'Ah, your honour,' she said, 'I hear you're going off in a short
time to Dublin, or to France, and maybe we won't be in the place at
all when you come back. There's no fences to the bit of farm I have,
the way I'm destroyed running. The calves do be straying, and the
geese do be straying, and the hens do be straying, and I'm destroyed
running after them. We've no man in the place since himself died in
the winter, and he ailing these five years, and there's no one to
give us a hand drawing the hay or cutting the bit of oats we have
above on the hill. My brother Michael has come back to his own place
after being seven years in the Richmond Asylum; but what can you ask
of him, and he with a long family of his own? And, indeed, it's a
wonder he ever came back when it was a fine time he had in the
asylum.'

She saw my movement of surprise, and went on:

'There was a son of my own, as fine a lad as you'd see in the
county--though I'm his mother that says it, and you'd never think it
t look at me. Well, he was a keeper in a kind of private asylum, I
think they call it, and when Michael was taken bad, he went to see
him, and didn't he know the keepers that were in charge of him, and
they promised to take the best of care of him, and, indeed, he was
always a quiet man that would give no trouble. After the first three
years he was free in the place, and he walking about like a
gentleman, doing any light work he'd find agreeable. Then my son
went to see him a second time, and "You'll never see Michael again,"
says he when he came back, "for he's too well off where he is." And,
indeed, it was well for him, but now he's come home.' Then she got
up to carry out some groceries she was buying to the ass-cart that