e gate of Inagh, the house
usually tenanted by the Resident Magistrate of the day, and here Louise
Eden took leave of her new acquaintance, again giving him her hand in
its little wet glove. The Doctor watched her as she ran lightly towards
the house. She wore a grey hat and cloak, and the rough madder-dyed
skirt of the peasant women of the district. None of the "young ladies"
he had hitherto met would have deigned to appear in one of these fleecy
crimson garments, so becoming to its present wearer. She turned and
waved her hand at the corner of the drive, and the Doctor having gazed a
moment longer into the grey mist that shrouded her, went on his journey
home.

His little house on the outskirts of Cloon had not many outward charms,
being built in the inverted box style so usual in Ireland. A few bushes
of aucuba and fuchsia scarcely claimed for the oblong space enclosed in
front the name of a garden. But within he found a cheerful turf fire,
and his old housekeeper soon put a substantial meal on the table.

"Any callers to-day, Mamie?" he asked as he sat down.

"Not a one, sir, only two," was the reply. "The first was a neighbouring
man from Killeen that was after giving himself a great cut with a
reaping-hook where he was cutting a few thorns out of the hedge for to
stop a gap where the cows did be coming into his oatfield. Sure I told
him you wouldn't be in this long time, and he went to Cloran to bandage
him up."

"And who was the other, Mamie?"

"The second first, sir, was a decent woman, Mrs. Cloherty, from Cranagh,
with a sore eye she has where she was cuttin' potatoes and a bit flew up
and hot it, and she's after going to the Friars at Loughrea to get a rub
off the blessed cross, but it did no good after."

The old woman rambled on, but the Doctor gave her but a divided
attention. He laughed and blushed a little presently to find himself
gazing in the small round mirror that hung against the wall, his
altitude of six feet just bringing his head to its level. The face that
laughed and blushed back at him was a pleasant one: frank, blue eyes and
a square brow surmounted by wavy fair hair were reflected, and the glad
healthfulness of four-and-twenty years. He had been looked on as a
"well-looking" man in his small social circle of Galway and Dublin, and
had laughed and joked and danced with the girls he had met at merry
gatherings, but without ever having given a preference in thought to one
above another.