His little house on the outskirts of Cloon had not many outward charms, being built in the inverted box style so usual in Ireland.  A few bushes of aucuba and fuchsia scarcely claimed for the oblong space enclosed in front the name of a garden.  But within he found a cheerful turf fire, and his old housekeeper soon put a substantial meal on the table.

“Any callers to-day, Mamie?” he asked as he sat down.

“Not a one, sir, only two,” was the reply.  “The first was a neighbouring man from Killeen that was after giving himself a great cut with a reaping-hook where he was cutting a few thorns out of the hedge for to stop a gap where the cows did be coming into his oatfield.  Sure I told him you wouldn’t be in this long time, and he went to Cloran to bandage him up.”

“And who was the other, Mamie?”

“The second first, sir, was a decent woman, Mrs. Cloherty, from Cranagh, with a sore eye she has where she was cuttin’ potatoes and a bit flew up and hot it, and she’s after going to the Friars at Loughrea to get a rub off the blessed cross, but it did no good after.”

The old woman rambled on, but the Doctor gave her but a divided attention.  He laughed and blushed a little presently to find himself gazing in the small round mirror that hung against the wall, his altitude of six feet just bringing his head to its level.  The face that laughed and blushed back at him was a pleasant one:  frank, blue eyes and a square brow surmounted by wavy fair hair were reflected, and the glad healthfulness of four-and-twenty years.  He had been looked on as a “well-looking” man in his small social circle of Galway and Dublin, and had laughed and joked and danced with the girls he had met at merry gatherings, but without ever having given a preference in thought to one above another.  Certainly no eyes had ever followed him into his solitude as the dark ones first seen to-day were doing.

He went out presently, the rain having ceased, and sauntered down the unattractive “Main Street” of Cloon.

The shops were shut, save those frequent ones which added the sale of liquor to that of more innocent commodities.  In one a smart-looking schoolboy was reading the Weekly Freeman aloud to a group of frieze-coated hearers.  At the door of another a ballad-singer was plaintively piping the “Mother’s Farewell,” with its practical refrain:—­

    “Then write to me often, and send me all you can,
    And don’t forget where’er you are that you’re an Irishman.”

The Doctor might at another time have joined and enlivened one of the listless groups standing about, but, after a moment or two of hesitation, he turned his back to them and walked in the direction of the gate of Inagh.  “There’s Mrs. Connell down there, that I ought to go and see; she’s always complaining,” he said to himself, in self-excuse.  But having arrived at her cottage, he saw by a glance at the unshuttered window that his visit would be a work of supererogation, as she was busily engaged in carding wool by the fireside, the clear light of the paraffin lamp, which without any intervening stage of candles had superseded her rushlight, showing her comely face to be hale and hearty.