wn upon
Lisconnel, as if a murky wing had flapped out its brief flare of
excitement. The whole thing had happened so quickly that the rich light
from the west was still bronzing the edges of the flat-ledged furze
boughs, and rosing their white stems, when the little hollow behind the
Joyces' house rested quiet and deserted, with no traces left of the
company lately there assembled, except a litter of silky white
bog-cotton tufts, soon to be swept away by the breeze, and the unchancy
yellow ribbon, which had been torn out of Denis's cap, and lay coiling
among the rough grass, whence, as the dusk thickened, it glinted like
the wraith of a lost sunbeam or a ray from an evil star.

But that night fell very dark, with a moon so closely veiled that the
flaggers and bulrushes waving their swords and spears fast by, dwindled
into mere rustlings and murmurs--the air was full of them. At the
dimmest hour anybody who had stolen out of a neighbouring door, and
passed between the faintly glimmering white boulders, as if in search of
something lost there, might have seemed only one of the whispering
shadows. And these might have begun so say, "Sorra aught can I do at
all, at all. And ne'er a soul is there to spake a word--all of thim agin
him, and it no fau't of his, when he would be torminted that way. They'd
no call to go play such a thrick on him, and he didn't mane it a'
purpose, I very well know; but the other chap was intindin' to annoy
him, sittin' there wid a great ugly grin on his face. I wish he'd never
come next or nigh Lisconnel." But be that as it may, when the next
morning's light twinkled among the dewy blades, the yellow ribbon had
disappeared.

After this the days seemed to drag heavily at Lisconnel, where a dulness
and flatness had come over society. Dr. Hamilton had carried off Denis
O'Meara to Ballybrosna, and there was nothing to fill up the blank he
left except speculations about his chances of recovery, and censures
upon Hugh McInerney, monotonously unanimous. In his favour, indeed, no
one seemingly had a word to say. People declared that "they'd never have
thought he'd take and do such a thing, for though he might ha' been a
quare sort of bosthoon, he was always dacint and paiceable." But
cancelled praise is the bitterest of blame; and they added that "it was
rael outrageous of him to go do murdher on the likes of Denis O'Meara,
and no credit to Lisconnel for it to be happenin' him there. Iligant
characters