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 since. She seemed none the worse. Cassidy read my thoughts with that uncanny intuition which you often find among west of Ireland peasants.

"At the first go off," he said, "you wouldn't have thought she minded—no more than another would anyway; but the weakness was within, in the inside of her, and it's lately that it has begun to come out."

I listened to a list of symptoms. It seemed that Mrs. Cassidy had lost heart and no longer took any pleasure in life. She baked bread; she washed clothes; she fed the pig—but she did these things without zest.

"It's seldom ever I can get her to go as far as the town on a market day," said Cassidy; "and she doesn't care if she never saw a neighbour woman or heard a word of what's going on.

"You couldn't get her to put a shawl over her head and go as far as the road—not if you was to offer her a fistful of gold for doing it."

This was plainly an evil case; but it seemed scarcely likely that my words would charm away so lethal an apathy.

"You'd think now," said Cassidy, "that she was no more than able just to put the one foot in front of the other."

He whispered these words in my ear, for we had reached the door of the cottage and it stood open. I went in and Cassidy followed me.

Mrs. Cassidy was sitting on a stool in the chim-