The ass stood quietly where he had been left.
Rain was pouring from him as though he were the father of rivers and supplied the world with running water. It dashed off his flanks; it leaped down his tail; it foamed over his forehead to his nose, and hit the ground from there with a thump.
"I'm very wet," said the ass to himself, "and I wish I wasn't."
His eyes were fixed on a brown stone that had a knob on its back. Every drop of rain that hit the stone jumped twice and then spattered to the ground. After a moment he spoke to himself again:
"I don't care whether it stops raining or not, for I can't be any wetter than I am, however it goes."
Having said this, he dismissed theweather and settled himself to think. He hung his head slightly and fixed his eyes afar off, and he stared distantly like that without seeing anything while he gathered and revolved his thoughts.
The first thing he thought about was carrots.
He thought of their shape, their colour, and the way they looked in a bucket. Some would have the thick end stuck up, and some would have the other end stuck up, and there were always bits of clay sticking to one end or the other. Some would be lying on their sides as though they had slipped quietly to sleep, and some would be standing in a slanting way as though they were leaning their backs against a wall and couldn't make up their minds what to do next. But, however they looked in the bucket, they all tasted alike, and they all tasted well. They are a companionable food; they make a pleasant, crunching noise when they are bitten, and so, when one is eating carrots, onecan listen to the sound of one's eating and make a story from it.
Thistles make a swishing noise when they are bitten; they have their taste.
Grass does not make any noise at all; it slips dumbly to the sepulchre, and makes no sign.
Bread makes no sound when it is eaten by an ass; it has an interesting taste, and it clings about one's teeth for a long time.
Apples have a good smell and a joyful crunch, but the taste of sugar lasts longer in the mouth, and can be remembered for longer than anything else; it has a short, sharp crunch that is like a curse, and instantly it blesses you with the taste of it.
Hay can be eaten in great mouthfuls. It has a chip and a crack at the first bite, and then it says no more. It sticks out of one's mouth like whiskers, and you can watch it with your eye while it moves to and fro according as your mouth moves. It is a friendly food, and very good for the hungry.
Oats are not a food; they are a great blessing; they are a debauch; they make you proud, so that you want to kick the front out of a cart, and climb a tree, and bite a cow, and chase chickens.
Mary came running and unyoked him from the cart. She embraced him on the streaming nose. "You poor thing, you!" said she, and she took a large paper bag from the cart and held it to his muzzle. There was soft sugar in the bag, and half a pound of it clove to his tongue at the first lick.
As she went back to the house with the bundle of food the ass regarded her.
"You are a good girl," said the ass.
He shook himself and dissipated his thoughts; then he trotted briskly here and there on the path to see if there was anything worth looking for.
They shared the food: there was little of it, and some of it was wet; but they each had a piece of bread, a knuckle of cheese, and three cold potatoes.
Mary said there was something wrong with her, and she passed two of her cold potatoes to the cherub Art, who ate them easily.
"I wish you had given them to me," said her father.
"I'll give you one of mine," said Eileen Ni Cooley, and she thrust one across to him.
Mac Cann pushed it entire into his mouth, and ate it as one who eats in a trance: he stared at Eileen.
"Why did you give me your potato?" said he.
Eileen blushed until not a single freckle in her face was visible.
"I don't know," she answered.
"You don't seem to know anything at all this day," he complained. "You're full of fun," said he.
He lit his pipe, and, after pulling for a while at it, he handed it to the woman.
"Take a draw at that pipe," he commanded, "and let us be decent with each other."
Eileen Ni Cooley did take a draw at the pipe, but she handed it back soon.
"I never was much at the smoking," said she.
Caeltia had his pipe going at full blast. He was leaning against the wall with his eyes half closed, and was thinking deeply between puffs.
Finaun had a good grip on Mary's hair, which he was methodically plaiting and unloosening again. He was sunken in reverie.
Mary was peeping from beneath her lids at Art, and was at the same time watching everybody else to see that she was not observed.
