it couldn't be bet," she said, "in Ireland. You could see it a mile off,
and you wouldn't get the match of it in Dublin under half-a-crown. If
she wouldn't be plased wid that, you've got an odd one to satisfy."

Ody with Rory came by as she was wrapping it up in paper, and Hugh,
pointing to his purchase with a melancholy air, said, in an aggrieved
tone: "It's a _terrible_ quantity they're about givin' me--yards and
yards--enough to rope round a haystack; and it's an ojis colour. Troth,
now, if she takes the notion to be stickin' the whole of it on top of
the little black head of her, it's an objec' she'll make of herself, she
will so. It's a pity. I'd liefer there hadn't been the half of it."

"What for then are you gettin' more than enough of whatever it is?" Ody
asked not unreasonably. "Supposin' you wanted any such thrash at all at
all."

"Ah, sure, I settled in me own mind to be spendin' me shillin' on it,
and that's the way it is," Hugh said resignedly. "Maybe she'll have more
wit, the bit of a crathur; she might never put it on. So now I've on'y
to see after Paddy Ryan's rapin'-hook, and then I'm done. And is it
carryin' them two bags all the way home you'd be? Sure there's plinty of
room for them on the baste."

"Ay, is there?" said Ody. "But the fac' is Rory's in none too good a
temper this minyit, goodness help him, and he'll be apt to thravel more
contint, the crathur, if he sees he's not the on'y body wid a loadin'."

"Rax me over the one of them," said Hugh, "I've nought barrin' the bit
of ribbon, and the rapin'-hook 'ill be nothin' to me at all."

And in this way they plodded back to Lisconnel.

CHAPTER VI

A FAIRING

Up at Lisconnel, meanwhile, as the idle hours loitered by, Ody
Rafferty's aunt grew tired of her solitary housekeeping, and late in the
afternoon she made her way down as far as the Joyces'. Here a number of
the neighbours were sitting about in almost the same place where Theresa
had sustained the loss of her cherry-coloured knot. But to-day there
were no rough breezes stirring to bring about such disasters by their
unmannerly pranks. The sun-steeped air was so still that the thick
bushes stood as steady as the boulders, and even the rushes nodded
slightly and stiffly. As the old woman hobbled down the slope she saw
Denis O'Meara's scarlet uniform gleaming martially against a background
of dark broom and hoary rock. Its wearer was, however, very peacefully
employed in pulling the silky floss off the heads of the bog-cotton,
which lay in a great heap before him on a flat-topped boulder, with a
big bunch of many-hued wild flowers beside it. Theresa Joyce, who sat
opposite to him, was pulling bog-cotton too, though less diligently, for
it might have been noticed that she often looked off her work, and
towards the scrap of road that lay within her ken. Joe Egan was at his
cousin's elbow, and a few other lads and lasses made a rough circle. But
old Mrs. Joyce, and old Mrs. Ryan, and old Paddy Ryan, and old Felix
O'Beirne had established themselves on a low grassy bank at a little
distance. It was kept so closely cropped by the Ryans' goat that its
dandelions grew dwarfed and stalkless, and were set flat in the fine
sward like mock suns. All this day the real sun had shone on it so
strongly that the air was aromatic with the odour of its dim-blossomed
herbs, and to touch it was like laying your hand on the warm side of
some sleek-coated beast. Old Paddy said you might think you were sitting
on the back of an ould cow, but his wife rejoined that "you'd have to go
far enough from Lisconnel, worse luck, before you'd get the chance of
doin' such a thing." And she shook her head over the reflection so
regretfully that a matter-of-fact person might have inferred her to have
been formerly much in the habit of enjoying seats on the backs of cows.

These elders, from where they sat, commanded a comprehensive view of the
crops of Lisconnel, its potatoes and oats, green and gold, meshed in
their grey stone fences, and flecked with obstructive boulders and
laboured cairns. In the middle of the Ryans' neighbouring field there is
a block of quartzite, as big as a small turf-stack, which gleamed
exceedingly white from amongst the deep muffling greenery of the
potato-plants. Mrs. Joyce had been praising their thriving aspect to old
Paddy, who, however, was disposed to express a gloomy view of them.

"It's too rank they're growin' altogether," he said; "ne'er a big crop
you'll get under that heigth of haulms. 'Heavy thatchin' and light
liftin',' as the sayin' is."

To Felix O'Beirne the smooth leafy surface recalled a far-off incident
of the War, when the dense foliage of a certain potato-field had
permitted the execution of a curious military manoeuvre. It was one of
old O'Beirne's favourite stories, and he often related it at full
length, but to-day it was cut short by the arrival of Ody Rafferty's
aunt, whom Mrs. Joyce and Mrs. Ryan were prompt to greet, making room
for her between them on the bank with an alacrity which somehow conveyed
an impression of uneasiness lest she should establish herself elsewhere.

Presently she said: "And what at all is Theresa busy wid over
yonder--and young O'Meara? Is it bogberries they're after pullin'?"

Mrs. Joyce said: "No, ma'am, it isn't bogberries;" and left further
explanations to Mrs. Ryan, with the air of one who refrains from
self-glorification, but counts upon its being done for her, more
gracefully, by deputy.

"Sure wasn't he out on the bog the len'th of the day, since early this
mornin', he and little Joe, gadrin' her the bog-cotton?" said Mrs. Ryan.
"The full of a pitaty-creel he brought her. They have it there in a
hape."

"'Twas because he heard her sayin' last night she wished she had a good
bit of it to stuff the pillow she's makin' me," put in Mrs. Joyce. "Off
he went after it the first thing this mornin'."

"Whethen now, is that the way of the win'?" said Ody Rafferty's aunt,
with a pleased smile, striking out unfamiliar paths among her wrinkles.
"Troth, but I'm rael glad to hear it. Bedad, it's a grand thing for
little Theresa."

"He's a very dacint poor lad," Mrs. Joyce said, looking over with pride
at the handsome young sergeant, and thinking that Ody Rafferty's aunt
must have some good nature in her after all, since she was so evidently
glad of their good luck.

"'Deed but there's not a finer young man in the kingdom of Connaught
this day," said Mrs. Ryan, who could, of course, be frankly laudatory.
"And wid everybody's good word, high and low, and drawin' grand pay, and
the colonel in his rigimint ready to do a turn for him any time, and a
rael steady kind-hearted lad to the back of that. But sure he's after as
nice a little girl as he'd ha' found anywheres, wid all his thravellin',
and as good as gould. He'll be very apt to be spakin' out to her
prisintly, for it's gettin' near his lave's ind, and what for would they
be waitin'? But to my mind it's as good as made up after what he's done
to-day."

