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+The Project Gutenberg eBook, Waysiders, by Seumas O'Kelly
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+
+
+
+Title: Waysiders
+
+Author: Seumas O'Kelly
+
+Release Date: September 15, 2004  [eBook #13472]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WAYSIDERS***
+
+
+E-text prepared by Ted Garvin, Michael Punch, and the Project Gutenberg
+Online Distributed Proofreading Team
+
+
+
+WAYSIDERS
+
+Stories of Connacht
+
+by
+
+SEUMAS O'KELLY
+
+Author of "The Shuiler's Child," "The Lady of Deerpark,"
+"The Bribe," &c.
+
+New York
+
+MCMXVIII
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+Contents
+
+
+The Can with the Diamond Notch
+
+Both Sides of the Pond
+
+The White Goat
+
+The Sick Call
+
+The Shoemaker
+
+The Rector
+
+The Home-Coming
+
+A Wayside Burial
+
+The Gray Lake
+
+The Building
+
+
+
+
+THE CAN WITH THE DIAMOND NOTCH
+
+I
+
+[Illustration: _Festus Clasby_]
+
+
+The name stood out in chaste white letters from the black background of
+the signboard. Indeed the name might be said to spring from the
+landscape, for this shop jumped from its rural setting with an air of
+aggression. It was a commercial oasis on a desert of grass. It
+proclaimed the clash of two civilisations. There were the hills, pitched
+round it like the galleries of some vast amphitheatre, rising tier upon
+tier to the blue of the sky. There was the yellow road, fantastic in its
+frolic down to the valley. And at one of its wayward curves was the
+shop, the shop of Festus Clasby, a foreign growth upon the landscape,
+its one long window crowded with sombre merchandise, its air that of
+established, cob-web respectability.
+
+Inside the shop was Festus Clasby himself, like some great masterpiece
+in its ancient frame. He was the product of the two civilisations, a
+charioteer who drove the two fiery steeds of Agricolo and Trade with a
+hand of authority. He was a man of lands and of shops. His dark face,
+framed in darker hair and beard, was massive and square. Behind the
+luxurious growth of hair the rich blood glowed on the clear skin. His
+chest had breadth, his limbs were great, showing girth at the hips and
+power at the calves. His eyes were large and dark, smouldering in soft
+velvety tones. The nose was long, the nostrils expressive of a certain
+animalism, the mouth looked eloquent. His voice was low, of an agreeable
+even quality, floating over the boxes and barrels of his shop like a
+chant. His words never jarred, his views were vaguely comforting, based
+on accepted conventions, expressed in round, soft, lulling platitudes.
+His manner was serious, his movements deliberate, the great bulk of the
+shoulders looming up in unconscious but dramatic poses in the curiously
+uneven lighting of the shop. His hands gave the impression of slowness
+and a moderate skill; they could make up a parcel on the counter without
+leaving ugly laps; they could perform a minor surgical operation on a
+beast in the fields without degenerating to butchery; and they would
+always be doing something, even if it were only rolling up a ball of
+twine. His clothes exuded a faint suggestion of cinnamon, nutmeg and
+caraway seeds.
+
+Festus Clasby would have looked the part in any notorious position in
+life; his shoulders would have carried with dignity the golden chain of
+office of the mayoralty of a considerable city; he would have looked a
+perfect chairman of a jury at a Coroner's inquest; as the Head of a
+pious Guild in a church he might almost be confused with the figures of
+the stained glass windows; marching at the head of a brass band he would
+symbolise the conquering hero; as an undertaker he would have reconciled
+one to death. There was no technical trust which men would not have
+reposed in him, so perfectly was he wrought as a human casket. As it
+was, Festus Clasby filled the most fatal of all occupations to dignity
+without losing his tremendous illusion of respectability. The hands
+which cut the bacon and the tobacco, turned the taps over pint measures,
+scooped bran and flour into scales, took herrings out of their barrels,
+rolled up sugarsticks in shreds of paper for children, were hands whose
+movements the eyes of no saucy customer dared follow with a gleam of
+suspicion. Not once in a lifetime was that casket tarnished; the nearest
+he ever went to it was when he bought up--very cheaply, as was his
+custom--a broken man's insurance policy a day after the law made such a
+practice illegal. There was no haggling at Festus Clasby's counter.
+There was only conversation, agreeable conversation about things which
+Festus Clasby did not sell, such as the weather, the diseases of
+animals, the results of races, and the scandals of the Royal Families of
+Europe. These conversations were not hurried or yet protracted. They
+came to a happy ending at much the same moment as Festus Clasby made the
+knot on the twine of your parcel. But to stand in the devotional lights
+in front of his counter, wedged in between divisions and subdivisions of
+his boxes and barrels, and to scent the good scents which exhaled from
+his shelves, and to get served by Festus Clasby in person, was to feel
+that you had been indeed served.
+
+The small farmers and herds and the hardy little dark mountainy men had
+this reverential feeling about the good man and his shop. They
+approached the establishment as holy pilgrims might approach a shrine.
+They stood at his counter with the air of devotees. Festus Clasby
+waited on them with patience and benignity. He might be some
+warm-blooded god handing gifts out over the counter. When he brought
+forth his great account book and entered up their purchases with a
+carpenter's pencil--having first moistened the tip of it with his
+flexible lips--they had strongly, deep down in their souls, the
+conviction that they were then and for all time debtors to Festus
+Clasby. Which, indeed and in truth, they were. From year's end to year's
+end their accounts remained in that book; in the course of their lives
+various figures rose and faded after their names, recording the ups and
+downs of their financial histories. It was only when Festus Clasby had
+supplied the materials for their wakes that the great pencil, with one
+mighty stroke of terrible finality, ran like a sword through their
+names, wiping their very memories from the hillsides. All purchases were
+entered up in Festus Clasby's mighty record without vulgar discussions
+as to price. The business of the establishment was conducted on the
+basis of a belief in the man who sold and acquiescence in that belief on
+the part of the man who purchased. The customers of Festus Clasby would
+as soon have thought of questioning his prices as they would of
+questioning the right of the earth to revolve round the sun. Festus
+Clasby was the planet around which this constellation of small farmers,
+herds, and hardy little dark mountainy men revolved; from his shop they
+drew the light and heat and food which kept them going. Their very
+emotions were registered at his counter. To the man with a religious
+turn he was able, at a price, to hand down from his shelves the _Key of
+Heaven_; the other side of the box he comforted the man who came panting
+to his taps to drown the memory of some chronic impertinence. He gave a
+very long credit, and a very long credit, in his philosophy, justified a
+very, very long profit. As to security, if Festus Clasby's customers had
+not a great deal of money they had grass which grew every year, and the
+beasts which Festus Clasby fattened and sold at the fairs had sometimes
+to eat his debtors out of his book. If his bullocks were not able to do
+even this, then Festus Clasby talked to the small farmer about a
+mortgage on the land, so that now and again small farmers became herds
+for Festus Clasby. In this way was he able to maintain his position with
+his back to the hills and his toes in the valley, striding his territory
+like a Colossus. When you saw his name on the signboard standing stark
+from the landscape, and when you saw Festus Clasby behind his counter,
+you knew instinctively that both had always stood for at least twenty
+shillings in the pound.
+
+
+II
+
+Now, it came to pass that on a certain day Festus Clasby was passing
+through the outskirts of the nearest country town on his homeward
+journey, his cart laden with provisions. At the same moment the spare
+figure of a tinker whose name was Mac-an-Ward, the Son of the Bard,
+veered around the corner of a street with a new tin can under his arm.
+It was the Can with the Diamond Notch.
+
+Mac-an-Ward approached Festus Clasby, who pulled up his cart.
+
+"Well, my good man?" queried Festus Clasby, a phrase usually addressed
+across his counter, his hands outspread, to longstanding customers.
+
+"The last of a rare lot," said Mac-an-Ward, deftly poising the tin can
+on the top of his fingers, so that it stood level with Festus Clasby's
+great face. Festus Clasby took this as a business proposition, and the
+soul of the trader revolved within him. Why not buy the tin can from
+this tinker and sell it at a profit across his counter, even as he
+would sell the flitches of bacon that were wrapped in sacking upon his
+cart? He was in mellow mood, and laid down the reins in the cart beside
+him.
+
+"And so she is the last?" he said, eyeing the tin can.
+
+"She is the Can with the Diamond Notch."
+
+"Odds and ends go cheap," said Festus Clasby.
+
+"She is the last, but the flower of the flock."
+
+"Remnants must go as bargains or else remain as remnants."
+
+"My wallet!" protested Mac-an-Ward, "you wound me. Don't speak as if I
+picked it off a scrap heap."
+
+"I will not, but I will say that, being a tail end and an odd one, it
+must go at a sacrifice."
+
+The Son of the Bard tapped the side of the can gently with his
+knuckles.
+
+"Listen to him, the hard man from the country! He has no regard for my
+feelings. I had the soldering iron in my hand in face of it before the
+larks stirred this morning. I had my back to the East, but through the
+bottom of that can there I saw the sun rise in its glory. The brightness
+of it is as the harvest moon."
+
+"I don't want it for its brightness."
+
+"Dear heart, listen to the man who would not have brightness. He would
+pluck the light from the moon, quench the heat in the heart of the sun.
+He would draw a screen across the aurora borealis and paint out the
+rainbow with lamp black. He might do such things, but he cannot deny the
+brightness of this can. Look upon it! When the world is coming to an end
+it will shine up at the sky and it will say: 'Ah, where are all the
+great stars now that made a boast of their brightness?' And there will
+be no star left to answer. They will all be dead things in the heaven,
+buried in the forgotten graves of the skies."
+
+"Don't mind the skies. Let me see if there may not be a leakage in it."
+Festus Clasby held up the can between his handsome face and the bright
+sky.
+
+"Leakages!" exclaimed Mac-an-Ward. "A leakage in a can that I soldered
+as if with my own heart's blood. Holy Kilcock, what a mind has this man
+from the country! He sees no value in its brightness; now he will tell
+me that there is no virtue in its music."
+
+"I like music," said Festus Clasby. "No fiddler has ever stood at my
+door but had the good word to say of me. Not one of them could ever say
+that he went thirsty from my counter."
+
+Said the Son of the Bard: "Fiddlers, what are fiddlers? What sound have
+they like the music of the sweet milk going into that can from the
+yellow teats of the red cow? Morning and evening there will be a hymn
+played upon it in the haggard. Was not the finest song ever made called
+_Cailin deas crúidhte na mbo_? Music! Do you think that the water in the
+holy well will not improve in its sparkle to have such a can as this
+dipped into it? It will be welcome everywhere for its clearness and its
+cleanness. Heavenly Father, look at the manner in which I rounded the
+edge of that can with the clippers! Cut clean and clever, soldered at
+the dawn of day, the dew falling upon the hands that moulded it, the
+parings scattered about my feet like jewels. And now you would bargain
+over it. I will not sell it to you at all. I will put it in a holy
+shrine."
+
+Festus Clasby turned the can over in his hands, a little bewildered. "It
+looks an ordinary can enough," he said.
+
+"It is the Can with the Diamond Notch," declared Mac-an-Ward.
+
+"Would it be worth a shilling now?"
+
+"He puts a price upon it! It is blasphemy. The man has no religion; he
+will lose his soul. The devils will have him by the heels. They will
+tear his red soul through the roof. Give me the can; don't hold it in
+those hands any longer. They are coarse; the hair is standing about the
+purple knuckles like stubbles in an ill-cut meadow. That can was made
+for the hands of a delicate woman or for the angels that carry water to
+the Court of Heaven. I saw it in a vision the night before I made it; it
+was on the head of a maiden with golden hair. Her feet were bare and
+like shells. She walked across a field where daisies rose out of young
+grass; she had the can resting on her head like one coming from the
+milking. So I rose up then and said, 'Now, I will make a can fit for
+this maiden's head.' And I made it out of the rising sun and the
+falling dew. And now you ask me if it is worth a shilling."
+
+"For all your talk, it is only made of tin, and not such good tin."
+
+"Not good tin! I held it in my hand in the piece before ever the
+clippers was laid upon it. I bent it and it curved, supple as a young
+snake. I shook it, and the ripples ran down the length of it like silver
+waves in a little lake. The strength of the ages was in its voice. It
+has gathered its power in the womb of the earth. It was smelted from the
+precious metal taken from the mines of the Peninsula of Malacca, and it
+will have its gleam when the sparkle of the diamond is spent."
+
+"I'll give you a shilling for it, and hold your tongue."
+
+"No! I will not have it on my conscience. God is my judge, I will break
+it up first. I will cut it into pieces. From one of them will yet be
+made a breastplate, and in time to come it will be nailed to your own
+coffin, with your name and your age and the date of your death painted
+upon it. And when the paint is faded upon it it will shine over the
+dust of the bone of your breast. It will be dug up and preserved when
+all graveyards are abolished. They will say, 'We will keep this
+breastplate, for who knows but that it bore the name of the man who
+refused to buy the Can with the Diamond Notch.'"
+
+"How much will you take for it?"
+
+"Now you are respectful. Let me put a price upon it, for it was I who
+fashioned it into this shape. It will hold three gallons and a half from
+now until the time that swallows wear shoes. But for all that I will
+part with it, because I am poor and hungry and have a delicate wife. It
+breaks my heart to say it, but pay into my hands two shillings and it is
+yours. Pay quickly or I may repent. It galls me to part with it; in your
+charity pay quickly and begone."
+
+"I will not. I will give you one-and-six."
+
+"Assassin! You stab me. What a mind you have! Look at the greed of your
+eyes; they would devour the grass of the fields from this place up to
+the Devil's Bit. You would lock up the air and sell it in gasping
+breaths. You are disgusting. But give me the one-and-six and to Connacht
+with you! I am damning my soul standing beside you and your cart,
+smelling its contents. How can a man talk with the smell of fat bacon
+going between him and the wind? One-and-six and the dew that fell at the
+making hardly dry upon my hands yet. Farewell, a long farewell, my
+Shining One; we may never meet again."
+
+The shawl of Mac-an-Ward's wife had been blowing around the near-by
+corner while this discussion had been in progress. It flapped against
+the wall in the wind like a loose sail in the rigging. The head of the
+woman herself came gradually into view, one eye spying around the
+masonry, half-closing as it measured the comfortable proportions of
+Festus Clasby seated upon his cart. As the one-and-six was counted out
+penny by penny into the palm of the brown hand of the Son of the Bard,
+the figure of his wife floated out on the open road, tossing and tacking
+and undecided in its direction to the eye of those who understood not
+the language of gestures and motions. By a series of giddy evolutions
+she arrived at the cart as the last of the coppers was counted out.
+
+"I have parted with my inheritance," said Mac-an-Ward. "I have sold my
+soul and the angels have folded their wings, weeping."
+
+"In other words, I have bought a tin can," said Festus Clasby, and his
+frame and the entire cart shook with his chuckling.
+
+The tinker's wife chuckled with him in harmony. Then she reached out her
+hand with a gesture that claimed a sympathetic examination of the
+purchase. Festus Clasby hesitated, looking into the eyes of the woman.
+Was she to be trusted? Her eyes were clear, grey, and open, almost
+babyish in their rounded innocence. Festus Clasby handed her the tin
+can, and she examined it slowly.
+
+"Who sold you the Can with the Diamond Notch?" she asked.
+
+"The man standing by your side."
+
+"He has wronged you. The can is not his."
+
+"He says he made it."
+
+"Liar! He never curved it in the piece."
+
+"I don't much care whether he did or not. It is mine now, anyhow."
+
+"It is my brother's can. No other hand made it. Look! Do you see this
+notch on the piece of sheet iron where the handle is fastened to the
+sides?"
+
+"I do."
+
+"Is it not shaped like a diamond?"
+
+"It is."
+
+"By that mark I identify it. My brother cuts that diamond-shaped notch
+in all the work he puts out from his hands. It is his private mark. The
+shopkeepers have knowledge of it. There is a value on the cans with that
+notch shaped like a diamond. This man here makes cans when he is not
+drunk, but the notch to them is square. The shopkeepers have knowledge
+of them, too, for they do not last. The handles fall out of them. He has
+never given his time to the art, and so does not know how to rivet
+them."
+
+"She vilifies me," said Mac-an-Ward, _sotto voce_.
+
+"Then I am glad he has not sold me one of his own," said Festus Clasby.
+"I have a fancy for the lasting article."
+
+"You may be able to buy it yet," said the woman. "My brother is lying
+sick of the fever, and I have his right to sell the Cans with the
+Diamond Notch on the handles where they are riveted."
+
+"But I have bought it already."
+
+"This man," said the damsel, in a tone which discounted the husband,
+"had no right to sell it. If it is not his property, but the property of
+my brother, won't you say that he nor no other man has a right to sell
+it?"
+
+Festus Clasby felt puzzled. He was unaccustomed to dealing with people
+who raised questions of title. His black brows knit.
+
+"How can a man who doesn't own a thing sell a thing?" she persisted. "Is
+it a habit of yours to sell that which you do not own?"
+
+"It is not," Festus Clasby said, feeling that an assault had been
+wantonly made on his integrity as a trader. "No one could ever say that
+of me. Honest value was ever my motto."
+
+"And the motto of my brother who is sick with the fever. I will go to
+him and say, 'I met the most respectable-looking man in all Europe, who
+put a value on your can because of the diamond notch.' I will pay into
+his hands the one-and-six which is its price."
+
+Festus Clasby had, when taken out of his own peculiar province, a heavy
+mind, and the type of mind that will range along side-issues and get
+lost in them if they are raised often enough and long enough. The
+diamond notch on the handle, the brother who was sick of the fever, the
+alleged non-title of Mac-an-Ward, the interposition of the woman, the
+cans with the handles which fall out, and the cans with the handles
+which do not fall out, the equity of selling that which does not belong
+to you--all these things chased each other across Festus Clasby's mind.
+The Son of the Bard stood silent by the cart, looking away down the road
+with a pensive look on his long, narrow face.
+
+"Pay me the one-and-six to put into the hands of my brother," the woman
+said.
+
+Festus Clasby's mind was brought back at once to his pocket. "No," he
+said, "but this man can give you my money to pay into the hand of your
+brother."
+
+"This man," she said airily, "has no interest for me. Whatever took
+place between the two of you in regard to my brother's can I will have
+nothing to say to."
+
+"Then if you won't," said Festus Clasby, "I will have nothing to do with
+you. If he had no right to the can you can put the police on to him;
+that's what police are for."
+
+"And upon you," the woman added. "The police are also for that."
+
+"Upon me?" Festus Clasby exclaimed, his chest swelling. "My name has
+never crossed the mind of a policeman, except, maybe, for what he might
+owe me at the end of the month for pigs' heads. I never stood in the
+shadow of the law. And to this man standing by your side I have nothing
+to say."
+
+"You have. You bought from him that which did not belong to him. You
+received, and the receiver is as bad as the rogue. So the law has it.
+The shadow of the law is great."
+
+Festus Clasby came down from his cart, his face troubled. "I am not
+used to this," he said.
+
+"You are a handsome man, a man thought well of. You have great
+provisions upon your cart. This man has nothing but the unwashed shirt
+which hangs on his slack back. It will not become you to march
+handcuffed with his like, going between two policemen to the bridewell."
+
+"What are you saying of me, woman?"
+
+"It will be no token of business to see your cart and the provisions it
+contains driven into the yard of the barracks. All the people of this
+town will see it, for they have many eyes. The people of trade will be
+coming to their doors, speaking of it. 'A man's property was molested,'
+they will say. 'What property?' will be asked. 'The Can with the Diamond
+Notch,' they will answer; 'the man of substance conspired with the thief
+to make away with it.' These are the words that will be spoken in the
+streets."
+
+Festus Clasby set great store on his name, the name he had got painted
+for the eye of the country over his door.
+
+"I will be known to the police as one extensive in my dealings," he
+said. "They will not couple me with this man who is known as one living
+outside of the law."
+
+"It is not for the Peelers to put the honest man on one side and the
+thief on the other. That will be for the court. You will stand with him
+upon my charge. The Peelers will say to you, 'We know you to be a man of
+great worth, and the law will uphold you.' But the law is slow, and a
+man's good name goes fast.'"
+
+Festus Clasby fingered his money in his pocket, and the touch of it made
+him struggle. "The can may be this man's for all I know. You have no
+brother, and I believe you to be a fraud."
+
+"That, too, will be for the law to decide. If I have a brother, the law
+will produce him when his fever is ended. If I have no brother the law
+will so declare it. If my brother makes a Can with the Diamond Notch,
+the law will hear of its value. If my brother does not make a Can with
+the Diamond Notch you will know me as one deficient in truth. There is
+no point under the stars that the law cannot be got to declare upon. But
+as is right, the law is slow, and will wait for a man to come out of
+his fever. Before it can decide, another man's good name, like a little
+cloud riding across the sky, is gone from the memory of the people and
+will not come riding back upon the crest of any wind."
+
+"It will be a great price to be paying for a tin can," said Festus
+Clasby. He was turning around with his fingers the coins in his pocket.
+
+The woman put the can on her arm, then covered it up with her shawl,
+like a hen taking a chick under the protection of her wing.
+
+"I have given you many words," she said, "because you are a man sizeable
+and good to the eye of a foolish woman. If I had not a sick brother I
+might be induced to let slip his right in the Can with the Diamond Notch
+for the pleasure I have found in the look of your face. When I saw you
+on the cart I said, 'There is the build of a man which is to my fancy.'
+When I heard your voice I said, 'That is good music to the ear of a
+woman.' When I saw your eye I said, 'There is danger to the heart of a
+woman.' When I saw your beard I said, 'There is a great growth from the
+strength of a man.' When you spoke to me and gave me your laugh I said,
+'Ah, what a place that would be for a woman to be seated, driving the
+roads of the country on a cart laden with provisions beside one so much
+to the female liking.' But my sick brother waits, and now I go to do
+that which may make away with the goodness of your name. I must seek
+those who will throw the shadow of the law over many."
+
+She moved away, sighing a quick sigh, as one might who was setting out
+on a disagreeable mission. Festus Clasby called to her and she came
+back, her eyes pained as they sought his face. Festus Clasby paid the
+money, a bright shilling and two threepenny bits, into her hand,
+wondering vaguely, but virtuously, as he did so, what hardy little dark
+mountainy man he would later charge up the can to at the double price.
+
+"Now," said the wife of Mac-an-Ward, putting the money away, "you have
+paid me for my brother's can and you would be within your right in
+getting back your one-and-six from this bad man." She hitched her shawl
+contemptuously in the direction of Mac-an-Ward.
+
+Festus Clasby looked at the Son of the Bard with his velvety soft eyes.
+"Come, sir," said he, his tone a little nervous. "My money!"
+
+Mac-an-Ward hitched his trousers at the hips like a sailor, spat through
+his teeth, end eyed Festus Clasby through a slit in his half-closed
+eyes. There was a little patter of the feet on the road on the part of
+Mac-an-Ward, and Festus Clasby knew enough of the world and its ways to
+gather that these were scientific movements invented to throw a man in a
+struggle. He did not like the look of the Son of the Bard.
+
+"I will go home and leave him to God," he said. "Hand me the can and I
+will be shortening my road."
+
+At this moment three small boys, ragged, eager, their faces hard and
+weather-beaten, bounded up to the cart. They were breathless as they
+stood about the woman.
+
+"Mother!" they cried in chorus. "The man in the big shop! He is looking
+for a can."
+
+"What can?" cried the woman.
+
+The three young voices rose like a great cry: "The Can with the Diamond
+Notch."
+
+The woman caught her face in her hands as if some terrible thing had
+been said. She stared at the youngsters intently.
