gloom inside and to the turf smoke
which filled the room. In a corner, seated on a low stool, he saw a
young man crouching over the fire.

"That's him," said Mrs. Finnegan. "That's the poor boy, doctor. The
sergeant will have been telling you about him."

The boy rose from his stool at the sound of her voice.

"Speak to the gentleman now," said Mrs. Finnegan. "Speak to the doctor,
Jimmy alannah, and tell him the way you are."

"Your honour's welcome," said Jimmy, in a thin, cracked voice. "Your
honour's welcome surely, though I don't mind that ever I set eyes on you
before."

"Whisht now, Jimmy," said the sergeant. "It's the doctor that's come to
see you, and it's for your own good he's come."

"I know that," said Jimmy, "and I know he'll be wanting to have me put
away. Well, what must be, must be, if it's the will of God, and if it's
before me it may as well be now as any other time."

"You see the way he is," said the sergeant.

"And I have the papers here already to be signed."

Dr. Lovaway saw, or believed he saw, exactly how things were. The boy
was evidently of weak mind. There was little sign of actual lunacy,
no sign at all of violence about him. Mrs. Finnegan added a voluble
description of the case.

"It might be a whole day," she said, "and he wouldn't be speaking a
word, nor he wouldn't seem to hear if you speak to him, and he'd just
sit there by the fire the way you see him without he'd be doing little
turns about the place, feeding the pig, or mending a gap in the wall or
the like. I will say for Jimmy, the poor boy's always willing to do the
best he can."

"Don't be troubling the doctor now, Mrs. Finnegan," said the sergeant.
"He knows the way it is with the boy without your telling him. Just let
the doctor sign what has to be signed and get done with it. Aren't we
wet enough as it is without standing here talking half the day?"

The mention of the wet condition of the party roused Mrs. Finnegan to
action. She hung a kettle from a blackened hook in the chimney and piled
up turf on the fire. Jimmy was evidently quite intelligent enough to
know how to boil water. He took the bellows, went down on his knees,
and blew the fire diligently. Mrs. Finnegan spread a somewhat dirty
tablecloth on a still dirtier table and laid out cups and saucers on it.

Dr. Lovaway was puzzled. The boy at the fire might be, probably was,
mentally deficient. He was not a case for an asylum. He was certainly
not like