Mary was thinking over this conversation as she leant against the gate at Foley’s Corner with “Rap” and the cat sitting sedately beside her. Miss Usher had talked of leaving as soon as her cold was better, and as it might be that she was now standing at her lifelong post for the last time, she fell into a dreamy meditation. The various faces she remembered seemed to pass the gate in single file. Master Ulick, on his bay hunter; Old Mike Daly; Kathleen Sullivan, her friend, who died of a decline, and the match made up and all; Bridgie Curran, her schoolfellow, whose boy was in America; Timmy Maher, who had asked her to marry him here at this very spot; Johnny Sugrue, who was killed in the war; and scores and scores of others. All that life was behind her, as much as if she were dead. No one would ever come to speak to her again at the gate. No one--_ever_! She had taken leave of the cottage which had been the home of many joys and sorrows--and kissed the little star on the window in token of farewell: for years she had never slept without first pressing her sweet red lips upon the irresponsive glass; but of late she had relinquished the habit. What was Mr. Ulick to her? Or she to Mr. Ulick? The scar was healing--time and silence are great physicians; yet “the tender grace of a day that was dead” occasionally stole into her heart, and it was a fact, that the sudden mention of one name invariably brought the colour to her cheek. Since Ulick Doran went away he had never sent but one sign; and that, thanks to the delinquencies of the local post, was fifteen long months, in reaching its destination. Judy Flynn was the mistress of a secondary makeshift post office, where the mail car picked up a small bag, en route from village to village; and Mrs. Flynn held a licence to sell stamps, as well as tobacco and tea. Judy was a widow--a character, and a notorious gossip. All the news in the county emanated from “the cross.” And if tales were true, no wonder. Judy kept a kettle handy and opened and read every letter that seemed to her to be of general interest! It was she who made known how John MacCarthy was owing for seed-potatoes nigh on three years, and likely to be put in court. How Mary Hannigan’s boy had gone back on her! Why the Connors were leaving Moreen, and when old Murphy had married his cook. Her shop was a place of the wildest, maddest confusion; behind the little counter letters, parcels, canisters of tobacco, pipes, old newspapers, herrings, and packets of tea, were inextricably mixed with portions of Mrs. Flynn’s wardrobe. “If ye will only lave me alone, and don’t moider me, I can lay me hand on everything,” was her invariable boast. Her business methods were at least original. Sometimes she went out, locked the door after her, and left the yawning post-bag hanging on a nail, where the passer-by might post (or extract) letters, precisely as he or she pleased.