+
+"He wants one more to make up an order," they chanted. "He says he will
+pay--"
+
+The woman shrank from them with a cry. "How much?" she asked.
+
+"Half-a-crown!"
+
+The wife of Mac-an-Ward threw out her arms in a wild gesture of despair.
+"My God!" she cried. "I sold it. I wronged my sick brother."
+
+"Where did you sell it, mother?"
+
+"Here, to this handsome dark man."
+
+"How much did he pay?"
+
+"Eighteen-pence."
+
+The three youngsters raised their hard faces to the sky and raised a
+long howl, like beagles who had lost their quarry.
+
+Suddenly the woman's face brightened. She looked eagerly at Festus
+Clasby, then laid the hand of friendship, of appeal, on his arm.
+
+"I have it!" she cried, joyfully.
+
+"Have what?" asked Festus Clasby.
+
+"A way out of the trouble," she said. "A means of saving my brother from
+wrong. A way of bringing him his own for the Can with the Diamond
+Notch."
+
+"What way might that be?" asked Festus Clasby, his manner growing
+sceptical.
+
+"I will go to the shopman with it and get the half-crown. Having got the
+half-crown I will hurry back here--or you can come with me--and I will
+pay you back your one-and-six. In that way I will make another shilling
+and do you no wrong. Is that agreed?"
+
+"It is not agreed," said Festus Clasby. "Give me out the tin can. I am
+done with you now."
+
+"It's robbery!" cried the woman, her eyes full of a blazing sudden
+anger.
+
+"What is robbery?" asked Festus Clasby.
+
+"Doing me out of a shilling. Wronging my sick brother out of his
+earnings. A man worth hundreds, maybe thousands, to stand between a poor
+woman and a shilling. I am deceived in you."
+
+"Out with the can," said Festus Clasby.
+
+"Let the woman earn her shilling," said Mac-an-Ward. His voice came from
+behind Festus Clasby.
+
+"Our mother must get her shilling," cried the three youngsters.
+
+Festus Clasby turned about to Mac-an-Ward, and as he did so he noticed
+that two men had come and set their backs against a wall hard by; they
+leaned limply, casually, against it, but they were, he noticed, of the
+same tribe as the Mac-an-Wards.
+
+"It was always lucky, the Can with the Diamond Notch," said the woman.
+"This offer of the man in the big shop is a sign of it. I will not allow
+you to break my brother's luck and he lying in his fever."
+
+"By heaven!" cried Festus Clasby. "I will have you all arrested. I will
+have the law of you now."
+
+He wheeled about the horse and cart, setting his face for the police
+barrack, which could be seen shining in the distance in the plumage of
+a magpie. The two men who stood by came over, and from the other side
+another man and three old women. With Mac-an-Ward, Mrs. Mac-an-Ward, and
+the three young Mac-an-Wards, they grouped themselves around Festus
+Clasby, and he was vaguely conscious that they were grouped with some
+military art. A low murmur of a dispute arose among them, rising
+steadily. He could only hear snatches of their words: 'Give it back to
+him,' 'He won't get it,' 'How can he be travelling without the Can with
+the Diamond Notch?' 'Is it the Can with the Diamond Notch?' 'No,' 'Maybe
+it is, maybe it is not,' 'Who knows that?' 'I say yes,' 'Hold your
+tongue,' 'Be off, you slut,' 'Rattle away.'
+
+People from the town were attracted to the place. Festus Clasby, the
+dispute stirring something in his own blood, shook his fist in the long
+narrow face of Mac-an-Ward. As he did so he got a tip on the heels and a
+pressure upon the chest sent him staggering a few steps back. One of the
+old women held him up in her arms and another old woman stood before
+him, striking her breast. Festus Clasby saw the wisps of hair hanging
+about the bony face and froth at the corners of her mouth. Vaguely he
+saw the working of the bones of her wasted neck, and below it a long
+V-shaped gleam of the yellow tanned breast, which she thumped with her
+fist. Afterwards the memory of this ugly old trollop remained with him.
+The youngsters were shooting in and out through the group, sending up
+unearthly shrieks. Two of the men peeled off their coats and were
+sparring at each other wickedly, shouting all the time, while
+Mac-an-Ward was making a tumultuous peace. The commotion and the strife,
+or the illusion of strife, increased. "Oh," an onlooker cried, "the
+tinkers are murdering each other!"
+
+The patient horse at last raised its head with a toss and a snort over
+the rabble, and then wheeled about to break away. With the instinct of
+his kind, Festus Clasby rushed to the animal's head and held him. As he
+did so the striped petticoats and the tossing shawls of the women
+flashed about the shafts and the body of the cart. The men raised a
+hoarse roar.
+
+A neighbour of Festus Clasby, driving up the street at this moment, was
+amazed to see the great man of lands and shops in the midst of the
+wrangling tinkers. He pulled up, marvelling, then went to him.
+
+"What is this, Festus?" he asked.
+
+"They have robbed me," cried Festus Clasby.
+
+"Robbed you?"
+
+"Ay, of money and of property."
+
+"Good God! How much money?"
+
+"I don't rightly know--I forget--some shillings, maybe."
+
+"Oh! And of property?"
+
+"No matter. It is only one article, but property."
+
+"Come home, Festus; in the name of God get out of this," advised the
+good neighbour.
+
+But Festus Clasby was strangely moved. He was behaving like a man who
+had drink taken. Something had happened wounding to his soul. "I will
+not go," he cried. "I must have back my money."
+
+The tinkers had now ceased disputing among themselves. They were grouped
+about the two men as if they were only spectators of an interesting
+dispute.
+
+"Back I must have my money!" cried Festus Clasby, his great hand going
+up in a mighty threat. The tinkers clicked their tongues on the roofs of
+their mouths in a sound of amazement, as much as to say, "What a
+terrible thing! What a wonderful and a mighty man!"
+
+"I advise you to come," persuaded his neighbour.
+
+"Never! God is my judge, never!" cried Festus Clasby.
+
+Again the tinkers clicked their tongues, looked at each other in wonder.
+
+"You will be thankful you brought your life out of this," said the
+neighbour. "Let it not be said of you on the countryside that you were
+seen wrangling with the tinkers in this town."
+
+"Shame! Shame! Shame!" broke out like a shocked murmur among the
+attentive tinkers.
+
+Festus Clasby faced his audience in all his splendid proportions. Never
+was he seen so moved. Never had such a great passion seized him. The
+soft tones of his eyes were no longer soft. They shone in fiery wroth.
+"I will at least have that which I bought twice over!" he cried. "I will
+have my tin can!"
+
+Immediately the group of tinkers broke up in the greatest disorder.
+Hoarse cries broke out among them. They behaved like people upon whom
+some fearful doom had been suddenly pronounced. The old women threw
+themselves about, racked with pain and terror. They beat their hands
+together, threw wild arms in despairing gestures to the sky, raising a
+harrowing lamentation. The men growled in sullen gutturals. The
+youngsters knelt on the road, giving out the wild beagle-like howl.
+Voices cried above the uproar: "Where is it? Where is the Can with the
+Diamond Notch? Get him the Can with the Diamond Notch! He must have the
+can with the Diamond Notch! How can he travel without the Can with the
+Diamond Notch? He'll die without the Can with the Diamond Notch!"
+
+Festus Clasby was endeavouring to deliver his soul of impassioned
+protests when his neighbour, assisted by a bystander or two, forcibly
+hoisted him up on his cart and he was driven away amid a great howling
+from the tinkers.
+
+[Illustration: _Festus Clasby_]
+
+It was twilight when he reached his place among the hills, and the good
+white letters under the thatch showed clear to his eyes. Pulling himself
+together he drove with an air about the gable and into the wide open
+yard at the back, fowls clearing out of his way, a sheep-dog coming to
+welcome him, a calf mewing mournfully over the half-door of a stable.
+Festus Clasby was soothed by this homely, this worshipful, environment,
+and got off the cart with a sigh. Inside the kitchen he could hear the
+faithful women trotting about preparing the great master's meal. He made
+ready to carry the provisions into the shop. When he unwrapped the
+sacking from the bacon, something like a sudden stab went through his
+breast. Perspiration came out on his forehead. Several large long slices
+had been cut off in jagged slashes from the flitches. They lay like
+wounded things on the body of the cart. He pulled down the other
+purchases feverishly, horror in his face. How many loaves had been torn
+off his batch of bread? Where were all the packets of tea and sugar, the
+currants and raisins, the flour, the tobacco, the cream-of-tartar, the
+caraway seeds, the nutmeg, the lemon peel, the hair oil, the--
+
+Festus Clasby wiped the perspiration from his forehead. He stumbled out
+of the yard, sat up on a ditch, and looked across the silent, peaceful,
+innocent country. How good it was! How lovely were the beasts grazing,
+fattening, in the fields! His soft velvety eyes were suddenly flooded
+with a bitter emotion and he wept.
+
+The loaves of bread were under the shawl of the woman who had supported
+Festus Clasby when he stumbled; the bacon was under another bright
+shawl; the tobacco and flour fell to the lot of her whose yellow breast
+showed the play of much sun and many winds; the tea and sugar and the
+nutmeg and caraway seeds were under the wing of the wife of the Son of
+the Bard in the Can with the Diamond Notch.
+
+
+
+
+BOTH SIDES OF THE POND
+
+I
+
+
+Mrs. Donohoe marked the clearness of the sky, the number and brightness
+of the stars.
+
+"There will be a share of frost to-night, Denis," she said.
+
+Denis Donohoe, her son, adjusted a primitive bolt on the stable door,
+then sniffed at the air, his broad nostrils quivering sensitively as he
+raised his head.
+
+"There is ice in the wind," he said.
+
+"Make a start with the turf to the market to-morrow," his mother
+advised. "People in town will be wanting fires now."
+
+Denis Donohoe walked over to the dim stack of brown turf piled at the
+back of the stable. It was there since the early fall, the dry earth cut
+from the bog, the turf that would make bright and pleasant fires in the
+open grates of Connacht for the winter months. Away from it spread the
+level bogland, a sweep of country that had, they said, in the infancy of
+the earth been a great oak forest, across which in later times had roved
+packs of hungry wolves, and which could at this day claim the most
+primitive form of industry in Western Europe. Out into this bogland in
+the summer had come from their cabins the peasantry, men and women,
+Denis Donohoe among them; they had dug up slices of the spongy, wet sod,
+cut it into pieces rather larger than bricks, licked it into shape by
+stamping upon it with their bare feet, stacked it about in little rows
+to dry in the sun, one sod leaning against the other, looking in the
+moonlight like a great host of wee brown fairies grouped in couples for
+a midnight dance on the carpet of purple heather. Now the time had come
+to convert it into such money as it would fetch.
+
+Denis Donohoe whistled merrily that night as he piled the donkey cart,
+or "creel," with the sods of turf. Long before daybreak next morning he
+was about, his movements quick like one who had great business on hands.
+The kitchen of the cabin was illuminated by a rushlight, the rays of
+which did not go much beyond a small deal table, scrubbed white, where
+he sat at his breakfast, an unusually good repast, for he had tea,
+home-made bread and a boiled egg. His mother moved about the dim
+kitchen, waiting on him, her bare feet almost noiseless on the black
+earthen floor. He ate heartily and silently, making the Sign of the
+Cross when he had finished. His mother followed him out on the dark road
+to bid him good luck, standing beside the creel of turf.
+
+"There should be a brisk demand now that the winter is upon us," she
+said hopefully. "God be with you."
+
+"God and Mary be with you, mother," Denis Donohoe made answer as he took
+the donkey by the head and led him along the dark road. The little
+animal drew his burden very slowly, the cart creaking and rocking
+noisily over the uneven road. Now and then Denis Donohoe spoke to him
+encouragingly, softly, his gaze at the same time going to the east,
+searching the blank sky for a hint of the dawn to come.
+
+But they had gone rocking and swaying along the winding road for a long
+time before the day dawned. Denis Donohoe marked the spread of the
+light, the slow looming up of a range of hills, the sweep of brown
+patches of bog, then grey and green fields, broken by the glimmer of
+blue fakes, slopes of brown furze making for them a dull frame.
+
+"Now that we have the blessed light we won't feel the journey at all,"
+Denis Donohoe said to the donkey.
+
+The ass drew the creel of turf more briskly, shook his winkers and
+swished his tail. When they struck very sharp hills Denis Donohoe got to
+the back of the cart, put his hands to the shafts, and, lowering his
+head, helped to push up the load, the muscles springing taut at the back
+of his thick limbs as he pressed hard against the bright frosty ground.
+
+As they came down from the hills he already felt very hungry, his
+fingers tenderly fondling the slices of oaten bread he had put away in
+the pocket of his grey homespun coat. But he checked the impulse to eat,
+the long jaw of his swarthy face set, his strong teeth tight together
+awaiting the right hour to play their eager part. If he ate all the
+oaten bread now--splendid, dry, hard stuff, made of oat meal and water,
+baked on a gridiron--it would leave too long a fast afterwards. Denis
+Donohoe had been brought up to practise caution in these matters, to
+subject his stomach to a rigorous discipline, for life on the verge of a
+bog is an exacting business. Instead of obeying the impulse to eat Denis
+Donohoe blew warm breaths into his purple hands, beat his arms about his
+body to deaden the bitter cold, whistled, took some steps of an odd
+dance along the road, and went on talking to the donkey as if he were
+making pleasant conversation to a companion. The only sign of life to be
+seen on earth or air was a thin line of wild duck high up in the sky,
+one group making wide circles over a vivid mountain lake.
+
+Half way on his journey to the country town Denis Donohoe pulled up his
+little establishment. It was outside a lonely cottage exactly like his
+own home. There was the same brown thatch on the roof, a garland of
+verdant wild creepers drooping from a spot at the gable, the same two
+small windows without any sashes in the front wall, the same narrow
+rutty pathway from the road, the same sort of yellow hen cackling
+heatedly, her legs quivering as she clutched the drab half door, the
+same scent of decayed cabbage leaves in the air. Denis Donohoe took a
+sack of hay from the top of the creel of turf, and spread some of it on
+the side of the road for the donkey. While he did so a woman who wore a
+white cap, a grey bodice, a thick woollen red petticoat, under which her
+bare lean legs showed, came to the door, waving the yellow hen off her
+perch.
+
+"Good day to you, Mrs. Deely," Denis Donohoe said, showing his strong
+teeth.
+
+"Welcome, Denis. Won't you step in and warm yourself at the fire, for
+the day is sharp, and you are early on the road?"
+
+Denis Donohoe sat with the woman by the fire for some time, their
+exchange of family gossip quiet and agreeable. The young man was,
+however, uneasy, glancing about the house now and then like one who
+missed something. The woman, dropping her calm eyes on him, divined his
+thoughts.
+
+"Agnes is not about," she said. "She started off for the Cappa Post
+Office an hour gone, for we had tidings that a letter is there for us
+from Sydney."
+
+"A letter from her sister?"
+
+"Yes, Mary is married there and doing well."
+
+Denis Donohoe resumed his journey.
+
+At the appointed spot he ravenously devoured the oaten bread, then
+stretched himself on his stomach on the ground and took some draughts of
+water from a roadside stream, drawing it up with a slow sucking noise,
+his teeth chattering, his eyes on the bright pebbles that glittered
+between some green cress at the bottom. When he had finished the donkey
+also laved his thirst at the spot.
+
+He reached the market town while it was yet morning. He led the creel of
+turf through the straggling streets, where some people with the sleep in
+their eyes were moving about. The only sound he made was a low word of
+encouragement to the donkey.
+
+"How much for the creel?" a man asked, standing at his shop door.
+
+"Six shilling," Denis Donohoe replied, and waited, for it was above the
+business of a decent turf-seller to praise his wares or press for a
+sale.
+
+"Good luck to you, son," said the merchant, "I hope you'll get it." He
+smiled, folded his hands one over the other, and retired to his shop.
+
+Denis Donohoe moved on, saying in an undertone to the donkey, "Gee-up,
+Patsy. That old fellow is no good."
+
+There were other inquiries, but nobody purchased. They said that money
+was very scarce. Denis Donohoe said nothing; money was too remote a
+thing for him to imagine how it could be ever anything else except
+scarce. He grew tired of going up and down past shops where there was no
+sign of business, so he drew the side streets and laneways, places where
+children screamed about the road, where there was a scent of soapy
+water, where women came to their doors and looked at him with eyes that
+expressed a slow resentment, their arms bare above the elbows, their
+hair hanging dankly about their ears, their voices, when they spoke,
+monotonous, and always sounding a note of tired complaint.
+
+On the rise of a little bridge Denis Donohoe met a red-haired woman, a
+family of children skirmishing about her; there was a battle light in
+her wolfish eyes, her idle hands were folded over her stomach.
+
+"How much, gossoon?" she asked.
+
+"Six shilling."
+
+"Six devils!" She walked over to the creel, handling some of the sods of
+turf Denis Donohoe knew she was searching a constitutionally abusive
+mind for some word contemptuous of his wares. She found it at last, for
+she smacked her lips. It was in the Gaelic. "_Spairteach!_" she cried--a
+word that was eloquent of bad turf, stuff dug from the first layer of
+the bog, a mere covering for the correct vein beneath it.
+
+"It's good stone turf," Denis Donohoe protested, a little nettled.
+
+The woman was joined by some people who were hanging about, anxious to
+take part in bargaining which involved no personal liability. They
+argued, made jokes, shouted, and finally began to bully Denis Donohoe,
+the woman leading, her voice half a scream, her stomach heaving, her
+eyes dancing with excitement, a yellow froth gathering at the corners
+of her angry mouth, her hand gripping a sod of the turf, for the only
+dissipation life now offered her was this haggling with and shouting
+down of turf sellers. Denis Donohoe stood immovable beside his cart,
+patient as his donkey, his swarthy face stolid under the shadow of his
+broad-brimmed black hat, his intelligent eyes quietly measuring his
+noisy antagonists. When the woman's anger had quite spent itself the
+turf was purchased for five shillings.
+
+Denis Donohoe carried the sods in his arms to the kitchen of the
+purchaser's house. It entailed a great many journeys in and out, the
+sods being piled up on his hooked left arm with a certain skill. His
+route lay through a small shop, down a semi-dark hallway, across a
+kitchen, the sods being stowed under a stairway where cockroaches
+scampered from the thudding of the falling sods.
+
+Women were moving about the kitchen, talking incessantly, fumbling about
+tables, always appearing to search for something that had been lost, one
+crooning over a cradle that she rocked before the fire. The smell of
+cooking, the sound of something fatty hissing on a pan, brought a sense
+of faintness to Denis Donohoe, for he was ravenously hungry again.
+
+He stumbled awkwardly in and out of the place with his armfuls of brown
+sods The women moved with reluctance out of his way. Once a servant girl
+raised the most melancholy pair of wide brown eyes he had ever seen,
+saying to him, "It always goes through me to hear the turf falling in
+the stair-hole. It reminds me of the day I heard the clay falling on me
+father's coffin, God be with him and forgive him, for he died in the
+horrors."
+
+By the time Denis Donohoe had delivered the cartload of turf the little
+donkey had eaten all the hay in the sack. In the small shop Denis
+purchased some bacon, flour and tea, so that he had only some coppers to
+bring home with him. After some hesitation he handed back one penny for
+some biscuits, and these he ate as soon as he set out on the return
+journey.
+
+The little donkey went over the road through the hills on the way back
+with spirit, for donkeys are good homers. Denis Donohoe sat up on the
+front of the cart, his legs dangling down beside the shaft. The donkey
+trotted down the slopes gayly, the harness rattling, the cart swaying,
+jolting, making an amazing noise.
+
+The donkey cocked his ears, flecked his tail, even indulged in one or
+two buck-jumps, as he rattled down the hilly roads. Denis Donohoe once
+or twice leaned out over the shaft, and brought his open hand down on
+the haunch of the donkey, but it was more a caress than a whack.
+
+The light began to fade, the landscape to grow more obscure. Suddenly
+Denis Donohoe broke into song. They were going over a level stretch of
+ground. The donkey walked quietly. The quivering voice rang out over the
+darkening landscape, gaining in quality and in steadiness, a clear light
+voice, the notes coming with the instinctive intonation, the perfect
+order of the born folk singer. It was some old Gaelic song, a refrain
+that had been preserved like the trunks of the primeval oaks in the
+bogs, such a refrain as might claim kinship with the Dresden _Amen_,
+sung by generations of German peasants until at last it reached the ears
+of Richard Wagner, giving birth to a classic. As he sang Denis Donohoe
+raised his swarthy face, his profile sharp against the pale sky, his
+eyes, half in rapture like all folk singers, ranging over the hills, his
+long throat palpitating, swelling and slackening like the throat of a
+bird quivering in song. Then a light from the sash-less windows of Mrs.
+Deely's cabin shone faintly and silence again brooded over the place.
+When he reached the cabin Denis Donohoe dismounted and walked into the
+kitchen, his eyes bright, his steps so eager that he became conscious of
+it and pulled up at once.
+
+Mrs. Deely was sitting by the fire, her knitting needles busy. Denis
+Donohoe sat down beside her. While they were speaking a young girl came
+from the only room in the house, and, crossing the kitchen, stood beside
+the open fireplace.
+
+"Agnes had great news from Australia from Mary," Mrs. Deely said. "She
+enclosed the price of the passage from this place to Sydney."
+
+"I will be making the voyage the end of this month," the girl herself
+added.
+
+There was an awkward silence, during which Mrs. Deely carefully piloted
+one of her needles through an intricate turn in the heel of the sock.
+
+"Well, I wish you luck, Agnes," Denis Donohoe said at last, and then
+gave a queer odd little laugh, a little laugh that made Mrs. Deely
+regard him quickly and seriously. She noticed that he had his eyes fixed
+on the ground.
+
+"It will be a great change from this place," the girl said, fingering
+something on the mantelpiece. "Mary says Sydney is a wonderful big
+city."
+
+Denis Donohoe slowly lifted his eyes, taking in the shape of the girl
+from the bare feet to the bright ribbon that was tied in her hair. What
+he saw was a slim girl, her limbs showing faintly in the folds of a
+cheap, thin skirt, a loose, small shawl resting on the shoulders, her
+bosom heaving gently where the shawl did not meet, her profile delicate
+and faint in the light of the fire, her eyes, suddenly turned upon him,
+being the eyes of a girl conscious of his eyes, her low breath the sweet
+breath of a girl stepping into her womanhood.
+
+"Well, God prosper you, Agnes Deely," Denis Donohoe said after some
+time, and rose from his seat.
+
+The two women came out on the road to see him off. He did not dally,
+jumped on to the front of the cart and rattled away.
+
+Overhead the sky was winter clear, the stars merry, eternal, the whole
+heaven brilliant in its silent, stupendous song, its perpetual
+_Magnificat_; but Denis Donohoe made the rest of the journey in a black
+silence, gloom in the rigid figure, the stooping shoulders, the dangling
+legs; and the hills seemed to draw their grim shadows around his tragic
+ride to the lonely light in his mother's cabin on the verge of the dead
+brown bog.
+
+
+II
+
+There was a continuous clatter of conversation that rose and fell and
+broke like the waves on the beach, there was the dull shuffling of
+uneasy feet on the ground, the tinkling of glasses, the rattle of
+bottles, and over it all the half hysterical laugh of a tipsy woman.
+Above the racket a penetrating, quivering voice was raised in song.
