“Ah, what’s on ye delaying this way?” said Mrs. Coolahan irritably, advancing into the shop.  “Sure I seen the pin with Helayna this morning.”

At the moment all that we could see of the junior postmistress was her long bare shins, framed by the low-browed doorway, as she stood on the counter to further her researches on a top shelf.

“The Lord look down in pity on me this day!” said Mrs. Coolahan, in exalted and bitter indignation, “or on any poor creature that’s striving to earn her living and has the likes o’ ye to be thrusting to!”

We here attached ourselves to the outskirts of the search, which had by this time drawn into its vortex a couple of countrywomen with shawls over their heads, who had hitherto sat in decorous but observant stillness in the background.  Katty Ann was rapidly examining tall bottles of sugar-stick, accustomed receptacles apparently for the pen.  Helayna’s raven fringe showed traces of a dive into the flour-bin.  Mrs. Coolahan remained motionless in the midst, her eyes fixed on the ceiling, an exposition of suffering and of eternal remoteness from the ungodly.

We were now aware for the first time of the presence of Mr. Coolahan, a taciturn person, with a blue-black chin and a gloomy demeanour.

“Where had ye it last?” he demanded.

“I seen Katty Ann with it in the cow-house, sir,” volunteered a small female Coolahan from beneath the flap of the counter.

Katty Ann, with a vindictive eye at the tell-tale, vanished.

“That the Lord Almighty might take me to Himself!” chanted Mrs. Coolahan.  “Such a mee-aw!  Such a thing to happen to me—­the pure, decent woman!  G’wout!” This, the imperative of the verb to retire, was hurtled at the tell-tale, who, presuming on her services, had incautiously left the covert of the counter, and had laid a sticky hand on her mother’s skirts.

“Only that some was praying for me,” pursued Mrs. Coolahan, “it might as well be the Inspector that came in the office, asking for the pin, an’ if that was the way we might all go under the sod!  Sich a mee-aw!”

“Musha!  Musha!” breathed, prayerfully, one of the shawled women.

At this juncture I mounted on an up-ended barrel to investigate a promising lair above my head, and from this altitude was unexpectedly presented with a bird’s-eye view of a hat with a silver band inside the railed and curtained “snug”.  I descended swiftly, not without an impression of black bottles on the snug table, and Katty Ann here slid in from the search in the cow-house.

[Illustration:  “MUSHA!  MUSHA!”]

“’Twasn’t in it,” she whined, “nor I didn’t put it in it.”

“For a pinny I’d give ye a slap in the jaw!” said Mr. Coolahan with sudden and startling ferocity.

“That the Lord Almighty might take me to Himself!” reiterated Mrs. Coolahan, while the search spread upwards through the house.

“Look here!” said Robert abruptly, “this business is going on for a week.  I’m going for the things myself.”