Perhaps among the inhabitants of The Lane none more deserved distinction than Mary Magovern. The grandmother of a numerous family, she united all the masculine and feminine virtues. About the stiff, spotless and colossal frill of her cap curled wreaths of smoke from her stout dhudeen as she sat before the door blacking the small boots of her grandchildren, stopping from time to time to remove the pipe from her mouth, that she might deliver in her full bass voice a peremptory order to the large yellow dog that lay at her feet. It was usually on the occasion of a carriage passing, when the dog would growl and rise. Very quickly out came the pipe, and immediately followed the words, "Danger, lay by thim intintions;" and the pipe was used as an indicator for the next movement--namely, to patiently lie down again upon the ground. Mary Magovern kept a drinking-shop behind the living-rooms of her cottage, and the immense prestige she had in The Lane must have had some foundation in the power which this thriving business gave her, many of her neighbors being under the obligation of debt to her. Mike Quinlan would have been her most frequent visitor had it not been for the ever-open eye of Mrs. Quinlan, which caused her husband to seek his delights by stealth at a village a mile away. Mike was an elderly and handsome man, but his wits had ebbed out as the contents of the wine-cup flowed in, and the beauty that had won so remarkable a person as Mrs. Quinlan in its first glow was somewhat marred. He was the owner of a small cart and a mule, and those who had stones or earth to move usually remembered to employ poor Mike. But it was on foot, as a more inconspicuous method of eluding the watchfulness of Mrs. Quinlan, that Mike slipped away to the neighboring village of an afternoon, and it was on foot that I one night saw Mrs. Quinlan going over the same road with an invincible determination in her countenance and a small birch rod in her hand. Mrs. Quinlan was somewhat younger than her lord and master: she had a clear, bright-blue eye, a roseate color in her little slender face, and gray hair tidily smoothed back beneath the dainty ruffles of her cap, about which a black ribbon was tied. She wore short petticoats and low shoes, and as she walked briskly along she smoothed her apron with the disengaged hand, as if, the balance of the family respectability having so wholly fallen upon her own shoulders, she would not disturb it by permitting a disorderly wrinkle. Half an hour later she passed again over the road, her face turned homeward and wearing an even greater austerity, the birch rod grasped firmly in her hand, and her worser half preceding her with a foolish smile upon his lips, half of concession, half of pride in the power to which he stooped.