"Have ye got a cub?" she asked my master without as much as a look at me.
"I have a young colt of a thing," he answered.
"They've been at it again," went on the old woman. "It's the brannat cow this time."
"We'll have to get away, that's all," said the man. "They'll soon not be after leavin' a single tail in the byre."
"Is it me that would be leavin' now?" asked the old woman, rising to her feet, and the look on her face was frightful to see. "They'll niver put Mary Sorley out of her house when she put it in her mind to stay. May the seven curses rest on their heads, them with their Home Rule and rack-rint and what not! It's me that would stand barefoot on the red-hot hob of hell before I'd give in to the likes of them."
Her anger died out suddenly, and she sat down and began to turn the turf over on the fire as she had been doing when I entered.
"Maybe ye'd go out and wash their tails a bit," she went on. "And take the cub with ye to hould the candle. He's a thin cub that, surely," she said, looking at me for the first time. "He'll be a light horse for a heavy burden."
The man carried a pail of water out to the byre, while I followed holding a candle which I sheltered from the wind with my cap.
The cattle were kept in a long dirty building, and it looked as if it had not been cleaned for weeks. There were a number of young bullocks tied to the stakes along the wall, and most of these had their tails cut off short and close to the body. A brindled cow stood at one end, and the blood dripped from her into the sink. The whole tail had been recently cut away.