But Constable Black crushed her hopes as he replied, “Ah, it’s nobody comin’ from Sallinbeg that we’ve anything to say to.  There’s after bein’ a robbery last night, down below at Jerry Dunne’s—­a shawl as good as new took, that his wife’s ragin’ over frantic, along wid a sight of fowl and other things.  And the Tinkers that was settled this long while in the boreen at the back of his haggard is quit out of it afore daylight this mornin’, every rogue of them.  So we’d have more than a notion where the property’s went to if we could tell the road they’ve took.  We thought like enough some of them might ha’ come this way.”

Now, Mr. Jerry Dunne was not a popular person in Lisconnel, where he has even become, as we have seen, proverbial for what we call “ould naygurliness.”  So there was a general tendency to say, “The divil’s cure to him,” and listen complacently to any details their visitors could impart.  For in his private capacity a policeman, provided that he be otherwise “a dacint lad,” which to do him justice is commonly the case, may join, with a few unobtrusive restrictions, in our neighborly gossips; the rule in fact being—­Free admission except on business.

Only Mrs. Kilfoyle was so much cast down by her misfortune that she could not raise herself to the level of an interest in the affairs of her thrifty suitor, and the babble of voices relating and commenting sounded as meaningless as the patter of the drops which jumped like little fishes in the large puddle at their feet.  It had spread considerably before Constable Black said to his comrade:—­

“Well, Daly, we’d better be steppin’ home wid ourselves as wise as we come, as the man said when he’d axed his road of the ould black horse in the dark lane.  There’s no good goin’ further, for the whole gang of them’s scattered over the counthry agin now like a seedin’ thistle in a high win’.”

“Aye, bedad,” said Constable Daly, “and be the same token, this win’ ud skin a tanned elephant.  It’s on’y bogged and drenched we’d git.  Look at what’s comin’ up over there.  That rain’s snow on the hills, every could drop of it; I seen Ben Bawn this mornin’ as white as the top of a musharoon, and it’s thickenin’ wid sleet here this minute, and so it is.”

The landscape did, indeed, frown upon further explorations.  In quarters where the rain had abated it seemed as if the mists had curdled on the breath of the bitter air, and they lay floating in long white bars and reefs low on the track of their own shadow, which threw down upon the sombre bogland deeper stains of gloom.  Here and there one caught on the crest of some gray-bowldered knoll, and was teazed into fleecy threads that trailed melting instead of tangling.  But toward the north the horizon was all blank, with one vast, smooth slant of slate-color, like a pent-house roof, which had a sliding motion onwards.

Ody Rafferty pointed to it and said,