In a little while after this Ody Rafferty's aunt slipped away, and set
off hobbling along the road towards Duffclane. She wanted to intercept
her grand-nephew on his way home and tell him this news. For all day she
had been haunted by an apprehension that Ody meant to return with a
fairing for Theresa, the presentation of which might bring about a
crisis in his courtship very disastrous from her own point of view. Old
Moggy surveyed her world rather steadily at all times from that
particular outlook, finding in her solitary superfluousness little to
deflect her gaze. The disappointment which, on her own theory, these
tidings would bring to Ody did not do so now, and she put her best foot
foremost, animated by the pleasure of telling some new thing, one,
moreover, that threw a reassuring light upon her situation. With even
her amended opinion of the lad she could hardly imagine that he would
have a chance against magnificent Denis O'Meara, whom nobody would have
ever expected to look for a wife in poor little Lisconnel--but you never
could tell, and she felt that it still behoved her to be on her guard
against all possible perils. Therefore she at present thought it
expedient to waylay Ody, and let him know that if he had any notion of
Theresa Joyce, he was a day after the fair.

Hobbling on bent and breathless, wrapped in her rusty black shawl, with
her shadow flitting far out over the level bog amid the slanted beams,
she looked a not inappropriate messenger of woe, symbolically impotent
and insignificant; a little dark speck in the wide westering light; a
feeble stir of life creeping on the verge of a vast silent solitude;
and full, withal, of baseless fears and futile plots, concerning the
withered shred of existence that remained to her. She was just in the
nick of time, she said to herself, when she saw the trio presently
coming over the top of the hill. Ody was pointing out conciliatingly to
the morose Rory how they'd be at home now nearly in the time he'd be
waggin' his tail; and Hugh McInerney was resolving that he would go on
straight to his own place, and defer the presentation of the ugly yellow
ribbon until to-morrow. All three were hot and fagged and dusty.

"Well, lad, and what's the best good news wid you?" Ody's aunt said to
him, as they met.

"Little enough," said Ody.

"And you comin' out of a fair?" she said. "Bedad now, we make a better
offer at it ourselves up here for the matter of news."

"What's that at all?" said Ody.

"Sure amn't I just after hearin' tell of a grand weddin' there's goin'
to be prisintly?" said his aunt, "and that doesn't happen every day of
the year."

"Och, a weddin'," said Ody. "I was thinkin' maybe there was somethin'
quare at our little place beyant yonder. But as long as it's nothin'
worser than weddin's you're hearin' tell of, I'm contint, if you
listened the two ears off your head."

"It's Denis O'Meara and Theresa Joyce has made a match of it," said his
aunt, conscious that she was slightly overstating facts; "settled up it
is on'y this evenin'. And the weddin's bound to be before his lave's
out--so there's for you."

"Sure good luck to the both of thim," said Ody, "Theresa Joyce is a
plisant little bein', I'll say that for her, and divil a bit of harm
there is in O'Meara aither. A fine chap he is for a sodger; not that
they're any great things as far as I can see--just pólis a thrifle
smartened up."

Ody's thoughts were for the moment running on the police, a couple of
whom he had lately espied at a short distance coming across the bog.

"Well, if you wanted to see the two of thim," said his aunt, raising her
voice as he began to drive Rory on, "there they are, just at the back of
her place, sortin' the stuff he's after gettin' her on the bog. He
brought her the full of the pitaty-creel. Her mother's as plased over it
as anythin', and sot up too, aye is she bedad."

The old woman was for the time being almost as much disappointed as
relieved by the equanimity with which Ody had received her tidings; yet
if she had but known, they had not failed to produce a strong sensation.
Only she never thought of considering how they might affect that quare
big gawk Hugh McInerney. What did occur to her in his connection as he
begun to trudge alongside her after the pony, was that "he was as ugly
as if he had been bespoke." For Hugh's long tramp under the sultry sun
had scorched him a deeper and more uniform red brick than usual, and his
shock of tow-coloured hair jutting from beneath an unnoticeable round
cap, looked more than ever like thatch over his blinking blue eyes. When
they had gone a few yards in silence he suddenly said musingly--

"I dunno why he wouldn't have as good a right to be bringin' her
anythin' she had a fancy for off the bog in a pitaty-creel, as me to be
buyin' her len'ths of hijis-coloured ribbons to make a show of herself
wid. But all the same, I'd as lief he'd let it alone. For some raison or
other I've the wish in me mind I was slingin' the whole of it into one
of thim bog-houles out there--and that 'ud be no thing to go do on
her.... And that was a quare story the ould woman had about thim
gettin' married. Somebody was apt to be makin' a fool of her. Who was it
would be tellin' her I won'er?"

But old Moggy partly overheard and said: "Thim that knew what they was
talkin' about, supposin' it's any affair of yours."

So he did the rest of his meditating inaudibly. He said to himself that
he was steppin' home straight--continuing the while to walk in quite the
opposite direction--and that he wouldn't be goin' to the Joyces' place
to-night at all; what 'ud bring him there, and it gettin' so late? But
of course he went there, as surely as a swimming bubble goes over the
cataract's smooth lip, or a fascinated little bird down the snake's
throat.

For the sensation which he had begun to experience, and which was a
strong one, and strange to him, was nothing less than jealousy. He was
jealous of that pitaty-creel.

When he came to the place Ody's aunt had told of, he found a group of
young Joyces and Ryans and others gathered among the boulders and bushes
in a circle of which the heap of bog-cotton formed the centre; and a
glance having showed him that it included Denis and Theresa, he sat down
facing them, and said to himself:

"If I'd known, now, it was bog-cotton she was wantin', I could ha' been
gadrin' her plinty last night after I come home. There's a gran' big
moon these times, wid lashin's and lavin's of light to be gettin' thim
kind of glimmerin' things by. I seen a black place below between the
sthrame of wather and the roadside all waved over white wid it, like as
if it was a fall of snow thryin' could it flutter off away wid itself
agin out of the world. I'd have got her enough to fill a six-fut sack.
What for didn't the crathur tell me?"

Pursuing these and other such reflections Hugh's attention, which at all
times had a long tether, strayed far afield. He did not hear Denis
O'Meara inquire of him twice whether Ody Rafferty had got his fine price
for the old pony; not yet Peter Ryan rejoin after an interval that he
supposed it was such a big one, anyway, Hugh McInerney couldn't get it
out of his mouth--that was sizable enough. No doubt it was this symptom
of absentmindedness that emboldened Thady Joyce to set about twitching
out of Hugh's pocket the flimsy paper parcel seen protruding from it, a
feat which he achieved undetected, while his surrounding accomplices
nudged one another and whispered: "Och he has it now--whoo-oo he'll do
it."

