Chapter IV: Part 4

Inside reigned a brownish twilight, and the corners were all rounded off with smoke-haze. One of them was occupied by Brian Mahony, a neighbour of the Farrells, who, since Dan’s illness, had often come in to lend him a hand. This morning he had undertaken the repairs of a turf-creel. He was a powerful-looking young man, with a shock of chestnut hair and tawny tufts and frills about his face, which just then wore a glum expression, misliking the entrance of Stevie Grogan. His dissatisfaction caused him to appear deeply absorbed in his task, and to discuss it with the little Farrells, who stood around to watch his splicing and weaving. They were unsuspectingly flattered by his unusual disposition to consult them, and they favoured him with much criticism and advice.

“Sit you down, man, and warm yourself,” said Dan, taking the glazy blue paper which young Grogan had extracted from a thin pocket-book bound in black American cloth, and tied round with frayed strings of pink tape. “I’m afeard we haven’t e’en a sup of anythin’ in the house.”

As Stevie seated himself near the circle of glowing sods, Dan carried his bill over to the window, that the light of its one deep-set pane might assist his somewhat feeble scholarship in spelling out the items. Many of them baffled him completely, but the grand total of one pound five shillings appeared with cruel distinctness, and caused him serious dismay. He had been prepared for a sum that would make a very large hole in one of his few precious notes, and even this prospect was grievous. But the demand for a whole note, body and bones, and some silver too, came as an unexpected stroke. His hands shook as he held the paper to the light, obscured by the leaves of a straggling geranium plant, and he felt bitterly convinced that he was being cheated. Manners, however, would not permit him to enter any protest beyond saying to his niece—

“Musha, Sally, it’s a terrible sight of sugar you seem to ha’ been usin’.”

Upon this Stevie of course said—

“And I’m sure _she_ doesn’t want it, anyway,”—smirking gallantly at Sarah, who had sat down in the adjacent chimney-corner and taken up her strip of lace-work.

“Won’erful fine talk you have,” said Sarah.

“And divil a word but the truth, talkin’ of you,” rejoined Stevie, sidling a little nearer to her along his rickety-legged bench.

Sarah replied by making a threatening demonstration with her needle, which caused her frail thread to snap.

“There now, you have it broke on me,” she said, “and sorra the bit of you’s worth the throuble of tyin’ a knot.”

“Ah now, don’t say so, Miss Tighe,” Stevie said insinuatingly. “That’s an iligant little pattron you have been doin’, oncommon tasty. We have some thread-lace edgin’ at our place that I declare isn’t a ha’porth better, and it comes to as much as thruppence a yard.” He intended the highest compliment, but did only plunge himself the deeper into the depths of her disfavour by thus evening her delicate point to his coarse, machine-made wares. She chose, however, for the time being, to dissemble her wrath against him, because she was angrier with Brian Mahony for his persistence in evidently ignoring her flirtation, and keeping up an unconcerned chatter addressed to the children. So she accepted Stevie’s offer to join the broken thread for her, and was coquettishly derisive of his clumsy-fingered failures, with much tittering and ostentatious enjoyment of the situation; and, in like manner, Brian worked away at the ragged-rimmed creel, and only desisted occasionally to scuffle sportively with Jimmy or Biddy for the possession of a long supple osier. Nobody could suppose him to care a thraneen what Sarah and the chap from Grogan’s found so amusing. He had something else to do than to be botherin’ his head about them.

Meanwhile the master of the house was performing his part—a sad one—in the small drama. He lifted a brown earthenware teapot out of its niche in the mud wall projecting beside the hearth. Its removal discovered the opening of another recess, whence he drew a rough deal box with a broken lid. In this the Farrells apparently stored miscellaneous valuables, for it contained a little roll of bank-notes, a grey flannel bag with silver in it, an old prayer-book that had belonged to Mrs Farrell, some spools of cotton, and so forth. Dan slowly peeled off one of the begrimed Munster notes, and, pre-occupied with regretful calculations, he forgot the shillings which were due, and restored box and teapot to their places. Then he laid down the note on the window-seat, spread out the bluish bill beside it, and stood smoothing both bits of paper with the palm of his hand.

“There’s that,” he said.

“Sure, I’ll be signin’ the resate,” said Stevie, jumping up with alacrity, and producing his shiny black pocket-book and red chalk pencil. But he came to a pause as he noticed the absence of the silver. He looked interrogatively at Dan. The man’s careworn, broken-down aspect, his lined face and tattered garments gave his creditor a conscience-stricken twinge, and for an instant suggested the possibility of renouncing that toll. Stevie, however, quickly ascertained that this was too much to expect from himself; the sum would come in just then too handily to be forgone, and he compromised the matter by resolving to see that the Farrells were let off easily in their next account. Future generosity is always easier than present justice, especially when the postponed virtue can be practised at somebody else’s expense. So—

“There was thim five shillin’s comin’ to us,” said Stevie, continuing to look at Dan.

“Och, murder, tubbe sure there was. It’s meself’s the gaby,” said Dan disconcertedly; and he went towards the niche to rectify his blunder, but he was interrupted by his niece.

“Sure I’ll fetch it out, Uncle Dan,” she said. “It’s throublesome for you to be stoopin’. Mr Grogan can be puttin’ his name on the account.”

She fumbled for a few moments in the box, and came over to the window with a large silver coin in her hand. It was a crown-piece, which, although it bore the stamp of the fourth George, still retained its sturdy thickness and bold outlines unimpaired, as if it had changed owners slowly. Around this she was wrapping a bit of crumpled, thin paper, perceiving which her uncle said—

“Sure, girl alive, I’ve got the note here right enough.”

