The old woman who kept his house believed that he had gone into Ennistown.

He was away with his horse, and would not be back till dinner time.

Then Neville, having seen his own nag taken from the gig, started on his walk up to Ardkill.
How ugly the country was to his eyes as he now saw it.

Here and there stood a mud cabin, and the small, half-cultivated fields, or rather patches of land, in which the thin oat crops were beginning to be green, were surrounded by low loose ramshackle walls, which were little more than heaps of stone, so carelessly had they been built and so negligently preserved.

A few cocks and hens with here and there a miserable, starved pig seemed to be the stock of the country.