fair.

Mrs. Kilfoyle, however, still stood in deep dejection at her door, and
said, "Och, but she was the great fool to go let the likes of him set
fut widin her house."

To console her Mrs. O'Driscoll said, "Ah, sure, sorra a fool were you,
woman dear; how would you know the villiny of him? And if you'd turned
the man away widout givin' him e'er a bit, it's bad you'd be thinkin'
of it all the day after."

And to improve the occasion for her juniors, old Mrs. Keogh added, "Ay,
and morebetoken you'd ha' been committin' a sin."

But Mrs. Kilfoyle replied with much candour, "'Deed, then, I'd a dale
liefer be after committin' a sin, or a dozen sins, than to have me poor
mother's good cloak thieved away on me, and walkin' wild about the
world."

As it happened the fate of Mrs. Kilfoyle's cloak was very different from
her forecast. But I do not think that a knowledge of it would have been
consolatory to her by any means. If she had heard of it, she would
probably have said, "The cross of Christ upon us. God be good to the
misfort'nit crathur." For she was not of at all an implacable temper,
and would, under the circumstances, have condoned even the injury that
obliged her to appear at Mass with a flannel petticoat over her head
until the end of her days. Yet she did hold the Tinkers in a perhaps
somewhat too unqualified reprobation. For there are tinkers and tinkers.
Some of them, indeed, are stout and sturdy thieves, veritable birds of
prey, whose rapacity is continually questing for plunder. But some of
them have merely the magpies' and jackdaws' thievish propensity for
picking up what lies temptingly in their way. And some few are so honest
that they pass by as harmlessly as a wedge of high-flying wild duck. And
I have heard it said that to places like Lisconnel their pickings and
stealings have at worst never been so serious a matter as those of
another flock, finer of feather, but not less predacious in their
habits, who roosted, for the most part, a long way off, and made their
collections by deputy.

CHAPTER IV

A GOOD TURN

Along the road to Sallinbeg little seemed to be abroad besides foul
weather, but there was a great deal of that. The gusts that came
flapping wide-winged over the bog met the wayfarer with a furious hurtle
and grapple, as if for want of better sport they had concentrated all
their forces upon his sole repulse; and the drops they dashed into his
blinded eyes and against his benumb