{"collection":"myth-cosmogony","full_text_available":true,"graph_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/api/page/gutenberg_46558/graph","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/page/gutenberg_46558","id":"gutenberg_46558","license":"Public Domain (US)","rights_basis":"gutenberg_metadata_copyright_false","source":"gutenberg","source_url":"https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/46558","summary":null,"tags":["Angels -- Fiction","Category: Mythology, Legends & Folklore","Category: Novels","Ireland -- Fiction","Tramps -- Fiction"],"text":"THE DEMI-GODS\n\n\n\n\n                             [Illustration]\n\n                         THE MACMILLAN COMPANY\n                  NEW YORK \u00b7 BOSTON \u00b7 CHICAGO \u00b7 DALLAS\n                        ATLANTA \u00b7 SAN FRANCISCO\n\n                        MACMILLAN & CO., LIMITED\n                       LONDON \u00b7 BOMBAY \u00b7 CALCUTTA\n                               MELBOURNE\n\n                   THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, LTD.\n                                TORONTO\n\n\n\n\n                             THE DEMI-GODS\n\n\n                                   BY\n                             JAMES STEPHENS\n               AUTHOR OF \"THE HILL OF VISION,\" \"THE CROCK\n                   OF GOLD,\" \"HERE ARE LADIES,\" ETC.\n\n\n                                New York\n                         THE MACMILLAN COMPANY\n                                  1921\n                         _All rights reserved_\n\n\n\n\n                            COPYRIGHT, 1914,\n                       BY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY.\n           Set up and electrotyped. Published October, 1914.\n\n\n                             Norwood Press\n                 J. S. Cushing Co.--Berwick & Smith Co.\n                         Norwood, Mass., U.S.A.\n\n\n\n\n                                   To\n                             THOMAS BODKIN\n\n\n\n\n                                CONTENTS\n\n\n                                 BOOK I\n                                                                PAGE\n    PATSY MAC CANN                                                 1\n\n\n                                BOOK II\n    EILEEN NI COOLEY                                              85\n\n\n                                BOOK III\n    BRIEN O'BRIEN                                                141\n\n\n                                BOOK IV\n    MARY MAC CANN                                                225\n\n\n\n\n                                 BOOK I\n\n                             PATSY MAC CANN\n\n\n\n\n                               CHAPTER I\n\n\n\"Will you leave that donkey alone,\" said Patsy Mac Cann to his daughter.\n\"I never heard the like of it,\" he continued testily. \"I tell you the\nway you do be going on with the ass is enough to make a Christian man\nswear, so it is.\"\n\n\"You let me be,\" she replied. \"If I was doing hurt or harm to you I\nwouldn't mind, and if I am fond of the ass itself what does it matter to\nanybody?\"\n\n\"It's this way, that I don't like to see a woman kissing an ass on the\nsnout, it's not natural nor proper.\"\n\n\"A lot you know about natural and proper. Let you leave me alone now;\nand, besides that, doesn't the ass like it?\"\n\n\"That's not a reason; sure it doesn't matter in the world what an ass\nlikes or dislikes, and, anyhow, an ass doesn't like anything except\ncarrots and turnips.\"\n\n\"This one does,\" said she stoutly.\n\n\"And a body might be kissing an ass until the black day of doom and he\nwouldn't mind it.\"\n\n\"This one minds.\"\n\n\"Kissing an old ass!\"\n\n\"One has to be kissing something.\"\n\n\"Let you kiss me then and get done with it,\" said he.\n\nShe regarded him in amazement.\n\n\"What would I kiss you for? Sure you're my father, and aren't you as old\nas the hills?\"\n\n\"Well, well, you're full of fun, and that's what I say. Take the winkers\noff that donkey's face, and let him get a bit to eat; there's grass\nenough, God knows, and it's good grass.\"\n\nMary busied herself with the winkers and the bit while her father\ncontinued:\n\n\"What I wish is this, that Christian people were able to eat grass like\nthe beasts, and then there wouldn't be any more trouble in the world.\nAre you listening to me, Mary, or are you listening to the donkey?\"\n\n\"It's you I'm listening to.\"\n\n\"I say this, that if every person had enough to eat there'd be no more\ntrouble in the world and we could fight our fill. What have you got in\nthe basket?\"\n\n\"I've the loaf that I bought in the shop at Knockbeg, and the half loaf\nthat you took out of the woman's window--it's fresher than the other\none.\"\n\n\"I was guided,\" said her father. \"We'll eat that one first the way no\nperson can claim it. What else have you got?\"\n\n\"I've the white turnip that I found in a field.\"\n\n\"There's great nourishment in turnips; the cattle do get fat on them in\nwinter.\"\n\n\"And I've the two handfuls of potatoes that you gathered at the bend of\nthe road.\"\n\n\"Roast themselves in the embers, for that's the only road to cook a\npotato. What way are we going to eat to-night?\"\n\n\"We'll eat the turnip first, and then we'll eat the bread, and after\nthat we'll eat the potatoes.\"\n\n\"And fine they'll taste. I'll cut the turnip for you with the\nsailorman's jackknife.\"\n\n                   *       *       *       *       *\n\nThe day had drawn to its close. The stars had not yet come, nor the\nmoon. Far to the west a red cloud poised on the horizon like a great\nwhale and, moment by moment, it paled and faded until it was no more\nthan a pink flush. On high, clouds of pearl and snow piled and fell and\nsailed away on easy voyages. It was the twilight--a twilight of such\nquietude that one could hear the soft voice of the world as it whispered\nthrough leaf and twig. There was no breeze to swing the branches of the\ntrees or to creep among the rank grasses and set them dancing, and yet\neverywhere there was unceasing movement and a sound that never ceased.\nAbout them, for mile upon mile, there was no habitation of man; there\nwas no movement anywhere except when a bird dipped and soared in a hasty\nflight homewards, or when a beetle went slugging by like a tired bullet.\n\nMary had unharnessed the ass and bade him, with an affectionate kiss, to\neat his full. The donkey stood for a moment with his ears and tail\nhanging down, then he lifted both his ears and his tail, slung up his\nragged head, bared his solid teeth, and brayed furiously for two\nminutes. That accomplished he trotted briskly a few paces, bent to the\ngrass, and began to eat so eagerly that one would think eating was more\nof a novelty to him than it could be to an ass of his years.\n\n\"The sound of that beast's voice does get on my nerves,\" said Patsy.\n\n\"He has a powerful voice, sure enough, God bless him! Sit down there by\nthe hedge and light the fire while I'm getting the things ready; the\nnight will be on us in a few minutes and it will be a cold night.\"\n\nWhile she moved busily from the cart to the hedge her father employed\nhimself lighting a fire of turf in a wrinkled bucket. When this was\nunder way he pulled out a pipe, black as a coal, and off which half the\nshank was broken, and this he put into his mouth. At the moment he\nseemed to be sunken in thought, his eyes to the grass and his feet\nplanted, and it was in a musing voice that he spoke:\n\n\"Do you know what I'd do, Mary, if I had a bottle of porter beside me in\nthis field?\"\n\n\"I do well,\" she replied; \"you'd drink it.\"\n\n\"I would so, but before I'd drink it I'd put the end of this pipe into\nit, for it's newly cracked, and it sticks to my lips in a way that would\nanger a man wanting a smoke, and if I could stick it into the porter it\nwould be cured. I don't suppose, now, that you have a sup of porter in\nthe cart!\"\n\n\"I have not.\"\n\n\"Because if you had a small sup I'd be able to get a smoke this night,\nas well as a drink.\"\n\n\"You're full of fun,\" said she sourly.\n\n\"I saw a bottle in your hand a while back,\" he continued musingly, \"and\nit looked like a weighty bottle.\"\n\n\"It's full to the neck with spring water.\"\n\n\"Ah!\" said her father, and he regarded that distant horizon whereon the\npink cloud was now scarcely visible as a pinkness and was no longer the\nshape of a great whale.\n\nAfter a moment he continued in a careless voice:\n\n\"You might hand me the bottle of spring water, alanna, till I wet my\nlips with it. It's a great thing for the thirst, I'm told, and it's\nhealthy beside that.\"\n\n\"I'm keeping that sup of water to make the tea when we'd be wanting it.\"\n\n\"Well, I'll only take a drop out of it, and I won't lose the cork.\"\n\n\"You can get it yourself, then,\" said Mary, \"for I've plenty to do and\nyou haven't.\"\n\nHer father, rolling his tough chin with his fingers, went to the cart.\nHe found the bottle, lifted the cork, smelt it, tasted:\n\n\"It is spring water indeed,\" said he, and he thumped the cork back again\nwith some irritation and replaced the bottle in the cart.\n\n\"I thought you wanted a drink,\" said his daughter mildly.\n\n\"So I do,\" he replied, \"but I can't stand the little creatures that do\nbe wriggling about in spring water. I wouldn't like to be swallowing\nthem unknown. Ah! them things don't be in barrels that you buy in a\nshop, and that's a fact.\"\n\nShe was preparing the potatoes when a remark from her father caused her\nto pause.\n\n\"What is it?\" said she.\n\n\"It's a bird. I saw it for a second against a white piece of a cloud,\nand I give you my word that it's as big as a haystack. There it is\nagain,\" he continued excitedly, \"there's three of them.\"\n\nFor a few minutes they followed the flight of these amazing birds, but\nthe twilight had almost entirely departed and darkness was brooding over\nthe land. They did not see them any more.\n\n\n\n\n                               CHAPTER II\n\n\nAnd yet it was but a short distance from where they camped that the\nangels first put foot to earth.\n\nIt is useless to question what turmoil of wind or vagary of wing brought\nthem to this desert hill instead of to a place more worthy of their\ngrandeur, for, indeed, they were gorgeously apparelled in silken robes\nof scarlet and gold and purple; upon their heads were crowns high in\nform and of curious, intricate workmanship, and their wings, stretching\nten feet on either side, were of many and shining colours.\n\nEnough that here they did land, and in this silence and darkness they\nstood for a few moments looking about them.\n\nThen one spoke:\n\n\"Art,\" said he, \"we were too busy coming down to look about us\ncarefully; spring up again a little way, and see if there is any house\nin sight.\"\n\nAt the word one of the three stepped forward a pace, and leaped twenty\nfeet into the air; his great wings swung out as he leaped, they beat\ntwice, and he went circling the hill in steady, noiseless flight.\n\nHe returned in a minute:\n\n\"There are no houses here, but a little way below I saw a fire and two\npeople sitting beside it.\"\n\n\"We will talk to them,\" said the other. \"Show the way, Art.\"\n\n\"Up then,\" said Art.\n\n\"No,\" said the Angel who had not yet spoken. \"I am tired of flying. We\nwill walk to this place you speak of.\"\n\n\"Very well,\" replied Art, \"let us walk.\"\n\nAnd they went forward.\n\n                   *       *       *       *       *\n\nAround the little bucket of fire where Mac Cann and his daughter were\nsitting there was an intense darkness. At the distance of six feet they\ncould still see, but delicately, indistinctly, and beyond that the night\nhung like a velvet curtain. They did not mind the night, they did not\nfear it, they did not look at it: it was around them, full of\nstrangeness, full of mystery and terror, but they looked only at the\nglowing brazier, and in the red cheer of that they were content.\n\nThey had eaten the bread and the turnip, and were waiting for the\npotatoes to be cooked, and as they waited an odd phrase, an exclamation,\na sigh would pass from one to the other; and then, suddenly, the dark\ncurtain of night moved noiselessly, and the three angels stepped nobly\nin the firelight.\n\nFor an instant neither Mac Cann nor his daughter made a movement; they\ndid not make a sound. Here was terror, and astonishment the sister of\nterror: they gaped: their whole being was in their eyes as they stared.\nFrom Mac Cann's throat came a noise; it had no grammatical significance,\nbut it was weighted with all the sense that is in a dog's growl or a\nwolf's cry. Then the youngest of the strangers came forward:\n\n\"May we sit by your fire for a little time?\" said he. \"The night is\ncold, and in this darkness one does not know where to go.\"\n\nAt the sound of words Patsy seized hold of his sliding civilization.\n\n\"To be sure,\" he stammered. \"Why wouldn't your honour sit down? There\nisn't a seat, but you're welcome to the grass and the light of the\nfire.\"\n\n\"Mary,\" he continued, looking hastily around--\n\nBut Mary was not there. The same instant those tall forms strode from\nthe darkness in front Mary had slipped, swift and noiseless as the\nshadow of a cat, into the darkness behind her.\n\n\"Mary,\" said her father again, \"these are decent people, I'm thinking.\nLet you come from wherever you are, for I'm sure they wouldn't hurt\nyourself or myself.\"\n\nAs swiftly as she had disappeared she reappeared.\n\n\"I was looking if the ass was all right,\" said she sullenly.\n\nShe sat again by the brazier, and began to turn the potatoes with a\nstick. She did not appear to be taking any heed of the strangers, but it\nis likely that she was able to see them without looking, because, as is\nwell known, women and birds are able to see without turning their heads,\nand that is indeed a necessary provision, for they are both surrounded\nby enemies.\n\n\n\n\n                              CHAPTER III\n\n\nThe remarkable thing about astonishment is that it can only last for an\ninstant. No person can be surprised for more than that time. You will\ncome to terms with a ghost within two minutes of its appearance, and it\nhad scarcely taken that time for Mac Cann and his daughter to become one\nwith the visitors.\n\nIf the surprisor and the surprisee are mutually astonished, then,\nindeed, there is a tangle out of which anything may emerge, for two\nexplanations are necessary at the one moment, and two explanations can\nno more hold the same position in time than two bodies can occupy the\nsame lodgment in space.\n\nIt needed alone that the angels should proclaim their quality for the\nsituation to arrange itself naturally.\n\nMan is a scientific creature; he labels his ignorance and shelves it:\nmystery affrights him, it bores him, but when he has given a name to any\nappearance then mystery flies away, and reality alone remains for his\ncogitation. Later, perhaps, reality will enrage and mystify him more\nprofoundly than any unexpectedness can do.\n\nThe Mac Canns, so far as they professed a religion, were Catholics.\nDeeper than that they were Irish folk. From their cradles, if ever they\nhad cradles other than a mother's breast and shoulder, they had supped\non wonder. They believed as easily as an animal does, for most creatures\nare forced to credit everything long before they are able to prove\nanything. We have arranged to label these faculties of imagination and\nprophecy among the lesser creatures Instinct, and with the label we have\nthrown overboard more of mystery than we could afford to live with.\nLater these may confront us again in our proper souls, and the wonder\nand terror so long overdue will compel our tardy obeisance.\n\nAt the end of amazement, as of all else, we go to sleep, and, within an\nhour of their meeting, the angels and the Mac Canns were stretched in\none common unconsciousness.\n\nThe angels were asleep, their attitudes proclaimed it. Patsy was asleep,\nhis nose, with the unpleasant emphasis of a cracked trumpet, pealed\nwheezy confirmation of his slumber. His daughter was asleep, for there\nby the brazier she lay, motionless as the ground itself.\n\nPerhaps she was not asleep. Perhaps she was lying with her face to the\nskies, staring through the darkness at the pale, scarce stars, dreaming\ndreams and seeing visions, while, all around, down the invisible road\nand across the vanished fields and the hills, night trailed her dusky\nrobes and crushed abroad her poppy.\n\nWhether she had slept or not she was the first to arise in the morning.\n\nA pale twilight was creeping over the earth, and through it one could\nsee chilly trees and shivering grass; the heavy clouds huddled together\nas though they were seeking warmth on those grisly heights; the birds\nhad not yet left their nests; it was an hour of utter silence and\nuncomeliness; an hour for blind and despairing creatures to move forward\nspitefully, cursing themselves and the powers; an hour when imagination\nhas no function, and hope would fly again to the darkness rather than\nremain in that livid wilderness, for this was not yet the thin child of\nthe dawn, crowned with young buds and active as a wintry leaf; it was\nthe abortion of the dawn, formless, heavy, and detestable.\n\nMoving cautiously in that shade, Mary herself seemed no more than a\nshadow; she diminished thin and formless as a wraith, while she trod\ncarefully to and fro from the cart to the hedge.\n\nShe sat down, unloosed her hair and commenced to brush it.\n\nIn this colourless light her hair had no colour, but was of astonishing\nlength and thickness; it flowed about her like a cloak, and as she sat\nit rolled and crept on the grass. She did not often tend her hair thus.\nSometimes she plaited it for the sake of convenience, so that windy days\nwould not whip it into her eyes or lash her cheeks; sometimes, through\nsheer laziness, she did not even plait it, she rolled it into a great\nball and drew a wide, masculine cap over its brightness; and now, before\nthe day had broken, sitting in a ghastly lightness, which was neither\nlight nor darkness, she was attending to her hair.\n\nAnd this hair perplexed her, for she did not know what to do with it;\nshe did not know whether it was to be seen or not seen; whether to braid\nit in two great ropes, or roll it carelessly or carefully above her\nhead, or let it hang loosely about her shoulders held only at the nape\nwith a piece of ribbon or stuff. An hesitation such as this was new to\nher; she had never had occasion for such forethought; it was strange and\ninquieting; more disturbing, indeed, than the visit at black of night of\nthose tall strangers whose eyes and voices were so quiet, and whose\nappointments flashed in the firelight while they spoke to her father of\nthe things in which travellers are interested.\n\nShe looked at them where they lay, but they were scarcely more than\nvisible--a tangle of flowing cloths and great limbs fading away in the\nrank grasses and the obscurity, and to her mind the real wonder was not\nthat they had come, but that they were still there, and that they were\nsleeping deeply and peacefully as she had slept so often, with her head\npillowed on her arm and her limbs folded calmly between the earth and\nthe sky.\n\n\n\n\n                               CHAPTER IV\n\n\nHer hair was not braided; it was tied at the neck with a piece of\nwhitish cloth torn from some part of her clothing, and upon her\nshoulders it billowed and rolled in magnificent living abundance.\n\nVery gently she moved to where her father lay on his back with his mouth\nopen and his black chin jutting at the sky. He was breathing through his\nmouth, so he was not snoring any longer. She lifted the three or four\nsacks which covered him, and rocked his shoulders cautiously until he\nawakened.\n\nHer father awakened exactly as she did, exactly as every open-air animal\ndoes; his eyes flew wide, instantly and entirely wakeful, and he looked\nat her with full comprehension of their adventure. He raised softly on\nan elbow and glanced to where the strangers were; then nodded to his\ndaughter and rose noiselessly to his feet. She beckoned him and they\nstepped a few paces away so that they might talk in security.\n\nMary was about to speak but her father prevented her:\n\n\"Listen,\" he whispered, \"the best thing we can do is to load the things\ninto the cart, without making any noise, mind you! then we'll yoke the\nlittle ass as easy as anything, and then I'll get into the cart and I'll\ndrive off as hard as ever I can pelt, and you can run beside the ass\nwith a stick in your hand and you welting the devil out of him to make\nhim go quick. I'm no good myself at the running, and that's why I'll get\ninto the cart, but you can run like a hare, and that's why you'll wallop\nthe beast.\"\n\n\"Mind now,\" he continued fiercely, \"we don't know who them fellows are\nat all, and what would the priest say if he heard we were stravaiging\nthe country with three big, buck angels, and they full of tricks maybe;\nso go you now and be lifting in the things and I'll give you good help\nmyself.\"\n\n\"I'll do nothing of the kind,\" whispered Mary angrily, \"and it wasn't\nfor that I woke you up.\"\n\n\"Won't you, indeed?\" said her father fiercely.\n\n\"What would they be thinking of us at all if they were to rouse and see\nus sneaking off in that way? I'm telling you now that I won't do it, and\nthat you won't do it either, and if you make a move to the cart I'll\ngive a shout that will waken the men.\"\n\n\"The devil's in you, you strap!\" replied her father, grinding his teeth\nat her. \"What call have we to be mixing ourselves up with holy angels\nthat'll be killing us maybe in an hour or half an hour; and maybe\nthey're not angels at all but men that do be travelling the land in a\ncircus and they full of fun and devilment?\"\n\n\"It's angels they are,\" replied his daughter urgently, \"and if they're\nnot angels itself they are rich men, for there's big rings of gold on\ntheir fingers, and every ring has a diamond in it, and they've golden\nchains across their shoulders, I'm telling you, and the stuff in their\nclothes is fit for the children of a king. It's rich and very rich they\nare.\"\n\nMac Cann rasped his chin with his thumb.\n\n\"Do you think they are rich folk?\"\n\n\"I do, indeed.\"\n\n\"Then,\" said her father in an abstracted tone, \"we won't say anything\nmore about it.\"\n\nAfter a moment he spoke again:\n\n\"What were you thinking about yourself?\"\n\n\"I was thinking,\" she replied, \"that when they waken up in a little\nwhile there won't be anything at all for them to eat and they\nstrangers.\"\n\n\"Hum!\" said her father.\n\n\"There's two cold potatoes in the basket,\" she continued, \"and a small\npiece of bread, and there isn't anything more than that; so let you be\nlooking around for something to eat the way we won't be put to shame\nbefore the men.\"\n\n\"It's easy talking!\" said he; \"where am I to look? Do you want me to\npick red herrings out of the grass and sides of bacon off the little\nbushes?\"\n\n\"We passed a house last night a mile down the road,\" said Mary; \"go you\nthere and get whatever you're able to get, and if you can't get anything\nbuy it off the people in the house. I've three shillings in my pocket\nthat I was saving for a particular thing, but I'll give them to you\nbecause I wouldn't like to be shamed before the strange men.\"\n\nHer father took the money:\n\n\"I wish I knew that you had it yesterday,\" he growled, \"I wouldn't have\ngone to sleep with a throat on me like a mid-summer ditch and it full of\ndust and pismires.\"\n\nMary pushed him down the road.\n\n\"Be back as quick as you are able, and buy every kind of thing that you\ncan get for the three shillings.\"\n\nShe watched him stamping heavily down the road, and then she returned\nagain to their encampment.\n\n\n\n\n                               CHAPTER V\n\n\nThe visitors had not awakened.\n\nNow the air was growing clearer; the first livid pallor of the dawn had\nchanged to a wholesome twilight, and light was rolling like clear smoke\nover the land. The air looked cold, and it began to look sharp instead\nof muddy; now the trees and bushes stood apart; they seemed lonely and\nunguarded in that chill dawning; they seemed like living things which\nwere cold and a little frightened in an immensity to which they were\nforeign and from which they had much to dread.\n\nOf all unnatural things, if that word can be used in any context, there\nis none more unnatural than silence, there is none so terrifying; for\nsilence means more than itself, it means also immobility; it is the\nsymbol and signature of death, and from it no one knows what may come at\nan instant; for silence is not quietness, it is the enemy of quietness;\nagainst it your watch must climb the tower and stare in vain; against it\nyour picket must be set, and he will thrust a lance to the sound of his\nown pulses; he will challenge the beating of his own heart, and hear his\nown harness threatening him at a distance.\n\nTo walk in a forest when there is no wind to stir the branches and set\nthe leaves tapping upon the boughs, this is terrifying; a lonely sea\nstretching beyond sight and upon which there is no ripple holds the same\ndespair, and a grassy plain from whence there is no movement visible has\ntoo its desolating horror.\n\nBut these things did not haunt the girl. She did not heed the silence\nfor she did not listen to it; she did not heed the immensity for she did\nnot see it. In space and silence she had been cradled; they were her\nfoster-parents, and if ever she looked or listened it was to see and\nhear something quite other than these. Now she did listen and look. She\nlistened to the breathing of the sleepers, and soon, for she was a\nfemale, she looked to see what they were like.\n\nShe leaned softly over one. He was a noble old man with a sweeping,\nwhite beard and a great brow; the expression of his quiet features was\nthat of a wise infant; her heart went out to him and she smiled at him\nin his sleep.\n\nShe trod to the next and bent again. He was younger, but not young; he\nlooked about forty years of age; his features were regular and very\ndetermined; his face looked strong, comely as though it had been\nchiselled from a gracious stone; there was a short coal-black beard on\nhis chin.\n\nShe turned to the third sleeper, and halted blushing. She remembered his\nface, caught on the previous night in one lightning peep while she slid\naway from their approach. It was from him she had fled in the night, and\nfor him that her hair was now draping her shoulders in unaccustomed\nbeauty.\n\nShe did not dare go near him; she was afraid that if she bent over him\nhe would flash open his eyes and look at her, and, as yet, she could not\nsupport such a look. She knew that if she were stretched in sleep and he\napproached to lean across her, she would awaken at the touch of his\neyes, and she would be ashamed and frightened.\n\nShe did not look at him.\n\nShe went again to her place and set to building a fire in the brazier,\nand, while she sat, a voice began to sing in the dawn; not loud, but\nvery gently, very sweetly. It was so early for a bird to sing, and she\ndid not recognise that tune although the sound of it was thrilling\nthrough all her body. Softly, more softly, O Prophetic Voice! I do not\nknow your speech; I do not know what happiness you are promising; is it\nof the leaves you tell and of a nest that rocks high on a leafy spray;\nthere your mate swings cooing to herself. She swings and coos; she is\nfolded in peace, and the small, white clouds go sailing by and they do\nnot fall.\n\nSo through unimagined ways went that song, lifting its theme in terms\nthat she did not comprehend; but it was not a bird that sang to her, it\nwas her own heart making its obscure music and lilting its secret, wild\nlyrics in the dawn.\n\n\n\n\n                               CHAPTER VI\n\n\nIt was the donkey awakened them.\n\nFor some time he had been rolling along the ground in ecstasy; now his\nagitated legs were pointing at the sky while he scratched his back\nagainst little stones and clumps of tough clay; now he was lying flat\nrubbing his jowl against these same clumps. He stood up suddenly, shook\nhimself, swung up his tail and his chin, bared his teeth, fixed his eye\non eternity, and roared \"hee-haw\" in a voice of such sudden mightiness,\nthat not alone did the sleepers bound from their slumbers, but the very\nsun itself leaped across the horizon and stared at him with its wild\neye.\n\nMary ran and beat the ass on the nose with her fist, but whatever Mary\ndid to the ass was understood by him as a caress, and he willingly\nsuffered it--\"hee-haw,\" said he again triumphantly, and he planted his\nbig head on her shoulder and stared sadly into space.\n\nHe was thinking, and thought always makes an ass look sad, but what he\nwas thinking about not even Mary knew; his eye was hazy with cogitation,\nand he looked as wise and as kindly as the eldest of the three angels;\nindeed, although he had never been groomed, he looked handsome also, for\nhe had the shape of a good donkey; his muzzle and his paws were white,\nthe rest of his body was black and his eyes were brown. That was the\nappearance of the donkey.\n\nThe angels arose and, much as the ass did they shook themselves; there\nwas no further toilet than that practicable; they ran their hands\nthrough their abundant hair, and the two who had beards combed these\nalso with their fingers--then they looked around them.\n\nNow the birds were sweeping and climbing on the shining air; they were\ncalling and shrieking and singing; fifty of them, and all of the same\nkind, came dashing madly together, and they all sang the one song, so\nloud, so exultant, the heaven and earth seemed to ring and ring again of\ntheir glee.\n\nThey passed, and three antic wings came tumbling and flirting together;\nthese had no song or their happiness went far beyond all orderly sound;\nthey squealed as they chased each other; they squealed as they dropped\ntwenty sheer feet towards the ground, and squealed again as they\nrecovered on a swoop, and as they climbed an hundred feet in three swift\nzig-zags, they still squealed without intermission, and then the three\nwent flickering away to the west, each trying to bite the tail off the\nothers.\n\nThere came a crow whose happiness was so intense that he was not able to\nmove; he stood on the hedge for a long time, and all that time he was\ntrying hard to compose himself to a gravity befitting the father of many\nfamilies, but every few seconds he lost all control and bawled with\nfervour. He examined himself all over; he peeped under his feathers to\nsee was his complexion good; he parted the plumage of his tail modishly;\nhe polished his feet with his bill, and then polished his bill on his\nleft thigh, and then he polished his left thigh with the back of his\nneck. \"I'm a hell of a crow,\" said he, \"and everybody admits it.\" He\nflew with admirable carelessness over the ass, and cleverly stole two\nclaws and one beak full of hair; but in mid-air he laughed incautiously\nso that the hair fell out of his beak, and in grabbing at that portion\nhe dropped the bits in his claws, and he got so excited in trying to\nrescue these before they reached the ground that his voice covered all\nthe other sounds of creation.\n\nThe sun was shining; the trees waved their branches in delight; there\nwas no longer murk or coldness in the air; it sparkled from every point\nlike a vast jewel, and the brisk clouds arraying themselves in fleeces\nof white and blue raced happily aloft.\n\nThat was what the angels saw when they looked abroad; a few paces\ndistant the cart was lying with its shafts up in the air, and a tumble\nof miscellaneous rubbish was hanging half in and half out of it; a\nlittle farther the ass, in a concentrated manner, was chopping grass as\nquickly as ever he could, and, naturally enough, eating it; for after\nthinking deeply we eat, and it is true wisdom to do so.\n\nThe eldest of the angels observed the donkey. He stroked his beard.\n\n\"One eats that kind of vegetable,\" said he.\n\nThe others observed also.\n\n\"And,\" that angel continued, \"the time has come for us to eat.\"\n\nThe second eldest angel rolled his coal-black chin in his hand and his\ngesture and attitude were precisely those of Patsy Mac Cann.\n\n\"I am certainly hungry,\" said he.\n\nHe picked a fistful of grass and thrust some of it into his mouth, but\nafter a moment of difficulty he removed it again.\n\n\"It is soft enough to eat,\" said he musingly, \"but I do not care greatly\nfor its taste.\"\n\nThe youngest angel made a suggestion.\n\n\"Let us talk to the girl,\" said he.\n\nAnd they all moved over to Mary.\n\n\"Daughter,\" said the eldest of the three, \"we are hungry,\" and he beamed\non her so contentedly that all fear and diffidence fled from her on the\ninstant.