Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: A YEAR AND A DAY. Among the fields north-westward of Ballyhoy there is a rather intricate tangle of by-roads, wherein a stranger may easily lose his bearings, as I had done one late summer evening, when I luckily fell in with an old acquaintance, Dan Joyce, the Kildrum letter-carrier. Dan, who was returning from a round, escorted me to a place where four ways are knotted together, and where, on a green triangle of sward, stands a wide old cottage with many thatched gables as quaint in contour as a broad-brimmed last-century hat. Its little peaked windows are almost eclipsed by the spreading eaves, and at highest noon its hearth-fire burns in a dusk which makes the flame, glimpsing through the open door, look strong and ruddy. While Dan was pointing me my road, a woman passed out of that dark door, and came close to us, a small figure with head and shoulders so muffled in a heavy woollen shawl that you could not tell at first sight whether she were old or young. But the rough grey terrier, which rose up from the threshold to follow her, was obviously very ancient, bestirring himself as a duty, not as a pleasure, which argues great age in a dog. She gazed intently up and down each empty white track, but was slowest to withdraw her eyes from the eastward lane, which joins the Town road. Her very shadow, stretching far over its dust, seemed to suggest a projected wish. When, after a few minutes, she turned lingeringly away, she would have gone indoors without noticing us, if Dan had not said, Good evenin’ to you, Mary, and how’s yourself this long time?
Why, it’s you ? Dan ? Dan Joyce, she said, groping to his identity with a palpable effort of recollection; I thought to meself I heard some- thin’ comin’ this way, but I didn’t expect it would be anythin’ at all yet a bit. …