Art was whistling to himself in a low tone, and he was looking fixedly at a spider.
The spider was hauling on a loose rope of his tent, and he was very leisurely. One would have thought that he was smoking also.
"What did you have for dinner?" said Art to the spider.
"Nothing, sir, but a little, thin, wisp of a young fly," said the spider.
He was a thick-set, heavy kind of spider, and he seemed to be middle-aged, and resigned to it.
"That is all I had myself," said Art. "Are the times bad with you now, or are they middling?"
"Not so bad, glory be to God! The flies do wander in through the holes, and when they come from the light outside to the darkness in here, sir, we catch them on the wall, and we crunch their bones."
"Do they like that?"
"They do not, sir, but we do. Thelad with the stout, hairy legs, down there beside your elbow, caught a blue-bottle yesterday; there was eating on that fellow, I tell you, and he's not all eaten yet, but that spider is always lucky, barring the day he caught the wasp."
"That was a thing he didn't like?" queried Art.
"Don't mention it to him, sir, he doesn't care to talk about it."
"What way are you going to fasten up your rope?" said Art.
"I'll put a spit on the end of it, and then I'll thump it with my head to make it stick."
"Well, good luck to yourself."
"Good luck to your honour."
Said Patsy to Caeltia, pointing to Finaun:
"What does he be thinking about when he gets into them fits?"
"He does be talking to the hierarchy," replied Caeltia.
"And who are themselves?"
"They are the people in charge of this world."
"Is it the kings and the queens and the Holy Pope?"
"No, they are different kinds of people."
Patsy yawned.
"What does he be talking to them about?"
"Every kind of thing," replied Caeltia, and yawned also. "They are asking him for advice now."
"What is he saying?"
"He is talking about love," said Caeltia.
"He is always talking about that," said Patsy.
"And," said Caeltia, "he is talking about knowledge."
"It's another word of his."
"And he is saying that love and knowledge are the same thing."
"I wouldn't put it past him," said Patsy.
For he was in a bad temper. Either the close confinement, or the dull weather,or the presence of Eileen Ni Cooley, or all of these, had made him savage.
He arose and began striding through the narrow room, kicking stones from one side of the place to the other and glooming fiercely at everybody. Twice he halted before Eileen Ni Cooley, staring at her, and twice, without a word said, he resumed his marching.
Suddenly he leaned his back against the wall facing her, and shouted:
"Well, Eileen a grah, the man went away from you, the man with the big stick and the lengthy feet. Ah! that's a man you'd be crying out for and you all by yourself in the night."
"He was a good man," said Eileen; "there was no harm in that man, Padraig."
"Maybe he used to be putting his two arms around you now and then beside a hedge and giving you long kisses on the mouth?"
"He used to be doing that."
"Aye did he, indeed, and he wasn't the first man to do that, Eileen."
"Maybe you're right, Padraig."
"Nor the twenty-first."
"You've got me here in the house, Padraig, and the people around us are your own friends."
Caeltia also had arisen to his feet and was staring morosely at Eileen. Suddenly he leaped to her, wrenched the shawl from her head with a wide gesture, and gripped her throat between his hands; as her head touched the ground she gasped, and then, and just as suddenly, he released her. He stood up, looking wildly at Patsy, who stared back at him grinning like a madman, then he stumbled across to Finaun and took his hands between his own.
"You must not hurt me, my dear," said Finaun, smiling gravely at him.
Mary had leaped to Art, whose arm she took, and they backed to the end of the room.
Eileen stood up; she arranged her dressand wrapped the shawl about her head again; she gazed fearlessly at Mac Cann.
"The house is full of your friends, Padraig, and there's nobody here with me at all; there's no man could want better than that for himself."
Patsy's voice was hoarse.
"You're looking for fight?"
"I'm looking for whatever is coming," she replied steadily.
"I'm coming, then," he roared, and he strode to her. He lifted his hands above his head, and brought them down so heavily on her shoulders that she staggered.