\n\nShe replied:\n\n\"My father has gone down the road looking for food; he will be coming\nback in a minute or two, and he'll be bringing every kind of thing\nthat's nourishing.\"\n\n\"While we are waiting for him,\" said the angel, \"let us sit down and you\ncan tell us all about food.\"\n\n\"It is a thing we ought to learn at once,\" said the second angel.\n\nSo they sat in a half-circle opposite the girl, and requested her to\ngive them a lecture on food.\n\nShe thought it natural they should require information about earthly\nmatters, but she found, as all unpractised speakers do, that she did not\nknow at what point to begin on her subject. Still, something had to be\nsaid, for two of them were stroking their beards, and one was hugging\nhis knees, and all three were gazing at her.\n\n\"Everything,\" said she, \"that a body can eat is good to eat, but some\nthings do taste nicer than others; potatoes and cabbage are very good to\neat, and so is bacon; my father likes bacon when it's very salt, but I\ndon't like it that way myself; bread is a good thing to eat, and so is\ncheese.\"\n\n\"What do you call this vegetable that the animal is eating?\" said the\nangel pointing to the ass.\n\n\"That isn't a vegetable at all, sir, that's only grass; every kind of\nanimal eats it, but Christians don't.\"\n\n\"Is it not good to eat?\"\n\n\"Sure, I don't know. Dogs eat it when they are sick, so it ought to be\nwholesome, but I never heard tell of any person that ate grass except\nthey were dying of the hunger and couldn't help themselves, poor\ncreatures! And there was a Jew once who was a king, and they do say that\nhe used to go out with the cattle and eat the grass like themselves, and\nnobody says that he didn't get fat.\n\n\"But here's my father coming across the fields (which is a queer way for\nhim to come, because he went away by the road), and I'm thinking that he\nhas a basket under his arm and there will be food in it.\"\n\n\n\n\n                              CHAPTER VII\n\n\nIt was true enough. Mac Cann was coming to them from a point at right\nangles to where he was expected.\n\nNow and again he turned to look over his shoulder, and as he was taking\nadvantage of dips in the ground, bushes, and such-like to shield his\nadvance his daughter divined that something had occurred in addition to\nthe purchase of food. She had often before observed her father moving\nwith these precautionary tactics, and had many times herself shared and\neven directed a retreat which was full of interest.\n\nWhen her father drew nigh he nodded meaningly at her, set down a basket\nand a bundle, and stood for a moment looking at these while he thumbed\nhis chin.\n\n\"Faith!\" said he, \"the world is full of trouble, and that's a fact.\"\n\nHe turned to the strangers.\n\n\"And I'm telling you this, that if the world wasn't full of trouble\nthere'd be no life at all for the poor. It's the only chance we get is\nwhen people are full of woe, God help them! and isn't that a queer\nthing?\n\n\"Mary,\" he turned, and his voice was full of careless pride, \"try if\nthere isn't some small thing or other in the basket, and let your\nhonours sit down on the grass while the young girl is getting your\nbreakfast.\"\n\nSo the angels and Patsy sat down peacefully on the grass, and Mary\nopened the basket.\n\nThere were two loaves of bread in it, a fine square of butter, a piece\nof cheese as big as a man's hand and four times as thick; there was a\nleg of mutton in the basket, and only a little bit had been taken off\nit, a big paper bag full of tea, a package of soft sugar, a bottle full\nof milk, a bottle half full of whisky, two tobacco pipes having silver\nbands on their middles, and a big bar of plug tobacco. Those were the\nthings in the basket.\n\nMary's eyes and her mouth opened when she saw them, and she blessed\nherself, but she made no sound; and when she turned her face towards the\ncompany there was no expression on it except that of hospitality.\n\nShe cut slices from each of these things and piled them on a large piece\nof paper in the centre of the men; then she sat herself down and they\nall prepared to eat.\n\nThe second angel turned courteously to Mac Cann.\n\n\"Will you kindly begin to eat,\" said he, \"and by watching you we will\nknow what to do.\"\n\n\"There can be nothing more uncomely,\" said the first angel, \"than to see\npeople acting in disaccord with custom; we will try to do exactly as you\ndo, and although you may be troubled by our awkwardness you will not be\nshocked by a lapse from sacred tradition.\"\n\n\"Well!\" said Patsy thoughtfully.\n\nHe stretched a hand towards the food.\n\n\"I'll stand in nobody's light, and teaching people is God's own work;\nthis is the way I do it, your worships, and any one that likes can\nfollow me up.\"\n\nHe seized two pieces of bread, placed a slice of cheese between them,\nand bit deeply into that trinity.\n\nThe strangers followed his actions with fidelity, and in a moment their\nmouths were as full as his was and as content.\n\nPatsy paused between bites:\n\n\"When I've this one finished,\" said he, \"I'll take two more bits of\nbread and I'll put a lump of meat between them, and I'll eat that.\"\n\n\"Ah!\" said that one of the angels whose mouth chanced to be free.\n\nPatsy's eye roved over the rest of the food.\n\n\"And after that,\" he continued, \"we will take a bit of whatever is\nhandy.\"\n\nIn a short time there was nothing left on the newspaper but soft sugar,\nbutter, tea, and tobacco. Patsy was abashed.\n\n\"I did think that there was more than that,\" said he.\n\n\"I've had enough myself,\" he continued, \"but maybe your honours could\neat more.\"\n\nTwo of the angels assured him that they were quite satisfied, but the\nyoungest angel said nothing.\n\n\"I'm doubting that you had enough,\" said Patsy dubiously to him.\n\n\"I could eat more if I had it,\" returned that one with a smile.\n\nMary went to the cart and returned bearing two cold potatoes and a piece\nof bread, and she placed these before the young angel. He thanked her\nand ate these, and then he ate the package of soft sugar, and then he\nate a little piece of the butter, but he didn't care for it. He pointed\nto the plug of tobacco:\n\n\"Does this be eaten?\" he enquired.\n\n\"It does not,\" said Patsy. \"If you ate a bit of that you'd get a pain\ninside of your belly that would last you for a month. There's some\npeople do smoke it, and there's others do chew it; but I smoke it and\nchew it myself, and that's the best way. There's two pipes there on the\npaper, and I've a pipe in my own pocket, so whichever of you would like\na smoke can do exactly as I do.\"\n\nWith a big jack-knife he shredded pieces from the plug, and rolled these\nbetween his palms, then he carefully stuffed his pipe, pulled at it to\nsee was it drawing well, lit the tobacco, and heaved a sigh of\ncontentment. He smiled around the circle.\n\n\"That's real good,\" said he.\n\nThe strangers examined the pipes and tobacco with curiosity, but they\ndid not venture to smoke, and they watched Patsy's beatific face with\nkindly attention.\n\n\n\n\n                              CHAPTER VIII\n\n\nNow at this moment Mary was devoured with curiosity. She wanted to know\nhow her father had become possessed of the basketful of provisions. She\nknew that three shillings would not have purchased a tithe of these\ngoods, and, as she had now no fear of the strangers, she questioned her\nparent.\n\n\"Father,\" said she, \"where did you get all the good food?\"\n\nThe angels had eaten of his bounty, so Mac Cann considered that he had\nnothing to fear from their side. He regarded them while he pulled\nthoughtfully at his pipe.\n\n\"Do you know,\" said he, \"that the hardest thing in the world is to get\nthe food, and a body is never done looking for it. We are after eating\nall that we got this morning, so now we'll have to search for what we'll\neat to-night, and in the morning we'll have to look again for more of\nit, and the day after that, and every day until we are dead we'll have\nto go on searching for the food.\"\n\n\"I would have thought,\" said the eldest angel, \"that of all problems\nfood would be the simplest in an organised society.\"\n\nThis halted Mac Cann for a moment.\n\n\"Maybe you're right, sir,\" said he kindly, and he dismissed the\ninterruption.\n\n\"I heard a man once, he was a stranger to these parts, and he had a\ngreat deal of the talk, he said that the folk at the top do grab all the\nfood in the world, and that then they make every person work for them,\nand that when you've done a certain amount of work they give you just\nenough money to buy just enough food to let you keep on working for\nthem. That's what the man said: a big, angry man he was, with whiskers\non him like the whirlwind, and he swore he wouldn't work for any one.\nI'm thinking myself that he didn't work either. We were great friends,\nthat man and me, for I don't do any work if I can help it; it's that I\nhaven't got the knack for work, and, God help me! I've a big appetite.\nBesides that, the work I'd be able to do in a day mightn't give me\nenough to eat, and wouldn't I be cheated then?\"\n\n\"Father,\" said Mary, \"where did you get all the good food this morning?\"\n\n\"I'll tell you that. I went down to the bend of the road where the house\nis, and I had the three shillings in my hand. When I came to the house\nthe door was standing wide open. I hit it a thump of my fist, but nobody\nanswered me. 'God be with all here,' said I, and in I marched. There was\na woman lying on the floor in one room, and her head had been cracked\nwith a stick; and in the next room there was a man lying on the floor,\nand his head had been cracked with a stick. It was in that room I saw\nthe food packed nice and tight in the basket that you see before you. I\nlooked around another little bit, and then I came away, for, as they\nsay, a wise man never found a dead man, and I'm wise enough no matter\nwhat I look like.\"\n\n\"Were the people all dead?\" said Mary, horrified.\n\n\"They were not--they only got a couple of clouts. I'm thinking they are\nall right by this, and they looking for the basket, but, please God,\nthey won't find it. But what I'd like to know is this, who was it hit\nthe people with a stick, and then walked away without the food and the\ndrink and the tobacco, for that's a queer thing.\"\n\nHe turned to his daughter.\n\n\"Mary, a cree, let you burn up that basket in the brazier, for I don't\nlike the look of it at all, and it empty.\"\n\nSo Mary burned the basket with great care while her father piled their\ngoods on the cart and yoked up the ass.\n\nMeanwhile the angels were talking together, and after a short time they\napproached Mac Cann.\n\n\"If it is not inconvenient,\" said their spokesman, \"we would like to\nremain with you for a time. We think that in your company we may learn\nmore than we might otherwise do, for you seem to be a man of ability,\nand at present we are rather lost in this strange world.\"\n\n\"Sure,\" said Patsy heartily, \"I haven't the least objection in the\nworld, only, if you don't want to be getting into trouble, and if you'll\ntake my advice, I'd say that ye ought to take off them kinds of clothes\nyou're wearing and get into duds something like my own, and let you put\nyour wings aside and your fine high crowns, the way folk won't be\nstaring at you every foot of the road, for I'm telling you that it's a\nbad thing to have people looking after you when you go through a little\nvillage or a town, because you can never know who'll remember you\nafterwards, and you maybe not wanting to be remembered at all.\"\n\n\"If our attire,\" said the angel, \"is such as would make us\nremarkable----\"\n\n\"It is,\" said Patsy. \"People would think you belonged to a circus, and\nthe crowds of the world would be after you in every place.\"\n\n\"Then,\" replied the angel, \"we will do as you say.\"\n\n\"I have clothes enough in this bundle,\" said Patsy, with a vague air. \"I\nfound them up there in the house, and I was thinking of yourselves when\nI took them. Let you put them on, and we will tie up your own things in\na sack and bury them here so that when you want them again you'll be\nable to get them, and then we can travel wherever we please and no\nperson will say a word to us.\"\n\nSo the strangers retired a little way with the bundle, and there they\nshed their finery.\n\nWhen they appeared again they were clad in stout, ordinary clothing.\nThey did not look a bit different from Patsy Mac Cann except that they\nwere all taller men than he, but between his dilapidation and theirs\nthere was very little to choose.\n\nMac Cann dug a hole beside a tree and carefully buried their property,\nthen with a thoughtful air he bade Mary move ahead with the ass, while\nhe and the angels stepped forward at the tailboard.\n\nThey walked then through the morning sunlight, and for a time they had\nlittle to say to each other.\n\n\n\n\n                               CHAPTER IX\n\n\nIn truth Patsy Mac Cann was a very able person.\n\nFor forty-two years he had existed on the edges of a society which did\nnot recognise him in any way, and, as he might himself have put it, he\nhad not done so very badly at all.\n\nHe lived as a bird lives, or a fish, or a wolf. Laws were for other\npeople, but they were not for him; he crawled under or vaulted across\nthese ethical barriers, and they troubled him no more than as he had to\nbend or climb a little to avoid them--he discerned laws as something to\nbe avoided, and it was thus he saw most things.\n\nReligion and morality, although he paid these an extraordinary\nreverence, were not for him either; he beheld them from afar, and,\nhowever they might seem beautiful or foolish, he left them behind as\nreadily as he did his debts, if so weighty a description may be given to\nhis volatile engagements. He did not discharge these engagements; he\nelongated himself from them; between himself and a query he interposed\ndistance, and at once that became foreign to him, for half a mile about\nhimself was his frontier, and beyond that, wherever he was, the enemy\nlay.\n\nHe stood outside of every social relation, and within an organised\nhumanity he might almost have been reckoned as a different species. He\nwas very mobile, but all his freedom lay in one direction, and outside\nof that pasturage he could never go. For the average man there are two\ndimensions of space wherein he moves with a certain limited freedom; it\nis for him a horizontal and a perpendicular world; he goes up the social\nscale and down it, and in both these atmospheres there is a level\nwherein he can exercise himself to and fro, his journeyings being\nstrictly limited by his business and his family. Between the place where\nhe works and the place where he lives lies all the freedom he can hope\nfor; within that range he must seek such adventures as he craves, and\nthe sole expansion to which he can attain is upwards towards another\nsocial life if he be ambitious, or downward to the underworlds if he is\nbored. For Mac Cann there was no upward and no downward movements, he\nhad plumbed to the very rocks of life, but his horizontal movements were\nbounded only by the oceans around his country, and in this gigantic\nunderworld he moved with almost absolute freedom, and a knowledge which\nmight properly be termed scientific.\n\nIn despite of his apparent outlawry he was singularly secure; ambition\nwaved no littlest lamp at him; the one ill which could overtake him was\ndeath, which catches on every man; no enmity could pursue him to any\nwall, for he was sunken a whole sphere beneath malice as beneath\nbenevolence. Physical ill-treatment might come upon him, but in that\ncase it was his manhood and his muscle against another manhood and\nanother muscle--the simplest best would win, but there was no glory for\nthe conqueror nor any loot to be carried from the battle.\n\nCasual warfares, such as these, had been frequent enough in his career,\nfor he had fought stubbornly with every kind of man, and had afterwards\nmedicined his wounds with the only unguents cheap enough for his\nusage--the healing balsams of time and patience. He had but one\noccupation, and it was an engrossing one--he hunted for food, and for it\nhe hunted with the skill and pertinacity of a wolf or a vulture.\n\nWith what skill he did hunt! He would pick crumbs from the lank chaps of\nfamine; he gathered nourishment from the empty air; he lifted it from\nwells and watercourses; he picked it off clothes lines and hedges; he\nstole so cleverly from the bees that they never felt his hand in their\npocket; he would lift the eggs from beneath a bird, and she would think\nthat his finger was a chicken; he would clutch a hen from the roost, and\nthe housewife would think he was the yard dog, and the yard dog would\nthink he was its brother.\n\nHe had a culture too, and if it was not wide it was profound; he knew\nwind and weather as few astronomers know it; he knew the habit of the\ntrees and the earth; how the seasons moved, not as seasons, but as days\nand hours; he had gathered all the sweets of summer, and the last rigour\nof winter was no secret to him; he had fought with the winter every year\nof his life as one fights with a mad beast, he had held off that\ngrizzliest of muzzles and escaped scatheless.\n\nHe knew men and women, and he knew them from an angle at which they\nseldom caught themselves or each other; he knew them as prey to be\nbitten and escaped from quickly. At them, charged with a thousand\npreoccupations, he looked with an eye in which there was a single\nsurmise, and he divined them in a flash. In this quick vision he saw\nman, one expression, one attitude for all; never did he see a man or\nwoman in their fullness, his microscopic vision caught only what it\nlooked for, but he saw that with the instant clarity of the microscope.\nThere were no complexities for him in humanity; there were those who\ngave and those who did not give; there were those who might be cajoled,\nand those who might be frightened. If there was goodness in a man he\nglimpsed it from afar as a hawk sees a mouse in the clover, and he\nswooped on that virtue and was away with booty. If there was evil in a\nman he passed it serenely as a sheep passes by a butcher, for evil did\nnot affect him. Evil could never put a hand on him, and he was not evil\nhimself.\n\nIf the denominations of virtue or vice must be affixed to his innocent\nexistence, then these terms would have to be re-defined, for they had no\nmeaning in his case; he stood outside these as he did outside of the\nsocial structure. But, indeed, he was not outside of the social\nstructure at all; he was so far inside of it that he could never get\nout; he was at the very heart of it; he was held in it like a deer in an\nornamental park, or a cork that bobs peacefully in a bucket, and in the\nimmense, neglected pastures of civilisation he found his own quietude\nand his own wisdom.\n\nAll of the things he knew and all of the things that he had done were\nmost competently understood by his daughter.\n\n\n\n\n                               CHAPTER X\n\n\nIt is to be remarked that the angels were strangely like Patsy Mac Cann.\nTheir ideas of right and wrong almost entirely coincided with his. They\nhad no property and so they had no prejudices, for the person who has\nnothing may look upon the world as his inheritance, while the person who\nhas something has seldom anything but that.\n\nCivilisation, having built itself at hazard upon the Rights of Property,\nhas sought on many occasions to unbuild itself again in sheer\ndesperation of any advance, but from the great Ethic of Possession there\nnever has been any escape, and there never will be until the solidarity\nof man has been really created, and until each man ceases to see the\nwolf in his neighbour.\n\nIs there actually a wolf in our neighbour? We see that which we are, and\nour eyes project on every side an image of ourselves; if we look with\nfear that which we behold is frightful; if we look with love then the\ncolours of heaven are repeated to us from the ditch and the dungeon. We\ninvent eternally upon one another; we scatter our sins broadcast and\ncall them our neighbours; let us scatter our virtues abroad and build us\na city to live in.\n\nFor Mac Cann and his daughter there was no longer any strangeness in\ntheir companions. As day and night succeeded, as conversation and action\nsupplemented each other on their journeys, so each of them began to\nunfold from the fleshy disguise, and in a short time they could each\nhave spoken of the others to an inquiring stranger, giving, within\nbounds, reasonably exact information as to habit and mentality.\n\nWhat conversations they had engaged in! Sitting now by a hedge close to\na tiny chaotic village, compact of ugliness and stupidity, now at\ntwilight as they camped in a disused quarry, leaning their shoulders\nagainst great splintered rocks, and hearing no sound but the magnified,\nslow trickle of water and the breeze that sung or screamed against a\nrazor edge of rock; or lying on the sheltered side of a pit of potatoes,\nthey stared at the moon as she sailed on her lonely voyages, or watched\nthe stars that glanced and shone from the drifting clouds; and as they\nlifted their eyes to these sacred voyagers in whose charge is the\ndestiny of man they lifted their minds also and adored mutely that mind\nof which these are the thoughts made visible.\n\nSometimes they discussed the problems of man in a thousand superficial\nrelationships. The angels were wise, but in the vocabulary which they\nhad to use wisdom had no terms. Their wisdom referred only to ultimates,\nand was the unhandiest of tools when dug into some immediate, curious\nproblem. Before wisdom can be audible a new language must be invented,\nand they also had to unshape their definitions and re-translate these\nsecular findings into terms wherein they could see the subject broadly,\nand they found that what they gained in breadth they lost in outline,\nand that the last generalisation, however logically it was framed, was\nseldom more than an intensely interesting lie when it was dissected\nagain. No truth in regard to space and time can retain virtue for longer\nthan the beating of an artery; it too has its succession, its sidereal\ntide, and while you look upon it, round and hardy as a pebble, behold,\nit is split and fissured and transformed.\n\nSometimes when it rained, and it rained often, they would seek refuge in\na haystack, if one was handy; or they would creep into a barn and hide\nbehind hills of cabbages or piles of farming tools; or they slid into\nthe sheds among the cattle where they warmed and fed themselves against\nthose peaceful flanks; or, if they were nigh a town and had been lucky\nthat day, they would pay a few coppers to sleep on the well-trodden,\nearthen floor of a house.\n\nAs for the ass, he slept wherever he could. When there was rain he would\nstand with his tail against the wind sunken in a reverie so profound\nthat he no longer seemed to feel the rain or the wind. From these\nabysses of thought he would emerge to the realisation that there was a\nsheltered side to a wall or a clump of heather, and he also would take\nhis timely rest under the stars of God.\n\nWhat did they say to him? Down the glittering slopes they peer and nod;\nbefore his eyes the mighty pageant is unrolled in quiet splendour; for\nhim too the signs are set. Does the Waterman care nothing for his\nthirst? Does the Ram not bless his increase? Against his enemies also\nthe Archer will bend his azure bow and loose his arrows of burning gold.\n\nOn their journeyings they met with many people; not the folk who lived\nin the houses dotted here and there at great distances from each other\non the curving roads, for with these people they had nothing to do, they\nhad scarcely anything to say, and the housefolk looked on the strollers\nwith a suspicion which was almost a fear. The language of these was\nseldom gracious, and often, on their approach, the man of the house was\nsent for and the dog was unchained.\n\nBut for the vagabonds these people did not count; Mac Cann and his\ndaughter scarcely looked on them as human beings, and if he had\ngeneralised about them at all, he would have said that there was no\ndifference between these folk and the trees that shaded their dwellings\nin leafy spray, that they were rooted in their houses, and that they had\nno idea of life other than the trees might have which snuff for ever the\nsame atmosphere and look on the same horizon until they droop again to\nthe clay they lifted from.\n\nIt was with quite other people they communed.\n\nThe wandering ballad singer with his wallet of songs slung at his ragged\nhaunch; the travelling musician whose blotchy fiddle could sneeze out\nthe ten strange tunes he had learned from his father and from his\nfather's generations before him; the little band travelling the world\ncarrying saplings and rushes from the stream which they wove cunningly\ninto tables and chairs warranted not to last too long; the folk who sold\nrootless ferns to people from whose window-ledges they had previously\nstolen the pots to plant them in; the men who went roaring along the\nroads driving the cattle before them from fair to market and back again;\nthe hairy tinkers with their clattering metals, who marched in the\nangriest of battalions and who spoke a language composed entirely of\ncurses.\n\nThese, and an hundred varieties of these, they met and camped with and\nwere friendly with, and to the angels these people were humanity, and\nthe others were, they did not know what.\n\n\n\n\n                               CHAPTER XI\n\n\nIt might be asked why Patsy Mac Cann permitted the strangers to remain\nwith him.\n\nNow that they were dressed like himself he had quite forgotten, or he\nnever thought of their celestial character, and they were undoubtedly a\nburden upon his ingenuity. They ate as vigorously as he did, and the\nfood which they ate he had to supply.\n\nThere were two reasons for this kindliness--He had always wished to be\nthe leader of a troop. In his soul the Ancient Patriarch was alive and\nambitious of leadership. Had his wife given him more children he would\nhave formed them and their wives and children into a band, and the\naffairs of this little world would have been directed by him with pride\nand pleasure. He would have observed their goings-out and their\ncomings-in; he would have apportioned praise and reproach to his little\nclann; he would have instructed them upon a multitude of things, and\npassed on to them the culture which he had gathered so hardily, and,\nwhen they arrived at the age of ingenuity, it would have still been his\nambition to dash their arguments with his superior knowledge, or put the\nhappy finish to any plan which they submitted for his approval; he would\nhave taken the road, like a prince of old, with his tail, and he would\nhave undertaken such raids and forays that his name and fame would ring\nthrough the underworld like the note of a trumpet.\n\nHe could not do this because he only had one child (the others had died\nwintry deaths) and she was a girl. But now heaven itself had blessed him\nwith a following and he led it with skill and enjoyment. Furthermore,\nhis daughter, of whom he stood in considerable awe, had refused flatly\nto desert the strangers whom Providence had directed to them.\n\nShe had constituted herself in some strange way the mother of the four\nmen. She cooked for them, she washed and mended for them, and, when the\nnecessity arose, she scolded them with the heartiest good-will.\n\nHer childhood had known nothing of dolls, and so her youth made dolls of\nthese men whom she dressed and fed. Sometimes her existence with them\nwas peaceful and happy; at other times she almost went mad with jealous\nrage. Little by little she began to demand a domestic obedience which\nthey very willingly gave her; so they were her men and no one else's,\nand the exercise of this power gave her a delight such as she had never\nknown.\n\nShe was wise also, for it was only in domestic affairs that she claimed\ntheir fealty; with their masculine movements she did not interfere, nor\ndid she interfere with the task and apportioning of the day, although\nher counsel was willingly listened to in these matters; but when night\ncame, when the camp was selected, the little cart unloaded, and the\nbrazier lit, then she stepped briskly to her kingdom and ruled like a\nchieftainess.\n\nWith her father she often had trouble: he would capitulate at the end,\nbut not until he had set forth at length his distaste for her\nsuggestions and his assurance that she was a strap. She seldom treated\nhim as a father, for she seldom remembered that relationship; she loved\nhim as one loves a younger brother, and she was angry with him as one\ncan only be angry with a younger brother. Usually she treated him as an\ninfant; she adored him, and, if he had permitted it, she would have\nbeaten him soundly on many an occasion.\n\nFor she was a strong girl. She was big in build and bone, and she was\nbeautiful and fearless. Framed in a rusty shawl her face leaped out\ninstant and catching as a torch in darkness; under her clumsy garments\none divined a body to be adored as a revelation; she walked carelessly\nas the wind walks, proudly as a young queen trained in grandeur. She\ncould leap from where she stood, as a wild-cat that springs terribly\nfrom quietude; she could run as a deer runs, and pause at full flight\nlike a carven statue. Each movement of hers was complete and lovely in\nitself; when she lifted a hand to her hair the free attitude was a\nmarvel of composure; it might never have begun, and might never cease,\nit was solitary and perfect; when she bent to the brazier she folded to\nsuch an economy of content that one might have thought her half her size\nand yet perfect; she had that beauty which raises the mind of man to an\necstasy which is murderous if it be not artistic; and she was so\nconscious of her loveliness that she could afford to forget it, and so\ncareless that she had never yet used it as a weapon or a plea.\n\nShe could not but be aware of her beauty, for her mirrors had tongues;\nthey were the eyes of those she met and paused with. No man had yet said\nanything to her, saving in rough jest as to a child, but no woman could\nspeak of anything else in her presence, and these exclamations drummed\nthrough all their talk.\n\nShe had been worshipped by many women, for to physical loveliness in\ntheir own sex women are the veriest slaves. They will love a man for his\nbeauty, but a woman they will adore as a singularity, as something\nalmost too good to be true, as something which may vanish even while\nthey gaze at it. Prettiness they understand and like or antagonise, but\nthey have credited beauty as a masculine trait; and as a race long\nsunken in slavery, and who look almost despairingly for a saviour, so\nthe female consciousness prostrates itself before female beauty as\nbefore a messiah who will lead them to the unconscious horrible\nambitions which are the goal of femininity. But, and it is humanity's\nguard against a solitary development, while women worship a beautiful\nwoman the beauty does not care for them; she accepts their homage and\nflies them as one flies from the deadliest boredom; she is the widest\nswing of their pendulum, and must hurry again from the circumference to\nthe centre with the violent speed of an outcast who sees from afar the\nsmoke of his father's house and the sacred roof-tree.\n\nThere is a steadying influence; an irreconcilable desire and ambition;\nthe desire of every woman to be the wife of a fool, her ambition to be\nthe mother of a genius; but they postulate genius, it is their outlet\nand their justification for that leap at a tangent which they have\nalready taken.\n\nOut there they have discovered the Neuter. Is the Genius always to be\nborn from an unfertilised womb, or rather a self-fertilised one?\nSingular Messiahs! scorners of paternity! claiming no less than the\nCosmos for a father; taking from the solitary mother capacity for\ninfinite suffering and infinite love, whence did ye gather the rough\nmasculine intellect, the single eye, all that hardiness of courage and\nsensibility of self that made of your souls a battlefield, and of your\nmemory a terror to drown love under torrents of horrid red! Deluded so\nfar and mocked! No genius has yet sprung from ye but the Genius of War\nand Destruction, those frowning captains that have ravaged our vineyards\nand blackened our generations with the torches of their egotism.