“Look at the way she whipped off your father and mother there,” he remarked at last, “and the comfort she keeps them in!  I b’lieve the improvement in them since they went up above there is somethin’”—­Jack paused for an adjective and finally selected “outrageous.”  “Tay, they do be tellin’ me, at two and thruppence a pound no less, an’ mate wanst and twice in the day, an’ a sup o’ punch at night the way they’d sleep sound!  Sure, it’s somethin’ altogether”—­again a pause—­“unmintionable!”

Jack actually leaned across the well of the car to peer into Mike’s face, but alas! the more choice and picturesque was his language, the deeper seemed to be the gloom of Michael Clancy.  At last, when within a few yards of Donoughmor, Mike abruptly requested to be set down there, and after thanking the man in somewhat tremulous tones, walked away rapidly in the direction of his former home.

“Sure, what’s the good of your going there?” shouted McEvoy, “the roof is off of it yet, an’ not a soul about.  Come on home wid ye, can’t ye?”

“No, thank ye,” said Mike, without turning his head.  The car drove on, and soon Mike stood within his dismantled home.  There had been some delay in procuring wood for the new rafters and the poor roofless, smoked-begrimed walls looked very forlorn.  Mike glanced round him and groaned aloud; he could have wept, so great was the turmoil in his heart and in his mind.  Everything was changed, it seemed to him; everything was gone.  Could this poor little place ever be home again?  How silent it was now that the old father was not cracking his jokes in the corner!  How empty now that the mother’s spare form was absent!  They were safe and sound at Monavoe, he knew, “well looked after,” as the driver had told him, by “Miss Rorke” herself, but for the time being it almost seemed to him as though they were dead.  As for Roseen, she was Miss Rorke now, the Mistress, the owner of Monavoe—­his Roseen was gone too!

His heart was still sore at the recollection of his bitter disappointment on the fateful evening when the rick was burnt.  She had not come to meet him on that night of all nights in the year!  He knew, through Jack McEvoy, that she had promised her grandfather never to speak to him again.  She had broken faith with him.  All through these weary weeks in prison, the anguish of this thought had deadened all his other sufferings and anxieties, but in any case, how could he ever expect her, amid her new grandeurs, to think of him as she used to do?  She had the best heart in the world, he knew that, and wouldn’t ask to do anything that was not kind; she’d try to make up as well as she could for the “differ of things” by doing all in her power for his father and mother and by befriending him.  It had been mainly through her exertions that he had been released, and she had sent her own car to meet him—­oh, to be sure she had done that!  But as to consenting to be his sweetheart again, sure, goodness knew, Michael could never expect that.