"Here I am," said he, staring into her face.
She closed her eyes.
"I knew it wasn't love you wanted, Padraig; it was murder you wanted, and you have your wish."
She was swaying under his weight as she spoke; her knees were giving beneath her.
"Eileen," said Patsy, in a small voice,"I'm going to tumble; I can't hold myself up, Eileen; my knees are giving way under me, and I've only got my arms round your neck."
She opened her eyes and saw him sagging against her, with his eyes half closed and his face gone white.
"Sure, Padraig!" said she.
She flung her arms about his body and lifted him, but the weight was too much, and he went down.
She crouched by him on the floor, hugging his head against her breast.
"Sure, listen to me, Padraig; I never did like any one in the world but yourself; there wasn't a man of them all was more to me than a blast of wind; you were the one I liked always. Listen to me now, Padraig. Don't I be wanting you day and night, and saying prayers to you in the darkness and crying out in the dawn; my heart is sore for you, so it is: there's a twist in us, O my dear. Don't you be minding the men; whatever they did itwas nothing, it was nothing more than beasts playing in a field and not caring anything. We are beside one another for a minute now. When I would put my hand on my breast in the middle of a laugh it was you I was touching, and I do never stop thinking of you in any place under the sky."
They were kissing each other like lost souls; they babbled and clung to each other; they thrust one another's head back to stare at it, and pursued the head with their violent lips.
It was a time before they all got to sleep that night, but they did sleep at the end of it.
They stretched in the darkness with their eyes closed, and the night folded them around, separating each one from his fellow, and putting on each the enchantment of silence and blindness. They were no longer together although they were lying but a few inches apart; therewas only the darkness that had no inches to it; the darkness that has no beginning and no end; that appears and disappears, calling hush as it comes and goes, and holding peace and terror in either invisible hand; there was no silver moon in the sky and no sparkle of white stars; there was only darkness and silence and the steady hushing of the rain.
When he awoke in the morning Mac Cann rolled urgently on his elbow and stared to where Eileen Ni Cooley had stretched herself for sleep—but she was not there, she was not anywhere.
He shouted, and the company sprang to their feet.
"She got out through the window," he roared.
"The devil damn the soul of her," said he.
BOOK III
BRIEN O'BRIEN
They continued their travels.
It would be more correct to say they continued their search for food, for that in reality was the objective of each day's journeying.
Moving thus, day by day, taking practically any road that presented itself, they had wandered easily through rugged, beautiful Donegal down into Connaught. They had camped on the slopes of rough mountains, slept peacefully in deep valleys that wound round and round like a corkscrew, traversed for weeks in Connemara by the clamorous sea where they lived sumptuously on fish, and then they struck to the inland plains again, and away by curving paths to the County Kerry.
At times Mac Cann got work to do—to mend a kettle that had a little hole in it, tostick a handle on a pot, to stiffen the last days of a bucket that was already long past its labour, and he did these jobs sitting in the sunlight on dusty roads, and if he did not do them Mary did them for him while he observed her critically and explained both to her and to his company the mystery of the tinker's craft.
"There's a great deal," he would say, "in the twist of the hand."
And again, but this usually to Art when that cherub tried his skill on a rusty pot:
"You'll never make a good tinker unless you've got a hand on you. Keep your feet in your boots and get to work with your fingers."
And sometimes he would nod contentedly at Mary and say:
"There's a girl with real hands on her that aren't feet."
Hands represented to him whatever of praiseworthy might be spoken of by a man, but feet were in his opinion rightly covered, and ought not to be discoveredexcept in minatory conversation. One ran on them! Well, it was a dog's trade, or a donkey's; but hands! he expanded to that subject, and could loose thereon a gale of praise that would blow all other conversation across the border.