\n\nTo woman beauty is energy, and they would gladly take from their own sex\nthat which they have so long accepted from man. They are economical; the\nants and the bees are not more amazingly parsimonious than they, and,\nlike the ants and the bees, their subsequent extravagance is a thing to\nmarvel at. Food and children they will hoard, and when these are\nsafeguarded their attitude to the life about them is ruinous. They will\nadorn themselves at the expense of all creation, and in a few years they\ncrush from teeming life a species which nature has toiled through\nlaborious ages to perfect. They adorn themselves, and too often\nadornment is the chief manifestation of boredom. They are world-weary,\nsex-weary, and they do not know what they want; but they want power, so\nthat they may rule evolution once more as long ago they ruled it; their\nblood remembers an ancient greatness; they crave to be the queens again,\nto hold the sceptre of life in their cruel hands, to break up the mould\nwhich has grown too rigid for freedom, to form anew the chaos which is a\nwomb, and which they conceive is their womb, and to create therein\nbeauty and freedom and power. But the king whom they have placed on the\nthrone has grown wise in watching them; he is their bone terribly\nseparated, terribly endowed; he uses their cruelty, their fierceness, as\nhis armies against them--and so the battle is set, and wild deeds may\nflare from the stars of rebellion and prophecy.\n\nMary, who could make women do anything for her, was entirely interested\nin making men bow to her will, and because, almost against her\nexpectation they did bow, she loved them, and could not sacrifice\nherself too much for their comfort or even their caprice. It was the\nmother-spirit in her which, observing the obedience of her children, is\nforced in very gratitude to become their slave; for, beyond all things,\na woman desires power, and, beyond all things, she is unable to use it\nwhen she gets it. If this power be given to her grudgingly she will\nexercise it mercilessly; if it is given kindly then she is bound by her\nnature to renounce authority, and to live happy ever after, but it must\nbe given to her.\n\n\n\n\n                              CHAPTER XII\n\n\nIt may be surprising to learn that the names of the angels were Irish\nnames, but more than eight hundred years ago a famous Saint informed the\nworld that the language spoken in heaven was Gaelic, and, presumably, he\nhad information on the point. He was not an Irishman, and he had no\nreason to exalt Fodhla above the other nations of the earth, and,\ntherefore, his statement may be accepted on its merits, the more\nparticularly as no other saint has denied it, and every Irish person is\nprepared to credit it.\n\nIt was also believed in ancient times, and the belief was world-wide,\nthat the entrance to heaven, hell, and purgatory yawned in the Isle of\nthe Saints, and this belief also, although it has never been proved, has\nnever been disproved, and it does assist the theory that Irish is the\ncelestial language. Furthermore, Gaelic is the most beautiful and\nexpressive fashion of speech in the whole world, and, thus, an artistic\nand utilitarian reinforcement can be hurried to the support of that\ntheory should it ever be in danger from philologists with foreign axes\nto grind.\n\nThe names of the angels were Finaun and Caeltia and Art.\n\nFinaun was the eldest angel; Caeltia was that one who had a small\ncoal-black beard on his chin, and Art was the youngest of the three, and\nhe was as beautiful as the dawn, than which there is nothing more\nbeautiful.\n\nFinaun was an Archangel when he was in his own place; Caeltia was a\nSeraph, and Art was a Cherub. An Archangel is a Councillor and a\nGuardian; a Seraph is one who accumulates knowledge; a Cherub is one who\naccumulates love. In heaven these were their denominations.\n\nFinaun was wise, childish, and kind, and between him and the little ass\nwhich drew their cart there was a singular and very pleasant\nresemblance.\n\nCaeltia was dark and determined, and if he had cropped his beard with a\nscissors, the way Patsy Mac Cann did, he would have resembled Patsy Mac\nCann as closely as one man can resemble another.\n\nArt was dark also, and young and swift and beautiful. Looking carelessly\nat him one would have said that, barring the colour, he was the brother\nof Mary Mac Cann, and that the two of them were born at a birth, and a\ngood birth.\n\nMary extended to Finaun part of the affection which she already had for\nthe ass, and while they were marching the roads these three always went\ntogether; the archangel would be on one side of the donkey and Mary\nwould be on the other side, and (one may say so) the three of them never\nceased talking for an instant.\n\nThe ass, it will be admitted, did not speak, but he listened with such\nevident intention that no one could say he was out of the conversation;\nhis right-hand ear hearkened agilely to Mary; his left-hand ear sprang\nto attention when Finaun spoke, and when, by a chance, they happened to\nbe silent at the one moment then both his ears drooped forward towards\nhis nose, and so he was silent also. A hand from either side continually\ntouched his muzzle caressingly, and at moments entirely unexpected he\nwould bray affectionately at them in a voice that would have tormented\nthe ears of any but a true friend.\n\nPatsy Mac Cann and the seraph Caeltia used to march exactly at the tail\nof the cart, and they, also, talked a lot.\n\nAt first Patsy talked the most, for he had much information to impart,\nand the seraph listened with intent humility, but, after a while,\nCaeltia, having captured knowledge, would dispute and argue with great\nvivacity. They spoke of many things, but a person who listened closely\nand recorded these things would have found that they talked oftener\nabout strong drinks than about anything else. Mac Cann used to speak\nlongingly about strange waters which he had heard were brewed in foreign\nlands, potent brewings which had been described to him by emphatic\nsailormen with tarry thumbs; but at this stage Caeltia only spoke about\nporter and whisky, and was well contented to talk of these.\n\nThe cherub Art was used to promenade alone behind them all, but\nsometimes he would go in front and listen to the conversation with the\nass; sometimes he would join the two behind and force them to consider\nmatters in which they were not interested, and sometimes again he would\nrange the fields on either side, or he would climb a tree, or he would\ngo alone by himself shouting a loud song that he had learned at the fair\nwhich they had last journeyed to, or he would prance silently along the\nroad as though his body was full of jumps and he did not know what to do\nwith them, or he would trudge forlornly in a boredom so profound that\none expected him to drop dead of it in his tracks.\n\nSo life fell into a sort of routine.\n\nWhen they were camped for the night Caeltia and Art would always sit on\none side of the brazier with Patsy Mac Cann sitting between them; on the\nother side of the brazier the archangel and Mary would sit; Finaun\nalways sat very close to her when they had finished eating and were all\ntalking together; he used to take her long plait of hair into his lap,\nand for a long time he would unplait and plait again the end of that\nlovely rope.\n\nMary liked him to do this, and nobody else minded it.\n\n\n\n\n                                BOOK II\n\n                            EILEEN NI COOLEY\n\n\n\n\n                              CHAPTER XIII\n\n\nEarly in the morning the sun had been shining gloriously, and there was\na thump of a wind blowing across the road that kept everything gay; the\ntrees were in full leaf and every bough went jigging to its neighbour,\nbut on the sky the clouds raced so fast that they were continually\ncatching each other up and getting so mixed that they could not\ndisentangle themselves again, and from their excessive gaiety black\nmisery spread and the sun took a gloomy cast.\n\nMac Cann screwed an eye upwards like a bird and rubbed at his chin.\n\n\"There will be rain soon,\" said he, \"and the country wants it.\"\n\n\"It will be heavy rain,\" said his daughter.\n\n\"It will so,\" he replied; \"let us be getting along now the way we'll be\nsomewhere before the rain comes, for I never did like getting wetted by\nrain, and nobody ever did except the people of the County Cork, and they\nare so used to it that they never know whether it's raining or whether\nit isn't.\"\n\nSo they encouraged the ass to go quicker and he did that.\n\nAs they hastened along the road they saw in front of them two people\nmarching close together, and in a little time they drew close to these\npeople.\n\n\"I know the look of that man's back,\" said Patsy, \"but I can't tell you\nwhere I saw it. I've a good memory for faces, though, and I'll tell you\nall about him in a minute.\"\n\n\"Do you know the woman that is with him?\" said Caeltia.\n\n\"You can't tell a woman by her back,\" replied Patsy, \"and nobody could,\nfor they all have the same back when they have a shawl on.\"\n\nMary turned her head to them:\n\n\"Every woman's back is different,\" said she, \"whether there's a shawl on\nit or not, and I know from the way that woman is wearing her shawl that\nshe is Eileen Ni Cooley and no one else.\"\n\n\"If that is so,\" said her father hastily, \"let us be going slower the\nway we won't catch up on her. Mary, a grah, whisper a word in the ass's\near so that he won't be going so quick, for he is full of fun this day.\"\n\n\"I'll do that,\" said Mary, and she said \"whoa\" into the ear of the\nlittle ass, and he stopped inside the quarter of a pace.\n\n\"Do you not like that woman?\" Caeltia enquired.\n\n\"She's a bad woman,\" replied Patsy.\n\n\"What sort of a bad woman is she?\"\n\n\"She's the sort that commits adultery with every kind of man,\" said he\nharshly.\n\nCaeltia turned over that accusation for a moment.\n\n\"Did she ever commit adultery with yourself?\" said he.\n\n\"She did not,\" said Patsy, \"and that's why I don't like her.\"\n\nCaeltia considered that statement also, and found it reasonable:\n\n\"I think,\" said he, \"that the reason you don't like that woman is\nbecause you like her too much.\"\n\n\"It's so,\" said Patsy, \"but there is no reason for her taking on with\nevery kind of man and not taking on with me at all.\"\n\nHe was silent for a moment.\n\n\"I tell you,\" said he furiously, \"that I made love to that woman from\nthe dawn to the dark, and then she walked off with a man that came down\na little road.\"\n\n\"That was her right,\" said Caeltia mildly.\n\n\"Maybe it was, but for the weight of a straw I would have killed the\npair of them that night in the dark place.\"\n\n\"Why didn't you?\"\n\n\"She had me weakened. My knees gave under me when she walked away and\nthere wasn't even a curse in my mouth.\"\n\nAgain he was silent, and again he broke into angry speech!\n\n\"I don't want to see her at all, for she torments me, so let the pair of\nthem walk their road until they come to a ditch that is full of thorns\nand is fit for them to die in.\"\n\n\"I think,\" said Caeltia, \"that the reason you don't want to see her is\nbecause you want to see her too much.\"\n\n\"It's so,\" growled Mac Cann, \"and it's so too that you are a prying kind\nof a man and that your mouth is never at rest, so we'll go on now to the\nwoman yonder, and let you talk to her with your tongue and your nimble\nquestions.\"\n\nThereupon he rushed forward and kicked the ass so suddenly in the belly\nthat it leaped straight off the ground and began to run before its legs\ntouched earth again.\n\nWhen they had taken a few dozen steps Mac Cann began to roar furiously:\n\n\"What way are you, Eileen Ni Cooley? What sort of a man is it that's\nwalking beside yourself?\"\n\nAnd he continued roaring questions such as that until they drew on the\npeople.\n\nThe folk stopped at his shouts.\n\nThe woman was big and thin and she had red hair. Her face was freckled\nall over so that one could only see her delicate complexion in little\nspots, and at the first glance the resemblance between herself and\nFinaun was extraordinary. In the sweep of the brow, the set of the\ncheek-bones, a regard of the eyes, that resemblance was seen, and then\nthe look vanished in a poise of the head and came again in another one.\n\nAt the moment her blue eyes seemed the angriest that ever were in a\nwoman's head. She stood leaning on a thick ash-plant and watched the\nadvancing company, but she did not utter a word to them.\n\nThe man by her side was tall also and as thin as a pole; he was\nramshackle and slovenly; there was not much pith in his body, for he was\nweak at the knees and his big feet splayed outwards at a curious angle;\nbut his face was extraordinary intelligent, and when he was younger must\nhave been beautiful. Drink and ill-health had dragged and carved his\nflesh, and nothing of comeliness remained to him but his eyes, which\nwere timid and tender as those of a fawn, and his hands which had never\ndone anything but fumble with women. He also leaned quietly on a cudgel\nand watched Patsy Mac Cann.\n\nAnd it was to him that Patsy came. He did not look once at the woman,\nthough all the time he never ceased shouting salutations and questions\nat her by her name.\n\nHe walked directly to the man, eyeing him intently.\n\n\"And how is yourself?\" he roared with horrible heartiness. \"It's a while\nsince I saw you, and it was the pitch night that time.\"\n\n\"I'm all right,\" said the man.\n\n\"So you are,\" said Patsy, \"and why wouldn't you be? Weren't you born in\nthe wide lap of good luck, and didn't you stay there? Ah, it's the way\nthat the men that come down little, narrow paths do have fortune, and\nthe ones that tramp the wide roads do have nothing but their broken\nfeet. Good luck to you, my soul, and long may you wave--Eh!\"\n\n\"I didn't say a word,\" said the man.\n\n\"And there's a stick in your hand that would crack the skull of a\nmountain, let alone a man.\"\n\n\"It's a good stick,\" said the man.\n\n\"Would you be calling it the brother or the husband of the one that the\nwoman has in her happy hands.\"\n\n\"I would be calling it a stick only,\" replied the man.\n\n\"That's the name for it surely,\" said Patsy, \"for a stick hasn't got a\nsoul any more than a woman has, and isn't that a great mercy and a great\ncomfort, for heaven would be full of women and wood, and there would be\nno room for the men and the drink.\"\n\nThe red-haired woman strode to Patsy and, putting her hand against his\nbreast, she gave him a great push:\n\n\"If you're talking,\" said she, \"or if you're fighting, turn to myself,\nfor the man doesn't know you.\"\n\nPatsy did turn to her with a great laugh:\n\n\"It's the one pleasure of my life to have your hands on me,\" he gibed.\n\"Give me another puck now, and a hard one, the way I'll feel you well.\"\n\nThe woman lifted her ash-plant threateningly and crouched towards him,\nbut the look on his face was such that she let her hand fall again.\n\n\"You're full of fun,\" said Patsy, \"and you always were, but we're going\nto be the great friends from now on, yourself and myself and the man\nwith the stick; we'll be going by short cuts everywhere in the world,\nand having a gay time.\"\n\n\"We're not going with you, Padraig,\" said the woman, \"and whatever road\nyou are taking this day the man and myself will be going another road.\"\n\n\"Whoo!\" said Patsy, \"there are roads everywhere, so you're all right,\nand there are men on every one of the roads.\"\n\n\n\n\n                              CHAPTER XIV\n\n\nWhile this conversation had been taking place the others stood in a\ngrave semicircle, and listened intently to their words.\n\nCaeltia, regarding the sky, intervened:\n\n\"The rain will be here in a minute, so we had better walk on and look\nfor shelter.\"\n\nMac Cann detached his heavy regard from Eileen Ni Cooley, and swept the\nsky and the horizon.\n\n\"That is so,\" said he. \"Let us go ahead now, for we've had our talk, and\nwe are all satisfied.\"\n\n\"There is a broken-down house stuck up a bohereen,\" he continued. \"It's\nonly a few perches up this road, for I remember passing the place the\nlast time I was this way; that place will give us shelter while the rain\nspills.\"\n\nHe turned his stubborn face to the woman:\n\n\"You can come with us if you like, and you can stay where you are if you\nlike, or you can go to the devil,\" and, saying so, he tramped after his\ndaughter.\n\nThe woman had just caught sight of Art the cherub, and was regarding him\nwith her steady eyes.\n\n\"Whoo!\" said she, \"I'm not the one to be frightened and I never was, so\nlet us all go along and talk about our sins in the wet weather.\"\n\nThey started anew on the road, Patsy's company in advance, and behind\nmarched the woman and the man and Art the cherub.\n\nThe sun had disappeared; wild clouds were piling themselves in rugged\nhills along the sky, and the world was growing dull and chill. Against\nthe grey atmosphere Art's face was in profile, an outline sharp and calm\nand beautiful.\n\nEileen Ni Cooley was regarding him curiously as they walked together,\nand the strange man, with a wry smile on his lips, was regarding her\nwith a like curiosity.\n\nShe pointed towards Patsy Mac Cann, who was tramping vigorously a dozen\nyards ahead.\n\n\"Young boy,\" said she, \"where did you pick up with the man yonder, for\nthe pair of you don't look matched?\"\n\nArt had his hands in his pockets; he turned and looked at her\ntranquilly.\n\n\"Where did you pick up with that man,\" he nodded towards her companion,\n\"and where did the man pick up with you, for you don't look matched\neither?\"\n\n\"We're not,\" said the woman quickly; \"we're not matched a bit. That man\nand myself do be quarrelling all day and all night, and threatening to\nwalk away from each other every minute of the time.\"\n\nThe man stared at her.\n\n\"Is that how it is with us?\" said he.\n\n\"It is,\" said she to Art, \"that's the way it is with us, honey. The man\nand myself have no love for each other now, and we never had.\"\n\nThe man halted suddenly; he changed the cudgel to his left hand and\nthrust out his right hand to her.\n\n\"Put your own hand there,\" said he, \"and shake it well, and then be\ngoing along your road.\"\n\n\"What are you talking about?\" said she.\n\nHe replied, frowning sternly from his wild eyes:\n\n\"I wouldn't hold the grace of God if I saw it slipping from me, so put\nyour hand into my hand and go along your road.\"\n\nEileen Ni Cooley put her hand into his with some awkwardness and turned\naway her head.\n\n\"There it is for you,\" said she.\n\nThen the man turned about and flapped quickly along the path they had\nalready travelled; his cudgel beat the ground with a sharp noise, and he\ndid not once look back.\n\nBefore he had taken an hundred paces the rain came, a fine, noiseless\ndrizzle.\n\n\"It will be heavy in a minute,\" said the woman, \"let us run after the\ncart.\"\n\nWith a quick movement she tucked her shawl about her head and shoulders\nand started to run, and Art went after her in alternate long hops of\neach foot.\n\nThey had reached a narrow path running diagonally from the main road.\n\n\"Up this way,\" shouted Patsy, and the company trooped after him, leaving\nthe ass and cart to the storm.\n\nTwo minutes' distance up the road stood a small, dismantled house. There\nwas a black gape where the window had been, and there were holes in the\nwalls. In these holes grass and weeds were waving, as they were along\nthe window-ledge. The roof was covered with a rusty thatch and there\nwere red poppies growing on that.\n\nPatsy climbed through the low window-space, and the others climbed in\nafter him.\n\n\n\n\n                               CHAPTER XV\n\n\nInside the house was an earthen floor, four walls, and plenty of air.\nThere were breezes blowing in the empty house, for from whatever\ndirection a wind might come it found entrance there. There were stones\nlying everywhere on the floor; some of them had dropped from the walls,\nbut most had been jerked through the window by passing children. There\nwere spider's webs in that house; the roof was covered with them, and\nthe walls were covered with them too. It was a dusty house, and when it\nwould be wet enough it would be a muddy house, and it was musty with\ndisuse and desolation.\n\nBut the company did not care anything about dust or stones or spiders.\nThey kicked the stones aside and sat on the floor in the most sheltered\npart of the place where there had once been a fireplace, and if a spider\nwalked on any of them it was permitted.\n\nPatsy produced a clay pipe and lit it, and Caeltia took a silver-mounted\nbriar from his pocket and he lit that and smoked it.\n\nOutside the rain suddenly began to fall with a low noise and the room\ngrew dark. Within there was a brooding quietness, for none of the people\nspoke; they were all waiting for each other to speak.\n\nIndeed, they had all been agitated when they came in, for the wrung face\nof Patsy and the savage eyes of Eileen Ni Cooley had whipped their\nblood. Tragedy had sounded her warning note on the air, and they were\neach waiting to see had they a part in the play.\n\nBut the sudden change of atmosphere wrought like a foreign chemical in\ntheir blood, the sound of the falling rain dulled their spirits, the\nmust of that sleeping house went to their brains like an opiate, and the\nsilence of the place folded them about, compelling them to a similar\nquietude.\n\nWe are imitative beings; we respond to the tone and colour of our\nenvironment almost against ourselves, and still have our links with the\nchameleon and the moth; the sunset sheds its radiant peace upon us and\nwe are content; the silent mountain-top lays a finger on our lips and we\ntalk in whispers; the clouds lend us of their gaiety and we rejoice. So\nfor a few moments they sat wrestling with the dull ghosts of that broken\nhouse, the mournful phantasms that were not dead long enough to be\nhappy, for death is sorrowful at first and for a long time, but\nafterwards the dead are contented and learn to shape themselves anew.\n\nPatsy, drawing on his pipe, looked around the people.\n\n\"Eh!\" he exclaimed with heavy joviality, \"where has the man got to, the\nman with the big stick? If he's shy let him come in, and if he's angry\nlet him come in too.\"\n\nEileen Ni Cooley was sitting close beside Art. She had let her shawl\ndroop from her head, and her hair was showing through the dusk like a\ntorch.\n\n\"The man has gone away, Padraig,\" said she; \"he got tired of the\ncompany, and he's gone travelling towards his own friends.\"\n\nPatsy regarded her with shining eyes. The must of the house was no\nlonger in his nostrils; the silence lifted from him at a bound.\n\n\"You are telling me a fine story, Eileen,\" said he, \"tell me this too,\ndid the man go away of his own will, or did you send him away?\"\n\n\"It was a bit of both, Padraig.\"\n\n\"The time to get good news,\" said Patsy, \"is when it's raining, and that\nis good news, and it's raining now.\"\n\n\"News need not be good or bad, but only news,\" she replied, \"and we will\nleave it at that.\"\n\nCaeltia spoke to her:\n\n\"Do you have a good life going by yourself about the country and making\nacquaintances where you please?\"\n\n\"I have the life I like,\" she answered, \"and whether it's good or bad\ndoesn't matter.\"\n\n\"Tell me the reason you never let himself make love to you when he wants\nto make it?\"\n\n\"He is a domineering man,\" said she, \"and I am a proud woman, and we\nwould never give in to each other. When one of us would want to do a\nthing the other one wouldn't do it, and there would be no living between\nus. If I said black he would say white, and if he said yes I would say\nno, and that's how we are.\"\n\n\"He has a great love for you.\"\n\n\"He has a great hate for me. He loves me the way a dog loves bones, and\nin a little while he'd kill me in a lonely place with his hands to see\nwhat I would look like and I dying.\"\n\nShe turned her face to Mac Cann:\n\n\"That's the kind of man you are to me, Padraig, although you're\ndifferent to other people.\"\n\n\"I am not that sort of man, but it's yourself is like that. I tell you\nthat if I took a woman with me I'd be staunch to her the way I was with\nthe mother of the girl there, and if you were to come with me you\nwouldn't have any complaint from now on.\"\n\n\"I know every thing I'm talking about,\" she replied sternly, \"and I\nwon't go with you, but I'll go with the young man here beside me.\"\n\nWith the words she put her hand on Art's arm and kept it there.\n\nMary Mac Cann straightened up where she was sitting and became deeply\ninterested.\n\nArt turned and burst into a laugh as he looked critically at Eileen.\n\n\"I will not go with you,\" said he. \"I don't care for you a bit.\"\n\nShe gave a hard smile and removed her hand from his arm.\n\n\"It's all the worse for me,\" said she, \"and it's small harm to you,\nyoung boy.\"\n\n\"That's a new answer for yourself,\" said Patsy, grinning savagely.\n\n\"It is, and it's a new day for me, and a poor day, for it's the first\nday of my old age.\"\n\n\"You'll die in a ditch,\" cried Patsy, \"you'll die in a ditch like an old\nmare with a broken leg.\"\n\n\"I will,\" she snarled, \"when the time comes, but you'll never have the\nkilling of me, Padraig.\"\n\nFinaun was sitting beside Mary with her hand in his, but she snatched\nher hand away and flared so fiercely upon Eileen that the woman looked\nup.\n\n\"Don't be angry with me, Mary,\" said she; \"I never did you any harm yet\nand I'll never be able to do it now, for there are years between us, and\nthey're going to break my back.\"\n\nFinaun was speaking, more, it seemed, to himself than to the company. He\ncombed his white beard with his hand as he spoke, and they all looked at\nhim.\n\n\"He is talking in his sleep,\" said Eileen pensively, \"and he an old man,\nand a nice old man.\"\n\n\"My father,\" said Caeltia, in an apologetic voice; \"there is no need to\ntell about that.\"\n\n\"There is every need, my beloved,\" replied Finaun with his slow smile.\n\n\"I would rather you did not,\" murmured Caeltia, lifting his hand a\nlittle.\n\n\"I ask your permission, my son,\" said Finaun gently.\n\nCaeltia spread out his open palms and dropped them again.\n\n\"Whatever you wish to do is good, my father,\" and, with a slight blush,\nhe slid the pipe into his pocket.\n\nFinaun turned to Eileen Ni Cooley:\n\n\"I will tell you a story,\" said he.\n\n\"Sure,\" said Eileen, \"I'd love to hear you, and I could listen to a\nstory for a day and a night.\"\n\nMac Cann pulled solemnly at his pipe and regarded Finaun who was looking\nat him peacefully from a corner.\n\n\"You're full of fun,\" said he to the archangel.\n\n\n\n\n                              CHAPTER XVI\n\n\nSaid Finaun:\n\n\"While generation succeeds generation a man has to fight the same fight.\nAt the end he wins, and he never has to fight that battle again, and\nthen he is ready for Paradise.\n\n\"Every man from the beginning has one enemy from whom he can never\nescape, and the story of his lives is the story of his battles with that\nenemy whom he must draw into his own being before he can himself attain\nto real being, for an enemy can never be crushed, but every enemy can be\nwon.\n\n\"Long before the foundations of this world were laid, when the voice was\nheard and the army of the voice went through the darkness, two people\ncame into being with the universe that was their shell. They lived\nthrough myriad existences knowing star after star grow hot and cold in\nthe broad sky, and they hated each other through the changing of the\nstars and the ebbing and flooding of their lives.\n\n\"At a time this one of them would be a woman and that other would be a\nman, and again in due period the one that had been a woman would be a\nman and the other would be a woman, that their battle might be joined in\nthe intimacy which can only come through difference and the distance\nthat is attraction.\n\n\"No one can say which of these did most harm to the other; no one can\nsay which was the most ruthless, the most merciless, for they were born,\nas all enemies are, equal in being and in power.\n\n\"Through their lives they had many names and they lived in many lands,\nbut their names in eternity were Finaun Mac Dea and Caeltia Mac Dea, and\nwhen the time comes, their name will be Mac Dea and nothing else: then\nthey will become one in each other, and one in Infinite Greatness, and\none in the unending life of Eternity which is God: but still, in world\nunder world, in star under flaming star, they pursue each other with a\nhate which is slowly changing into love.\n\n\"It was not on earth, nor in any planet, that the beginning of love came\nto these two, it was in the hell that they had fashioned for themselves\nin terror and lust and cruelty. For, as they sat among their demons, a\nseed germinated in the soul of one, the seed of knowledge which is the\nparent of love and the parent of every terrible and beautiful thing in\nthe worlds and the heavens.\n\n\"While that one looked on his companion, writhing like himself in\ntorment, he grew conscious, and although he looked at the other with\nfury it was with a new fury, for with it came contempt, and they were no\nlonger equal in power or in hate.\n\n\"Now, for the first time, that one in whom knowledge had been born\ndesired to escape from his companion; he wished to get away so that he\nmight never behold that enemy again; suddenly the other appeared to him\nhideous as a toad that couches in slime and spits his poison at random,\nbut he could not escape, and he could never escape.\n\n\"As that one increased in knowledge so he increased in cruelty and\npower, so his lust became terrible, for now there was fear in his\ncontempt because he could never escape. Many a time they fled from one\nanother, but always, and however they fled, it was towards each other\ntheir steps were directed. At the feast, in the camp, and in the\nwilderness they found themselves and undertook anew the quarrel which\nwas their blood and their being.\n\n\"And that other in whom knowledge had not awakened--He raged like a\nbeast; he thought in blood and fever; his brains were his teeth and the\nnails of his hands. Cunning came creepingly to his aid against\nknowledge; he lay in wait for his enemy in gloomy places; he spread\nsnares for him in the darkness and baited traps. He feigned humility to\nget closer to his vengeance, but he could not combat knowledge.\n\n\"Time and again he became the slave of that other, and as slave and\nmaster their battle was savagely joined, until at last knowledge stirred\nalso in that mind and he grew conscious.\n\n\"Then the age-long enmity drew to its change. For him there was no\ncontempt possible, the other was older than he and wiser, for to be wise\nis to be old; there was no vantage for contempt, but envy sharpened his\nsword, it salted his anger, and they fought anew and unceasingly.\n\n\"But now their hands were not seeking each other's throats with such\nfrank urgency; they fought subterraneously, with smiles and polite words\nand decent observances, but they did not cease for an instant to strive\nand never did they forsake an advantage or lift up the one that had\nfallen.\n\n\"Again the change: and now they battled not in the name of hate but\nunder the holy superscription of love; again and again, life after life,\nthey harried and ruined each other; their desire for one another was a\nmadness, and in that desire they warred more bitterly than before. They\nblasted each other's lives, they dashed their honour to the mud, they\nslew one another. Than this none of their battles had been so terrible.\nHere there was no let, no respite even for an instant. They knew each\nother with that superficial knowledge which seems so clear although it\nshows no more than the scum floating upon existence; they knew the\nscumminess of each other and exhausted to the dregs their abundant evil\nuntil of evil they could learn no further, and their lives, alternating\nin a fierce energy and a miserable weariness, came towards but could not\ncome to stagnation.\n\n\"The horizon vanished from them; there were irons on the feet of the\nwinds; the sun peered from a hood through a mask, and life was one room\nwherein dull voices droned dully, wherein something was for ever uttered\nand nothing was said, where hands were for ever lifted and nothing was\ndone, where the mind smouldered and flared to lightning and no thought\ncame from the spark.\n\n\"They had reached an end, and it was a precipice down which they must\nspin giddily to the murk, or else shape wings for themselves and soar\nfrom that completion, for completion is a consciousness, and once again\nthey were powerfully aware of themselves. They were vice-conscious, and\nvirtue did not abide in their minds than as a dream which was an\nillusion and a lie.