creature, she never
got back her memory sufficiently to tell them all that had happened to
her after her husband's death. Nor did she seem as if she wanted to try
to remember, she was garrulous only of her early days when the parish
bells rang for her wedding, and the furze was in bloom. This was before
the Big House on the hill had been built. The hill was then a fine
pasture for sheep, and Margaret would often describe the tinkling of
the sheep-bells in the valley, and the yellow furze, and the bells that
were ringing for her wedding. She always spoke of the bells, though no
one could understand where the bells came from. It was not customary to
ring the parish bell for weddings, and there was no other bell, so that
it was impossible to say how Margaret could have got the idea into her
head that bells were ringing for her when she crossed the hill on her
way to the church, dressed in the beautiful gown, which the grandmother
of the present Mr. Roche had dressed her in, for she had always been
the favourite, she said, with the old mistress, a much greater
favourite than even her two sisters had ever been. Betty and Mary were
then little children and hardly remembered the wedding, and could say
nothing about the bells.

Margaret Kirwin walked with a short stick, her head lifted hardly
higher than the handle and when the family were talking round the
kitchen fire she would come among them for a while and say something to
them, and then go away, and they felt they had seen someone from
another world. She hobbled now and then as far as the garden gate, and
she frightened the peasantry, so strange did she seem among the
flowers--so old and forlorn, almost cut off from this world, with only
one memory to link her to it. It was the spectral look in her eyes that
frightened them, for Margaret was not ugly. In spite of all her
wrinkles the form of the face remained, and it was easy, especially
when her little grand-niece was by, to see that sixty-five years ago
she must have had a long and pleasant face, such as one sees in a fox,
and red hair like Molly.

Molly was sixteen, and her grey dress reached only to her ankles.
Everyone was fond of the poor old woman; but it was only Molly who had
no fear of her at all, and one would often see them standing together
beside the pretty paling that separated the steward's garden from the
high road. Chestnut-trees grew about the house, and china roses over
the walls, and in the course o