+
+Now and again bleary eyes were raised to, the stage, shadowy in a fog
+of tobacco smoke. The figure on the boards strutted about, made some
+fantastic steps, the face pallid in the streaky light, the mouth scarlet
+as a tulip for a moment as it opened wide, the muscles about the lips
+wiry and distinct from much practice, the words of the song coming in a
+vehement nasal falsetto and in a brogue acquired in the Bowery. The
+white face of the man who accompanied the singer on the piano was raised
+for a moment in a tired gesture that was also a protest; in the eyes of
+the singer as they met those of the accompanist was an expression of
+cynical Celtic humour; in the smouldering gaze of the pianist was the
+patient, stubborn soul of the Slav. The look between these entertainers,
+one from Connacht the other from Poland, was a little act of mutual
+commiseration and a mutual expression of contempt for the noisy
+descendants of the Lost Tribes who made merry in the place.
+
+A Cockney who had exchanged Houndsditch for the Bowery leered up broadly
+at the Celt prancing about the stage. He turned to the companion who sat
+drinking with him, a tall, bony half-caste, her black eyes dancing in a
+head that quivered from an ague acquired in Illinois.
+
+"'E's all ryght, is Paddy," said the voice from Houndsditch. He pointed
+a thumb that was a certificate of villainy in the direction of the
+stage.
+
+"Sure," said the coloured lady, whose ancestry rambled back away
+Alabama. She looked up at the stage with her bold eyes.
+
+"I know him," she said, thoughtfully. "And I like him," she added
+grinning. "We all like him. He's one of the boys."
+
+"Wot price me?" said the Houndsditch man.
+
+"Oh, you're good, too," said the coloured lady. "Blow in another
+cocktail, honey." She struck her breast where the uneasy bone showed
+through the dusky skin. "I've a fearful thirst right there."
+
+Little puckers gathered about the small, humorous eyes of the Cockney as
+he looked at her. "My," he said, "you 'ave got a thirst and a capacity,
+Ole Sahara!"
+
+The coloured lady raised the cocktail to her fat lips, and as she did so
+there was a sudden racket, men shouting, women clapping their hands,
+the voice of the tipsy woman dominant in its hysteria over the uproar.
+The singer was bowing profuse acknowledgments from the stage, his eyes,
+sly in their cynical humour, upon the face of the Slav at the piano, his
+head thrown back, the pallor of his face ghastly.
+
+The lady from Alabama joined in the tribute to the singer.
+
+"'Core, 'core," cried Ole Sahara, raising her glass in the dim vapour.
+"Here's to Denis Donohoe!"
+
+
+
+
+THE WHITE GOAT
+
+I
+
+
+The white goat stood in a little clearing closed in by a ring of whins
+on the hillside. Her head swayed from side to side like the slow motion
+of the pendulum of a great clock. The legs were a little spread, the
+knees bent, the sides slack, the snout grey and dry, the udder limp.
+
+The Herd knew the white goat was in great agony. She had refused the
+share of bran he had brought her, had turned away from the armful of
+fresh ivy leaves his little daughter held out to her. He had desisted
+from the milking, she had moaned so continuously.
+
+Some days before the Herd had found the animal injured on the hill; the
+previous night he had heard the labourers making a noise, shouting and
+singing, as they crossed from the tillage fields. He knew what had
+happened when he had seen the marks of their hob-nailed boots on her
+body. She was always a sensitive brute, of a breed that came from the
+lowlands. The sombre eyes of the Herd glowed in a smouldering passion as
+he stood helplessly by while the white goat swung her head from side to
+side.
+
+He gathered some dry bracken and spread a bed of it near the white goat.
+It would be unkind to allow her to lie on the wet grass when the time
+came that she could no longer stand. He looked up at the sky and marked
+the direction of the wind. It had gone round to the west. Clouds were
+beginning to move across the sky. There was a vivid light behind the
+mountains. The air was still. It would rain in the night. He had
+thought for the white goat standing there in the darkness, swaying her
+head in agony, the bracken growing sodden at her feet, the rain beating
+into her eyes. It was a cold place and wind-swept. Whenever the white
+goat had broken her tether she had flown from it to the lowlands. He
+remembered how, while leading her across a field once, she had drawn
+back in some terror when they had come to a pool of water.
+
+The Herd looked at his little daughter. The child had drawn some
+distance away, the ivy leaves fallen from her bare arms. He was
+conscious that some fear had made her eyes round and bright. What was it
+that the child feared? He guessed, and marvelled that a child should
+understand the strange thing that was about to happen up there on the
+hill. The knowledge of Death was shining instinctively in the child's
+eyes. She was part of the stillness and greyness that was creeping over
+the hillside.
+
+"We will take the white goat to the shelter of the stable," the Herd
+said.
+
+The child nodded, the fear still lingering in her eyes. He untied the
+tether and laid his hand on the horn of the goat. She answered to the
+touch, walking patiently but unsteadily beside him.
+
+After a while the child followed, taking the other horn, gently, like
+her father, for she had all his understanding of and nearness to the
+dumb animals of the fields. They came slowly and silently. The light
+failed rapidly as they came down the hill. Everything was merged in a
+shadowy vagueness, the colour of the white goat between the two dim
+figures alone proclaiming itself. A kid bleated somewhere in the
+distance. It was the cry of a young thing for its suckle, and the Herd
+saw that for a moment the white goat raised her head, the instinct of
+her nature moving her. Then she tottered down the hill in the darkness.
+
+When they reached the front of the stable the white goat backed
+painfully from the place. The Herd was puzzled for a moment. Then he saw
+the little pool of water in a faint glimmer before their feet. He
+brought the animal to one side, avoiding it, and she followed the
+pressure of his directing hand.
+
+He took down a lantern that swung from the rafters of the stable and
+lighted it. In a corner he made a bed of fresh straw. The animal leaned
+over a little against the wall, and they knew she was grateful for the
+shelter and the support. Then the head began to sway in a weary rhythm
+from side to side as if the pain drove it on. Her breath quickened,
+broke into little pants. He noted the thin vapour that steamed from
+about her body. The Herd laid his hand on her snout. It was dry and red
+hot. He turned away leading the child by the hand, the lantern swinging
+from the other, throwing long yellow streaks of light about the gloom of
+the stable. He closed the door softly behind him.
+
+
+II
+
+It was late that night when the Herd got back from his rounds of the
+pastures. His boots soaked in the wet ground and the clothes clung to
+his limbs, for the rain had come down heavily. A rumble of thunder
+sounded over the hills as he raised the latch of his door. He felt glad
+he had not left the white goat tethered in the whins on the hill.
+
+His little daughter had gone to sleep. His wife told him the child on
+being put to bed had wept bitterly, but refused to confess the cause of
+her grief. The Herd said nothing, but he knew the child had wept for the
+white goat. The thought of the child's emotion moved him, and he turned
+out of the house again, standing in the darkness and the rain. Why had
+they attacked the poor brute? He asked the question over and over
+again, but only the rain beat in his face and around him was darkness,
+mystery. Then he heard the voices higher up on the side of the hill,
+first a laugh, then some shouts and cries. A thick voice raised the
+refrain of a song, and it came booming through the murky atmosphere. The
+Herd could hear the words:
+
+  _Where are the legs with which you run?
+          Hurroo! Hurroo!
+  Where are the legs with which you run?
+          Hurroo! Hurroo!
+  Where are the legs with which you run
+  When first you went to carry a gun?
+  Indeed, your dancing days are done!
+      Och, Johnny, I hardly knew ye!_
+
+And then came the chorus like a roar down the hills:
+
+  _With drums and guns, and, guns and drum
+  The enemy nearly slew ye;
+  My darling dear, you look so queer,
+      Och, Johnny, I hardly knew ye!_
+
+The voices of the labourers passing from the tillage fields died away,
+and the rumble of thunder came down more frequently from the hills. The
+Herd crossed his garden, his boots sinking in the soft ground. Half way
+across he paused, for a loud cry had dominated the fury of the breaking
+storm. His ears were quick for the cries of animals in distress. He went
+on rapidly toward the stable.
+
+The ground grew more sloppy and a thin stream of water came from the rim
+of his soft black hat, streaming down his face. He noted the flashes of
+lightning overhead. Through it all the cry of the white goat sounded,
+with that weird, vibrating "mag-gag" that was the traditional note of
+her race. It had a powerful appeal for the Herd. It stirred a feeling of
+passion within him as he hurried through the rain.
+
+How they must have lacerated her, a poor brute chained to the sod, at
+the mercy of their abuse! The red row of marks along her gams, raw and
+terrible, sprang to his sight out of the darkness. Vengeance, vengeance!
+He gripped his powerful hands, opening and closing the fists. Then he
+was conscious of something in the storm and the darkness that robbed him
+of his craving for personal vengeance. All that belonged to the
+primitive man welled up in him. He knew that in the heart of the future
+there lurked a reckoning--something, somebody--that would count the
+tally at the appointed time. Then he had turned round the gable of the
+stable. He saw the ghostly white thing, shadowy in the blackness, lying
+prostrate before the door. He stood still, his breath drawn inward.
+
+There was a movement in the white shape. He could discern the blurred
+outline of the head of the animal as she raised it up a little. There
+was a low moan followed by a great cry. The Herd stood still, terror in
+his heart. For he interpreted that cry in all the terrible inarticulate
+consciousness of his own being. That cry sounded in his ears like an
+appeal to all the generations of wronged dumb things that had ever come
+under the lash of the tyranny of men. It was the protest of the brute
+creation against humanity, and to the Herd it was a judgment. Then his
+eyes caught a murky gleam beside the fallen white shape, and the
+physical sense of things jumped back to his mind.
+
+He remembered that in wet weather a pool of water always gathered before
+the stable door. He remembered that there was a glimmer of it there when
+he had led the white goat into the stable. He remembered how she had
+shown fear of it.
+
+He stooped down over the white goat where she lay. Thin wisps of her
+hair floated about looking like dim wraiths against the blackness of the
+pool. He caught a look of the brown eyes and was aware that the udder
+and teats bulged up from the water. He sank down beside her, the water
+making a splash as his knees dropped into the place. The animal raised
+her head a little and with pain, for the horns seemed to weigh like
+lead. But it was an acknowledgment that she was conscious of his
+presence; then the head fell back, a gurgle sounding over one of the
+ears.
+
+The Herd knew what had happened, and it was all very tragical to his
+mind. His wife had come out to the stable for something, and had left
+the door open behind her. The white goat, goaded by the growing pain,
+had staggered out the door, perhaps feeling some desire for the open
+fields in her agony. Then she had seen before the threshold of the door
+that which had always been a horror to her--a pool of water. The Herd
+could see her tottering and swaying and then falling into it with a cry,
+fulfilling her destiny. He wondered if he himself had the same instinct
+for the things that would prove fatal to him? Why was he always so
+nervous when he stooped to or lay upon the ground? Why did it always
+give him a feeling that he would be trampled under the hooves of
+stampeding cattle rounded up for treatment for the warble fly? He
+trembled as he heard the beat of hooves on the ground behind him. He
+peered about and for a while did not recognise the shape that moved
+restlessly about in the darkness. He heard the neigh of the brood mare.
+He knew then she had been hovering about the stable afraid to go in out
+of the storm. She was afraid to go in because of the thing that lay
+before the stable door. He heard the answering call of the young foal
+in the stable, and he knew that it, too, was afraid to come out even at
+the call of its dam. Death was about in that night of storm, and all
+things seemed conscious of it.
+
+He stooped down over the white goat and worked his hands under her
+shoulders. He lifted her up and felt the strain all over his frame, the
+muscles springing tense on his arms. She was a dead weight, and he had
+always prided on her size. His knees dug into the puddle in the bottom
+of the pool as he felt the pressure on his haunches. He strained hard as
+he got one of his feet under him. With a quick effort he got the other
+foot into position and rose slowly, lifting the white form out of the
+pool. The shaggy hair hung from the white goat, limp and reeking,
+numerous thin streams of water making a little ripple as they fell. The
+limbs of the Herd quivered under the weight, he staggered back, his
+heavy boots grinding in the gravel; then he set his teeth, the limbs
+steadied themselves, he swayed uncertainly for a moment, then staggered
+across the stable door, conscious of the hammer strokes of the heart of
+the white goat beating against his own heart. He laid her down in the
+bed of straw and heard the young foal bounding out of the stable in
+terror. The Herd stood in the place, the sweat breaking out on his
+forehead, then dropping in great beads.
+
+The white goat began to moan. The Herd was aware from the rustling of
+the straw that her limbs were working convulsively. He knew from the
+nature of her wounds that her death would be prolonged, her agonies
+extreme. What if he put her out of pain? It would be all over in a
+moment. His hand went to his pocket, feeling it on the outside. He made
+out the shape of the knife, but hesitated.
+
+One of the hooves of the white goat struck him on the ankle as her limbs
+worked convulsively. His hand went into his pocket and closed around the
+weapon. He would need to be quick and sure, to have a steady hand, to
+make a swift movement. He allowed himself some moments to decide. Then
+the blade of the knife shot back with a snap.
+
+The sound seemed to reach the white goat in all its grim significance.
+She struggled to her feet, moaning more loudly. The Herd began to
+breathe hard. He was afraid she would cry out even as she had cried out
+as she lay in the pool before the stable door. The terror of the things
+that made up that cry broke in upon the Herd. He shook with fear of it.
+Then he stooped swiftly, his fingers nervously feeling over the delicate
+course of the throat of the white goat. His hands moved a little
+backwards and forwards in the darkness. He felt the hot stream on his
+hands, then the animal fell without a sound, her horns striking against
+the wall. He stood over her for a moment and was conscious that his
+hands were wet. Then he remembered with a shudder that the whole tragedy
+of the night had been one of rains and pools and water and clinging damp
+things, of puddles and sweats and blood. Even now the knife he held in
+his fingers was dripping. He let it fall. It fell with a queer thud,
+sounding of flesh, of a dead body. It had fallen on the dead body of the
+white goat. He turned with a groan and made his way uncertainly for the
+stable door.
+
+At the door he stood, thoughts crowding in upon him, questions beating
+upon his brain and giving no time for answer. Around him was darkness,
+mystery, Death. What right had he to thrust his hand blindly into the
+heart of this mystery? Who had given him the power to hasten the end, to
+summon Death before its time? Had not Nature her own way for counting
+out the hours and the minutes? Had not she, or some other power,
+appointed an hour for the white goat to die? She would live, even in
+agony, until they could bear her up no longer; and having died Nature
+would pass her through whatever channel her laws had ordained. Had not
+the white goat made her last protest against his interference when she
+had risen to her feet in her death agony? And if the white goat, dumb
+beast that she was, had suffered wrong at the hands of man, then there
+was, the Herd now knew, a Power deliberate and inexorable, scrupulous in
+its delicate adjustment of right and wrong, that would balance the
+account at the appointed audit.
+
+He had an inarticulate understanding of these things as he moved from
+the stable door. He tripped over a barrow unseen in the darkness and
+fell forward on his face into the field. As he lay there he heard the
+thudding of hooves on the ground. He rose, dizzy and unnerved, to see
+the dim shapes of some cattle that had gathered down about the place
+from the upland. He felt the rain beating upon his face, the clothes
+hung dank and clammy to his limbs. His boots soaked and slopped when he
+stepped. A boom of thunder sounded overhead and a vivid flash of
+lightning lit up for an instant a great elm tree. He saw all its
+branches shining with water, drops glistening along a thousand stray
+twigs. Then the voices of the labourers returning over the hills broke
+in upon his ears. He heard their shouts, the snatches of their songs,
+their noise, all the ribaldry of men merry in their drink.
+
+The Herd groped through the darkness for his house like a half-blind
+man, his arms out before him, and a sudden gust of wind that swept the
+hillside shrieked about the blood of the white goat that was still wet
+upon his hands.
+
+
+
+
+THE SICK CALL
+
+
+A man wearing the grey frieze coat and the soft black hat of the
+peasantry rode up to the Monastery gate on a wiry, long-tailed nag. When
+he rang the bell at the hall-door there was a clatter of sandals on a
+flagged hall inside.
+
+The door was opened by a lay Brother in a brown habit, a girdle about
+the waist from which a great Rosary beads was suspended. The peasant
+turned a soft black hat nervously in his hands as he delivered his
+message. The Friar who visited ailing people was, he said, wanted. A
+young man was lying very ill away up on the hills. Nothing that had been
+done for him was of any account. He was now very low, and his people
+were troubled. Maybe the Friar would come and raise his holy hands over
+Kevin Hooban?
+
+The peasant gave some account of how the place might be reached. Half an
+hour later the Spanish Friar was on a side-car on his way to the
+mountain. I was on the other side of the car. The Spanish Friar spoke
+English badly. The peasantry--most of whom had what they called _Béarla
+briste_ (broken English)--could understand only an occasional word of
+what he said. At moments of complete deadlock I, a Mass server, acted as
+a sort of interpreter. For this, and for whatever poor companionship I
+afforded, I found myself on the sick call.
+
+The road brought us by a lake which gave a chilly air to the landscape
+in the winter day, then past a strip of country meagrely wooded. We
+turned into a narrow road that struck the hills at once, skirting a
+sloping place covered with scrub and quite dark, like a black patch on
+the landscape. After that it was a barren pasture, prolific only in
+bleached boulders of rocks, of bracken that lay wasted, of broom that
+was sere. It was a very still afternoon, not a breath of wind stirring.
+Sheep looking bulky in their heavy fleeces lay about in the grass, so
+motionless that they might be the work of a vigorous sculptor. The
+branches of the trees were so still, so delicate in their outlines
+against the pale sky, that they made one uneasy; they seemed to have
+lost the art of waving, as if leaves should never again flutter upon
+them. A net-work of low stone walls put loosely together, marking off
+the absurdly small fields, straggled over the face of the landscape,
+looking in the curious evening light like a great grey web fantastically
+spun by some humorous spider. The brown figure of a shepherd with a
+sheep crook in his hand rose up on a distant hill. He might be a sacred
+figure in the red chancel of the western sky. In a moment he was gone,
+leaving one doubtful if he had not been an illusion. A long army of
+starlings trailed rapidly across the horizon, a wriggling motion marking
+their course like the motion in the body of a gigantic snake. Everything
+on the hills seemed, as the light reddened and failed, to grow vast,
+grotesque. The silence which reigned over it all was oppressive.
+
+Stray cabins skirted the roadside. Some people moved about them, leaving
+one the impression of a remoteness that was melancholy. The women in
+their bare feet made little curtesies to the Friar. Children in long
+dresses ran into the cabins at sight of the strangers, like rabbits
+scuttling back to their burrows. Having found refuge they looked out
+over the half-doors as the car passed, their eyes sparkling, humorous,
+full of an alert inquisitiveness, their faces fresh as the wind.
+
+A group of people swung along the road, speaking volubly in Irish,
+giving one the impression that they had made a great journey across the
+range of hills. They gave us a salutation that was also a blessing. We
+pulled up the car and they gathered about the Friar, looking up at him
+from under their broad-brimmed black hats, the countenances for the most
+part dark and primitive, the type more of Firbolg than Milesian origin.
+
+When the Friar spoke to them they paused, shuffled, looked at each
+other, puzzled. Half unconsciously I repeated the priest's words for
+them.
+
+"Oh, you are heading for the house where Kevin Hooban is lying sick?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"The priest is going to read over him?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"And maybe they are expecting him?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"We heard it said he is very low, a strangeness coming over him."
+
+"Is the house far?"
+
+"No, not too far when you are once a-past the demesne wall, with the ivy
+upon it. Keep on the straight road. You will come to a stream and a
+gullet and a road clipping into the hills from it to the right; go past
+that road. West of that you will see two poplar trees. Beyond them you
+will come to a boreen. Turn down that boreen; it is very narrow, and you
+had best turn up one side of the car and both sit together, or maybe the
+thorny hedges would be slashing you on the face in the darkness of the
+place. At the end of the boreen you will come to a shallow river, and it
+having a shingle bottom. Put the mare to it and across with you. Will
+you be able to remember all that?"
+
+"Yes, thanks."
+
+"Very well. Listen now. When you are across the river with the shingly
+bottom draw up on the back meadow. You will see a light shining to the
+north. Let one bawl out of you and Patch Keetly will be at hand to take
+the mare by the head. He will bring you to the house where Kevin Hooban
+is lying in his trouble. And God grant, Father, that you will be able to
+reach out a helping hand to him, and to put your strength in holy words
+between him and them that has a hold of him; he is a fine young man
+without fault or blemish, and the grandest maker of music that ever put
+a lip to the fideóg. Keep an eye out for the poplar trees."
+
+"Very good. God be with you."
+
+"God speed you kindly."
+
+We drove on. As we did so we tried to piece the directions together. The
+two poplar trees appeared to touch some curious strain of humour in the
+Spanish Friar. But it all came to pass as the prophet had spoken. We
+came to the ivy wall, to the stream, the gullet, the road that clipped
+into the hills to the right, and a long way beyond it the two poplar
+trees, tall, shadowy, great in their loneliness on the hills, sentinels
+that appeared to guard some mountain frontier. The light had rapidly
+gone. The whole landscape had swooned away into a vague, dark chaos.
+Overhead the stars began to show, the air was cutting; it bit with
+frost. And then we turned down the dark boreen, the mare venturing into
+it with some misgiving. I think the Friar was praying in an undertone in
+his native Basque as we passed through the narrow mountain boreen. At
+the end of it we came to the shallow river with the shingly bottom.
+Again the mare required some persuasion before she ventured in, the
+wheels crunching on the gravel, her fetlocks splashing the slow-moving,
+chocolate-coloured water. On the opposite bank we reached a sort of
+plateau, seen vaguely in the light. I "let a bawl out of me." It was
+like the cry of some lonely, lost bird on the wing. The Friar shook with
+laughter. I could feel the little rock of his body on the springs of the
+car. A figure came suddenly out of the darkness and silently took the
+mare by the head. The car moved on across the vague back meadow. Patch
+Keetly was piloting us to a light that shone in the north.
+
+People were standing about the front of the long, low-thatched house.
+Lights shone in all the windows, the door stood open. The people did
+not speak or draw near as we got down from the car. There was a fearful
+silence about the place. The grouping of the people expressed mystery.
+They eyed us from their curiously aloof angles. They seemed as much a
+part of the atmosphere of the hills, as fixed in the landscape as the
+little clumps of furze or the two lonely poplars that mounted guard over
+the mouth of the boreen.
+
+"Won't the holy Father be going into the house?" Patch Keetly asked. "I
+will unyoke the mare and give her a share of oats in the stable."
+
+The Friar spoke to me in an undertone, and we crossed to the open door
+of the house.
+
+The door led directly into the kitchen. Two women were standing well
+back from the door, something respectful, a little mysterious and a
+little fearful in their attitude. Their eyes were upon the Friar, and
+from their expressions they might have expected some sort of apparition
+to cross the threshold. They made a curtesy to him, dipping their bodies
+in a little sudden jerk. Nobody else was in the kitchen, and, despite
+the almost oppressive formality of their attitude, they somehow
+conveyed a sense of the power of women in the household in time of
+crisis. They were in supreme command, the men all outside, when a life
+had to be battled for. The elder of the women came forward and spoke to
+the priest, bidding him welcome. The reception looked as if it had been
+rehearsed, both women painfully anxious to do what was right.
+
+There appeared some little misunderstanding, and I was too dazed with
+the cold--which I had only fully felt when I got off the car and found
+my legs cramped--to come to the rescue as interpreter. The Spanish Friar
+was accustomed to these little embarrassments, and he had a manner of
+meeting them with a smile. The misunderstanding and the embarrassment
+seemed to thaw the formality of the reception. The women looked
+relieved. They were obviously not expected to say anything, and they had
+no fear now that they would be put to the ordeal of meeting a possibly
+superior person, one who might patronise them, make a flutter in their
+home, appal them by expecting a great deal of attention, in short, be
+"very Englified." The Spanish Friar had very quick intuitions and some
+subtle way of his own for conveying his emotions and his requirements.