\n\n\"Then, and this too was long ago! how long! When the moon was young;\nwhen she gathered rosy clouds about her evening and sang at noon from\nbush and mountain-ledge; when she folded her breasts in dewy darkness\nand awakened with cries of joy to the sun; then she tended her flowers\nin the vale; she drove her kine to deep pasture: she sang to her\nmultitudes of increase and happiness while her feet went in the furrow\nwith the plough and her hand guided the sickle and the sheaf. Great love\ndidst thou give when thou wast a mother, O Beautiful! who art now white\nas silver and hath ice upon thine ancient head.\n\n\"Again they lived and were wed.\n\n\"Which of them was which in that sad pilgrimage it is not now possible\nto know. Memory faints at the long tale of it, and they were so\nintermingled, so alike through all their difference that they were\nbecoming one in the great memory. Again they took up the time-long\nburden, and again desire drew them wildly to the embrace which was much\nrepugnance and very little love. So, behold these two, a man and a\nwoman, walking through the pleasant light, taking each other's hands in\na kindness that had no roots, speaking words of affection that their\nsouls groaned the lie to.\n\n\"The woman was fair--she was fair as one star that shines on the void\nand is not abashed before immensity; she was beautiful as a green tree\nby a pool that bows peacefully to the sun; she was lovely as a field of\nmild corn waving to the wind in one slow movement. Together they plumbed\ntheir desire and found wickedness glooming at the bottom, and they were\nconscious of themselves and of all evil.\n\n\"There was a demon in the pit that they had digged, and always, when\nthey founded anew their hell, he tormented them; he was the accumulation\nof their evil; age after age they re-created him until he showed\ngigantic and terrible as a storm, and as they lusted after each other so\nhe lusted after them.\n\n\"On a time that Misery shaped itself as a man and came privily to the\nwoman while she walked under heavy apple boughs in a garden. Their feet\nwent to and fro closely together in the grass and their voices communed\ntogether, until one day the woman cried bitterly that there were no\nwings, and with the Spectre she leaped forthright to the chasm and went\ndown shrieking a laughter that was woe. There she found herself and her\ndemon and was the concubine of that one; and there, in the gulf and\nchasm of evil, she conjured virtue to her tortured soul and stole energy\nfrom the demon.\n\n\"She sat among the rocks of her place.\n\n\"Old Misery beside her laughed his laugh, and while she looked at him\nher eyes went backwards in her head, and when she looked again she saw\ndifferently, for in that space knowledge had put forth a bud and a\nblossom and she looked through knowledge. She saw herself and the demon\nand the man, and she prayed to the demon. As she prayed she gathered\nsmall blue flowers that peered sparsely among the crags, and she made a\nchaplet of these. She wove them with tears and sighs, and when the\nchaplet was made she put it to the demon's hand, praying him to bear it\nto the man.\n\n\"He did that for her because he loved to laugh at their trouble, and he\ndivined laughter for his iron chaps.\n\n\"So the demon came terribly to the man as he walked under the swaying\nand lifting of green boughs in the long grass of an orchard, and he put\nthe chaplet in the man's hand, saying:\n\n\"'My concubine, your beloved, sends a greeting to you with her love and\nthis garland of blue flowers which she has woven with her two hands in\nhell.'\n\n\"The man, looking on these flowers, felt his heart move within him like\nwater.\n\n\"'Bring her to me,' said he to the demon.\n\n\"'I will not do so,' replied the Misery.\n\n\"And, suddenly, the man leaped on the Spectre. He locked his arms about\nthat cold neck, and clung furiously with his knees.\n\n\"'Then I will go to her with you,' said he.\n\n\"And together they went headlong down the pit, and as they fell they\nbattled frightfully in the dark pitch.\"\n\n\n\n\n                              CHAPTER XVII\n\n\nMac Cann was asleep, but when Finaun's voice ceased he awakened and\nstretched himself with a loud yawn.\n\n\"I didn't hear a word of that story,\" said he.\n\n\"I heard it,\" said Eileen Ni Cooley; \"it was a good story.\"\n\n\"What was it about?\"\n\n\"I don't know,\" she replied.\n\n\"Do you know what it was about, Mary?\"\n\n\"I do not, for I was thinking about other things at the time.\"\n\nFinaun took her hand.\n\n\"There was no need for any of you to know what that story was about,\nexcepting you only,\" and he looked very kindly at Eileen Ni Cooley.\n\n\"I listened to it,\" said she; \"and it was a good story. I know what it\nwas about, but I would not know how to tell what it was about.\"\n\n\"It must have been the queer yarn,\" said Patsy regretfully; \"I wish I\nhadn't gone to sleep.\"\n\n\"I was awake for you,\" said Caeltia.\n\n\"What's the use of that?\" said Patsy testily.\n\nIt was still raining.\n\nThe day was far advanced and evening was spinning her dull webs athwart\nthe sky. Already in the broken house the light had diminished to a brown\ngloom, and their faces looked watchful and pale to each other as they\ncrouched on the earthen floor. Silence was again seizing on them, and\neach person's eyes were focussing on some object or point on the wall or\nthe floor as their thoughts began to hold them.\n\nMac Cann roused himself.\n\n\"We are here for the night; that rain won't stop as long as there's a\ndrop left in its can.\"\n\nMary bestirred herself also.\n\n\"I'll slip down to the cart and bring back whatever food is in it. I\nleft every thing covered and I don't think they'll be too wet.\"\n\n\"Do that,\" said her father.\n\n\"There's a big bottle rolled up in a sack,\" he continued; \"it's in a\nbucket at the front of the cart by the right shaft, and there's a little\nsup of whisky in the big bottle.\"\n\n\"I'll bring that too.\"\n\n\"You're a good girl,\" said he.\n\n\"What will I do with the ass this night?\" said Mary.\n\n\"Hit him a kick,\" said her father.\n\n\n\n\n                             CHAPTER XVIII\n\n\nThe ass stood quietly where he had been left.\n\nRain was pouring from him as though he were the father of rivers and\nsupplied the world with running water. It dashed off his flanks; it\nleaped down his tail; it foamed over his forehead to his nose, and hit\nthe ground from there with a thump.\n\n\"I'm very wet,\" said the ass to himself, \"and I wish I wasn't.\"\n\nHis eyes were fixed on a brown stone that had a knob on its back. Every\ndrop of rain that hit the stone jumped twice and then spattered to the\nground. After a moment he spoke to himself again:\n\n\"I don't care whether it stops raining or not, for I can't be any wetter\nthan I am, however it goes.\"\n\nHaving said this, he dismissed the weather and settled himself to think.\nHe hung his head slightly and fixed his eyes afar off, and he stared\ndistantly like that without seeing anything while he gathered and\nrevolved his thoughts.\n\nThe first thing he thought about was carrots.\n\nHe thought of their shape, their colour, and the way they looked in a\nbucket. Some would have the thick end stuck up, and some would have the\nother end stuck up, and there were always bits of clay sticking to one\nend or the other. Some would be lying on their sides as though they had\nslipped quietly to sleep, and some would be standing in a slanting way\nas though they were leaning their backs against a wall and couldn't make\nup their minds what to do next. But, however they looked in the bucket,\nthey all tasted alike, and they all tasted well. They are a\ncompanionable food; they make a pleasant, crunching noise when they are\nbitten, and so, when one is eating carrots, one can listen to the sound\nof one's eating and make a story from it.\n\nThistles make a swishing noise when they are bitten; they have their\ntaste.\n\nGrass does not make any noise at all; it slips dumbly to the sepulchre,\nand makes no sign.\n\nBread makes no sound when it is eaten by an ass; it has an interesting\ntaste, and it clings about one's teeth for a long time.\n\nApples have a good smell and a joyful crunch, but the taste of sugar\nlasts longer in the mouth, and can be remembered for longer than\nanything else; it has a short, sharp crunch that is like a curse, and\ninstantly it blesses you with the taste of it.\n\nHay can be eaten in great mouthfuls. It has a chip and a crack at the\nfirst bite, and then it says no more. It sticks out of one's mouth like\nwhiskers, and you can watch it with your eye while it moves to and fro\naccording as your mouth moves. It is a friendly food, and very good for\nthe hungry.\n\nOats are not a food; they are a great blessing; they are a debauch; they\nmake you proud, so that you want to kick the front out of a cart, and\nclimb a tree, and bite a cow, and chase chickens.\n\n                   *       *       *       *       *\n\nMary came running and unyoked him from the cart. She embraced him on the\nstreaming nose. \"You poor thing, you!\" said she, and she took a large\npaper bag from the cart and held it to his muzzle. There was soft sugar\nin the bag, and half a pound of it clove to his tongue at the first\nlick.\n\nAs she went back to the house with the bundle of food the ass regarded\nher.\n\n\"You are a good girl,\" said the ass.\n\nHe shook himself and dissipated his thoughts; then he trotted briskly\nhere and there on the path to see if there was anything worth looking\nfor.\n\n\n\n\n                              CHAPTER XIX\n\n\nThey shared the food: there was little of it, and some of it was wet;\nbut they each had a piece of bread, a knuckle of cheese, and three cold\npotatoes.\n\nMary said there was something wrong with her, and she passed two of her\ncold potatoes to the cherub Art, who ate them easily.\n\n\"I wish you had given them to me,\" said her father.\n\n\"I'll give you one of mine,\" said Eileen Ni Cooley, and she thrust one\nacross to him.\n\nMac Cann pushed it entire into his mouth, and ate it as one who eats in\na trance: he stared at Eileen.\n\n\"Why did you give me your potato?\" said he.\n\nEileen blushed until not a single freckle in her face was visible.\n\n\"I don't know,\" she answered.\n\n\"You don't seem to know anything at all this day,\" he complained.\n\"You're full of fun,\" said he.\n\nHe lit his pipe, and, after pulling for a while at it, he handed it to\nthe woman.\n\n\"Take a draw at that pipe,\" he commanded, \"and let us be decent with\neach other.\"\n\nEileen Ni Cooley did take a draw at the pipe, but she handed it back\nsoon.\n\n\"I never was much at the smoking,\" said she.\n\nCaeltia had his pipe going at full blast. He was leaning against the\nwall with his eyes half closed, and was thinking deeply between puffs.\n\nFinaun had a good grip on Mary's hair, which he was methodically\nplaiting and unloosening again. He was sunken in reverie.\n\nMary was peeping from beneath her lids at Art, and was at the same time\nwatching everybody else to see that she was not observed.\n\nArt was whistling to himself in a low tone, and he was looking fixedly\nat a spider.\n\nThe spider was hauling on a loose rope of his tent, and he was very\nleisurely. One would have thought that he was smoking also.\n\n\"What did you have for dinner?\" said Art to the spider.\n\n\"Nothing, sir, but a little, thin, wisp of a young fly,\" said the\nspider.\n\nHe was a thick-set, heavy kind of spider, and he seemed to be\nmiddle-aged, and resigned to it.\n\n\"That is all I had myself,\" said Art. \"Are the times bad with you now,\nor are they middling?\"\n\n\"Not so bad, glory be to God! The flies do wander in through the holes,\nand when they come from the light outside to the darkness in here, sir,\nwe catch them on the wall, and we crunch their bones.\"\n\n\"Do they like that?\"\n\n\"They do not, sir, but we do. The lad with the stout, hairy legs, down\nthere beside your elbow, caught a blue-bottle yesterday; there was\neating on that fellow, I tell you, and he's not all eaten yet, but that\nspider is always lucky, barring the day he caught the wasp.\"\n\n\"That was a thing he didn't like?\" queried Art.\n\n\"Don't mention it to him, sir, he doesn't care to talk about it.\"\n\n\"What way are you going to fasten up your rope?\" said Art.\n\n\"I'll put a spit on the end of it, and then I'll thump it with my head\nto make it stick.\"\n\n\"Well, good luck to yourself.\"\n\n\"Good luck to your honour.\"\n\n                   *       *       *       *       *\n\nSaid Patsy to Caeltia, pointing to Finaun:\n\n\"What does he be thinking about when he gets into them fits?\"\n\n\"He does be talking to the hierarchy,\" replied Caeltia.\n\n\"And who are themselves?\"\n\n\"They are the people in charge of this world.\"\n\n\"Is it the kings and the queens and the Holy Pope?\"\n\n\"No, they are different kinds of people.\"\n\nPatsy yawned.\n\n\"What does he be talking to them about?\"\n\n\"Every kind of thing,\" replied Caeltia, and yawned also. \"They are\nasking him for advice now.\"\n\n\"What is he saying?\"\n\n\"He is talking about love,\" said Caeltia.\n\n\"He is always talking about that,\" said Patsy.\n\n\"And,\" said Caeltia, \"he is talking about knowledge.\"\n\n\"It's another word of his.\"\n\n\"And he is saying that love and knowledge are the same thing.\"\n\n\"I wouldn't put it past him,\" said Patsy.\n\n                   *       *       *       *       *\n\nFor he was in a bad temper. Either the close confinement, or the dull\nweather, or the presence of Eileen Ni Cooley, or all of these, had made\nhim savage.\n\nHe arose and began striding through the narrow room, kicking stones from\none side of the place to the other and glooming fiercely at everybody.\nTwice he halted before Eileen Ni Cooley, staring at her, and twice,\nwithout a word said, he resumed his marching.\n\nSuddenly he leaned his back against the wall facing her, and shouted:\n\n\"Well, Eileen a grah, the man went away from you, the man with the big\nstick and the lengthy feet. Ah! that's a man you'd be crying out for and\nyou all by yourself in the night.\"\n\n\"He was a good man,\" said Eileen; \"there was no harm in that man,\nPadraig.\"\n\n\"Maybe he used to be putting his two arms around you now and then beside\na hedge and giving you long kisses on the mouth?\"\n\n\"He used to be doing that.\"\n\n\"Aye did he, indeed, and he wasn't the first man to do that, Eileen.\"\n\n\"Maybe you're right, Padraig.\"\n\n\"Nor the twenty-first.\"\n\n\"You've got me here in the house, Padraig, and the people around us are\nyour own friends.\"\n\nCaeltia also had arisen to his feet and was staring morosely at Eileen.\nSuddenly he leaped to her, wrenched the shawl from her head with a wide\ngesture, and gripped her throat between his hands; as her head touched\nthe ground she gasped, and then, and just as suddenly, he released her.\nHe stood up, looking wildly at Patsy, who stared back at him grinning\nlike a madman, then he stumbled across to Finaun and took his hands\nbetween his own.\n\n\"You must not hurt me, my dear,\" said Finaun, smiling gravely at him.\n\nMary had leaped to Art, whose arm she took, and they backed to the end\nof the room.\n\nEileen stood up; she arranged her dress and wrapped the shawl about her\nhead again; she gazed fearlessly at Mac Cann.\n\n\"The house is full of your friends, Padraig, and there's nobody here\nwith me at all; there's no man could want better than that for himself.\"\n\nPatsy's voice was hoarse.\n\n\"You're looking for fight?\"\n\n\"I'm looking for whatever is coming,\" she replied steadily.\n\n\"I'm coming, then,\" he roared, and he strode to her. He lifted his hands\nabove his head, and brought them down so heavily on her shoulders that\nshe staggered.\n\n\"Here I am,\" said he, staring into her face.\n\nShe closed her eyes.\n\n\"I knew it wasn't love you wanted, Padraig; it was murder you wanted,\nand you have your wish.\"\n\nShe was swaying under his weight as she spoke; her knees were giving\nbeneath her.\n\n\"Eileen,\" said Patsy, in a small voice, \"I'm going to tumble; I can't\nhold myself up, Eileen; my knees are giving way under me, and I've only\ngot my arms round your neck.\"\n\nShe opened her eyes and saw him sagging against her, with his eyes half\nclosed and his face gone white.\n\n\"Sure, Padraig!\" said she.\n\nShe flung her arms about his body and lifted him, but the weight was too\nmuch, and he went down.\n\nShe crouched by him on the floor, hugging his head against her breast.\n\n\"Sure, listen to me, Padraig; I never did like any one in the world but\nyourself; there wasn't a man of them all was more to me than a blast of\nwind; you were the one I liked always. Listen to me now, Padraig. Don't\nI be wanting you day and night, and saying prayers to you in the\ndarkness and crying out in the dawn; my heart is sore for you, so it is:\nthere's a twist in us, O my dear. Don't you be minding the men; whatever\nthey did it was nothing, it was nothing more than beasts playing in a\nfield and not caring anything. We are beside one another for a minute\nnow. When I would put my hand on my breast in the middle of a laugh it\nwas you I was touching, and I do never stop thinking of you in any place\nunder the sky.\"\n\nThey were kissing each other like lost souls; they babbled and clung to\neach other; they thrust one another's head back to stare at it, and\npursued the head with their violent lips.\n\n                   *       *       *       *       *\n\nIt was a time before they all got to sleep that night, but they did\nsleep at the end of it.\n\nThey stretched in the darkness with their eyes closed, and the night\nfolded them around, separating each one from his fellow, and putting on\neach the enchantment of silence and blindness. They were no longer\ntogether although they were lying but a few inches apart; there was only\nthe darkness that had no inches to it; the darkness that has no\nbeginning and no end; that appears and disappears, calling hush as it\ncomes and goes, and holding peace and terror in either invisible hand;\nthere was no silver moon in the sky and no sparkle of white stars; there\nwas only darkness and silence and the steady hushing of the rain.\n\n                   *       *       *       *       *\n\nWhen he awoke in the morning Mac Cann rolled urgently on his elbow and\nstared to where Eileen Ni Cooley had stretched herself for sleep--but\nshe was not there, she was not anywhere.\n\nHe shouted, and the company sprang to their feet.\n\n\"She got out through the window,\" he roared.\n\n\"The devil damn the soul of her,\" said he.\n\n\n\n\n                                BOOK III\n\n                             BRIEN O'BRIEN\n\n\n\n\n                               CHAPTER XX\n\n\nThey continued their travels.\n\nIt would be more correct to say they continued their search for food,\nfor that in reality was the objective of each day's journeying.\n\nMoving thus, day by day, taking practically any road that presented\nitself, they had wandered easily through rugged, beautiful Donegal down\ninto Connaught. They had camped on the slopes of rough mountains, slept\npeacefully in deep valleys that wound round and round like a corkscrew,\ntraversed for weeks in Connemara by the clamorous sea where they lived\nsumptuously on fish, and then they struck to the inland plains again,\nand away by curving paths to the County Kerry.\n\nAt times Mac Cann got work to do--to mend a kettle that had a little\nhole in it, to stick a handle on a pot, to stiffen the last days of a\nbucket that was already long past its labour, and he did these jobs\nsitting in the sunlight on dusty roads, and if he did not do them Mary\ndid them for him while he observed her critically and explained both to\nher and to his company the mystery of the tinker's craft.\n\n\"There's a great deal,\" he would say, \"in the twist of the hand.\"\n\nAnd again, but this usually to Art when that cherub tried his skill on a\nrusty pot:\n\n\"You'll never make a good tinker unless you've got a hand on you. Keep\nyour feet in your boots and get to work with your fingers.\"\n\nAnd sometimes he would nod contentedly at Mary and say:\n\n\"There's a girl with real hands on her that aren't feet.\"\n\nHands represented to him whatever of praiseworthy might be spoken of by\na man, but feet were in his opinion rightly covered, and ought not to be\ndiscovered except in minatory conversation. One ran on them! Well, it\nwas a dog's trade, or a donkey's; but hands! he expanded to that\nsubject, and could loose thereon a gale of praise that would blow all\nother conversation across the border.\n\nThey set their camp among roaring fairs where every kind of wild man and\nwoman yelled salutation at Patsy and his daughter, and howled\nremembrance of ten and twenty-year old follies, and plunged into drink\nwith the savage alacrity of those to whom despair is a fairer brother\nthan hope, and with some of these people the next day's journey would be\nshared, rioting and screaming on the lonely roads, and these people also\nthe angels observed and were friendly with.\n\nOne morning they were pacing on their journey. The eyes of the little\ntroop were actively scanning the fields on either hand. They were all\nhungry, for they had eaten nothing since the previous midday. But these\nfields were barren of food. Great stretches of grass stretched away to\neither horizon, and there was nothing here that could be eaten except by\nthe donkey.\n\nAs they went they saw a man sitting on a raised bank. His arms were\nfolded; he had a straw in his mouth; there was a broad grin on his red\nface; a battered hat was thrust far back on his head, and from beneath\nthis a brush of stiff hair poked in any direction like an ill-tied\nbundle of black wire.\n\nMac Cann stared at that red joviality.\n\n\"There's a man,\" said he to Caeltia, \"that hasn't got a care in the\nworld.\"\n\n\"It must be very bad for him,\" commented Caeltia.\n\n\"Holloa, mister,\" cried Patsy heartily, \"how's everything?\"\n\n\"Everything's fine,\" beamed the man, \"how's yourself?\"\n\n\"We're holding up, glory be to God!\"\n\n\"That's the way.\"\n\nHe waved his hand against the horizon.\n\n\"There's weather for you,\" and he spoke with the proud humility of one\nwho had made that weather, but would not boast. His eye was steady on\nMac Cann.\n\n\"I've got a hunger on me that's worth feeding, mister.\"\n\n\"We've all got that,\" replied Patsy, \"and there's nothing in the cart\nbarring its timbers. I'm keeping an eye out, tho', and maybe we'll trip\nover a side of bacon in the middle of the road or a neat little patch of\npotatoes in the next field and it full of the flowery boyoes.\"\n\n\"There's a field a mile up this road,\" said the man, \"and everything you\ncould talk about is in that field.\"\n\n\"Do you tell me!\" said Patsy briskly.\n\n\"I do: every kind of thing is in that field, and there's rabbits at the\nfoot of the hill beyond it.\"\n\n\"I used to have a good shot with a stone,\" said Patsy.\n\n\"Mary,\" he continued, \"when we come to the field let yourself and Art\ngather up the potatoes while Caeltia and myself take stones in our hands\nto kill the rabbits.\"\n\n\"I'm coming along with you,\" said the man, \"and I'll get my share.\"\n\n\"You can do that,\" said Patsy.\n\nThe man scrambled down the bank. There was something between his knees\nof which he was very careful.\n\n\"What sort of a thing is that?\" said Mary.\n\n\"It's a concertina and I do play tunes on it before the houses, and\nthat's how I make my money.\"\n\n\"The musiciner will give us a tune after we get a feed,\" said Patsy.\n\n\"Sure enough,\" said the man.\n\nArt stretched out his hand.\n\n\"Let me have a look at the musical instrument,\" said he.\n\nThe man handed it to him and fell into pace beside Patsy and Caeltia.\nMary and Finaun were going as usual one on either side of the ass, and\nthe three of them returned to their interrupted conversation. Every\ndozen paces Finaun would lean to the border of the road and pluck a\nfistful of prime grass or a thistle or a clutch of chickweed, and he\nwould put these to the ass's mouth.\n\nPatsy was eyeing the man.\n\n\"What's your name, mister?\" said he.\n\n\"I was known as Old Carolan, but now the people call me Billy the\nMusic.\"\n\n\"How is it that I never met you before?\"\n\n\"I'm from Connemara.\"\n\n\"I know every cow-track and bohereen in Connemara, and I know every road\nin Donegal and Kerry, and I know everybody that's on them roads, but I\ndon't know you, mister.\"\n\nThe man laughed at him.\n\n\"I'm not long on the roads, so how could you know me? What are you\ncalled yourself?\"\n\n\"I'm called Padraig Mac Cann.\"\n\n\"I know you well, for you stole a hen and a pair of boots off me ten\nmonths ago when I lived in a house.\"\n\n\"Do you tell me?\" said Mac Cann.\n\n\"I do; and I never grudged them to you, for that was the day that\neverything happened to me.\"\n\nMac Cann was searching his head to find from whom he had stolen a hen\nand a pair of boots at the one time.\n\n\"Well, glory be to God!\" he cried. \"Isn't it the queer world! Are you\nold Carolan, the miserly man of Temple Cahill?\"\n\nThe man laughed and nodded.\n\n\"I used to be him, but now I'm Billy the Music, and there's my\ninstrument under the boy's oxter.\"\n\nPatsy stared at him.\n\n\"And where's the house and the cattle, and the hundred acres of grass\nland and glebe, and the wife that people said you used to starve the\nstomach out of?\"\n\n\"Faith, I don't know where they are, and I don't care either,\" and he\nshook with the laughter as he said it.\n\n\"And your sister that killed herself climbing out of a high window on a\nwindy night to search for food among the neighbours?\"\n\n\"She's dead still,\" said the man, and he doubled up with glee.\n\n\"I declare,\" said Patsy, \"that it's the end of the world.\"\n\nThe man broke on his eloquence with a pointed finger.\n\n\"There's the field I was telling you about and it's weighty to the ribs\nwith potatoes and turnips.\"\n\nPatsy turned to his daughter.\n\n\"Gather in the potatoes; don't take them all from the one place, but\ntake them from here and there the way they won't be missed, and then go\nalong the road with the cart for twenty minutes and be cooking them.\nMyself and Caeltia will catch up on you in a little time and we'll bring\ngood meat with us.\"\n\nCaeltia and he moved to the right where a gentle hill rose against the\nsky. The hill was thickly wooded, massive clumps of trees were dotted\nevery little distance, and through these one could see quiet, green\nspaces drowsing in the sun.\n\nWhen they came to the fringing trees Patsy directed his companion to go\namong them some little distance and then to charge here and there,\nslashing against the trees and the ground with a stick.\n\nCaeltia did that, and at the end of a quarter of an hour Patsy had three\nrabbits stretched under his hand.\n\n\"That's good enough,\" he called; \"we'll go on now after the people.\"\n\nThey stowed the rabbits under their coats and took the road.\n\nThey soon caught on their companions. The cart was drawn to the side of\nthe road, at a little distance the ass was browsing, and Mary had a fire\ngoing in the brazier and the potatoes ready for the pot.\n\nPatsy tossed the rabbits to her.\n\n\"There you are, my girl,\" said he, and, with Caeltia, he sank down on\nthe grassy margin of the road and drew out his pipe.\n\nThe strange man was sitting beside Art, to whom he was explaining the\nmechanism of a concertina.\n\n\"While we are waiting,\" said Patsy to him, \"you can tell us all the\nnews; tell us what happened to the land and what you're doing on the\nroad; and there is a bit of twist to put in your pipe so that you'll\ntalk well.\"\n\nMary broke in:\n\n\"Wait a minute now, for I want to hear that story; let yourself help me\nover with the brazier and we can all sit together.\"\n\nThere was a handle to the bucket and through this they put a long stick\nand lifted all bodily to the butt of the hedge.\n\n\"Now we can sit together,\" said Mary, \"and I can be cooking the food and\nlistening to the story at the same time.\"\n\n\"I'd sooner give you a tune on the concertina,\" said Billy the Music.\n\n\"You can do that afterwards,\" replied Patsy.\n\n\n\n\n                              CHAPTER XXI\n\n\n\"I'll tell you the story,\" said Billy the Music, \"and here it is:\n\n\"A year ago I had a farm in the valley. The sun shone into it, and the\nwind didn't blow into it for it was well sheltered, and the crops that I\nused to take off that land would astonish you.\n\n\"I had twenty head of cattle eating the grass, and they used to get fat\nquick and they used to give good milk into the bargain. I had cocks and\nhens for the eggs and the market, and there was a good many folk would\nhave been glad to get my farm.\n\n\"There were ten men always working on the place, but at harvest-time\nthere would be a lot more, and I used to make them work too. Myself and\nmy son and my wife's brother (a lout, that fellow!) used to run after\nthe men, but it was hard to keep up with them, for they were great\nschemers. They tried to do as little work as ever they were able, and\nthey tried to get as much money out of me as they could manage. But I\nwas up to them lads, and it's mighty little they got out of me without\ngiving twice as much for it.\n\n\"Bit by bit I weeded out the men until at last I only had the ones I\nwanted, the tried and trusty men. They were a poor lot, and they didn't\ndare to look back at me when I looked at them; but they were able to\nwork, and that is all I wanted them to do, and I saw that they did it.\n\n\"As I'm sitting beside you on this bank to-day I'm wondering why I took\nall the trouble I did take, and what, in the name of this and that, I\nexpected to get out of it all. I usen't go to bed until twelve o'clock\nat night, and I would be up in the dawn before the birds. Five o'clock\nin the morning never saw me stretching in the warm bed, and every day I\nwould root the men out of their sleep; often enough I had to throw them\nout of bed, for there wasn't a man of them but would have slept rings\nround the clock if he got the chance.\n\n\"Of course I knew that they didn't want to work for me, and that, bating\nthe hunger, they'd have seen me far enough before they'd lift a hand for\nmy good; but I had them by the hasp, for as long as men have to eat, any\nman with the food can make them do whatever he wants them to do;\nwouldn't they stand on their heads for twelve hours a day if you gave\nthem wages? Aye would they, and eighteen hours if you held them to it.\n\n\"I had the idea too that they were trying to rob me, and maybe they\nwere. It doesn't seem to matter now whether they robbed me or not, for I\ngive you my word that the man who wants to rob me to-day is welcome to\nall he can get and more if I had it.\"\n\n\"Faith, you're the kind man!\" said Patsy.\n\n\"Let that be,\" said Billy the Music.\n\n\"The secret of the thing was that I loved money, hard money, gold and\nsilver pieces, and pieces of copper. I liked it better than the people\nwho were round me. I liked it better than the cattle and the crops. I\nliked it better than I liked myself, and isn't that the queer thing? I\nput up with the silliest ways for it, and I lived upside down and inside\nout for it. I tell you I would have done anything just to get money, and\nwhen I paid the men for their labour I grudged them every penny that\nthey took from me.\n\n\"It did seem to me that in taking my metal they were surely and openly\nrobbing me and laughing at me as they did it. I saw no reason why they\nshouldn't have worked for me for nothing, and if they had I would have\ngrudged them the food they ate and the time they lost in sleeping, and\nthat's another queer thing, mind you!\"\n\n\"If one of them men,\" said Patsy solemnly, \"had the spunk of a wandering\ngoat or a mangy dog he'd have taken a graipe to yourself, mister, and\nhe'd have picked your soul out of your body and slung it on a\ndung-heap.\"\n\n\"Don't be thinking,\" replied the other, \"that men are courageous and\nfiery animals, for they're not, and every person that pays wages to men\nknows well that they're as timid as sheep and twice as timid. Let me\ntell you too that all the trouble wasn't on their side; I had a share of\nit and a big share.\"\n\nMac Cann interrupted solemnly--\n\n\"That's what the fox told the goose when the goose said that the teeth\nhurted him. 'Look at the trouble I had to catch you,' said the fox.\"\n\n\"We won't mind that,\" said Billy the Music.\n\n\"I was hard put to it to make the money. I was able to knock a good\nprofit out of the land and the beasts and the men that worked for me;\nand then, when I came to turn the profit into solid pieces, I found that\nthere was a world outside of my world, and it was truly bent on robbing\nme, and, what's more, it had thought hard for generations about the best\nway of doing it. It had made its scheme so carefully that I was as\nhelpless among them people as the labourers were with me. Oh! they got\nme, and they squeezed me, and they marched off smiling with the heaviest\npart of my gain, and they told me to be a bit more polite or they'd\nbreak me into bits, and I was polite too. Ah! there's a big world\noutside the little world, and maybe there's a bigger world outside that,\nand grindstones in it for all the people that are squeezers in their own\nplace.