Thady conveyed what he had filched to Molly and Nelly Ryan, who
manipulated it for some time amid much giggling; and then Nelly, with
dexterous audacity pinned their handiwork on to the cap of her neighbour
Denis O'Meara, who sat all unawares. Thus it came to pass that when Hugh
was at last roused to a vague sense of tittering all round him, which
reached him much as the clacking chirp of sparrows gets meaninglessly
into our frayed morning dreams, and looking up out of his reverie,
stared about him for an explanation, the first thing his eyes lit on was
Denis's smart cap surmounted by a mass of gaudy yellow ribbon in immense
bows and loops and streamers, flapping and waggling absurdly at every
movement made by their unsuspecting wearer. And the spectacle caught his
breath, and dazzled his sight with a sudden scorching blast of wrath.
For it seemed to him that Denis was not making merely a mock of him and
his fairing, which he thought intrinsically of small amount, but through
it of Theresa herself and her foolish little fancies. And there sat
Theresa looking on, with a quick pink flush, and shining eyes, and a
quiver about her mouth. The next moment Hugh had hurled at the bedizened
cap what he happened to be holding in his hand. And this was Paddy
Ryan's new reaping-hook.

Thereupon followed a terrible confusion and clamour, which seemed to
fill at a sweep all the spacious drowsy light of the sunsetting. For the
missile had gone surely to its mark, and had not simply knocked off
Denis's cap, but made a shocking gash in his temple, so that there were
only too sufficient reasons for the rising shrieks of "Holy Virgin, he's
murdhered--he's kilt!" Amid all the turmoil, with Denis fallen on the
ground, and Hugh standing staring, and everybody else rushing through
other like crows in a storm, one person alone appeared to act with a
definite purpose, and that was little Joe Egan. The event had made him
like one possessed with rage and despair. To Joe, weakly and timorous
and not over-wise, his valiant, handsome, good-natured soldier cousin
had come as the most splendid apparition that had shined upon him in the
dim course of his fifteen years; and he had spent the past three months
in adoring it very devoutly. So that now to see him laid low suddenly in
this savage fashion was a sight that might well cause a burning thirst
for vengeance upon the miscreant who had dealt the stroke. Joe generally
had to get his revenges wreaked by deputy; and now, as he darted away,
his intention was to find the pólis somewhere, and bring them to take up
"that great bastely murdherin' divil, Hugh McInerney," and if by any
means possible get him hung. He attained his object sooner than might
have been expected, as not far down the road a pair of constables were
run into by a small tatterdemalion figure, who, choking and stammering
and writhing in an ague fit of fury, proceeded to inform them that "Big
Hugh McInerney was just after murdherin' Denis O'Meara up above
there--takin' the head off him wid a rapin'-hook," and, further, that
"if they looked in the dirty thief's little place at the fut of the
hill, they'd find that every other stone in the walls of it was nothin'
else but a crock of poteen."

This was the cause of the police's prompt arrival on the scene, where
nobody resented Joe's action. Denis's injury, though so grave, happily
did not seem to be mortal, in fact, on this occasion young Dan O'Beirne,
albeit scarcely more than a spalpeen, displayed a handiness and resource
about bandaging and other remedies, which foreshadowed his future
reputation throughout the district for knowledgableness in surgery and
medicine. Hugh McInerney was, of course, at once arrested, without any
resistance on his part, or any sympathy from the indignant neighbours.
He appeared to be what old Will Sheridan termed, "fallen into a serious
consternation," and was heard to make only one remark. It was when
people were saying that Theresa Joyce had took a wakeness, and her
brothers had carried her indoors. "Och, the crathur," he said, "and it
might aisy have hit her, very aisy. Miself's the quare divil."

Once the police and their prisoner had gone, Denis having been brought
into the Ryans' house, a deep and melancholy hush settled down upon
Lisconnel, as if a murky wing had flapped out its brief flare of
excitement. The whole thing had happened so quickly that the rich light
from the west was still bronzing the edges of the flat-ledged furze
boughs, and rosing their white stems, when the little hollow behind the
Joyces' house rested quiet and deserted, with no traces left of the
company lately there assembled, except a litter of silky white
bog-cotton tufts, soon to be swept away by the breeze, and the unchancy
yellow ribbon, which had been torn out of Denis's cap, and lay coiling
among the rough grass, whence, as the dusk thickened, it glinted like
the wraith of a lost sunbeam or a ray from an evil star.

But that night fell very dark, with a moon so closely veiled that the
flaggers and bulrushes waving their swords and spears fast by, dwindled
into mere rustlings and murmurs--the air was full of them. At the
dimmest hour anybody who had stolen out of a neighbouring door, and
passed between the faintly glimmering white boulders, as if in search of
something lost there, might have seemed only one of the whispering
shadows. And these might have begun so say, "Sorra aught can I do at
all, at all. And ne'er a soul is there to spake a word--all of thim agin
him, and it no fau't of his, when he would be torminted that way. They'd
no call to go play such a thrick on him, and he didn't mane it a'
purpose, I very well know; but the other chap was intindin' to annoy
him, sittin' there wid a great ugly grin on his face. I wish he'd never
come next or nigh Lisconnel." But be that as it may, when the next
morning's light twinkled among the dewy blades, the yellow ribbon had
disappeared.

After this the days seemed to drag heavily at Lisconnel, where a dulness
and flatness had come over society. Dr. Hamilton had carried off Denis
O'Meara to Ballybrosna, and there was nothing to fill up the blank he
left except speculations about his chances of recovery, and censures
upon Hugh McInerney, monotonously unanimous. In his favour, indeed, no
one seemingly had a word to say. People declared that "they'd never have
thought he'd take and do such a thing, for though he might ha' been a
quare sort of bosthoon, he was always dacint and paiceable." But
cancelled praise is the bitterest of blame; and they added that "it was
rael outrageous of him to go do murdher on the likes of Denis O'Meara,
and no credit to Lisconnel for it to be happenin' him there. Iligant
charácters it 'ud be givin' them if he wint back to the rigimint wid his
eyes slashed out of his head, as much as to say he hadn't a fair chance
among us unless he'd come wid his side-arms."

The neighbours were of opinion, too, that "it was no wonder little
Theresa Joyce had got a bit moped and quiet, after her sweetheart bein'
as good as destroyed before her eyes, and it hard to say if she'd ever
see a sight of him again."

"It was a misfort'nit thing," Mrs. Con Ryan remarked one day, when the
subject was under discussion, "that young O'Meara hadn't actually spoke
out before it happint thim. 'Twould ha' made her a dale aisier in her
mind now, I wouldn't won'er. Because the way the matter stands, he
might take up wid some diff'rint notion, and just be off wid himself
like a cloud blown out of the sky, and she couldn't be sayin' a word, if
she was ever so sure of what he was intindin'."