“But it’s my belief ’twas the dirtiest one you had that you sorted out,” replied Sarah promptly. “Now _I_’ve found him a dacint clane one; and I’m sure you’d a dale liefer be takin’ it wid you, Mr Grogan?”

“’Deed you may depind upon that, Miss Tighe,” Stevie said, with an elated smirk; “and hard-set I’ll be to part wid it, when I consider how you put yourself about to be pickin’ and choosin’ for me.”

Here Brian Mahony abruptly threw down his creel and flung out of the house, with a scowl which did not escape Sarah’s observation. It did not please her, somehow, any better than his previous air of unconcern, whence we may infer that her mood was capricious and contrary. Stevie Grogan, at any rate, presently had reason to think it so, and a flatness and tartness came over the conversation, not inviting him to prolong his visit. After three snubs—

“The day’s darkenin’ again,” he said, “and I’ll be getting along afore there’s another plump of rain.” He took leave of Dan, who was reflecting sorrowfully how much poorer a man the last half-hour had made him, and went to the door, accompanied by Sarah. “Bedad!” he said, glancing around, “I think the sthrame looks to have quieted itself a goodish bit. I might be steppin’ across them stones, it saves better than a mile when you get into the bog over yonder.”

It is possible that Stevie was determined to adopt this course less by the aspect of the river than by a glimpse which he at that moment had had of Brian lounging moodily upon the bridge where he must otherwise pass. But if that were the case, his plan failed of its purpose. For as he walked through the tangled oats followed by Sarah, who had bethought her of a message to give him for her mother, Brian espied them, and immediately descended from the bridge and made for the ford along the river’s bank. He could not resist the spell which drew him to every opportunity of tormenting himself by witnessing what his jealous mind regarded as Sarah’s marked preference for young Grogan, and he sped so recklessly, stumbling and tripping over wisps of weeds and grass, that he reached the stepping-stones just as the others did.

On this occasion, however, his feelings were not to be harrowed by the display of much sentiment or facetiousness at leave-taking, as it was drowned in a sudden burst of rain, which made Sarah pull her fringed shawl into deep eaves over her face, and gasp out with ducked head—

“Och, mercy on us, here’s polthogues—I must run for me life, and you’d best step out, Stevie Grogan, or you’ll be bogged entirely before you get home.”

Thus exhorted, Stevie began hurriedly to stride from stone to stone. In one hand he held the shiny pocket-book, and with the other he clutched the brim of his black felt hat, which a rising gust momentarily threatened to whisk away. He was nearly half over, when the wind came swooping past in a furious flurry, and at the same time a thicker coil of the brown river-water broke on the stones, making one on which he had just set his foot wobble violently. The consequence was that he stumbled badly, only keeping his balance by a headlong plunge forward with outspread arms; and not till he had floundered on to the opposite bank did he perceive that his hat and book were both missing. His hat, after a high-whirled flight, lit on the rapid stream, and went skimming down it without let or hindrance, while his more precious book described a parabolic curve in the air, and dropped into the water near the place where Brian and Sarah stood. For a moment it lay on the surface, and Brian, leaning over at a dangerous angle, tried to reach it with his long osier rod. Upon which Sarah, gripping him by the arm, pulled him back with all her might, saying in an agonised tone:

“Och, goodness gracious, man, get out of that, and let it be!” But even as she spoke, the black cover, weighed down, no doubt, by the filched crown-piece, sunk out of sight and was no more seen. A few seconds later, however, the rough brown eddies a little lower down became strewn with small flecks whiter than the creamy foam. Evidently the strings and covers had collapsed, and let their frail contents go to wrack.

“Sure it’s every bit of it flitthered into laves,” said Sarah, releasing Brian’s arm; “niver sight nor light of it he’ll get the chance to lay eyes on agin, note or no note.” The tone in which she announced this fact was both relieved and triumphant. As for the owner of that perishing property, he stood on the opposite bank, bareheaded in the pelting rain, discontented and woe-begone, an object to move pity. But Sarah added: “And the divil’s cure to him, the thievin’ slieveen. We’ve got the resate off him all right any way.”

Brian, on the contrary, now took off his own limp cloth cap, crumpled it round a great shingle stone for ballast, and flung it across to Stevie.

“Clap that on your head, and be leggin’ it home wid you, if you’ll take my advice,” he shouted against the wind; “you’ll get nothin’, unless it’s your death of could, standin’ there in the rain. Belike we might be some odd chance get the five shillin’ piece at the bottom, when the river goes down, but them bits of papers is past prayin’ for intirely.” This seemed obvious even to the unwillingly convinced Stevie, and he started dolefully through the driving rain, half-blinded by it and the descending peak of Brian’s too roomy cap. The others raced home under much less trying circumstances, and were speedily sheltered beneath Dan Farrell’s thatch.

Sarah took her strip of lace-work, and sat down with it in the brighter patch by the window. She was filling in the centre of a fantastic blossom with a pattern which seemed to have been suggested by the dewy web of some long-legged spinner hitched from blade point to point. Brian Mahony fetched his creel and osiers out of the corner, and stood opposite to her, busy with his coarse weaving. Now and then he looked at her complacently as she stooped over her fine stitches, and for some time neither of them spoke. At last Brian said—

“That was a fine fright I’m after giving you down there, Sarah. You have the sleeve nearly rieved out of my ould coat. Was it dhrowndin’ meself you thought I’d be that you took such a hould of me?”