\n\n\"The price I thought fair for the crop was never the price I got from\nthe jobbers. If I sold a cow or a horse I never got as much as half of\nwhat I reckoned on. There were rings and cliques in the markets\neverywhere, and they knew how to manage me. It was they who got more\nthan half the money I made, and they had me gripped so that I couldn't\nget away. It was for these people I used to be out of bed at twelve\no'clock at night and up again before the fowl were done snoring, and it\nwas for them I tore the bowels out of my land, and hazed and bedevilled\nevery man and woman and dog that came in sight of me, and when I thought\nof these market-men with their red jowls and their 'take it or leave it'\nI used to get so full of rage that I could hardly breathe.\n\n\"I had to take it because I couldn't afford to leave it, and then I'd go\nhome again trying to cut it finer, trying to skin an extra chance profit\noff the land and workers, and I do wonder now that the men didn't try to\nkill me or didn't commit suicide. Aye, I wonder that I didn't commit\nsuicide myself by dint of the rage and greed and weariness that was my\nshare of life day and night.\n\n\"I got the money anyhow, and, sure enough, the people must have thought\nI was the devil's self; but it was little I cared what they thought, for\nthe pieces were beginning to mount up in the box, and one fine day the\nbox got so full that not another penny-piece could have been squeezed\nsideways into it, so I had to make a new box, and it wasn't so long\nuntil I made a third box and a fourth one, and I could see the time\ncoming when I would be able to stand in with the market-men, and get a\ngood grip on whatever might be going.\"\n\n\"How much did you rob in all?\" said Patsy.\n\n\"I had all of two thousand pounds.\"\n\n\"That's a lot of money, I'm thinking.\"\n\n\"It is so, and it took a lot of getting, and there was twenty damns went\ninto the box with every one of the yellow pieces.\"\n\n\"A damn isn't worth a shilling,\" said Patsy. \"You can have them from me\nat two for a ha'penny, and there's lots of people would give them to\nyourself for nothing, you rotten old robber of the world! And if I had\nthe lump of twist back that I gave you a couple of minutes ago I'd put\nit in my pocket, so I would, and I'd sit on it.\"\n\n\"Don't forget that you're talking about old things,\" said Billy the\nMusic.\n\n\"If I was one of your men,\" shouted Patsy, \"you wouldn't have treated me\nthat way.\"\n\nBilly the Music smiled happily at him.\n\n\"Wouldn't I?\" said he, with his head on one side.\n\n\"You would not,\" said Patsy, \"for I'd have broken your skull with a\nspade.\"\n\n\"If you had been one of my men,\" the other replied mildly, \"you'd have\nbeen as tame as a little kitten; you'd have crawled round me with your\nhat in your hand and your eyes turned up like a dying duck's, and you'd\nhave said, 'Yes, sir,' and 'No, sir,' like the other men that I welted\nthe stuffing out of with my two fists, and broke the spirits of with\nlabour and hunger. Don't be talking now, for you're an ignorant man in\nthese things, although you did manage to steal a clocking hen off me the\nday I was busy.\"\n\n\"And a pair of good boots,\" said Patsy triumphantly.\n\n\"Do you want to hear the rest of the story?\"\n\n\"I do so,\" said Patsy; \"and I take back what I said about the tobacco;\nhere's another bit of it for your pipe.\"\n\n\"Thank you kindly,\" replied Billy.\n\nHe shook the ashes from his pipe, filled it, and continued his tale.\n\n\"On the head of all these things a wonderful thing happened to me.\"\n\n\"That's the way to start,\" said Patsy approvingly. \"You're a good\nstory-teller, mister.\"\n\n\"It isn't so much that,\" replied Billy, \"but it's a good story and a\nwonderful story.\"\n\n\"The potatoes are nearly done, Mary, a grah?\"\n\n\"They'll be done in a short while.\"\n\n\"Hold your story for a few minutes until we eat the potatoes and a few\ncollops of the rabbits, for I tell you that I'm drooping with the\nhunger.\"\n\n\"I didn't eat anything myself,\" replied Billy, \"since the middle of\nyesterday, and the food there has a smell to it that's making me mad.\"\n\n\"It's not quite done yet,\" said Mary.\n\n\"It's done enough,\" replied her father. \"Aren't you particular this day!\nPull them over here and share them round, and don't be having the men\ndying on your hands.\"\n\nMary did so, and for five minutes there was no sound except that of\nmoving jaws, and by that time there was no more food in sight.\n\n\"Ah!\" said Patsy with a great sigh.\n\n\"Aye, indeed!\" said Billy the Music with another sigh.\n\n\"Put on more of the potatoes now,\" Patsy commanded his daughter, \"and be\ncooking them against the time this story will be finished.\"\n\n\"I wish I had twice as much as I had,\" said Art.\n\n\"You got twice as much as me,\" cried Patsy angrily, \"for I saw the girl\ngiving it to you.\"\n\n\"I'm not complaining,\" replied Art; \"I'm only stating a fact.\"\n\n\"That's all right,\" said Patsy.\n\nThe pipes were lit, and all eyes turned to Billy the Music. Patsy leaned\nback on his elbow, and blew his cloud.\n\n\"Now we'll have the rest of the story,\" said he.\n\n\n\n\n                              CHAPTER XXII\n\n\n\"This,\" continued Billy the Music, \"is the wonderful thing that happened\nto me.\n\n\"Bit by bit I got fonder of the money. The more I got of it the more I\nwanted. I used to go away by myself to look at it and handle it and\ncount it. I didn't store it all in the house; I only kept enough there\nto make the people think it was all there, and as every one was watching\nthat and watching each other (for they all wanted to steal it) it was\nsafe enough.\n\n\"They didn't know it was mostly copper was in that box, but copper it\nwas, and some silver that I couldn't fit into the other boxes.\n\n\"There was a place at the end of the big barn, just underneath the dog's\nkennel--maybe you remember my dog, Patsy?\"\n\n\"A big black-and-white snarly devil of a bull-terrier?\" said Patsy,\nthoughtfully.\n\n\"That's him.\"\n\n\"I remember him well,\" said Patsy. \"I fed him once.\"\n\n\"You poisoned him,\" said Billy the Music quickly.\n\n\"That's a hard word to say,\" replied Patsy, scraping at his chin.\n\nBilly the Music looked very fixedly at him, and he also scraped\nmeditatively at his bristles.\n\n\"It doesn't matter now,\" said he. \"That was the dog. I made a place\nunder his kennel. It was well made. If you had pulled the kennel aside\nyou'd have seen nothing but the floor. Down there I kept the three boxes\nof gold, and while I'd be looking at them the dog would be lurching\naround wondering why he wasn't allowed to eat people--I was a bit timid\nwith that dog myself--and it was one day while I was handling the money\nthat the thing happened.\n\n\"There came a thump on the barn door. The dog made a noise away down in\nthe heel of his throat and loped across; he stuck his nose against the\ncrack at the bottom and began to sniff and scratch.\n\n\"'Strangers there,' said I. I put the money away quietly, lifted the\nkennel back to its place, and went over to open the door.\n\n\"There were two men standing outside, and the dog sprang for one of them\nas if he had been shot out of a gun.\n\n\"But that man was quick. He took the beast on the jump, caught him by\nthe chaps, and slung him with a heave of his arm. I don't know where he\nslung him to; I never saw the dog alive after that, and I did think it\nwas that jerk killed him.\"\n\n\"Begor!\" said Patsy.\n\n\"It must have been within half an hour or so that you gave him the\npoisoned meat, Patsy.\"\n\n\"It was a lengthy mutton bone,\" murmured Mac Cann.\n\n\"Whatever it was!\" said Billy the Music.\n\n\"The men walked in, they shut the barn door behind them and locked it,\nfor the key was inside whenever I was.\n\n\"Well! I always had the use of my hands and my feet and my teeth, but I\nhad no chance there, so in a few minutes I sat down on the kennel to get\nmy breath back and to mop up the blood that was teeming out of my nose.\nThe two men, I will say, were very quiet with it all--they waited for\nme.\n\n\"One of them was a middle-sized block of a man, and he looked as if his\nhead had been rolled in tar--\"\n\n\"Eh!\" said Patsy loudly.\n\n\"The other one was a big, young man with a girl's face; he had blue eyes\nand curls of gold, and he was wearing a woman's skirt--the raggedest\nold----\"\n\n\"Begor!\" cried Patsy, and he leaped furiously to his feet.\n\n\"What's wrong with you?\" said Billy the Music.\n\nPatsy beat his fists together.\n\n\"I've been looking for that pair of playboys for a full year,\" he\nbarked.\n\n\"Do you know them?\" said Billy the Music, with equal excitement.\n\n\"I don't know them, but I met them, and the girl yonder met them too,\nthe thieves!\"\n\n\"They are a pair of dirty dogs,\" said Mary coldly.\n\n\"And when I do meet them,\" said Patsy savagely, \"I'll kill the pair of\nthem: I will so.\n\nBilly the Music laughed.\n\n\"I wouldn't try killing them lads; I did try it once, but they wouldn't\nlet me. Tell us what they did to yourself, and then I'll go on with my\nstory, for I'm real curious about those two.\"\n\nMac Cann put his pipe into his pocket.\n\n\n\n\n                             CHAPTER XXIII\n\n\nSaid Patsy:\n\n\"There isn't very much to tell, but this is how it happened.\n\n\"About two weeks before your dog died myself and the girl were tramping\nup towards Dublin. We hadn't got the ass with us that time, for it was\nin pawn to a woman that peddled fish in the south-west of Connemara. She\nwas keeping the ass and cart for us while we were away, and she was\ngoing to give us something for their loan at the heel of the season. She\nwas an old rip, that one, for she sold the ass on us to one man and she\nsold the cart to another man, and we had the trouble of the world\ngetting the pair of them together again--but that's no matter.\n\n\"One morning, fresh and early, we were beating along a road that comes\ndown from the mountains and runs away into Donnybrook. I had just picked\nup a little goose that I found walking along with its nose up, and I\nthought maybe we could sell the creature to some person in the city who\nwanted a goose.\n\n\"We turned a bend in the road (it's a twisty district), and there I saw\ntwo men sitting on the grass on each side of the path. The two men were\nsitting with the full width of the road between them, and they were\nclean, stark, stone naked.\n\n\"They hadn't got as much as a shirt; they hadn't a hat; they hadn't got\nanything at all on them barring their skins.\n\n\"'Whoo!' said I to myself, and I caught a grip of the girl. 'We'll be\ntaking another road,' said I, and round we sailed with the goose and\nall.\n\n\"But the two men came after us, and what with the goose and the girl,\nthey caught up on us too.\n\n\"One of them was a bullet-headed thief and he did look as if he had been\nrolled in tar, and I hope he was. The other was a dandy lad that never\ngot his hair cut since he was a mother's boy.\n\n\"'Be off with the pair of you,' said I, 'ye indecent devils. What do ye\nwant with honest folk and you in your pelt?'\n\n\"The bullet-headed one was bouncing round me like a rubber ball.\n\n\"'Take off your clothes, mister,' said he.\n\n\"'What!' said I.\n\n\"'Take off your clothes quick,' said he, 'or I'll kill you.'\n\n\"So, with that I jumped into the middle of the road, and I up with the\ngoose, and I hit that chap such a welt on the head that the goose\nbursted. Then the lad was into me and we went round the road like\nthunder and lightning till the other fellow joined in, and then Mary\nwelted into the lot of us with a stick that she had, but they didn't\nmind her any more than a fly. Before you could whistle, mister, they had\nme stripped to the buff, and before you could whistle again they had the\ngirl stripped, and the pair of them were going down the road as hard as\never they could pelt with our clothes under their oxters.\"\n\n\"Begor!\" said Billy the Music.\n\n\"I tell you so,\" grinned Patsy.\n\n\"There was herself and myself standing in the middle of the road with\nnothing to cover our nakedness but a bursted goose.\"\n\n\"That was the queer sight,\" said Billy the Music looking thoughtfully at\nMary.\n\n\"You keep your eyes to yourself, mister,\" said Mary hotly.\n\n\"What did you do then?\" said Billy.\n\n\"We sat down on the side of the road for a long time until we heard\nfootsteps and then we hid ourselves.\n\n\"I peeped over the hedge and there was a man coming along the path. He\nwas a nice-looking man with a black bag in his hand and he was walking\nfast. When he came exactly opposite me I jumped the hedge and I took the\nclothes off him--\"\n\nBilly the Music slapped his palm on his knee.\n\n\"You did so!\"\n\n\"I did so,\" said Patsy.\n\n\"He was grumbling all the time, but as soon as I let him loose he\nstarted to run, and that was the last I saw of him.\n\n\"After a bit a woman came along the road, and Mary took the clothes off\nher. She was a quiet, poor soul, and she didn't say a word to either of\nus. We left her the goose and the man's black bag for payment, and then\nthe pair of us started off, and we didn't stop running till we came to\nthe County Kerry.\n\n\"These are the clothes I'm telling you about,\" said Patsy; \"I have them\non me this minute.\"\n\n\"It's a great story,\" said Billy the Music.\n\n\"I can tell you something further about these people,\" said Caeltia\nsmiling.\n\n\"Can you so?\" cried Patsy.\n\n\"I can, but the man here hasn't finished what he was telling us.\"\n\n\"I was forgetting him,\" said Mac Cann. \"Put another pinch in your pipe,\nmister, and tell us what happened to you after that.\"\n\n\n\n\n                              CHAPTER XXIV\n\n\nBilly the Music did put another pinch of tobacco into his pipe, and\nafter drawing on it meditatively for a few minutes he snuffed it out\nwith his thumb and put it into his pocket. Naturally he put it in upside\ndown, so that the tobacco might drop from the pipe, for he was no longer\na saving man.\n\n\"They were surely the two men that I'm telling you about,\" said he, \"and\nthere they were standing up in front of me while I was sneezing the\nblood out of my nose.\n\n\"'What do you want?' said I to themselves, and all the time I was\npeeping here and there to see if there wasn't a bit of a stick or a\ncrowbar maybe lying handy.\n\n\"It was the boyo in the skirt that answered me:\n\n\"'I wanted to have a look at yourself,' said he.\n\n\"'Take your eye-full and go away, for God's sake,' said I.\n\n\"'You dirty thief!' said he to me.\n\n\"'What's that for?' said I.\n\n\"'What do you mean by getting me thrown out of heaven?' said he.\n\n\"...! Well, mister honey, that was a question to worry any man, and it\nworried me. I couldn't think what to say to him. 'Begor!' said I, and I\nsneezed out some more of my blood.\n\n\"But the lad was stamping mad.\n\n\"'If I could blot you from the light of life without doing any hurt to\nmyself, I'd smash you this mortal minute,' said he.\n\n\"'For the love of heaven,' said I, 'tell me what I did to yourself, for\nI never did see you before this day, and I wish I didn't see you now.'\n\n\"The bullet-headed man was standing by all the time, and he chewing\ntobacco.\n\n\"'Have it out with him, Cuchulain,' said he. 'Kill him,' said he, 'and\nsend him out among the spooks.'\n\n\"But the other man calmed down a bit, and he came over to me wagging the\ngirl's skirts.\n\n\"'Listen!' said he, 'I'm the Seraph Cuchulain.'\n\n\"'Very good,' said I.\n\n\"'I'm your Guardian Angel,' said he.\n\n\"'Very good,' said I.\n\n\"'I'm your Higher Self,' said he, 'and every rotten business you do down\nhere does be vibrating against me up there. You never did anything in\nyour life that wasn't rotten. You're a miser and a thief, and you got me\nthrown out of heaven because of the way you loved money. You seduced me\nwhen I wasn't looking. You made a thief of me in a place where it's no\nfun to be a robber, and here I am wandering the dirty world on the head\nof your unrighteous ways. Repent, you beast,' said he, and he landed me\na clout on the side of the head that rolled me from one end of the barn\nto the other.\n\n\"'Give him another one,' said the bullet-headed man, and he chewing\nstrongly on his plug.\n\n\"'What have you got to do with it?' said I to him. 'You're not my\nGuardian Angel, God help me!'\n\n\"'How dare you,' said the bullet-headed man. 'How dare you set this\nhonest party stealing the last threepenny bit of a poor man?' and with\nthat he made a clout at me.\n\n\"'What threepenny bit are you talking about?' said I.\n\n\"'My own threepenny bit,' said he. 'The only one I had. The one I\ndropped outside the gates of hell.'\n\n\"Well, that beat me! 'I don't care what you say any longer,' said I,\n'you can talk till you're blue and I won't care what you say,' and down\nI sat on the kennel and shed my blood.\n\n\"'You must repent of your own free will,' said Cuchulain, marching to\nthe door.\n\n\"'And you'd better hurry up, too,' said the other fellow, 'or I'll\nhammer the head off you.'\n\n\"The queer thing is that I believed every word the man said. I didn't\nknow what he was talking about, but I did know that he was talking about\nsomething that was real although it was beyond me. And there was the way\nhe said it too, for he spoke like a bishop, with fine, shouting words\nthat I can't remember now, and the months gone past. I took him at his\nword anyhow, and on the minute I began to feel a different creature,\nfor, mind you, a man can no more go against his Guardian Angel than he\ncan climb a tree backwards.\n\n\"As they were going out of the barn Cuchulain turned to me:\n\n\"'I'll help you to repent,' said he, 'for I want to get back again, and\nthis is the way I'll help you. I'll give you money, and I'll give you\npiles of it.'\n\n\"The two of them went off then, and I didn't venture out of the barn for\nhalf-an-hour.\n\n                   *       *       *       *       *\n\n\"I went into the barn next day, and what do you think I saw?\"\n\n\"The floor was covered with gold pieces,\" said Patsy.\n\nBilly nodded:\n\n\"That's what I saw. I gathered them up and hid them under the kennel.\nThere wasn't room for the lot of them, so I rolled the rest in a bit of\na sack and covered them up with cabbages.\n\n\"The next day I went in and the floor was covered with gold pieces, and\nI swept them up and hid them under the cabbages too. The day after that\nand the next day and the day after that again it was the same story. I\ndidn't know where to put the money. I had to leave it lying on the\nfloor, and I hadn't as much as a dog to guard it from the robbers.\"\n\n\"You had not,\" said Patsy, \"and that's the truth.\"\n\n\"I locked the barn; then I called up all the men; I paid them their\nwages, for what did I want with them any longer and I rolling in gold? I\ntold them to get out of my sight, and I saw every man of them off the\nland. Then I told my wife's brother that I didn't want him in my house\nany longer, and I saw him off the land. Then I argued my son out of the\nhouse, and I told my wife that she could go with him if she wanted to,\nand then I went back to the barn.\n\n\"But, as I told you a minute ago, I was a changed man. The gold was\nmounting up on me, and I didn't know what to do with it. I could have\nrolled in it if I wanted to, and I did roll in it, but there was no fun\nin that.\n\n\"This was the trouble with me--I couldn't count it; it had gone beyond\nme; there were piles of it; there were stacks of it; it was four feet\ndeep all over the floor, and I could no more move it than I could move a\nhouse.\n\n\"I never wanted that much money, for no man could want it: I only wanted\nwhat I could manage with my hands; and the fear of robbers was on me to\nthat pitch that I could neither sit nor stand nor sleep.\n\n\"Every time I opened the door the place was fuller than it was the last\ntime, and, at last, I got to hate the barn. I just couldn't stand the\nlook of the place, and the light squinting at me from thousands and\nthousands of gold corners.\n\n\"It beat me at last. One day I marched into the house, and I picked up\nthe concertina that my son bought (I was able to play it well myself)\nand said I to the wife:\n\n\"'I'm off.'\n\n\"'Where are you off?'\n\n\"'I'm going into the world.'\n\n\"'What will become of the farm?'\n\n\"'You can have it yourself,' said I, and with that I stepped clean out\nof the house and away to the road. I didn't stop walking for two days,\nand I never went back from that day to this.\n\n\"I do play on the concertina before the houses, and the people give me\ncoppers. I travel from place to place every day, and I'm as happy as a\nbird on a bough, for I've no worries and I worry no one.\"\n\n\"What did become of the money?\" said Patsy.\n\n\"I'm thinking now that it might have been fairy gold, and, if it was,\nnobody could touch it.\"\n\n\"So,\" said Mac Cann, \"that's the sort of boys they were?\"\n\n\"That's the sort.\"\n\n\"And one of them was your own Guardian Angel!\"\n\n\"He said that.\"\n\n\"And what was the other one?\"\n\n\"I don't know, but I do think that he was a spook.\"\n\nPatsy turned to Finaun:\n\n\"Tell me, mister, is that a true story now, or was the lad making it\nup?\"\n\n\"It is true,\" replied Finaun.\n\nPatsy considered for a moment.\n\n\"I wonder,\" said he musingly, \"who is my own Guardian Angel?\"\n\nCaeltia hastily put the pipe into his pocket.\n\n\"I am,\" said he.\n\n\"Oh, bedad!\"\n\nMac Cann placed his hands on his knees and laughed heartily.\n\n\"You are! and I making you drunk every second night in the little pubs!\"\n\n\"You never made me drunk.\"\n\n\"I did not, for you've got a hard head surely, but there's a pair of us\nin it, mister.\"\n\nHe was silent again, then:\n\n\"I wonder who is the Guardian Angel of Eileen Ni Cooley? for he has his\nwork cut out for him, I'm thinking.\"\n\n\"I am her Guardian Angel,\" said Finaun.\n\n\"Are you telling me that?\"\n\nMac Cann stared at Finaun, and he lapsed again to reverie.\n\n\"Ah, well!\" said he to Billy the Music, \"it was a fine story you told\nus, mister, and queer deeds you were mixed up in; but I'd like to meet\nthe men that took our clothes, I would so.\"\n\n\"I can tell you something more about them,\" Caeltia remarked.\n\n\"So you said a while back. What is it you can tell us?\"\n\n\"I can tell you the beginning of all that tale.\"\n\n\"I'd like to hear it,\" said Billy the Music.\n\n\"There is just a piece I will have to make up from what I heard since we\ncame here, but the rest I can answer for because I was there at the\ntime.\"\n\n\"I remember it too,\" said Art to Caeltia, \"and when you have told your\nstory I'll tell another one.\"\n\n\"Serve out the potatoes, Mary,\" said Mac Cann, \"and then you can go on\nwith the story. Do you think is that ass all right, alannah?\"\n\n\"He's eating the grass still, but I think he may be wanting a drink.\"\n\n\"He had a good drink yesterday,\" said her father, and he shifted to a\nmore comfortable position.\n\n\n\n\n                              CHAPTER XXV\n\n\nSaid Caeltia:\n\n\"When Brien O'Brien died people said that it did not matter very much\nbecause he would have died young in any case. He would have been hanged,\nor his head would have been split in two halves with a hatchet, or he\nwould have tumbled down the cliff when he was drunk and been smashed\ninto jelly. Something like that was due to him, and everybody likes to\nsee a man get what he deserves to get.\n\n\"But, as ethical writs cease to run when a man is dead, the neighbours\ndid not stay away from his wake. They came, and they said many\nmitigating things across the body with the bandaged jaws and the sly\ngrin, and they reminded each other of this and that queer thing which he\nhad done, for his memory was crusted over with stories of wild,\nlaughable things, and other things which were wild but not laughable.\n\n\"Meanwhile he was dead, and one was at liberty to be a trifle sorry for\nhim. Further, he belonged to the O'Brien nation--a stock to whom\nreverence was due. A stock not easily forgotten. The historic memory\ncould reconstruct forgotten glories of station and battle, of terrible\nvillainy and terrible saintliness, the pitiful, valorous, slow descent\nto the degradation which was not yet wholly victorious. A great stock!\nThe O'Neills remembered it. The O'Tools and the Mac Sweeneys had stories\nby the hundred of love and hate. The Burkes and the Geraldines and the\nnew strangers had memories also.\n\n\"His family was left in the poorest way, but they were used to that, for\nhe had kept them as poor as he left them, or found them, for that\nmatter. They had shaken hands with Charity so often that they no longer\ndisliked the sallow-faced lady, and so certain small gifts made by the\nneighbours were accepted, not very thankfully, but very readily. These\ngifts were almost always in kind. A few eggs. A bag of potatoes. A\nhandful of meal. A couple of twists of tea--such like.\n\n\"One of the visitors, however, moved by an extraordinary dejection,\nslipped a silver threepenny-piece into the hand of Brien's little\ndaughter, Sheila, aged four years, and later on she did not like to ask\nfor it back again.\n\n\"Little Sheila had been well trained by her father. She knew exactly\nwhat should be done with money, and so, when nobody was looking, she\ntip-toed to the coffin and slipped the threepenny-piece into Brien's\nhand. That hand had never refused money when it was alive, it did not\nreject it either when it was dead.\n\n\"They buried him the next day.\n\n\"He was called up for judgment the day after, and made his appearance\nwith a miscellaneous crowd of wretches, and there he again received what\nwas due to him. He was removed, protesting and struggling, to the place\ndecreed:\n\n\"'Down,' said Rhadamanthus, pointing with his great hand, and down he\nwent.\n\n\"In the struggle he dropped the threepenny-piece, but he was so bustled\nand heated that he did not observe his loss. He went down, far down, out\nof sight, out of remembrance, to a howling black gulf with others of his\nunseen kind.\n\n\"A young seraph, named Cuchulain, chancing to pass that way shortly\nafterwards, saw the threepenny-piece peeping brightly from the rocks,\nand he picked it up.\n\n\"He looked at it in astonishment. He turned it over and over, this way\nand that way. Examined it at the stretch of his arm, and peered minutely\nat it from two inches distance.\n\n\"'I have never in my life seen anything so beautifully wrought,' said\nhe, and, having stowed it in his pouch along with some other trinkets,\nhe strolled homewards again through the massy gates.\n\n\"It was not long until Brien discovered his loss, and suddenly, through\nthe black region, his voice went mounting and brawling.\n\n\"'I have been robbed,' he yelled. 'I have been robbed in heaven!'\n\n\"Having begun to yell he did not stop. Sometimes he was simply angry and\nmade a noise. Sometimes he became sarcastic and would send his query\nswirling upwards.\n\n\"'Who stole the threepenny-bit?' he roared. He addressed the surrounding\nblack space:\n\n\"'Who stole the last threepenny-bit of a poor man?'\n\n\"Again and again his voice pealed upwards. The pains of his habitation\nlost all their sting for him. His mind had nourishment, and the heat\nwithin him vanquished the fumes without. He had a grievance, a righteous\ncause, he was buoyed and strengthened, nothing could silence him. They\ntried ingenious devices, all kinds of complicated things, but he paid no\nheed, and the tormentors were in despair.\n\n\"'I hate these sinners from the kingdom of Kerry,' said the Chief\nTormentor, and he sat moodily down on his own circular saw; and that\nworried him also, for he was clad only in a loin-cloth.\n\n\"'I hate the entire Clann of the Gael,' said he; 'why cannot they send\nthem somewhere else?' and then he started practising again on Brien.\n\n\"It was no use. Brien's query still blared upwards like the sound of the\ngreat trump itself. It wakened and rung the rocky caverns, screamed\nthrough fissure and funnel, and was battered and slung from pinnacle to\ncrag and up again. Worse! his companions in doom became interested and\ntook up the cry, until at last the uproar became so appalling that the\nMaster himself could not stand it.\n\n\"'I have not had a wink of sleep for three nights,' said that harassed\none, and he sent a special embassy to the powers.\n\n\"Rhadamanthus was astonished when they arrived. His elbow was leaning on\nhis vast knee, and his heavy head rested on a hand that was acres long,\nacres wide.\n\n\"'What is all this about?' said he.\n\n\"'The Master cannot go to sleep,' said the spokesman of the embassy, and\nhe grinned as he said it, for it sounded queer even to himself.\n\n\"'It is not necessary that he should sleep,' said Rhadamanthus. 'I have\nnever slept since time began, and I will never sleep until time is over.\nBut the complaint is curious. What has troubled your master?'\n\n\"'Hell is turned upside down and inside out,' said the fiend. 'The\ntormentors are weeping like little children. The principalities are\nsquatting on their hunkers doing nothing. The orders are running here\nand there fighting each other. The styles are leaning against walls\nshrugging their shoulders, and the damned are shouting and laughing and\nhave become callous to torment.'\n\n\"'It is not my business,' said the judge.\n\n\"'The sinners demand justice,' said the spokesman.\n\n\"'They've got it,' said Rhadamanthus, 'let them stew in it.'\n\n\"'They refuse to stew,' replied the spokesman, wringing his hands.\n\n\"Rhadamanthus sat up.\n\n\"'It is an axiom in law,' said he, 'that however complicated an event\nmay be, there can never be more than one person at the extreme bottom of\nit. Who is the person?'\n\n\"'It is one Brien of the O'Brien nation, late of the kingdom of Kerry. A\nbad one! He got the maximum punishment a week ago.'\n\n\"For the first time in his life Rhadamanthus was disturbed. He scratched\nhis head, and it was the first time he had ever done that either.\n\n\"'You say he got the maximum,' said Rhadamanthus, 'then it's a fix! I\nhave damned him for ever, and better or worse than that cannot be done.\nIt is none of my business,' said he angrily, and he had the deputation\nremoved by force.\n\n\"But that did not ease the trouble. The contagion spread until ten\nmillion billions of voices were chanting in unison, and uncountable\nmultitudes were listening between their pangs.\n\n\"'Who stole the threepenny-bit? Who stole the threepenny-bit?'\n\n\"That was still their cry. Heaven rang with it as well as hell. Space\nwas filled with that rhythmic tumult. Chaos and empty Nox had a new\ndiscord added to their elemental throes. Another memorial was drafted\nbelow, showing that unless the missing coin was restored to its owner\nhell would have to close its doors. There was a veiled menace in the\nmemorial also, for Clause 6 hinted that if hell was allowed to go by the\nboard heaven might find itself in some jeopardy thereafter.\n\n\"The document was despatched and considered. In consequence a\nproclamation was sent through all the wards of Paradise, calling on\nwhatever person, archangel, seraph, cherub, or acolyte, had found a\nthreepenny-piece since mid-day of the tenth August then instant, that\nthe same person, archangel, seraph, cherub, or acolyte, should deliver\nthe said threepenny-piece to Rhadamanthus at his Court, and should\nreceive in return a free pardon and a receipt.\n\n\"The coin was not delivered.\n\n                   *       *       *       *       *\n\n\"The young seraph, Cuchulain, walked about like a person who was strange\nto himself. He was not tormented: he was angry. He frowned, he cogitated\nand fumed. He drew one golden curl through his fingers until it was lank\nand drooping; save the end only, that was still a ripple of gold. He put\nthe end in his mouth and strode moodily chewing it. And every day his\nfeet turned in the same direction--down the long entrance boulevard,\nthrough the mighty gates, along the strip of carved slabs, to that piled\nwilderness where Rhadamanthus sat monumentally.\n\n\"Here delicately he went, sometimes with a hand outstretched to help his\nfoothold, standing for a space to think ere he jumped to a farther rock,\nbalancing himself for a moment ere he leaped again. So he would come to\nstand and stare gloomily upon the judge.\n\n\"He would salute gravely, as was meet, and say, 'God bless the work';\nbut Rhadamanthus never replied, save by a nod, for he was very busy.