very early hour by
a thumping on her door. When she opened it she found some difficulty in
recognising her visitor, as the dawn had scarcely done more than dim a
few stars far away in the east, which is an ineffective form of
illumination. "Whethen, now, Joe Patman, is it yourself?" she said,
peeringly. "And what's brought you out at all afore you can see a step
or a stim? Is the little girl took worse?" For Katty's illness still
continued, and had grown rather serious.

"Sure, no," said the old man; "Katty's just pretty middlin'. But it's
waitin' I've been the len'th of the mornin', till 'twould turn broad
daylight, before I'd be disturbin' of you, ma'am, to tell you the quare
sort of a joke they're after playin' on me down yonder."

"Saints above, man, what talk have you of jokin' at this hour of the day
or night?" said Mrs. M'Gurk, feeling the unseasonableness acutely as a
bitter gust came swooping up the slope and indiscriminatingly ruffled
the rime-dusted grass-tufts and her own grizzled locks.

"Och, bejabbers, it's a great joke they have agin me whatever," said old
Patman, who was shivering much, with cold partly, and partly perhaps
with amusement. "You see the way of it was, last night, no great while
after we'd all gone asleep, I woke up suddint, like as if wid the crake
of a door or somethin', but, whatever it might be, 'twas slipped beyond
me hearin' afore I'd got a hould of me sinses rightly. So I listened a
goodish bit, and somehow everythin' seemed unnathural quiet, till I
heard Katty fidgettin', and I went over to see would she take a dhrink
of wather. The Lord presarve us and keep us, ma'am, if all the rest of
them hadn't quit--quit out of it they have, and left us cliver and
clane."

"Ah, now, don't be romancin' man," said the widow, remonstrantly. "What
in the name of the nation 'ud bewitch any people to go rovin' out of
their house in the middle of the black night, wid the frost thick on the
ground?"

"Quit they are," said the old man. "Tom's gone, and the wife, and every
man-jack of them. They've took the couple of chuckens I noticed Tishy
killin' of yisterday. Begorrah, I believe they've took Tib the cat, for
ne'er a sign of it I see about the place, that would mostly be sittin'
cocked up atop of the dresser. Goodness guide us, sorra a sowl there is
in the house but the two of us, me and the child, and she's rael bad.
It's a quare ould joke."

"It 'ud be the joke of a set of ravin' mad people