“‘Ay, sure enough, it’s the purty posy,’ the girl continued, ‘but hadn’t I trouble enough finding it, with the snow here, there and everywhere, every step I took goin’ deeper than the rest; but I didn’t mind the snow, why should I? Sure his face was colder when I saw it last, and his windin’ sheet was as white.’
“‘Sit down, achorra, and the good woman will be up in a few minutes and will give ye something to warm ye.’
“‘Ay, then! ‘tis cowld ye think I am, and maybe I am cowld, too; an’ I gets tired sometimes; but there’s a fire in my heart always—a fire that’ll niver go out—niver go out, I tell ye, until Michil of the Lodge comes to his own.’ And then the poor thing sat down by the hob, and the boy blew up the turf till the blaze lighted the whole kitchen, and the pewter on the dresser flashed back the ruddy rays. And when the heat began to spread about the room, the head of the poor, tired creature dropped on her breast and she fell into a deep sleep.
“This was the first coming of Maurya to the Glen, and that’s the way the story was told to me. For, as I told you, it was before my time. She was treated kindly by Jack M’Guinness and his wife, who took to the poor girl, and would have kept her with her if she could, but Maurya couldn’t be induced to spend more than a few days in any place.
“Who she was, or why she came to the glen, or where she came from nobody in the glen knew.
“The women said it was love trouble that drove the poor thing wandering, and that her question about the green upon the cape showed that the lover had fallen a victim on the scaffold, or in the field, in the struggle in ’98.
“There wasn’t a family in the glen that hadn’t sent a man to Ballinahinch, and not a few sent more than one, and there wasn’t a hearth in the glen where poor Maurya didn’t find a welcome.
“But she was always roaming. After a night’s rest she went ‘scouting,’ as she used to say, hoping to catch Red Michil to bring him to his own—‘the three sticks.’
“And so in the first light of the morning she used to go out and ramble over the hills, living any way she might, and coming back and seeking hospitality—now in one house, now in another, in the glen.