“Dhrowndin’ himself? Frightenin’ me? Musha good gracious, what talk has the man out of him at all?” Sarah said with shrill ejaculation. “Bedad, if that was all that ailed the likes of you, I’d ha’ had somethin’ better to be at than throublin’ myself to interfere wid you. But afeared I was that you’d be hookin’ that chap’s ould book ashore on us; thryin’ your best you were to do that fool’s thrick.”

“And what for wouldn’t I be saving it if I could?” said Brian, partly consoled for the unflattering explanation of his solicitude by the animosity of her tone when she mentioned that chap; “sure, onst the money was ped away, you were nothin’ the betther for it goin’ to loss.”

“That’s all you know about it,” said Sarah, with mysterious glee. She glanced round to see whether her uncle by the hearth were listening, and as he appeared to be half-asleep, she went on in a lower tone: “Why, look here, Brian—sure that grand clane pound-note I let on to be sortin’ out for him, ne’er a note it was at all, but just an ould bit of the silver-paper pattron I had workin’ me lace from; when it’s crumpled up and creased like, it looks the very moral of one, and the great gomeral stuck it into his book widout takin’ the throuble of unfoldin’ it, be good luck.”

“And what at all did you do that for?” asked Brian after a puzzled pause.

“What for?” said Sarah, “sure in the first beginnin’ of it ’twas just to be risin’ a laugh on him; that was all the notion I had. It come in me head when I was lookin’ for the shillin’s, and seen the thin paper there. But afterwards, when he tuk and put it up widout mindin’, thinks I to myself, I’ll ha’ given him a good long thramp over it anyway; it’s back he’ll be thrapesin’ to-morra or next day to get the right one, in a fine fantigue. But now when he’s slung the whole affair into the wather, so as nobody’ll be the wiser what was in th’ ould pocket-book and what wasn’t, that’s the greatest chance could ha’ happened, and we wid the resate signed and all, the way he can’t say a word agin us. It’s as good as a pound saved to me uncle, poor man, that’s annoyed enough wid his bit of harvest ruinated and everythin’. And you doin’ your endeavours to destroy it all wid fishin’ the book out; small blame to me if I’d pulled the fool’s arm off of you, let alone your ould sleeve.”

“It was no thing to go do,” said Brian gruffly, “to be playin’ them sort of thricks.”

“Sorra the ha’porth of harm was there in it,” Sarah replied airily; “and considerin’ that whatever he got’s swallied up in the river, ’twould ha’ been a cruel pity if we’d gave him anythin’ betther.”

“You’d a right to be sendin’ him the rael note now,” said Brian with decision.

“Saints above! Whethen now, I hope you’ll get your health until I do,” said Sarah, with a shrillness subdued by her uncle’s proximity. “That’d be a nice piece of foolery. Why, you sthookawn, the young slieveen’s no worse off this minute than he would ha’ been if I was after givin’ him a five-pound note to drop out of his hand.”

“You got the resate off of him for nothin’ at all,” said Brian; “he’s never been ped. And the river makes no differ. How would it, when he hadn’t anythin’ of yours to lose in it?”

“That’s just what I’m sayin’. It makes no odds to him; he’d ha’ lost it whether or no. And for the matther of that, he’s been ped times and again for anythin’ Uncle Dan ever got from them, poor man; for them Grogans are notorious thieves, as everybody well knows. Me sister was tellin’ us the other day, they charge three shillin’s a pound for tay that’s on’y eighteen-pence in Dublin. It’s a charity to let them have a taste of chatin’ for themselves. Not that we’re chatin’ them at all at all, it so happens.”

Brian listened quite unimpressed, having no turn for casuistry. He now condescended, however, to urge an objection based upon the expedient.

“And what’ll your uncle say to it, when he finds he’s got a pound too much?”

“I was thinkin’ of that,” said Sarah, nowise disconcerted. “Belike I could persuade him he miscounted them at the fair. But I dare say ’twould be better if I just slipt one off the roll, and kep’ it to get odds and ends of things wid for him, accordin’ as they would be wanted, and never let on about it. Och, no fear, but I’ll conthrive one way or the other.”

“Ay, bedad; it seems to me that you’re great at conthrivin’ and schemin’,” said Brian bitterly. “I’ve as good a mind as ever I had in me life to tell him the whole affair.”

“And if you offer to do such a thing on me, you ould clashbag, you!” Sarah said in a furious whisper, “sorra a word I’ll spake to you agin as long as I live in the world.”

“Faix, then, perhaps I won’t be throublin’ meself to ax you in a hurry,” retorted Brian, “when the on’y talk people has out of them is tellin’ lies and makin’ fools of everybody. My notion is, the fewer words they spake to you, the luckier you’ll be.”

“Plase yourself, and you’ll plase me,” said Sarah, with an assumption of calm indifference, which would have been more successfully achieved if she had not flushed to the scarlet of a frost-nipt brier leaf, besides adding inconsistently, “I’d liefer hear the pigs gruntin’ in the ould stye than to be listenin’ to some people gabbin’ and blatherin’.”

“And plenty good enough company they are, too, poor bastes, for the likes of some I could name—and long sorry I’d be to stop anywheres I wasn’t wanted, wastin’ me time mendin’ things, and gettin’ imperance for it—and one while it’ll be afore you’ll have raison to complain of me disturbin’ you,” said Brian, whose wrath had flared up even more ruddily than hers. And thereupon he bolted away into the rain, without waiting to borrow the loan of Dan’s hat. At which Sarah through all her huff, stood somewhat aghast, knowing that for a man to go out of doors bareheaded argues no ordinary perturbation of spirit.

