"Ye'll be a Donegal cub?"
"That I am," I replied.
"Ye're a comely lookin' fellow," said the woman. "An' what age may ye be?"
"I'll be thirteen come Christmas," I said proudly.
"Poor child!" said the woman. "Ye should be in yer own home yet. Was old Mary Sorley good to ye?"
"She's dead."
"Under God the day and the night, and d'ye tell me so!" cried the woman, and she said a short prayer to herself for the soul of Mary Sorley.
"She was a bad woman, indeed, but it's wrong to speak an ill word of the dead," my new friend went on when she had finished her prayer. "Now where would ye be makin' for next?"
"That's it," I answered.