"So he handed me over a little black Virgil wid the page opened where I was to exhibit me acquaintance wid the text. It was merely a bit of an oration of Queen Dido's that I've known ivery line of these forty years as well as I know me own name, and better. And what came over me is more than I can tell, but the minute I took the book in me hand, it seemed to me as if ivery atom of sinse and manin' slipped out of the words, or out of me head—I couldn't say which, and I just stood starin' at them and starin', till iverythin' else got whirlin' round about me, fit to shake the panes out of the big windows, and the pictures off the walls.... Belike himself persaived I was flusthered, for, 'Take your time,' sez he; and after a while they stood steady enough. But, the Lord be good to me—sorra a syllable of the sinse come back. And be that I well knew it was all up wid me; and I was thinkin' me father's son had no business to be standin' there makin' a show of meself in the middle of Trinity College. So the lad in the cap said again, 'Take your time, sir, take your time.' But I said to him, 'God help me, sir, I've taken very nigh all I'll get, for I declare to you, lad, I'm over seventy years of age. But as for your time, sir,' I said, 'I'll be wastin' no more of it.' And wid that I put down the book, and out I wint. I mind the sun in the square nearly dazzled the eyes out of me fool's head. I niver seen it blazin' brighter—and there was a big bell somewhere boomin' away, as if they'd set the heart of the world tollin'; it's ringin' in me ears yet.... And a couple of days after that I quit out of Dublin, and I've been trampin' back to this counthry, takin' me time, as he said—there's no hurry now about anythin'. So that was the ind of me University Degree."

"I just wish I could git discoorsin' wid that young feller," said old Felix, vindictively, "himself and his tassel in his cap."

"Sure, man, 'twas no fault of his," said Mr. Polymathers, "and I can live widout a Degree, if that's all. Me betters did before me. To tell you the truth, I've thought often enough as I was comin' along now, that I dunno how at all I'd have had the face to meet me poor father one of these days, and I cocked up with a Baccalaureatus in Artibus, and he wid not so much as a dacint stone over his grave to commemorate his name, that was the most illusthrious Polymath in the county Sligo, wid more larnin' in the tip of his ear than ever I got into me ould skull. Never a hap'orth of good was I at anythin' except the trifle of mathematics, but he was as great at the Classics.... I used to humbug meself somewhiles lettin' on I hankered after it because it would ha' gratified him maybe to hear of the event. But little I ever done to plase him, God forgive me. Let alone goin' and makin' an ould fool of meself up at Trinity College.... 'Twas a terrible upset to him when I turned again the Priesthood, after he had the money saved up for the seminary and all. Words about it we had, and the ind of it was he put it all into me brother Ned's little farm. Ned had no more fancy for larnin' than the bastes of the field. A trifle of it would ha' come in very handy sometimes for buyin' me books; howane'er it was not to be.... And the books there—I on'y brought them along to lave wid you for the youngest lad—ay, Nicholas. He has a head on his shoulders for the mathematics, I can tell you; he might do something yet, if he got his chances. They're no use to me now, and I'd as lief be shut of the sight of them. And to-morra I'll be off to Ardnacreagh."

So the gaunt old man talked on, groping his way out of hesitating pauses, and straying into dreamy meditations, as if he sometimes forgot his story, and sometimes its hearers. They did not know what a life-wreck it outlined, but they saw and surmised enough to make them think of him as "the crathur," and speak to him with more deference than if he had returned in a radiant glow of success, symbolised as some of them had anticipated, by scarlet robes as splendid, at least, as Father Rooney's at High Mass. And Felix O'Beirne took occasion of a madly skirling gust to say, "Listen now to that, sir, and don't be talkin' wild of thravellin' off to-morra. If I might be sayin' so, you'd a dale better stay quiet where you are this minyit. And as for taichin', sure it's proud and thankful the two boyos 'ud be for e'er a bit more. There's Nicholas mopin' about like an ould hin that's lost her chuckens iver since you quit."

Mr. Polymathers did stop quiet—very quiet—but he taught the boys no more. In fact, he did nothing except sit all day staring into the fire, as if he had lost something in it. Once after Nicholas had sat looking very hard at him for a long time with the ragged Euclid ostentatiously open at a crux, he seemed to rouse up, and putting out a hand for the book, began an explanation. But it died away unfinished in an aimless muttering, which both shocked and saddened Nicholas, and the experiment was not repeated. Then towards Christmas time all the neighbours were saying that Mr. Polymathers was greatly failed to what he had been. And Bridget O'Beirne reported that you might as well be argufyin' wid a scutty wren to swally down the full of the ducks' dish as persuadin' him to take a raisonable bite and sup. Dr. Hamilton from the Dispensary, who was consulted on the case, "consaited," Bridget told inquirers, "that he might be after gettin' a sort of stroke like unbeknownst;" but her own opinion was that "he had, so to spake, lost the knot off his thread, and 'twould be much if he didn't slip away out of it on them, afore they seen e'er another green laif on the bushes."

It was, at any rate, more than happened. One snowy afternoon, when he had been busy for some time "scrawmin' a manner of letter," which related, he said, to the disposition of his property, Mr. Polymathers grew so much worse that Dan and Nicholas ran off for the Doctor and the Priest, and before their arrival could possibly be expected, it became evident that he could not wait to receive them. Bridget O'Beirne, deploring the hap by his bed in the small room off the kitchen, thought a few minutes before he went that she heard him murmuring something coherent, and she called to little Rosy Corcoran, "Child alive—me head's bothered—come in here and listen, can you make out at all what he's sayin'?"

Rosy came reluctantly and listened. "I think," she whispered, "it's some sort of prayers like what his Riverence sez."

"Ah, then, glory be to God for that itself," said Bridget, "there might be a good chance for him after all."

But she had been misinformed. The words Mr. Polymathers was muttering over and over to himself were: Admitto te—admitto te.



CHAPTER VIII

HONORIS CAUSA

The evening of the day after Mr. Polymathers died was a very wild black-and-white one out of doors all round Lisconnel, yet, notwithstanding the flakes in the air and under foot, the O'Beirnes had received some company. Not at a wake, however the purpose of their assembly was to discuss a serious business matter, upon which old Felix O'Beirne wished for friendly counsel. Hence his contemporary, old Paddy Ryan, had prodded little round craters in the snow with his thick stick all along the good step of bleak road which lay between his house and the forge, and with him had come on the same errand Terence Kilfoyle, who, although of so much junior standing, was esteemed as a man of notably shrewd sense and judgment. But then neither he nor the neighbours knew how often he took and gave Bessie Kilfoyle's advice. These two were present by express invitation, but another pair of guests, the Dooleys, would never have been asked for the sake of their opinion, which they were indeed encouraged to keep to themselves, and appeared at this domestic crisis merely by virtue of family ties. Old Felix had always thought little of his daughter Maggie's mental powers, and less ever since her marriage with Peter Dooley, who kept a shop in the Town, and could be described as "an ould gombeen man," if one wished to regard him from an unfavourable point of view, which his father-in-law not uncommonly did. He had been heard to say of Peter that "the chap was that smooth-spoken you might think he was after swallyin' a one of his own graisy dipts, on'y he'd liefer be chaitin' some poor body over the sellin' of it"—a perhaps not inexcusable preference. As for Peter, he contemplated humanity with a jovial cynicism, and rather enjoyed the society of the old blacksmith, despite the gruff sarcasms which sometimes made their womenkind turn the conversation apprehensively. He had been heard to say of Felix that "It was aisy work runnin' down other people's business, and small blame to th' ould man if he had a fancy for a light job now and agin, when he would be tired poundin' th' ould iron at a profit you couldn't see to pick up widout a strong pair of spectacles." Proximity had brought to the consultation Mrs. Carbery and Tim O'Meara from adjacent doors; and they, with old ancient Mrs. O'Beirne and her daughter and the two lads, formed quite a large party about the fire. The business to be brought before them was Mr. Polymathers's Will.

Now, lest it should be thought that unseemly haste was displayed in attending to this affair while Mr. Polymathers still lay in the little next room, I must explain that for special reasons the nature of the funeral arrangements depended upon the result of the conference; and how deeply important such a point would be considered at Lisconnel I need remind no one who has occasionally been perplexed by our propensity for the pinching and scraping which takes toll of a life-long penury, that a brief show of pomp may invest the last scene of all. This propensity is not seldom misconstrued into the outcome of a mere personal vanity, whereas it has its root in the worthier sentiment of veneration for our Kind. Ould Pat Murphy, who has subsisted all his life upon an insufficiency of pitaties, and inhabited a largish sty, never loses the sense that he owes something better to himself in his character of a human being, and he takes painful steps to ensure the ultimate discharge of the debt. One of these days he who has hitherto come and gone in unimposing guise shall be borne, on wheels if possible—but here I mention grandeur never even dreamed of up at remote Lisconnel—in unwonted state, certain to draw the gaze of every passer-by. But as if with a fine touch of courtesy, he so times his assertion of dignity that none of his fellows shall thereby be abashed nor envy-bitten. No ragged wayfarer shall wish to change places with him as he passes solemnly along, nor grudge him the unshared splendour of his sombre equipage; not even if it display the crowning glory of woolly black plumes to waggle over his head. Accordingly, when Pat has died on his humble bed, which is as likely as not just earth tempered with straw, under his rifted thatch, through which he may perhaps see the stars glimmer with nothing except the smoke-haze and gathering mists between, he is conveyed thence with whatever pomp and circumstance his savings permit, and all his neighbours feel that the right thing has been done.