They set their camp among roaring fairs where every kind of wild man and woman yelled salutation at Patsy and his daughter, and howled remembrance of ten and twenty-year old follies, and plunged into drink with the savage alacrity of those to whom despair is a fairer brother than hope, and with some of these people the next day's journey would be shared, rioting and screaming on the lonely roads, and these people also the angels observed and were friendly with.
One morning they were pacing on their journey. The eyes of the little troop were actively scanning the fields on either hand. They were all hungry, for they had eaten nothing since the previous midday. But these fields were barren offood. Great stretches of grass stretched away to either horizon, and there was nothing here that could be eaten except by the donkey.
As they went they saw a man sitting on a raised bank. His arms were folded; he had a straw in his mouth; there was a broad grin on his red face; a battered hat was thrust far back on his head, and from beneath this a brush of stiff hair poked in any direction like an ill-tied bundle of black wire.
Mac Cann stared at that red joviality.
"There's a man," said he to Caeltia, "that hasn't got a care in the world."
"It must be very bad for him," commented Caeltia.
"Holloa, mister," cried Patsy heartily, "how's everything?"
"Everything's fine," beamed the man, "how's yourself?"
"We're holding up, glory be to God!"
"That's the way."
He waved his hand against the horizon.
"There's weather for you," and he spoke with the proud humility of one who had made that weather, but would not boast. His eye was steady on Mac Cann.
"I've got a hunger on me that's worth feeding, mister."
"We've all got that," replied Patsy, "and there's nothing in the cart barring its timbers. I'm keeping an eye out, tho', and maybe we'll trip over a side of bacon in the middle of the road or a neat little patch of potatoes in the next field and it full of the flowery boyoes."
"There's a field a mile up this road," said the man, "and everything you could talk about is in that field."
"Do you tell me!" said Patsy briskly.
"I do: every kind of thing is in that field, and there's rabbits at the foot of the hill beyond it."
"I used to have a good shot with a stone," said Patsy.
"Mary," he continued, "when we come to the field let yourself and Art gather upthe potatoes while Caeltia and myself take stones in our hands to kill the rabbits."
"I'm coming along with you," said the man, "and I'll get my share."
"You can do that," said Patsy.
The man scrambled down the bank. There was something between his knees of which he was very careful.
"What sort of a thing is that?" said Mary.
"It's a concertina and I do play tunes on it before the houses, and that's how I make my money."
"The musiciner will give us a tune after we get a feed," said Patsy.
"Sure enough," said the man.
Art stretched out his hand.
"Let me have a look at the musical instrument," said he.
The man handed it to him and fell into pace beside Patsy and Caeltia. Mary and Finaun were going as usual one on either side of the ass, and the three of them returned to their interrupted conversation.Every dozen paces Finaun would lean to the border of the road and pluck a fistful of prime grass or a thistle or a clutch of chickweed, and he would put these to the ass's mouth.
Patsy was eyeing the man.
"What's your name, mister?" said he.
"I was known as Old Carolan, but now the people call me Billy the Music."
"How is it that I never met you before?"
"I'm from Connemara."
"I know every cow-track and bohereen in Connemara, and I know every road in Donegal and Kerry, and I know everybody that's on them roads, but I don't know you, mister."
The man laughed at him.
"I'm not long on the roads, so how could you know me? What are you called yourself?"
"I'm called Padraig Mac Cann."
"I know you well, for you stole a hen and a pair of boots off me ten months ago when I lived in a house."
"Do you tell me?" said Mac Cann.
"I do; and I never grudged them to you, for that was the day that everything happened to me."
Mac Cann was searching his head to find from whom he had stolen a hen and a pair of boots at the one time.
"Well, glory be to God!" he cried. "Isn't it the queer world! Are you old Carolan, the miserly man of Temple Cahill?"
The man laughed and nodded.
"I used to be him, but now I'm Billy the Music, and there's my instrument under the boy's oxter."
Patsy stared at him.
"And where's the house and the cattle, and the hundred acres of grass land and glebe, and the wife that people said you used to starve the stomach out of?"