+He was in spirit nearer to the peasantry than many of the Friars who
+themselves came from the flesh of the peasantry. And these two peasant
+women, very quick in both their intuitions and their intelligence,
+seemed at the very moment of the breakdown of the first attempt at
+conversation to understand him and he to understand them. The elder of
+the women led the priest into a room off the kitchen where I knew Kevin
+Hooban lay ill.
+
+The younger woman put a chair before the fire and invited me to sit
+there. While I sat before the fire I could hear the quick but quiet step
+of her feet about the kitchen, the little swish of her garments.
+Presently she drew near to the fire and held out a glass. It contained
+what looked like discoloured water, very like the water in the shallow
+river with the shingly bottom. I must have expressed some little
+surprise, even doubt, in my face, for she held the glass closer, as if
+reassuring me. There was something that inspired confidence in her
+manner. I took the glass and sipped the liquid. It left a half-burned,
+peaty taste in the mouth, and somehow smacked very native in its
+flavour. I thought of the hills, the lonely bushes, the slow movement of
+the chocolate-coloured river, the men with the primitive dark faces
+under the broad-brimmed hats, their mysterious, even dramatic way of
+grouping themselves around the lighted house. The peaty liquid seemed a
+brew out of the same atmosphere. I knew it was poteen. And in a moment I
+felt it coursing through my body, warming my blood. The young woman
+stood by the fire, half in shadow, half in the yellow flame of the turf
+fire, her attitude quiet but tense, very alert for any movement in the
+sick room.
+
+The door of the room stood slightly open, and the low murmur of the
+Friar's voice reciting a prayer in Latin could be heard. The young woman
+sighed, her bosom rising and falling in a quick breath of pain. Then she
+made the sign of the Cross.
+
+"My brother is very low," she said, sitting down by the fire after a
+time. Her eyes were upon the fire. Her face was less hard than the
+faces I had seen on the hills. She looked good-natured.
+
+"Is he long ill?"
+
+"This long while. But to look at him you would conceit he was as sound
+as a trout. First he was moody, moping about the place, and no way
+wishful for company. Hours he would spend below at the butt of the
+meadow, nearby the water, sitting under the thorn bush and he playing
+upon the fideóg. Then he began to lose the use of his limbs, and crying
+he used to be within in the room. Some of the people who have knowledge
+say he is lying under a certain influence. He cannot speak now. The holy
+Friar will know what is best to be done."
+
+When the Friar came out of the room he was divesting himself of the
+embroidered stole he had put over his shoulders.
+
+The white-capped old woman had excitement in her face as she followed
+him.
+
+"Kevin spoke," she said to the other. "He looked up at the blessed man
+and he made an offer to cross himself. I could not hear the words he
+was speaking, that soft they come from his lips."
+
+"Kevin will live," said the younger woman, catching some of the
+excitement of her mother. She stood tensely, drawn up near the fire,
+gazing vacantly but intently across the kitchen, as if she would will it
+so passionately that Kevin should live that he would live. She moved
+suddenly, swiftly, noiselessly across the floor and disappeared into the
+room.
+
+The priest sat by the fire for some time, the old woman standing by,
+respectful, but her eyes riveted upon him as if she would pluck from him
+all the secrets of existence. The priest was conscious, a little uneasy,
+and a little amused, at this abnormal scrutiny. Some shuffling sounded
+outside the house as if a drove of shy animals had come down from the
+mountain and approached the dwelling. Presently the door creaked. I
+looked at it uneasily. The atmosphere of the place, the fumes of the
+poteen in my head, the heat of the fire, had given me a more powerful
+impression of the mysterious, the weird. Nothing showed at the door for
+some time, but I kept my eye upon it. I was rewarded. A cluster of heads
+and shoulders of men, swarthy, gloomy, some awful foreboding in the
+expression of their faces, hung round the door and peered silently down
+at the Friar seated at the fire. Again I had the sense that they would
+not be surprised to see any sort of apparition. The heads disappeared,
+and there was more shuffling outside the windows as if shy animals were
+hovering around the house. The door creaked again, and another bunch of
+heads and shoulders made a cluster about it. They looked, as far as I
+could see them, the same group of heads, but I had the feeling that they
+were fresh spectators. They were taking their view in turn.
+
+The priest ventured some conversation with the woman of the house.
+
+"Do you think will Kevin live, Father?"
+
+"He should have more courage," the Friar said.
+
+"We will all have more courage now that you have read over him."
+
+"Keep the faith. It is all in the hands of God. It is only what is
+pleasing to Him that will come to pass."
+
+"Blessed be His Holy Name." The woman inclined her head as she spoke
+the words. The priest rose to go.
+
+The young girl came out of the room. "Kevin will live," she said. "He
+spoke to me." Her eyes were shining as she gazed at her mother.
+
+"Could you tell what words he spoke?"
+
+"I could. He said, 'In the month of April, when the water runs clear in
+the river, I will be playing the fideóg.' That is what Kevin said."
+
+"When the river is clear--playing the fideóg," the elder woman repeated,
+some look of trouble, almost terror, in her face. "The cross of Christ
+between him and that fideóg!"
+
+The priest was moving to the door and I followed. As I did so I got a
+glimpse, through the partly open room door, of the invalid. I saw the
+long, pallid, nervous-looking face of a young man on the pillow. A light
+fell on his brow, and I thought it had the height, and the arch, the
+good shape sloping backward to the long head, of a musician. The eyes
+were shining with an unnatural brightness. It was the face of an artist,
+an idealist, intensified, idealised, by illness, by suffering, by
+excitement, and I wondered if the vision which Kevin Hooban had of
+playing the fideóg by the river, when it ran clear in April, were a
+vision of his heaven or his earth.
+
+We left the house. Patch Keetly was taking the loop from a trace as he
+harnessed the mare in the yellow light of a stable lantern. We mounted
+the car. The groups of men drew about us, their movements again sounding
+like the shuffling of shy animals on the sod, and they broke silence for
+the first time.
+
+There was more said about Kevin Hooban. From various allusions, vague
+and unsubstantial, little touches in the kind, musical voices, I
+gathered that they believed him to be under the influence of the Good
+People. The sense of mystery and ill-omen came back to me, and I carried
+away a memory of the dark figures of the people grouped about the lonely
+lighted house, standing there in sorrow for the flute-player, the grass
+at their feet sparkling with frost.
+
+
+
+
+THE SHOEMAKER
+
+
+Obeying a domestic mandate, Padna wrapped a pair of boots in paper and
+took them to the shoemaker, who operated behind a window in a quiet
+street.
+
+The shoemaker seemed to Padna a melancholy man. He wore great
+spectacles, had a white patch of forehead, and two great bumps upon it.
+Padna concluded that the bumps had been encouraged by the professional
+necessity of constantly hanging his head over his knees.
+
+The shoemaker invited Padna to sit down in his workshop, which he did.
+Padna thought it must be very dreary to sit there all day among old and
+new boots, pieces of leather, boxes of brass eyelets, awls, knives, and
+punchers. No wonder the shoemaker was a melancholy-looking man.
+
+Padna maintained a discreet silence while the shoemaker turned his
+critical glasses upon the boots he had brought him for repair. Suddenly
+the great glasses were turned upon Padna himself, and the shoemaker
+addressed him in a voice of amazing pleasantness.
+
+"When did you hear the cuckoo?" he asked.
+
+Padna, at first startled, pulled himself together. "Yesterday," he
+replied.
+
+"Did you look at the sole of your boot when you heard him?" the
+shoemaker asked.
+
+"No," said Padna.
+
+"Well," said the shoemaker, "whenever you hear the cuckoo for the first
+time in the spring always look at the sole of your right boot. There you
+will find a hair. And that hair will tell you the kind of a wife you
+will get."
+
+The shoemaker picked a long hair from the sole of Padna's boot and held
+it up in the light of the window.
+
+"You'll be married to a brown-haired woman," he said. Padna looked at
+the hair without fear, favour, or affection, and said nothing.
+
+The shoemaker took his place on his bench, selected a half-made shoe,
+got it between his knees, and began to stitch with great gusto. Padna
+admired the skilful manner in which he made the holes with his awl and
+drew the wax-end with rapid strokes. Padna abandoned the impression that
+the shoemaker was a melancholy man. He thought he never sat near a man
+so optimistic, so mentally emancipated, so detached from the indignity
+of his occupation.
+
+"These are very small shoes you are stitching," said Padna, making
+himself agreeable.
+
+"They are," said the shoemaker. "But do you know who makes the smallest
+shoes in the world? You don't? Well, well!... The smallest shoes in the
+world are made by the clurichaun, a cousin of the leprechaun. If you
+creep up on the west side of a fairy fort after the sun has set and put
+your ear to the grass you'll hear the tapping of his hammer. And do you
+know who the clurichaun makes shoes for? You don't? Well, well!... He
+makes shoes for the swallows. Oh, indeed they do, swallows wear shoes.
+Twice a year swallows wear shoes. They wear them in the spring, and
+again at the fall of the year. They wear them when they fly from one
+world to another. And they cross the Dead Sea. Did you ever hear tell of
+the Dead Sea? You did. Well, well!... No bird ever yet flew across the
+Dead Sea. Any of them that tried it dropped and sank like a stone. So
+the swallows, when they come to the Dead Sea, get down on the bank, and
+there the clurichauns have millions of shoes waiting for them. The
+swallows put on their shoes and walk across the Dead Sea, stepping on
+bright yellow and black stepping-stones that shine across the water like
+a lovely carpet. And do you know what the stepping-stones across the
+Dead Sea are? They are the backs of sleeping frogs. And when the
+swallows are all safe across the frogs waken up and begin to sing, for
+then it is known the summer will come. Did you never hear that before?
+No? Well, well!"
+
+A cat, friendly as the shoemaker himself, leapt on to Padna's lap. The
+shoemaker shifted the shoe he was stitching between his knees, putting
+the heel where the toe had been.
+
+"Do you know where they first discovered electricity?" he asked.
+
+"In America," Padna ventured.
+
+"No. In the back of a cat. He was a big buck Chinese cat. Every hair on
+him was seven inches long, in colour gold, and thick as copper wire. He
+was the only cat who ever looked on the face of the Empress of China
+without blinking, and when the Emperor saw that he called him over and
+stroked him on the back. No sooner did the Emperor of China stroke the
+buck cat than back he fell on his plush throne, as dead as his
+ancestors. So they called in seven wise doctors from the seven wise
+countries of the East to find out what it was killed the Emperor. And
+after seven years they discovered electricity in the backbone of the
+cat, and signed a proclamation that it was from the shock of it the
+Emperor had died. When the Americans read the proclamation they decided
+to do whatever killing had to be done as the cat had killed the Emperor
+of China. The Americans are like that--all for imitating royal
+families."
+
+"Has this cat any electricity in her?" Padna asked.
+
+"She has," said the shoemaker, drawing his wax-end. "But she's a
+civilised cat, not like the vulgar fellow in China, and civilised cats
+hide their electricity much as civilised people hide their feelings. But
+one day last summer I saw her showing her electricity. A monstrous black
+rat came prowling from the brewery, a bald patch on his head and a piece
+missing from his left haunch. To see that fellow coming up out of a
+gullet and stepping up the street, in the middle of the broad daylight,
+you'd imagine he was the county inspector of police."
+
+"And did she fight the rat?" Padna asked.
+
+The shoemaker put the shoe on a last and began to tap with his hammer.
+"She did fight him," he said. "She went out to him twirling her
+moustaches. He lay down on his back. She lay down on her side. They kept
+grinning and sparring at each other like that for half an hour. At last
+the monstrous rat got up in a fury and come at her, the fangs stripped.
+She swung round the yard, doubled in two, making circles like a
+Catherine-wheel about him until the old blackguard was mesmerised. And
+if you were to see the bulk of her tail then, all her electricity gone
+into it! She caught him with a blow of it under the jowl, and he fell in
+a swoon. She stood over him, her back like the bend of a hoop, the tail
+beating about her, and a smile on the side of her face. And that was the
+end of the monstrous brewery rat."
+
+Padna said nothing, but put the cat down on the floor. When she made
+some effort to regain his lap he surreptitiously suggested, with the tip
+of his boot, that their entente was at an end.
+
+A few drops of rain beat on the window, and the shoemaker looked up, his
+glasses shining, the bumps on his forehead gleaming. "Do you know the
+reason God makes it rain?" he asked.
+
+Padna, who had been listening to the conversation of two farmers the
+evening before, replied, "I do. To make turnips grow."
+
+"Nonsense!" said the shoemaker, reaching out for an awl. "God makes it
+rain to remind us of the Deluge. And I don't mean the Deluge that was
+at all at all. I mean the Deluge that is to come. The world will be
+drowned again. The belly-band of the sky will give, for that's what the
+rainbow is, and it only made of colours. Did you never know until now
+what the rainbow was? No? Well, well!... As I was saying, when the
+belly-band of the sky bursts the Deluge will come. In one minute all the
+valleys of the earth will be filled up. In the second minute the
+mountains will be topped. In the third minute the sky will be emptied
+and its skin gone, and the earth will be no more. There will be no ark,
+no Noah, and no dove. There will be nothing only one great waste of grey
+water and in the middle of it one green leaf. The green leaf will be a
+sign that God has gone to sleep, the trouble of the world banished from
+His mind. So whenever it rains remember my words."
+
+Padna said he would, and then went home.
+
+
+II
+
+When Padna called on the shoemaker for the boots that had been left for
+repair they were almost ready. The tips only remained to be put on the
+heels. Padna sat down in the little workshop, and under the agreeable
+influence of the place he made bold to ask the shoemaker if he had grown
+up to be a shoemaker as the geranium had grown up to be a geranium in
+its pot on the window.
+
+"What!" exclaimed the shoemaker. "Did you never hear tell that I was
+found in the country under a head of cabbage? No! Well, well! What do
+they talk to you at home about at all?"
+
+"The most thing they tell me," said Padna, "is to go to bed and get up
+in the morning. What is the name of the place in the country where they
+found you?"
+
+"Gobstown," said the shoemaker. "It was the most miserable place within
+the ring of Ireland. It lay under the blight of a good landlord, no
+better. That was its misfortune, and especially my misfortune. If the
+Gobstown landlord was not such a good landlord it's driving on the box
+of an empire I would be to-day instead of whacking tips on the heels of
+your boots. How could that be? I'll tell you that.
+
+"In Gobstown the tenants rose up and demanded a reduction of rent; the
+good landlord gave it to them. They rose up again and demanded another
+reduction of rent; he gave it to them. They went on rising up, asking
+reductions, and getting them, until there was no rent left for anyone to
+reduce. The landlord was as good and as poor as our best.
+
+"And while all this was going on Gobstown was surrounded by estates
+where there were the most ferocious landlords--rack-renting, absentee,
+evicting landlords, landlords as wild as tigers. And these tiger
+landlords were leaping at their tenants and their tenants slashing back
+at them as best they could. Nothing, my dear, but blood and the music of
+grape-shot and shouts in the night from the jungle. In Gobstown we had
+to sit down and look on, pretending, moryah, that we were as happy as
+the day was long.
+
+"Not a scalp was ever brought into Gobstown. No man of us ever went out
+on an adventure which might bring him home again through the mouth of
+the county jail. Not a secret enterprise that might become a great
+public excitement was ever hatched, not to speak of being launched. We
+had not as much as a fife-and-drum band. We did not know how to play a
+tin whistle or beat upon the tintinnabulum. We never waved a green flag.
+We had not a branch of any kind of a league. We had no men of skill to
+draft a resolution, indite a threatening letter, draw a coffin, skull,
+and cross-bones, fight a policeman, or even make a speech. We were never
+a delegate at a convention, an envoy to America, a divisional executive,
+a deputation, or a demonstration. We were nothing. We wilted under the
+blight of our good landlord as the green stalk wilts under the frost of
+the black night.... Hand me that knife. The one with the wooden handle.
+
+"In desperation we used rouse ourselves and march into the
+demonstrations on other estates. We were a small and an unknown tribe.
+The Gobstown contingent always brought up the rear of the procession--a
+gawky, straggling, bad-stepping, hay-foot, straw-foot lot! The onlookers
+hardly glanced at us. We stood for nothing. We had no name. Once we
+rigged up a banner with the words on it, 'Gobstown to the Front!' but
+still we were put to the back, and when we walked through this town the
+servant girls came out of their kitchens, laughed at us, and called out,
+'Gobstown to the Back of the Front!'
+
+"The fighting men came to us, took us aside, and asked us what we were
+doing in Gobstown. We had no case to make. We offered to bring forward
+our good landlord as a shining example, to lead our lamb forward in
+order that he might show up the man-eaters on the other estates. The
+organisers were all hostile. They would not allow us into the
+processions any more. If we could bring forward some sort of roaring
+black devil we would be more than welcome. Shining examples were not in
+favour. We were sent home in disgrace and broke up. As the preachers
+say, our last state was worse than our first.
+
+"We became sullen and drowsy and fat and dull. We got to hate the sight
+of each other, so much so that we began to pay our rents behind each
+other's backs, at first the reduced rents, then, gale day by gale day,
+we got back to the original rent, and kept on paying it. Our good
+landlord took his rents and said nothing. Gobstown became the most
+accursed place in all Ireland. Brother could not trust brother. And
+there were our neighbours going from one sensation to another. They were
+as lively as trout, as enterprising as goats, as intelligent as
+Corkmen. They were thin and eager and good-tempered. They ate very
+little, drank water, slept well, men with hard knuckles, clean bowels,
+and pale eyes. Anything they hit went down. They were always ready to go
+to the gallows for each other.
+
+"I had a famous cousin on one of these estates, and I suppose you heard
+of him? You didn't! What are they teaching you at school at all? Latin
+grammar? Well, well!... My cousin was a clumsy fellow with only a little
+of middling kind of brains, but a bit of fight in him. Yet look at the
+way he got on, and look at me, shodding little boys like yourself! I was
+born under a lucky star but my cousin was born under a lucky landlord--a
+ferocious fellow who got into a garret in London and kept roaring across
+at Ireland for more and more blood. Every time I thought of that old
+skin of a man howling in the London garret I said to myself, 'He'll be
+the making of my cousin.' And so, indeed, he was. Three agents were
+brought down on my cousin's estate. State trials were running like great
+plays in the courthouse. Blood was always up. They had six fife-and-drum
+bands and one brass band. They had green and gold banners with harps
+and streamers, and mottoes in yellow lettering, that took four hardy men
+to carry on a windy day. The heads of the Peelers were hardly ever out
+of their helmets. The resident magistrate rose one day in the bosom of
+his family, his eyes closed, to say grace before meals, and from dint of
+habit he was chanting the Riot Act over the table until his wife flew at
+him with, 'How dare you, George! The mutton is quite all right!' Little
+boys no bigger than yourself walking along the roads to school in that
+splendid estate could jump up on the ditch and make good speeches.
+
+"My cousin's minute books--he was secretary of everything--would stock a
+book-shop, and were noted for beautiful expressions. He was the author
+of ten styles of resolution construction. An enemy christened him
+Resolving Kavanagh. Every time he resolved to stand where he always
+stood he revolved. Everybody put up at his house. He was seen in more
+torchlight processions than Bryan O'Lynn. A room in his house was
+decorated in a beautiful scheme of illuminated addresses with border
+designs from the Book of Kells. The homes of the people were full of
+the stumps of burned-down candles, the remains of great illuminations
+for my cousin whenever he came out of prison. I tell you no lie when I
+say that that clumsy cousin of mine became clever and polished, all
+through pure practice. He had the best of tutors. The skin of a landlord
+in the London garret, his agents, their understrappers, removable
+magistrates, judges, Crown solicitors, county inspectors of police,
+sergeants, constables, secret service men,--all drove him from fame to
+fame until in the end they chased him out the only gap that was left
+open to the like of him--the English Parliament. Think of the streak of
+that man's career! And there was I, a man of capacity and brains, born
+with the golden spoon of talent in my mouth, dead to the world in
+Gobstown! I was rotting like a turnip under the best and the most
+accursed of landlords. In the end I could not stand it--no man of spirit
+could.
+
+"One day I took down my ashplant, spat on my fist, and set out for my
+cousin's place. He gave me no welcome. I informed him as to how the land
+lay in Gobstown. I said we must be allowed to make a name for ourselves
+as the producers of a shining example of a landlord. My cousin let his
+head lie over a little to one side and then said, 'In this country
+shining examples ought only be used with the greatest moderation.' He
+looked out through the window and after some time said, 'That Gobstown
+landlord is the most dangerous lunatic in all Ireland.' 'How is that?'
+said I. 'Because,' said my famous cousin, 'he has a perfect heart.' He
+put his head over to the other side, looked at me and said, 'If Gobstown
+does not do something he may be the means of destroying us all.' 'How?'
+said I. 'He may become contagious,' said my cousin. 'Only think of his
+example being followed and Ireland turned into one vast tract of
+Gobstowns! Would not any fate at all be better than that?' I who knew
+said, 'God knows it would.'
+
+"My cousin sighed heavily. He turned from me, leaving me standing there
+in the kitchen, and I saw him moving with a ladder to the loft overhead.
+This he mounted and disappeared in the black rafters. I could hear him
+fumbling somewhere under the thatch. Presently down he came the ladder,
+a gun in one hand, and a fistful of cartridges in the other. He spoke no
+word, and I spoke no word. He came to me and put the gun in my hand and
+the handful of cartridges in my pocket. He walked to the fire and stood
+there with his back turned. I stood where I was, a Gobstown mohawk, with
+the gun in my hand. At last I said, 'What is this for?' and grounded the
+gun a little on the floor. My cousin did not answer at once. At last he
+said without moving, 'It's for stirring your tea, what else?' I looked
+at him and he remained as he was and, the sweat breaking out on the back
+of my neck, I left the house and made across the fields for home, the
+cartridges rattling in my pocket every ditch I leapt, the feel of the
+gun in my hand becoming more familiar and more friendly.
+
+"At last I came to the summit of a little green hill overlooking
+Gobstown, and there I sat me down. The sight of Gobstown rose the gorge
+in me. Nothing came out of it but weak puffs of turf smoke from the
+chimneys--little pallid thin streaks that wobbled in the wind. There,
+says I, is the height of Gobstown. And no sound came up out of it
+except the cackle of geese, and then the bawl of an old ass in the bog.
+There, says I, is the depth of Gobstown. And rising up from the green
+hill I made up my mind to save Ireland from Gobstown even if I lost my
+own soul. I would put a bullet in the perfect heart of our good
+landlord.
+
+"That night I lay behind a certain ditch. The moon shone on the nape of
+my neck. The good landlord passed me by on the road, he and his good
+wife, chattering and happy as a pair of lovers. I groped for the gun.