It is true that Mr. Polymathers had given no sign of any such sentiment. When discreetly sounded on the subject during his last days, he had replied: "Ah! man, it's very immaterial," in a tone of indifference as unmistakable as the phrase was ambiguous. And from this fact, coupled with his written instructions, it might, one would have thought, safely have been inferred that he desired no costly magnificence at his obsequies. Yet the point was obscured in his late host's mind by a thick cloud of doubts and scruples.

Mr. Polymathers had died surprisingly rich, not less than twenty-five pounds, seven shillings and threepence having been counted awestrickenly out of his leathern pouch. The ground rents of all Lisconnel did not reach to such a figure. It had been larger still before his disastrous expedition to the University; but it had never undergone any diminution so long as he abode under Felix O'Beirne's roof. On the first Saturday after his convalescence he had inquired, pouch in hand: "And what might be the amount of me pecuniary debt to you, sir?" And old O'Beirne had replied: "And you spendin' your time puttin' the heighth of larnin' into the two lads' heads! Bedad, sir, it's debt the other way round, supposin' there was to be any talk about it." The same little scene, dwindled at last into a mere form and ceremony, had taken place on every succeeding Saturday. Not that Mr. Polymathers did not feel he had grounds for more than merely formal demur. But he was then facing the steep hill of his ambition, and had sometimes to stoop as he climbed.

But now, when he had turned back baffled, and all his climbing was done, old Felix had no engrossing object to blunt a sense of many scruples that must be removed before he himself or his family could with honour derive profit from the event; as they would do if Mr. Polymathers's instructions were carried out. For by that document, which he had finished drawing up only just in time, all his property was left unreservedly to Nicholas O'Beirne, with the injunction that as little of it as possible might be expended upon "the burying." Of course it was an extraordinary thing that such a piece of good fortune should befall, such a number of pounds accrue to, anybody at all; but apart from this there seemed to be nothing very strange in the bequest. Everybody knew that Mr. Polymathers had entertained "a great opinion entirely" of Nicholas' abilities. Time and again he had said that the lad would be heard of in the world if he got his chance of some good teaching. And he once more expressed the same conviction, only at fuller length and in finer language, in the composition which had been the last effort of his wearied brain. "It would give me," he wrote, "the utmost satisfaction to think that the legacy may eventually smooth his path to the attainment of those University distinctions which have eluded my own grasp." And almost his latest moment of consciousness had been pervaded by a faint thrill of pleased pride at the turn of the sentence as he read it over. This high style was not, however, maintained throughout, and the purport could not be misunderstood. Furthermore, everybody knew that he had said he had not a relation belonging to him in this world; and that being so, it was natural enough for him to make a promising and favorite pupil his heir. At first sight, therefore, no difficulties presented themselves; but old Felix slept upon the matter, and by morning grave doubts had risen in his mind. The gist of them was that "If they took and grabbed the ould gintleman's bit of money, and he after dyin' all his lone up among them there, wid ne'er a one of his own folks near him to see he had his rights, it might look ugly enough agin them, and set some people passin' remarks he'd be long sorry to have made on him, or any of his name;" and that for the precluding of such animadversions it might behove them to provide "a buryin'" not merely decent but "very respectable whatever," and to expend the remainder of Mr. Polymathers's personality upon a headstone for his grave, and Masses for his soul. To set against these apprehensions were Mr. Polymathers's wishes and Nicholas's interests; and the longer the old man balanced them in his mind, the more perplexing became their tremulous poise. So at last, goaded by the urgent necessity for a prompt decision, he turned to seek it among his neighbours. He could not forbear a hope that their voices might be convincingly in favour of giving Nicholas his chances; still his strongest feeling was that it would be a relief to get the matter settled one way or the other.

Very different in its degree of intensity was the interest with which his grandson Nicholas looked forward to the issue. The question to be decided seemed to him of almost as vital importance as if it were: Whether or no the sun should rise again next morning. For him at least, it depended upon that whether his world should loom back again in a dreary blankness, or waken lit with new and wondrous gleams. Nicholas's thirst for knowledge and love of learning were much more essentially part and parcel of him than his hands and eyes, and had so far found little except dreams and desires to thrive upon. Even before the memorable summer evening when the gaunt old man in the curious big hat had asked for the night's lodging, which lengthened into a season's sojourn, he had often wandered among visions of places where there were as many books as anybody could read—a dozen maybe—and some people in it with a power of book-learning—as much perhaps as his Reverence or the Doctor—only neither priest nor quality, but just neighbours whom he could question about anything that came into his head, as he used to question his grandfather, and Paddy Ryan, and Terence Kilfoyle, until he got tired of being asked, in reply: "Musha good gracious, and who could be tellin' you that?" an answer which had repeatedly left him a discouraged atom of bewilderment, symbolically environed by our wide-spreading bog. Since Mr. Polymathers's visit, these visions had grown clearer, but not under any rays of hope. His initiation into the elements of mathematics had pointed out the road along which he should travel, but had simultaneously revealed all its obstacles, insurmountable for him solitary and unequipped. In those days his mind was constantly fumbling at some insoluble problem with the sense of frustration that one has who gropes vainly in the dark, well knowing how a single unattainable match-flare would put what he is seeking into his hands. And no brighter prospect seemed to lie before him anywhere in his future.

So when he suddenly learned that Mr. Polymathers had left all his money—sums and sums—to be spent on "getting schooling for Nicholas O'Beirne;" and when the sums and sums were actually counted out on the table, he felt as if a door into enchanted regions had majestically opened in a blank wall. That night he went to bed in a state of joyous excitement, only dashed by some pangs of self-reproach for being unable to feel more sorrow at the flickering out of his poor old teacher's dim life. He had to frame excuses for himself by recollecting how his great-aunt Bridget had said, "Ah, sure the crathur's better off, God knows. What else 'ud he do, and the heart of him broke, but quit out of it, if he got the chance? Ay, bedad, some people have the quare good luck."

And when he got up with his happiness still fresh and strange in the morning, there was his grandfather declaring "he didn't know if they'd have a right to touch the bit of money at all; it might be no thing to go do; schoolin' or no schoolin', he wouldn't be givin' people any call to say the O'Beirnes were after playin' a dirty thrick." At this Nicholas's experience was like that of a desert traveller who should see a mirage of palms and pools grow swiftly before his delighted eyes into a substantial oasis, and then anon, or ever he could approach it, shimmer back, with all its sheen and shade, into mocking illusion again. For thus did it fare with his hopes as his grandfather talked of renouncing Mr. Polymathers's bequest. Moreover, the grounds which the old man alleged forbade his grandson, lothfully though he listened, to utter a word of protest, and even made him half ashamed of his vehement longing to do so. Nicholas had been an O'Beirne for but fourteen years, yet he had already entered upon his inheritance of family pride. Only he could not bring himself to believe that the honour of his house called for so prodigious a sacrifice; and he could have urged a dozen arguments against it, if some other person had been the legatee. As it was, all that delicacy would permit him to do for himself was to give piteously inadequate expression to his sentiments in casual remarks about the grandeur of getting a bit of learning, and the difficulty of understanding some things out of one's own head. Altogether that day was the longest and the most anxious that he had ever spent.

Dan also, though his fortunes were not involved to the same extent as his younger brother's, was not easy in his mind. All day he had been thinking rather badly of himself, and suspecting that other people thought worse of him than he deserved, and the reflection was depressing and irritating. The news of the legacy certainly had not given him unmixed pleasure, as he felt that it ought to have done; but at the same time he was aware that he neither grudged nor envied Nicholas his good fortune, and that this unamiable frame of mind would nevertheless probably be ascribed to him, if he betrayed any dissatisfaction or disapproval. The truth was that he could not help feeling some mortification at the way in which both Mr. Polymathers and his grandfather assumed the forge to be his destiny and portion in life. Dan did not by any means despise it: he took an interest in the work, and a pride in the fact that farmers sent their horses thither from beyond the Town, so well reputed was old Felix O'Beirne's shoeing. But it did not follow that he wanted to be a blacksmith all his days. Even if he had done so, he was sixteen, and consequently of an age to resent any prescribed calling, especially since he knew that the selection here had been made as the result of an unfavourable comparison of his abilities with those of another person. "Dan is no fool, mind you," Mr. Polymathers had said once. "But for intellect you need never name him on the same day of the month as Nicholas," a verdict which fell with a slight shock upon Dan, accustomed to the precedence given by two years' seniority, superior strength, and a more practical turn of mind. What was far more serious, however, Dan secretly cherished an ambition of his own. It took the form of thinking that it would be a wonderfully fine thing if he could ever get to learn the doctoring, and be able to drive about on a car like Dr. Hamilton, with a name and a remedy for everybody's ailment. A particularly fine thing it seemed to understand the construction of bones and joints, a knowledge which would put it in his power to prevent people from coming to such grief as, for instance, poor Matt Haloran down at Duffclane, who must limp on a crooked leg to the end of his days, because the man who pulled in his dislocated ankle for him had made a botch of it, through not knowing rightly what he was about. Dan had been much impressed, too, by several cases where a few drops of brown stuff out of a bottle had put people to sleep when various aches and pains had long hindered them from closing an eye, a result which the neighbours were occasionally disposed to view with mistrust, as rather probably wrought through the agency of "some quare ould pishtrogues (charms)," but which to Dan's mind proved the possession of a skill as enviable as it was beneficent. Beside it hammering out horseshoes appeared a tedious and aimless pursuit, and he sometimes thumped away in a very vague dream of one of these days finding himself more congenially employed. Now, however, it was perfectly clear to him that if Nicholas "took off wid himself to get scholarship," his own portion must be to stick to the anvil. For otherwise supposing his grandfather got past his work, or anything else happened him, there would be nobody left to look after Dan's great-aunt, who was not very old, and his great-grandmother, who was such a wonderful age entirely that no one could say how much longer she mighn't live. Even the wildest of dreams are not quite easy to scare away, and it was this chiefly that marred his content with Mr. Polymathers's testamentary dispositions. Still, when he heard his grandfather's doubts, and saw his brother's downcast looks, he became almost as anxious as Nicholas himself that the neighbours might talk away the old man's scruples and allow the will to stand.

