food he eat it like a man that had never seen food before, and one of
them said, 'He is eating as if he had trodden on the hungry grass.'
It was in the white light of the morning he set out, and the time
seemed long to him till he could get to Mary Lavelle's house. But
when he came to it, he found the door broken, and the thatch dropping
from the roof, and no living person to be seen. And when he asked the
neighbours what had happened her, all they could say was that she had
been put out of the house, and had married some labouring man, and
they had gone looking for work to London or Liverpool or some big
place. And whether she found a worse place or a better he never knew,
but anyway he never met with her or with news of her again.




THE TWISTING OF THE ROPE.


Hanrahan was walking the roads one time near Kinvara at the fall of
day, and he heard the sound of a fiddle from a house a little way off
the roadside. He turned up the path to it, for he never had the habit
of passing by any place where there was music or dancing or good
company, without going in. The man of the house was standing at the
door, and when Hanrahan came near he knew him and he said: 'A welcome
before you, Hanrahan, you have been lost to us this long time.' But
the woman of the house came to the door and she said to her husband:
'I would be as well pleased for Hanrahan not to come in to-night, for
he has no good name now among the priests, or with women that mind
themselves, and I wouldn't wonder from his walk if he has a drop of
drink taken.' But the man said, 'I will never turn away Hanrahan of