+The queerest feeling came over me. I did not even raise it. I had no
+nerve. I quaked behind the ditch. His footsteps and her footsteps were
+like cracks of this hammer on my head. I knew, then, in that minute,
+that I was no good, and that Gobstown was for ever lost.... What
+happened me? Who can say that for certain? Many a time have I wondered
+what came over me in that hour. I can only guess.... Nobody belonging to
+me had ever been rack-rented. I had never seen any of my own people
+evicted. No great judge of assize had ever looked down on me from his
+bench to the dock and addressed to me stern words. I had never heard
+the clang behind me of a prison door. No royal hand of an Irish
+constabularyman had ever brought a baton down on my head. No carbine had
+ever butted the soft places of my body. I had no scars that might redden
+with memories. The memories I had and that might give me courage were
+not memories of landlords. There was nothing of anger in my heart for
+the Gobstown landlord, and he went by. I dragged my legs out of the
+ditch and drowned my cousin's gun in a boghole. After it I dropped in
+the handful of cartridges. They made a little gurgle in the dark water
+like blood in a shot man's throat. And that same night I went home, put
+a few things in a red handkerchief, and stole out of Gobstown like a
+thief. I walked along the roads until I came to this town, learned my
+trade, became a respectable shoemaker, and--tell your mother I never use
+anything only the best leather. There are your boots, Padna, tips and
+all ... half-a-crown. Thanks, and well wear!"
+
+
+
+
+THE RECTOR
+
+
+The Rector came round the gable of the church. He walked down the sanded
+path that curved to the road. Half-way down he paused, meditated, then
+turning gazed at the building. It was square and solid, bulky against
+the background of the hills. The Rector hitched up his cuffs as he gazed
+at the structure. Critical puckers gathered in little lines across the
+preserved, peach-like cheeks. He put his small, nicely-shaped head to
+one side. There was a proprietorial, concerned air in his attitude. One
+knew that he was thinking of the repairs to the church, anxious about
+the gutters, the downpipe, the missing slates on the roof, the painting
+of the doors and windows. He struck an attitude as he pondered the
+problem of the cracks on the pebble-dashed walls. His umbrella grounded
+on the sand with decision. He leaned out a little on it with
+deliberation, his lips unconsciously shaping the words of the ultimatum
+he should deliver to the Select Vestry. His figure was slight, he looked
+old-world, almost funereal, something that had become detached, that
+was an outpost, half-forgotten, lonely; a man who had sunk into a parish
+where there was nothing to do. He mumbled a little to himself as he came
+down to the gate in the high wall that enclosed the church grounds.
+
+A group of peasants was coming along the yellow, lonely road, talking
+and laughing. The bare-footed women stepped with great active strides,
+bearing themselves with energy. They carried heavy baskets from the
+market town, but were not conscious of their weight. The carded-wool
+petticoats, dyed a robust red, brought a patch of vividness to the
+landscape. The white "bauneens" and soft black hats of the men afforded
+a contrast. The Rector's eyes gazed upon the group with a schooled
+detachment. It was the look of a man who stood outside of their lives,
+who did not expect to be recognised, and who did not feel called upon to
+seem conscious of these peasant folk. The eyes of the peasants were
+unmoved, uninterested, as they were lifted to the dark figure that stood
+at the rusty iron gate leading into the enclosed church grounds. He
+gave them no salutation. Their conversation voluble, noisy, dropped for
+a moment, half through embarrassment, half through a feeling that
+something alive stood by the wayside. A vagueness in expression on both
+sides was the outward signal that two conservative forces had met for a
+moment and refused to compromise.
+
+One young girl, whose figure and movements would have kindled the eye of
+an artist, looked up and appeared as if she would smile. The Rector was
+conscious of her vivid face, framed in a fringe of black hair, of a
+mischievousness in her beauty, some careless abandon in the swing of her
+limbs. But something in the level dark brows of the Rector, something
+that was dour, forbade her smile. It died in a little flush of
+confusion. The peasants passed and the Rector gave them time to make
+some headway before he resumed his walk to the Rectory.
+
+He looked up at the range of hills, great in their extent, mighty in
+their rhythm, beautiful in the play of light and mist upon them. But to
+the mind of the Rector they expressed something foreign, they were part
+of a place that was condemned and lost. He began to think of the young
+girl who, in her innocence, had half-smiled at him. Why did she not
+smile? Was she afraid? Of what was she afraid? What evil thing had come
+between her and that impulse of youth? Some consciousness--of what? The
+Rector sighed. He had, he was afraid, knowledge of what it was. And that
+knowledge set his thoughts racing over their accustomed course. He ran
+over the long tradition of his grievances--grievances that had submerged
+him in a life that had not even a place in this wayside countryside. His
+mind worked its way down through all the stages of complaint until it
+arrived at the _Ne Temere_ decree. The lips of the Rector no longer
+formed half-spoken words; they became two straight, tight little thin
+lines across the teeth. They would remain that way all the afternoon,
+held in position while he read the letters in the _Irish Times_. He
+would give himself up to thoughts of politics, of the deeds of wicked
+men, of the transactions that go on within and without governments,
+doping his mind with the drug of class opiates until it was time to go
+to bed.
+
+Meantime he had to pass a man who was breaking stones in a ditch by the
+roadside. The hard cracks of the hammer were resounding on the still
+air. The man looked up from his work as the Rector came along; the grey
+face of the stone-breaker had a melancholy familiarity for him. The
+Rector had an impulse--it was seldom he had one. He stood in the centre
+of the road. The _Ne Temere_ decree went from his mind.
+
+"Good-day, my man," he said, feeling that he had made another
+concession, and that it would be futile as all the others.
+
+"Good-day, sir," the stone-breaker made answer, hitching himself upon
+the sack he had put under his haunches, like one very ready for a
+conversation.
+
+There was a pause. The Rector did not know very well how to continue. He
+should, he knew, speak with some sense of colloquialism if he was to get
+on with this stonebreaker, a person for whom he had a certain removed
+sympathy. The manner of these people's speech was really a part of the
+grievances of the Rector. Their conversation, he often secretly assured
+himself, was peppered with Romish propaganda. But the Rector made
+another concession.
+
+"It's a fine day, thank God," he said. He spoke like one who was
+delivering a message in an unfamiliar language. "Thank God" was local,
+and might lend itself to an interpretation that could not be approved.
+But the Rector imported something into the words that was a protection,
+something that was of the pulpit, that held a solemnity in its
+pessimism.
+
+"A fine day, indeed, glory be to God!" the stonebreaker made answer.
+There was a freshness in his expression, a cheerfulness in the prayer,
+that made of it an optimism.
+
+The Rector was so conscious of the contrast that it gave him pause
+again. The peach-like colourings on the cheeks brightened, for a
+suspicion occurred to him. Could the fellow have meant anything? Had he
+deliberately set up an optimistic Deity in opposition to the pessimistic
+Deity of the Rector? The Rector hitched up the white cuffs under his
+dark sleeves, swung his umbrella, and resumed his way, his lips
+puckered, a little feverish agitation seizing him.
+
+"A strange, down-hearted kind of a man," the stonebreaker said to
+himself, as he reached out for a lump of lime-stone and raised his
+hammer. A redbreast, perched on an old thorn bush, looking out on the
+scene with curious eyes, stretched his wing and his leg, as much as to
+say, "Ah, well," sharpened his beak on a twig, and dropped into the
+ditch to pick up such gifts as the good earth yielded.
+
+The Rector walked along the road pensive, but steadfast, his eyes upon
+the alien hills, his mind travelling over ridges of problems that never
+afforded the gleam of solution. He heard a shout of a laugh. Above the
+local accents that held a cadence of the Gaelic speech he heard the
+sharp clipping Northern accent of his own gardener and general factotum.
+He had brought the man with him when he first came to Connacht, half as
+a mild form of colonisation, half through a suspicion of local honesty.
+He now saw the man's shaggy head over the Rectory garden wall, and
+outside it were the peasants.
+
+How was it that the gardener got on with the local people? How was it
+that they stood on the road to speak with him, shouting their
+extravagant laughter at his keen, dry Northern humour?
+
+When he first came the gardener had been more grimly hostile to the
+place than the Rector himself. There had been an ugly row on the road,
+and blows had been struck. But that was some years ago. The gardener now
+appeared very much merged in the life of the place; the gathering
+outside the Rectory garden was friendly, almost a family party. How was
+it to be accounted for? Once or twice the Rector found himself
+suspecting that at the bottom of the phenomenon there might be all
+unconscious among these people a spirit of common country, of a common
+democracy, a common humanity, that forced itself to the surface in
+course of time. The Rector stood, his lips working, his nicely-shaped
+little head quivering with a sudden agitation. For he found himself
+thinking along unusual lines, and for that very reason dangerous
+lines--frightfully dangerous lines, he told himself, as an ugly
+enlightenment broke across his mind, warming it up for a few moments and
+no more. As he turned in the gate at the Rectory it was a relief to
+him--for his own thoughts were frightening him--to see the peasants
+moving away and the head of the gardener disappear behind the wall. He
+walked up the path to the Rectory, the lawn dotted over with sombre yew
+trees all clipped into the shape of torpedoes, all trained directly upon
+the forts of Heaven! The house was large and comfortable, the walls a
+faded yellow. Like the church, it was thrown up against the background
+of the hills. It had all the sombre exclusiveness that made appeal to
+the Rector. The sight of it comforted him at the moment, and his mental
+agitation died down. He became normal enough to resume his accustomed
+outlook, and before he had reached the end of the path his mind had
+become obsessed again by the thought of the _Ne Temere_ decree.
+Something should, he felt convinced, be done, and done at once.
+
+He ground his umbrella on the step in front of the Rectory door and
+pondered. At last he came to a conclusion, inspiration lighting up his
+faded eyes. He tossed his head upwards.
+
+"I must write a letter to the papers," he said. "Ireland is lost."
+
+
+
+
+THE HOME-COMING
+
+
+Persons:
+    Mrs. Ford
+    Donagh Ford
+    Hugh Deely
+    Agnes Deely
+
+  Scene: A farmhouse in Connacht.
+
+Hugh: They'll make short work of the high field. It's half ploughed
+already.
+
+Donagh: It was good of the people to gather as they did, giving us their
+labour.
+
+Hugh: The people had always a wish for your family, Donagh. Look at the
+great name your father left behind him in Carrabane. It would be a fine
+sight for him if he had lived to stand at this door now, looking at the
+horses bringing the plough over the ground.
+
+Donagh: And if he could move about this house, even in his great age. He
+never got accustomed to the smallness of the hut down at Cussmona.
+
+Hugh: When I was a bit of a gosoon I remember the people talking about
+the eviction of Donagh Ford. It was terrible work used to be in
+Carrabane those times. Your father was the first man to fight, and that
+was why the people thought so well of him.
+
+Donagh: He would never speak of it himself, for at home he was a silent,
+proud man. But my mother used to be telling me of it many a time.
+
+Hugh: Your mother and yourself have the place back now. And you have
+Agnes to think of.
+
+Donagh: Agnes is a good thought to me surely. Was she telling you we
+fixed the day of the wedding yesterday at your uncle's?
+
+Hugh: She was not. A girl like her is often shy of speaking about a
+thing of that kind to her brother. I'd only be making game of her. (_A
+cheer is heard in the distance outside. Hugh goes to look out door._)
+
+Hugh: Here is the car coming up the road with your mother and Agnes.
+They're giving her a welcome.
+
+Donagh (_looking out of window_): She'll be very proud of the people,
+they to have such a memory of my father.
+
+Hugh: I'll run out and greet her. (_In a sly undertone._) Agnes is
+coming up. (_He goes out laughing. Donagh hangs up harness on some pegs.
+Agnes Deely, wearing a shawl over her head and carrying a basket on her
+arm, comes in._)
+
+Agnes: Donagh, your mother was greatly excited leaving the hut. I think
+she doesn't rightly understand what is happening.
+
+Donagh: I was afeard of that. The memory slips on her betimes. She
+thinks she's back in the old days again.
+
+Agnes (_going to dresser, taking parcels from the basket._): My father
+was saying that we should have everything here as much like what it used
+to be as we can. That's why he brought up the bin. When they were
+evicted he took it up to his own place because it was too big for the
+hut.
+
+Donagh: Do you know, Agnes, when I came up here this morning with your
+brother, Hugh, I felt the place strange and lonesome. I think an evicted
+house is never the same, even when people go back to it. There seemed to
+be some sorrow hanging over it.
+
+Agnes (_putting up her shawl_): Now Donagh, that's no way for you to be
+speaking. If you were to see how glad all the people were! And you ought
+to have the greatest joy.
+
+Donagh: Well, then I thought of you, Agnes, and that changed everything.
+I went whistling about the place. (_Going to her._) After coming down
+from your uncle's yesterday evening I heard the first cry of the cuckoo
+in the wood at Raheen.
+
+Agnes: That was a good omen, Donagh.
+
+Donagh: I took it that way, too, for it was the first greeting I got
+after parting from yourself. Did you hear it, Agnes?
+
+Agnes: I did not. I heard only one sound the length of the evening.
+
+Donagh: What sound was that, Agnes?
+
+Agnes: I heard nothing only the singing of one song, a lovely song, all
+about Donagh Ford!
+
+Donagh: About me?
+
+Agnes: Yes, indeed. It was no bird and no voice, but the singing I heard
+of my own heart.
+
+Donagh: That was a good song to hear, Agnes. It is like a thought that
+would often stir in a man's mind and find no word to suit it. It is
+often that I thought that way of you and could speak no word.
+
+Agnes: All the same I think I would have an understanding for it,
+Donagh.
+
+Donagh: Ah, Agnes, that is just it. That is what gives me the great
+comfort in your company. We have a great understanding of each other
+surely.
+
+Hugh (_speaking outside_): This is the way, Mrs. Ford. They are waiting
+for you within. (_He comes in._) Donagh, here is your mother. (_Mrs.
+Ford, leaning on a stick, comes to the door, standing on the threshold
+for a little. Hugh and Donagh take off their hats reverently._)
+
+Mrs. Ford: And is that you, Donagh. Well, if it is not the fine high
+house you got for Agnes. Eh, pet?
+
+Agnes (_taking shawl from her_): It is your own house Donagh has taken
+you back to.
+
+Hugh: Did you not hear the people giving you a welcome, Mrs. Ford?
+
+Donagh: Don't you remember the house, mother?
+
+Mrs. Ford: I have a memory of many a thing, God help me. And I heard the
+people cheering. I thought maybe it was some strife was going on in
+Carrabane. It was always a place of one struggle or another. (_She looks
+helplessly about house, muttering as she hobbles to the bin. She raises
+the lid._) Won't you take out a measure of oats to the mare, Donagh? And
+they have mislaid the scoop again. I'm tired telling them not to be
+leaving it in the barn. Where is that Martin Driscoll and what way is he
+doing his business at all? (_She turns to close the bin._)
+
+Hugh (_to Donagh_): Who is Martin Driscoll?
+
+Donagh: A boy who was here long ago. I heard a story of him and a flight
+with a girl. He lies in a grave in Australia long years.
+
+Mrs. Ford (_moving from bin, her eyes catching the dresser_): Who put
+the dresser there? Was it by my orders? That is a place where it will
+come awkward to me.
+
+Agnes (_going to her_): Sit down and rest yourself. You are fatigued
+after making the journey.
+
+Mrs. Ford (_as they cross to fire_): Wait until I lay eyes on Martin
+Driscoll and on Delia Morrissey of the cross! I tell you I will regulate
+them.
+
+Donagh (_to Hugh_): Delia Morrissey--that is the name of the girl I
+spoke of. She was lost on the voyage, a girl of great beauty.
+
+Agnes (_to Mrs. Ford_): Did you take no stock of the people as you came
+on the car?
+
+Mrs. Ford: In throth I did. It was prime to see them there reddening the
+sod and the little rain drops falling from the branches of the trees.
+
+Hugh: They raised a great cheer for you.
+
+Mrs. Ford: Did you say that it was to me they were giving a welcome?
+
+Donagh: Indeed it was, mother.
+
+Mrs. Ford (_laughing a little_): Mind that, Agnes. They are the lively
+lads to be taking stock of an old woman the like of me driving the
+roads.
+
+Hugh: The people could not but feel some stir to see what they saw this
+day. I declare to you, Donagh, when I saw her old stooped dark figure
+thrown against the sky on the car it moved something in me.
+
+Mrs. Ford: What are you saying about a stir in the country, Hugh Deely?
+
+Hugh: Was it not something to see the planter going from this place? Was
+it not something to see you and Donagh coming from a miserable place in
+the bog?
+
+Mrs. Ford (_sharply_): The planter, did you say? (_Clutching her stick
+to rise_). Blessed be God! Is Curley the planter gone from Carrabane?
+Don't make any lie to me, Hugh Deely.
+
+Hugh: Curley is gone.
+
+Mrs. Ford (_rising with difficulty, her agitation growing_): And his
+wife? What about his trollop of a wife?
+
+Donagh: The whole brood and tribe of them went a month back.
+
+Agnes: Did not Donagh tell you that you were back in your own place
+again? (_Mrs. Ford moves about, a consciousness of her surroundings
+breaking upon her. She goes to room door, pushing it open._)
+
+Hugh: It is all coming back to her again.
+
+Donagh: She was only a little upset in her mind.
+
+Mrs. Ford (_coming from room door_): Agnes, and you, Hugh Deely, come
+here until I be telling you a thing of great wonder. It was in this
+house Donagh there was born. And it was in that room that we laid out
+his little sister, Mary. I remember the March day and the yellow flowers
+they put around her in the bed. She had no strength for the rough world.
+I crossed her little white hands on the breast where the life died in
+her like a flame. Donagh, my son, it was nearly all going from my mind.
+
+Agnes: This is no day for sad thoughts. Think of the great thing it is
+for you to be back here again.
+
+Mrs. Ford: Ah, that's the truth, girl. Did the world ever hear of such a
+story as an old woman like me to be standing in this place and the
+planter gone from Currabane! And if Donagh Ford is gone to his rest his
+son is here to answer for him.
+
+Donagh: The world knows I can never be the man my father was.
+
+Mrs. Ford (_raising her stick with a little cry_): Ah-ha, the people saw
+the great strength of Donagh Ford. 'They talk of a tenant at will,' he'd
+say, 'but who is it that can chain the purpose of a man's mind.' And
+they all saw it. There was no great spirit in the country when Donagh
+Ford took the courage of his own heart and called the people together.
+
+Hugh: This place was a place of great strife then.
+
+Mrs. Ford: God send, Agnes Deely, that you'll never have the memory of a
+bitter eviction burned into your mind.
+
+Donagh: That's all over and done now, mother. There is a new life before
+you.
+
+Mrs. Ford: Well, they had their way and put us across the threshold. But
+if they did it was on this hearth was kindled a blaze that swept the
+townland and wrapped the country. It went from one place to another and
+no wave that rose upon the Shannon could hold it back. It was a thing
+that no power could check, for it ran in the blood and only wasted in
+the vein of the father to leap fresh in the heart of the son. Ah, I will
+go on my knees and kiss the threshold of this house for the things it
+calls to mind. (_She goes to door, kneeling down and kissing the
+threshold._)
+
+Hugh: It is a great hold she has on the old days and a great spirit. (_A
+low murmur of voices is heard in the distance outside._)
+
+Donagh: They are turning the ploughs into the second field.
+
+Mrs. Ford: What's that you say about the ploughs?
+
+Donagh (_going to her_): The boys are breaking up the land for us. (_He
+and Hugh help her to rise. They are all grouped at the door._)
+
+Agnes: It was they who cheered you on the road.
+
+Mrs. Ford: The sight is failing me.
+
+Donagh. I can only make out little dark spots against the green of the
+fields.
+
+Donagh: Those are the people, mother.
+
+Mrs. Ford (_crossing to fireplace_): The people are beginning to gather
+behind the ploughs again. Tell me, Donagh, what way is the wind coming?
+
+Donagh: It is coming up from the South.
+
+Mrs. Ford (_speaking more to herself_): Well, I can ask no more now. The
+wind is from the South and it will bear that cheer past where HE is
+lying in Gurteen-na-Marbh. It is a kind wind and it carries good music.
+Take my word for it every sound that goes on the wind is not lost to the
+dead.
+
+Hugh: You ought to take her out of these thoughts.
+
+Agnes: Leave her with me for a little while. (_Hugh and Donagh move to
+door._)
+
+Mrs. Ford: Where are you going, Donagh?
+
+Donagh: Down to the people breaking the ground. They will be waiting for
+word of your home-coming.
+
+Mrs. Ford: Ah, sure you ought to have the people up here, _a mhic_. I'd
+like to see all the old neighbours about me and hear the music of their
+voices.
+
+Hugh: Very well. I'll step down and bid them up. (_He goes._)
+
+Mrs. Ford: You'll have the anxiety of the farm on your mind from this
+out, Donagh.
+
+Donagh: Well, it is not the hut, with the hunger of the bog about it,
+that I will be bringing Agnes into now.
+
+Mrs. Ford: Agnes, come here, love, until I look upon the sweetness of
+your face. (_Agnes goes to her, kneeling by her side._) You'll be in
+this place with Donagh. It is a great inheritance you will have in the
+name of Donagh Ford. It is no idle name that will be in this house but
+the name of one who knew a great strength. It will be a long line of
+generations that the name of the Fords will reach out to, generations
+reaching to the time that Ireland herself will rise by the power of her
+own will.
+
+Agnes (_rising_): You will only sadden yourself by these thoughts. Think
+of what there is in store for you.
+
+Mrs. Ford: I'm an old woman now, child. There can be no fresh life
+before me. But I can tell you that I was young and full of courage once.
+I was the woman who stood by the side of Donagh Ford, that gave him
+support in the day of trial, that was always the strong branch in the
+storm and in the calm. Am I saying any word only what is a true word,
+Donagh?
+
+Donagh: The truth of that is well known to the people. (_He goes to
+door._)
+
+Mrs. Ford: Very well. Gather up all the people now, son. Let them come
+in about this place for many of them have a memory of it. Let me hear
+the welcome of their voices. They will have good words to say, speaking
+on the greatness of Donagh Ford who is dead.
+
+Donagh: They are coming out from the fields with Hugh, mother. I see the
+young fellows falling into line. They are wearing their caps and sashes
+and they have the band. I can see them carrying the banner to the front
+of the crowd. Here they are marching up the road. (_The strains of a
+fife and drum band playing a spirited march are heard in the distance.
+Mrs. Ford rises slowly, "humouring" the march with her stick, her face
+expressing her delight. The band stops._)
+
+Mrs. Ford: That's the spirit of Carrabane. Let the people now look upon
+me in this place and let them take pride in my son.
+
+Donagh: I see Stephen Mac Donagh.
+
+Mrs. Ford: Let him be the first across the threshold, for he went to
+jail with Donagh Ford. Have beside him Murt Cooney that lost his sight
+at the struggle of Ballyadams. Let him lift up his poor blind face till
+I see the rapture of it.
+
+Donagh: Murt Cooney is coming, and Francis Kilroy and Brian Mulkearn.
+
+Mrs. Ford: It was they who put a seal of silence on their lips and bore
+their punishment to save a friend of the people. Have a place beside me
+for the widow of Con Rafferty who hid the smoking revolver the day the
+tyrant fell at the cross of Killbrack.
+
+Donagh: All the old neighbours are coming surely.
+
+Mrs. Ford (_crossing slowly to door, Agnes going before her_): Let me
+look into their eyes for the things I will see stirring there. I will
+reach them out the friendship of my hands and speak to them the words
+that lie upon my heart. The rafters of this house will ring again with
+the voices that Donagh Ford welcomed and that I loved. Aye, the very
+fire on the hearth will leap in memory of the hands that tended it.
+
+Donagh: This will be such a day as will be made a boast of for ever in
+Carrabane. (_Agnes goes out door to meet the people._)
+
+Mrs. Ford: Let there be music and the sound of rejoicing and shouts from
+the hills. Let those who put their feet in anger upon us and who are
+themselves reduced to-day look back upon the strength they held and the
+power they lost.
