“God bless your honour,” replied the woman, “and thank you, too, for comforting me:  he’s a dear good boy, that’s true; but the Colonel has taken him to France, so I shall never see him more.”

“Oh yes, you may, my good lady,” replied the stranger:  “you know I am his cousin—­his father’s first cousin; so if you want to hear of him from time to time, perhaps I could put you in the way of it.  If I knew where you lived, I would come and call upon you to-night, and talk to you about it before I go on to Dublin.”

“Your honour’s going to Dublin, are you?” said the woman, suddenly and sharply, while the blood mounted into the cheek of her companion, as if from some feeling of embarrassment.  She continued, however, before he could reply, saying, “With a thousand thanks to your honour, I shall be glad to see you; and if I could but hear that the poor boy got well to France, and was comfortable, I think I should be happy all my life.”

“But where do you live, my good woman?” demanded the horseman:  “we have not much time to lose, for the sun is going down, and the night is coming on.”

“And a stormy night it will be,” said the woman, who, though she had very little of the Irish accent, seemed to have not a little of that peculiar obliquity of mind, which so often leads the Irishman to follow the last idea started, however loosely it may be connected with the main subject of discourse.  “As to where I live,” she continued, “it’s at the small neat cottage at the end of the lane; the best house in the place to my mind, except the priest’s and the tavern; and for that matter, it’s my own property, too.”

“Well, I will come there in about an hour,” said her companion, “and we will talk it all over, my good lady, for I must leave this place early to-morrow.”

Away went the stranger as he spoke, at a rapid pace, towards an Irish village or small town of that day, which lay at the distance of about a mile and a half from the sea-shore.  It was altogether a very different place, and bore a very different aspect, from any other collection of houses, of the same number and extent, within the shores of the Sister Island.  It was situated upon the rise of a steep hill, at the foot of which ran a clear shallow stream, from whose margin, up to the top of the acclivity, ran two irregular rows of houses, wide apart, and scattered at unequal distances, on the two sides of the high road.  They were principally hovels, of a single story in height; a great proportion of them formed of nothing but turf, with no other window but a hole covered with a board, and sometimes not that.  Others, few and far between, again, were equally of one story, but were neatly plastered with clay, and ornamented with a wash of lime; and besides these, were three or four houses which really deserved the name—­the parish priest’s, the tavern, and what was called the shop.

These rows of dwellings were raised on two high but sloping banks, which were covered with green turf, and extended perhaps fifty yards in width between the houses and the road:  this long strip of turf affording the inhabitants plenty of space for dunghills and dust-heaps, with occasional stacks of turf, and a detached sort of summer-house now and then for a pig, in those cases where his company was not preferred in the parlour.