My Lady of the Chimney Corner

Excerpt: ...A haystack in summer and a pigsty in winter sufficed him. He Pg 112 had a deep graphophone voice and when he spoke the sound was like the creaking of a barn door on rusty hinges. When he came to town he was to us what a circus is to boys of more highly favored communities. There were several interpretations of Hughie. One was that he was a sent back. That is, he had gone to the gates of a less cumbersome life and Peter or the porter at the other gate had sent him back to perform some unfulfilled task. Another was that he was a nobleman of an ancient line who was wandering over the earth in disguise in search of the Grail. A third, and the most popular one, was that he was just a common beggar and an unmitigated liar. The second interpretation was made more plausible by the fact that he rather enjoyed his reputation as a liar, for wise ones said: He's jist lettin' on. On one of his semi-annual visits to Antrim, Hughie got into a barrel of trouble. He was charged-rumor charged him Pg 113 -with having blinked a widow's cow. It was noised abroad that he had been caught in the act of skellyin' at her. The story gathered in volume as it went from mouth to mouth until it crystallized as a crime in the minds of half a dozen of our toughest citizens-boys who hankered for excitement as a hungry stomach hankers for food. He was finally rounded up in a field adjoining the Mill Row meeting-house and pelted with stones. I was of the gallery that watched the fun. I watched until a track of blood streaked down Hughie's pock-marked face. Then I ran home and told Anna. Ma! I yelled breathlessly, they're killin' Hughie Thornton! Jamie threw his work down and accompanied Anna over the little garden patches to the wall that protected the field. Through the gap they went and found poor Hughie in bad shape. He was crying and he cried like a brass band. His head and Pg 114 face had been cut in several places and his face and clothes were red....