Thus there were many eager hopes and fears lodged that evening in the O'Beirnes' living-room, which was all throbbing with fire-light, as the neighbours began to drop in talking out of the dark. People are apt to speak loudly when they get their breath after a battle with snowy blasts; and the sound of voices came strangely into the stillness close by, where there was only a cold glimmer of candle-light, and nobody conversing, unless we count old Bridget O'Beirne, who had slipped in to repeat a few prayers, and say to herself with a sort of grudging wistfulness that everybody else was getting away. Then she came back to her world again, and mended the crumbling red-hot bank with sods out of her apron, and shovelled up the snow-balls shaken off their visitors' clogged brogues, that they might not melt into mud patches on the floor.

To Dan and Nicholas, looking on from opposite corners, it seemed a long while before anything to the purpose was said. Everybody had to comment upon the snow, and Paddy Ryan's remark was that "if it kep' on at it that-a-way, they'd be hard enough set to get through the dhrifts be the day of the buryin'." This caused Mrs. Carbery to remember how she "had been at a one up in the County Cavan, where the gate into the buryin'-ground was all blocked up, so that the whole of them had to lep over what would be be rights a ten-fut wall. And if they did, the half of them plumped up to their necks in a soft place on the other side, and came as near losin' their lives as could be thought. Bedad now, they were comical to behould, goodness forgive her for sayin' so, all bawlin' and flounderin' about like a flock of sheep stuck in a bog, on'y it was a white bog and black sheep, as she minded Tom Ennis, that was a quare codger, sayin' at the time." And this again started old O'Beirne upon reminiscences of remarkable buryings which had come under his own observation.

"Comical it may have been," he said, "but I'll bet you me best brogues ne'er a one of yous ever witnessed a quarer buryin' than a one I seen down in the south some ould ages ago, when I was a slip of a lad. But I'll maybe ha' tould you the story, ma'am—about the flood in the Tullaroe River?"

"Was that the time it riz up suddint and dhrownded the crathur that was diggin' the grave?" said Mrs. Carbery.

"Sure not at all: that happint up at Lough Gortragh, and this I'm talkin' about was in the Tullaroe River, a dale souther of the Lough. Outrageous it does be in the wet saisons. So one harvest day, when it was flowin' over all before it, there was a walkin' funeral about crossin' at the ford. The way of it was, they were after hangin' a lad up at the jail. In those days it's very ready they were wid the hangin', and in a hurry over it too sometimes. Howane'er the frinds of this lad had got lave to be buryin' him dacint after he would be hanged; and me poor father, and meself, and plinty of other people were follyin'. Till they come to the ford, and when they seen the manner the wather was runnin' wild, the bearers had a notion to be turnin' back; but they made up their minds, and on they wint. And as sure as they did, one of the lads must needs slip his fut, and they right in the middle of the river, and down wid the whole lot of thim, like a stook of oats in a gale of win'; 'twas twinty wonders e'er a man of thim ever got his feet under him agin. Faix, now the yell every sowl let you might ha' heard anywheres at all; for some of thim was thinkin' the misfort'nit body was apt to be swep' away and mortally dhrowned to the back of bein' hung; and some of thim wasn't thinkin' any such a thing. But as for the coffin, I'll give you me word if it didn't take and set off wid itself floatin' away bobbin' along atop of the wather as light now, as if it was a lafe dhropped down from the boughs archin' over our heads—and wasn't that cur'ous enough? And as quare as anythin' it was to behould the people all peltin' along be the two wet banks of the river as hard as they could dhrive, and thrippin' theirselves up over the roots of the trees, and slitherin' into the pools, wid the coffin just skimmin' and swimmin' away down the sthrame ahead of them, as aisy and plisant as if it was a bit of a pookawn. You might ha' sworn there was ne'er a nothin' in it, to look at it. And he they were after hangin' a fine big man, 'ud weigh every ounce of fourteen stone. I tould you it was a quare thing. So where it would be sailin' to nobody could say; very belike out into the bay below. But sure when it come where the river runs past th' ould church, the strong current that was racin' under it just gave a sort of lap round wid it, and washed it clane up on the flat stones at the gate goin' into the buryin'-ground, and left it lyin' there, same as if the lads had set it down off their shoulders. Bedad now it was a very lucky thing it so happint there was none of the polis or red coats about, be raison of their gettin' notice the buryin' was somewhere else—oncommon lucky."

"It's as quare as the rest of it," said Peter Dooley, who had heard the story before, "that nobody among them had had the wit to put a few brickbats in it, or some good big lumps of heavy stones. Stones is plinty, and chape enough."

"They're things you haven't the sellin' of then, I'll go bail," said old Felix. He spoke in resentment of the interruption, but Mr. Dooley took the speech as a flattering tribute to his business capacity, and acknowledged it with a good-humoured smirk.

So Bridget might have spared herself the uneasiness which made her say hurriedly to her brother: "If you was lookin' for Mr. Polymathers's bit of writin', Felix, I left it lyin' convanient to you under the plate there on the table."

"Oh, ay, bedad, that's what's been botherin' me," said the old man, reachin' for it, "I dunno rightly what to say to it. But sure any of yous that like can be readin' it, and see what he sez for yourselves."

Reading was not a question simply of liking with all members of the company; but everybody could hold the paper and look wise, and if he were none the more so afterwards, that may have been only because he knew the contents of it beforehand. When it was Peter Dooley's turn he examined the signature closely, and said, "But what name's this he's put to it? 'John Campion' I see, but divil a sign of any Polymathers."

"Ah, that was another thing was botherin' me, too," said old O'Beirne, rather dejectedly, "a little while ago, when Dr. Hamilton was comin' to see him. For th' ould gintleman tould him Campion was his name; and it appairs Polymathers is some discripshin of thrade, and not rightly called to anybody at all. So I was thinkin' he was maybe annoyed wid our callin' him out of his name all the while; but he said all that ailed it was it was a dale too good for him; and better plased he seemed we would keep on wid it. Oh ay, 'John Campion's' right enough."

"I niver heard of any such a thrade as polymatherin'," said his son-in-law; "would it be anythin' in the pedlarin' line?"

"Is it pedlarin'?" said old O'Beirne, "and he that took up wid larnin' and litherature he couldn't ha' tould you the price of a pinny loaf. Faix, man, if I was Maggie I'd just put a good dab of strong glue in your place behind the counter down-below, and stick you standing steady in it, for buyin' and sellin's all the notion you have in your head here or there. Pedlarin', sez he."

"Well, at all events," said Peter Dooley, unperturbed, "he's got together a dacint little fortin one way or the other. Maybe he didn't come by it any worser; but sure that's no great odds now. And plain enough he sez the young chap there's to have it—that's all the one thing wid yourself. But, anyhow, I dunno who could aisy conthrive to be takin' it off you, and he lavin' no one belongin' to him. You have it safe enough. Grab all you can, and keep a hould of it when you've got it, sez I. But you're safe enough, no fear."

Nicholas, watching his grandfather's face from his corner, would have given ten years of his life to throttle his uncle's reassuring speech midway.

"There's no mistake, I should say, about what he was intendin'," said Terence Kilfoyle, in whose hands the paper was by this time; "and who'd be apt to know better than himself what he had in his mind so long as he was right in his head."

"And if he wasn't, it's little likely he'd be to ha' got that written. Hard enough work it is, accordin' to what I can see, even when a body has all his wits to the fore," said old Paddy Ryan, whose acquaintances did as a rule get more out of breath over a letter than over a wrestling match or the recapture of an active pig.

"Mad people do be surprisin' cute some whiles, mind you," said Mrs. Carbery. "There was a deminted body used to be up at our place—Daft Jimmy they called him—and if you axed him the time of day he'd tell you to the minyit, exacter than any clock that ever sthruck, and he belike not widin a mile of e'er a one."

"It seems a sight of money to be layin' out on larnin'," pursued old Paddy; "I dunno where you'd be gettin' the vally of it that-a-way, onless he was larnin' everythin' twyste over, same as you put two coats of whitewash on a wall if you're after mixin' a drop more than you want. You might do it then."

His friends' arguments and illustrations had apparently a depressing effect upon old Felix, and he said with impatience, "Weary on it, man-alive! Sure there's no doubt about what he was manin', at all at all. The question is, have we any call to be takin' him at his word, and spendin' it away from aught 'ud do him a benefit—the buryin' and Masses and such?"

"That might be a diff'rint thing," said Mrs. Carbery.

"I'd scarce think it," said Terence Kilfoyle, "considherin' he'll say no more to make it so. The job's out of his hand, and 'ill stay the way he left it."

"He might ha' changed his mind afore now, for anythin' we can tell," said Mrs. Carbery.

"'Deed, then, he might so, the poor man, Heaven be his bed," said Mrs. Dooley.

"You could ax the priest about it," Tim O'Meara said diffidently, out of the melancholy muteness which it was his habit to maintain.

"That's as much as to say it should go for Masses," said old Felix, clutching at any shred of definite opinion, "for it's on'y in the nathur of things his Riverence 'ud be recommindin' thim."

But Tim shrank away from the shadow of responsibility, protesting, "Och, not at all, not at all. I wasn't as much as sayin' anythin'."

