he other side of
the arch. There he caught hold of a twisted ivy-tod and a bough of
mountain-ash, whence he dropped on the bank, and crawled up it out of
reach, commenting in forcible language upon the occurrence, by which he
was still astoundedly bewildered.

Judy, who was aroused in like manner, had her chance too. For a branch
of the same tree crooked a friendly arm towards her as she was borne
past, and she would have grasped it only that the weight of her heavy
cloth cloak dragged her down. So that instead of returning to dry land
for many a long day's tramp, she went out to sea in company with sundry
wrenched-off boughs, and mats of heather, and bundles of withered
bracken, and other such waifs and strays, none of which were ever again
heard tidings of any more than they were inquired after in the lonely
places they had left. Only for some stormy days the wrecked and sodden
banks of the Rosbride river were haunted by a forlorn-looking object of
a lame tramp, who sought vainly what his despair hoped to find. As he
roamed about in it, he had just one spell of consolation, which he was
often muttering over to himself. It was something he called, "The best
turn, anyway, I iver done the crathur in her life. Little enough, God
knows, little enough, but the best good turn."

CHAPTER V

FORECASTS

When Mrs. Joyce used in her last days to predict regretfully that her
youngest daughter would never marry, she said a bold word, for at this
time still Theresa's years fell short of twenty, and she was generally
recognised as the prettiest girl to be seen at Mass in the small, ugly
chapel down beyant near Ballybrosna. Some people, it is true, said that
she was "just a fairy of a crathur, and too little for anythin'," and
she was, no doubt, diminutive in size. Nor had she any brilliancy of
colouring to make amends in a humming-bird's fashion for the
insignificance of her proportions, resembling rather, with her dark eyes
and hair, one of those filmy white blossoms which look the paler and
frailer for their knots of ebon stamens, or the delicate moth who shows
fine black pencillings among his pearly down. Still, nobody denied that
she had "an uncommon purty face of her own," and the neighbours,
moreover, always found her "plisant and frindly and gay enough," when
they found her at all. But they remarked among themselves that one
seldom seen e'er a sight of Therasa Joyce these times anywheres about.
They supposed she w