is she?" For
she had been a superfluous aunt so long that she found it hard to
believe in anything better than toleration.

"Talkin' of company," said Ody, to change the subject--which his aunt's
remarks often disposed people to do--"Mad Bell's just after shankin'
back wid herself; she's below colloguin' wid Big Anne. It's a fine long
tramp she's took this time; so if she was in the humour she'd a right to
ha' plinty to be tellin' us."

"Well, now, I'm glad the crathur's home," said Mrs. Kilfoyle. "It's
lonesome in a manner to think of the little ould bein' rovin' about the
world like a wisp of hay gathered up on the win'; for all, tubbe sure,
it's her own fancy starts her off."

"I won'er where to she wint this time," said Mrs. M'Gurk.

"You might as well," said Ody, "be won'erin' where a one of thim
saygulls goes, when it gives a flourish of its ould flippers and away
wid itself head foremost--barrin', in coorse, that Mad Bell's bound to
keep on the dhry land at all ivents. But from Sallinbeg ways she come
this evenin', singin' 'Garry Owen' most powerful--I know that much."

"Ah, then she might be chance ha' been as far as Laraghmena, and ha'
seen a sight of me brother Mick and Theresa," Mrs. Kilfoyle said, with
wistful interest. For at Lisconnel we still look not a little to the
reports brought by stray travellers for news of absent friends, much as
we did before the days of penny posts and mail trains. And our
geographical lore is vague enough to impede us but slightly in our hopes
of obtaining information from any quarter. Only the probability seems to
be increased if the newcomer arrives from the direction in which our
friend departed.

"Sure she might so," said Ody. "But niver a tell she'll tell onless she
happens to take the notion in the quare ould head of her. It's just be
the road of humouring her now and agin, and piecin' her odd stories
together, you git e'er a discovery, so to spake, of the places she's
after bein' in."

The scenes of Mad Bell's wanderings did indeed reveal themselves to her
neighbours confusedly and dispersedly in her fitful and capricious
narrative, like glimpses of a landscape caught through a shifting mist.
As this sometimes distorts the objects that loom within it, so Mad
Bell's statements were occasionally misleading. Once, for example, she
threw the Quigley family into most distracted concern by her accounts of
the terrific "shootin' and murdherin' and massacreein'" she had