heart was broke. So I got wond'rin' to myself if the
raison was maybe that we'd ate it all on her. Och, but it's the quare
foolishness people does be remimberin'!"

"Belike the raison of that is because it's as plinty as anythin' else
wid thim," said Thady, cynically, "or maybe a trifle plintier."

"Sure we was on'y brats thim times," said Judy, apologetically. "For
anythin' we could tell we might as well be streelin' about under the
width of the sky like a string of wild duck, as stoppin' at home wid a
roof over our misfort'nit heads. Ould Mrs. McClenaghan next door had a
cloak the same pattern as this," Judy continued, selecting her memories
with better judgment. "But 'twas all tatters at the bottom, not worth a
bawbee to mine."

And Thady said with interest: "Had she now?"

"And as for me ould shawl," Judy went on, "it's been a scandal and a
caution this last three or four year; droppin' in bits it is, and small
blame to it. I wish I'd a penny for every mile I've tramped in it. Do
you remimber the joke me mother had about it's bein' a conthrary thing
that people thravellin' 'ud always begin a mile at the wrong ind? She'd
be talkin' that way to hearten up me father; but as often as not he'd
on'y let a roar at her to whisht, he was that discouraged. 'Twas a great
wish he had, poor man, to git her back settled in a little place of her
own before he was took. But 'twas in the big barracks of a Union at
Monaghan----"

"Well, it's all one to the two of thim now anyway," said Thady, finding
that Judy's reminiscences of their family history did not tend to
enliven his meditations over his pipe.

"Ah sure, everythin' will be all one to the whole of us, plase God, one
of these days," said Judy, who in her present mood could not easily have
realised the keen contentions and scorching jealousies of the night
before; "and when we get done with the thrampin', 'twill make little
enough differ whether it's one mile we wint or twinty hunderd. On'y I'd
liefer than a good dale thim two had had better luck wid it all. Cruel
put about they were many a time, and wantin' the bit to keep the life in
thim, and it just fretted out of thim in the ind I'm thinkin'. The
thought of it comes agin a body when one's sittin' warm and snug," Judy
said, gazing remorsefully round her shadowy, gusty lodging, and then
into the flames, lighting up a bare earth-patch, and down at the dark
folds that fell about her as she crouched on it. She seemed su