After this there were many more wet days, and a few golden fine ones, and the harvest was got in one way or the other, and the winter came, and Sarah Tighe went home to live with her family at Athcrum, and finished her fine lace border. But she and Brian did not meet again. At last, one bright, frosty morning, not long before Christmas, they ran against each other coming round the corner of the row in which the little post-office stands. Sarah was so startled that for a moment or two she halted, irresolute, ere she recollected that it behoved her to flounce past him with up-tilted chin. She was just proceeding to do so, when he twitched her shawl, and said, in an expostulatory tone—

“Och now, Sarah, is it cross wid me ye’re goin’ to be all this time?”

“It isn’t me that’s cross wid anybody at all,” said Sarah, subsiding lamentably from her dignified attitude.

“Sure then,” said Brian, “I was on’y wantin’ to tell you what I’ve done about that pound-note was owin’ to the Grogans. Sooner than that you’d have anythin’—anythin’ quare-like on your conscience, I’ve saved up, and sent it to th’ ould miscreant in a letter. So it can’t come agin you now anyway. I’m just after postin’ it this minute.”

“Och, murdher! and are you so?” said Sarah, with an accent of the keenest regret. “And weren’t you the gomeral to not tell me that last week?”

“And I on’y droppin’ it in the letter-box this instiant of time?” said Brian. “But at all events, what differ’d that have made?”

“Differ enough,” said Sarah ruefully. “You see, the fact of the matter was, when I come to considher, I didn’t know but the ould naygur Grogan had a right to that pound-note after all; so last week, when I sold me flounce of deep lace for thirty shillin’s, I got an order, and put it in a cover, and sent it to ould Natty himself. I wasn’t goin’ to let that young thief of the world, Stevie, be layin’ one of his greasy fingers on it, anyhow; and even so I thought badly enough of postin’ it away. For now the winter’s comin’ on us, there was a dale of things I’d liefer ha’ done wid it.”

“Begorra, that’s the very same way it was wid me just now,” said Brian.

“Maybe the post-mistress’d give it back to you, if you thried,” suggested Sarah. “She couldn’t hardly ha’ done anythin’ wid the letters yet.”

“Sorra a thry I’ll thry,” said Brian, with decision. “Sure I wasn’t manin’ to say that I begrudged it e’er a bit, Sally, when it was settin’ things straight for you, acushla.”

“Ah, but to think of payin’ them twyste over—that’s what distresses me,” said Sarah, who did not, however, look inconsolable. “’Deed, now, we managed it finely, Brian; I’m afeard that you and I are a great pair of fools.”

But Brian replied with complacent promptitude, “True for you, then, Sally, machree; that’s just the way it is. Fools we are, very belike, and a pair we are for sartin. Och now, honey, be aisy; sure ’twas yourself said it. And maybe we’ll do all as well as if we’d had more wit. It’s continted I am, anyway. Ay, bedad, a pair of fools—but them Grogans are welcome to their couple of pounds.”

M‘NEILLS’ TIGER-SHEEP

M‘NEILLS’ TIGER-SHEEP

The feud between the Timothy O’Farrells and Neil M‘Neills at Meenaclure was not of very long standing, for the dowager Mrs O’Farrell and the elder Mrs M‘Neill, who had been by no means young when it began, were still to the fore, and not yet even considered to have attained “a great ould age intirely.” This seems a mere mushroom-growth compared with some of our family quarrels, which have been handed down from father to son through so many generations that everybody regards them as a part of the established order of things in the world of their parish. Still, to the younger people, who had been but children at its birth, it seemed to have lasted a long while, and their juniors would have found a different state of affairs almost unthinkable. For them the origin of the enmity had already begun to loom dimly through a mist of tradition, which would tend as time went on to grow vaguer and falser, until at length nobody would be left who could give a clear account of what it was all about. So far, however, all the neighbours who were “any age to speak of” knew the rights of the case well enough. And this is what had happened.

It was a cloudless midsummer evening, perhaps twenty years back—nobody is over-particular about chronology at Meenaclure—and all the dogs and children were away out on the wild land towards the mountains, minding the sheep, to keep them from coming home and eating up the crops. From April to October that was every year their occupation, and a very engrossing one they found it. For the scraggy little sheep of the district are endowed with an appetite for green food worthy of any locust, added to a cleverness at taking fences that would discredit no hunter; and this makes them a constant peril to the painfully-tilled fields, whose produce they threaten like a sort of visibly-embodied blight. Luckily, it is one whose ravages can be averted by timely precautions; and therefore, as soon as potatoes are _kibbed_, and oats sown, the sheep are driven off to a discreet distance on the moors, whence they are prevented from returning by a strong cordon of wary mongrels and active spalpeens. The children of such places as Meenaclure find the sunnier half of the year a season of perpetual school-vacation, when the longest days are watched out to their last lingering glimmer among the tussocks and boulders, so that the morning seems to have begun ages and ages ago by the time one straggles home, three-parts asleep on one’s feet, the flocks having already betaken themselves to completer repose, or, recognising the unattainability of young green oats, having set their nibbling mouths safely up the swarded hill-slopes. For that night the fields may lie secure from marauding trespassers.