+
+Donagh: I will bid the music play up. (_He goes out._)
+
+Mrs. Ford (_standing alone at the door_): People of Carrabane, gather
+about the old house of Donagh Ford. Let the fight for the land in this
+place end where it began. Let the courage and the strength that Donagh
+Ford knew be in your blood from this day out. Let the spirit be good and
+the hand be strong for the work that the heart directs. Raise up your
+voices with my voice this day and let us make a great praise on the
+name of Ireland. (_She raises her stick, straightening her old figure.
+The band strikes up and the people cheer outside as the curtain falls._)
+
+
+
+
+A WAYSIDE BURIAL
+
+
+The parish priest was in a very great hurry and yet anxious for a talk
+on his pet subject. He wanted to speak about the new temperance hall.
+Would I mind walking a little way with him while he did so? He had a
+great many things to attend to that day.... We made our way along the
+street together, left the town behind us, and presently reached that
+sinister appendage of all Irish country towns, the workhouse. The priest
+turned in the wide gate, and the porter, old, official, spectacled, came
+to meet him.
+
+"Has the funeral gone?" asked the priest, a little breathless.
+
+"I'll see, Father." The porter shuffled over the flags, a great door
+swung open; there was a vista of whitewashed walls, a chilly, vacant
+corridor, and beyond it a hall where old men were seated on forms at a
+long, white deal table. They were eating--a silent, grey, bent, beaten
+group. Through a glass partition we could see the porter in his office
+turning over the leaves of a great register.
+
+"I find," he said, coming out again, speaking as if he were giving
+evidence at a sworn inquiry, "that the remains of Martin Quirke,
+deceased, were removed at 4.15."
+
+"I am more than half an hour late," said the priest, regarding his watch
+with some irritation.
+
+We hurried out and along the road to the country, the priest trailing
+his umbrella behind him, speaking of the temperance hall but preoccupied
+about the funeral he had missed, my eyes marking the flight of flocks of
+starlings making westward.
+
+Less than a mile of ground brought us to the spot where the paupers were
+buried. It lay behind a high wall, a narrow strip of ground, cut off
+from a great lord's demesne by a wood. The scent of decay was heavy in
+the place; it felt as if the spring and the summer had dragged their
+steps here, to lie down and die with the paupers. The uncut grass lay
+rank and grey and long--Nature's unkempt beard--on the earth. The great
+bare chestnuts and oaks threw narrow shadows over the irregular mounds
+of earth. Small, rude wooden crosses stood at the heads of some of the
+mounds, lopsided, drunken, weather-beaten. No names were inscribed upon
+them. All the bones laid down here were anonymous. A robin was singing
+at the edge of the wood; overhead the rapid wings of wild pigeons beat
+the air.
+
+A stable bell rang impetuously in the distance, dismissing the workmen
+on the lord's demesne. By a freshly-made grave two gravediggers were
+leaning on their spades. They were paupers, too; men who got some
+privilege for their efforts in this dark strip of earth between the wood
+and the wall. One of them yawned. A third man stood aloof, a minor
+official from the workhouse; he took a pipe from his mouth as the priest
+approached.
+
+The three men gave one the feeling that they were rather tired of
+waiting, impatient to have their little business through. It was a
+weird spot in the gathering gloom of a November evening. The only bright
+thing in the place, the only gay spot, the only cheerful patch of
+colour, almost exulting in its grim surroundings, was the heap of
+freshly thrown up soil from the grave. It was rich in colour as
+newly-coined gold. Resting upon it was a clean, white, unpainted coffin.
+The only ornament was a tin breastplate on the lid and the inscription
+in black letters:
+
+    Martin Quirke,
+    Died November 3, 1900.
+    R.I.P.
+
+The white coffin on the pile of golden earth was like the altar of some
+pagan god. I stood apart as the priest, vesting himself in a black
+stole, approached the graveside and began the recital of the burial
+service in Latin. The gravediggers, whose own bones would one day be
+interred anonymously in the same ground, stood on either side of him
+with their spades, two grim acolytes. The minor official from the
+workhouse, the symbol of the State, bared a long, narrow head, as white
+and as smooth as the coffin on the heap of earth. I stood by a groggy
+wooden cross, the eternal observer.
+
+The priest spoke in a low monotone, holding the book close to his eyes
+in the uncertain light. And as he read I fell to wondering who our
+brother in the white coffin might be. Some merry tramp who knew the pain
+and the joy of the road? Some detached soul who had shaken off the
+burden of life's conventions, one who loved lightly and took punishment
+casually? One who saw crime as a science, or merely a broken reed? Or a
+soldier who had carried a knapsack in foreign campaigns? A creature of
+empire who had found himself in Africa, or Egypt, or India, or the
+Crimea, and come back again to claim his pile of golden earth in the
+corner of the lord's demesne? If the men had time, perhaps they would
+stick a little wooden cross over the spot where his bones were laid
+down....
+
+The priest's voice continued the recitation of the burial service and
+the robin sang at the edge of the dim wood. Down the narrow strip of
+rank burial ground a low wind cried, and the light, losing its glow in
+the western sky, threw a grey pall on the grass. And under the influence
+of the moment a little memory of people I had known and forgotten went
+across my mind, a memory that seemed to stir in the low wind, a memory
+of people who had at the last got their white, clean coffin and their
+rest on a pile of golden earth, people who had gone like our brother in
+the deal boards.... There was the man, the scholar, who had taught his
+school, who had an intelligence, who could talk, who, perhaps, could
+have written only--. The wind sobbed down the narrow strip of ground....
+He had made his battle, indeed, a long-drawn-out battle, for he had only
+given way step by step, gradually but inexorably yielding ground to the
+thing that was hunting him out of civilised life. He had gone from his
+school, his home, his friends, fleeing from one miserable refuge to
+another in the miserable country town. Eventually he had passed in
+through the gates of the workhouse. It was all very vivid now--his
+attempts to get back to the life he had known, like a man struggling in
+the quicksands. There were the little spurts back to the town, the
+well-shaped head, the face which still held some remembrance of its
+distinction and its manhood erect over the quaking, broken frame; that
+splendid head like a noble piece of sculpture on the summit of a
+crumbling ruin. Forth he would come, the flicker of resistance, a pallid
+battle-light in the eyes, a vessel that had been all but wrecked once
+more standing up the harbour to meet the winds that had driven it from
+the seas--and after a little battle once more taking in the sheets and
+crawling back to the anchorage of the dark workhouse, there to suffer in
+the old way, in secret to curse, to pray, to despair, to hope, to
+contrive some little repairs to the broken physique in order that there
+might be yet another journey into waters that were getting more and more
+shadowy. And the day came when the only journey that could be made was a
+shuffle to the gate, the haunted eyes staring into a world which was a
+nightmare of regrets. How terrible was the pathos of that life, that
+struggle, that tragedy, how poignant its memory while the robin sang at
+the edge of the dim wood!... And there was that red-haired, defiant
+young man with the build of an athlete, the eyes of an animal. How
+bravely he could sing up the same road to the dark house! It was to him
+as the burrow is to the rabbit. He would come out to nibble at the
+regular and lawful intervals, and having nibbled return to sleep and
+shout and fight for his "rights" in the dark house. And once, on a
+spring day, he had come out with a companion, a pale woman in a thin
+shawl and a drab skirt, and they had taken to the roads together,
+himself swinging his ashplant, his stride and manner carrying the
+illusion of purpose, his eyes on everything and his mind nowhere;
+herself trotting over the broken stones in her canvas shoes beside him,
+a pale shadow under the fire of his red head. They had gone away into a
+road whose milestones were dark houses, himself singing the song of his
+own life, a song of mumbled words, without air or music; herself silent,
+clutching her thin shawl over her breast, her feet pattering over the
+little stones of the road.... The wind whistled down over the graves, by
+the wooden crosses.... There was that little woman who at the close of
+the day, when the light was charitable in its obscurity, opened her door
+and came down from the threshold of her house, painfully as if she were
+descending from a great height. Nobody was about. All was quietness in
+the quiet street. And she drew the door to, put the key in the lock, her
+hand trembled, the lock clicked! The deed was done! Who but herself
+could know that the click of the key in the lock was the end, the close,
+the dreadful culmination of the best part of a whole century of
+struggle, of life? Behind that door she had swept up a bundle of
+memories that were now all an agony because the key had clicked in the
+lock. Behind the door was the story of her life and the lives of her
+children and her children's children. Where was the use, she might have
+asked, of blaming any of them now? What was it that they had all gone,
+all scattered, leaving her broken there at the last? Had not the key
+clicked in the lock? In that click was the end of it all; in the empty
+house were the ghosts of her girlhood, her womanhood, her motherhood,
+her old age, her struggles, her successes, her skill in running her
+little shop, her courage in riding one family squall after another! The
+key had clicked in the lock. She moved down the quiet street, sensitive
+lest the eye of the neighbours should see her, a tottering, broken thing
+going by the vague walls, keeping to the back streets, setting out for
+the dark house beyond the town. She had said to them, "I will be no
+trouble to you." And, indeed, she was not. They had little more to do
+for her than join her hands over her breast.... The wind was plaintive
+in the gaunt trees of the dark wood.... Which of us could say he would
+never turn a key in the lock of an empty house? How many casual little
+twists of the wrist of Fate stand between the best of us and the step
+down from the threshold of a broken home? What rags of memories have any
+of us to bundle behind the door of the empty house when the hour comes
+for us to click the key in the lock?... The wind cried down the narrow
+strip of ground where the smell of decay was in the grass.
+
+There was a movement beside the white coffin, the men were lifting it
+off the golden pile of earth and lowering it into the dark pit. The
+men's feet slipped and shuffled for a foothold in the yielding clay. At
+last a low, dull thud sounded up from the mouth of the pit. Our brother
+in the white coffin had at last found a lasting tenure in the soil.
+
+The official from the dark house moved over to me. He spoke in whispers,
+holding the hat an official inch of respect for the dead above the
+narrow white shred of his skull.
+
+"Martin Quirke they are burying," he said.
+
+"Who was he?"
+
+"Didn't you ever hear tell of Martin Quirke?"
+
+"No, never."
+
+"A big man he was one time, with his acres around him and his splendid
+place. Very proud people they were--he and his brother--and very hot,
+too. The Quirkes of Ballinadee."
+
+"And now--"
+
+I did not finish the sentence. The priest was spraying the coffin in the
+grave with the golden earth.
+
+"Ashes to ashes and dust to dust." It fell briskly on the shallow deal
+timber.
+
+"'Twas the land agitation, the fight for the land, that brought Martin
+Quirke down," said the official as the earth sprayed the pauper's
+coffin. "He was one of the first to go out under the Plan of
+Campaign--the time of the evictions. They never got back their place.
+When the settlement came the Quirkes were broken. Martin lost his spirit
+and his heart. Drink it was that got him in the end, and now--"
+
+"Requiem æternam dona eis, Domine: et lux perpetua luceat eis," the
+priest's voice said.
+
+"All the same," said the official, "It was men like Martin Quirke who
+broke the back of landlordism. He was strong and he was weak. God rest
+him!"
+
+I walked away over the uneven ground, the memory of the land agitation,
+its bitterness and its passion, oppressing me. Stories of things such as
+this stalked the country like ghosts.
+
+The priest overtook me, and we turned to leave. Down the narrow strip of
+the lord's demesne were the little pauper mounds, like narrow boxes
+wrapped in the long grey grass. Their pathos was almost vibrant in the
+dim November light. And away beyond them were a series of great heaps,
+looking like broad billows out to sea. The priest stood for a moment.
+
+"You see the great mounds at the end?" he asked. "They are the Famine
+Pits."
+
+"The Famine Pits?"
+
+"Yes; the place where the people were buried in heaps and hundreds, in
+thousands, during the Famine of '46 and '47. They died like flies by the
+roadside. You see such places in almost every part of Ireland. I hope
+the people will never again die like that--die gnawing the gravel on the
+roadside."
+
+The rusty iron gate in the demesne wall swung open and we passed out.
+
+
+
+
+THE GRAY LAKE
+
+
+"I can see every colour in the water except gray," said the lady who was
+something of a sceptic.
+
+"That," said the humorist, tilting back his straw hat, "is the very
+reason they call it the Gray Lake. The world bristles with misnomers."
+
+"Which explains," said the lady sceptic, "why they call Eamonn a
+_seannachie_."
+
+"Hi!" called out the humorist. "Do you hear that, Eamonn?"
+
+"_Cad tá ort?_" asked Eamonn. He had been leaning out over the prow of
+the boat, looking vaguely into the water, and now turned round. Eamonn
+was always asking people, "_Cad tá ort?_" and before they had time to
+answer he was saying, or thinking, something else.
+
+"Why do they call this the Gray Lake?" asked the lady sceptic. "It never
+looked really gray, did it?"
+
+"Of course it did," said Eamonn. "The first man who ever saw it beheld
+it in the gray light of dawn, and so he called it _Baile Loch Riabhach_,
+the Town of the Gray Lough."
+
+"When might that be?" asked the lady sceptic drily.
+
+"The morning after the town was drowned," said Eamonn.
+
+"What town?"
+
+"The town we are now rowing over."
+
+"Good heavens! Is there a town beneath us?"
+
+"_Seadh_", said Eamonn. "Just now I was trying if I could see anything
+of the ruins at the bottom of the lake."
+
+"And you did, of course."
+
+"I think so."
+
+"What did you see?"
+
+"Confusion and the vague, glimmering gable of a house or two. Then the
+oars splashed and the water became dense."
+
+"But tell us how the town came to be at the bottom of the lake," said
+the man who rowed, shipping his oars. The boat rocked in the quick wash
+of the waves. The water was warming in vivid colours under the glow of
+the sunset. Eamonn leaned back in his seat at the prow of the boat. His
+eyes wandered away over the water to the slope of meadows, the rise of
+hills.
+
+"_Anois, Eamonn_," said the lady sceptic, still a little drily. "The
+story!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Long and long ago, said Eamonn, there was a sleepy old town lying snug
+in the dip of a valley. It was famous for seven of the purest springs of
+water which ever sparkled in the earth. They called it the Seven
+Sisters. Round the springs they built an immense and costly well. Over
+the well was a great leaden lid of extraordinary weight, and by a
+certain mechanical device this lid was closed on the well every evening
+at sundown. The springs became abnormally active between sundown and
+sunrise, so that there was always a danger that they might flood the
+valley and destroy the people. As security against this the citizens had
+built the great well with its monster lid, and each evening the lid was
+locked over the well by means of a secret lock and a secret key.
+
+The most famous person in the town of the Seven Sisters was the Keeper
+of the Key. He was a man of dignified bearing, important airs, wearing
+white silk knee-breeches, a green swallow-tail coat, and a cocked hat.
+On the sleeve of his coat was embroidered in gold the image of a key and
+seven sprays of water. He had great privileges and authority, and could
+condemn or reprieve any sort of criminal except, of course, a sheep
+stealer. He lived in a mansion beside the town, and this mansion was
+almost as famous as the seven famous springs. People travelled from far
+places to see it. A flight of green marble steps led to a broad door of
+oak. On the broad oaken door he had fashioned one of the most remarkable
+knockers and the most beautiful door knob that were known to Europe.
+Both were of beaten gold. The knocker was wrought in the shape of a key.
+The door knob was a group of seven water nymphs. A sensation was created
+which agitated all Ireland when this work of art was completed by five
+of the foremost goldsmiths in the land. The Keeper of the Key of the
+Seven Sisters issued a Proclamation declaring that there was a flaw in
+the rounding of one of the ankles of the group of seven water nymphs. He
+had the five goldsmiths suddenly arrested and put on their trial. "The
+Gael," said the Keeper of the Key, "must be pure-blooded in his art. I
+am of the Clann Gael, I shall not allow any half-artist to come to my
+door, there work under false pretence and go unpunished." The goldsmiths
+protested that their work was the work of artists and flawless as the
+design. Not another word would they be allowed to speak. Bards and
+artists, scholars and men skilled in controversy, flocked from all parts
+to see the door knob. A terrible controversy ensued. Sides were taken,
+some for, others against, the ankle of the water nymph. They came to be
+known as the Ankleites and the anti-Ankleites. And in that tremendous
+controversy the Keeper of the Key proved the masterly manner of man he
+was. He had the five goldsmiths convicted for failure as supreme
+artists, and they were sentenced to banishment from the country. On
+their way from the shore to the ship that was to bear them away their
+curragh sprang a sudden leak, and they were all drowned. That was the
+melancholy end of the five chief goldsmiths of Eirinn.
+
+Every morning at daybreak trumpets were blown outside the mansion of
+the Keeper of the Key. The gates of a courtyard swung open and out
+marched an armed guard, men in saffron kilts, bearing spears and swords.
+They formed up before the flight of marble steps. A second fanfare of
+the trumpets, and back swung the great oaken door, disclosing the Keeper
+of the Key in his bright silks and cocked hat. Out he would come on the
+doorstep, no attendants by him, and pulling to the great door by the
+famous knob he would descend the marble steps, the guard would take up
+position, and, thus escorted, he would cross the drawbridge of the moat
+and enter the town of the Seven Sisters, marching through the streets to
+the great well. People would have gathered there even at that early
+hour, women bearing vessels to secure their supply of the water, which,
+it was said, had an especial virtue when taken at the break of day. No
+mortal was allowed nearer than fifty yards to the well while the Keeper
+proceeded to unlock the lid. His guard would stand about, and with a
+haughty air he would approach the well solus. The people would see him
+make some movements, and back would slide the enormous lid. A blow on
+the trumpets proclaimed that the well was open, and the people would
+approach it, laughing and chattering, and the Keeper of the Key would
+march back to his mansion in the same military order, ascend the steps,
+push open the great door, and the routine of daily life would ensue. For
+the closing of the well at sundown a similar ceremony was observed. The
+only additional incident was the marching of a crier through the
+streets, beating great wooden clappers, and standing at each street
+corner calling out in a loud voice: "Hear ye people that the lock is on
+the Seven Sisters. All's well!"
+
+In those days there was a saying among the people which was in common
+usage all over Ireland. When a man became possessed of any article or
+property to which he had a doubtful title his neighbours said, with a
+significant wag of the head, "He got it where the Keeper gets the Key."
+This saying arose out of a mysterious thing in the life of the Keeper of
+the Key. Nobody ever saw the secret key. It was not in his hands when he
+came forth from the mansion morning and evening to fulfil his great
+office. He did not carry it in his pockets, for the simple reason that
+he had had no pockets. He kept no safe nor secret panel nor any private
+drawer in his mansion that the most observant among his retainers could
+espy. Yet that there was a secret key, and that it was inserted in a
+lock, anybody could see for himself, even at a distance of fifty yards,
+twice a day at the well. It was as if at that moment the key came into
+his hand out of the air and again vanished into air when the proper
+business was over. Indeed, there were people of even those remote and
+enlightened days who attributed some wizardy to the Keeper of the Key.
+It added to the awe in which he was held and to the sense of security
+which the proceedings of his whole life inspired in his fellow-citizens.
+Nevertheless had the Keeper of the Key his enemies. A man of distinction
+and power can no more tread the paths of his ambitions without stirring
+up rivalries and hostilities than can the winds howl across the earth
+and leave the dust on the roads undisturbed. The man who assumes power
+will always, sooner or later, have his power to hold put to the test. So
+it was with the Keeper of the Key. There were people who nursed the
+ambition of laying hands on the secret key. That secured, they would be
+lords of the town of the Seven Sisters. The reign of the great Keeper
+would be over. His instinct told him that these dangers were always
+about. He was on the alert. He had discovered treachery even within the
+moat of his own keep. His servants and guards had been tampered with.
+But all the attempts upon his key and his power had been in vain. He
+kept to the grand unbroken simplicity of his masterly routine. He had
+crushed his enemies whenever they had arisen. "One who has survived the
+passions of Ireland's poets," he would say--for the poets had all been
+Ankleites--"is not likely to bow the knee before snivelling little
+thieves." A deputation which had come to him proposing that the well
+should be managed by a constitutional committee of the citizens was
+flogged by the guards across the drawbridge. The leader of this
+deputation was a deformed tailor, who soon after planned an audacious
+attack on the mansion of the Keeper of the Key. The Keeper, his guards,
+servants and retainers were all one night secretly drugged and for
+several hours of the night lay unconscious in the mansion. Into it
+swarmed the little tailor and his constitutional committee; they pulled
+the whole interior to pieces in search of the key. The very pillows
+under the head of the Keeper had been stabbed and ransacked. It was
+nearing daybreak when the Keeper awoke, groggy from the effects of the
+narcotic. The guard was roused. The whole place was in confusion. The
+robbers had fled, leaving the great golden knocker on the door hanging
+from its position; they were removing it when surprised. The nymphs were
+untouched. The voice of the Keeper of the Key was deliberate,
+authoritative, commanding, amid the confusion. The legs of the guards
+quaked beneath them, their heads swam, and they said to each other, "Now
+surely is the key gone!" But their master hurried them to their morning
+duty, and they escorted him to the well a little beyond daybreak, and,
+lo, at the psychological moment, there was the key and back rolled the
+lid from the precious well. "Surely," they said, "this man is blessed,
+for the key comes to him as a gift from Heaven. The robbers of the earth
+are powerless against him." When the citizens of the Seven Sisters
+heard of what had taken place in the evil hours of the night they poured
+across the drawbridge from the town and acclaimed the Keeper of the Key
+before his mansion. He came out on the watch tower, his daughter by his
+side, and with dignified mien acknowledged the acclamations of the
+citizens. And before he put the lid on the well that night the deformed
+tailor and his pards were all dragged through the streets of the Seven
+Sisters and cast into prison.
+
+Never was the popularity of the Keeper at so high a level as after this
+episode. They would have declared him the most perfect as the most
+powerful of men were it not for one little spot on the bright sun of his
+fame. They did not like his domestic habits. The daughter who stood by
+his side on the watch tower was a young girl of charm, a fair, frail
+maiden, a slender lily under the towering shadow of her dark father. The
+citizens did not, perhaps, understand his instincts of paternity; and,
+indeed, if they understood them they would not have given them the
+sanction of their approval. The people only saw that the young girl, his
+only child, was condemned to what they called a life of virtual
+imprisonment in the mansion. She was a warm-blooded young creature, and
+like all warm-blooded creatures, inclined to gaiety of spirits, to
+impulsive friendships to a joyous and engaging frankness. These traits,
+the people saw, the father disapproved of and checked, and the young
+girl was regarded with great pity. "Ah," they would say, "he is a
+wonderful Keeper of the Key, but, alas, how harsh a father!" He would
+not allow the girl any individual freedom; she was under eternal escort
+when abroad; she was denied the society of those of her years; she was a
+flower whose fragrance it was not the privilege of the people to enjoy.
+It may be that the people, in murmuring against all this, did not make
+sufficient allowance for the circumstances of the life of the Keeper of
+the Key. He was alone, he stood apart from all men. His only passion in
+life had been the strict guardianship of a trust. In these circumstances
+his affections for his only child were direct and crude and, too, maybe
+a little unconsciously harsh. His love for his child was the love of the
+oyster for its pearl. The people saw nothing but the rough, tight
+shells which closed about the treasure in the mansion of the Keeper of
+the Key. More than one considerable wooer had approached that mansion,
+laying claim to the pearl which it held. All were met with the same
+terrible dark scowl and sent about their business. "You, sir," the
+Keeper of the Key would say, "come to my door, knock upon my knocker,
+lay hands upon my door knob--my golden door knob--and ask for my
+daughter's hand! Sir, your audacity is your only excuse. Let it also be
+your defence against my wrath. Now, sir, a very good day!" And when the
+citizens heard that yet another gallant wooer had come and been
+dismissed they would say, "The poor child, the poor child, what a pity!"
