ttle of
the Frogs and Mice in English' (1894); 'Maureen's Fairing and other
Stories' (1895); and 'Strangers at Lisconnel,' a second series of 'Irish
Idyls' (1895). In the last book we again have the sorrows and joys of
the small hamlet in the west of Ireland, where "the broad level spreads
away and away to the horizon before and behind and on either side of
you, very sombre-hued, yet less black-a-vised than more frequent bergs,"
where in the distance the mountains "loom up on its borders much less
substantial, apparently, in fabric than so many spirals of blue turf
smoke," and where the curlew's cry "can set a whole landscape to
melancholy in one chromatic phrase."

THE WIDOW JOYCE'S CLOAK

From 'Strangers at Lisconnel'

Still, although the Tinkers' name has become a byword among us through a
long series of petty offenses rather than any one flagrant crime, there
is a notable misdeed on record against them, which has never been
forgotten in the lapse of many years. It was perpetrated soon after the
death of Mrs. Kilfoyle's mother, the Widow Joyce, an event which is but
dimly recollected now at Lisconnel, as nearly half a century has gone
by. She did not very long survive her husband, and he had left his
roots behind in his little place at Clonmena, where, as we know, he had
farmed not wisely but too well, and had been put out of it for his pains
to expend his energy upon our oozy black sods and stark-white bowlders.
But instead he moped about, fretting for his fair green fields, and few
proudly cherished beasts,--especially the little old Kerry cow. And at
his funeral the neighbors said, "Ah, bedad, poor man, God help him, he
niver held up his head agin from that good day to this."

When Mrs. Joyce felt that it behooved her to settle her affairs, she
found that the most important possession she had to dispose of was her
large cloak. She had acquired it at the prosperous time of her marriage,
and it was a very superior specimen of its kind, in dark-blue cloth
being superfine, and its ample capes and capacious hood being
double-lined and quilted and stitched in a way which I cannot pretend to
describe, but which made it a most substantial and handsome garment. If
Mrs. Joyce had been left entirely to her own choice in the matter, I
think she would have bequeathed it to her younger daughter Theresa,
notwithstanding that custom clearly designated Bessy Kilfoyle, the
eldest of the family, as the heiress. For she said to