\n\n\"Yet the judge did observe him, and would sometimes heave ponderous lids\nto where he stood, and so, for a few seconds, they regarded each other\nin an interval of that unceasing business.\n\n\"Sometimes for a minute or two the young seraph Cuchulain would look\nfrom the judge to the judged as they crouched back or strained forward,\nthe good and the bad all in the same tremble of fear, all unknowing\nwhich way their doom might lead. They did not look at each other. They\nlooked at the judge high on his ebon throne, and they could not look\naway from him. There were those who knew, guessed clearly their doom;\nabashed and flaccid they sat, quaking. There were some who were\nuncertain--rabbit-eyed these, not less quaking than the others, biting\nat their knuckles as they peeped upwards. There were those hopeful, yet\nsearching fearfully backwards in the wilderness of memory, chasing and\nweighing their sins; and these last, even when their bliss was sealed\nand their steps set on an easy path, went faltering, not daring to look\naround again, their ears strained to catch a--'Halt, miscreant! this\nother is your way!'\n\n\"So, day by day, he went to stand near the judge; and one day\nRhadamanthus, looking on him more intently, lifted his great hand and\npointed:\n\n\"'Go you among those to be judged,' said he.\n\n\"For Rhadamanthus knew. It was his business to look deep into the heart\nand the mind, to fish for secrets in the pools of being,\n\n\"And the young seraph Cuchulain, still rolling his golden curl between\nhis lips, went obediently forward and set down his nodding plumes\nbetween two who whimpered and stared and quaked.\n\n\"When his turn came, Rhadamanthus eyed him intently for a long time:\n\n\"'Well!' said Rhadamanthus.\n\n\"The young seraph Cuchulain blew the curl of gold from his lips:\n\n\"'Findings are keepings,' said he loudly, and he closed his mouth and\nstared very impertinently at the judge.\n\n\"'It is to be given up,' said the judge.\n\n\"'Let them come and take it from me,' said the seraph Cuchulain. And\nsuddenly (for these things are at the will of spirits) around his head\nthe lightnings span, and his hands were on the necks of thunders.\n\n\"For the second time in his life Rhadamanthus was disturbed, again he\nscratched his head:\n\n\"'It's a fix,' said he moodily. But in a moment he called to those whose\nduty it was:\n\n\"'Take him to this side,' he roared.\n\n\"And they advanced. But the seraph Cuchulain swung to meet them, and his\ngolden hair blazed and shrieked; and the thunders rolled at his feet,\nand about him a bright network that hissed and stung--and those who\nadvanced turned haltingly backwards and ran screaming.\n\n\"'It's a fix,' said Rhadamanthus; and for a little time he stared\nmenacingly at the seraph Cuchulain.\n\n\"But only for a little time. Suddenly he put his hands on the rests of\nhis throne and heaved upwards his terrific bulk. Never before had\nRhadamanthus stood from his ordained chair. He strode mightily forward\nand in an instant had quelled that rebel. The thunders and lightnings\nwere but moonbeams and dew on that stony carcass. He seized the seraph\nCuchulain, lifted him to his breast as one lifts a sparrow, and tramped\nback with him:\n\n\"'Fetch me that other,' said he sternly, and he sat down.\n\n\"Those whose duty it was sped swiftly downwards to find Brien of the\nO'Brien nation; and while they were gone, all in vain the seraph\nCuchulain crushed flamy barbs against that bosom of doom. Now, indeed,\nhis golden locks were drooping and his plumes were broken and tossed;\nbut his fierce eye still glared courageously against the nipple of\nRhadamanthus.\n\n\"Soon they brought Brien. He was a sight of woe--howling, naked as a\ntree in winter, black as a tarred wall, carved and gashed, tattered in\nall but his throat, wherewith, until one's ears rebelled, he bawled his\none demand.\n\n\"But the sudden light struck him to a wondering silence, and the sight\nof the judge holding the seraph Cuchulain like a limp flower to his\nbreast held him gaping.\n\n\"'Bring him here,' said Rhadamanthus.\n\n\"And they brought him to the steps of the throne.\n\n\"'You have lost a medal!' said Rhadamanthus. 'This one has it.'\n\n\"Brien looked straitly at the seraph Cuchulain.\n\n\"Rhadamanthus stood again, whirled his arm in an enormous arc, jerked,\nand let go, and the seraph Cuchulain went swirling through space like a\nslung stone.\n\n\"'Go after him, Kerryman' said Rhadamanthus, stooping; and he seized\nBrien by the leg, whirled him wide and out and far; dizzy, dizzy as a\nswooping comet, and down, and down, and down.\n\n\"Rhadamanthus seated himself. He motioned with his hand.\n\n\"'Next,' said he coldly.\n\n\"Down went the seraph Cuchulain, swirling in wide tumbles, scarcely\nvisible for quickness. Sometimes, with outstretched hands, he was a\ncross that dropped plumb. Anon, head urgently downwards, he dived\nsteeply. Again, like a living hoop, head and heels together, he spun\ngiddily. Blind, deaf, dumb, breathless, mindless; and behind him Brien\nof the O'Brien nation came pelting and whizzing.\n\n\"What of that journey? Who could give it words? Of the suns that\nappeared and disappeared like winkling eyes. Comets that shone for an\ninstant, went black and vanished. Moons that came, and stood, and were\ngone. And around all, including all, boundless space, boundless silence;\nthe black unmoving void--the deep, unending quietude, through which they\nfell with Saturn and Orion, and mildly-smiling Venus, and the fair,\nstark-naked moon, and the decent earth wreathed in pearl and blue. From\nafar she appeared, the quiet one, all lonely in the void. As sudden as a\nfair face in a crowded street. Beautiful as the sound of falling waters.\nBeautiful as the sound of music in a silence. Like a white sail on a\nwindy sea. Like a green tree in a solitary place. Chaste and wonderful\nshe appeared. Flying afar. Flying aloft like a joyous bird when the\nmorning breaks on the darkness and he shrills sweet tidings. She soared\nand sang. Gently she sang to timid pipes and flutes of tender straw and\nmurmuring, distant strings. A song that grew and swelled, gathering to a\nmultitudinous, deep-thundered harmony, until the overburdened ear failed\nbefore the appalling uproar of her ecstasy, and denounced her. No longer\na star! No longer a bird! A plumed and horned fury! Gigantic, gigantic,\nleaping and shrieking tempestuously, spouting whirlwinds of lightning,\ntearing gluttonously along her path, avid, rampant, howling with rage\nand terror she leaped, dreadfully she leaped and flew....\n\n                   *       *       *       *       *\n\n\"Enough! They hit the earth--they were not smashed, there was that\nvirtue in them. They hit the ground just outside the village of\nDonnybrook where the back road runs to the hills; and scarcely had they\nbumped twice when Brien of the O'Brien nation had the seraph Cuchulain\nby the throat.\n\n\"'My threepenny-bit,' he roared, with one fist up.\n\n\"But the seraph Cuchulain only laughed:\n\n\"'That!' said he. 'Look at me, man. Your little medal dropped far beyond\nthe rings of Saturn.'\n\n\"And Brien stood back looking at him--He was as naked as Brien was. He\nwas as naked as a stone, or an eel, or a pot, or a new-born babe. He was\nvery naked.\n\n\"So Brien of the O'Brien nation strode across the path and sat down by\nthe side of a hedge:\n\n\"'The first man that passes this way,' said he, 'will give me his\nclothes, or I'll strangle him.'\n\n\"The seraph Cuchulain walked over to him:\n\n\"'I will take the clothes of the second man that passes,' said he, and\nhe sat down.\"\n\n\n\n\n                              CHAPTER XXVI\n\n\n\"And then,\" said Mac Cann thoughtfully, \"we came along, and they stole\nour clothes.\"\n\n\"That wasn't a bad tale,\" he continued to Caeltia. \"You are as good a\nstory-teller, mister, as the man himself,\" pointing to Billy the Music.\n\nBilly replied modestly:\n\n\"It's because the stories were good ones that they were well told, for\nthat's not my trade, and what wonder would it be if I made a botch of\nit? I'm a musician myself, as I told you, and there's my instrument, but\nI knew an old man in Connaught one time, and he was a great lad for the\nstories. He used to make his money at it, and if that man was to break\noff in the middle of a tale the people would stand up and kill him, they\nwould so. He was a gifted man, for he would tell you a story about\nnothing at all, and you'd listen to him with your mouth open and you\nafraid that he would come to the end of it soon, and maybe it would be\nnothing more than the tale of how a white hen laid a brown egg. He would\ntell you a thing you knew all your life, and you would think it was a\nnew thing. There was no old age in that man's mind, and that's the\nsecret of story-telling.\"\n\nSaid Mary:\n\n\"I could listen to a story for a day and a night.\"\n\nHer father nodded acquiescence:\n\n\"So could I, if it was a good story and well told, and I would be ready\nto listen to another one after that.\"\n\nHe turned to Art:\n\n\"You were saying yourself, sonny, that there was a story in your head,\nand if that's so, now is your chance to tell it; but I'm doubting you'll\nbe able to do it as well as the two men here, for you are a youngster,\nand story-telling is an old man's trade.\"\n\n\"I'll do my best,\" said Art, \"but I never told a story in my life, and\nit may not be a good one at the first attempt.\"\n\n\"That's all right,\" replied Mac Cann encouragingly. \"We won't be hard on\nyou.\"\n\n\"Sure enough,\" said Billy the Music, \"and you've listened to the lot of\nus, so you will know the road.\"\n\n\"What are you going to talk about?\" said Caeltia.\n\n\"I'm going to talk about Brien O'Brien, the same as the rest of you.\"\n\n\"Did you know him too?\" cried Billy.\n\n\"I did.\"\n\n\"There isn't a person doesn't know that man,\" growled Patsy. \"Maybe,\"\nand he grinned ferociously as he said it, \"maybe we'll meet him on the\nroad and he tramping, and perhaps he will tell us a story himself.\"\n\n\"That man could not tell a story,\" Finaun interrupted, \"for he has no\nmemory, and that is a thing a good story-teller ought to have.\"\n\n\"If we meet him,\" said Mac Cann grimly, \"I'll do something to him and\nhe'll remember it, and it's likely that he will be able to make a story\nout of it too.\"\n\n\"I only saw him once,\" said Art, \"but when Rhadamanthus tossed him\nthrough the void I recognised his face, although so long a time had\nelapsed since I did see him. He is now less than he was, but he is,\nnevertheless, much more than I had expected he would be.\"\n\n\"What is he now?\" said Billy the Music.\n\n\"He is a man.\"\n\n\"We are all that,\" said Patsy, \"and it isn't any trouble to us.\"\n\n\"It was more trouble than you imagine,\" said Finaun.\n\n\"I had expected him to be no more than one of the higher animals, or\neven that he might have been dissipated completely from existence.\"\n\n\"What was he at the time you met him?\"\n\n\"He was a magician, and he was one of the most powerful magicians that\never lived. He was a being of the fifth round, and he had discovered\nmany secrets.\"\n\n\"I have known magicians,\" commented Finaun, \"and I always found that\nthey were fools.\"\n\n\"Brien O'Brien destroyed himself,\" Art continued, \"he forfeited his\nevolution and added treble to his karmic burden because he had not got a\nsense of humour.\"\n\n\"No magician has a sense of humour,\" remarked Finaun, \"he could not be a\nmagician if he had--Humour is the health of the mind.\"\n\n\"That,\" Art broke in, \"is one of the things he said to me. So you see he\nhad discovered something. He was very near to being a wise man. He was\ncertainly a courageous man, or, perhaps, foolhardy; but he was as\nserious as a fog, and he could not bring himself to believe it.\"\n\n\"Tell us the story,\" said Caeltia.\n\n\"Here it is,\" said Art.\n\n\n\n\n                             CHAPTER XXVII\n\n\n\"On a day long ago I laboured with the Army of the Voice. The first\nsyllable of the great word had been uttered, and in far eastern space,\nbeyond seven of the flaming wheels, I and the six sons drew the lives\ntogether and held them for the whirlwind which is the one. We were\nwaiting for the second syllable to form the wind.\n\n\"As I stood by my place holding the north in quietness, I felt a strong\nvibration between my hands. Something was interfering with me. I could\nnot let go, but I looked behind me, and there I saw a man standing, and\nhe was weaving spells.\n\n\"It was a short, dark man with a little bristle of black whisker on his\nchin and a stiff bristle of black hair on his head. He was standing\ninside a double triangle having the points upwards, and there were\nmagical signs at each point of the triangles. While I looked, he threw\naround him from side to side a flaming circle, and then he threw a\nflaming circle about him from front to back, and he span these so\nquickly that he was surrounded by a wall of fire.\n\n\"At him, on the instant, I charged a bolt, but it could not penetrate\nhis circles; it hit them and fell harmless, for the circles had a\ngreater speed than my thunderbolt.\n\n\"He stood so in the triangles, laughing at me and scratching his chin.\n\n\"I dared not loose my hands again lest the labour of a cycle should be\ndissipated in an instant, and it was no use shouting to the others, for\nthey also were holding the lives in readiness for the whirlwind which\nwould shape them to a globe, so the man had me at his mercy.\n\n\"He was working against my grip, and he had amazing power. He had\nsomehow discovered part of the first syllable of the great word, and he\nwas intoning this on me between giggles, but he could not destroy us,\nfor together we were equal to the number of that syllable.\n\n\"When I looked at him again he laughed at me, and what he said\nastonished me greatly.\n\n\"'This,' said he, 'is very funny.'\n\n\"I made no reply to him, being intent only on holding my grip; but I was\nreassured, for, although he poured on me incessantly the great sound,\nits effect was neutralised, for I am a number, and in totality we were\nthe numbers; nevertheless the substance did strain and heave so\npowerfully that I could do no more than hold it in place.\n\n\"The man spoke to me again. Said he:\n\n\"'Do you not think that this is very funny?'\n\n\"I made no answer for a time, and then I said:\n\n\"'Who are you?'\n\n\"'A name,' he replied, 'is a power; I won't give you my name although I\nwould like to, for this is a great deed and a funny one.'\n\n\"'What is your planet?' quoth I.\n\n\"'I won't tell you that,' he replied; 'you might read my signs and come\nafter me later on.'\n\n\"I could not but admire the immense impertinence of his deed.\n\n\"'I know your sign,' said I, 'for you have already made it three times\nwith your hand, and there is only one planet of these systems which has\nevolved the fifth race, so I know your planet. Your symbol is the Mule,\nand Uriel is your Regent; he will be coming after you soon, so you had\nbetter go away while you have time.'\n\n\"'If he comes,' said the man, 'I'll put him in a bottle, and I'll put\nyou in a bottle too. I won't go for another while, the joke is too good,\nand this is only the commencement of it.'\n\n\"'You will be caught by the second syllable,' I warned him.\n\n\"'I'll put it in a bottle,' said he grinning at me. 'No,' he continued,\n'I won't be caught, I've made my calculations, and it's not due yet a\nwhile.'\n\n\"Again he poured on me the great sound until I rocked to and fro like a\nbush in the wind; but he could not loose my grip, for I was a part of\nthe word.\n\n\"'Why are you doing this?' I asked him.\n\n\"'I'll tell you that,' he replied.\n\n\"'I am two things, and I am great in each of these two things. I am a\ngreat magician, and I am a great humourist. Now, it is very easy to\nprove that one is a magician, for one has only to do things and then\npeople are astonished; they are filled with fear and wonder; they fall\ndown and worship and call one god and master. But it is not so easy to\nbe a humourist, because in that case it is necessary to make people\nlaugh. If a man is to be a magician it is necessary, if his art is to be\nappreciated, that the people around him be fools. If a person desires to\nbe a humourist it is necessary that the people around him shall be at\nleast as wise as he is, otherwise his humour will not be comprehended.\nYou see my predicament! and it is a cruel one, for I cannot forego\neither of these ambitions--they are my karma. Laughter is purely an\nintellectual quality, and in my planet I have no intellectual equals: my\njokes can only be enjoyed by myself, and it is of the essence of humour\nthat one share it, or it turns to ill-health and cynicism and mental\nsourness. My humour cannot be shared with the people of my planet, for\nthey are all half a round beneath me--they can never see the joke, they\nonly see consequences, and these blind them to the rich drollery of any\naffair, and render me discontented and angry. My humour is too great for\nthem, for it is not terrestrial but cosmic; it can only be appreciated\nby the gods, therefore, I have come out here to seek my peers and to\nhave at least one hearty laugh with them.'\n\n\"'One must laugh,' he continued, 'for laughter is the health of the\nmind, and I have not laughed for a crore of seasons.'\n\n\"Thereupon he took up the syllable and intoned its flooding sound so\nthat the matter beneath my hands strained against me almost unbearably.\n\n\"I turned my head and stared at the little man as he laughed happily to\nhimself and scraped his chin.\n\n\"'You are a fool,' said I to that man.\n\n\"The smile vanished from his face and a shade of dejection took its\nplace.\n\n\"'Is it possible, Regent, that you have no sense of humour!' said he.\n\n\"'This,' I replied, 'is not humorous; it is only a practical joke; it is\nno more than incipient humour; there is no joke in it but only mischief,\nfor to interfere with work is the humour of a babe or a monkey. You are\na thoroughly serious person, and you will not make a joke in ten\neternities; that also is in your karma.'\n\n\"At these words his eyes brooded on me darkly, and an expression of real\nmalignancy came on his face: he stamped at me from the triangles and\nhissed with rage.\n\n\"'I'll show you something else,' said he, 'and if it doesn't make you\nlaugh it will make everybody else who hears about it laugh for an age.'\n\n\"I saw that he was meditating a personal evil to me, but I was\npowerless, for I could not let go my grip on the substance.\n\n\"He lifted his hands against me then, but, at the moment, there came a\nsound, so low, so deep, it could scarcely be heard, and with equal\nstrong intensity the sound pervaded all the spaces and brooded in every\npoint and atom with its thrilling breath--we were about to shape to the\nwhirlwind.\n\n\"The man's hands fell, and he stared at me.\n\n\"'Oh!' said he, and he said 'Oh' three times in a whisper.\n\n\"The sound was the beginning of the second syllable.\n\n\"'I thought I had time,' he gasped: 'my calculations were wrong.'\n\n\"'The joke is against you,' said I to the man.\n\n\"'What will I do?' he screamed.\n\n\"'Laugh,' I replied, 'laugh at the joke.'\n\n\"Already his flying circles had ceased to revolve, and their broad flame\nwas no more than a blue flicker that disappeared even as I looked at\nthem. He stood only in the triangles, and he was open to my vengeance.\nHis staring, haggard eyes fell on the bolt in my hand.\n\n\"'There is no need for that,' said he, and he did speak with some small\ndignity, 'I am caught by the sound, and there is an end to me.'\n\n\"And that was true, so I did not loose my bolt.\n\n\"Already his triangles were crumbling. He sank on his haunches, clasped\nhis hands about his legs and bowed his head on his knees. I could see\nthat he knew all was lost, and that he was making a last desperate\neffort to guard his entity from dissolution, and he succeeded, for, one\ninstant before the triangles had disappeared, he had vanished, but he\ncould not have entirely escaped the sound, that was impossible, and if\nhe reached his planet it must have been as a life of the third round\ninstead of the fifth to which he had attained. He had the entire of his\nevolution to perform over again and had, moreover, added weightily to\nhis karmic disabilities.\n\n\"I saw him no more, nor did I hear of him again until the day when Brien\nO'Brien was thrown from the gates, and then I knew that he and O'Brien\nwere the same being, and that he had really escaped and was a fourth\nround life of the lowest globe.\n\n\"Perhaps he will be heard of again, for he is an energetic and restless\nbeing to whom an environment is an enemy and to whom humour is an\nambition and a mystery.\"\n\n                   *       *       *       *       *\n\n\"That is the end of my story,\" said Art modestly.\n\nMac Cann regarded him indulgently from a cloud of smoke:\n\n\"It wasn't as good as the other ones,\" he remarked, \"but that's not your\nfault, and you're young into the bargain.\"\n\n\"He is not as young as he looks,\" remarked Finaun.\n\n\"A good story has to be about ordinary things,\" continued Patsy, \"but\nthere isn't anybody could tell what your story was about.\"\n\nBilly the Music here broke in:\n\n\"The person I would have liked to hear more of is Cuchulain, for he is\nmy own guardian angel and it's him I'm interested in. The next time I\nmeet him I'll ask him questions.\"\n\nHe glanced around the circle:\n\n\"Is there anybody would like to hear a tune on the concertina? I have it\nby my hand here, and the evening is before us.\"\n\n\"You can play it for us the next time we meet,\" said Patsy, \"for we are\nall tired listening to the stories, and you are tired yourself.\"\n\nHe lifted to his feet then and yawned heartily with his arms at full\nstretch and his fists clenched:\n\n\"We had better be moving,\" he continued, \"for the evening is coming on\nand it's twenty miles to the fair.\"\n\nThey harnessed the ass.\n\n\"I'm going the opposite way to you,\" said Billy the Music.\n\n\"All right,\" said Patsy. \"God be with you, mister.\"\n\n\"God be with yourselves,\" replied Billy the Music.\n\nHe tramped off then in his own direction, while Mac Cann and his\ncompanions took their road with the ass.\n\n\n\n\n                                BOOK IV\n\n                             MARY MAC CANN\n\n\n\n\n                             CHAPTER XXVIII\n\n\nThe search for work and food led them back, but by different paths,\nthrough Kerry, up into Connemara, and thence by stony regions to Donegal\nagain and the rugged hills.\n\nTheir days were uneventful but they were peaceful: their nights were\npleasant, and seldom did they lack for even one meal in the day. When\nthey did so lack they passed the unwelcome hour in the silence of those\nto whom such an hiatus was not singular. Under Mac Cann's captaincy the\ntiny band moved from meal to meal as another army would invest and sack\nand depart from the cities on its route.\n\nSometimes at night a ballad-singer would stray on their road, an angry\nman from whom no person had purchased songs for two days, and in return\nfor victual this one would entertain them with his lays and recite the\ncurses he had composed against those who did not pay the musician.\n\nSometimes they came on gatherings of tinkers and pedlars, tramps, and\ntrick-men, and in the midst of these they would journey towards a fair.\nUproarious nights then! Wild throats yelling at the stars and much loud\ntrampling on the roads as the women fought and screeched, and the men\nhowled criticism and encouragement, and came by mere criticism\nthemselves to the battle. Paltry onslaughts these, more of word than of\nweapon to the fray that left some blooded noses and swollen lips as the\none hour memorial of their deeds.\n\nAnd again the peaceful nights, the calm stars, the quiet moon strewing\nher path in silver; space for the eye, the ear, and the soul; the\nwhispering of lovely trees; the unending rustle of the grass, and the\nwind that came and went away and came, chanting its long rhythms or\nhushing its chill lullaby by the fields and the hills.\n\nOn a day when they had finished eating Finaun beckoned Caeltia and Art\naside and they spoke closely together. Turning to Mac Cann and his\ndaughter Finaun said:\n\n\"We have finished what we came to do, my friends.\"\n\nPatsy nodded frowningly at him.\n\n\"What was it you came to do?\"\n\n\"I came to give help to the powers,\" said Finaun mildly.\n\n\"I didn't see you doing much,\" replied Patsy.\n\n\"And,\" Finaun continued smilingly, \"the time has come for us to go\naway.\"\n\n\"You're in a hurry, I suppose?\"\n\n\"We are not in a great hurry, but the time has come for us to go back.\"\n\n\"Very well!\" said Patsy. \"We aren't so far from where we started. If we\ntake one of the turns on the right here and bear away to the west by\nCnuc-Mahon and Tober-Fola and Rath-Cormac we'll come to the place where\nyour things are buried, and then I suppose--we can get there in three\ndays, if that will do you?\"\n\n\"That will do,\" said Finaun.\n\nDuring the remainder of the day he and his companions walked together\ntalking among themselves while Mac Cann and his daughter went with the\nass.\n\nPatsy also was preoccupied all that day and she had her own thoughts;\nthey scarcely spoke at all and the ass was bored.\n\nAt night they camped under a broken arch, the vestige of they knew not\nwhat crumbled building, and, seated around the brazier, they sunk to\nsilence, each staring at the red glow and thinking according to their\nneed, and it was then that Art, lifting his eyes from the brazier,\nlooked for the first time at Mary and saw that she was beautiful.\n\nShe had been looking at him--that was now her one occupation. She\nexisted only in these surreptitious examinations. She dwelt on him\nbroodingly as a miser burns on his gold or a mother hovers hungrily upon\nher infant, but he had never given her any heed. Now he was looking at\nher, and across the brazier their eyes communed deeply.\n\nThere was birth already between them--sex was born, and something else\nwas shaping feebly to existence. Love, that protection and cherishing,\nthat total of life, the shy prince scarcely to be known among the\nteeming populations of the world, raised languidly from enchanted sleep\na feeble hand.\n\nWhat fire did their eyes utter! The quiet night became soundingly vocal.\nWinged words were around her again as in that twilight when her heart\nloosed its first trials of song. Though the night was about her black\nand calm there was dawn and sunlight in her heart, and she bathed\nherself deeply in the flame.\n\nAnd he! There is no knowing but this, that his eyes poured soft fire,\nenveloping, exhaustless. He surrounded her as with a sea. There she slid\nand fell and disappeared, to find herself again, renewed, reborn,\nthrilling to the embrace of those waters, wondrously alive and yet so\nlanguid that she could not move. There she rocked like a boat on the\nbroad waves and, saving the limitless sea, there was nothing in sight.\nAlmost he even had disappeared from her view but not from her sensation:\nhe was an influence wide as the world, deep and steep and tremendous as\nall space.\n\nThey were alone. The quiet men seated beside them thinned and faded and\ndisappeared: the night whisked from knowledge as a mounting plume of\nsmoke that eddies and is gone: the trees and the hills tripped softly\nbackwards and drooped away. Now they were in a world of their own,\nmicroscopic, but intense: a sphere bounded by less than the stretching\nof their arms: a circle of such violent movement that it was stationary\nas a spinning-top, and her mind whirled to it, and was still from very\nactivity. She could not think, she could not try to think, that was her\nstillness, but she could feel and that was her movement; she was no\nlonger a woman but a responsiveness: she was an universal contact\nthrilling at every pore and point: she was surrendered and lost and\ncaptured and no longer pertained to herself.\n\nSo much can the eye do when the gathered body peers meaningly through\nits lens. They existed in each other: in and through each other: the\nthree feet of distance was no longer there: it had disappeared, and they\nwere one being swinging on league-long wings through vast spaces.\n\nWhen they dropped to sleep it was merely a slipping backwards, a motion\nthat they did not feel: they were asleep before they dropped asleep:\nthey were asleep long before that, drugged and senseless with the strong\npotion of the body, stronger than aught in the world but the sharp\nessence of the mind that awakens all things and never permits them to be\nlulled again.\n\n                   *       *       *       *       *\n\nWhen morning dawned and the camp awakened there was some little\nconfusion, for Mac Cann was not in the place where he had slept and they\ncould not imagine where he had gone to.\n\nMary discussed his disappearance in all kinds of terms, Caeltia alone,\nwith a downcast air, refusing to speak of it. They waited during hours\nfor him, but he did not return, and at noon they decided to wait no\nlonger but to go on their journey leaving him to catch on them if he was\nbehind or hoping to gain on him if he was in advance, for their route\nwas marked.\n\nThe angels did seem a trifle lost in his absence, and they looked with\nsome dubiety at Mary when she took charge of their journey and of the\ndaily provision of their food.\n\nFood had to be gotten, and she had to discover it not alone for herself\nbut for these other mouths. It was the first time she had been alone\nand, although her brows and lips were steady, her heart beat terror\nthrough her body.\n\nFor she had to do two things which she had never done and had never\nsurmised really had to be done. She had to think, and she had to follow\nher thought by doing the thing she thought of. Which of these two were\nthe more terrible she did not know, but there was no difficulty as to\nwhich she must do first, the simple orderliness of logic clamoured that\nshe must think before she could do anything, and, so, her brain set to\nthe painful weaving of webs too flimsy at first for any usage; but on\nthis day she discovered where her head lay and how to use it without any\nassistance. She had memory to work with also, the recollection of her\nfather's activities, and memory is knowledge; a well-packed head and\nenergy--that is the baggage for life, it is the baggage for eternity.\n\nShe moved to the head of the ass and pulled his ear to advance. Caeltia\nand Finaun trod beside and they went forward. Behind came Art sniffing\nwith the hungriest of nostrils on the sunny air, for it was five hours\nsince they had eaten and more than three hours' abstinence was painful\nto him.\n\n\n\n\n                              CHAPTER XXIX\n\n\nShe did get food. She nourished her three children sumptuously, but she\nmade them help her to get it.\n\nShe looked at Finaun's high nose, his sweeping beard, his air as of a\ngood child well matured, and she sent it to the market:\n\n\"One must eat,\" said she.\n\nWhen they came to a house by the roadside she ordered Finaun to the door\nto ask for bread; he got it too and had eaten but the slowest mouthful\nwhen she seized it from him and stocked it for the common good.\n\nShe charged Caeltia through the open door of a cottage, and his\nexpedition was famous for eight hours afterwards.\n\nShe performed feats herself in a fowl-house and a cattle-pen, but she\ndid not issue any commands to Art except at the falling-to, when he\nobeyed adequately.\n\nShe recalled the deeds of her father in many predicaments, and for the\nfirst time she really understood his ceaseless skill and activity. She\nfound too that she could recollect his tactics, beside which her own\nwere but childish blunderings, and, with that memory she mended her\nhand, and life became the orderly progression which everybody expects it\nto be.\n\nThat night by the glow of the brazier she rested a mind that had never\nbeen weary before, and she craved for the presence of her father that\nshe might gain from him the praise which her present companions did not\nknow was due to her.\n\n                   *       *       *       *       *\n\n\"Two days more,\" said her heart, communicating to her bitterly as they\nproceeded on the morrow morning, but she banished the thought and set to\nher plots and plans. She banished it, but it clung with her, vague and\nweighty as a nightmare, and when she looked backwards on the road Art's\neyes were looking into hers with a quietness that almost drove her mad.\nShe could not understand him.\n\nThey had never spoken to each other; not once had they spoken directly\nsince that night when he stepped into the glow of the brazier. At first\nshe had fled from him in a fear which was all shyness and wildness, and\nso an overlooking habit had been formed between them which he had never\nsought to break, and which she did not know how to put an end to.