Inistioge

So they decide to go.

On the night of the thirtieth of March, seventeen seventy-eight, Sarah Ponsonby climbs out of a window of the house at Inistioge.

She is dressed in men's clothes.

She is carrying a pistol she does not intend to use and a small dog she cannot bear to leave behind.

The families come after them, and they are found, and they are brought back.

What happens next is the part of the story that people tend to skip, and it is worth slowing down for, because nobody gives up.

Eleanor is locked in a room in her family's house, and she gets out, and she walks the miles to Inistioge, and she hides in Sarah's bedroom for days with the help of Sarah's maid, a woman named Mary Carroll, who brings food up the stairs and says nothing to anyone.

Eventually, the families simply run out of arguments.