On this particular day, however, owing to some remissness of the young M‘Neills and their shrewd-visaged dog, who were all led away by the excitement of a rabbit-hunt, one of the sheep under their charge successfully eluded observation, and broke through the line, with two comrades presently pattering after her. With a wiliness well masked by her expression of meek fatuity, she slunk along unseen in furzy folds of the broken ground, and late in the afternoon had arrived near the forbidden pastures. There she lurked furtively for a while, fully determined to hop over the fence of Timothy O’Farrell’s oatfield, the very first moment that nobody seemed to be about. This opportunity soon occurred, as the O’Farrells’ holding lies somewhat apart in a slight hollow, which secludes it from the little cabin-cluster standing a bit higher round a curve in the long green glacis-like foot-slope of Slieve Gowran.

Thus it came to pass that when Timothy O’Farrell returned from turf-cutting on the bog with his sister Margaret and his brothers Hugh and Patrick, the first thing they noticed was an object like a movable grey boulder cropping up on the delicate sheeny surface of their oat-patch. Whereupon: “Be the powers of smoke,” said Timothy, “if there isn’t them bastes in it agin.”

“Three of them, no less,” said Margaret.

“M‘Neills’, you may bet your brogues,” said Hugh.

“The divil doubt it,” said Timothy. Patrick, who was a youth of action rather than speech, had already plunged head-foremost towards the scene of the trespass.

There were several reasons why doubts of the M‘Neills’ responsibility in the matter should be relegated to the divil. In the first place, the M‘Neills owned more sheep than anybody else at Meenaclure, whereas the O’Farrells owned none; and secondly, the O’Farrells had sown an unusually extensive patch of oats, while the M‘Neills had planted potatoes only. The tendencies of this situation are obvious. Again, the O’Farrells had more than once before undergone the like inroads, and on these occasions Neil M‘Neill had not, Timothy considered, shown by any means an adequate amount of penitence. “Bedad, now,” Timothy reported to his family, “he was cool enough over it. Maybe it’s _his_ notion of fine farmin’ to graze his bastes on other people’s growin’ crops.” A deep-rooted sentiment of respect, however, restrained him from uttering these sarcasms in public. For Timothy, though the head and father of a family, had seen not many more than a score of harvests; and Neil, a dozen years his senior, enjoyed a high reputation among the neighbours as a very knowledgable man altogether. After the second incursion, it is true, Timothy’s wrath had so far overcrowed his awe as to make him “up and tell” Neil M‘Neill that “if he didn’t mind his ould shows of sheep himself, he’d be apt to find somebody that’d do it in a way he mightn’t like.” Still, the affair went no farther, and Timothy had soon reverted to his customary attitude of amicable veneration. But at this third repetition of the offence his anger could not be expected to subside so harmlessly.

Pat’s shouts and flourishing gallop speedily routed the conscious-stricken sheep, and two of them whisked up the hillside like thistledown on a brisk breeze; but the third, who was the ringleader, leaped the fence with so little judgment that she came floundering against Timothy, who grasped her dexterously by the hind-legs.

Now, to catch a Slieve Gowran sheep alive in the open is a rare and difficult feat—proverbially impossible, indeed, at Meenaclure; but Timothy and his brethren were at a loss how they should best turn this achievement of it to account. They felt that simply to let the creature go again would be a flat and unprofitable result, yet what else could they do with it? While they pondered, and their captive impotently wriggled, Hugh suddenly had an inspiration. It came to him at the sight of two large black pots, which stood beside a smouldering fire against the white end-wall of their little house. To an unenlightened observer, they might have suggested some gipsy encampment, but Hugh knew they betokened that his mother had been dyeing her yarn. The Widow O’Farrell was a great spinner, and a large part of the wool shorn in the parish travelled over her whirring wheel on its way to Fergus the weaver’s loom. A few old sacks lying near the fire had contained the ingredients which she used according to an immemorial recipe. From the mottled grey lichen, _crottal_, which clothes our boulders with hues strangely like those of the fleeces browsing among them, she extracted a warm tawny brown; a flaky mass of the rusty black turf-soot supplied her with a strong yellow, and the dull-red bog-ore boiled paradoxically into black.

“Be aisy, will you, you little thief of the mischief,” Hugh said to the sheep. “M‘Neills’ she is, sure enough; there’s the mark. Musha, lads, let’s give her a dab or so of what’s left in the ould pots. ’Twould improve her apparance finely.”

“Ay would it,” said Timothy. “She’s an unnathural ugly objic’ of a crathur the way she is now. Bedad, they’ve a couple of barrels desthroyed on us.”

“A few odd sthrakes of the black and yella’d make her look iligant,” said Hugh. “Do you take a hould of her, Tim. Och, man, don’t let her away, but lift her aisy. Maggie, did you see e’er a sign of the stick they had stirring the stuff wid? But it’s apt to be cool enough agin now.”

“Ah, boys dear, but it’s ragin’ mad M‘Neills ’ll be if you go for to do such a thing,” Margaret said, half-scared, and blundering in her flurry on a wrong note, as she at once perceived. For her brothers promptly responded in a sort of fugal movement—

“And sure who’s purvintin’ of them? They’re welcome, bedad, them, or the likes of them. Is it ragin’? Maybe it’s raison they’ll have before they’re a great while oulder, musha Moyah.” And they proceeded with all the greater enthusiasm to carry out their design, which became more ambitiously elaborate in the course of execution.