The old man tossed up his chin disgustedly, and meditated gloomily during a brief pause.

"There's no denyin'," he said then, "that poor Mr. Polymathers had a won'erful great opinion of himself over there." He nodded towards Nicholas's corner, and used this periphrasis with a sense that he had taken a precaution against perilously arousing the boy's vanity. "Times and agin last summer he was sayin' to me the lad 'ud do credit to us yet if he had his chances. A pity it 'ud be, he said, if he didn't iver git to school, or maybe College itself. And gave him his books and all. But sure, I dunno would that make it look any the better for us if we was to be grabbin' his bit of money, and we the on'y people he had to see he got fairity after he was gone. Ne'er a word have I agin schoolin' and College if there would be no doubtin' over the matter; but there's some things you can't stand too clear of, like the heels of a kickin' horse. It might have a quare, bad apparance, rael mane; and long sorry I'd be for that. What 'ud you say, now?"

He looked slowly round the flickering room, but met with no response from old or young; all silent, from his mother, asleep in her elbow-chair by the hearth, to his grandson Nicholas, very wide awake, in a nook beyond her. Then his eyes travelled across to the opposite corner, and as they lit there upon his other grandson, he specialised his question into, "What 'ud you say, Dan?"

Dan, thus abruptly called upon, was intensely conscious that two eyes shining out of the shadow over against him had fixed him with an unwavering gaze. And it is hard to say how he would have answered their urging if at the same moment Mr. Dooley at his elbow had not been loudly whispering to Mrs. Dooley—

"Colleges? Sure that's just talk he has be way of an excuse for keepin' it. A great notion he has of spendin' it on Colleges. He knows better, bedad."

Mr. Dooley, who was rather like several sorts of rodent animals in the face, wore a smile at his own penetration.

"I dunno but it might look ugly," Dan suddenly said.

He was staring straight before him, yet he knew somehow, as if by a sixth sense, that the shining eyes opposite ceased their watch with an angry flash; and he had scarcely spoken before he would have given anything to call back his irrevocable speech.

His grandfather's puzzled will closed on the opinion with a vice-like grip, as if at a touch given to a powerful spring. Indecision was with him an unwonted mood, from which it was an irresistible relief to escape, even at some cost. And nobody who knew him could suppose that his mind, once made up, would alter.

"Begorrah, Dan, I believe it's true for you," he said. "'Twould be no thing to go do, and divil a bit of me 'ill do it. Whatever's over from the buryin' and bit of a grave-stone may go for Masses; sorra a penny of it a one of the O'Beirnes 'ill touch."

So Nicholas lost his chances, which seems a pity when one considers how, for the sake of bringing them to him, old Mr. Polymathers, dazed and enfeebled and hope-bereft, came tramping on that long, long journey, day after weary day, under the scowling wintry sky, and against the ruffling blasts, back again across the breadth of Ireland. The road was all strewn for him with the wreckage of his shattered dream, and the one gleam of consolation that lighted him on the way had been the thought that his savings might now give a help to the lad up at Lisconnel. This had often been in his mind when he set off, shivering in the bleak morning, and when he stopped to shift his over-heavy bundle, and when he roused himself painfully from the bewildering lethargies that fell upon him. But he had reckoned without the pride of the O'Beirnes.

It was a pity, too, that the affair should have led to an estrangement between the two brothers, which set in as tacitly as a black frost, for neither of them ever said a word to the other about Dan's intervention. This silence left him in the thorny grip of misgivings as to the motives with which Nicholas might be charging him. That he had done it on purpose to spoil Nicholas's chances out of spite was one of these. And although Dan knew very well that he had spoken from an altogether different impulse, he was conscious of having had feelings which seemed to give him a cruelly clear insight into the possible workings of Nicholas's mind. "Consaitin' that it was because I was invyin' him, that's what he's thinkin' agin me," he said to himself as the days went by, and he perceived, or fancied, that Nicholas in his disconsolate moping about had no other aim than to keep away from wherever Dan might be.

But Dan's unhappiness took an acuter phase in a fortnight or so, when Nicholas began to resume his mathematical studies. There lies just opposite the O'Beirnes' front door a low turf bank, gently sloping, and mostly clothed with short, fine grass, but liable to be cut into brown squares, if sods are wanted for roofing a shed, or for spreading a green layer of scraws under new thatch. This had been done on a rather large scale in the past autumn, and the boys had been in the habit of utilising the smooth, bare patches as tablets whereon to trace with pointed sticks, or any handy implements borrowed from the forge, the figures and diagrams occurring in Mr. Polymathers's scientific lectures. Nicholas now, albeit he had buried both teacher and hope, began once more to draw his circles and triangles and polygons on the soft mould, as it grew damply and darkly through the wearing snow coverlid. Sometimes in the excitement of demonstrating involved relations between AB's and BC's he would for a while forget his disappointment almost as completely as he did the wet-winged winds that had been flapping and wheeling about the house ever since the thaw set in. His obliviousness could not, however, ensure him against the effects of cold shower-baths, and before long his geometrical drawing was done to the accompaniment of a hollow-sounding cough, which made Dan remember a time some years ago when Nicholas had been so seriously ill with pleurisy that voices had said at their door, "Ah, the crathur, he'll scarce last the night. Dr. Hamilton has no opinion of him at all. 'Deed, now, his poor grandfather's to be pitied, losin' such a fine young lad." And he also remembered having occasionally heard his great-aunt say that Nicholas took after his poor mother, and would never comb a grey head. Now, therefore, the figure of Nicholas sitting out on the bank in a vibrating mist of rain, with his feet in a puddle, and his hair flickering in damp strands about his thin face, became for Dan an ominous and saddening spectacle.

But while he was ruefully contemplating it one day, a happy idea struck him. He would get Nicholas some clean white paper to draw his dygrims on. "And then belike he'd be contint to sit in be the fire, instead of to be catchin' his death scrawmin' out there in the mud under teems of rain." Grand writing-paper was to be had at Isaac Tarpey's, down in Ballybrosna, and Dan at this time happened to be in possession of a whole shilling, which he dedicated more than willingly to the purchase.

Isaac Tarpey presided over the Ballybrosna Post-office, which was in some respects a singularly complete establishment, as not only was the raw material for a letter kept in stock there, but the letter itself could, for a consideration, be written on the premises by the postmaster in person. It is true that Isaac did not supply more than the barest necessaries of scribes, the bread and water, so to speak, of stationery, the very plainest pens and paper and ink. He kept his ink in a single moderate-sized jar, out of which he measured penn'orths and ha'p'orths into the various receptacles brought by customers who came to demand "a sup" or "a drain." On these sales his profits were certainly enormous, not less than cent. per cent., but then the consumption of that article was extremely small in Ballybrosna. It took a long while to reach the sediment at the bottom of the jar, and Isaac's letter-writing, done at the rate of thruppence a-piece, probably was a more lucrative branch of his business, though the correspondence of the Town was not large enough to put his services in frequent requisition. Partly on this account, and partly because he was by nature a strong conservative, Mr. Tarpey set his face sternly against the spread of education. He was distressed by the appearance of any symptoms of it among the neighbouring youth, even when it took the form of an inquiry for his limp paper and skewer-like pens. In fact, the diffusion of penmanship was what he most seriously deprecated and discountenanced. "The Lord knows," his main argument ran, "the foolery them spalpeens 'ill be gabbin' permiscuis would sicken you, widout givin' them the chance to be sittin' down aisy and invintin' it." His wife once suggested that "the crathurs might be more sinsible like, when they were takin' time to considher themselves." But Isaac said, "Pigs may fly."

At the time when Dan came for his paper the office was occupied by Norah Fottrell, engaged in dictating a letter to her sweetheart, Stevie Flynn, away in Manchester. The composition still looked discouragingly brief, despite Isaac's big, flourishing hand, yet Norah's ideas had already run so short that she was staring in quest of more up among the cobwebby rafters over her head.

"You might say," she said, after a pause, "that I hope he's gettin' his health where he is."

"I've said that twyste before," Isaac objected severely.

"Och, murdher, have you?" said Norah, reverting to the rafters with a distracted gaze.

"Couldn't you tell him the price your father got for the last baste he sould?" said Isaac.

"Bedad, I might so," said Norah; "'twas on'y thirty shillin', but it 'ud take up a good bit of room. And look-a, Mr. Tarpey, couldn't we lave the rest of the page clane? As like as not the bosthoon wouldn't be botherin' his head spellin' out the half of it."

The adoption of this course expedited Norah's love-letter to a happy close. But when Dan took her place at the counter Isaac assured him, not without satisfaction, that "they were cliver and clane run out of all their writin' paper, barrin' it might be a sort of butt-ind of loose sheets left litterin' at the bottom of the drawer, and they that thick wid dust you could be plantin' pitaties in them, forby gettin' mildewed lyin' up in the damp so long."

It was not so much compunction at Dan's disappointed countenance as an irresistible hankering after a good bargain that ultimately led the postmaster to sweep this uninviting remnant together, and fix upon it the price of sixpence. The charge was exorbitant, considering the small quantity and damaged state of the goods, yet Dan carried off his little packet quite contentedly, announcing that he would step over again for another sixpenn'orth next week, when, as Isaac reluctantly admitted, a fresh supply of stationery would have arrived.

