orlorn glimmer of complacency at
the arrangement passed over even the sorrowful countenance of Mrs.
Skeffington Yelverton herself, as she sat in her ragged old wisp of a
shawl. She was holding under it her grand new delft teapot, whose
beauties she should never see; though by this time much fingering had
made her familiar with the outlines of its raised pink-rose wreath. Then
Theresa Joyce said, "We ought to be steppin' on wid ourselves, if we're
to get to Duffclane before dark. The evenin's took up a bit. I see the
sky there turnin' like goulden glass agin the windy-pane." But the
neighbours protested against their setting forward again; and it was
agreed that they should sleep the night at the Kilfoyles'.

When this point had been decided, Mrs. Morrough said, "Would that be
the say--the rustlin' I hear outside there?"

Upon this people looked ruefully at her and at each other, as if the
question had given them a glimpse into the darkness in which she was
sitting.

"Ah, no, ma'am," said Mrs. Doyne, "that's on'y the sedge-laves in the
win' round the big pool just back of the house. Few days of the year
there is, summer or winter, but they'll be shoosh-sooin' that way. A
dhrary sort of noise it is to my mind. I do be tired listenin' to it in
the night sometimes."

"Sure there's ne'er a dhrop of say-wather nearer us, ma'am, than the
place you're after quittin' out of," said Judy Ryan, "it's the quare
whillaloo it 'ud have to be risin' before we'd hear it that far."

"Well, well," said the blind woman, "yous are the very lucky people, I'm
thinkin', all of yous, that see the shinin' of the sun, and live beyond
the sound of the say."

Her remark was followed by a short silence, during which her hearers
were, perhaps, questing for consolatory rejoinders rather than
congratulating themselves upon their own luckiness. It was Big Anne who
broke the pause, saying, with the best intentions, "Ah, sure, ma'am
dear, plase God, _you_ won't be so, and _we_ won't be so;" a sentiment
which apparently did not meet with the approval of Ody Rafferty, as he
frowned bushily at her and said in a testy undertone, "Musha, good
gracious, woman, what talk have you out of you at all?"

Just at this moment sounds, the nature of which could not easily be
mistaken, rose up close by--shouts and laughter and thumps and trampling
of feet. People who ran quickly to the door were in time to see a knot
of youths fall confusedly out of the house over