Early next morning, while the mountain-shadow still threw a purple cloak over the steep fields of Meenaclure, where all the dewdrops were ready to twinkle as soon as a ray reached them, and when Mrs Neil M‘Neill was preparing breakfast, which at this short-coming summer season consisted chiefly of Indian meal, her eldest daughter ran in to her with news. There was somethin’, Molly said, leppin’ about in the pigstye. Now, the M‘Neills’ stye just then stood empty, in the interval between the despatch of their last lean fat pig to Letterkenny fair and the hoped-for fall in the market-price of the wee springy which was to replace him. So Mrs Neil said, “Och, blathers, child alive, what would there be in it at all?”

“But it’s rustlin’ in the straw,—I heard it,—and duntin’ the door wid its head like,” Molly persisted.

“Sure then, run and see what it is, honey,” said her mother, who was pre-occupied with a critical stage of her porridge; and a piece of practical business on hand generally disposes us to adopt a sceptical attitude towards marvels. “Maybe one of the hins might have fluttered into it; but there’s apter to not be anythin’.”

Molly, whose mood was not enterprising, reinforced her courage with the company of Judy and Thady before she went to investigate; and a minute afterwards she came rushing back uttering terrified lamentations, whereof the burden seemed to be, “It’s a tiger-sheep.” Her report could no longer be disregarded, and the rest of the family were presently grouped round the low wall of the little lean-to shed, which did really contain an inmate of extraordinary aspect. Its form was that of a newly-shorn sheep, long-legged and lank-bodied like others of its race, but in colouring altogether exceptional. Boldly marked stripes of black and tawny yellow alternated all over it, with a brilliant symmetry not surpassed by the natural history chromograph which flamed on the wall of Rathflesk National School, and which now recurred to little Molly’s mind in conjunction with the fact that the wearer of the striated skin “was a cruel, savage, wicked baste, that would be swallyin’ all before it,” whereupon she had shrieked “Tiger-sheep!” and fled from ravening jaws.

Her parents and grandparents, on the contrary, stood and surveyed the phenomenon with almost unutterable wrath. Traces of a human hand in its production were plain enough, for the beast had been fastened into the stye by a rope round her neck, which was further ornamented with long bracken-fronds and tufts of curiously-coloured wool, studiously grotesque. In fact, had she been mercilessly endowed with “the giftie,” she would no doubt have suffered from a mortification as acute as was that of her owners, instead of trotting off quite satisfied, when once she was released and at liberty to resume her fastidious nibbling among the dewy tussocks.

“That’s some divilment of the O’Farrells, and the back of me hand to the whole of them!” said Neil M‘Neill, with clenched eyebrows. “Themselves and their blamed impidence, and their stinkin’ brashes! The ould woman’s niver done boilin’ them up for her wool. It’s slung about her head I wish they were, sooner than to be used for misthratin’ other people’s dacint bastes.”

“’Deed now, thrue for you,” said his mother. “Sure wasn’t she tellin’ me herself yesterday evenin’ she’d been busy all day gettin’ her yarn dyed, agin she would be knittin’ the boys their socks? Gad’rin’ the sut she said she was this good while. That’s the way they done it—och, the vagabones!”

“It’s a bad job,” said old Joe M‘Neill, shaking his despondent white head.

“I wouldn’t ever ha’ thought it of them,” said Mrs Neil. “On’y them boys is that terrible wild; goodness forgive them, there’s no demented notion they mayn’t take into their heads. But what at all could we do for the misfort’nit crather? Sure it’s distressful to see her goin’ about that scandalous figure. I can’t abide the sight of her.”

Our bogland dyes, however, are very fast, and for many a day that summer Mrs Neil had to endure the apparition of the O’Farrells’ victim, who of course became a painfully conspicuous object on the hillside, where she roamed blissfully unaware of how her owners’ eyes followed her with gloomy resentment, and of how their neighbours’ children, catching up Molly’s cry, shouted one to another derisively, “Och, look at M‘Neills’ tiger-sheep!” But long and long after the parti-coloured fleece had vanished for good and all, the effects of the outrage continued to make themselves felt in the social life of Meenaclure, where it must be owned that the inhabitants are rather prone to keep their grudges in the same time-proof wallet with their gratitudes. And the grudges, somehow, often seem to lie atop. In this case, moreover, the injury had an especial bitterness, because the M‘Neills came of an old sheep-keeping class, whose little flock was an inheritance handed down, dwindling, through many generations, and whose main interests and activities had time out of mind turned upon wool, so that everything connected with it had acquired in their eyes the peculiar sanctity with which we often invest the materials and implements belonging to our own craft. A chimney-sweep has probably some feeling of disinterested regard for his bags and brushes. Accordingly, sheep were to them a serious, almost solemn subject, altogether unsuitable for a practical joke; and an insult offered to them was felt to strike at the honour of the family. Small blame to them, therefore, if, as the neighbours said, they were ragin’ mad entirely, and turned a deaf ear to all pacific overtures.

The O’Farrells, to do them justice, admitted upon reflection that they had maybe gone a little beyond the beyonds, and were disposed to be apologetic and conciliatory. But when old Mrs O’Farrell, one day meeting the two smallest M‘Neills on the road, presented each of them with a pale brown egg, which she had just found in the nest of her speckled hen away down beside the river, the result merely was that her gifts were smashed into an impromptu omelet before the M‘Neills’ door, by the direction of the master of the house, who only wished the ould sinner had been there herself to see the way he’d serve that, or anythin’ else she’d have the impidence to be sendin’ into his place. And later on, when the feathery gold of the O’Farrells’ oatfield had been bound in stooks, and the hobbledehoy Pat was despatched to inquire whether the M‘Neills might be wantin’ e’er a thrifle of straw after the thrashin’ for darnin’ their bit of thatch, the polite attention elicited nothing except a peremptory injunction to “quit out of that.”

