‘Yes, in there.’ Jacky now looks as though he is going to burst. ‘Why don’t you believe me? I saw her, I tell you. I saw her quite plain. An’ her hair is dark, a lot darker than yours, an she’s got a blue frock like your Sunday one, only better.’ Susan interrupts him with dignity. ‘I don’t see how Mrs. Denis’s——’ Denis’s wife was always called Mrs. Denis; if she had any other name, it was sunk beneath insuperable barriers. Mr. and Mrs. Denis she and her husband had been since the priest poured his blessing down upon them and made them one in the old chapel built on the rock at the end of the village. This rock gave the parish priest a distinct crow over the Protestant clergyman. ‘Ye would quote me the Scriptures, would ye?’ Father McFane would call to Mr. Barry as the latter drove by the chapel in his Norwegian on his way to the church beyond. ‘An’ what did St. Paul say? “Like a house founded upon a rock.” Why, here’s the rock, man. Come in! come in! where are ye going?’ It occurred every Sunday, and Mr. Barry would smile back at Father McFane, and nod his head, for the two, indeed, were great friends, as the Protestants and Roman Catholics often are in small places, until someone comes in to them with wild news and absurd tidings from incendiaries outside to upset the loving work of years. ‘I don’t see how Mrs. Denis’s niece or cousin, or whatever she is, should have a better gown than mine,’ says she. ‘But she isn’t Mrs. Denis’s cousin, she’s too young,’ says Jacky. ‘She’s a girl, and she was pulling the flowers like anything, and if she belonged to Mrs. Denis she wouldn’t be let do that.’ Jacky’s English is always horrible. ‘Oh, you’ve dreamt the whole thing!’ says Susan contemptuously. ‘Run away and play.’ She has forgotten about the lessons. ‘Oh, you are a marplot! I am going to believe in Jacky for once in my life. Don’t go, Jacky! Jacky, come back! If you don’t, Aunt Jemima will make you do your lessons.’ This has a magical effect. Jacky swerves round. ‘She is there,’ says he indignantly. ‘I did see her.’ He seems to dwell on this fact with gusto. ‘An’ she’s not Mrs. Denis’s niece. An’ old Meany down by the mill says she’s been there for four weeks.’ ‘The plot is thickening,’ says Betty lazily. ‘’Tis a clever villain, whoever she is; fancy her being here for four weeks without the very size of her shoes being known throughout the length and breadth of Curraghcloyne! Four days ought to have done it. Go on, Jacky! Had she a cloven foot by any chance?’ ‘No; but’—and Jacky’s eyes widen, and he seems to swell—‘Meany says she’s a prisoner.’ ‘A what?’ ‘Yes, a real prisoner. She’s not let go out of the place. Mrs. Denis never opens the front-gate now, but comes out by the little green one we can see from the hall-door, an’ even that’s locked when she comes out an’ goes back again, Meany says.’ ‘Mrs. Denis very seldom comes out by any other,’ says Susan.