s of the nuns. The making of
the profits fills the workhouse. A little aloof stands the Protestant
church, austere to look upon, expressing in all its lines a grim
reproach of the people's life. Beyond it, among scanty, stooped trees,
is the rectory, gray, as everything else is, wearing, like a decayed
lady, the air of having lived through better days.

Such, save for one feature, is Ballymoy, as the traveller sees it, as
Hyacinth Conneally saw it when he arrived there one gusty afternoon.
The one unusual feature is Mr. James Quinn's woollen mill. It stands,
a gaunt and indeed somewhat dilapidated building, at the bottom of the
street, in the angle where the river turns sharply to flow under the
bridge. The water just above the bridge is swept into a channel and
forced to turn the wheel which works some primitive machinery within.
In the centre of the mill's front is an archway through which carts pass
into the paved square behind. Here is the weighbridge, and here great
bundles of heavy-smelling fleeces are unloaded. Off the square is the
office where Mr. Quinn sits, pays for the wool, and enters the weight
of it in damp ledgers. Here on Saturdays two or three men and a score of
girls receive their wages. The business is a peculiar one. You may bring
your wool to Mr. Quinn in fleeces, just as you sheer it off the sheep's
back. He will pay you for it, more or less, according to the amount
of trouble you have taken with your sheep. This is the way the younger
generation likes to treat its wool. If you are older, and are blessed
with a wife able to card and spin, you deal differently with Mr. Quinn.
For many evenings after the shearing your wife sits by the fireside
with two carding-combs in her hands, and wipes off them wonderfully soft
rolls of wool. Afterwards she fetches the great wheel from its nook, and
you watch her pulling out an endless gray thread while she steps back
and forwards across the floor. The girls watch her, too, but not, as
you do, with sleepy admiration. Their emotion is amused contempt.
Nevertheless, your kitchen wall is gradually decorated with bunches of
great gray balls. When these have accumulated sufficiently, you take
them to Mr. Quinn. A certain number of them become his property. Out of
the rest he will weave what you like--coarse yellow flannel, good for
bawneens, and, when it is dyed crimson, for petticoats; or blankets--not
fluffy like the blankets that are bought in shops, but warm to sl