In taking up this attitude, the M‘Neills had at first the support of their neighbours’ sympathy, public opinion being that it was no thing for the O’Farrells to go do. But as time went on, people began to add occasionally that sure maybe they didn’t mean any such great harm after all, and that they were only young boyoes, without as much sense among the whole of them as would keep a duck waddling straight. What was the use of being so stiff over a trifle? These magnanimous sentiments were, no doubt, strengthened by the fact that in so small a community as Meenaclure a permanent breach between any two families could not but entail some inconveniences upon all the rest. It was irksome, for instance, to bear in mind throughout a friendly chat that at the casual mention of a neighbour’s name the person you were talking to would look “as bitter as sut” and freeze into grim dumbness; or to have to consider, should you wish for a loan of Widdy O’Farrell’s market-basket, that you must by no means “let on” to her your intention of carrying home in it Mrs M‘Neill’s grain of tea; or to be called upon to choose between the company of Neil M‘Neill and Hugh O’Farrell on the way home from the fair, because neither of them, as the saying is, would look the same side of the road as the other. Such obligations lay stumbling-blocks in our daily path, and nip growths of good fellowship, and are generally embarrassing and vexatious. However, Meenaclure had to put up with this state of things for so many a long day that people learned to include it unprotestingly among their necessary evils.

Under these circumstances, it was of course only in the nature of things that the little M‘Neills and O’Farrells, the smallest of whom had not been born at the time of the quarrel, should always put out their tongues at one another whenever they met. They regarded the salutation, indeed, as a sort of ceremonial observance, which could not be omitted without a sense of indecorum. Thus, one inclement autumn, when Patrick O’Farrell was no longer a hobbledehoy, but “as big a man as you’d meet goin’ most roads,” he went off to a _rabble_, that is, a hiring-fair, at Letterkenny, and took service for six months with a farmer away at Raphoe. On the day that he left Meenaclure, he happened, just as he was setting out, to meet Molly M‘Neill, who had by this time grown into “a tall slip of a girl going on for sixteen,” and they duly exchanged the customary greeting, Pat getting the better of her by at least half-an-inch of insult. But when he returned on a soft April evening, it chanced again that one of the first persons he fell in with was Molly. She was coming along between the newly-clad hedges of a narrow lane, and when he caught sight of her first he mistook her for his cousin, Norah O’Farrell, she looked so much taller than his recollections. But, on perceiving his error, he merely gave up his intention of saying, “Well, Norah, and how’s yourself this great while?” and slunk past without making any demonstration whatever. Molly would hardly have noticed it, indeed, as when she saw him coming she began to minutely examine the buds on the thorn-bushes, and did not lift an eyelash while they were passing. Yet, as they went their several ways, Pat felt that he had somehow shirked a duty; and Molly, for her part, could not shake off a sense of having failed in loyalty to her family until she had relieved her conscience by announcing at home that she was “just after meetin’ that great _ugly_-lookin’ gomeral, Pat O’Farrell, slingein’ down the road below Widdy Byrne’s.”

The year which followed this spring was one of bad seasons and hard fare at Meenaclure, and towards the end of it Pat O’Farrell came reluctantly to perceive that he could best mend his own and his family’s tattered fortunes by emigrating to the States. His resolve, though regretted by all his neighbours, except of course the M‘Neills, was considered sensible enough; and at the “convoy” which assembled according to custom to see him off on his long journey the general purport of conversation was to the effect that, bedad, everybody’d be missing poor Pat, but sure himself was the fine clever boy wouldn’t be any time gettin’ together the price of a little place back again in the ould country. The M‘Neills alone were of the opinion, expressed by Neil’s mother, that “the only pity was the rest of the pack weren’t goin’ along wid Pat; unless, like enough, they’d be more than the people out in those parts could put up wid all at onst, the way they’d be landin’ them back on us like a bundle of ould rubbish washin’ up agin wid the tide.”

But surprise was the universal feeling when, about six months later, it became known that Neil M‘Neill’s eldest child Molly had also made up her mind to cross over the water. Her own family were foremost among the wonderers; for Molly had always been considered rather excessively timid and quiet—certainly the very last girl in the parish whom one would have thought likely to make such a venture. They half-believed that when it came to the point, “sorra a fut of her would go”; and they much more than half hoped so, notwithstanding that their rent had fallen into alarming arrears, and none of her brethren were old enough to help. Molly, however, actually went, amid lamentations and forebodings, both of her own and other people’s, all alike unavailing to stop her. Mrs Timothy O’Farrell said she’d be long sorry to have a daughter of hers streeling off to the ends of the earth. And I think that Molly’s mother _was_ long sorry, poor soul, through many a lonesome day and anxious night.

