about ninety, "that you need be settlin'
I'm goin' anywheres next. Musha cock you up. And your own hair turned as
white as sheep's wool on a blackthorn bush."

She seemed so much put out by Con's statement and inference that young
Thady Kilfoyle, always a good-natured lad, sought to soothe her.

"Sure there's no settlin' any such a thing, and for the matter of goin',
the young people often enough get their turn as fast as anybody else.
It's meself," he said, "might be sooner than you bringin' news of yous