ed hands were as icy as they could be
without ceasing to be wet. Their combined assaults were calculated
feelingly to persuade a man of his uninfluential position in the scheme
of things--his voice in this matter was so tyrannically howled down--or,
if of less philosophic mind, to bring home to him the special
disadvantages of going half-starved and clad in threadbare tatters. This
was the plight of Thady Quinlan as, leaving Lisconnel, soon lapt out of
sight behind him amid the grey web of the rain-mists, he tramped
haltingly away, with Mrs. Kilfoyle's cloak bundled under his arm, and
the dread of pursuit on his mind, and in his heart a great remorse, the
object of which you are perhaps guessing wrongly. But he had also a hope
and a purpose, and is therefore not wholly to be pitied, although the
one did wane until the other looked impossible, as mile after mile
unrolled its drenched and dreary length without bringing him apparently
nearer to his goal.

All the while, however, he was slowly gaining upon a traveller, who had
taken the same road a few hours earlier, hopelessly and aimlessly, and
even more inadequately equipped than he. It was his sister Judy Quinlan,
from whom he had parted on the worst of terms about three o'clock that
morning. The fact is that the Tinkers' raid upon Jerry Dunne's premises,
although carried out with unusual success, had led, not at all
unusually, to complications when it was time to divide the spoil. Over
Mrs. Dunne's second-best shawl it was that the difficulty arose. Mrs.
Dunne, despite her husband's thrifty turn, owned many shawls, few of
them inferior enough to be worn at all frequently, and she had pinned on
this one three times only during the half-dozen years of her
proprietresship. So it was certainly bitter bad luck that she should by
chance have worn it to Confession on Friday, and got it soaked coming
home, and hung it up in the passage by the back door to dry slowly,
"instead of to be all cockled into gathers wid the heat of the fire
blazin' on it, you stookawn," as she explained with exasperation to
Ellen Roe, her servant-girl, who had officiously suggested the kitchen
hearth. For this precaution proved tragically self-defeating, and put
its object into the very hands of Thady Quinlan and Joe Smith, when,
under cover of the wild, wet night, they forced the feeble lock, and
made a clean sweep of all portable property that lay within easy reach.
The shawl formed the most valuab