Barney Casey, who felt anxious to know from the parents of Grace Davoren whether any trace or tidings of her had been heard of, went to pay the heart-broken family a visit for that purpose.
On entering, he found the father seated at his humble hearth, unshaven, and altogether a man careless and negligent of his appearance.

He sat with his hands clasped before him, and his heavy eyes fixed on the embers of the peat fire which smouldered on the hearth.

The mother was at her distaff, and so were the other two females--to wit, her grandmother and Grace's sister.

But the mother! gracious heaven, what a spirit of distress and misery breathed from those hopeless and agonizing features! There was not only natural sorrow there, occasioned by the disappearance of her daughter, but the shame which resulted from her fall and her infamy; and though last not least, the terrible apprehension that the hapless girl had rushed by suicidal means into the presence of an offended God, "unanointed, unaneled," with all her sins upon her head.

Her clothes were hanging from the branches of a large burdock* against the wall, and from time to time the father cast his eyes upon them with a look in which might be read the hollow but terrible expression of despair.
* The branches of the burdock, when it is cut, trimmed, and seasoned, are used by the humble classes to hang their clothes upon.