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She was followed by Mrs. Cregan, as guiltily reverential as if she were an altar boy who had been persuaded to join in some mischievous trespass on the "sanctuary." Madame Wampa received them, professionally insolent in her indifference. Mrs. Byrne explained that she wanted only a "small card reading" for twenty-five cents. Madame Wampa said curtly: "Sit down!" They sat down.
Danny Mann died amid all the agonies of a remorse which made even those whose eyes had looked upon such cases shrink back with fear and wonder. Mrs. Cregan lived many years after Hardress's departure, practising the austere and humiliating works of piety which her Church prescribes for the penitent.
At a pleasure garden on a hill near Limerick, Eily O'Connor, the beautiful daughter of Mihil O'Connor, the rope-maker, first met Hardress Cregan, a young gentleman fresh from college; and on the same night, as she and her father were returning homeward, they were attacked by a rabble of men and boys, and rescued by the stranger and his hunchbacked companion, Danny Mann.
The stranger looked at his ragged garments and hesitated when the captain invited him into the parlour, where Norah was seated, and bade him take a chair; however, plucking up courage, he did as he was desired. Captain Tracy having briefly told Norah what he had just heard, turned to the seaman. "You have not yet given me your name," he said. "It's Larry Cregan, yer honour.
Mrs. Byrne entered the gipsy tent, and Mrs. Cregan was left alone in the atmosphere of a bespangled past reduced to its lowest terms of imposture. There were strings of Indian corn hanging from the ceiling, Chinese coins and rabbits' feet on the walls, a horseshoe wrapped in tinfoil over the door, and a collection of absurdly grotesque bric-
"Dip yer hand in holy water, an' yuh'll hear no more of it. Now, then. Behave yerself." "I was wishin' it!" she wailed. "I was wishin' somethin' 'd happen to him to leave me free here in m' own home!" "An' that," Mrs. Byrne said, "is the judgment o' heaven on yuh fer carin' more fer yer dishes than yuh did fer yer husband. Yuh're a good manager, Mrs. Cregan, but yuh've been a dang poor wife.
Cregan was beyond the reach of shame or the appeal of the priest, she said: "Well, I don't blame yuh, woman. Cregan's a fool like all the rest o' the men. An' yerself such a good manager. Well, well! Yer rooms was that purty 't 'ud make yuh wistful. Where will yuh be goin'?" "I dunno." "Have yuh had yer breakfast?" Mrs. Cregan shook her head. "Come back, then, an' have a bite with me." "Niver!
Eily O'Connor, the victim, is a pretty and pathetic figure; the hero-villain Hardress Cregan, and the mother who indirectly causes the crime, are effective though melodramatic; but the actual murderer, Danny the Lord, Hardress Cregan's familiar, is worthy of Scott or Hugo.
"They're no more than children," Mrs. Byrne replied, "an' they're to be treated as such. Sure, Cregan couldn't live without yuh. He'd have no buttons to his pants in a week." "An' him!" Mrs. Cregan cried. "Iver, since the Raypublicuns got licked, there's be'n no gettin' on with him at all. Thim Sunday papers 've toorned his head. He's all blather about his rights an' his wrongs.
We c'u'd get two loaves o' bread fer the money an' live on it fer a week!" But Mrs. Cregan was beyond the reach of practicalities, and she ordered her buckwheat cakes and coffee with an air that was mournfully distrait. Mrs. Byrne made a vain attempt to get her own cakes from the waitress for five cents, and then resigned herself to the senseless extravagance.
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