"She's the one way always," was the reply; "and it wasn't of you I was
thinking, Doctor, but standing I was to watch that ruffian of a pig of
Mr. Rourke's that had me grand cabbages eat last night, and me in Cloon
buying a pound of madder to colour a petticoat. Ah, then, look at him
now standing there by the wall watching me out of the corner of his
eye!" and flourishing her stick the energetic old lady trotted off to
the attack.

"I may as well go in and see Mary," muttered the Doctor, tying the reins
to an isolated gate-post, and walking up the narrow lane to the thatched
cottage it led to.

"God save all here," he said, putting his head in over the half-door.

"God save you kindly," was the reply from an old man in corduroy
knee-breeches and a tall hat, who sat smoking a short pipe in the deep
chimney-corner, and watching with interest the assault of various hens
and geese upon the heap of potato-skins remaining in a basket-lid which
had done duty as a dinner-table.

The Doctor passed through to a little room beyond, whitewashed and
containing a large four-post bed. The invalid, a gentle,
consumptive-looking girl, lay on the pillows and smiled a greeting to
the Doctor.

His eye, however, passed her, and rested with startled curiosity on a
visitor who was sitting by her side, and who rose and bowed slightly.
The stranger was a lady, young and slight, with dark eyes and hair and a
small, graceful head. He guessed at once she must be Miss Eden, the new
Resident Magistrate's sister, of whose ministrations to the poor he had