As Dan left the office he passed an unknown gentleman, tall, with a shrewd sallow face, dark, peaked beard, and alert grey eyes, who had been leaning against the door while the bargain was struck. The stranger was Mr. Alfred B. Willett, of New York, a wealthy engineer, who on his way home from Europe had been visiting his friend Dr. Hamilton of Ballybrosna. His curiosity now was roused by Dan's evident eagerness to acquire materials for the drawing of diagrams, the pursuit striking him as so strangely incongruous with the aspect of the brown-faced stalwart ragged youth, that he stepped inside when the place was empty to make inquiries on the subject. The post-master's information was to the effect that "the O'Beirnes above at the forge had always had the name of bein' very dacint respectable people up to then, and he'd never before seen any of the young ones settin' themselves up to be askin' after such things. He hoped it mightn't be a sign that the old man was goin' foolish, and lettin' the lads get past his control. But sure enough we must all of us put up wid growin' good for nothin' sometime, unless we happint to ha' never been worth anythin' to begin wid. And he wished he had a penny ped him for every one of that sort he'd met in the coorse of his life."

This cynical disquisition was not very enlightening. However next week when Dan slipped over again for his second sixpenn'orth, Mr. Willett it chanced was there too, having called to report on the excessive thickness and other undesirable peculiarities of some ink lately supplied to him. It had been, in fact, composed of "the sidimint" artfully diluted with a drop of vinegar; but Isaac Tarpey said it was "thick wid the stren'th was in it," and set about uncorking his fresh jar with an affronted air, when his customer persisted in pointing out that its adhesive properties were less valuable in ink than in glue. Meanwhile Mr. Willett fell into a conversation with Dan, which ended in his engaging the lad to accompany him as guide on a shooting expedition next day. The arrangement turned out satisfactorily, and was repeated more than once, with the consequence that Dan and the stranger talked about many things in the course of several long tramps, until one evening the latter, sitting on a stone wall after a steep pull uphill, made Dan an offer which caused the most familiar objects to seem unreal, because a marvellous dream was coming true among them. For Mr. Willett proposed to take Dan home with him, and have him taught whatever he most wished to learn. "You're a smart lad, Dan," he said, "and I reckon you'll make more of that in the States than in this country."

"Ah! the doctorin'," said Dan, turning as red as the young sorrel leaves, and letting his darling wish slip out in his surprise as involuntarily as he would have blinked at a flash of lightning. But next moment he remembered Nicholas, and fell silent; Nicholas, who had not looked him in the face since that snowy evening weeks ago. The dream seemed to stop coming true.

"There's no need to make up your mind in a hurry," said Mr. Willett, "you can be thinking it over between this and Monday."

Dan did think it over deeply that night and the next day and the day after. He thought how fine, if rather fearful, it would be to go on such a journey; and what a splendid thing to learn the doctoring business, and some day come home again able to cure everybody of anything that ailed them. "For out in the States, like enough, they had all manner of contrivances the people over here had never taught Dr. Hamilton," whose skill was occasionally baffled. He imagined the neighbours' surprise when he came driving up on his car; if possible he would be driving a little blue-roan mare like Farmer Finucane's Rosemary, with whom he had made friends in the course of many shoeings. He thought he would be sorry to miss seeing them all for so long; and yet it would certainly be very pleasant, in a way, to get to a place where things were a bit different sometimes, not like here where when you were getting up in the morning you knew what was bound to be happening all day just as well as you did when you were going to bed that night. And next he thought that such days would be coming to Nicholas, while he himself was away seeing and learning "all manner of everything;" and that if he had held his tongue that time, maybe Nicholas would have got his chance with Mr. Polymathers's money, instead of its all being spent away on nothing. And he thought that it wasn't his fault, for what else could he say when he was asked all of a minute, except the first thing that came into his head? And he wondered how it would be if anything happened to his grandfather. Nicholas wasn't over-strong, and too young altogether besides. And then he thought again that Mr. Willett was cleverer than anybody he had ever seen, and more good-natured; it was a pleasure to go about with him; and people were great fools to give up their chances. Maybe Nicholas might get another some day. And maybe Mr. Polymathers had been mistaken in thinking that he was the one best worth teaching.

All these things Dan thought, and the result of his cogitations was that on the Monday he stole a sheaf of Nicholas's most complicated cobweb-like diagrams from their hiding-place in the wall, and brought them with him when he went by appointment to meet his patron off beyond Knockfinny. And when Mr. Willett said to him: "Well, Dan, what about the States and the doctoring?" he replied inconsequently by holding out the sheets of paper with the explanation: "It's me brother, Nicholas, sir, does be doin' them mostly out of his own head."

Mr. Willett looked at them for some minutes with interested ejaculations. "Upon my word," he then said, "if these were done out of his own head, he must have about as much mathematics located in it by nature as a spider."

"Aren't they good for anythin' at all then, sir?" said Dan, not knowing exactly what he hoped and feared.

"Good? They're astonishing," said Mr. Willett. He asked some questions about Nicholas's age, schooling, and so forth; after which he said: "You must take me to see this brother of yours, Dan. I expect he'll have got to come right along with us."

But Dan stared round and round the spacious brown-purple floor they were standing on, and after a far-off flight of wild fowl, and up at the sky, where the clouds travel without let or hindrance, before he answered hesitatingly: "The two of us couldn't ever both go, sir. How could we be lavin' the forge and all on me ould grandfather? And Nicholas never makes any great hand of the work."

"Ah! is that the way the land lies?" said Mr. Willett, as if half impatient, and half amused, but not best pleased. He looked hard at Dan, and thought he saw how matters stood, "You've no mind to leave the old grandfather and the rest of the concern, but you think it would be more in the other lad's line."

As a matter of fact Dan was at that particular moment feeling strongly how easily he could have reconciled himself to the separation, and how entirely it would be the making of him to do so. But he did not gainsay Mr. Willett's statement. To himself he said, "He's a right to have his chances; and the one of us is bound to stop in it"—a mode of expressing his sentiments which showed that he had much need of culture; and aloud: "Nicholas always had a powerful wish to be gettin' some larnin'; and I'm a fool to him at the geomethry anyway."

The upshot of it all was that when some six weeks later Mr. Alfred B. Willett sailed for New York, Nicholas O'Beirne accompanied him, and Dan O'Beirne remained at Lisconnel. It was on a gleamful April day that they set out, with soft gusts roaming all around, as if they had come from very far off, and were eagerly exploring the strange places, and many light clouds flitting by swiftly above, as if they had a long journey before them, and were in a joyous flurry over it. Dan spent the slow-paced hours in the forge, where he hammered loud and long, and seldom looked across the threshold. The pleasantest thought in his mind was the remembrance of a short conversation which he had had with Nicholas while they were tying up Mr. Polymathers's old books at the kitchen-door just as the grey chink in the east filled with rose-light, and the earliest breeze came over the bog waving the withered grasses. Dan had said to Nicholas: "Sure I wouldn't be grudgin' you e'er a bit of good luck, lad." And Nicholas had replied: "And never did."

After Nicholas's departure many days bad and good rose on Lisconnel, but few of them brought any tidings of the absent. Letters passed now and then, laggard and uninstructive as such letters must be, and they grew rarer and briefer as time went on. Perhaps a dozen years had gone by, when Dan one day received simultaneously an American newspaper and a parcel. The newspaper was marked with large blue chalk crosses at a paragraph which related how the degree of D.Sc. had been conferred. Honoris Causa upon Mr. Nicholas O'Beirne by the University of Sarabraxville. And in the parcel, more astonishing still, was a brown-covered book, lettered on the back: A Treatise on Conic Sections, by Nicholas O'Beirne. By this time Dan had been left alone at the forge; but he was courting Mary Ryan, Mick Ryan's daughter, so he naturally conveyed to her this remarkable news. It produced a profound impression. Old Paddy her grandfather was with difficulty brought to realise the fact that "they were after makin' a doctor of young Nicholas O'Beirne, him that went out to the States the year before the Famine." And when he had got the idea into his head, it seemed to act like a swivel-joint, and set him nodding to the tune of: "Well tub-be sure; glory be to God; young Nicholas O'Beirne."

"I wish to goodness he'd come over and cure Mick, poor man," said Mick's wife. "For he hasn't been worth pickin' up off the road ever since he was bad with the fever last year, and he might as well be dhrinkin' so much ditch-wather as the ould stuff Dr. Carson's givin' him."

"Ah but it's not the medical doctorin' Nicholas has gone to," said Dan, the shadow of a shadow crossing his face, "there'd be diff'rint letters for that." And he proceeded to read out the report of the degree conferred honoris causa upon the distinguished young Irishman, Mr. Nicholas O'Beirne, whose recent contributions to the study of the higher mathematics had roused so much interest in scientific circles.

"Ay, true for you, Dan," said Mary; "you don't hear them callin' Dr. Carson an Honory-causy."

Dan's shred of Latin had grown rustier than the oldest iron in his stock, but was not yet utterly worn away. "The manin' of that," he explained, "would be, be raison of honour, and I should suppose, they've gave it to him for the sake of what all he's after doin'."

"Bedad then, Dan," said Mrs. Mick, "some one had a right to be givin' you an Honory-causy yourself, considherin' the cure you're after makin' on Mr. Finucane's ould mare, and everybody of the opinion she'd never stand on four feet again to the ages' ind."

"Och blathers, ma'am," Dan said, modestly, "sure anybody wid the sight of their eyes might aisy enough ha' seen what ailed the crathur. That was no great comether. And look at what Nicholas is after doin'; he's wrote a book, no less."

The "Treatise on Conic Sections" created an even stronger sensation than the news of the honorary degree, especially among those who had letters enough to spell out the familiar name on the title-page. Dan's Mary was not one of these scholars, but she found another page to admire, saying that the circles "drew in and out of aich other like a lot of soap-bubbles, had an oncommon tasty look, and so had all them weeny corners, wid the long bames between, the moral of a chain-harrow, you couldn't mistake it. Sure it's proud of it anybody might be."

