tumn weather, with just a sprinkle of
frost white on the wayside grass, like the wraith of belated moonlight,
when the sun rose, and shimmering into rainbow stars by noon. But about
a month later the winter swooped suddenly on Lisconnel: with wild winds
and cold rain that made crystal-silver streaks down the purple of the
great mountainheads peering in over our bogland.

So one perishing Saturday Mrs. Kilfoyle made up her mind that she would
wear her warm legacy on the bleak walk to Mass next morning, and
reaching it down from where it was stored away among the rafters wrapped
in an old sack, she shook it respectfully out of its straight-creased
folds. As she did so she noticed that the binding of the hood had ripped
in one place, and that the lining was fraying out, a mishap which should
be promptly remedied before it spread any further. She was not a very
expert needlewoman, and she thought she had better run over the way to
consult Mrs. O'Driscoll, then a young matron, esteemed the handiest and
most helpful person in Lisconnel.

"It's the nathur of her to be settin' things straight wherever she
goes," Mrs. Kilfoyle said to herself as she stood in her doorway waiting
for the rain to clear off, and looking across the road to the sodden
roof which sheltered her neighbor's head. It had long been lying low,
vanquished by a trouble which even she could not set to rights, and some
of the older people say that things have gone a little crookeder in
Lisconnel ever since.

The shower was a vicious one, with the sting of sleet and hail in its
drops, pelted about by gusts that ruffled up the puddles into ripples,
all set on end, like the feathers of a frightened hen. The hens
themselves stood disconsolately sheltering under the bank, mostly on one
leg, as if they preferred to keep up the slightest possible connection
with such a very damp and disagreeable earth. You could not see far in
any direction for the fluttering sheets of mist, and a stranger who had
been coming along the road from Duffelane stepped out of them abruptly
quite close to Mrs. Kilfoyle's door, before she knew that there was
anybody near. He was a tall, elderly man, gaunt and grizzled, very
ragged, and so miserable-looking that Mrs. Kilfoyle could have felt
nothing but compassion for him had he not carried over his shoulder a
bunch of shiny cans, which was to her mind as satisfactory a passport as
a ticket of leave. For although these were yet rather early d