himself that Mr. Doyle, like the sergeant and Mr. Thaddeus Gallagher,
was sound asleep. Then he passed on and turned down a narrow laneway at
the side of the hotel.

This led him into the yard at the back of the hotel. A man of delicate
sensibilities would have shrunk from entering Mr. Doyle's yard on a
hot day. It was exceedingly dirty, and there were a great many decaying
things all over it, besides a manure heap in one corner and a pig-stye
in another. But Constable Moriarty had no objection to bad smells.
He sat down on the low wall of the pig-stye and whistled "Kathleen
Mavourneen." He worked through the tune twice creditably, but without
attempting variations. He was just beginning it a third time when a door
at the back of the hotel opened and a girl came out. Moriarty stopped
whistling and grinned at her amiably. She was a very pretty girl, but
she was nearly as dirty as the yard. Her short skirt was spotted and
stained from waist-band to the ragged fringe where there had once been
a hem. Her boots were caked with dry mud. They were several sizes too
large for her and seemed likely to fall off when she lifted her feet
from the ground. A pink cotton blouse was untidily fastened at her neck
with a brass safety pin. Her hair hung in a thick pig-tail down her
back. In the higher ranks of society in Connacht, as elsewhere, girls
are generally anxious to pose as young women at the earliest possible
moment. They roll up their hair and fasten it with hairpins as soon as
their mothers allow them. But girls of the peasant class in the west of
Ireland put off the advance of womanhood as long as they can. Wiser
than their more fashionable sisters, they dread the cares and
responsibilities of adult life. Up to the age of twenty, twenty-one,
or twenty-two, they still wear their hair in pig-tails and keep their
skirts above their ankles.

"Is that you, Mary Ellen?" said Constable Moriarty.

The girl stood still. She was carrying a bucket full of a thick yellow
liquid in her right hand. She allowed it to rest against her leg. A
small portion of its contents slopped over and still further stained her
skirt. She looked at Constable Moriarty out of the corners of her eyes
for a moment. Then she went on again towards the pig-stye. She had large
brown eyes with thick lashes. Her hair was still in a pig-tail, and
her skirt was far from covering the tops of her boots; but she had
a precocious understanding of the art of looking at