Young Mrs. Keogh, to whom she made the observation, refused to entertain
this view, and replied, "Sorra a fear is there of that. It was aisy to
see he'd ha' gone to the Well of the World's End after her, let alone
steppin' up from the Town, if he's spared to get his health. Ay, he'll
be comin' back for her one of these fine days, sure enough, plase God."

But the fulfilment of her confident prediction looked several degrees
more doubtful in the light of one of the two pieces of news which Mrs.
Carbery, accompanied by her daughter Rose, conveyed to the Joyces' on a
bright September morning a short while after. Her son had come home with
it from the Town too late the night before. One of them was that Hugh
McInerney, who had been awaiting the assizes in Moynalone Jail, had died
of the fever there on last Friday. There was nothing very surprising in
this event, as Hugh's open-air life could have but ill acclimatised him
to the atmosphere of the unclean little jail; and it was not likely to
be very deeply deplored at Lisconnel, where he had not been known long,
nor, as we have seen, much to his advantage.

As Mrs. Carbery sat in the three-cornered arm-chair, with the sun-dazzle
off a burnished mug on the dresser shimmering into her eyes, and making
her blink quaintly, she said, with rather severe solemnity, that "she
hoped the young fellow had had time to repint of his sins, or else it
was very apt to be a bad look-out for him, and he after comin' widin a
shavin' of takin' another man's life no time at all ago, so to
spake--ne'er a chance but it would be clear in everybody's
recollection."

Mrs. Joyce, however, said: "Ah, sure maybe the crathur wasn't intindin'
any such great harm all the while, God be good to him. And, anyway,
where he's gone he'll find plinty ready to be spakin' up for him, and
puttin' the best face they can on the matter."

"Ay will he," said old Biddy Ryan, who was calling too, "and bedad it's
one great differ there is, be all accounts, between that place and this.
For here if a misfort'nit body does aught amiss, the first notion the
rest of us have, God forgive us, is to be axin' what worser he was
manin', like as if it was some manner of riddle, that there's bound to
be an answer to, if one could find it."

"'Deed, and I dunno if they haven't very far to look, ma'am," said Mrs.
Carbery, with dignity, "when a chap does his endeavours to take the head
off another man wid a rapin'-hook, ma'am."

"And _I_ dunno, ma'am, for that matter," said old Biddy, also with
dignity, "if it's any such a great dale better to have one's mind took
up wid invintin' other people's bad intintions than if it was wid one's
own."

"Ah, well! I wouldn't be thinkin' too bad of poor Hugh McInerney, at all
events," said Mrs. Joyce. "'Twas maybe a sort of accident, for he seemed
a dacint crathur afore that. Och now, to think it's on'y a few odd weeks
since he was creepin' about over our heads up there, mendin' th' ould
thatch! You'd whiles hear him hummin' away, talkin' to himself like some
sort of big bee--and in his grave to-day! But isn't it a lucky thing
that he's lavin' nobody belongin' to him to be breakin' their hearts
frettin' after him? Theresa, child dear, you've ne'er a stim of light to
be workin' in, sittin' there in the corner."

But Theresa said she had light enough to blind her, and was only
winding a skein, and could see better to do that in the dark. So Mrs.
Carbery passed on to her second piece of news, which, though less
tragical than the first, was not likely to sound very cheerfully in the
ears of some among her audience. It ran that her son Ned was "after
seein' Denis O'Meara down beyant, and that he was doin' finely, next
door to himself again: and that the people in the Town did be sayin' he
was coortin' Mary Anne Neligan, the people's daughter that he was
lodgin' wid--a terrible fortin she was said to have--and that he'd be
very apt to be takin' her along wid him prisintly when his lave was up."
Mrs. Carbery supposed they were none of them ever likely to see him
again up at Lisconnel. And the rest of the neighbours, having heard her
tale, supposed so likewise, and said among themselves that Theresa Joyce
was to be pitied.

Yet not many days after this, while the early autumn weather was still
soft-aired and mellow-lighted over our blue-misted bogland, where the
leaves and berries were brightening, and even the little frosty-grey
cups on the lichened boulders getting a scarlet thread at the rim, on
one clear, dew-dashed morning, who but Denis O'Meara himself should
come stepping into Lisconnel? The neighbours who saw him go by were glad
to notice that he looked as well as ever he did in his life, and he
greeted them all blithely though briefly, eluding every attempt to
entangle him in conversation, and making very straight for the Widow
Joyce's house, which was by these same observers considered to betoken a
healthy frame of mind.

Only Mrs. Joyce and Mrs. Kilfoyle were in the little brown room when he
arrived, but they gave him a cordial welcome, and he took a seat from
which he could keep a watch on the door while they talked about
different things. One of these, naturally, was the melancholy end of
Denis's assailant--poor Hugh McInerney--and Mrs. Joyce said it was
little enough they'd have thought a while ago that it would be Denis
who'd come back. "But indeed," she said, "if anythin' had took you, we'd
ha' been in no hurry ever to set eyes on the other unlucky bosthoon."

Denis said: "Faith, ma'am, I'd give six months' pay the thing had never
happint. Divil a bit of harm I believe there was in poor McInerney; and
I spoke to Dr. Hamilton to spake to Mr. Nugent and the other magistrates
for him; but they said, after what me cousin Joe let out about the
poteen at his place, the pólis would be wishful to keep him convanient
to thim for a while; and to be sure, they kep' him too long altogether.
I know, ma'am, young Rafferty and the rest had his shanty pulled down
before the pólis come up next day; but they thought they'd git somethin'
out of him. The little jackass ought to ha' held his tongue. It was a
pity, bedad. Hard lines it is on a man to be losin' his life, you may
say, along wid his temper, just be raison of a bit of a joke."

Still as he looked out into the sunshine he could not help thinking that
he would have had a greater loss of his life than poor Hugh McInerney,
who, it was evident, would always have met with a cold reception from
everybody at the Joyces'. Then he said to Mrs. Joyce: "And how's
Theresa, ma'am?"

Mrs. Joyce was in the middle of replying that she was grandly, and had
just run over to Mrs. Keogh on a message, when Theresa herself came in.

Denis jumped up quickly, saying: "Ah, Theresa, it's a great while since
I've seen you."

But Theresa only lifted her head without turning it, and walked straight
on as if nobody had accosted her.

"Arrah, now, Theresa darlint, don't you see Denis O'Meara?" said her
mother, puzzled and rather dismayed.

And then Theresa did turn and look at him. "Yis, I see him," she
said--and, indeed, she might as easily have overlooked the red flame in
a lantern as the tall scarlet lancer in her mother's little
misty-cornered room. "I see him," she said, "and I hate the sight of
him." And thereupon she turned again, and walked out of the door,
leaving a dead silence behind her.

