companion, who kept a
tight clutch on her arm, as if afraid to let go, and looked at nobody's
face, but seemed to listen from one to the other. She was, it appeared,
the widow Morrough from Laraghmena, who had been struck blind by the
lightning in the great storm Friday was a week--the sight of her eyes
clean destroyed with one flash as she was throwing a bit of food to the
fowl at her door. And the last child she had belonging to her set off
the next morning to the States. And now she herself was going into the
Union down at Moynalone, for what else could she be doing, that couldn't
see her hand before her face? So Theresa was bringing her down, and they
thought they might have got as far as Duffclane against night; but the
creature wasn't well used yet to walking in the dark, so they were slow
coming, and they'd hardly do it.

Such was the outline of Mrs. Morrough's history up to date, and its
rehearsal had at once the effect of arousing a sympathetic bustle about
her, which did not subside until she sat a wet and wayworn guest, in the
most comfortable hearth-corner, and had been provided with a cup of the
tea that Mrs. Doyne had made herself in her character of an invalid. She
now sat on one side of the blind woman, and stirred her tea for her, and
on the other Dan O'Beirne shook his head in regretful confirmation of
the opinion pronounced by the Drumroe doctor, which was reported to be
that mortal man couldn't do her a thraneen of good. Meanwhile Theresa
Joyce, who was likewise bedrenched and weary, found a seat in the
opposite corner, where her nearest neighbours were Ody Rafferty, and her
niece-in-law, Mrs. Brian Kilfoyle, with her daughter Rose.

"Well, Theresa, it's the long while since you've stepped over to see
us," Ody said, starting the conversation, "and it's the soft evenin'
you've chose to be comin'. Your shawl's dhreeped. Take it off, and I'll
give it a shake above the fire. Bedad, Theresa, the two of us has been
wearin' the dusty male-bags on our heads since the time I seen you
first. As black as a sloe you was; but now it's liker the blossom it's
turned."

"And time for it," said Theresa. "Sure I'm over sivinty year of age now,
any way, every day of it--and the long days there was among them, God
knows."

"But wid all that, ne'er a one of them was long enough for you to be
findin' a man to your mind in it," said Ody. "And I declare to goodness
I dunno but maybe it's the very sinsible woman you were