r youth.
Then arose difficulties about "rint," while their landlord, who was new
to the property, had a natural zeal for sweeping it clear of encumbering
tenants. And the end of it was that the three women transferred
themselves to Lisconnel, where they became not the least respected of
its inhabitants.

But these particulars about their antecedents were never learned by the
neighbours there; and the joint ownership of the furniture still
presents itself as one of our unsolved problems. Another of them was
propounded somewhat later, when Mad Bell returned from an unusually long
ramble, during which she had crossed the Liffey by the spacious
O'Connell Bridge, and had heard the boom of the big College bell, and
with her wizened-lemon face had half-scared the smallest-sized children
in villages round about Dublin. For she was wearing an elaborately
fantastic piece of headgear, which moved everybody's curiosity so
strongly that it cannot have been for want of wondering if we failed to
find out how she had come thereby. Strangely incongruous it did
undoubtedly look; yet the stages by which it had descended from its
stand in the milliner's show-room and alighted upon the head of the
little wandering-witted tramp, were much fewer than might have been
supposed probable.

One blustery March morning when Mrs. M'Bean was on her way along by the
low sea-wall to buy a bit of bacon at Donnelly's shop in Kilclone, the
east wind did her the shrewd turn of whisking off her hat and dropping
it into the water. It was a most shabby old black straw, rusty and
battered, and torn, yet Mrs. M'Bean, a labourer's wife, who had nothing
at all handsome about her, seemed to think it worth a serious risk. For
she mounted on the broad wall-top, and thence made so unwary a snatch
that she overbalanced herself and splashed headlong into the heaving
high-tide, where she would very soon have perished beneath the cold
olive-gray swell, had not the brothers Denny, fishing for bass hard by,
noticed the perilous accident, and pulled timely to the rescue.

When they disembarked her, gasping and dripping, at the nearest
landing-place, she was understood to say, "Sure me heart's broke," a
remark which Police-sergeant Young, who formed one of the group gathered
by the disaster, considered sufficient grounds for marching her off to
the handiest J. P. on a charge of attempted suicide. Mrs. M'Bean
vehemently repelled the accusation. She explained that she had sa