' And this suggestion made Mrs.
Jack look askance at her pastor, as being also in the running for the
money.

It was surprising how many queer presents found their way to Margret's
larder in those days. They who had not the most suitable gift for an
invalid brought what they had, and Margret received them all with the
same inscrutability. She might have been provisioning for a siege.
Mrs. Jack's chickens were flanked by a coarse bit of American bacon;
here was a piece of salt ling, there some potatoes in a sack; a slice
of salt butter was side by side with a griddle cake. Many a good woman
appreciated the waste of good food even while she added to it, and
sighed after that full larder for the benefit of her man and the weans
at home; but all the time there was the dancing marsh-light of
Margret's money luring the good souls on. There had never been any
organised robbery in the Island since the cattle-lifting of the kernes
long ago; but many a good woman fell of a tremble now when she thought
of Margret and her 'stocking' alone through the silent night, and at
the mercy of midnight robbers.

There was not a day that several offerings were not laid at Margret's
feet. But suddenly she changed her stereotyped form of thanks to a
mysterious utterance, 'You're maybe feeding more than you know, kind
neighbours,' was the dark saying that set the women conjecturing about
Margret's sanity.

Then the bolt fell. One day a big, angular, shambling girl, with
Margret's suspicious eyes and cynical mouth, crossed by the ferry to
the Island. She had a trunk, which Barney Ryder, general carrier to
the Island, would have lifted to his ass-cart, but the new-comer
scornfully waved him away. 'Come here, you two gorsoons,' she said,
seizing upon young Jack Laffan and a comrade who were gazing at her
grinning, 'take a hoult o' the thrunk an' lead the way to Margret
Laffan's in the Red Glen. I'll crack sixpence betune yez when I get
there.' The lads, full of curiosity, lifted up the trunk, and preceded
her up the mile or so of hill to Margret's. She stalked after them
into the sunny kitchen where Margret sat waiting, handed them the
sixpence when they had put down the trunk, bundled them out and shut
the door before she looked towards Margret in her chimney-corner.

The explanation came first from his Reverence, who was walking in the
evening glow, when Mrs. Jack Laffan came flying towards him with her
cap-strings streaming.

'Little Jack