"One day I slipped and hurt myself, and I was lying on my back for
more than two years, and all the time I could see the fowls
pecking in the yard, for my bed was by the window. I thought I
would like to keep fowls when I was older."
The priest remembered the old woman standing before him telling
him of her accident, and while listening he had watched her,
undecided whether she could be called a hunchback. Her shoulders
were higher than shoulders usually are, she was jerked forward
from the waist, and she had the long, thin arms, and the long,
thin face, and the pathetic eyes of the hunchback. Perhaps she
guessed his thoughts. She said:--
"In those days we used to go blackberrying with the boys. We used
to run all over the hills."
He did not think she had said anything else, but she had said the
words in such a way that they suggested a great deal--they
suggested that she had once been very happy, and that she had
suffered very soon the loss of all her woman's hopes. A few weeks,
a few months, between her convalescence and her disappointment had
been all her woman's life. The thought that life is but a little
thing passed across the priest's mind, and then he looked at Pat
Connex and wondered what was to be done with him. His conduct at
the wedding would have to be inquired into, and the marriage that
was being arranged would have to be broken off if Kate's flight
could be attributed to him.
"Now, Pat Connex, we will go to Mrs. M'Shane. I shall want to hear
her story.
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