bigger than many a quarter of beef might be. On each side of the table, up and down, there was every sort of dish crowded one against another, with every sort of meat upon them, bacon, and lamb, and veal, and ducks, and geese, and kids, and hares, and grouse, and snipe, and chickens.
Forty-four people sat down to table together in the first set. Michael counted them. And yet the company had to take turns, there were so many people at the wedding feast. According as one got up another sat down in the place he had left. But there was no fear that the last person would be badly off; when all were satisfied there was enough left for as many more.
Great as were the numbers at that wedding feast that night, both men and women, and young and old, they all had one thought in their mind. That thought was in their mind, clear and distinct. Good as was the food and the drink, and great as was the wit and the fun that there was over the food and drink, and great as was the entertainment and noise that was going on, they all had that thought in secret, although not one of them said one tittle about it to any of the others. The thought was: how little notion any one of those present had had, after all the matches that were in the making during the time that had gone before, and after all the reports that had been going round, about Shiana, and Short Mary, and Nora of the Causeway, and the Maid of the Liss, that it would be Nosey Cormac they would be marrying in the end! Their minds were full of it, full of it, full of it. But I promise you there was no fear that any of them let out a single hint of it.
It was of that Michael was thinking when some-