+
+The truth was that the daughter of the Keeper of the Key was not in the
+least unhappy. She had a tremendous opinion of her father; she lavished
+upon him all the warm affection of her young ardour. She reigned like a
+young queen within the confines of her home. She was about the gardens
+and the grounds all day, as joyous as a bird. Once or twice her
+governess gave her some inkling as to the suitors who came to the
+mansion requesting her hand, for that is an affair that cannot be kept
+from the most jealously-guarded damsel. The governess had a sense of
+humour and entertained the girl with accounts of the manner of lovers
+who, as she put it, washed up the marble steps of the mansion to the oak
+door, like waves on a shore, and were sent back again into the ocean of
+rejections. The young girl was much amused and secretly flattered at
+these events. "Ah," she would say, in a little burst of rapture, "how
+splendid is my father!" The pearl rejoices in the power of the oyster to
+shut it away from the world.
+
+Now (continued Eamonn), on the hilly slopes of the country called
+Sunnach there was a shepherd boy, and people who saw that he was a rare
+boy in looks and intelligence were filled with pity for his unhappy lot.
+The bodach for whom he herded was a dour, ill-conditioned fellow, full
+of curses and violent threats, but the boy was content in the life of
+the hillsides, and troubled very little about the bodach's dour looks.
+"Some day," he would say to himself laughingly, "I will compose terrible
+verses about his black mouth." One day the shepherd boy drove a little
+flock of the bodach's lively sheep to the fair in the town of the Seven
+Sisters. As he passed the mansion of the Keeper of the Key he cried out,
+"How up! how up! how up!" His voice was clear and full, the notes as
+round and sweet as the voice of the cuckoo. The daughter of the Keeper
+of the Key was seated by a window painting a little picture when she
+heard the "How up!" of the shepherd's voice. "What beautiful calls!" she
+exclaimed, and leaned out from the window. At the same moment the
+shepherd boy looked up. He was bare-headed and wore his plaids. His head
+was a shock of curly straw-coloured hair, his face eager, clear-cut, his
+eyes golden-brown and bright as the eyes of a bird. He smiled and the
+damsel smiled. "How up! how up! how up!" he sang out joyously to his
+flock as he moved down to the fair. The damsel went back to her little
+picture and sat there for some time staring at her palette and mixing
+the wrong colours.
+
+That evening the Keeper of the Key, as was his custom, escorted his
+daughter on his arm, servants before and behind them, through the town
+of the Seven Sisters, viewing such sights of the fair as were agreeable
+and doing a little shopping. The people, seeing the great man coming,
+made way for him on the paths, and bowed and smiled to him as he passed.
+He walked with great dignity, and his daughter's beauty made the
+bystanders say, "Happy will it be for the lucky man!" Among those they
+encountered was the shepherd boy, and he gazed upon the damsel with
+rapture in his young eyes. He followed them about the town at a
+respectful distance, and back to their mansion. The shepherd boy did not
+return to the hilly country called Sunnach that night, nor the next
+night, nor for many a long day and night. He remained in the town of the
+Seven Sisters, running on errants, driving carts, doing such odd jobs as
+came his way, and all because he wanted to gaze upon the daughter of the
+Keeper of the Key. In the evening he would go by the mansion singing
+out, "How up! how up! how up!" as if he were driving flocks past. And in
+the window he would see the wave of a white hand. He would go home,
+then, to his little back room in the lodging-house, and there stay up
+very late at night, writing, in the candle-light, verses to the damsel.
+One Song of the Shepherd Boy to his Lady has survived:
+
+  _Farewell to the sweet reed I tuned on the hill,
+  My grief for the rough slopes of Sunnach so still,
+  The wind in the fir tree and bleat of the ewe
+  Are lost in the wild cry my heart makes for you.
+  The brown floors I danced on, the sheds where I lay,
+  Are gone from my mind like a wing in the bay:
+  Dear lady, I'd herd the wild swans in the skies
+  If they knew of lake water as blue as your eyes!_
+
+Well, it was not very long, as you can imagine, until the Keeper of the
+Key observed the shepherd boy loitering about the mansion. When he heard
+him calling past the house to imaginary flocks a scowl came upon his
+face. "Ah-ha!" he said, "another conspiracy! Last time it was a
+hunchback tailor. This time they come from the country. They signal by
+the cries of shepherds. Well, I shall do the driving for them!" There
+and then he had the shepherd boy apprehended, bound, and put in a cell.
+In due course he was accused and sentenced, like the famous goldsmiths,
+to banishment from Eirinn. When the daughter of the Keeper heard what
+had come to pass she was filled with grief. She appeared before her
+father for the first time with tears in her eyes and woe in her face. He
+was greatly moved, and seated the girl by his side. She knelt by his
+knee and confessed to the whole affair with the shepherd boy. The Keeper
+of the Key was a little relieved to learn that his suspicions of a fresh
+conspiracy were unfounded, but filled with indignation that such a
+person as a shepherd should not alone aspire to but win the heart of his
+daughter. "What have we come to," he said, "when a wild thing from the
+hills of Sunnach comes down and dares to lay his hand on the all but
+perfect water nymphs on the golden knob of my door! Justice shall be
+done. The order of banishment is set aside. Let this wild hare of the
+hills, this mountain rover, be taken and seven times publicly dipped in
+the well. I guarantee that will cool him! He shall then have until break
+of day to clear out of my town. Let him away back to the swine on the
+hills." The girl pleaded that the boy might be spared the frightful
+indignity of a public dipping in the well of the Seven Sisters, but her
+father was implacable. "Have I not spoken?" he said sternly, and the
+damsel was led away by her governess in tears.
+
+The people flocked to the well as they might to a Feis to see the
+dipping of the shepherd boy. Cries of merriment arose among them when
+the boy, bound in strips of hide, was lowered by the servants of the
+Keeper of the Key into the mouth of the great well. It was a cold, dark,
+creepy place down in the shaft of the well, the walls reeking, covered
+with slimy green lichen, the waters roaring. The shepherd boy closed his
+eyes and gave himself up for lost. But the Seven Sisters of the well
+kept moving down as fast as the servants told out the rope, until at
+last they could not lower him any farther. The servants danced the rope
+up and down seven times, and the people screamed and clapped their
+hands, crying out, "All those who write love verses come to a bad end!"
+But the poet was never yet born who had not a friend greater than all
+his enemies. At that moment the spirits of the Seven Sisters rose out of
+the water and spoke to the shepherd boy.
+
+"O shepherd boy," they said, "the Keeper of the Key is also our enemy.
+We were created for something better than this narrow shaft. We cry out
+in bitter pain the long hours of the night."
+
+"Why do you cry out in bitter pain?" asked the shepherd boy.
+
+"Because," said the spirits of the Seven Sisters, "we want to leap out
+of this cold place to meet our lover, the moon. Every night he comes
+calling to us and we dare not respond. We are locked away under the
+heavy lid. We can never gather our full strength to burst our way to
+liberty. We dream of the pleasant valley. We want to get out into it,
+to make merry about the trees, to sport in the warm places, to lip the
+edge of the green meadows, to water pleasant gardens. We want to see the
+flowers, to flash in the sun, to dance under the spread of great
+branches, to make snug, secret places for the pike and the otter, to
+pile up the coloured pebbles, and hear the water-hen splashing in the
+rushes. And above all, we want to meet our lover, the moon, to roll
+about in his beams, to reach for his kiss in the harvest nights. O
+shepherd boy, take us from our prison well!"
+
+"O Seven Sisters," asked the shepherd boy, "how can I do this for you?"
+
+"Secure the secret key," they said. "Open the lid while we are at our
+full strength in the night."
+
+"Alas," said the shepherd boy, "that I cannot do. The Keeper has made of
+it a magic thing."
+
+"We know his great secret," said the spirits of the Seven Sisters.
+"Swear to set us free and we shall tell you the secret of the key."
+
+"And what reward shall I have?" asked the shepherd boy.
+
+"You shall have the hand of the daughter of the Keeper of the Key, the
+Lady of your Songs," they said. "Take her back to the hills where you
+were so happy. We shall spare you when we are abroad."
+
+"Then," said the shepherd boy, "I swear to release you."
+
+"The Keeper of the Key," said the spirits of the Seven Sisters, "has a
+devil lurking behind the fine manners of his body. In secret he laughs
+at the people. He has the blood of the five goldsmiths on his hands. It
+was by his connivance the curragh sprang a leak, and that they were
+drowned. They were true artists, of the spirit of the Gael. But they
+alone knew his secret, and he made away with them before they could
+speak. His great controversy on the water nymphs was like a spell cast
+over the minds of the people to cover his crime."
+
+"What a demon!" cried the shepherd boy.
+
+"The key of the well," said the spirits of the Seven Sisters, "is
+concealed in the great golden knob of the oaken door, and upon that has
+concentrated the greatest public scrutiny which has ever beaten upon a
+door-knob in the story of the whole world. Such has been the craft of
+the Keeper of the Key! When he comes out in the morning and evening, and
+while drawing the door after him, he puts a finger on the third toe of
+the fourth water nymph. This he presses three times, quick as a
+pulse-beat, and, lo, a hidden spring is released and shoots the key into
+the loose sleeve of his coat. On returning he puts his hand on the
+golden knob, presses the second toe of the third water nymph, and the
+key slides back into its hidden cavity. This secret was alone known to
+the goldsmiths. They went to the bottom of the sea with it. In this way
+has the Keeper of the Key held his power and defied his enemies. When
+the scholars were making epigrams and the bards warming into great
+cadences on the art of the ankle of the water nymph, this Keeper of the
+Key would retire to his watch-tower and roll about in secret merriment."
+
+"What a fiend!" cried the shepherd boy.
+
+"He had caused to be painted in his room a scroll surrounded by
+illuminated keys and nymphs and tumbling cascades, and bearing the
+words, 'Let us praise the art which conceals art; but let us love the
+art which conceals power.'"
+
+"What a monster!" cried the shepherd boy.
+
+"In this way," said the spirits of the Seven Sisters, "has he lived. In
+this way has he been able to keep us from our freedom, our lover. O
+shepherd boy--"
+
+Before another word could be spoken the shepherd boy was drawn up on the
+rope. The water rose with him and lapped lightly over his person so that
+he might seem as if he had been plunged deeply into the well.
+
+When he was drawn up to the side or the well the shepherd boy lay on the
+ground, his eyes closed, feigning great distress. The people again
+clapped their hands, and some cried out, "Now little water rat, make us
+a new verse!" But others murmured in pity, and an old peasant woman, in
+a Breedeen cloak, hobbled to his side and smoothed back his locks. At
+the touch of her soft hands the shepherd boy opened his eyes, and he saw
+it was the daughter of the Keeper of the Key disguised. With the
+connivance of her governess, she had escaped from the mansion as an old
+peasant woman in a cloak. The shepherd boy secretly kissed her little
+palms and whispered, "I must come to you at midnight. As you value your
+life have the guards taken from the outer door, only for two minutes.
+Make some pretext. I will give the shepherd's call and then you must
+act. Do not fail me."
+
+Before more could be said the servants roughly bundled the old peasant
+woman aside, carried the shepherd boy to his lodgings, and there threw
+him on his bed. "Remember," they said, "that you remain within the walls
+of the town of the Seven Sisters after break of day at your peril."
+
+At midnight the shepherd boy arose and approached the mansion of the
+Keeper of the Key. He could see the two grim guards, one each side of
+the oaken door. Standing some way off he gave the shepherd's call,
+making his voice sound like the hoot of an owl. In a little time he saw
+the guards move away from the door; they went to a side entrance in the
+courtyard, and presently he could hear them laughing, as if some
+entertainment was being provided for them; then measures were passed
+through the iron bars of the gate to them, and these they raised to
+their lips. At this the shepherd boy ran swiftly up the steps,
+approached the door, and pressed three times, quick as a pulse-beat, the
+third toe of the fourth water nymph, and immediately from a secret
+cavity in the knob a curious little golden key was shot forth. This the
+shepherd boy seized, flew down the steps, and scaled over the town wall.
+He ran to the great well and stooped over the lid. He could hear the
+Seven Sisters twisting and worming and striving beneath it, little cries
+of pain breaking from them. Overhead the moon was shining down on the
+well.
+
+"O Seven Sisters," said the Shepherd boy, "I have come to give you to
+your lover."
+
+He could hear a great cry of joy down in the well. He put the key in the
+lock, turned it, and immediately there was the gliding and slipping of
+one steel bar after another into an oil bath. The great lid slowly
+revolved, moving away from over the well. The Seven Sisters did the
+rest. They sprang with a peal of the most delirious laughter--laughter
+that was of the underground, the cavern, the deep secret places of the
+earth, laughter of elfs and hidden rivers--to the light of the moon. The
+shepherd boy could see seven distinct spiral issues of sparkling water
+and they took the shape of nymphs, more exquisite than anything he had
+ever seen even in his dreams. Something seemed to happen in the very
+heavens above; the moon reached down from the sky, swiftly and tenderly,
+and was so dazzling that the shepherd boy had to turn his face away. He
+knew that in the blue spaces of the firmament overhead the moon was
+embracing the Seven Sisters. Then he ran, ran like the wind, for already
+the water was shrieking down the streets of the town. As he went he
+could see lights begin to jump in dark windows and sleepy people in
+their night attire coming to peer out into the strange radiance outside.
+
+As he reached the drawbridge he saw that the men had already lowered it,
+and there was a great rustling noise and squealing; and what he took to
+be a drift of thick dust driven by the wind was gushing over it, making
+from the town. A few more yards and he saw that it was not thick brown
+dust, but great squads of rats flying the place. The trumpets were all
+blowing loud blasts when he reached the mansion of the Keeper of the
+Key, the guards with their spears pressing out under the arch of the
+courtyard, and servants coming out the doors. The great oak door flew
+open and he saw the Keeper of the Key, a candle in his quaking hand. A
+great crying could now be heard coming up from the population of the
+town. The water was bursting open the doors of the houses as if they
+were cardboard.
+
+"O Keeper of the Key," cried the shepherd boy, "the Seven Sisters are
+abroad. I am obeying your command and returning to the swine on the
+hills. The despised Sunnach will be in the dreams of many to-night!"
+
+The candle fell from the hand of the Keeper of the Key, and he could be
+seen in the moonlight groping for the door-knob, his hand on the figures
+of the group of water nymphs. In a moment he gave a low moan and, his
+head hanging over his breast, he staggered down the marble steps.
+"Alas," cried the guards, "now is the great man broken!" He made for the
+drawbridge crying out, "The lid, the lid. Slide it back over the well!"
+The guards and servants pressed after him, but not one of them ever got
+into the town again. Across the bridge was now pouring a wild rush of
+human panic. Carriages, carts, cars, horsemen, mules, donkeys, were
+flying from the Seven Sisters laden with men and women and whole
+families. Crowds pressed forward on foot. Animals, dogs, cats, pigs,
+sheep, cows, came pellmell with them. Drivers stood in their seats
+flaying their horses as if driven by madness. The animals rolled their
+eyes, snorted steam from their nostrils, strained forward with desperate
+zeal. Once or twice the struggling mass jammed, and men fought each
+other like beasts. The cries of people being trampled to death broke out
+in harrowing protest. For a moment the shepherd boy saw the form of a
+priest rise up, bearing aloft the stark outline of a cross, and then he
+disappeared.
+
+Over that night of terror was the unnatural brilliance of the swoollen
+moon. All this the shepherd boy saw in a few eternal moments. Then he
+cried out, "How up! how up! how up!" and immediately the damsel tripped
+down the broad staircase of the mansion, dressed in white robes, her
+hair loose about her shoulders. Never had she looked so frail and
+beautiful, the lily of the valley! The shepherd boy told her what had
+come to pass. She cried out for her father. "I am the daughter of the
+Keeper of the Key," she said. "I shall stand by his side at the well in
+this great hour."
+
+"I am now the master of the town of the Seven Sisters," said the
+shepherd boy. "I am the Keeper of the Key." And he held up the secret
+key.
+
+The damsel, seeing this, and catching sight of what was taking place at
+the drawbridge, fell back in a swoon on the carpet of the hall. The
+shepherd boy raised her in his arms and fled for the hills. Along the
+road was the wild stampede of the people, all straining for the hills,
+pouring in a mad rush from the valley and the town. Behind them were the
+still madder, swifter, more terrible waters, coming in sudden thuds, in
+furious drives, eddying and sculping and rearing in an orgy or
+remorseless and heartrending destruction. Down before that roaring
+avalanche went walls and trees and buildings. The shepherd boy saw men
+give up the struggle for escape, cowering by the roadside, and women,
+turning from the race to the hills, rushed back to meet the oncoming
+waters with arms outspread and insanity in their wild eyes.
+
+Not a human creature escaped that night of wroth except the shepherd boy
+and the damsel he carried in his arms. Every time the waters reached his
+heels they reared up like great white horses and fell back, thus sparing
+him. Three times did he look back at happenings in the town of the Seven
+Sisters. The first time he looked back the water was up to the last
+windows of houses that were three storeys high. All the belongings of
+the householders were floating about, and people were sinking through
+the water, their lives going out as swiftly as twinkling bubbles. In an
+attic window he saw a young girl loosen her hair, she was singing a
+song, preparing to meet death as if she were making ready for a lover. A
+man at the top of a ladder was gulping whiskey from a bottle, and when
+the water sprang at his throat he went down with a mad defiant cry. A
+child ran out an open window, golden locks dancing about its pretty
+head, as if it were running into a garden. There was another little
+bubble in the moonlight.... The second time the shepherd boy looked back
+the swallows were flying from their nests under the eaves of the houses,
+for the water was now lapping them. An old woman was hobbling across a
+roof on crutches. Men were drawing their bodies out of the chimney-pots.
+A raft on which the Keeper's guard had put out slowly, like a live thing
+lazily yawning and turning over on its side, sent them all into the
+common doom. A man with a bag of gold clutched in his hand, stood
+dizzily on the high gable of a bank, then, with a scream, tottered and
+fell.... The third time the shepherd boy looked back nothing was to be
+seen above the face of the water except the pinnacle of the watch tower
+of the mansion, and standing upon it was the Keeper of the Key, his arms
+outspread, his face upturned to the moon, and the seven water nymphs
+leaping about him in a silver dance.
+
+After that the shepherd boy drew up on the hills with the damsel. He was
+quite exhausted, and he noticed that the activity of the waters
+gradually calmed down as daybreak approached, like things spent after a
+night of wild passion. When at last the day quivered into life on the
+eastern sky he called the damsel to his side, and standing there
+together they looked out over the spread of water. The town of the
+Seven Sisters was no more.
+
+"Look," cried the shepherd boy, "at Loch Riabhach!" And drawing back he
+cast out into the far water the secret key. There it still lies under a
+rock, somewhere in the lake over which our boat is now drifting. And the
+shepherd boy and the damsel there and then founded a new town beside the
+lake, and all who are of the old families of Baile Loch Riabhach, like
+myself, are their descendants. That, concluded Eamonn, is the story of
+the Gray Lake.
+
+
+
+
+THE BUILDING
+
+I
+
+
+Martin Cosgrave walked up steadily to his holding after Ellen Miscal had
+read to him the American letter. He had spoken no word to the woman. It
+was not every day that he had to battle with a whirl of thoughts. A
+quiet man of the fields, he only felt conscious of a strong impulse to
+get back to his holding up on the hill. He had no clear idea of what he
+would do or what he would think when he got back to his holding. But the
+fields seemed to cry out to him, to call him back to their
+companionship, while all the wonders of the resurrection were breaking
+in fresh upon his life.
+
+Martin Cosgrave walked his fields and put his flock of sheep scurrying
+out of a gap with a whistle. His holding and the things of his holding
+were never so precious to his sight. He walked his fields with his hands
+in his pockets and an easy, solid step upon the sod. He felt a bracing
+sense of security.
+
+Then he sat up on the mearing.
+
+The day was waning. It seemed to close in about his holding with a new
+protection. The mood grew upon him as the shadows deepened. A great
+peace came over him. The breeze stirring the grass spread out at his
+feet seemed to whisper of the strange unexpected thing that had broken
+in upon his life. He felt the splendid companionship of the fields for
+the master.
+
+Suddenly Martin Cosgrave looked down at his cabin. Something snapped as
+his eyes remained riveted upon it. He leapt from the mearing and walked
+out into the field, his hands this time gripping the lapels of his coat,
+a cloud settling upon his brow. In the centre of the field he stood, his
+eyes still upon the cabin. What a mean, pokey, ugly little dirty hovel
+it was! The thatch was getting scraggy over the gables and sagging at
+the back. In the front it was sodden. A rainy brown streak reached down
+to the little window looking like the claw of a great bird upon the
+walls. He had been letting everything go to the bad. That might not
+signify in the past. But now--
+
+"Rose Dempsey would never stand the like," he said to himself. "She will
+be used to grand big houses."
+
+He turned his back upon the cabin near the boreen and looked up to the
+belt of beech trees swaying in the wind on the crest of the hill. How
+did he live there most of his life and never see that it was a place
+fashioned by the hand of Nature for a house? Was it not the height of
+nonsense to have trees there making music all the long hours of the
+night without a house beside them and people sleeping within it? In a
+few minutes the thought had taken hold of his mind. Limestone--beautiful
+limestone--ready at hand in the quarry not a quarter of a mile down the
+road. Sand from the pit at the back of his own cabin. Lime from the kiln
+beyond the road. And his own two hands! He ran his fingers along the
+muscles of his arms. Then he walked up the hill.
+
+Martin Cosgrave, as he walked up the hill, felt himself wondering for
+the first time in his life if he had really been foolish to have run
+away from his father's cabin when he had been young. Up to this he had
+always accepted the verdict of the people about him that he had been a
+foolish boy "to go wandering in strange places." He had walked along the
+roads to many far towns. Then he had struck his friend, the building
+contractor. He had been a useful worker about a building house. At first
+he had carried hods of mortar and cement up ladders to the masons. The
+business of the masons he had mastered quickly. But he had always had a
+longing to hold a chisel in one hand and a mallet in the other at work
+upon stone. He had drifted into a quarry, thence to a stone-cutting
+yard. After a little while he could not conceal his impatience with the
+mere dressing of coping stones or the chiselling out of tombstones to a
+pattern. Then he saw the man killed in the quarry. He was standing
+quite near to him. The chain of the windlass went and the poor man had
+no escape. Martin Cosgrave had heard the crunch of the skull on the
+boulder, and some of the blood was spattered upon his boots. He was a
+man of tense nerves. The sight of blood sickened him. He put on his
+coat, left the quarry, and went walking along the road.
+
+It was while he walked along the road that the longing for his home came
+upon him. He tramped back to his home above Kilbeg. His father had been
+long dead, but by his return he had glorified the closing days of his
+mother's life. He took up the little farm and cut himself off from his
+wandering life when he had fetched the tools from his lodgings in the
+town beside the quarries.
+
+By the time Martin Cosgrave had reached the top of the hill he had
+concluded that he had not, after all, been a foolish boy to work in far
+places. "The hand of God was in it," he said reverently with his eyes on
+the beech trees that made music on the crest of the hill.
