you've the fancy to be tyin' the
bit of red string through it, I'm sorry it was ate."

Hugh's head drew back, and disappeared from her view; but next moment
she heard him say mournfully: "What am I after doin'? Puttin' me fut
that far down a houle it's caught fast between a couple of rafters.
Firrm it is, begorrah. If I don't mind what I'm at, it's pullin' the
half of their house down, and wranchin' me ankle I'll be before I free
meself." And she saw him struggling cautiously on the roof all the
while she was ascending the slope to Ody Rafferty's door, within which
his aunt was at present a prisoner.

A reluctant and repining one she was, having been seized with a bad
attack of lumbago at a time when she felt particularly anxious to keep a
vigilant eye upon what occurred in her neighbourhood, instead of being
left dependent upon hearsay for a knowledge of anything happening
outside her four draughty walls. Many a care-infested hour she fretted
away between them. For how could she tell with what insidious steps the
calamity to ensue from Ody's courtship of Theresa Joyce might all the
while be stealing on her? She dared not confide her fears to any
neighbour, nor would she have put much faith in the report of
observation unwhetted thereby; and she lived in daily dread of hearing
the news announced as no mere conjecture or rumour, but a very hard
fact. As the days wore on the idea took possession of her more and more
completely, but she could only wreak her helpless ill-humour by doing
foolish and futile things, such as dilating to Ody upon the imprudence
of getting married, and the undesirable qualities of black-looking slips
of colleens--a simple and ingenious expedient for putting him out of
conceit with all and any of them; while she assumed towards Theresa a
demeanor so glum and repellent that the girl could not attribute it
entirely to the irritability caused by rheumatic twinges, and from one
of her charitably intentioned visits returned with a disconcerted
expression, and a resolve, which she kept, to pay no more. But in fact
Ody was during these weeks even more than usually engrossed by the
affairs of the inobtrusive little manufactory, which he and Felix
O'Beirne superintended away in a retired part of the bog; and not they
alone, but Lisconnel collectively, had been going through some
excitement on this account. This was occasioned by the livelier interest
which the police had recently manifested in that branc