n the box,
and the next moment they were away.

It is no part of our task to dwell on the sage speculations and wise
surmises of the village on this event. They had not, it is true, much
"evidence" before them, but they were hardy guessers, and there was very
little within the limits of possibility which they did not summon to the
aid of their imaginations. All, however, were tolerably agreed upon one
point,--that to leave the place while the young lord was still unable
to quit his bed, and too weak to sit up, was unnatural and unfeeling;
traits which, "after all," they thought "not very surprising, since the
likes of them lords never cared for anybody."

Colonel Harcourt still remained at Glencore, and under his rigid
sway the strictest blockade of the coast was maintained, nor was any
intercourse whatever permitted with the village. A boat from the Castle,
meeting another from Leenane, half way in the lough, received the
letters and whatever other resources the village supplied. All was done
with the rigid exactness of a quarantine regulation; and if the mainland
had been scourged with plague, stricter measures of exclusion could
scarcely have been enforced.

In comparison with the present occupant of the Castle, the late one was
a model of amiability; and the village, as is the wont in the case, now
discovered a vast number of good qualities in the "lord," when they had
lost him. After a while, however, the guesses, the speculations, and
the comparisons all died away, and the Castle of Glencore was as much
dreamland to their imaginations as, seen across the lough in the dim
twilight of an autumn evening, its towers might have appeared to their
eyes.

It was about a month after Lord Glencore's departure, of a fine, soft
evening in summer, Billy Traynor suddenly appeared in the village. Billy
was one of a class who, whatever their rank in life, are always what
Coleridge would have called "noticeable men." He was soon, therefore,
surrounded with a knot of eager and inquiring friends, all solicitous to
know something of the life he was leading, what they were doing "beyant
at the Castle."

"It's a mighty quiet studious kind of life," said Billy, "but agrees
with me wonderfully; for I may say that until now I never was able
to give my 'janius' fair play. Professional life is the ruin of the
student; and being always obleeged to be thinkin' of the bags destroyed
my taste for letters." A grin of self-approval at his o