This was one of the very few harsh sayings that Theresa Joyce has
uttered in the course of her long life, and it came like a shock upon
her hearers.

Mrs. Joyce at last said blankly: "What at all has took the child?"

And Bessie Kilfoyle said to Denis, who stood dumbfounded: "But indeed
now, you may be sure there's not a many up here, at any rate, who do
that."

But he replied: "If _she_ does, it's many enough for me, Mrs. Kilfoyle.
And I won't stop here to be drivin' her out of the house. So I'll say
good-bye to yous kindly, for I'll be off now to Dublin to-morra or next
day."

"And in coorse," Mrs. Joyce remarked ruefully, after he had departed,
retreading his steps through the bright fresh morning with so
crestfallen a mien that all the neighbours knew things had not run
smoothly, "you couldn't raisonably expec' him to stay here to be hated
the sight of. And indeed, what wid one thing and another, it's none too
good thratement the poor lad's got up at Lisconnel, more's the pity."

Theresa herself never had any explanation to offer of "why she would be
that cross wid poor Denis O'Meara." Her mother accounted for it by pique
at the Carberys' ill-timed gossip about his imaginary courtship of Mary
Anne Neligan; and Mrs. Kilfoyle was for a while inclined to the same
opinion, until one day by chance she espied in the little old tin box
which contained Theresa's treasures, a roll of bright yellow ribbon
wrapped up very carefully; and thenceforward she silently ceased to hope
that things might all come right yet, if Denis O'Meara came back again
on leave.

So, although Mrs. Joyce may have drawn wrong inferences, the results
were much as she had foreseen. Theresa never married, and when her
mother died she went to live with her brother Mick at Laraghmena, where
she is living still, notwithstanding that it is so long since all this
happened--since the fine summer when Denis O'Meara was at Lisconnel, and
Hugh McInerney, who luckily left nobody to be breaking their hearts
fretting after him, died in Moynalone Jail.

The yellow ribbon lies safely in her box, and with it a grimy bit of
paper, brought to her one day by a trusty hand, to which Hugh found out
a way of committing it "before he was took bad entirely." Theresa
herself has never deciphered its wild scrawls, being an unlettered
person, but its bearer read it over to her until she knew it by heart
every word. "For your own self the yella ribin is," the letter ran, "but
don't be wearin' it unless you like it. And I'm sorry the man got hit;
but I do be dhramin' most nights that it's you I'm after rapin' the
little black head off of; and I'd liefer lose me life than think I'd be
after hurtin' a hair of it. But the Divil was busy wid me that evenin'.
And I'm very apt never to get the chance to set fut again out on the big
bog. It 'ud do me heart good to see the sun goin' down in it a great way
off, for this is a quare small place. It's a long while. But sure, to
the end of all the days of me life," it said to her, like an echo
beaten back from the walls of the great abysm, "it's of yourself I'll be
thinkin' off away in contintmint at Lisconnel."

CHAPTER VII

MR. POLYMATHERS

It was to an accidental circumstance that Lisconnel owed the prolonged
sojourn there of perhaps the most distinguished scholar who has ever
visited us. For when he arrived at O'Beirne's forge one misty June
evening, the night's lodging only was all he asked or desired. But in
those times, now some fifty years since, we had "a terrible dale of
sickness about in the country," and next morning the stranger was down
with the fever, which, although so mild a case that even Bridget
O'Beirne never gave him over more than twice in the same day, brought
his journey perforce to a halt. At the beginning he was very loth to
believe that he must relinquish his intention of reaching Dublin by a
certain date--the first Monday in July; however, having once recognised
the impossibility of doing so, he showed no haste to quit his quarters,
and his stay with the O'Beirnes lengthened into months as the summer
slipped away. At this time the forge was owned by Felix O'Beirne,
blacksmith, shebeener, and ex-whiteboy, and with him lived his orphan
grandsons, Daniel and Nicholas, his very old, ancient mother, who still
drew enjoyment in whiffs through the stem of her black dudeen, and his
elderly sister, Bridget, who had taken little pleasure in anything since
the redcoats shot her sweetheart in the War. The missing third
generation was represented occasionally when Mrs. Dooley, Felix's
married daughter, came on a visit. It was conjectured among them that
"the fancy the ould gintleman had for larnin' all manner to young
Nicholas continted him to stop." And this may have had something to do
with it, though less, probably, than the vaguer fact that he from the
first "took kindly" to the O'Beirnes, and they to him. His appearance
puzzled them a little. He was of a massive, large-boned frame, such as
nature seems to design for rough uses; but, as Felix remarked, "you
could aisy tell be ivery finger and thumb on him that hard work wasn't
the handle he'd took a hould of the world by." He wore a very long, grey
frieze coat, and a chimney-pot hat so old and tall that it looked as if
it must have grown slowly to its great height. When he took it off he
uncovered a shock of soft white hair, like the wig of a seeded
groundsel, about a face which was furrowed and wrinkled ruggedly enough,
in a different pattern somehow from what is commonly seen at Lisconnel,
where sun and wind have a large share in the process. His baggage
consisted of two bundles, very unequal in size and weight. The contents
of the smaller one were mainly a shirt and three socks, knotted loosely
in a blue cotton handkerchief; the other was done up carefully in
sacking, and he liked to have it under his eye.

Of course the O'Beirnes' visitor was often talked about among the groups
gathered of an evening, much as they are nowadays, for gossip and poteen
within the broad-leaved forge doors, through which on dark nights the
fire still blinks as far across the bog as the amber of the sunset, or
the rising glow of the golden harvest moon. Even from Felix's first
report it appeared that the stranger was no ordinary person.

"Won'erful fine discoorse he has out of him, anyway," he told the
neighbours a few nights after the arrival; "ivery now and agin he'll out
wid a word as grand like and big as his Riverence at Mass--goodness
forgive me for sayin' so. Sometimes we've been hardset to tell what he's
drivin' at. But that's the way it is wid thim words that has a power of
manin' in thim. They're apt to bother you a bit when you're used to
spakin plain."

"Belike it's the fever in his head sets him talkin' oddly," said young
Barney Corcoran. "I mind me brother Joe when he was bad wid it would be
ravin' wild. Sorra the sinsible word there was out of him for the best
part of a week."

This way of accounting for his guest's fine language rather affronted
Felix, and he consequently said, "Musha now, was there not? And how long
might yourself be under that descripshin of fever?"

"Ah sure, what 'ud we do at all if poor Barney was took that way?" said
Peter Keogh, "and nobody able to tell was it ravin' he was, or settin'
up to be talkin' raisonable for any differ they could see."

