a' been a corp."

Brian Kilfoyle's view was: "Divil a much! Sure if he'd had e'er a notion
to be doin' anythin' agin himself, there was plinty of deep bog-houles
handy for him to sling himself into, and have done wid it." Whereupon
Mrs. Sheridan crossed herself and said deprecatingly: "Ah, sure, belike
the crathur wouldn't have the wickedness in him to go do such a thing."
Her husband didn't know but he might. "Them soft sort of fellers 'ud
sometimes stick to anythin' they took into their heads, the same as a
dab of morthar agin a wall." And Ody Rafferty supposed the fact of the
matter was, "that if be any odd chance they got a notion of their own,
they mistook it for somebody else's."

On one point, however, the neighbours, Mrs. M'Gurk not excepted, were
practically unanimous, the utter flagitiousness, namely, of Tishy
M'Crum. There was a tendency to begrudge her the trivial merit of having
voluntarily left behind her the five-shilling piece. For this marred
that perfect symmetry of iniquity which is so pleasant to the eye when
displayed by people of whom we "have no opinion." Only Mrs. Brian said
it was a mercy she had that much good nature in her itself. But even she
added that the fewer of them kind of folks she saw comin' about the
place, the better she'd be pleased, and she hoped they'd got shut of
them for good and all.

This aspiration seemed the more likely to be fulfilled, when within a
week or so the Patmans heard from the family of Tom's first wife, who
held out prospects of work for himself, and a home for Katty and his
father--a proposal which was gladly accepted. Their departure left as
the single trace of their sojourn in Lisconnel, Tib the cat, which
remained behind, a somewhat unwelcome bequest to the widow M'Gurk.
Indeed, I fear the creature became a source of some annoyance to her,
because Andy Sheridan contracted a habit of addressing it by the name of
Tishy, and bestowing upon it the same laudatory epithets with which the
widow had been wont to justify her admiration for the energetic sisters.

It was on a hushed February morning that the Patmans finally departed.
The smell of spring was in the air, and filmy silvery mist had begun to
float off the dark bogland in vanishing wreaths, soft and dim as the
frail sloe-blossom, already stolen out over the writhen black branches
up on the ridge. A jewel had been left in the heart of every groundling
trefoil and clover-leaf, and the long rays that twink