"Faith, I don't know where they are, and I don't care either," and he shook with the laughter as he said it.
"And your sister that killed herself climbingout of a high window on a windy night to search for food among the neighbours?"
"She's dead still," said the man, and he doubled up with glee.
"I declare," said Patsy, "that it's the end of the world."
The man broke on his eloquence with a pointed finger.
"There's the field I was telling you about and it's weighty to the ribs with potatoes and turnips."
Patsy turned to his daughter.
"Gather in the potatoes; don't take them all from the one place, but take them from here and there the way they won't be missed, and then go along the road with the cart for twenty minutes and be cooking them. Myself and Caeltia will catch up on you in a little time and we'll bring good meat with us."
Caeltia and he moved to the right where a gentle hill rose against the sky. The hill was thickly wooded, massive clumps of trees were dotted every little distance, andthrough these one could see quiet, green spaces drowsing in the sun.
When they came to the fringing trees Patsy directed his companion to go among them some little distance and then to charge here and there, slashing against the trees and the ground with a stick.
Caeltia did that, and at the end of a quarter of an hour Patsy had three rabbits stretched under his hand.
"That's good enough," he called; "we'll go on now after the people."
They stowed the rabbits under their coats and took the road.
They soon caught on their companions. The cart was drawn to the side of the road, at a little distance the ass was browsing, and Mary had a fire going in the brazier and the potatoes ready for the pot.
Patsy tossed the rabbits to her.
"There you are, my girl," said he, and, with Caeltia, he sank down on the grassy margin of the road and drew out his pipe.
The strange man was sitting beside Art,to whom he was explaining the mechanism of a concertina.
"While we are waiting," said Patsy to him, "you can tell us all the news; tell us what happened to the land and what you're doing on the road; and there is a bit of twist to put in your pipe so that you'll talk well."
Mary broke in:
"Wait a minute now, for I want to hear that story; let yourself help me over with the brazier and we can all sit together."
There was a handle to the bucket and through this they put a long stick and lifted all bodily to the butt of the hedge.
"Now we can sit together," said Mary, "and I can be cooking the food and listening to the story at the same time."
"I'd sooner give you a tune on the concertina," said Billy the Music.
"You can do that afterwards," replied Patsy.
"I'll tell you the story," said Billy the Music, "and here it is:
"A year ago I had a farm in the valley. The sun shone into it, and the wind didn't blow into it for it was well sheltered, and the crops that I used to take off that land would astonish you.
"I had twenty head of cattle eating the grass, and they used to get fat quick and they used to give good milk into the bargain. I had cocks and hens for the eggs and the market, and there was a good many folk would have been glad to get my farm.
"There were ten men always working on the place, but at harvest-time there would be a lot more, and I used to make them work too. Myself and my son and my wife's brother (a lout, that fellow!) used to run after the men, but it was hard to keep upwith them, for they were great schemers. They tried to do as little work as ever they were able, and they tried to get as much money out of me as they could manage. But I was up to them lads, and it's mighty little they got out of me without giving twice as much for it.
"Bit by bit I weeded out the men until at last I only had the ones I wanted, the tried and trusty men. They were a poor lot, and they didn't dare to look back at me when I looked at them; but they were able to work, and that is all I wanted them to do, and I saw that they did it.
"As I'm sitting beside you on this bank to-day I'm wondering why I took all the trouble I did take, and what, in the name of this and that, I expected to get out of it all. I usen't go to bed until twelve o'clock at night, and I would be up in the dawn before the birds. Five o'clock in the morning never saw me stretching in the warm bed, and every day I would root the men out of their sleep; often enough I had to throwthem out of bed, for there wasn't a man of them but would have slept rings round the clock if he got the chance.
"Of course I knew that they didn't want to work for me, and that, bating the hunger, they'd have seen me far enough before they'd lift a hand for my good; but I had them by the hasp, for as long as men have to eat, any man with the food can make them do whatever he wants them to do; wouldn't they stand on their heads for twelve hours a day if you gave them wages? Aye would they, and eighteen hours if you held them to it.