Barney cleared his throat disconcertedly, and the old man, recalling his
responsibilities as a host, and perhaps not admiring his sarcasm thus
elaborated, said conciliatingly, "Och, he'll do right enough if he niver
raves any worse than Mr. Polymathers. All that ails him is that we want
to git a bit used to his manner of spakin'."

"Polymathers?" said Peter.

"To be sure, Polymathers. Did you say it any better than I?"

"Well, I nivir heard tell of anybody called that way before. It's a
quare she-he soundin' sort of name," said Peter.

"Faix, then, there may be plinty quarer in it, we niver heard tell of,
if that was all," said Felix. "Anyhow, it's his name, and his people's
afore him. Himself tould me his father was the ouldest of all the
Polymatherses there was in the counthry he came out of--somewheres down
south, I think he said--and the head of the whole of thim forby."

"Ay, he did so," said Dan. "Sez you to him, there was a dale of water
run down hill since the time there was O'Beirnes blacksmiths in this
part of the counthry; and your father was a one, sez you. And sez he to
you, he couldn't be any manner of manes purtind to be the aquil to what
_his_ father was. And sez you to him, what was he? And sez he, it was
one of the Polymatherses he was, and well known for his larnin' through
the len'th and breadth of the county Sligo. And a name it was, he sez,
any man might be proud of ownin'."

"Be jabers, himself has the great consait of it, at all ivents," said
Peter. "But he might find people could be tellin' him there's Keoghs as
good as any Polymatherses iver was in it--ivery hair."

The stranger's patronymic having thus been ascertained, it was desirable
to fix his calling, and, despite his disclaimer of inherited erudition,
several circumstances bespoke him a schoolmaster, even before the
question seemed settled by the first act of his convalescence being an
inquiry into the amount of book-learning which Dan and Nicholas had
amassed during their sixteen and fourteen years. This was not large,
though as much as could be expected, considering that in all Lisconnel
there were not just then, I believe, more than four volumes, one of
which being merely the index to a non-existent _Encyclopædia_, can
scarcely rank as literature. The boys themselves, and their grandfather,
were deeply interested in the examination, and very anxious that it
should have a creditable result. For learning and the learned have at
all times been held in profound respect among us away on our bogland,
where the devotion to something afar springs perhaps the more abundantly
because so many things are remote. On this occasion Mr. Polymathers
opened his most sizable bundle, and it was seen to be filled with books,
not fewer, doubtless, than a score, in leather bindings, ragged and
battered, and brownly time-stained all over their margins, as if the
river of years had for them run no metaphor, but a russet bog-stream.
They comprised _Homer_, _Virgil_, _Livy_, and other ancients; likewise
two Latin lexicons, which looked extravagant until you observed how each
did but supplement the other's deficiencies, and this so imperfectly
that their owner was still liable to search in vain for words between MO
and NA.

These, however, were evidently not the most prized portion of Mr.
Polymathers's library, though he displayed them with some complacency,
reading out here and there a sonorous "furrin" phrase, at which his
audience said, "More power," and "Your sowl to glory," and the like. It
was when he handled the shabbiest of the volumes, with broken backs and
edges all curling tatters, that his touch grew caressing. The
lookers-on, contrariwise, thought but poorly of them because they set
up, seemingly, to be illustrated works, and their pictures, mostly of
uninteresting round and three-cornered objects, struck Lisconnel art
critics as very feeble efforts. To be sure Mr. Polymathers called them
_dygrims_, but that was no help to the overtaxed imagination. Only young
Nicholas O'Beirne listened intently to the explanation which he gave of
one of them. Nicholas was a long, thin lad, with melancholy grey eyes
and a square forehead, whose capacity his grandfather had held in some
esteem, since it had been discovered, years ago, that "the spalpeen
could make out an account for four sets of shoes, and half a stone of
three-inch holdfasts, and a dozen of staples, and two gallon of the
crathur, and allow for a hundredweight of ould iron, all in his head,
and right to a farthin'." Now the melancholy eyes darkened and
brightened with excitement as Mr. Polymathers discoursed of right lines
and angles and circles, and expounded the mysterious signification of
certain Ah Bay Says. And he had thenceforward an unweariable pupil in
Nicholas, companied, albeit with less ardent zeal, and at a slower rate
of progress, by his elder brother, Dan.

More general interest, however, continued to be taken in the stranger's
classical attainments. Everybody--the O'Beirnes themselves, their
neighbours in the cabin-row close by, now long since an untraceable
ruin, and the people of Lisconnel proper, a couple of miles further
on--felt uplifted by the residence among them of a man, who they boasted
would talk Latin to you as soon as look at you. But as we never enjoy
our own happiness fully until it has been looked at through other men's
envious eyes, they could not here remain content with simply possessing
this privilege, or even with dilating upon it to their less favoured
friends down below and down beyant. They longed to make a parade of it,
to give a demonstration of it. And the method of doing so which they
came to consider most desirable was the bringing about of a conversation
in Latin between Mr. Polymathers and Father Rooney, the Parish Priest.
For if that took place they could easily imagine his Reverence riding
home to report in the Town what a wonderful great scholar entirely they
had stopping above at Lisconnel. Moreover, the conversation itself would
be a rael fine thing to have the hearing of. Terence Kilfoyle, for
instance, said that it would be as good as a Play, which, as he had
never seen one, was to entertain unbounded expectations. And at last,
after they had wished the wish for some weeks, a prospect of its
fulfilment came into sight together with Father Rooney's cream-coloured
pony jogging along through the light of a fiery-zoned July sunset, in
which Mr. Polymathers was basking by the O'Beirnes' door. In those days
his Reverence was a youngish man, ruddy, and of a cheerful countenance,
a substantial load for his sturdy nag, and altogether, in his glossy
black cloth, a figure very different from their gaunt, sad-visaged,
shaggily-garbed old guest. He was at the time of Father Rooney's
approach seated on a two-legged, three-legged stool, propped
precariously against the ray-rosed cabin wall, and was teaching Dan and
Nicholas the twelfth proposition of the second book of Euclid. Dan had
not yet grasped it, but it all lay as clear as a sunbeam athwart
Nicholas's brain, and he was fidgeting like an impatient horse at the
slowness of his fellow.

Several of the neighbours chanced to be about, for the forge saw a good
deal of company in those long empty days before the potato-digging could
begin. They all drew together into a small crowd, and closed in step by
step to watch the first meeting between these two notable persons, much
admiring the deftness with which old O'Beirne secured it by pronouncing
one of the pony's shoes in need of tightening, and the felicitous
opening he made by assuring his Reverence that "divil a bit need he be
mindin' the delay, because Mr. Polymathers there had enough _furrin
languages_ to keep thim all divarted, if the baste owned as many feet as
a forty-legs, wid the shoes droppin' off ivery pair of thim. That was to
say, in coorse, supposin' he got the chance of convarsin' a bit wid
somebody aquil to answerin' him back iligant, the way there wasn't e'er
a one of thim could make an offer at doin' no more than thim little
weevils of chirpin' chuckens."

