as took up wid lookin' after her mother, who wasn't
gettin' her health over well this good while back. I think myself that
Theresa's invisibility could be only in part accounted for thus, as the
explanation does not cover the fact that to slip the wrong side of the
dyke, or turn aside among screening hillocks and hollows when she
noticed the approach of her acquaintances, was the course she always
adopted if she could achieve it without hurting anybody's feelings.
Theresa much disliked doing this, as a rule, though she broke it on one
occasion in a way that surprised and puzzled those who knew her best.

But whether Mrs. Joyce forecast the future rightly or wrongly, she had
certainly an erroneous impression on her mind when, as often happened,
she wound up her disconsolate musings by saying resentfully, "And the
back of me hand to some I could name." If she had proceeded to do so,
she would probably have mentioned persons who had done nothing to bring
about the result she was deploring, and she never thought of connecting
it with the events which had accompanied Ody Rafferty's flitting from
the Three Mile Farm more than a twelvemonth before Denis O'Meara came to
the place.

Until Ody took up his abode at Lisconnel he had always lived with his
father, who farmed a remote bit of land out towards Lough Glenglas. It
was a holding which had been wrested from the grip of a surrounding bog
by earlier generations of Raffertys, who were a strenuous race; but in
Ody's father's time their energies had taken a turn not conducive to
reclamation, or even to the maintenance of what was already won. All
Ody's many elder brethren--sisters there were none--had run wild, and
ended by running it so far afield that the narrow, whitewashed house,
lonesome and bleak, saw them no more. Its mistress also died, failing,
perhaps, other means of exit--running wild being in her case
impracticable--and finding life impossibly dreary without Ned, the
least-good-for of her sons; and the household was thus reduced to old
Michael Rafferty, and his aunt, and little Ody. These domestic changes,
in conjunction with other untoward chances, sadly hindered farming
operations, and nature made prompt use of the pause. Season by season
the patch of tilled ground seemed to shrink at the wish of the greedy
black land that girdled it about. The outlying fields grew first garish
with golden ragweed and scarlet poppies, and then dull green again with
the brown-knott