Thus it was that when Mrs. Kilfoyle saw who Ody’s companions were, she bade a regretful adieu to her hopes of recovering her stolen property.  For how could she set him on the Tinker’s felonious track without apprising them likewise?  You might as well try to huroosh one chicken off a rafter and not scare the couple that were huddled beside it.  The impossibility became more obvious presently as the constables, striding quickly down to where the group of women stood in the rain and wind with fluttering shawls and flapping cap-borders, said briskly, “Good-day to you all.  Did any of yous happen to see e’er a one of them tinkerin’ people goin’ by here this mornin’?”

It was a moment of strong temptation to everybody, but especially to Mrs. Kilfoyle, who had in her mind that vivid picture of her precious cloak receding from her along the wet road, recklessly wisped up in the grasp of as thankless a thievin’ black-hearted slieveen as ever stepped, and not yet, perhaps, utterly out of reach, though every fleeting instant carried it nearer to that hopeless point.  However, she and her neighbors stood the test unshaken.  Mrs. Ryan rolled her eyes deliberatively, and said to Mrs. M’Gurk, “The saints bless us, was it yisterday or the day before, me dear, you said you seen a couple of them below, near ould O’Beirne’s?”

And Mrs. M’Gurk replied, “Ah, sure, not at all, ma’am, glory be to goodness.  I couldn’t ha’ tould you such a thing, for I wasn’t next or nigh the place.  Would it ha’ been Ody Rafferty’s aunt?  She was below there fetchin’ up a bag of male, and bedad she came home that dhreeped, the crathur, you might ha’ thought she’d been after fishin’ it up out of the botthom of one of thim bog-houles.”

And Mrs. Kilfoyle heroically hustled her Thady into the house, as she saw him on the brink of beginning loudly to relate his encounter with a strange man, and desired him to whisht and stay where he was in a manner so sternly repressive that he actually remained there as if he had been a pebble dropped into a pool, and not, as usual, a cork to bob up again immediately.

Then Mrs. M’Gurk made a bold stroke, designed to shake off the hampering presence of the professionals, and enable Ody’s amateur services to be utilized while there was yet time.

“I declare,” she said, “now that I think of it, I seen a feller crossin’ the ridge along there a while ago, like as if he was comin’ from Sallinbeg ways; and according to the apparence of him, I wouldn’t won’er if he was a one of thim tinker crathures—­carryin’ a big clump of cans he was, at any rate—­I noticed the shine of thim.  And he couldn’t ha’ got any great way yet to spake of, supposin’ there was anybody lookin’ to folly after him.”