o lie across her path,
a murky shadow, which she could by no means evade nor disperse.

The invisible sun was low when Judy came to a place where the road
forks, sending one branch to creep across the level bogland towards
Sallinbeg, and one to climb up among the first tilted slopes of the
mountains. Here the Rosbride river comes jostling its way down a rocky
ravine spanned at the mouth by a bridge, past which the swift, brown
stream darts along in a more spacious and smoother channel, bound for
Rosbride Bay. Judy stood for a while and looked down over the parapet at
the swirls of creamy foam that swept under the arch. Then she took out
of her pocket a battered-looking heel of a loaf, and began to munch it.
But before she had half finished it, she tossed the crust away into the
river, being too heartsick to go on eating once the rage of hunger was
subdued. She wished sincerely that she dared fling herself after it, but
she was far too much cowed by cold and weariness to muster the courage
for such a resolve. Perhaps there was not under Irish skies that
December day, a more miserable woman than Judy Quinlan as she stood all
alone in the world on Rosbride bridge, while a black mountain rampart
lifted itself slowly against the shrouded west, and the dusk thickened
on the long, shelterless road, whence eager blasts whistled a summons to
her, nearer and nearer, till they fluttered her rags, and keened about
her ears, and chilled her to the bone.

Suddenly something heavy and soft seemed to grasp her by the shoulders,
and thence fall around her in long, wide folds, covering her from head
to foot, much as if a small tent had been blown down on her. Of course
she screamed shrilly, and almost in the same breath she saw that Thady
was at her elbow. He had for some little time been stalking her warily,
with the great coat expanded ready to throw over her, and having done
so, was now holding it on with a rough hug. The joy with which he had at
last caught sight of the forlorn, bedraggled figure had overflowed
irrepressibly into this joke, and its successful accomplishment put the
finishing touch to his happiness. As for Judy, if the sun had leaped up
again in a fiery flurry, till the hills and the plain and the river were
all flooded with flushed light, gleaming and glowing, it would have but
dimly symbolised the transfiguration of her world. In the twinkling of
an eye her stark despair was changed into rapturous relief, a miracle