e
district had tracked the party. Young Dan O'Beirne, whose work brought
him daily up from down below to the forge a long way on the road toward
Lisconnel, had safely promised to convey this letter so far whenever it
came; and on many a day the neighbours nodded commiseratingly to one
another as they saw "the ould crathur, goodness may pity him, settin'
off wid himself" in quest of it. The prompt January dusk would have
already fallen before he struggled up the Knockawn, to be greeted by the
widow in the tone of marked congratulation which our friends sometimes
adopt when all reason for it is conspicuously absent: "Well, man alive,
there wouldn't be ere a letter in it this day anyway."

"Och tub-be sure, not at all," he would answer cheerfully, "I wouldn't
look to there bein' e'er a one sooner than to-morra. I hadn't the notion
of expectin' a letter whatever. 'Twas just for the enjoyment of the bit
of a walk I went."

"Why tub-be sure it was. But be comin' in, man, for you're fit to dhrop,
and be gettin' your ould brogues dhried. Och man, you're dhrownded
entirely; 'tis a mighty soft evenin' it's turnin' out."

"And here's Katty lookin' out for you this great while," Big Anne would
say, "she's finely this evenin', glory be to goodness."

CHAPTER XIII.

A RETURN.

Affairs were much in this posture, when the widow M'Gurk was one day
perplexed by the occurrence of two small incidents. In the first place,
as she was starting on an expedition to the Town she saw at a little
distance something run across the road which looked uncommonly like the
Patmans' black cat Tib. Lisconnel owns no other cats for which she might
have mistaken it; still, as she was puzzled to think how the creature
should have hidden itself away for more than a fortnight, she concluded
that she had been deceived by some fluttering bird or glancing shadow.
In the next place, she happened in the Town upon one Larry Donnelly, who
in the course of conversation remarked: "So you've that young Patman
back wid yous agin. What took him to be leggin' off wid himself that
way?"

"And what put that in your head at all?" said the widow. "Light nor
sight we've seen of him, or a one of them, or likely to. It's off out of
the counthry he is belike, and he after robbin' his ould father, that's
niver done talkin' foolish about him, and lavin' his innicent child to
go starvin' into the Union--bad luck to him." She found a free
expression of her sentiments