Probably Nicholas was very proud of this first heir of his invention, diagrams, and all. Whether it ever had any successors seems doubtful; certainly none of them arrived at his old home. But his Treatise is still safely stowed away there in a corner of the dresser. Most likely it is the only copy of "O'Beirne on Conic Sections" existing in Ireland; and who would expect to find it lodged in a smoke-stained cabin on the wild bogland between Duffclane and Lisconnel?



CHAPTER IX

BOYS' WAGES

One leaden-roofed morning in the winter after his brother Nicholas had gone to the States, young Dan O'Beirne was in rather low spirits, and rather out of humour. It was not unnatural that such a mood should occasionally overtake him, since he had reached apparently a straight and monotonous tract of road, which would have looked interminable to the eyes of seventeen had not his household companions been now all declining folk, whose presence brought under his constant observation the last stages of "a long journey in December gone." Half a century or so of smithy work, even with some unlicensed doctoring and illicit distilling thrown in, was not by any means the future that he would have liked his oracle to predict for him. And though he forecast it accurately enough without the intervention of any soothsaying, this no more helped him to avoid it than if he had been an old-world tragical hero, whose friends were seeking by vain devices to circumvent the promulgated decrees of his destiny. Dan, indeed, took no steps of that sort. For him, as for most of us, the skirts of circumstance were as the meshes of the net in which Fate holds us, and his evil star was an object of which it seemed very hard to get a good grip. I have always wondered myself how people set about it. At any rate, Dan continued to walk under his; that is to say, if it were really bad luck that kept him at the forge. Upon this point there might be differences of opinion. Terence Kilfoyle, for instance, who dropped in to escape from a snow-shower in the course of that morning, would not, evidently, have taken such a view. For when Dan said something grumblingly about Lisconnel being "a slack sort of a place, where one didn't get much chance of doin' anythin' at all;" he replied, "Bedad now, if I'd the fine business you and your grandfather have to be puttin' me hand to, I wouldn't call the Queen me aunt."

In those times the district around our bogland was more thickly inhabited than it is at present, and the blacksmith's jobs were proportionately plentier. Nowadays the forge is liable to long spells of silence, but Dan, who as young Dan has been superseded, philosophises over them, and talks no more about chances. On this occasion his remarks were overheard by his grandfather, perhaps because the old man had begun to have thoughts of chances which made him sensitive to signs of discontent in his assistant. And by and by when Terence had gone, he said, "Terence said a very sinsible word; a lad might aisy get a worse start in life, ay indeed he might so, if it was twyste as slack. But anyhow there's them here that 'ud be hard set to make a shift for themselves if the two of us was out of it; and I'm apt to be quittin' before Biddy at all events." To which Dan replied, "Why what talk was there of quittin'?" and the subject ceased out of the conversation. During the subsequent silence Dan thought, among other things, that it was "aisy for his grandfather to be talkin';" but in this he made a mistake. For old O'Beirne remembered vividly that he had once had his own restless ambitions, and his chances, too, of realising them, in times when he did more stirring things than merely forge pike-heads. Therefore he guessed what lent an unnecessary vehemence to his grandson's hammering, and if he could have thought of any consolatory remark, he would have made it. But it only occurred to him to say that the days would soon be len'thenin' now, anyway; and even to himself this seemed cold comfort. Dan replied, "Och, they're plinty long enough," and sent a thick swarm of fiery bees flitting up the dark-throated chimney.

That evening when Dan closed the broad-leaved forge doors, he shut himself out into a world as black and white as moonlight on turf and snow could make it. Though the morning's flutter of snow had left but a meagre sprinkling on that great bogland, the moonbeams touching every scattered flake, seemed to gather it all up widely in one stark spectral gleam. Far away towards the horizon this dulled off into a shadowy zone of mist, where the wind was muttering and moaning to itself, dimly heard across the hushed floor of the night. Beyond that Dan was aware wistfully of regions unknown, with all their possibilities fascinating and mysterious. But he had small scope for speculation about what he should find when he opened the house door fast by; and in fact he discovered everything and everybody just as he could have foretold. The fire-lit room was filled with the busy weaving of the web that ruddy gleams and russet shadows never got finished, swiftly as they glanced, and overhead the black spaces between the rafters gloomed down like inlets of a starless sky. There sat his great-grandmother smoking her dudeen in her nook by the hearth, and her big cloak—a very little of wizened old woman to a great many heavy, dark-blue folds. There, too, knitted her grey-haired daughter Bridget, who said, as she did every evening, "Well, Dan, so you're come in," and would have not much more to say for herself that night except the Rosary. And his grandfather, who had come in just before him, was lighting his pipe in the opposite chimney-corner. A year ago his brother Nicholas would have thrust a head, all eyes and rumpled hair, into a patch of bright flickerings, to pore over the tattered arithmetic-book; but by this time his absence had become a matter of course. The only at all unusual feature was Joe Denny, the blind fiddler, who had called in on his way home and had a drop of poteen and a farrel of wholemeal cake. Yet Joe was indeed a tolerably common incident, and his jokes altered not. He had begun his parting one, which was to the effect that sorra a man in the counthry of Connaught could see clearer than himself if the night was dark enough, when Dan's arrival interrupted him, and made him declare, taking out his fiddle, that 'twould be a poor case if the lad didn't get e'er a tune at all. Dan was not much in the humour for tunes, but he said, "Ay, Joe, give us a one, man-alive," and Joe struck up with twangle and squeak.

He was playing—

"Over the hills and far away, Over the hills and beyond the say, Over the hills and a great way off, And the wind it blew—"

when a thudding knock on the door seemed to beat down the shriller sounds and stop the sliding bow. Dan went to see who it was, and found standing on the threshold a tall, lean old man in a long, ragged coat, with a thick, knotted blackthorn in his hand. A few hard-frozen granules pattered in at the opened door, which admitted a glimpse of the moon, tarnished by a thin drift of scudding cloud.

"God save all here," said the old man, who was a stranger.

"Good-evenin' to you kindly, sir," responded old Felix from his fireside corner; "and wudn't you be steppin' widin?"

"I'm on'y axin' me way to the place below there—Ballybrosna beyond Duffclane," said the old man; "it's the road I must be steppin', for I'm more than a thrifle late."

But he came slowly forward into the room as if lured by the fire, at which he looked hungrily. He stooped and limped very much, and when he took off his black caubeen, the sharp gleam of his white hair seemed to comment coldly on those infirmities.

"I'm widin a mile or so of it, or maybe less, by now, I should suppose," he said.

"Faix, then, it's the long mile," said the fiddler. "Put half a dozen to it, and you'll be nearer; and bedad it's aisier work doin' that in your head than on your feet. Be the same token I must be leggin' it, or they'll consait I'm lost at our place." And he stepped out darkly into the veiled moonlight.

"Wirrasthrew and weary on it," the old man said to himself; and then to the others, "Is it that far as he says?"

"Ay is it, every inch," said old O'Beirne. "And too long a thramp for you altogether, sir, if I might make so free."

"For the matther of that," said the ragged old man, proudly, "I've walked the double of it, and more, times and agin, widout so much as considherin'. But your road's a bit heavy to-night, wid the snow—and could."

"That's the worst of the roads," said the little old woman, peering suddenly out of her corner; "the longer you walk them, the longer they'll grow on you, till you begin to think there's no ind to them. And after that, the best conthrivance is to keep off of them clivir and clane, the way I do. Then they're no len'th at all."

"Ah, ma'am, but 'twouldn't be very handy if the young folk took to thryin' that plan," the old man said. "We're bound to keep steppin' out."

A short silence followed this remark, because the hearers felt uncertain whether he meant the pronoun for a jest. To evade the difficulty, old O'Beirne bade Dan fetch a mug for a drop of poteen, and meanwhile said to the stranger:

"Sit you down, sir, and take a taste of the fire. Where might you be thravellin' from this day?"

"I was livin' over at Innislone," said the old man, sitting down on a creepy stool.

"Musha, then, you didn't ever come that far all on ind—sure it's miles untould."

"'Twas the day afore yisterday I quit. Last night I slep' at Sallinbeg, and this mornin' I met a man who loaned me a grand lift in his cart."

"I used to know a man lived at Innislone," said old O'Beirne, "be the name of Brian English. He come by here of an odd while after the stuff."

"Ay, bedad, and a very dacint ould crathur he was. Meself's one of the Dermodys—young Christie they call me—but ould Christie that was me poor father's dead this while back. Thank you kindly, lad," the old man said to Dan, who now handed him a little delft mug half full of whisky. "Why, you're nigh as long a fellow as meself. Are you good at the wrestlin'?"

"Och, I'm no great things whatever," Dan replied with becoming modesty.

"There's not many heavy weights in the parish 'ud care to stand up to me," said this young Christie, holding the mug in a gaunt tremulous hand. "Faix, it's noways forrard they've been about it since the time I come near breakin' Rick Tighe's neck. I've noticed that. Begorrah, now, ivery sowl thought I had him massacred," he said, with a transient gleam of genuine complacency. "You might have heard tell of it, belike?"

"It 'ud ha' happint before my recollections, sir, maybe," said Dan, looking at him perplexedly, "if 'twas apt to ha' been a longish while ago."

"'Twasn't long to say," said the old man. He drank the spirits lingeringly, in slow sips, and seemed to sit up straighter as he did so. Then he set down the empty mug on the table, and said, "Boys' wages."

