“Well, sure, me dear, I do be sayin’ me prayers for her every sun goes over our heads that she might be left wid you this great while yet; ‘deed, I do so.  But ah, acushla, if we could be keepin’ people that-a-way, would there be e’er a funeral iver goin’ black on the road at all at all?  I’m thinkin’ there’s scarce a one livin’, and he as ould and foolish and little-good-for as you plase, but some crathur’ill be grudgin’ him to his grave, that’s himself may be all the while wishin’ he was in it.  Or, morebetoken, how can we tell what quare ugly misfortin’ thim that’s took is took out of the road of, that we should be as good as biddin’ thim stay till it comes to ruinate them?  So it’s prayin’ away I am, honey,” said old Biddy, whom Theresa could not help hating heart-sickly.  “But like enough the Lord might know better than to be mindin’ a word I say.”

And it seemed that He did; anyway, the day soon came when the heavy blue cloak passed into Mrs. Kilfoyle’s possession.

At that time it was clear, still autumn weather, with just a sprinkle of frost white on the wayside grass, like the wraith of belated moonlight, when the sun rose, and shimmering into rainbow stars by noon.  But about a month later the winter swooped suddenly on Lisconnel:  with wild winds and cold rain that made crystal-silver streaks down the purple of the great mountainheads peering in over our bogland.

So one perishing Saturday Mrs. Kilfoyle made up her mind that she would wear her warm legacy on the bleak walk to Mass next morning, and reaching it down from where it was stored away among the rafters wrapped in an old sack, she shook it respectfully out of its straight-creased folds.  As she did so she noticed that the binding of the hood had ripped in one place, and that the lining was fraying out, a mishap which should be promptly remedied before it spread any further.  She was not a very expert needlewoman, and she thought she had better run over the way to consult Mrs. O’Driscoll, then a young matron, esteemed the handiest and most helpful person in Lisconnel.

“It’s the nathur of her to be settin’ things straight wherever she goes,” Mrs. Kilfoyle said to herself as she stood in her doorway waiting for the rain to clear off, and looking across the road to the sodden roof which sheltered her neighbor’s head.  It had long been lying low, vanquished by a trouble which even she could not set to rights, and some of the older people say that things have gone a little crookeder in Lisconnel ever since.

The shower was a vicious one, with the sting of sleet and hail in its drops, pelted about by gusts that ruffled up the puddles into ripples, all set on end, like the feathers of a frightened hen.  The hens themselves stood disconsolately sheltering under the bank, mostly on one leg, as if they preferred to keep up the slightest possible connection with such a very damp and disagreeable earth.  You could not see far in any direction for the fluttering sheets of