Yet the interview turned out disappointingly after all. If such a thing
had not been, of course, exceedingly improbable, one might have fancied
that each scholar stood in awe of the other's reputation, they steered
so clear of all recondite subjects; keeping to the merest commonplaces
about rain and potatoes and turf--which anybody else could have
discussed quite as knowledgably. In vain, whenever there was a promising
pause would the bystanders nudge one another, whispering, hopefully,
"Whist, boys--they'll be sayin' somethin' now." Only the plainest
English followed, and at last, when Father Rooney rode on, his parting
joke, which referred to the difficulty his pony would now find in the
way of becoming a barefooted pilgrim, left for a wonder solemnly
irresponsive faces behind it.

Michael Ryan said, with a touch of resentment, "Ah, well, one couldn't
maybe expec' it of thim to be throublin' thimselves talkin' fine for the
pack of us, as ignorant as dirt, in the middle of th'ould bog."

And his wife said, "'Deed, now, I wouldn't won'er meself if the raison
was his Riverence 'ud think bad of usin' his Latin words for anythin'
else on'y prayers and such. It might be somethin' the same as if he went
and took his grand vistments to go dig pitaties in; and that 'ud be a
great sin, God knows."

But old Felix, who was, as we have seen, a rather touchy person,
construed this suggestion into an implied censure on his own wishes in
the matter, and he said, huffily--

"Sorra the talk of sin I see in it at all, ma'am. 'Tis a dale liker they
just couldn't get out wid it convanient offhand. The same way that I'd
aisy enough bate out a shoe on me anvil there, when it's bothered I'd be
if you axed me to make a one promiscuous here of a suddint on the
roadside."

Mr. Polymathers himself meanwhile was perhaps dimly conscious that he
had disappointed hopes, and failed to rise duly to the occasion; and
this may have been why he slipped indoors, and fetched out a small book
he had never produced before, bound in a dingy greenish blue, with a
white paper label.

"D'you know what that is, sir?" he questioned, rhetorically, handing it
to Felix O'Beirne. "It's the Calendar, let me tell you, of the College
of the Holy and Undivided Trinity, _juxta_ Dublin. There's a print of
the Front of the Buildings attached to the fly-leaf. I'm after pickin'
it up this spring at Moynalone. 'Twas new the year before last, and
comprises a dale of information relative to terms, examinations, fees,
and so forth."

"Begor, then, it looks to be a wide house," said Felix, confining
himself to the picture as a comprehensible point. "It's apt to be an
oncommon fine place, sir, I should suppose."

"You may say that, me man," said Mr. Polymathers, emphatically. "Not its
match in the kingdom of Ireland. The home of literature and the haunt
of science. And it's there I'll be, plase God, next October."

"Musha, and will you be thravellin' that far--to Dublin?" said Felix.

"Ay will I, and would have gone last month on'y for the fever delayin'
me till after the midsummer entrance. Me savin's amount to somethin'
over thirty pound, so I may venture on the step, and prisint meself at
the Michaelmas term. In short," said Mr. Polymathers, re-poising himself
upon his rickety stool, "I might describe myself as an unmatriculated
candidate undergraduate of the University of Dublin."

"And what at all now would that be, sir, if I might be axin'?" said
Felix, humbly, after the awe-stricken pause which followed Mr.
Polymathers's proclamation of his style and title.

"It's a necessary preliminary," said Mr. Polymathers, "to proceeding to
the Degree of _Baccalaureatus in Artibus_, or _In Artibus
Baccalaureatus_--the _ordo verborum_ is, I take it, immaterial, to judge
by the transposition of initials in the case of ----."

"Faix, but it's the fine Latin you can be discoorsin' now, and his
Riverence half-ways home," said Felix reproachfully.

Mr. Polymathers, glancing round a circle of deeply impressed faces, felt
that his prestige was restored, and even began to enjoy a foretaste of
the triumph, which had been one part of his dream through the long
laborious years. But he was puzzled how to bring the full grandeur of
his design clearly before this uninstructed audience, and after
reflecting for a while in quest of concise yet adequate definitions, he
launched out into an eloquent description of the ceremonial observed in
conferring degrees at Dublin University. It may be surmised that many of
the details were due to his own fondly brooding fancy. For not only did
the highest learning in the land crowd the Hall in their academic robes,
but the Lord Lieutenant himself took a prominent part in the
proceedings, which were enlivened by military music and thunderous
salutes. Mr. Polymathers nearly toppled off his tricky stool more than
once without noticing it in his excitement as he rehearsed these
splendid scenes, declaiming with great unction the formulas long since
learned by all his heart, especially _Ego, auctoritate mihi concessa_,
and the rest, until he came to his peroration: "And all this pomp and
ceremony, mind yous, to the honour and glory of science and fine
scholarship. It's a grand occasion, lads; it's an object any man might
be proud to give----" Here he pulled himself up, warned by an unusually
violent lurch that his theme was running away with him. But having by no
means worked off his enthusiasm, he expended some of it, as a schoolboy
might have done, in throwing a small bit of turf at a stately white hen,
who just then sailed across the dark doorway, like a little frigate
under the most crowded canvas. She immediately took flight with
floundering screeches, which drowned what the old man was muttering to
himself. However, it was only "_Admitto te--admitto te_."

After these revelations Mr. Polymathers was looked up to more than ever,
as one not only endowed with rare gifts, but destined by their means to
scale heights of hardly realisable exaltation. "Be all accounts there
was no knowin' what he mightn't rise to be at Dublin College," the
neighbours said. They also often remarked that it was "a surprisin'
thing to see a great scholar like him spendin' his time over taichin'
thim two young O'Beirnes." If the speaker happened to be afflicted with
a twinge of envy about those educational advantages, he was apt to say
"thim two young bosthoons" or "gomerals." But Dan and Nicholas were
not, in fact, any such thing. Nicholas, indeed, quickly proved himself
possessed of what Mr. Polymathers called "a downright astonishin'
facility at the mathematics," far out-stripping Dan, not quite to Dan's
satisfaction, as he had always enjoyed the pre-eminence conferred by
superior physical strength and a practical turn of mind. So well pleased
was the old man with his eager pupil that he would have liked to do his
teaching, "nothing for reward," but his host's hospitality, and his own
ambition, would not permit this. Now and then he rather puzzled Nicholas
by an apologetic tone in answering questions about his University
career. And once at the end of a lesson he said, as if to himself: "May
goodness forgive me if I'm takin' what he'd have done better with. But
sure he's young--he's plenty of chances yet." However, as the time for
his departure drew on, all his misgivings, if such he had, seemed to
vanish away, and his thoughts became very apt to journey off blissfully
to Dublin in the middle of the most interesting problems. Nicholas had
to wait till they came back.