But he had scarcely uttered the words when he perceived that he had thought aloud irrelevantly, and made haste to cover the slip. "I'd better be gettin' on wid meself," he said, rising, "Thank you, kindly. That's an iligant fire you have." He looked at it regretfully, but turned resolutely towards the door, still open, and framing the broad dim whiteness out away to the bounding curtain of gloom. "It's a grand thing," he said defiantly, "to have all the world before you."

The sentiment was not accepted without qualification.

"That depinds," said old O'Beirne. "Somewhiles I question wud you find anythin' in it better than a warm corner and a pipe of 'baccy, if you thramped the whole of it. And you might happen on a dale worse. What do you say, mother?"

She was knocking ashes out of her pipe-bowl against the wall, and nodded in assent.

"It's no place for people that can keep shut of it," she said.

"If you've ne'er a chance of gettin' into it," said Dan, "I dunno what great good it does you bein' there afore or behind."

"Or if you knew there was nothin' left in it you wanted to be goin' after," said his great-aunt, half to herself.

"Well, whatever way you look at it," said the strange old man, "I've a notion I've a right to be gettin' somethin' more out of it be now than boys' wages. Ay, it's time I was. Boys' wages; the lyin' spalpeen."

"If you axed me, sir," said old O'Beirne, "I'd say 'twas time somebody else would be gettin' the wages. Isn't there any childer to be earnin' for you? Haven't you e'er a son, that you need be thrampin' the counthry that fashion, let alone talkin' about all the world, wild like?"

"I've a son, troth have I, if that was all," said the old man, turning away, angrily.

"Then it's that much better off than me you are. The only one I had, he took and died on me, himself, and his poor wife a couple of days after him—God be good to them—when the lad there wasn't scarce the height of that stool, and a less size on his brother, that's away now in the States gettin' all manner of a fine edication. Very dacint poor childer they always was, too; but it was a bad job."

"He might ha' done worse agin you than that," said Christie Dermody, "be the powers he might." He had retreated as far as the door, but now he faced round, and stood on the edge of the thin snow, leaning his right shoulder against the post, and looking in at the other old man by the fire. "He might ha' fooled you for years and years, and made a laughin'-stock of you wid everybody about the place—and me wid ne'er a thought of any such a thing—he might so, and bad luck to him.... 'Foostherin' about and consaitin' to be doin' a fair day's work, when he's the creep of a snail on him, and the stren'th of a rat.' That's what I heard Tim Reilly sayin' and I goin' home on the Saturday night. But if I come creepin' after him, the young baste, he'd maybe ha' raison to remimber it.... And himself and the wife lettin' on there was nothin' like me; and he callin' me to come into his room—I heard him plain enough all the while, no fear, but I wudn't be lettin' on. There's ne'er a hap'orth ailin' him. Troth he may call till he's choked afore iver I'll come next or nigh him. And sendin' the little girl slutherin' to say her daddy wanted me. I tould her want might be his master. Sure they're all the one pack, and the widest width there is in this world I'll be keepin' between them and me. Shut of them I'll be for good and all—and I'll make me fortin' yet, and no thanks to him. What talk have they of ould men? Boys' wages. Good-night to you all."

To those in the room it seemed as if he dropped away back into the wan dusk behind him, and next moment they saw him in motion a few paces distant, limping fast, and gesticulating as though he were still carrying on his monologue.

"That old crathur's asthray in his mind, I misdoubt," said old O'Beirne, "and I wouldn't won'er if he was after gettin' bad thratement among his own people."

"Goodness pity him," said his sister Bridget. "It's a cruel perishin' night, and snowin' thicker. Where'll he get to at all? And carryin' nought but an old stick. We'd better ha' kep' him."

"Sure we couldn't ha' stopped him anyhow," said the blacksmith, "no more than one of them flustherin' blasts goin' by. When a body's took up wid onraisonable notions, you might as well be hammerin' could iron as offerin' to persuade him diff'rint. But he'll maybe turn in at the Gallahers'."

They watched him until the dark imprints of his receding steps in the thin snow-sheet could no longer be distinguished, and then Dan closed the door, shutting out the wide world and the fortune seeker. "Things is quare and conthrary," he said to himself.

Some two hours afterwards they were all sitting round the fire still. It was nearly nine o'clock, which is late in Lisconnel, but they found it hard to detach themselves from the cordial grasp of the warm glow. Bridget, however, had put by her needles, and begun to tell her beads, when another knock broke in upon them.

"He's come back belike," said old O'Beirne; but when Dan opened the door, the person who stood there, though likewise tall and gaunt and ragged, had grizzled black hair, and was not more than middle-aged. His face was hollow-cheeked and drawn, and his eyes glittered while he shivered and panted. The night had grown wilder as the moon sank low, and the snow went past the door like rapid wafts of ghostly smoke. This newcomer stumbled into the room without ceremony, as if half blinded, and said breathlessly—

"Did any of yous be chance see an ould man goin' this road to-day? An ould ancient man, somethin' lame; be the name of Christie Dermody?"

"Ay, sure enough, himself was in it not so long ago," said old O'Beirne. "If it hadn't been you, 'twas very apt to ha' been him come back."

In the man's face one trouble seemed to be relieved by another at the tidings.

"Glory be to goodness, then, that I've heard tell of him at last," he said. "But God help the crathur, what's to become of him streelin' about this freezin' night? The snow's as dhry as mail-dust. Perished he'll be. Och, he's the terrible man to go do such a thing on us. What way did he quit? It's me ould father, sir, that's over eighty years of age."

"And is he after strayin' away on you?" said old O'Beirne.

"Follyin' him since yisterday mornin' I am," said the other, "when it's in me bed I should be be rights, for I'm that distroyed wid the could on me chest I've scare a bit of breath in me body. But sure what matter if I can come be the crathur agin. Is it that a-way he went, did you notice?"

"You're bound to wait till the flurry of the win's gone by," said old O'Beirne, for his visitor pointed out into a shrieking whirl, shrilling higher and fiercer. "Sorra a minyit you'll lose, for you couldn't stir a step in that or see a stim. Sit you down a while. What was it set him rovin'?"

"Did he say anythin' agin us? Anythin' of bein' thrated bad?"

"Well, I wouldn't say he seemed altogether satisfied in himself," said old O'Beirne, remembering his suspicions. "Somethin' he said of bein' made a fool of, and tould lies to——"

"And gettin' boys' wages," said Dan.

"Ay, ay, wirrasthrew, that was the very notion he had, goodness help us. What will we do at all wid him? You see, sir, me father's a won'erful proud-minded man; he is that. And a great big man, and as strong as ten he was, ontil he got rael ould entirely. So it's cruel bad he thinks of not bein' able for everythin' the way he used to be; and he won't let on but he is, be no manner of manes he won't. 'Deed no, he sez he's as good a man as ever he was in his life."

"Belike now he's of the opinion the sun doesn't dhrop down out of the sky of an evenin'," said little old Mrs. O'Beirne, with sarcasm. "What does the ould body expec'?"

"I dunno, ma'am, I dunno. Sure it's agin nathur and raison. There's meself gettin' as grey as a badger, and noways that supple as I was. But me father's a terrible cliver man. You'd niver get the better of an argufyment wid him, for he wouldn't listen to a word you'd be sayin'. So you see the way of it was, the two of us is workin' this great while on Mr. Blake's lan', that's a dacint man enough; and it might be three year ago, he sez to me one Saturday night—for be good luck 'twas me and not me father he'd mostly be payin'—sez he to me, 'Look it here, Ned, it's the last time I'll be givin' man's wages to your father, for bedad an infant child 'ud do as much as he any day of the week. So I'll put him on boys' wages,' he sez, 'that'ill be three shillin's, and every penny as much as he's worth,' sez he. And sure I knew it was the truth he was sayin', but 'twould break me father's heart.

"So nought better could I do on'y to make out 'twas he would be gettin' the man's wages, and meself the boy's. Diff'rint raisons I conthrived," he said, with some natural pride in the details of his strategy, "but mostly I let on 'twas because of me bein' such a fool about the horses they couldn't trust me wid any except the ould ones. Anyway me father was contint enough; faix, some whiles he seemed a bit set up like, considherin' he had the pull over me, and he'd be sayin' what at all 'ud we do without him, and I such an omadhawn. Niver a cross word we had until last week I got laid up wid this mischancy could and the pain in me chest, so sorra a fut could I go to me work; and I well knew the whole thing 'ud come out, if he went when I didn't. Bedad I dhramed it all the night asleep and awake, till I was fairly moidhered in me head."

"Tub-be sure," said old O'Beirne, "that's the worst of lettin' on. If anythin' goes crooked, it's like the bottom bursted out of a sack of mail; you're carryin' about nothin' at all before you know what's happint you."

"Well, we done the best we could, me wife and me, to dispersuade him off of goin' on Saturday. Bad wid the could too, we said he was; but och not a fut of him but would go. So Barney McAuliffe was tellin' me wife, when the men was payin' in the yard, me father he ups and says to Mr. Blake:

"'Beg pardon, sir, but you're after givin' me no more than me son's money, and it's meself was workin' this week, not him.'

"And Mr. Blake sez, just goin' off in a hurry, 'What are you talkin' about, man? Whethen now, you don't suppose I've been payin' you full wages, that hasn't done a stroke of work worth namin' this half-dozen year? That'ill have to contint you till Ned's back agin.'