+
+He made a rapid survey of the place with his keen eyes. Then he mapped
+out the foundation of the building by driving the heel of his boot into
+the green sod. He stepped back among the beech trees and looked out at
+the outlined site of the building. He saw it all growing up in his
+mind's eye, at first a rough block, a mere shell, a little uncertain and
+unsatisfactory. Then the uncertainties were lopped off, the building
+took shape, touch after touch was added. Long shadows spread out from
+the trees and wrapped the fields. Stars came out in the sky. But Martin
+Cosgrave never noticed these things. The building was growing all the
+time. There was a firm grasp of the general scheme, a realisation of
+what the building would evolve that no other building ever evolved, what
+it would proclaim for all time. The passing of the day and the stealth
+of the night could not claim attention from a man who was living over a
+dream that was fashioning itself in his mind, abandoning himself to the
+joy or his creation, dwelling longingly upon the details of the
+building, going over and, as it were, feeling it in every fibre, jealous
+of the effect of every stone, tracing the trend and subtlety of every
+curve, seeing how one touch fitted in and enhanced the other and how all
+carried on the meaning of the whole.
+
+When he came down from the hill there was a spring in Martin Cosgrave's
+step. He swung his arms. The blood was coursing fast through his veins.
+His eyes were glowing. He would need to make a map of the building. It
+was all burned clearly into his brain.
+
+From under the bed of his cabin he pulled out the wooden box. It had not
+been opened since he had fetched it from the far town. He held his
+breath as he threw open the lid. There they lay, the half-forgotten
+symbols of his old life. Worn mallets, chisels, the head of a broken hod
+with the plaster still caked into it, a short broad shovel for mixing
+mortar, a trowel, a spirit level, a plumb, all wrapped loosely in a worn
+leather apron. He took the mallets in his hand and turned them about
+with the quick little jerks that came so naturally to him. Strength for
+the work had come into his arms. All the old ambitions which he thought
+had been stifled with his early manhood sprang to life again.
+
+As he lay in his bed that night Martin Cosgrave felt himself turning
+over and over again the words in the letter which Rose Dempsey had sent
+to her aunt, Ellen Miscal, from America. "Tell Martin Cosgrave," the
+letter read, "that I will be back home in Kilbeg by the end of the
+spring. If he has no wish for any other girl I am willing to settle
+down." Beyond the announcement that her sister Sheela would be with her
+for a holiday, the letter "brought no other account." But what an
+account it had brought to Martin Cosgrave! The fields understood--the
+building would proclaim.
+
+Early in the morning Martin Cosgrave went down to Ellen Miscal to tell
+her what to put in the letter that was going back to Rose Dempsey in
+America. Martin Cosgrave walked heavily into the house and stood with
+his back against the dresser. He turned the soft black hat about in his
+hands nervously and talked like one who was speaking sacred words.
+
+"Tell her," he said, "that Martin Cosgrave had no thought for any other
+person beyond herself. Tell her to be coming back to Kilbeg. Tell her
+not to come until the late harvest."
+
+Ellen Miscal, who sat over the sheet of writing paper on the table,
+looked up quickly as he spoke the words. As she did so she was conscious
+of the new animation that vivified the idealistic face of Martin
+Cosgrave. But he did not give her time to question him.
+
+"I have my own reasons for asking her to wait until the harvest," he
+said, with some irritation.
+
+He stayed at the dresser until Ellen Miscal had written the letter. He
+carried it down to the village and posted it with his own hand, and he
+went and came as gravely as if he had been taking part in some solemn
+ritual.
+
+
+II
+
+That day the building was begun. Martin Cosgrave tackled the donkey and
+drew a few loads of limestone from the nearby quarry. Some of the
+neighbours who came his way found him a changed man, a silent man with
+his eager face set, a man in whose eyes a new light shone, a quiet man
+of the fields into whose mind a set purpose had come. He struggled up
+the road with his donkey-cart, his hand gripping the shaft to hasten the
+steps of the slow brute, his limbs bent to the hill, his head down at
+the work. By the end of the week a pile of grey-blue stones was heaped
+up on the crest of the hill. The walls of the fields had been broken
+down to make a carway. Late into the night when the donkey had been fed
+and tethered the neighbours would see Martin Cosgrave moving about the
+pile of grey-blue stones, sorting and picking, arranging in little
+groups to have ready to his hands. "A house he is going to put up on the
+hill," they would say, lost in wonder.
+
+The spring came, and with it all the strenuous work on the land. But
+Martin Cosgrave went on with the building. The neighbours shook their
+heads at the sight of neglect that was gathering about his holding; they
+said it was flying in the face of Providence when Martin Cosgrave weaned
+all the lambs from the ewes one day, long before their time, and sold
+them at the fair to the first bidder that came his way. Martin Cosgrave
+did so because he wanted money and was in a hurry to get back to his
+building.
+
+"What call has a man to be destroying himself like that?" the neighbours
+asked each other.
+
+Martin Cosgrave knew what the neighbours were saying about him. But what
+did he care? What thought had any of them for the heart of a builder?
+What did any of them know beyond putting a spade in the clay and waiting
+for the seasons to send up growing things from the seed they scattered
+by their hands? What did they know about the feel of the rough stone in
+the hand and the shaping of it to fit into the building, the building
+that day after day you saw rising up from the ground by the skill of
+your hand and the art of your mind? What could they in Kilbeg know of
+the ship that would plough the ocean in the harvest bearing Rose Dempsey
+home to him? For all their ploughing and their sowing, what sort of a
+place had any of them led a woman into? They might talk away. The joy of
+the builder was his. The beech trees that made music all day beside the
+building he was putting up to the sight of all the world had more
+understanding of him than all the people of the parish.
+
+Martin Cosgrave had no help. He kept to his work from such an early hour
+in the morning until such a late hour of the night that the people
+marvelled at his endurance. But as the work went on the people would
+talk about Martin Cosgrave's building in the fields and tell strangers
+of it at the markets. They said that the like of it had never been seen
+in the countryside. It was to be "full of little turrets and the finest
+of fancy porches and a regular sight of bulging windows." One day that
+Martin Cosgrave heard a neighbour speaking about the "bulging windows"
+he laughed a half-bitter, half-mocking laugh.
+
+"Tell them," he said, "that they are cut-stone tracery windows to fit in
+with the carved doors." These cut-stone windows and carved doors cost
+Martin Cosgrave such a length of time that they provoked the patience of
+the people. Out of big slabs of stone he had worked them, and sometimes
+he would ask the neighbours to give him a hand in the shifting of these
+slabs. But he was quick to resent any interference. One day a
+stone-cutter from the quarry went up on the scaffold, and when Martin
+Cosgrave saw him he went white to the lips and cursed so bitterly that
+those standing about walked away.
+
+When the shell of the building had been finished Martin Cosgrave hired a
+carpenter to do all the woodwork. The woodwork cost money. Martin
+Cosgrave did not hesitate. He sold some of his sheep, sold them
+hurriedly, and as all men who sell their sheep hurriedly, he sold them
+badly. When the carpentry had been finished, the roofing cost more
+money. One day the neighbours discovered that all the sheep had been
+sold. "He's beggared now," they said.
+
+The farmer who turned the sod a few fields away laboured in the damp
+atmosphere of growing things, his mind filled with thoughts of bursting
+seeds and teeming barns. He shook his head at sight of Martin Cosgrave
+above on the hill bent all day over hard stones; whenever he looked up
+he only caught the glint of a trowel, or heard the harsh grind of a
+chisel. But Martin Cosgrave took no stock of the men reddening the soil
+beneath him. Whenever his eyes travelled down the hillside he only saw
+the flock of crows that hung over the head of the digger. The study of
+the veins of limestone that he turned in his hands, the slow moulding of
+the crude shapes to their place in the building, the rhythm and swing of
+the mallet in his arm, the zest with which he felt the impact of the
+chisel on the stone, the ring of forging steel, the consciousness of
+mastery over the work that lay to his hands--these were the things that
+seemed to him to give life a purpose and man a destiny. He would whistle
+a tune as he mixed the mortar with the broad shovel, for it gave him a
+feeling of the knitting of the building with the ages. He pitied the
+farmer who looked helplessly upon his corn as it was beaten to the
+ground by the first storm that blew from the sea; he was upon a work
+that would withstand the storms of centuries. The scent of lime and
+mortar greeted his nostrils. When he moved about the splinters crunched
+under his feet. Everything around him was hard and stubborn, but he was
+the master of it all. In his dreams in the night he would reach out his
+hands for the feel of the hard stone, a burning desire in his breast to
+put it into shape, to give it nobility in the scheme of a building.
+
+It was while Martin Cosgrave walked through the building that Ellen
+Miscal came to him with the second letter from America. The carpenter
+was hammering at something below. The letter said that Rose Dempsey and
+her sister, Sheela, would be home in the late harvest. "With all I saw
+since I left Kilbeg," Rose Dempsey wrote, "I never saw one that I
+thought as much of as Martin Cosgrave."
+
+When Ellen Miscal left him, Martin Cosgrave stood very quietly looking
+through the cut-stone tracery window. The beech trees were swaying
+slowly outside. Their music was in his ears.
+
+Then he remembered that he was standing in the room where he would take
+Rose Dempsey in his arms. It was here he would tell her of all the
+bitter things he had locked up in his heart when she had gone away from
+him. It was here he would tell her of the day of resurrection, when all
+the bitter thoughts had burst into flower at the few words that told of
+her return. It was that day of great tumult within him that thought of
+the building had come into his mind.
+
+When Martin Cosgrave walked out of the room the carpenter and a
+neighbour boy were arguing about something at the foot of the stairs.
+
+"It's too steep, I'm telling you," the boy was saying.
+
+"What do you know about it?"
+
+"I know this much about it, that if a little child came running down
+that stairs he'd be apt to fall and break his neck."
+
+Then the two men went out, still arguing.
+
+Martin Cosgrave sat down on one of the steps of the stairs. A child
+running down the steps! His child! A child bearing his name! He would be
+prattling about the building. He would run across that landing, swaying
+and tottering. His little voice would fill the building. Arms would be
+reaching out to him. They would be the soft white arms of Rose Dempsey,
+or maybe, they would be the arms that raised up the building--his own
+strong arms. Or it might be that he would be carrying down the child
+and handing him over the rails there into the outspread arms of Rose
+Dempsey. She would be reaching out for the child with the newly-kindled
+light of motherhood in her eyes, the passion of a young mother in her
+welcoming voice. A child with his very name--a child that would grow up
+to be a man and hand down the name to another, and so on during the
+generations. And with the name would go down the building, the building
+that would endure, that would live, that was immortal. Did it all come
+to him as a sudden revelation, springing from the idle talk of a
+neighbour boy brought up to work from one season to another? Or was it
+the same thing that was behind the forces that had fired him while he
+had worked at the building? Had it not all come into his life the
+evening he stood among his fields with his eyes on the crest of the
+hill?
+
+Ah, there had been a great building surely, a building standing up on
+the hill, a great, a splendid building raised up to the sight of all the
+world, and with it a greater building, a building raised up from the
+sight of all men, the building of a name, the moulding of hearts that
+would beat while Time was, a building of immortal souls, a building into
+which God would breathe His breath, a building which would be heard of
+in Heaven, among the angels, through all the eternities, a building
+living on when all the light was gone out of the sun, when oceans were
+as if they had never been, a name, a building, living when the story of
+all the worlds and all the generations would be held written upon a
+scroll in the lap of God.... The face of the dreamer as he abandoned
+himself to his thoughts was pallid with a half-fanatical emotion.
+
+The neighbours were more awed than shocked at the change they saw
+increasing in Martin Cosgrave. He had grown paler and thinner, but his
+eyes were more tense, had in them, some of the neighbours said, the
+colour of the limestone. He was more and more removed from the old life.
+He walked his fields without seeing the things that made up the old
+companionship. His whole attitude was one of detachment from everything
+that did not savour of the crunch of stone, the ring of steel on the
+walls of a building. He only talked rationally when the neighbours spoke
+to him of the building. They had heard that he had gone to the
+money-lender, and mortgaged every perch of his land. "It was easy to
+know how work of the like would end," they said.
+
+One day a stranger was driving by on his car, and when he saw the
+building he got down, walked up the hill, and made a long study of it.
+On his way down he met Martin Cosgrave.
+
+"Who built the house on the hill?" he asked.
+
+"A simple man in the neighbourhood," Martin Cosgrave made answer, after
+a little pause.
+
+"A simple man!" the stranger exclaimed, looking at Martin Cosgrave with
+some disapproval. "Well, he has attempted something anyway. He may not
+have, succeeded, but the artist is in him somewhere. He has created a
+sort of--well, lyric--in stone on that hill. Extraordinary!"
+
+The stranger hesitated before he hit on the word lyric. He got up on his
+car and drove away muttering something under his breath.
+
+Martin Cosgrave could have run up the hill and shouted. He could have
+called all the neighbours together and told them of the strange man who
+had praised the building.
+
+But he did none of these things. He had work waiting to his hand. A
+hunger was upon him to feel his pulse beating to the throb of steel on
+stone. From the road he made a sweep of a drive up to the building. The
+neighbours looked open-mouthed at the work for the days it went on.
+"Well, that finishes Martin Cosgrave anyway," they said.
+
+Martin Cosgrave rushed the making of the drive; he took all the help he
+could get. The boys would come up after their day's work and give him a
+hand. While they worked he was busy with his chisel upon the boulders of
+limestone which he had set up on either side of the entrance gate. Once
+more he felt the glamour of life--the impact of forging steel on stone
+was thrilling through his arms, the stone was being moulded to the
+direction of his exulting mind.
+
+When he had finished with the boulders at the entrance gate the people
+marvelled. The gate had a glory of its own, and yet it was connected
+with the scheme of the building on the hill palpably enough for even
+their minds to grasp it. When the people looked upon it they forgot to
+make complaint of the good land that was given to ruin. One of them had
+expressed the general vague sentiment when he said, "Well, the kite has
+got its tail."
+
+In the late harvest Martin Cosgrave carried up all the little sticks of
+furniture from his cabin and put it in the building. Then he sent for
+Ellen Miscal. When the woman came she looked about the place in
+amazement.
+
+"Well, of all the sights in the world!" she exclaimed.
+
+Martin Cosgrave was irritated at the woman's attitude.
+
+"We'll have to make the best of it," he said, looking at the furniture.
+"I will be marrying Rose Dempsey in the town some days after she lands."
+
+"Rose would never like the suddenness of that," her aunt protested. "She
+can be staying with me and marrying from my house.
+
+"I saw the priest about it," Martin Cosgrave said impatiently. "I will
+have my way, Ellen Miscal. Rose Dempsey will come up to Kilbeg my wife.
+We will come in the gate together, we will walk in to the building
+together. I will have my way."
+
+Martin Cosgrave spoke of having his way in the impassioned voice of the
+fanatic, of his home-coming with his bride in the half-dreamy voice of
+the visionary.
+
+"Have your way, Martin, have your way," the woman said. "And," she
+added, rising, "I will be bringing up a few things to put into your
+house."
+
+
+III
+
+Martin Cosgrave spent three days in the town waiting the arrival of Rose
+Dempsey. The boat was late. He haunted the railway station, with hungry
+eyes scanned the passengers as each train steamed in. His blood was on
+fire in his veins for those three days. What peace could a man have who
+was waiting to get back to his building and to have Rose Dempsey going
+back with him, his wife?
+
+Sometimes he would sit down on the railway bench on the platform,
+staring down at the ground, smiling to himself. What a surprise he had
+in store for Rose! What would he say to her first? Would he say anything
+of the building? No, he would say nothing at all of the building until
+they drove across the bridge and right up to the gate! "Rose," he would
+then say, "do you remember the hill--the place under the beech trees?"
+She was sure to remember that place. It was there they had spent so much
+time, there he had first found her lips, there they had quarrelled! And
+Rose would look up to that old place and see the building! What would
+she think? Would she feel about it as he felt himself? She would, she
+would! What sort of look would come into her face? And what would he be
+able to tell her about it at all?... He would say nothing at all about
+it; that would be the best way! They would say nothing to each other,
+but walk in the gate and up the drive across the hill, the hill they
+often ran across in the old days! They would be quite silent, and walk
+into the house silently. The building, too, would be silent, and he
+would take her from one room to another in silence, and when she had
+seen everything he would look into her eyes and say, "Well?" It would be
+all so like a wonderful story, a day of magic!... Martin Cosgrave sprang
+from the bench and went to the edge of the platform, staring down the
+long level road, with its two rails tapering almost together in the
+distance. Not a sign of a train. Would it never come in? Had anything
+happened the boat? He walked up and down with energy, holding the lapel
+of his coat, saying to himself, "I must not be thinking of things like
+this. It is foolishness. Whatever is to happen will happen, and that's
+all about it. I am quite at ease, quite cool!"
+
+At last it came, steaming and blowing. Windows were lowered, carriage
+doors flew open, people ran up and down. Martin Cosgrave stood a little
+away, tense, drawn, his eyes sweeping down the people. Suddenly
+something shot through him; an old sensation, an old thrill, made his
+whole being tingle, his mind exult, and then there was the most
+exquisite relaxation. How long it was since he felt like this before!
+His eyes were burning upon a familiar figure that had come from a
+carriage, the figure of a girl in a navy blue coat and skirt, her back
+turned, struggling with parcels, helped by the hands of invisible people
+from within the carriage. Martin Cosgrave strode down the platform,
+eagerness, joy, sense of proprietorship, already in his stride.
+
+"Rose!" he exclaimed while the girl's back was still turned to him.
+
+His voice shook in spite of him. The woman turned about sharply.
+
+Martin Cosgrave gave a little start back. It was not Rose Dempsey, but
+her sister, Sheela. How like Rose she had grown!
+
+"Martin!" she exclaimed, putting out her hand. He gave it a hurried
+shake and then searched the railway carriage with burning eyes. The
+people he saw there were all strangers, tired-looking travellers. When
+he turned from the railway carriage Sheela Dempsey was rushing with her
+parcels into a waiting-room. He strode after her. He looked at the girl.
+How unlike Rose she was after all! Nobody--nobody--could ever be like
+Rose Dempsey!
+
+"Where is Rose?" he asked.
+
+Sheela Dempsey looked up into the face of Martin Cosgrave and saw there
+what she had half-dreaded to see.
+
+"Martin," she said, "Rose is not coming home."
+
+Martin Cosgrave gripped the door of the waiting-room. The train whistled
+outside and glided from the station. He heard a woman's cheerful voice
+cry out a conventional "good-bye, good-bye," and through the window he
+saw the flutter of a dainty handkerchief. A truck was wheeled past the
+waiting-room. There was the crack of a whip and some cars rattled away
+over the road. Then there was silence.
+
+Sheela Dempsey walked over to him and laid a hand upon his shoulder.
+When she spoke her voice was full of an understanding womanly sympathy.
+
+"Don't be troubling over it, Martin," she said, "Rose is not worth it."
+She spoke her sister's name with some bitterness.
+
+Vaguely Martin Cosgrave looked into the girl's eyes. He read there in a
+dim way what the girl could not say of her sister.
+
+It was all so strange! The waiting-room was so bare, so cold, so grey,
+so like a sepulchre. What could Sheela Dempsey with all her womanly
+understanding, with all her quick intuition, know of the things that
+happened beside her? How could she have ears for the crashing down of
+the pillars of the building that Martin Cosgrave had raised up in his
+soul? How could she have eyes for the wreck of the structure that was to
+go on through all the generations? What thought had she of the wiping
+out of a name that would have lived in the nation and continued for all
+time in the eternities, a tangible thing in Heaven among the Immortals
+when the stars had all been burned out in the sky?
+
+Martin Cosgrave drove home from the railway station with Sheela Dempsey.
+He sat without a word, not really conscious of his surroundings as they
+covered the miles. The girl reached across the side-car, touching him
+lightly on the shoulder.
+
+"Look!" she exclaimed.
+
+Martin Cosgrave looked up. The building stood in the moonlight on the
+crest of the hill. He bade the driver pull up, and then got down from
+the car.
+
+"Who owns the house?" Sheela Dempsey asked.
+
+"I do. I put it up on the hill for Rose."
+
+There was silence for some time.
+
+"How did you get it built, Martin?" Sheela Dempsey asked, awe in her
+tone.
+
+"I built it myself," he answered. "I wonder has Rose as good a place?
+What sort of a building is she in to-night?"
+
+Martin Cosgrave did not notice the sudden quiver in the girl's body as
+he put the question. But she made no reply, and the car drove on,
+leaving Martin Cosgrave standing alone at the gate of the building.
+
+The faint sweep of the drive lay before him. It led his eyes up to the
+crest of the hill. There it was standing shadowy against the sky, every
+delicate outline clear to his vision. The beech trees were swaying
+beside it, reaching out like great shapeless arms in the night, blurred
+and beckoning and ghostly. A little vein of their music sounded in his
+ears. How often had he listened to that music and the things it had sung
+to him! It made him conscious of all the emotion he had felt while he
+had put up the building on the hill.
+
+The joy of the builder swept over him like a wave. He was within the
+rising walls again, his hands among the grey-blue shapes, the measured
+stroke of the mallet swinging for the shifting chisel, the throb of
+steel going through his arms, the grind of stone was under his hands,
+the stone dust dry upon his lips, his eyes quick and keen, his arms
+bared, the shirt at his breast open, his whole body tense, tuned, to the
+desire of the conscious builder.... Once more he moved about the carpet
+of splinters, the grateful crunch beneath his feet, his world a world of
+stubborn things, rejoicing in his power of direction and mastery over it
+all. And always at the back of his mind and blending itself with the
+work was the thought of a ship forging through the water at the harvest,
+a ship with white sails spread to the winds. Had not thought for the
+building come into his mind when dead things sprang to life in the
+resurrection of his hopes?
+
+Martin Cosgrave turned away from the gate. He walked down where the
+shadow of the mearing was faint upon the road. He turned up the boreen
+closed in by the still hedges. He stumbled over the ruts. He stood at
+the cabin door and looked up at the sky with soulless eyes. The
+animation, the inspiration, that had vivified his face since the
+building had been begun had died. The face no longer expressed the
+idealist, the visionary. His eyes swept the sky for a purpose. It was
+the look of the man of the fields, the man who had thought for his
+crops, who was near to the soil.
+
+He had not looked a final and anxious, a peasant look, at the sky from
+his cabin-door in the night since he had embarked upon the building. He
+was conscious of that fact after a little. He wondered if it was a vague
+stirring in his heart that made him do it, a vague craving for the old
+companionship of the fields this night of bitterness. They were the
+fields, the sod, the territory of his forefathers, the inheritance of
+his blood. Who was he that he should put up a great building on the
+hill? What if he had risen for a little on his wings above the common
+flock?
+
+The night air was heavy with the scent of the late dry harvest and all
+that the late dry harvest meant to the man nurtured on the side of a wet
+hill. The sheaves of corn were stooked in his neighbour's fields.
+Yesterday he had sacrificed the land to the building; to-morrow he would
+sacrifice the building to the land. Martin Cosgrave knew, the stars
+seemed to know, that a message, a voice, a command, would come like a
+wave through the generations of his blood sweeping him back to a common
+tradition. The cry for service on the land was beginning to stir
+somewhere. It would come to him in a word, a word sanctified upon the
+land by the memory of a thousand sacrifices and a thousand struggles,
+the only word that held magic for his race, the one word--Redemption! He
+looked up at the building, made a vague motion of his hand that was like
+an act of renunciation, and laughed a laugh of terrible bitterness.
+
+"Look," he cried, "at the building Martin Cosgrave put up on the hill!"
+
+He moved to the cabin-door, his feet heavy upon the uneven ground as the
+feet of any of the generations of men who had ever gone that way before.
+He pressed the cabin-door with his fist. With a groan it went back
+shakily over the worn stone threshold, sticking when it was only a
+little way open. All was quiet, black, damp, terrible as chaos, inside.
+Martin Cosgrave hitched forward his left shoulder, went in sideways, and
+closed the crazy door against the pale world of moonlight outside.
+
+
+
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