rst, too, they speculated much about the circumstances
which had brought the curious trio together beneath one thatch, and
found it especially hard to conjecture how the daft little vagrant had
come into possession of sundry tables and chairs. All its members,
however, being incommunicative persons, no satisfactory elucidation of
these points was arrived at in Lisconnel.

The coalescence of Big Anne's and the Dummy's fortunes is a simple
history enough. Anne Fannin, while yet a youngish woman, was left alone
in the world to do for herself in her little wayside cabin. Without a
dowry to recommend her rough-hewn features and large-boned ungainliness,
she never had any suitors, and she found it as much as she could
contrive to make out her single living by means of her "bit of poultry"
and her pig. Nevertheless, when her nearest neighbours--the
Golighers--died, leaving their daughter Winnie, "who had niver got her
speech, the crathur," to live on charity or the rates, what else was a
body to do except take her in? Anne would have put this question to you
with a sincere want of resource. So Winnie Goligher transferred to Anne
Fannin's house, herself and all her worldly goods, which consisted of
the clothes she had on, and a prayer-book, and a lame duck, and
thenceforward the two "got along the best way they could."

Mad Bell's history has more complications in it. They began one pleasant
April day when she was only a slip of a lass, who had taken a little
place at the Hunts' farm near her home, for the purpose of saving up a
few pounds against her marriage with Richard McBirney. She had been
given an unexpected holiday, and was running home across the fresh,
spring-green grass-fields, thinking to take her people by surprise, when
she came to a hedge-gap whence you look down into a steep-banked lane.
And at the foot of the bank Richard McBirney was sitting with his arm
round her sister Lizzie's waist.

To a dispassionate observer this transference of his attentions might
have seemed a matter of small moment. Most of their acquaintances, for
example, were just as well satisfied that he should court Eliza as
Isabella. But the sight turned all the current of her life awry. For it
set her off rushing away from it across the same sunny green fields, and
she never came home again. Nor ever again would she settle down quietly
anywhere. She had a strong, clear voice and a taste for music, and this
led her to take to singing ballad