“She died very quiet, poor dear,” the woman continued sadly, while the Colonel stood passively near her, biting with an embarrassed air the silver knob of the cane that he had flourished so debonnairily such a very short time before. “She wasn’t much put about, thank God; and it was a lonesome place, you know. Even the priest, Father Donovan, him as you may remember used to have stations twice a-year in the village, didn’t come to anoint poor Winny when she was dying. You see, they send for him so often when there’s no occasion; and--” “But, tell me,” said Norcott impatiently, “does this girl, John Beacham’s wife, know anything about her parentage? Did the old people, your grandfather and grandmother, keep the child at Moyfeckan after poor Winny’s death? I don’t understand it all. Was there any money to support her--the girl, I mean? And where has she been living all these years?” “Where has she been living?” retorted the woman, speaking for the first time in a very decided Irish accent, for she was excited, and in anger the old familiar brogue cropped out unchecked. “Are you asking me that? And are you thinking that my father’s daughter’s child would be wanting charity to bring her up?” “No; not that. I know you were not poor people. Old Phil Moriarty was a ‘snug man evermore;’” he quoted, with an abortive attempt to be facetious; “but, you see, I didn’t know but what he--” “Might have turned his granddaughter out of doors, and left her to starve, poor girl, because of your sin! Is that what’s in your mind, sir? Faix, you should have thought of that before you took--but that’s neither here nor there. My grandfather, respectable as he’d always kep himself, was not the man to turn his back on his own kith and kin, let ’em be never so unfortunate. It’s not the way of our country-people, and it was not his. Says he, ‘That grand jintleman was a schoundrel’--I beg your pardon, sir, I only repeat his words--‘and he’s brought throuble on as good a gurl as ever trod the ground; but it ’ull come home to him,’ says he--‘it ’ull come home to him one of these days;’ and with that he’d groan, as he sat in the hearth, like a possessed man.” Again Colonel Norcott, who was growing very impatient, was about to interrupt her with a question, but she stopped him peremptorily.