Mr. Polymathers left Lisconnel on a fine autumn morning, when the air
was so still that the flashing and twinkling of the many dewdrops seemed
to make quite a stir in it. The sky was as clear as any one of them, and
in the golden light the wavering columns of blue smoke rose with curves
softly transparent. He started with a buoyant step, as well he might,
since he was setting out on the enterprise into which he had put all the
spirit of his youth. He felt some regret at parting from his Lisconnel
friends, but his plans and prospects were naturally very pre-occupying,
whereas they had the ampler leisure of the left-behind to deplore his
flitting, which seemed likely enough to be for good. Nearly four years,
he had explained, must elapse before the crowning height of the B. A.
Degree could be won, and it was only just possible that he might manage
to tramp back on a visit meanwhile, during some Long Vacation. This
doubtful chance was cold comfort for that ardent scholar Nicholas
O'Beirne, who grieved more than anybody else. Most ruefully did he help
Dan to carry the candidate undergraduate's library as far as the Town;
nor could he take more than a downcast pleasure in Mr. Polymathers's
farewell gift to him of the raggedest _Euclid_. And as he stood
watching the car out of sight, his eyes were as wistful as if a door
briefly opened on glimpses of radiant vistas had been inexorably barred
in his face.

Yet after all Mr. Polymathers's absence was not to be measured by years
or months. One evening on the threshold of December, Lisconnel was lying
roofed over by a massy livid-black cloud, which came lumbering up and up
interminably, and which the weatherwise estimated to contain as much
snow as would smother the width of the world. The north wind moaned and
keened dismally under the toil of wafting on this portentous load, and
its breath was bitingly sharp, so that when the lads came in from the
forge, their grandfather said, "Ah, Dan, shut over the door, for there's
a blast sweepin' through it 'ud freeze ten rigiments as stiff as
staties." We usually take a large view of things at Lisconnel. Dan went
to carry out this order, but instead of doing so he suddenly shouted:
"Murdher alive! Here's Mr. Polymathers."

Through the grey gloaming came a Mr. Polymathers, very different from
what he had been on that brilliant, hopeful morning only a few weeks
ago, when he had stepped lightly, and held his head up as if he were
looking a friendly fortune in the face. Now his feet stumbled and
dragged as he fared slowly against the wind's blustering, with his eyes
on the ground, and his movements seemingly guided more by the weight of
the bundle he carried than by his own will. Before he came within even
loud shouting distance, everybody felt a presentiment of disaster; but
he had not spoken a word to justify or discredit it by the time he got
indoors.

"Musha, and so it's yourself, sir," old Felix then repeated, in a
congratulatory tone. "Ah, but it's a hardy evenin', and it's perished
you are, sir. Come in be the fire."

"Ay, I'm back," Mr. Polymathers said slowly, after a hesitating pause,
as if the remark had been interpreted to him by some second person, "I
was bringin' the books, thinkin' the lad might use them--he's young
enough. But I'm not come to stop on you," he added, speaking faster,
"on'y just for this night. Early to-morra I must be off to Ardnacreagh,
and try for the taichin' there again. 'Twas on'y on account of bringin'
the books I came this way. I'll be on the road quite early."

His insistence on this point made, somehow, a very melancholy
impression on Felix; but he replied jovially: "Is it to-morra? Bedad
then, sir, don't you wish you may slip off on us that soon, and we after
gettin' a hould of you agin? What fools we are. Not if you was as
slithery, ivery inch of you, as a wather-eel."

The wraith of a relieved smile at this came over Mr. Polymathers's face;
still it looked so grey and withered, and his eyes were so sunken, and
his large, bony hands so shaky, that all with one consent refrained from
questions which they were agog to ask; and when Mrs. Keogh by and by
dropped in, and being an inquisitive and not very quick-witted person,
said, "Saints among us--it's Mr. Polymathers. And how's yourself, sir?
And are you bringing home the grand Degree?" though they all listened
eagerly for the reply, they wished she had held her tongue.

"The divil a Degree, ma'am," said Mr. Polymathers, "and niver will."

There was a short silence, and then he turned round on his stool--it was
the same from which he had made his boast in the summer sunset, but Dan
had meanwhile mended its broken leg with the handle of a worn-bladed
spade. "I've given up," he said to them. "I no longer entertain the
project of becomin' a graduate, or for the matter of that an
undergraduate of Dublin University; and if I'd done right, I'd niver
have taken up such an idea. I've put it out of me head. But it's been in
me mind a great while--a terrible long while."

"Look you here, Mr. Polymathers, sir, are you after gittin' any bad
thratment from any people up in thim places?" said Felix, who always
liked better to lay a grievance on some human and possibly breakable
head than to believe it the work of the vengeance-baffling demon
bad-luck.

"Not at all, not at all," said Mr. Polymathers, when the question
reached him. "I've nothin' to complain of. They're very respectable
people in Dublin, and it's a fine city. But me head's a bit giddy yet
wid the drivin' they have in the streets, that makes one stupid. I mind
there was a car tatterin' along, and I crossin' over the College Green,
had me down on the stones, on'y a dacint lad gript a hould of me, and
whirled me inside the College gates. There I was before I rightly knew
anythin' had happened me, and I after spendin' the best part of me life
gettin' to it. 'Twasn't the way I thought it 'ud be.... But the College
is as grand as any notion I had of it; on'y since I've seen it, 'tis
like a drame to me that ever I set fut in it, just a sort of drame....
Great ancient places the squares are; I walked round the whole of them
before I found the Hall. A couple of chaps in uniform like came axin' me
me business, but I tould them fast enough that I was a candidate--ah,
goodness help me.... And the Hall's a spacious and splendid apartment.
On'y it was strange, now, to see it full of nothin' but young fellows,
scarce oulder than the two lads there. I might, sure enough, have known
the way it 'ud be, if I'd come to considher, but somehow it seemed to
put me out, as if I'd no call to be there at all. There was one of them
began pricin' me ould hat, and another of them tripped him up against a
black marble construction with a pair of angels atop of it, that there
is on the wall--sure they were just spalpeens. But I'll give you me
word, when they called me up to the examiner's table, there was a young
gintleman sittin' at it in his black gown and his cap wid the
tassel--bound to be one of the College Fellows, and ivery sort of a fine
scholar--and for all the age there was on him he might ha' been me son
or me grandson.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

CHAPTER VIII

HONORIS CAUSA

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

CHAPTER IX

BOYS' WAGES

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

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

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

He was playing--

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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