\n\n\"Two days!\" said her heart again, pealing it to her through her webs,\nand again she exiled her heart, and could feel its wailing when she\ncould hear it no longer.\n\n                   *       *       *       *       *\n\nThey stopped for the mid-day meal; bread and potatoes and a morsel of\ncheese; the fare was plentiful, and from a stream near by good water\nwashed it down.\n\nThe reins of the donkey were thrown across the limb of a tree, and he\nhad liberty to browse in a circle. He also had his drink from the\nrunning stream, and was glad of it.\n\nAs they sat three people marched the road behind them; they saw these\npeople, and studied their advance.\n\nA talkative, a disorderly advance it was. An advance that halted every\nfew paces for parley, and moved on again like a battle.\n\nTwo men and a woman were in that party, and it did seem that they were\nfighting every inch of their way. Certainly, they were laughing also,\nfor a harsh peal came creaking up the road, and came again. Once the\nlaugh broke abruptly on its gruff note as though a hand had pounded into\nits middle. Then the party parleyed again and moved again.\n\nWhat they said could not be distinguished, but the rumour of their\nconversation might have been heard across the world. They bawled and\nscreamed, and always through the tumult came the gruff hoot of laughter.\n\nSaid Caeltia:\n\n\"Do you know these people?\"\n\n\"The woman is Eileen Ni Cooley,\" replied Mary, \"for I know her walk, but\nI don't know the shape of the men.\"\n\nCaeltia laughed quietly to himself.\n\n\"The taller of these men,\" said he, \"is the Seraph Cuchulain, the other\nman is that Brien O'Brien we were telling you of.\"\n\nMary's face flamed, but she made no remark.\n\nIn a few minutes these people drew near.\n\nEileen Ni Cooley was dishevelled. Her shawl hung only from one shoulder\nand there were holes in it, her dress was tattered, and a long wisp of\nred hair streamed behind her like a flame. Her face was red also, and\nher eyes were anxious as they roved from one to the other.\n\nShe came directly to the girl and sat beside her; young Cuchulain set\nhimself down beside Art, but Brien O'Brien stood a few paces distant\nwith his fists thrust in his pockets and he chewing strongly on tobacco.\nEvery now and then he growled a harsh creak of a laugh and then covered\nit ostentatiously with his hand.\n\n\"God be with you, Mary Ni Cahan,\" said Eileen Ni Cooley, and she twisted\nup her flying hair and arranged her shawl.\n\n\"What's wrong with you?\" said Mary.\n\n\"Where's your father?\" said Eileen.\n\n\"I don't know where he is. When we lifted from sleep a morning ago he\nwasn't in his place, and we haven't seen him since that time.\"\n\n\"What am I going to do at all?\" said Eileen in a low voice. \"These men\nhave me tormented the way I don't know how to manage.\"\n\n\"What could my father do?\" said Mary sternly, \"and you playing tricks on\nhim since the day you were born.\"\n\n\"That's between myself and him,\" replied Eileen, \"and it doesn't matter\nat all. I wanted your father to beat O'Brien for me, for he won't leave\nme alone day or night, and I can't get away from him.\"\n\nMary leaned to her whispering:\n\n\"My father couldn't beat that man, for I saw the two of them fighting on\nthe Donnybrook Road, and he had no chance against him.\"\n\n\"He could beat him, indeed,\" said Eileen indignantly, \"and I'd give him\ngood help myself.\"\n\n\"If my father owes you anything,\" said Mary, \"I'm ready to pay it for\nhim, so let us both rise against the man, and maybe the pair of us would\nmake him fly.\"\n\nEileen stared at her.\n\n\"I hit him once,\" continued Mary, \"and I would like well to hit him\nagain; my people here would keep his friend from joining against us.\"\n\nThe blue eyes of Eileen Ni Cooley shone with contentment; she slipped\nthe shawl from her shoulders and let it drop to the ground.\n\n\"We'll do that, Mary,\" said she, \"and let us do it now.\"\n\nSo the women lifted to their feet and they walked towards Brien O'Brien,\nand suddenly they leaped on him like a pair of panthers, and they leaped\nso suddenly that he went down against the road with a great bump. But he\ndid not stay down.\n\nHe rose after one dumbfounded moment, and he played with the pair of\nthem the way a conjurer would play with two balls, so that the breath\nwent out of their bodies, and they had to sit down or suffocate.\n\n\"That's the kind of man he is,\" panted Eileen.\n\n\"Very well!\" said Mary fiercely, \"we'll try him again in a minute.\"\n\nThe camp was in confusion, and from that confusion Art leaped towards\nBrien O'Brien, but the Seraph Cuchulain leaped and outleaped Art, and\nset himself bristling by the elbow of his friend; then Caeltia, with his\nface shining happily, tip-toed forward and ranged with Art against these\ntwo, but Finaun went quicker than they all; he leaped between the\ncouples, and there was not a man of the four dared move against his\nhand.\n\nIn a second that storm blew itself out, and they returned to their seats\nsmiling foolishly.\n\n\"Let the women be quiet,\" said Brien O'Brien harshly.\n\nHe also seated himself, with his back touching against the donkey's\nlegs.\n\nThe ass had finished eating and drinking, and was now searching the\nhorizon with the intent eye of one who does not see anything, but only\nlooks on the world without in order to focus steadily the world within.\n\nBrien O'Brien stared with a new interest at Finaun, and revolved his\nquid. Said he to Cuchulain:\n\n\"Would the old lad be able to treat us the way Rhadamanthus did, do you\nthink?\"\n\n\"He could do that,\" laughed Cuchulain, \"and he could do it easily.\"\n\nO'Brien moved the quid to the other side of his jaw.\n\n\"If he slung us out of this place we wouldn't know where we might land,\"\nsaid he.\n\n\"That is so,\" replied Cuchulain, thrusting a sleek curl between his\nteeth. \"I don't know these regions, and I don't know where we might\nland, or if we would ever land. Only for that I would go against him,\"\nand he waggled his finger comically at Finaun.\n\nArt commenced to snigger and Finaun laughed heartily, but Caeltia eyed\nCuchulain so menacingly that the seraph kept a quiet regard on him for\nthe rest of the day.\n\nPeace was restored, and while they were revolving peace and wondering\nhow to express it Patsy Mac Cann came on them from a side path that ran\nnarrowly between small hills.\n\n\n\n\n                              CHAPTER XXX\n\n\nWhen Mac Cann saw the visitors he halted for an instant and then came\nforward very slowly, with his head on one side and his thumb rasping\nsteadily on his chin.\n\nHe was staring at Brien O'Brien, and as he stared he bristled like a\ndog.\n\n\"It's the man himself,\" said he, \"the man that stole my clothes.\"\n\nO'Brien peeped upwards at him but did not move.\n\n\"Sit down and hold your prate,\" said he, \"or I'll steal your life.\"\n\nMac Cann would have thrown himself on his enemy, but at that moment he\ncaught sight of Eileen Ni Cooley and her face drove the other out of his\nhead.\n\nHe stared.\n\n\"It's yourself!\" said he.\n\n\"It is me, sure enough, Padraig.\"\n\n\"You'll be going away in a minute, I suppose,\" said he grimly.\n\nHe sat on the grass and there was peace once more. He was sitting beside\nO'Brien, and the ass was still thinking deeply with his hocks touching\nagainst their shoulder-blades.\n\nWhen he seated himself they were all silent, for, in face of everything,\nMac Cann took the lead, and they waited for him to speak.\n\nO'Brien was looking at him sideways with a grin on his hard jaw. He\ncreaked out a little laugh and then covered it up with his hand as one\nwho was abashed, but Mac Cann paid no attention to him.\n\nHis attention was on Eileen Ni Cooley.\n\n\"You're a great woman,\" said he, \"and you're full of fun surely.\"\n\n\"I'm everything you like to call me,\" replied Eileen.\n\n\"Which of the men are you with this time, or are you travelling with the\npair of them?\"\n\n\"I don't want either of them, Padraig, but I can't get away from them\nanyhow. They won't let me go my own road, and they're marching at my\nelbows for two days and two nights, cursing and kicking and making a\nnoise every step of the way.\"\n\n\"They're doing that!\" said Patsy.\n\n\"They are doing that, Padraig. It's O'Brien is the worst, for the other\nfellow is only helping him and doesn't care for me at all. Catching me\nthey do be, and holding me....\"\n\n\"Aye!\" said Patsy.\n\n\"I can't get away from O'Brien,\" said she, \"and I thought that if I\ncould find yourself----\"\n\n\"You were looking for me?\"\n\n\"I was looking for you this time, Padraig.\"\n\n\"Aye!\" said Patsy, and he turned a black eye on Brien O'Brien, and his\neye looked like a little, hard ball of stone.\n\n\"You'll be left alone from this day out,\" said Patsy.\n\n\"Mind yourself!\" growled Brien O'Brien. \"Mind yourself, my hardy man, or\nyou'll waken up among the spooks.\"\n\nPatsy held him with that solid eye.\n\n\"Spooks!\" said he, and suddenly he rolled on top of Brien O'Brien, his\nleft hand grabbing at the throat, his right fist jabbing viciously with\npacked knuckles.\n\nDown went Brien O'Brien's head and up went his heels; then he gave a\nmighty wriggle and started to come up, his hands threshing like the\nwings of a mill. As he came up they rolled, and now Mac Cann was below;\nbut Brien O'Brien's head had disturbed the donkey, and, without emerging\nfrom cogitation, the ass let his two heels fly at the enemy of thought\nbehind him; Patsy saw for an instant the white flash of those little\nhoofs across his face, but Brien of the O'Brien Nation took them full on\nhis forehead and his brows crackled in like the shell of an egg; he\nrelaxed, he sagged, he drooped and huddled limply to Patsy's bosom, and\nfor three seconds Mac Cann lay quietly beneath him, captured by\nastonishment.\n\nThe donkey had again related the infinity without to the eternity\nwithin, and his little hoofs were as peaceful as his mild eye.\n\nMac Cann tugged himself from beneath that weighty carcass and came to\nhis feet.\n\nMary and Eileen were both sitting rigid, with arms at full stretch and\ntheir fingers tipping straitly on the ground, while their round eyes\nwere wide in an unwinking stare.\n\nCaeltia was on his feet and was crouching at an equally crouching\nCuchulain. Patsy saw the curl jerking as the lips of the seraph laughed.\n\nArt was frozen on one knee in the mid-act of rising, and Finaun was\ncombing his beard while he looked fixedly at Eileen Ni Cooley.\n\nTwenty seconds only had elapsed since Mac Cann rolled sideways on Brien\nO'Brien.\n\nThe seraph Cuchulain was staring under Caeltia's arm. He blew the golden\ncurl from his lips and sounded a laugh that was like the ringing of\nsilver bells.\n\n\"What will Rhadamanthus say this time?\" quoth he, and with that he\nturned and tripped happily down the road and away.\n\n                   *       *       *       *       *\n\nMac Cann regarded the corpse.\n\n\"We had better bury the man,\" said he gloomily.\n\nHe took a short spade from the cart, and with it he made a hole in the\nroadside.\n\nThey laid Brien O'Brien in that hole.\n\n\"Wait for a minute,\" said Mac Cann. \"It's not decent to send him off\nthat way.\"\n\nHe pushed a hand into his pocket and pulled it out again with money in\nit.\n\n\"He should have something with himself and he taking the long journey.\"\n\nHe lifted O'Brien's clenched fist, forced it open, and put a silver\nthreepenny-piece into it; then he tightened the pale hand again and\nfolded it with the other on his breast.\n\nThey wrapped a newspaper about his face, and they threw the clay over\nBrien of the O'Brien Nation and stamped it down well with their feet,\nand as they left him the twilight stole over the land, and a broad star\nlooked peacefully down through the grey distances.\n\n\n\n\n                              CHAPTER XXXI\n\n\nThey walked through the evening.\n\nDusk had fallen and in the drowsy half-lights the world stretched itself\nin peacefulness.\n\nThey had come to a flat country that whispered in grass; there were no\nmore of the little hills that roll and fall and roll; there were\nscarcely any trees; here and there in great space a beech swung its slow\nboughs and made a quiet noise in the stillness; here and there a stiff\ntree lifted its lonely greenness, and around it the vast horizon\nstretched away and away to sightlessness.\n\nThere was silence here, there was deep silence, and over all the dusk\ndrowsed and folded and increased.\n\nWith what slow veils the darkness deepened! the gentle weaver spun her\nthin webs and drooped soft coverings from the sky to the clay; momently\nthe stars came flashing their tiny signals, gathering their bright hosts\nby lonely clusters, and one thin sickle of the moon grew from a cloud\nand stood distantly as a sign of gold.\n\nBut the quiet beauty of the heavens and the quiet falling to sleep of\nthe earth had for this night no effect on one of our travellers.\n\nMac Cann was ill at ease. He was moody and irritable, and he moved from\nEileen Ni Cooley to his daughter and back again to Eileen Ni Cooley and\ncould not content himself with either of them.\n\nThe angels were treading at the rear of the cart talking among\nthemselves; the slow drone of their voices drifted up the road, and from\nthis murmuring the words God and Beauty and Love would detach themselves\nand sing recurringly on the air like incantations.\n\nEileen Ni Cooley trod on the left side of the ass. She trod like a\nfeatureless shade; her shawl wrapped blottingly about her face and her\nmind moving within herself and for herself.\n\nMac Cann and his daughter went together by the right side of the donkey,\nand, as he looked constantly at his daughter, his eyes were furtive and\ncunning.\n\nHe tapped her elbow.\n\n\"Mary,\" he whispered, \"I want to talk to you.\"\n\nShe replied in a voice that was low from his contact.\n\n\"I want to talk to yourself,\" said she.\n\n\"What do you want to say?\"\n\n\"I want to know where you got the money that I saw in your hand when you\nburied the man?\"\n\n\"That's what I'm going to tell you about,\" he whispered. \"Be listening\nto me now and don't make any noise.\"\n\n\"I'm listening to you,\" said Mary.\n\n\"What have we got to do with these lads behind us?\" said Patsy urgently.\n\"They are nothing to us at all, and I'm tired of them.\"\n\n\"There's a thing to say!\" quoth she.\n\n\"This is what we'll do. To-night we won't unyoke the ass, and when they\nare well asleep we'll walk quietly off with ourselves and leave them\nthere. Eileen Ni Cooley will come with us and in the morning we'll be\ndistant.\"\n\n\"I won't do that,\" said Mary.\n\nHe darted at her a sparkle of rage.\n\n\"You'll do what I say, you strap, or it'll be the worse for you!\" said\nhis violent whisper.\n\n\"I won't do that,\" she hissed, \"and I tell you I won't.\"\n\n\"By the living Jingo...!\" said Patsy.\n\nShe came at him whispering with equal fierceness.\n\n\"What have you done on the men?\" said she. \"What did you do on them that\nyou want to run away from them in the night?\"\n\n\"Keep your tongue in your teeth, you----!\"\n\n\"Where were you for a day and a half? Where did you get the money from\nthat I saw in your hand when you buried the man?\"\n\nPatsy composed himself with difficulty; he licked his dry lips.\n\n\"There's no fooling you, alannah, and I'll tell you the truth.\"\n\nHe glanced cautiously to where the others were coming deep in talk.\n\n\"This is what I did. I went to that place by Ard-Martin where we buried\nthe things, and I dug them up.\"\n\n\"Oh!\" said Mary.\n\n\"I dug them up, and I took them away, and I sold them to a man for\nmoney.\"\n\n\"Oh!\" said Mary.\n\n\"They're sold, do you hear? And there's no going back on it; so do what\nI tell you about the ass this night and we'll take our own road from now\non.\"\n\n\"I won't do it,\" whispered Mary, and she was almost speechless with\nrage.\n\nMac Cann thrust his face close to hers grinning like a madman.\n\n\"You won't do it!\" said he. \"What will you do then against your father?\"\n\n\"I'll go on to the place with the men,\" she stammered.\n\n\"You'll come with me this night.\"\n\n\"I'll not go,\" said she harshly.\n\n\"You'll come with me this night,\" said he.\n\n\"I'll not go,\" she screamed at him.\n\nAt the sound of her scream everybody came running to them.\n\n\"Is there anything wrong?\" said Art.\n\n\"She's only laughing at a joke I told her,\" said Patsy. \"Make that ass\ngo on, Mary a grah, for it's walking as if it was going asleep.\"\n\nCaeltia was looking at Mac Cann so fixedly, with such a severe gravity\nof eye, that the blood of the man turned to water and he could scarcely\nhold himself upright. For the first time in his life Mac Cann knew what\nfear was.\n\n\"To-morrow,\" said Caeltia, \"we will be going away from you, let us be\npeaceful then for our last night together.\"\n\n\"Aye,\" said Patsy, \"let us be comfortable for this night of all nights.\"\n\nHe turned away, and with a great effort at carelessness he moved to the\ndonkey's head.\n\n\"Come on, Mary,\" said he.\n\nEileen Ni Cooley trod beside him for a moment.\n\n\"What's wrong with you, Padraig?\" said she.\n\n\"Nothing at all, Eileen, just leave me alone for a minute for I want to\ntalk to the girl.\"\n\n\"You can count on me for anything, Padraig.\"\n\n\"I don't know whether I can or not,\" he muttered savagely. \"Keep quiet\nfor ten minutes, in the name of God.\"\n\nFor a few dull seconds they paced in quiet. Patsy moistened his lips\nwith his tongue.\n\n\"What are you going to do, Mary?\"\n\n\"I don't know,\" she replied. \"What man did you sell the things to?\"\n\n\"I sold them to a man that lives near by--a rich man in a big house.\"\n\n\"There's only one big house about here.\"\n\n\"That's the house.\"\n\nShe was silent.\n\n\"If you're going to tell the men,\" said her father, \"give me two hours'\nlaw this night until I get away, and then you can tell them and be\ndamned to you.\"\n\n\"Listen to me!\" said the girl.\n\n\"I'm listening.\"\n\n\"There is only one thing to be done, and it has got to be done at once:\ngo you to the place of that rich man and take the things away from his\nhouse and bury them back again in the place they were buried. If you\nwant any help I'll go with you myself.\"\n\nMac Cann's thumb wandered to his chin and a sound as of filing was heard\nwhile he rubbed it. His voice was quite changed as he replied:\n\n\"Begor!\" said he.\n\n\"You're full of fun,\" said he, thoughtfully. He covered his mouth with\nhis hand then and stared thoughtfully down the road.\n\n\"Will you do that?\" said Mary.\n\nHe thumped a hand heavily on her shoulder.\n\n\"I will so, and I do wonder that I didn't think of it myself, for it's\nthe thing that ought to be done.\"\n\nAnd now as they marched the atmosphere had changed; there was once more\npeace or the precursor of it; from Mac Cann a tempered happiness\nradiated as of old: he looked abroad without misgiving and he looked at\nhis daughter with the cynical kindliness habitual to him. They trod so\nfor a little time arranging their thoughts, then:\n\n\"We are near enough to that house to be far enough from it if there's\nany reason to be far,\" said Mac Cann, \"so this is what I say, let us\nstop where we are for the night and in the morning we'll go on from\nhere.\"\n\n\"Very well,\" said Mary, \"let us stop here.\"\n\nHer father drew the ass to the side of the road and there halted it.\n\n\"We'll go to bed now,\" he shouted to the company, and they all agreed to\nthat.\n\n\"I'm going to unyoke the beast,\" said Mary with a steady eye on her\nfather.\n\nHe replied heartily.\n\n\"Why wouldn't you do that? Let him out to get something to eat like the\nrest of us.\"\n\n\"There isn't any water,\" he complained a minute later. \"What will that\nanimal do? and what will we do ourselves?\"\n\n\"I have two big bottles of water in the cart,\" said Mary.\n\n\"And I have a little bottle in my pocket,\" said he, \"so we're all\nright.\"\n\nThe donkey was unyoked, and he went at once to stand with his feet in\nthe wet grass. He remained so for a long time without eating, but he did\neat when that idea occurred to him.\n\nThe brazier was lit, the sacks strewn on the ground, and they sat about\nthe fire in their accustomed places and ate their food. After a smoke\nand a little conversation each person stretched backwards, covering\nthemselves with other sacks, and they went heartily to sleep.\n\n\"We will have to be up early in the morning,\" was Patsy's last remark,\n\"for you are in a hurry to get back your things,\" and saying so he\nstretched his length with the others.\n\n                   *       *       *       *       *\n\nWhen a still hour had drifted by Mary raised cautiously and tip-toed to\nher father. As she stood by him he slid the sacks aside and came to his\nfeet, and they moved a little way down the road.\n\n\"Now,\" said Mary, \"you can do what you said you'd do.\"\n\n\"I'll do that,\" said he.\n\n\"And get back as quick as you can.\"\n\n\"It's a distance there and back again. I'll be here in the morning, but\nI'll be late.\"\n\n\"Bury the things the way they were before.\"\n\n\"That's all right,\" and he moved a step backwards.\n\n\"Father!\" said Mary softly.\n\nHe returned to her.\n\n\"What more do you want?\" said he impatiently.\n\nShe put her arms about his neck.\n\n\"What the devil are you doing?\" said he in astonishment, and he tried to\nwriggle loose from her.\n\nBut she did not say another word, and after a moment he put his own arms\nabout her with a grunt and held her tightly.\n\n\"I'm away now,\" said he, and, moving against the darkness, he\ndisappeared.\n\nFor half a minute the sound of his feet was heard, and then the darkness\ncovered him.\n\nMary returned to her place by the brazier. She stretched close to Eileen\nNi Cooley and lay staring at the moving clouds.\n\nIn a few minutes she was asleep, although she had not felt any heaviness\non her eyes.\n\n\n\n\n                             CHAPTER XXXII\n\n\nNo one was awake.\n\nIn the brazier a faint glow peeped from the white turf-ash; the earth\nseemed to be holding its breath, so still it was; the clouds hung\nimmovably each in its place; a solitary tree near by folded its wide\nlimbs into the darkness and made no sound.\n\nNothing stirred in the world but the ass as he lifted his head slowly\nand drooped it again; his feet were sunken in a plot of grass and he was\nquiet as the earth.\n\nThen I came softly, and I spoke to the ass in the darkness.\n\n\"Little ass,\" quoth I, \"how is everything with you?\"\n\n\"Everything is very well,\" said the ass.\n\n\"Little ass,\" said I, \"tell me what you do be thinking of when you fix\nyour eye on vacancy and stare there for a long time?\"\n\n\"I do be thinking,\" said the ass, \"of my companions, and sometimes I do\nbe looking at them.\"\n\n\"Who are your companions?\"\n\n\"Last night I saw the Cyclops striding across a hill; there were forty\nof them, and each man was forty feet high; they had only one eye in\ntheir heads and they looked through that; they looked through it the way\na fire stares through a hole and they could see well.\"\n\n\"How do you know they could see well?\"\n\n\"One of them saw me and he called out to the others; they did not wait,\nbut he waited for a moment; he took me in his arms and he stroked my\nhead; then he put me on the ground and went away, and in ten strides he\ncrossed over the mountain.\"\n\n\"That was a good sight to see!\"\n\n\"That was a good sight.\"\n\n\"Tell me something else you saw.\"\n\n\"I saw seven girls in a meadow and they were playing together; when they\nwere tired playing they lay on the grass and they went to sleep; I drew\nnear and stretched beside them on the grass, and I watched them for a\nlong time; but when they awakened they disappeared into the air and were\ngone like puffs of smoke.\n\n\"I saw the fairy host marching through a valley in the hills; wide,\nsilken banners were flying above their heads; some had long swords in\ntheir hands and some had musical instruments, and there were others who\ncarried a golden apple in their hands, and others again with silver\nlilies and cups of heavy silver; they were beautiful and proud and they\nmarched courageously; they marched past me for three gay hours while I\nstood on the slope of a hill.\n\n\"I saw three centaurs riding out of a wood; they raced round and round\nme shouting and waving their hands; one of them leaned his elbows on my\nback, and they talked of a place in the middle of a forest; they pelted\nme with tufts of grass; then they went by a narrow path into the wood,\nand they rode away.\n\n\"I saw a herd of wild asses in a plain; men were creeping around them in\nthe long grass, but the asses ran suddenly, and they killed the men with\ntheir hoofs and their teeth; I galloped in the middle of them for half a\nnight, but I remembered Mary Ni Cahan, and when I remembered her I\nturned from all my companions and I galloped home again.\"\n\n\"Those were all good sights to see!\"\n\n\"They were all good sights.\"\n\n\"Good-bye, little ass,\" said I.\n\n\"Good-bye, you,\" said he.\n\nHe lay along the grass then and he closed his eyes, but I turned back\nand crouched by the brazier, watching the people while they slept, and\nstaring often into the darkness to see did anything stir before the\nlight came.\n\n\n\n\n                             CHAPTER XXXIII\n\n\nMac Cann strode through the darkness for a little time, but when he\nfound himself at sufficient distance from the camp he began to run.\n\nThere was not very much time wherein to do all that he had engaged\nbefore the morning dawned, and so he took to this mode of activity,\nwhich was not one for which he had any reverence. He was a heavy man and\ndid not run with either grace or ease, but he could hasten his movements\nto a jog-trot, and, as his physical condition was perfect, he could\ncontinue such a trot until hunger brought it to a halt, for he was never\nfatigued, being as strong and tireless as a bear.\n\nHe was the most simple-minded of men. When he was engaged in one affair\nhe could not meddle with anything else, and now that he was running he\ncould do nothing but run--he could not think, for instance. When it was\nnecessary to think he would either walk very slowly or stand\nstock-still, and then he would think with great speed and with great\nsimplicity. His head bade his legs be quiet while it was occupied, and,\nwhen they were in motion, his legs tramped hush to his head, which\nobeyed instantly; and he was so well organised on these lines that there\nwas never any quarrel between the extremities.\n\nIt was, therefore, the emptiest of men that now pounded the road. He\nwould deal with an emergency when it was visible, but until then he\nsnapped a finger and forgot it, for he had learned that the first word\nof an emergency is a warning, the second a direction for escape, its\nthird utterance is in action, and it will only be waited for by a fool.\n\nExactly what he would do when he arrived at the house he did not know,\nand as yet he made no effort to deal with that problem: he obeyed the\nprime logical necessity, which was to get there: once there and the\nsecond step would push itself against him, and from that cause the most\norderly of results would ensue. If there was no trouble he would succeed\nin his enterprise; if there was trouble he would fly--that was his\nsimple programme.\n\nAnd meantime there was nothing in the world but darkness and the\nrhythmic tramping of his feet. These, with a faintly hushing wind, kept\nhis ears occupied. He had much of the cat's facility for seeing in the\ndark, and he had the sense of direction which some birds have, so he\nmade good progress.\n\nAfter half an hour's steady movement he came to the house for which he\nwas seeking, and halted there.\n\nIt was a long, low building, standing back from the road. There was a\nstone wall around this house, and the entrance was by an iron gate.\n\nMac Cann touched the gate, for experience had taught him that gates are\nnot always locked, but this one was locked securely. By the gate was a\ncaretaker's lodge, so he moved quietly from that place and walked by the\nwall.\n\nThere was glass on the top of the wall which halted him for a few\nmoments while he sucked his incautious hand. To cope with this he\ngathered several large stones and placed them on top of each other and\nhe stood on these, then he threw his coat and waistcoat over the glass\nand climbed easily across.\n\nHe was in a shrubbery. About him every few paces were short, stiff\nbushes, some of which were armed with spines, which did their duty on\nhis hands and the legs of his trousers; but he regarded these with an\ninattention which must have disgusted them. He tip-toed among these\nguardians and was shortly free of them and on a gravel pathway. Crossing\nthis he came on quiet flower-beds, which he skirted: the house was now\nvisible as a dark mass distant some hundred yards.\n\nSaving for one window the place was entirely dark, and it was towards\nthat window he directed his careful steps.\n\n\"It's better to look at something than at nothing,\" quoth he.\n\nHe was again on a gravel path, and the stones tried to crunch and\nwriggle under his feet, but he did not allow that to happen.\n\nHe came to the window and, standing well to the side, peeped in.\n\nHe saw a square room furnished as a library. The entire section of the\nwalls which he could spy was covered from floor to ceiling with books.\nThere were volumes of every size, every shape, every colour. There were\nlong, narrow books that held themselves like grenadiers at stiff\nattention. There were short, fat books that stood solidly like aldermen\nwho were going to make speeches and were ashamed but not frightened.\nThere were mediocre books bearing themselves with the carelessness of\nfolk who are never looked at and have consequently no shyness. There\nwere solemn books that seemed to be feeling for their spectacles; and\nthere were tattered, important books that had got dirty because they\ntook snuff, and were tattered because they had been crossed in love and\nhad never married afterwards. There were prim, ancient tomes that were\ncertainly ashamed of their heroines and utterly unable to obtain a\ndivorce from the hussies; and there were lean, rakish volumes that\nleaned carelessly, or perhaps it was with studied elegance, against\ntheir neighbours, murmuring in affected tones, \"All heroines are\ncharming to us.\"\n\nIn the centre of the room was a heavy, black table, and upon the highly\npolished surface of this a yellow light fell from globes on the ceiling.\n\nAt this table a man was seated, and he was staring at his hands. He was\na man of about thirty years of age. A tall, slender man with a lean\nface, and, to Patsy, he was of an appalling cleanliness--a cleanliness\nreally to make one shudder: he was shaved to the last closeness; he was\nwashed to the ultimate rub; on him both soap and water had wrought their\nutmost, and could have no further ambitions; his wristlets gleamed like\nsnow on a tree, and his collar rose upon a black coat as the plumage of\na swan emerges spotlessly from water.\n\nHis cleanliness was a sight to terrify any tramp, but it only angered\nMac Cann, who was not liable to terror of anything but hunger.\n\n\"I would like to give you a thump on the head, you dirty dog!\" said\nPatsy, breathing fiercely against the corner of the window-pane, and his\nuse of the adjective was singular as showing in what strange ways\nextremes can meet.\n\nThis was the man to whom he had sold the gear of his companions: an\nindelicate business indeed, and one which the cleanliness of the\npurchaser assisted him to rectify, and it was in this room that the\nbarter had been conducted. By craning his neck a little he could see an\noaken settle, and upon this his sacks were lying with their mouths open\nand the gleaming cloths flooding at the entry.\n\nWhile he stared, the man removed his fingers from his eyes and put them\nin his pocket, then he arose very slowly and paced thoughtfully towards\nthe window.\n\nMac Cann immediately ducked beneath the window-ledge. He heard the\nwindow opened and knew the man was leaning his elbows on the sill while\nhe stared into the darkness.\n\n\"Begor!\" said Patsy to himself, and he flattened his body against the\nwall.\n\nAfter a time, which felt longer than it could have been, he heard the\nman moving away, and he then popped up and again peeped through the\nwindow.\n\nThe man had opened the door of the room which faced the window and was\nstanding in the entry. Now his hands were clasped behind his back, his\nhead was sunken forward, and he seemed to be looking at his feet, which\nis the habit of many men when they think, for when the eyes touch the\nfeet a circuit is formed and one's entire body is able to think at ease.