Margaret stopped and tried to think what it could mean.
“It can’t be Dan Grennan!” she said to herself; “for what would he be doing here at this hour? God knows but it might be some villyans of tinkers.... But whatever it is, I’ll have to find out who is there, making so free, and coming in here upon our place!”
So, though she was as frightened a woman as could be, she gave a great shout, thinking by that to frighten away whoever it might be.
It did frighten the man that was there! her voice lifted him off his feet, he was so startled, the fields being generally so silent at that hour.
He jumped up, and then he stopped; and the snorting and trampling feet stopped, too. Then the figure, that Marg could just make out against the pale yellow of the evening sky, where it was above the hill ... the figure seemed to Marg to turn about, and then she could hear it coming, coming quickly down the hill towards her.
She was frightened in earnest then. Her first thought was, that she’d run away. But her knees gave under her. So she crouched down close to the damp ground, thinking to escape being seen. And she had herself dead and buried, in her own mind that is, when the man came up, and stood still beside her.
“So you don’t know me, Marg Molally!” he said, in a very sad, mild voice; “you don’t remember poor Patsy now! Nor couldn’t, I suppose! Mrs. Heffernan is too big and grand a person now, to have any recollection of the ould times!”
And with that, he turned on the light of a lantern he was carrying under his coat; and Marg saw plainly who it was.
“In the name of God, Patsy Ratigan, it’s not you!” she said.
“Who else?” said he; “is it that I’m that changed a man, that you don’t know me? But small blame to me to be changed! after all the want and hardships I’m after putting over me! And small blame to you, either, not to know me. It’s another story with you,” he says, “the same as ever you look! not a day older than you were, the day you ... well, sure, it’s bad to be raking up old sores! But if it was you that had been away, and came back...! No matter what change there was upon you, I’d know your skin upon a bush, so I would!”