"And Barney sez my father had ne'er a word out of him, but just went home dazed like. And me wife sez when he come in, he sits down on the form be the door, and niver opens his lips. So she knew right well what ailed him, and she said iverythin' she could think of—how it's disthroyed we'd be on'y for him now I was laid up, and the won'erful man he was, and this way and that way. But niver a word he heeded, nor near the fire he wouldn't come, and had her heart-scalded seein' him sittin' there in the draught of the door. And I meself was tired callin' him to come in and spake to me, and I lyin' in bed, but next or nigh me he niver come, not even for little Maggie that he always thought a hape of. And the next mornin' if he wasn't quit out of it early, afore anybody knew, in the bitter black frost, and a quare threatinin' of snow. So then as soon as I heard tell, I up wid me and come after him. Troth, I left the wife frettin' wild, the crathur, thinkin' I'd get me death; but what else could I do? And now I must be steppin' on again. Och no, thank you, lad, if I took a dhrop of spirits, I'd be choked wid coughin'. But you might just set me on the right road."

"I'll go along wid him," said Dan, aside to his grandfather, "and if I can bring him, or the both of them, back here, I will. It's my belief he's as bad as he can stick together."

So Dan and old Dermody's son went out into the night. A lull in the wind had come, and the light of the moon, hung near the horizon's rim, flickered out dimly ever and anon as the edge of the drifting mist lapped up wave-like and touched her. It was piercingly cold. Ned Dermody leaned heavily on Dan as they walked, only till he fetched back his breath, he said, but it was slow in coming. They had not gone many hundred yards, yet vast tracts of solitude seemed to have folded round them, before Dan caught sight of something that somehow startled and shocked him—a group of boulders by the road, with a shadow under one of them strangely like a human form. A few paces further on he became aware that it really was a man—the old man—sitting huddled up under the big glimmering stone. Thus far had he carried his forlorn quest after Fortune, and mutiny against Fate. His snaggy stick lay at a little distance, a black line on the snow, and the sight of that made Dan's heart stumble. But Ned Dermody shouted out hoarsely and loud: "Be the Lord it's himself," and, as Dan afterwards used to tell, "took a flyin' lep at him, as if he'd a mind to ha' lep over the world."

"Musha now, and is it there you would be sittin' to catch your death of could?" he began, in a tone of gleeful reproach, shaking the old man by the shoulder. "Goodness forgive me for sayin' so, but it's yourself's the pernicious ould miscreant. Fine thrampin' over the counthry I've had after you—forby givin' us the greatest fright altogether. Sure I give you me word the whole of them at home was runnin' in and out of the house on Sunday mornin' like so many scared rabbits about a bank. And ne'er a man-jack of them, you persaive, had the wit to find out where you was off to till meself riz out of me bed to go look. And now, man-alive, git up wid yourself and come along, for it's mortal could here, and there's tons' weight of snow this instiant minyit ready to dhrop down on our heads. Come along. Sure it's niver disthressin' yourself you'd be about ould Blake and his wages? Musha sure Norah and meself was sayin' on'y on Saturday night that there wasn't many stookawns like me had fathers to be bringin' them home shillin's every week as regular as the clock, and givin' prisints to the childer, and all manner. There's little Maggie frettin' woful to be missin' you out of it. Don't be keepin' me standin' on me feet, there's a good man, for it's quare and bad I've been, and the doctor was sayin' he couldn't tell what ruination mightn't be on me if I didn't mind what I was at. And here's the dacint lad waitin' to show us the road. We're just comin' along this instant, boyo. Look-a-daddy, 'twas all a mistake, and we'll settle it up next week, when we're both workin' agin. Very belike Mr. Blake didn't rightly know what he was sayin'. Wake up and come along.... Daddy darlint, don't you hear what I'm tellin' you? It's raisin' your wages they'll be after Lent, I wouldn't won'er, raisin' them a shillin' belike—rael grand it'ill be—God Almighty!"

He stood up suddenly and looked towards Dan, but at neither him nor anything else. The moon began to shine clearer in a chink between two straight leaden bars, and the great white bog seemed to grow wider and stiller under the strengthening light. The very wind had forsaken them, and gone off keening into the far distance. It seemed to Dan that even a flake fluttering down would have been some company, but not a single one was in the air. He felt himself seized by a nameless panic, such as had not come over him since he was a small child a dozen years ago.

"What's the matter at all?" he said futilely to Ned Dermody, knowing well enough.

"Gone he is," said Ned, "the life was vexed out of him among us all. He's gone. And it's follyin' him I'd liefer be, on'y for them crathurs at home."

But in another moment he came staggering against Dan, and clutched his arm, saying wildly: "Ah, lend me a hand—for pity's sake—a hand for a minyit. Don't let go of me." And he leant such a heavy dead weight on him that all Dan could do was to let it slip down and down as softly as might be, until the snowy earth took it from him.

Ned had followed in spite of the crathurs at home.



CHAPTER X

CON THE QUARE ONE

Among the unfamiliar faces that show themselves now and then at Lisconnel, some make no second appearance, never coming our way again, but passing out of our ken as utterly as if their route lay along a tangent, or the branch of an hyperbola, or other such unreverting line. We seldom, it is true, get proof positive, as in the case of the Dermodys, father and son, that they will no more return. Generally their doing so any day may be supposed possible as long as anybody remembers to suppose it. But some come back at more or less regular intervals, like periodic comets, so that if a certain time elapses without bringing one of them, the neighbours say they wonder what's took him at all, while some reappear erratically enough to preclude any calculations upon the subject. Of this latter class was Con the Quare One, who, after his first arrival, on a summer's evening, now more than a quarter of a century since, became a rather frequent visitor, usually stopping for a few days at least, before he resumed his travels. It was conjectured that these were very extensive, though perhaps less so than Mad Bell's. But it was even more difficult to obtain a satisfactory report of them from him than from her. Mrs. M'Gurk said he was "so took up with his own notions, that he mostly knew no better where he'd been, or what he'd been doin', than a baste drivin' home from a fair; you might as soon be axin' questions of one as the other; though when Con chose to give his mind to it, he knew what he was about as well as anybody else. Sure if you wanted to know which way he was after comin', as likely as not he'd talk about nothin' on'y the sorts of clouds he'd been watchin' goin' by over his head; and 'twould take a cliver body to tell from that what road he might ha' had under his feet." This incommunicativeness made him a disappointing guest sometimes by the firesides, where he was finding a night's lodging; though he might eke out his conversation with a little twangling on his fiddle, in which the melody would be quite as vague as his narratives. As for his own earlier history, he never gave any clear account of it, probably having none to give, and the neighbours' speculations upon this point were somewhat wide of the mark, which was not surprising, as what stray hints he did let fall could be very deviously construed. The opinion most commonly received held that he had "took and run off from home, and he but a gossoon, be raison of doin' some quare bit of mischief, and had a mind yet to be keepin' out of his people's way; though, like enough, they weren't throublin' their heads about him be now;" a theory which was not entirely in accordance with facts.

Con was not, I believe, an especially quare one at his first start in life, begun under the thatch of a little whitewashed cottage, dotted down among grass-fields beside a clear, brown river, which kept his mother busy exhorting him and his half-dozen brethren to not be falling in and drowning themselves on her. Her days were haunted by apprehensions of that catastrophe, which, however, was not included in the plot of her life's drama. Con's chosen bugbear was the bridge which bestrode the river close by, and beneath the arch of which he had once happened to be while a cart passed overhead. For the lumbering rumble had been an appalling experience, which he shuddered to repeat. Yet he lacked the moral courage to rouse his elders' derision by an avowal, so he followed, and did not let on, whenever their wading and dabbling brought them into the hollow-sounding shade. Despite this daily anxiety, Con spent his earliest years light-heartedly enough, with no stinting of pitaties—none at least that reached the childer—and ample scope for sports and pastimes. But when he was still very small, his grandmother, lately widowed and on her way to a new abode, stopped a night with her married daughter, and begged that she might bring home one of the grandchildren with her, "just to take the could edge off her lonesomeness," a request which could not well be refused. And Con seemed the appropriate person to go, as the old woman considered that "the dark head of hair he had on him was the moral of his poor grandfather's afore it turned white." Therefore the swiftly running mysteriously murmuring river flowed away out of his life, and with it vanished all the faces and voices and comradeship that had made up his world.

At first he fretted for them rather persistently, but after a time adapted himself to circumstances, and contented himself with the grass-bordered, hedge-muffled lane, which had become the scene of his adventures, fraternizing with the reserved fawn-coloured goat and demonstrative terrier, who alone took an intelligent interest in them. For his grandmother was satisfied with the sense of having him "playin' around handy," and could not be counted company.

But after nearly a twelvemonth had passed, Con seemed one day to be seized with a fresh fit of homesickness. It was a brilliant late summer morning, yet to old Mrs. Quin's perplexity, he continued to sit on his little stool, with his slice of griddle-cake half-crumbled in his lap, and answered her suggestions that he should finish his breakfast, and run out to play, by irrelevant requests for his own ould mammy. He wanted her cruel bad, he said, and there was nothin' ailed him, and he wouldn't like to look for blackberries along the hedge—or to throw stones for Bran—or even to be given a whole ha'penny to go buy himself a grand sugarstick down at the shop—he only wanted his mammy. Such was his attitude and refrain all that day and the next. After which his grandmother said to her neighbour, Judy Ahern, that she couldn't tell what had come over the child, and he had her fairly distracted listening to him.

And Mrs. Ahern said: "Maybe he might be gettin' somethin'; there's a terrible dale of sickness about. But he doesn't look very bad to say. Arrah now, Con avic, why wouldn't you run out and play a bit this lovely mornin'? Wantin' your mammy? Sure that's foolish talk, and she nobody can tell how far away this minyit. It's just a notion you have.... 'Deed, ma'am, I dunno, but maybe you'd a right to let him home to her, or else he might get frettin' and mopin' himself into the fever. He's a poor little crathur; the face of him this instant isn't the width of a ha'penny herrin'."