\n\nSuddenly the man stepped into a black corridor and he disappeared. Mac\nCann heard about ten steps ringing from a solid flooring, then he\nheard a door open and shut, then he heard nothing but the shifting and\nrubbing of his own clothes and the sound his own nose made when he\nbreathed outwards: there was a leathern belt about his middle, and\nfrom the noise which it made one would have fancied that it was woven\nof thunders--there was a great silence; the lighted room was both\ninviting and terrifying, for it was even more silent than the world\noutside; the steady globes stared at the window like the eyes of a mad\nfish, and one could imagine that the room had pricked up invisible\nears and was listening towards the window, and one could imagine also\nthat the room would squeak and wail if any person were to come through\nanywhere but a door and stand in it.\n\nMac Cann did not imagine any of these things. He spat on his hands, and\nin the twinkling of an eye he was inside the window. In three long and\nhasty paces he placed a hand on each of the sacks, and just as he\ngripped them he heard a door opening, and he heard the footsteps ringing\nagain on a solid flooring.\n\n\"I'm in,\" said he, viciously, \"and I won't go out.\"\n\nHis eyes blinked around like the flash of lightning but there was no\nplace to hide. He stepped across the oaken chest and crouched down.\nBehind him, from the floor upwards, were books, in front was the big\nchest, and on top of it the two bulging sacks. He was well screened and\nhe could peep between the sacks.\n\nHe stared towards the door.\n\nThe clean man came in and stood aside. Following him came a woman who\nwas, if anything, more rigorously washed than he was. Somehow, although\nshe was a tall woman, she seemed as light as a feather. She was clad in\na delicate pink gown of such gossamer quality that it balanced and swam\non the air with every movement she made. Across her bare shoulders was a\nlawn veiling, which also sailed and billowed as she moved. Her hair\nseemed to be of the finest spun gold, light as thistle-down, and it,\ntoo, waved and floated in little strands and ringlets.\n\nThese two people sat down at different sides of the table, and for a\ntime they did not speak to each other. Then the man raised his head:\n\n\"I got a letter from your mother this morning,\" said he in a low voice.\n\nThe woman answered him in a tone that was equally low:\n\n\"I did not know you corresponded with her.\"\n\nThe man made a slight gesture:\n\n\"Nor did I know that your correspondence was as peculiar as I have found\nit,\" said he.\n\nSaid the woman coldly:\n\n\"You are opening this subject again.\"\n\n\"I am: I have to: your mother confirms everything that I have charged\nyou with.\"\n\n\"My mother hates me,\" said the woman, \"she would confirm anything that\nwas said of me, if it was bad enough.\"\n\n\"She is your mother.\"\n\n\"Oh no, she is not! When I ceased to be a child she ceased to be a\nmother. We are only two women who are so well acquainted that we can be\nenemies without any shame of each other.\"\n\n\"Are you not talking nonsense?\"\n\n\"I have committed a crime against her. She will never forgive me for\nbeing younger than she is, and for being pretty in her own fashion. She\nleft my father because he said I was good-looking.\"\n\n\"All that...!\" said the man with a movement of his shoulder.\n\n\"As to what she would do against me, you should know it well enough\nconsidering the things she told you before we were married.\"\n\n\"You admitted that they were not all lies.\"\n\n\"Some of the facts were true, all of the colouring was false--they are\nthe things a loving mother says about her daughter! but that is an old\nstory now, or I had fancied so.\"\n\n\"One forgets the old story until the new story drags it to memory,\" said\nhe.\n\nShe also moved her shoulders slightly.\n\n\"I begin to find these conversations tiresome.\"\n\n\"I can understand that.... With her letter your mother enclosed some\nother letters from her friends--they insist on the facts, and add\nothers.\"\n\n\"Are they letters, or copies of letters?\"\n\n\"They are copies.\"\n\n\"Of course my mother has forbidden you to disclose the fact that she\nforwarded her friends' private correspondence to you.\"\n\n\"Naturally.\"\n\n\"Very naturally; the reason being that she wrote these letters herself\nto herself. There are no originals of these copies.\"\n\n\"Again you are talking nonsense.\"\n\n\"I know her better than you do, better than she knows herself.\"\n\nThere was silence between them again for a few moments, and again it was\nbroken by the man.\n\n\"There are some things I cannot do,\" said he, and paused:\n\n\"I cannot search in unclean places for unclean information,\" he\ncontinued, and again the silence fell between these two people.\n\nShe could bear that silence, but he could not:\n\n\"You do not say anything!\" said he.\n\n\"This seems to be so entirely your business,\" was her quiet reply.\n\nHe moved a hand at that:\n\n\"You cannot divorce yourself from me with such ease. This is our\nbusiness, and we must settle it between us.\"\n\nHer hand was resting on the table, and suddenly he reached to her and\nlaid his own hand on hers. She did not withdraw, but the stiffening of\nher body was more than withdrawal. He drew his hand away again.\n\n\"We are reasonable creatures and must question our difficulties,\" said\nhe gently, \"we must even help each other to resolve them.\"\n\n\"These difficulties are not of my making.\"\n\n\"They are, and you are lying to me shamelessly.\"\n\nAgain between these people a silence fell which was profound but not\nquiet. That soundlessness was tingling with sound; there were screams\nlatent in it; it was atrocious and terrifying. The man's hand was\npressed against his forehead and his eyes were closed, but what he was\nlooking at was known only to himself in the silence of his being. The\nwoman sat upright an arm's-length from him, and although her eyes were\nwide and calm, she also was regarding that which was free within\nherself, and very visible to her.\n\n\"There are things I cannot do,\" said the man, emerging as with an effort\nfrom subterranean caves and secret prospects. He continued speaking,\ncalmly but tonelessly:\n\n\"I have striven to make a rule of life for myself and to follow it, but\nI have not sought to impose my laws on any one else--not on you,\ncertainly. Still there are elementary duties which we owe to one another\nand which cannot be renounced by either of us. There is a personal, I\nmight say, a domestic loyalty expected by each of us....\"\n\n\"I expect nothing,\" said she.\n\n\"I exact nothing,\" said the man, \"but I expect that--I expect it as I\nexpect air for my lungs and stability under my feet. You must not\nwithdraw that from me. You are not the individual you think; you are a\nmember of society, and you live by it; you are a member of my household,\nand you live by it.\"\n\nShe turned her face to him but not her eyes.\n\n\"I do not ask anything from you,\" said she, \"and I have accepted as\nlittle as was possible.\"\n\nHe clenched his hand on the table, but when he spoke his voice was\nwithout emphasis:\n\n\"That is part of my grievance against you. Life is to give and take\nwithout any weighing of the gifts. You will do neither, and yet our\ncircumstances are such that we must accommodate each other whether we\nwill or not.\"\n\n\"I am an exact man,\" he continued, \"perhaps you find that trying, but I\ncannot live in doubt. Whatever happens to hinder or assist my\nconsciousness must be known to me. It is a law of my being: it is my\nancestral heritage, and I have no command over it.\"\n\n\"I also,\" said she coldly, \"am an heir of the ages, and must take my\nbequests whether I like them or not.\"\n\n\"I love you,\" said the man, \"and I have proved it many times. I am not\ndemonstrative, and I am shy of this fashion of speech. Perhaps that\nshyness of speech is responsible for more than is apparent to either of\nus in a world eager for speech and gesture, but I say the word now in\nall sincerity, with a gravity, perhaps, which you find repulsive. Be at\nleast as honest with me, no matter how cruel you are. I cannot live in\nthe half-knowledge which is jealousy. It tears my heart. It makes me\nunfit for thought, for life, for sleep, even for death. I must know, or\nI am a madman and no man any longer, a wild beast that will bite itself\nin despair of hurting its enemy.\"\n\nThe woman's tongue slipped over her pale lips in a quick, red flash.\n\n\"Have you anything to say to me?\" said he.\n\nThere was no reply.\n\nHe insisted:\n\n\"Are the statements in your mother's letter true?\"\n\n\"My mother's letter!\" said she.\n\n\"Have I reason for this jealousy?\" he breathed.\n\nHer reply was also but a breathing:\n\n\"I will not tell you anything,\" said she.\n\nOnce again the silence drowsed and droned between the two people, and\nagain they repaired to the secret places of their souls where energy was\nsucked from them until they existed only in a torpor. The woman rose\nlanguidly from her chair, and, after an instant, the man stood also.\n\nSaid he:\n\n\"I will leave here in the morning.\"\n\n\"You will let me see the boy,\" she murmured.\n\n\"If,\" said he, \"I ever learn that you have spoken to the boy I will kill\nyou, and I will kill the boy.\"\n\nThe woman went out then, and her feet tapped lightly along the corridor.\nThe man turned down the lights in the yellow globes and stepped to the\ndoor; his footsteps also died away in the darkness, but in a different\ndirection.\n\n                   *       *       *       *       *\n\nMac Cann stood up:\n\n\"Begor!\" said he, stretching his cramped knees.\n\nAbout him was a great darkness and a great silence, and the air of that\nroom was more unpleasant than any atmosphere he had ever breathed. But\nhe had the nerves of a bear and a resolute adherence to his own\nbusiness, so the excitement of another person could only disturb him for\na moment. Still, he did not like the room, and he made all haste to get\nout of it.\n\nHe lifted the sacks, stepped carefully to the window, and dropped them\nout. Then he climbed through and picked them up.\n\nIn five minutes he was on the road again. Along it for some dozen yards\nhe trod like a great cat until he had left the gate-keeper's lodge well\nbehind him; then, with the sacks across his shoulders, he shook to the\nsteady jog-trot which was to last for about three hours.\n\n\n\n\n                             CHAPTER XXXIV\n\n\nMary awakened early.\n\nThe morning was grey and the sky flat and solid, with here and there\nthin furrows marking its gathered fields.\n\nShe raised her head, and looked towards her father's place, but he was\nnot there, and the sacks were crumpled on the ground.\n\nFinaun's great length was lying along the ground, and he was straight as\na rod. Caeltia was curved a little, and one hand was flung above his\nhead. Art was rolled up like a ball; his hands were gripped about his\nknees, and he had kicked the sacks off his body. Eileen Ni Cooley had\nher two arms under her face; she was lying on her breast, and her hair\nstreamed sidewards from her head along the dull grass.\n\nAs Mary lay back, for it was still too early to rise, a thought came to\nher and she rose to her feet again. She thought that perhaps her father\nhad come softly in the night and moved the ass and cart away with him,\nand that thought lifted her breast in panic.\n\nShe ran down the road and saw the cart with its shafts poked in the air,\nand further away the donkey was lying on his side.\n\nShe came back on tip-toe smiling happily to herself, and, with infinite\nprecaution, she restored the sacks to Art's body and composed herself\nagain to sleep. She did not raise the camp, for she wished to give her\nfather all possible time so that he might return unnoticed.\n\nAnd while she slept the sky unpacked its locked courses; the great\ngalleons of cloud went sailing to the west, and thus, fleet by fleet,\nrelieved those crowded harbours. The black cloud-masses went rolling on\nthe sky--They grew together, touched and swung apart and slipped away\nwith heavy haste, as when down narrow waters an armada weighs, filling\nlistlessly her noisy sails, while the slender spars are hauled to the\nbreeze; the watchmen stand at the posts, and the fenders are still hung\nfrom the pitching sides; almost the vessels touch; the shipmen shout as\nthey bear heavily on their oaken poles; and then they swing again, the\ngreat prows bear away, the waters boil between, and the loud farewells\nsing faintly to the waves.\n\nAnd now the sky was a bright sea sown with islands; they shrank and\ncrumbled and drifted away, islands no more, but a multitude of plumes\nand flakes and smoky wreaths hastily scudding, for the sun had lifted\nhis tranquil eye on the heavens; he stared afar down the grey spaces,\nand before his gaze the mists went huddling and hiding in lovely haste;\nthe dark spaces became white, the dark blue spaces became light blue,\nand earth and sky sparkled and shone in his radiant beam.\n\n                   *       *       *       *       *\n\nThe camp awakened before Mary did, and again the enquiry went as to the\nwhereabouts of her father:\n\n\"He will be here shortly,\" said Mary. \"He must have gone along the road\nto see if there was anything he could find for us to eat,\" and she\ndelayed the preparation of their breakfast to the last possible moment.\nShe spilled a pot of boiling water to that end, and she overturned the\nbrazier when the water boiled again.\n\nThey were about sitting to their food when Mac Cann came in sight, and\nshe held the meal until his arrival with his hat far to the back of his\nhead, the happiest of smiles on his face, and a newspaper bundle in his\nhand.\n\nMary gave him a look of quick meaning:\n\n\"Were you able to find anything for the breakfast?\" said she, and then\nshe was astonished.\n\n\"I was indeed,\" he replied, and he handed her the bulky newspaper\npackage.\n\nShe used that occasion to whisper to him:\n\n\"Well?\"\n\n\"That's all right,\" said he, nodding at the bundle, but really in answer\nto her query.\n\nShe opened the parcel.\n\nThere were slices of bacon in it and slices of beef; there were ten\nsausages in it and the biggest half of a loaf--these, with a small flat\nbottle full of rum and two pairs of stockings, made up the parcel.\n\n\"Put the sausages in a pan,\" said Patsy, \"and share them round and we'll\neat them.\"\n\nMary did put them on the pan, and when they were cooked she shared them\nround, and they were fairly eaten.\n\nAfter breakfast the pipes were lit, but they rose almost immediately to\ncontinue the journey.\n\n\"This evening,\" said Finaun, \"we will be saying good-bye.\"\n\n\"Aye,\" said Mac Cann, \"I'm sorry you're going, for we had a good time\ntogether.\"\n\nThe ass took his instructions, and they went down the road. Their places\nwere now as they had always been--Finaun and Eileen Ni Cooley and Mary\nMac Cann went with the ass, and there was no lack of conversation in\nthat assembly, for sometimes they talked to one another and sometimes\nthey talked to the ass, but the donkey listened no matter who was being\ntalked to, and not a person objected to him.\n\nPatsy and Caeltia marched sturdily at the tailboard, and they were close\nin talk.\n\nBehind them Art was ranging aimlessly, and lilting snatches of song. He\ndid not know the entire of any song but he knew verses of many, and he\nwas able to relate the tunes of these so harmoniously, with such gradual\nslipping of theme into theme, that twenty minutes of his varied lilting\ncould appear like one consecutive piece of music.\n\n\"That lad has a great ear,\" said Patsy. \"He could make his fortune at\nthe music.\"\n\n\"He is a musician,\" Caeltia replied. \"That is his business when we are\nin our own place, and, as you can see, it is his pleasure also.\"\n\nPatsy was in high spirits. Now that he had successfully undone that\nwhich he had done a real weight had lifted from him. But the thing was\nstill so near that he could not get easily from it. His head was full of\nthe adventures of the last few days, and although he could not speak of\nthem he could touch them, sound them, lift the lid of his mystery and\nsnap it to again, chuckling meanwhile to himself that those who were\nconcerned did not know what he was talking about, and yet he was talking\nto himself, or to one cognisant, in hardy, adequate symbol. A puerile\ngame for a person whose youth had been left behind for twenty years, but\none which is often played nevertheless and by the most solemn minds.\n\nIt was with an impish carelessness that he addressed Caeltia:\n\n\"It won't be long before we are there,\" said he.\n\n\"That is so,\" was the reply.\n\n\"You'll be feeling fine, I'm thinking, when you get your own clothes on\nagain.\"\n\n\"I have not missed them very much.\"\n\n\"I hope your wings and your grand gear will be all right.\"\n\n\"Why should you doubt it?\" returned the seraph.\n\n\"What,\" said Patsy, \"if they were robbed on you! You'd be rightly in the\ncart, mister, if that happened.\"\n\nCaeltia puffed quietly at his pipe.\n\n\"They were robbed,\" said he.\n\n\"Eh!\" cried Mac Cann sharply.\n\nThe seraph turned to him, his eyes brimming with laughter.\n\n\"Aye, indeed,\" said he.\n\nMac Cann was silent for a few seconds, but he did not dare to be silent\nany longer.\n\n\"You're full of fun,\" said he sourly. \"What are you talking about at\nall?\"\n\n\"Finaun and I knew all about it,\" said Caeltia, \"and we were wondering\nwhat would be done by the person.\"\n\n\"What did he do?\" said Patsy angrily.\n\nCaeltia returned the pipe to his mouth.\n\n\"He put them back,\" said he.\n\n\"Only for that,\" he continued, \"we might have had to recover them\nourselves.\"\n\n\"Would you have been able to get them back?\" said Mac Cann humbly.\n\n\"We would have got them back; there is nothing in the world could stand\nagainst us two; there is nothing in the world could stand against one of\nus.\"\n\nPatsy jerked a thumb to where Art was lilting the open bars of \"The Wind\nthat shakes the Barley\":\n\n\"Wouldn't the boy help?\" said he. \"How old is the lad?\"\n\n\"I don't know,\" smiled Caeltia. \"He remembers more than one Day of a\nGreat Breath, but he has no power for he has never had being, and so did\nnot win to knowledge; he could give help, for he is very strong.\"\n\n\"Could you have licked Cuchulain that day?\" said Patsy timidly.\n\n\"I am older than he,\" replied Caeltia, \"that is to say I am wiser than\nhe.\"\n\n\"But he was up there with yourself and could learn the tricks.\"\n\n\"There is no secrecy in this world or in the others, and there are no\ntricks: there is Knowledge, but no person can learn more than his head\nis ready to welcome. That is why robbery is infantile and of no\nimportance.\"\n\n\"It fills the stomach,\" replied Patsy cunningly.\n\n\"The stomach has to be filled,\" said Caeltia. \"Its filling is a\nnecessity superior to any proprietarial right or disciplinary ethic, and\nits problem is difficult only for children; it is filled by the air and\nthe wind, the rain and the clay, and the tiny lives that move in the\nclay. There is but one property worth stealing; it is never missed by\nits owners, although every person who has that property offers it to all\nmen from his gentle hands.\"\n\n\"You're trying to talk like Finaun,\" said Patsy gloomily.\n\nThey walked then in silence for ten minutes. Every vestige of impishness\nhad fled from Mac Cann; he was a miserable man; his vanity was hurt and\nhe was frightened, and this extraordinary combination of moods plunged\nhim to a depression so profound that he could not climb therefrom\nwithout assistance.\n\nSaid Caeltia to him after a little:\n\n\"There is a thing I would like to see done, my friend.\"\n\nMac Cann's reply came sagging as he hauled his limp ideas from those\npits.\n\n\"What's that, your honour?\"\n\n\"I would like to see the money thrown into this ditch as we go by.\"\n\nPatsy's depression vanished as at the glare of a torch and the trumpet\nof danger. He nosed the air and sniffed like a horse.\n\n\"Begor!\" said he. \"You're full of----. There's no sense in that,\" said\nhe sharply.\n\n\"That is what I would like to see, but everybody must act exactly as\nthey are able to act.\"\n\n\"I tell you there isn't any sense in it; give me a reasonable thing to\ndo in the name of God and I'll do it.\"\n\n\"That is the only thing I want done.\"\n\n\"What's the use of making a fool of me?\"\n\n\"Am I demanding anything?\"\n\nWhen they had walked a few paces:\n\n\"What is it, after all!\" said Patsy proudly.\n\nHe thrust his hands into his pockets and exhibited them full of gold and\nsilver.\n\n\"Just a pitch of my hand and it's gone!\" said he.\n\n\"That is all,\" said Caeltia. \"It's easily done.\"\n\n\"So it is,\" growled Patsy, and he swung his arm.\n\nBut he dropped the hand again.\n\n\"Wait a minute,\" and he called Eileen Ni Cooley to his side.\n\n\"Walk with ourselves, Eileen, and don't be a stranger. There's something\nI want to show you.\"\n\nHe opened his hand before her and it was flooding and flashing in gold.\n\nShe stared with the awe of one who looks on miracles.\n\n\"There's a great deal of money there,\" she gasped.\n\n\"There's fifteen golden pounds and some shillings in it,\" said Patsy,\n\"and here's all I care for them.\"\n\nHe flung his hand then and sped the money at the full force of his\nshoulder.\n\n\"That's all I care for the stuff,\" said he, and he gripped her arm to\nprevent her bounding to its recovery.\n\n\"Come on, woman dear, and leave the ha'pence alone.\"\n\nSaid Caeltia:\n\n\"There is something I must throw away also, for I am getting too fond of\nit.\"\n\n\"What's that?\" said Mac Cann curiously.\n\n\"It's this pipe,\" the seraph replied, and he balanced it by the\nmouthpiece.\n\n\"Don't throw away the good pipe,\" cried Eileen Ni Cooley. \"Am I walking\nbeside a pair of wild men this day?\"\n\nPatsy interrupted also.\n\n\"Hold on for a minute. Give me the pipe and you can take this one.\" He\ntook Caeltia's silver-mounted briar and he passed to the seraph his own\nblackened clay.\n\n\"You can throw that one away,\" said he, and he popped Caeltia's pipe\ninto his own mouth.\n\n\"It will do that way,\" said Caeltia sadly.\n\nHe held the pipe by the stem, and with a sharp movement snapped it in\nhalves; the head fell to the ground and a small tight wad of burning\ntobacco jumped from it at the shock.\n\n\"There it is,\" said Caeltia.\n\nHe jerked the piece of broken stem from his hand, and after sighing\ndeeply they marched on.\n\nEileen Ni Cooley was angry.\n\n\"Padraig,\" said she, \"what made you throw all the golden money away, and\nthe silver money?\"\n\nPatsy regarded her with the calm eye of a king.\n\n\"Stick your arm through mine, Eileen,\" said he, \"and let us be\ncomfortable as we go along, for the pair of us haven't had a talk for a\nlong time, and Caeltia here wants to talk to you as well as me.\"\n\n\"That is so,\" said Caeltia.\n\nEileen did put her arm in his, and as they stepped briskly forward she\nstared at him with eyes that were round with admiration and\nastonishment.\n\n\"Aren't you the queer man, Padraig!\" said she.\n\n\"I suppose,\" said Patsy, \"that you'll be slipping away from us some time\nto-night?\"\n\n\"Not if you want me to stay, Padraig.\"\n\nThey opened a new conversation on that.\n\n\n\n\n                              CHAPTER XXXV\n\n\nThat day they did not stay their travel, even to eat.\n\nFinaun was urgent, and they ate from their hands as they marched. The\nass moved his slender legs briskly, the cart rumbled, and the metals in\nit clashed and thumped as the wheels jolted on the rutty path.\n\nThey met no person as they went.\n\nFrom the fields near by came the fresh odour of wild grass that\nout-breathed again to the sun his living breath; and the sun shone, not\nfiercely, but kindly, tempering down the oblique ways his potent fire;\nabove their heads and slanting away on wide wings the birds were\nsailing, calling a note as they went and calling again; here were trees\nonce more; their grave shadows slept on the road, stamping the golden\nlight with a die of ebony, and their grave voices whispered busily,\nquietly, like the voices of many mothers who fold against fruitful\nbreasts the little children; so they crooned and sang rocking their\nample greenery on the air.\n\nIn the afternoon they reached the hill, close to the top of which the\nangels' finery was buried.\n\nWhen they had ascended this hill for nearly an hour the donkey struck\nwork.\n\nHe stood, and nothing would induce him to move further in that\ndirection. Indeed, he slewed the cart completely round, and pointed his\nnose and his shafts in the direction which he considered reasonable.\n\nThey halted.\n\n\"He'll not go up there,\" said Mary, and she pulled the long nose to her\nbosom.\n\n\"He will not,\" said her father. \"Will you leave that ass alone, Mary.\nGive him back his snout and behave yourself like a Christian girl.\"\n\n\"You leave me alone,\" said Mary, \"what harm am I doing to yourself?\"\n\n\"It's that I don't like to see a woman kissing an ass.\"\n\n\"Well, if you don't look at me you won't see anything.\"\n\n\"You're full of fun,\" said her father sternly.\n\nHe shrugged his shoulders and turned to Finaun:\n\n\"He did this once before on us and we going up a tall hill in Connaught,\nand although I hammered the skin off his back he wouldn't move a step;\nhe's a great ass, mind you, mister, and maybe we ought to have looked\nfor a gentler way up this hill.\"\n\nFinaun was feeding tufts of grass to the donkey, and the donkey was\neating these with appetite.\n\n\"There is no need to come further,\" said Finaun. \"We are almost in sight\nof the place and can make our adieus here.\"\n\n\"Oh! we'll leave the beast,\" cried Mac Cann, \"and we'll all go up to see\nthe last of you.\"\n\n\"It is better that we should part here,\" said Finaun gently. \"We do not\nwish to be seen at the last.\"\n\n\"You can have it your own way,\" said Patsy sulkily.\n\nFinaun stood towering over Mac Cann; he placed his hands on Patsy's\nshoulders and solemnly blessed him in round language, then he kissed him\ntenderly on either cheek.\n\n\"Begor!\" said Patsy.\n\nAnd Finaun did the same for Eileen Ni Cooley and for Mary, and he kissed\nthe two of them on their cheeks, then he laid his palm on the donkey's\nmuzzle and blessed that beast, and he strode mightily up the hill.\n\nCaeltia advanced to Patsy, but Mac Cann was embarrassed. He had been\nkissed by a man, so he lit his pipe in self-defence and kept it in his\nmouth.\n\n\"You're going off?\" said he to Caeltia, and he puffed like a chimney.\n\n\"I'm going off,\" replied Caeltia in a low voice.\n\nPatsy took the pipe from his mouth and put it into the seraph's hand.\n\n\"Here,\" said he, \"take a last pull at that and ease your heart.\"\n\nCaeltia did take it, and he smoked it, and it did ease his heart.\n\n\"I'll give you the spade out of the cart,\" continued Patsy, \"for you'll\nhave to dig the things up. There it is, and it doesn't matter whether\nit's lost or not.\"\n\n\"It is good-bye now,\" said Caeltia, shouldering the spade, and he\nreturned the pipe to Patsy, who put it instantly in his mouth.\n\nCaeltia held out his hand and Mac Cann put his own into it.\n\nWhile their hands were together Patsy was seized with compunction--he\ndrew the seraph aside a few paces:\n\n\"Listen!\" said he. \"I played a trick on you the time I was taking the\nmoney out of my pocket to throw it away.\"\n\n\"Yes?\" said Caeltia.\n\n\"I let one of the gold pieces slip through my fingers, and it's lying at\nthe bottom of my pocket at this minute, but I'll throw it away, mister\nhoney, if you say so.\"\n\nCaeltia looked at him, and a smile of great contentment crept over his\nlips.\n\n\"If I were you,\" said he, \"I'd keep it.\"\n\nMac Cann nodded at him very solemnly:\n\n\"I'll keep it,\" said he earnestly, \"and I'll spend it.\"\n\nCaeltia then said his adieus to the others, and he tramped up the hill\nwith the spade balanced in his hand.\n\nThe piece of gold was burning in Patsy's pocket. He turned to Art:\n\n\"Well, young boy! there's my hand and good luck be with you; give up\nracing about and climbing trees and you'll be all right; you've the\nmakings of a good hand on you, and that's a great thing, and you've got\nthe music.\"\n\n\"Good-bye,\" said Art, and they shook hands.\n\nEileen Ni Cooley took his hand also, then she and Patsy strode to the\ncart, and with the donkey they moved down the hill.\n\nMary stood in front of Art, and she did not look at him; she turned her\ngrave face away, and stared sidewards where the late sunshine drowsed in\ngold on the rough slopes. She put her hand out to him.\n\nHe took her hand and held it between his own; he raised it to his lips\nand he held it there pressing against his mouth.\n\nHe dropped it, and stood back a pace staring at her; he struck his hands\ntogether in a wild movement; he turned and ran swiftly after his\ncompanions.\n\nThese two had never spoken to each other.\n\nNear the top of the hill he came on Finaun and Caeltia, and the three\nwent together.\n\nIn a little they reached the point in the road where they had slept\nduring their first night on earth, and where they had eaten their first\nmeal on a sunny morning. Distant a few paces they saw the tree.\n\nCaeltia dug there until he uncovered the sacks. He pulled these from the\nclay and opened them, and each of the angels retrieved his own\nbelongings from the medley.\n\nFinaun was urgent and thoughtful. He apparelled himself hastily, while,\nwith less speed, Caeltia also achieved his change. But Art sat on the\nground fingering his raiment, and seemed to be lost in a contemplation\nof the grass beside him.\n\nFinaun was ready. He stood upright, a kingly figure, shimmering in\npurple folds. On his head a great crown, closed at the top; across his\nshoulder a chain of heavy gold, and depending on his breast a broad\nplaque of gold that blazed.\n\nHe looked at the others and nodded, then he leaped, and at a hundred\nfeet the sun flashed from his wings, and he looked like a part of the\nrainbow.\n\nNow Caeltia was ready, standing in cloth of gold and lovely ornaments of\nhammered silver. He scanned once more the drowsing landscape; he smiled\non Art; he sprang aloft and abroad and sped upwards in a blinding gleam.\n\nArt raised himself.\n\nHe lifted the crimson robe that was dashed with gold, the crimson\nbuskins feathered at the heel, the wide crown of short points. He placed\nthese on the ground and stood for a time looking down the road, while\nthe many-coloured pinions streamed lengthily from his hand.\n\nSuddenly he frowned, and, with the wings still dragging, he ran down the\npath.\n\nIn five minutes he came to the place where they had left the ass, but it\nwas no longer there. Far below on the curving ways he saw the donkey\nmoving quietly. Mac Cann and Eileen Ni Cooley were going by each other's\nside, and Patsy's arm was about the woman.\n\nHe looked around, and at a little distance saw the girl beside a bush.\nShe was lying on her breast, her face was hidden into the ground, and\nshe was motionless.\n\nHe walked to her.\n\n\"Mary,\" said he, \"I have come to say farewell.\"\n\nShe moved as at a shock. She rose to her feet, and she did not look at\nhim, and this was the first time that these two had talked together.\n\nHe bent to her beseechingly:\n\n\"I have come to say farewell,\" said he.\n\nAgain she put her hand into his:\n\n\"Say your say,\" quoth she, \"and go your road,\" and with that she did\nlook at him, sternly.\n\nHe loosed her hand; his eyes flamed; he stamped the road; he swung his\narms aloft gripping the wings, and, with a fierce movement, he ripped\nthem in twain; he put the halves together and tore again, then, with a\nsweep of his hands, fluttered the shining plumes away and on the wind.\n\n\"Now!\" quoth he, with a laugh.\n\n\"Oh!\" she stammered, staring, terrified, incredulous.\n\n\"Let you and I go down after the people,\" he said.\n\nBut Mary was weeping, and as they paced down the narrow track he laid a\ngreat arm about her shoulder.\n\n\nPrinted in the United States of America.\n\n\n\n\n                           Transcriber Notes:\n\nPassages in italics were indicated by _underscores_.\n\nSmall caps were replaced with ALL CAPS.\n\nThroughout the dialogues, there were words used to mimic accents of the\nspeakers. Those words were retained as-is.\n\nThroughout the document was creative spelling\n\nErrors in punctuations and inconsistent hyphenation were not corrected\nunless otherwise noted.\n\nOn page 202, the quotation marks were corrected around \"Bring him here,\".\n\nOn page 203, a quotation mark was added before \"Down went the seraph Cuchulain\".","title":"The Demi-gods","tradition":"myth-cosmogony","translated_text":null,"word_count":47525}