"It's good to get back again," I said, seating myself on the familiar bench at the door, and letting my eyes wander over the lovely scenes—the blossoming trees, the gold of the laburnum, and the whole sweetened by the pervading fragrance of the hawthorn.
"We're proud to have you with us, ma'am," the landlord declared. "We thought the time long since you left."
The "we" referred to his better half, who, however, rarely left the kitchen, and with whom I had not exchanged half a dozen words.
"I don't think I'll ever go away, again," I said; "so you may just as well arrange my rooms accordingly. And now what of the schoolmaster?"
"They tell me," he said, speaking in a confidential undertone, "that Father Owen exorcised him—took off of him some spell that the 'good people' had laid upon him, forcing him to wander night and day—and scatterin' his wits."
"At any rate, Niall of the hills has changed his ways, I hear," said I.
"Well, so they tell me; though there are them that met him wanderin' still on the hills. But sure mebbe the poor daft crathure was only takin' the air by moonlight."
"And Granny Meehan?" I inquired.
"Oh, she's to the fore! And it's her ould heart that'll be rejoiced entirely by your return, not to speak of her colleen."