It spread rapidly through Lisconnel, and brought the neighbors together exclaiming and condoling, though not in great force, as there was a fair going on down beyant, which nearly all the men and some of the women had attended.  This was accounted cruel unlucky, as it left the place without any one able-bodied and active enough to go in pursuit of the thief.  A prompt start might have overtaken him, especially as he was said to be a “thrifle lame-futted”; though Mrs. M’Gurk, who had seen him come down the hill, opined that “’twasn’t the sort of lameness ’ud hinder the miscreant of steppin’ out, on’y a quare manner of flourish he had in a one of his knees, as if he was gatherin’ himself up to make an offer at a grasshopper’s lep, and then thinkin’ better of it.”

Little Thady Kilfoyle reported that he had met the strange man a bit down the road, “leggin’ it along at a great rate, wid a black rowl of somethin’ under his arm that he looked to be crumplin’ up as small as he could,”—­the word “crumpling” went acutely to Mrs. Kilfoyle’s heart,—­and some long-sighted people declared that they could still catch glimpses of a receding figure through the hovering fog on the way toward Sallinbeg.

“I’d think he’d be beyant seein’ afore now,” said Mrs. Kilfoyle, who stood in the rain, the disconsolate centre of the group about her door; all women and children except old Johnny Keogh, who was so bothered and deaf that he grasped new situations slowly and feebly, and had now an impression of somebody’s house being on fire.  “He must ha’ took off wid himself the instiant me back was turned, for ne’er a crumb had he touched of the pitaties.”

“Maybe he’d that much shame in him,” said Mrs. O’Driscoll.

“They’d a right to ha’ choked him, troth and they had,” said Ody Rafferty’s aunt.

“Is it chokin’?” said young Mrs. M’Gurk, bitterly.  “Sure the bigger thief a body is, the more he’ll thrive on whatever he gits; you might think villiny was as good as butter to people’s pitaties, you might so.  Sharne how are you?  Liker he’d ate all he could swally in the last place he got the chance of layin’ his hands on anythin’.”

“Och, woman alive, but it’s the fool you were to let him out of your sight,” said Ody Rafferty’s aunt.  “If it had been me, I’d niver ha’ took me eyes off him, for the look of him on’y goin’ by made me flesh creep upon me bones.”

“’Deed was I,” said Mrs. Kilfoyle, sorrowfully, “a fine fool.  And vexed she’d be, rael vexed, if she guessed the way it was gone on us, for the dear knows what dirty ould rapscallions ‘ill get the wearin’ of it now.  Rael vexed she’d be.”

This speculation was more saddening than the actual loss of the cloak, though that bereft her wardrobe of far and away its most valuable property, which should have descended as an heirloom to her little Katty, who, however, being at present but three months old, lay sleeping happily unaware of the cloud that had come over her prospects.