“That’s the kind of him,” said Maire a Glan. “His people had the contrary drop in their veins always. D’ye mind, Norah Ryan, the way that——”
But when the old woman looked round Norah had disappeared. She had stolen out through the starlight to her bed, her mind groping blindly with a terrible mystery which she could not fathom.
CHAPTER XXI
REGRETS
I
IN the June of the following year Norah Ryan received a letter from Scotland. It ran:
“47, Ann Street,
“Cowcaddens,
“Glasgow.
“My dear Norah,
“It is a long while now since you heard a word from me. I often intended to write to you, but my hand was not used to the pen; it comes foreign to my fingers. I am not like you, a scholart that was so long at the Glenmornan school-house with Master Diver.
“I am working away here in Scotland, the black country with the cold heart. I have only met one of the Glenmornan people for a long while. That was Oiney Dinchy’s son, Thady, and he’s a dock labourer on the quay. He told me all about the people at home. He said that poor Maire a Crick, God rest her soul! is dead. Do you mind the night on Dooey Head long ago? Them was the bad and bitter times. He said that Father Devaney has furnished his new house and the cost of it was thousands of pounds, a big lot for a poor parish to pay. He also told me that you were over with the potato squad in Scotland and that you were looked on with no unkindly eyes by a rich farmer’s son. But whoever he is or whatever he is, you are too good for him, for it is yourself that was always the comely girl with the pleasant ways. Whatever you do, child, watch yourself anyway, for the men that are in black foreign parts are not to have the great trust put in them.
“Mac Oiney Dinchy was saying that no word has come from Dermod Flynn for a long time. He didn’t send much money home to his own people and they think that he has gone to the bad. Well, for all they say, Dermod was a taking lad when I knew him.