After these two departures, things at Meenaclure took their wonted course, a little more sadly and dully perhaps than heretofore. Communications from abroad came rarely and scantily, for neither of the absentees had much scholarship. Their sheep-herding summers had greatly curtailed that, and it would have been difficult to say whether Pat’s or Molly’s scrawls were the briefer or obscurer. But not long after Molly M‘Neill had gone, one of Pat O’Farrell’s letters contained an important piece of news—nothing less than that he was “just about gettin’ married.” He did not go into particulars about the match, merely describing the future Mrs Pat as the “best little girl in or out of Ireland,” and opining that they mightn’t do too badly. His family were not overjoyed at the event, which might be considered to presage a falling off in remittances; and his mother was much cast down thereby, her thoughts going to the tune of “my son is my son till he gets him a wife.” Still, she was not so dispirited as to be past finding some solace in an innuendo; and she almost certainly designed one when she took occasion to remark just outside the chapel door, where she had been telling the neighbours her news: “But ah, sure, I don’t mind so long as he hasn’t took up wid one of them black-headed girls I never can abide the looks of. And ’deed now there’s no fear of that. Pat’s just the same notion as myself, I know very well.” For Mrs Neil M‘Neill was standing well within earshot, and, as everybody remembered, “there wasn’t a fair hair on the head of e’er a one of her childer.” However, Mrs Neil proved equal to the emergency, and remarked, addressing Katty Byrne, that “It was rael queer the sort of omadhawns she’d heard tell of some girls, who, belike, knew no better, bein’ content to take great lumberin’ louts of fellers, wid the ugly-coloured hair on their heads like nothin’ in the world except a bit of new thatch before it would be combed straight.”

She spoke without any presentiment that she would soon have to go through much the same experience as old Mrs O’Farrell; but so it was. For a week or two later came a letter from Molly stating that she was “just after gettin’ married.” Her husband, who she said was earning grand wages, bore the obnoxious name of O’Farrell, but there was nothing strange in the coincidence, as the district about Meenaclure abounds in Farrells and Neills, with and without prefixes of O and Mac; and it seemed only natural to suppose a similar state of things in New York. Nobody could deny that there were plenty of O’Farrells very dacint people. So Molly’s mother mourned in private over an event which seemed to set a seal upon the separation between her daughter and herself; and in public was well pleased and very proud, laying great stress upon the fact that Molly had sent the money-order just as usual,—“Sorra a fear of little Molly forgettin’ the ould people at all,”—and serenely scorning Mesdames O’Farrell’s opinion that “when a girl had to thravel off that far after a husband, it was the quare crooked stick of a one she’d be apt to pick up.”

After this Meenaclure received no very thrilling foreign news for about a twelve-month. Then one fine Sunday, the Widdy O’Farrell was to be seen sailing along Masswards, with her head held extremely high in its stiff-frilled cap and dark blue hood, and with a swinging sweep of her black homespun skirt, which betrayed an exultant stride. All her family, indeed, wore a somewhat elated and consequential air, which most of her neighbours allowed to be justifiable when she explained that she had become the happy grandmother of her Pat’s fine young son: the letter with the announcement had come last night. This was indeed promotion, for her son Tim’s children were all girls. With the congratulations upon so auspicious an event even old Mrs M‘Neill could mingle only subdued murmurs about brats taking after their fathers that weren’t good for much, the dear knows. However, she had not long to wait for as good or better a right to strut chin in air, since it was with a great-grandmother’s dignity that a few days later she could inform everybody of the arrival of Molly’s boy. She would, I believe, have found it very hard to forgive Molly if the child had been merely a daughter.

This rivalry, as it were, between the estranged families in the matter of news from their non-resident members recurred with the same equipoised result on more than one similar occasion, and was extended even to less happy events. For instance, one time when Pat wrote in great distraction, and a wilder scrawl than usual, that the “three childer was dreadful bad wid the mumps, he doubted would they get over it,” the next mail brought just such a report from Molly; which was rather awkward for her mother and grandmother, who had been going about passing the remark that “when childer got proper mindin’ they never took anythin’ of the sort.”

At length, however, when perhaps half-a-dozen years had gone by, the balance of good fortune dipped decidedly towards the O’Farrells. One autumn morning a letter came from Pat to say that he and his family were coming home. He had saved up a tidy little bit of money, and meant to try could he settle himself on a dacint little bit of land; at any rate he would get a sight of the ould place and the ould people. Great was the rejoicing of the O’Farrells. Whereas for the M‘Neills at this time the meagre mail-bags contained no foreign letter, no letter at all, bad or good, let alone one fraught with such grand news. Molly’s mother, it is true, dreamt two nights running that Molly had come home; but dreams are a sorry substitute for a letter, especially when everybody knows, and some people remind you, that they always go by contraries. So Mrs Neil fretted and foreboded, and had not the heart to be sarcastic, no matter how arrogantly the O’Farrells might comport themselves.

Then the autumn days shrivelled and shrank, and one morning in late November the word went round Meenaclure that the _Kaley_ that evening would be up at Fergus the weaver’s. This meeting-place was always popular, Fergus being a well-liked man, with a wide space round his hearth. And this night’s conversazione promised to be particularly enjoyable, as it had leaked out that Dan Farrell and Mrs Keogh and Dinny O’Neill were concerned in what is at Meenaclure technically termed “a join,” for the purpose of treating the kaleying company to cups of tea. In fact, the materials for that refreshment, done up in familiar purple paper parcels, lying on the window-seat, were obvious to everybody who came into the room, though to have seemed aware of them would have been a grave breach of manners. When all the company were mustered, and the fire was burning its brightest, Fergus might well look round his house with satisfaction, for so large an assembly seldom came together, and universal harmony seemed to prevail. This was not disturbed by the fact that several both of the Timothy O’Farrells and Neil M‘Neills were present, as by this time everybody thoroughly understood the situation, and the neighbours arranged themselves as a matter of course in ways which precluded any awkward juxtapositions of persons “who weren’t spakin’.”