"I had the idea too that they were trying to rob me, and maybe they were. It doesn't seem to matter now whether they robbed me or not, for I give you my word that the man who wants to rob me to-day is welcome to all he can get and more if I had it."
"Faith, you're the kind man!" said Patsy.
"Let that be," said Billy the Music.
"The secret of the thing was that I loved money, hard money, gold and silver pieces, and pieces of copper. I liked it better than the people who were round me. I liked it better than the cattle and the crops. I liked it better than I liked myself, and isn't that the queer thing? I put up with the silliest ways for it, and I lived upside down and inside out for it. I tell you I would have done anything just to get money, and when I paid the men for their labour I grudged them every penny that they took from me.
"It did seem to me that in taking my metal they were surely and openly robbing me and laughing at me as they did it. I saw no reason why they shouldn't have worked for me for nothing, and if they had I would have grudged them the food they ate and the time they lost in sleeping, and that's another queer thing, mind you!"
"If one of them men," said Patsy solemnly, "had the spunk of a wandering goat or a mangy dog he'd have taken agraipe to yourself, mister, and he'd have picked your soul out of your body and slung it on a dung-heap."
"Don't be thinking," replied the other, "that men are courageous and fiery animals, for they're not, and every person that pays wages to men knows well that they're as timid as sheep and twice as timid. Let me tell you too that all the trouble wasn't on their side; I had a share of it and a big share."
Mac Cann interrupted solemnly—
"That's what the fox told the goose when the goose said that the teeth hurted him. 'Look at the trouble I had to catch you,' said the fox."
"We won't mind that," said Billy the Music.
"I was hard put to it to make the money. I was able to knock a good profit out of the land and the beasts and the men that worked for me; and then, when I came to turn the profit into solid pieces, I found that there was a world outside of my world, andit was truly bent on robbing me, and, what's more, it had thought hard for generations about the best way of doing it. It had made its scheme so carefully that I was as helpless among them people as the labourers were with me. Oh! they got me, and they squeezed me, and they marched off smiling with the heaviest part of my gain, and they told me to be a bit more polite or they'd break me into bits, and I was polite too. Ah! there's a big world outside the little world, and maybe there's a bigger world outside that, and grindstones in it for all the people that are squeezers in their own place.
"The price I thought fair for the crop was never the price I got from the jobbers. If I sold a cow or a horse I never got as much as half of what I reckoned on. There were rings and cliques in the markets everywhere, and they knew how to manage me. It was they who got more than half the money I made, and they had me gripped so that I couldn't get away. It was for these people I used to be out of bed at twelve o'clock atnight and up again before the fowl were done snoring, and it was for them I tore the bowels out of my land, and hazed and bedevilled every man and woman and dog that came in sight of me, and when I thought of these market-men with their red jowls and their 'take it or leave it' I used to get so full of rage that I could hardly breathe.
"I had to take it because I couldn't afford to leave it, and then I'd go home again trying to cut it finer, trying to skin an extra chance profit off the land and workers, and I do wonder now that the men didn't try to kill me or didn't commit suicide. Aye, I wonder that I didn't commit suicide myself by dint of the rage and greed and weariness that was my share of life day and night.
"I got the money anyhow, and, sure enough, the people must have thought I was the devil's self; but it was little I cared what they thought, for the pieces were beginning to mount up in the box, and one fine day thebox got so full that not another penny-piece could have been squeezed sideways into it, so I had to make a new box, and it wasn't so long until I made a third box and a fourth one, and I could see the time coming when I would be able to stand in with the market-men, and get a good grip on whatever might be going."
"How much did you rob in all?" said Patsy.
"I had all of two thousand pounds."
"That's a lot of money, I'm thinking."
"It is so, and it took a lot of getting, and there was twenty damns went into the box with every one of the yellow pieces."
"A damn isn't worth a shilling," said Patsy. "You can have them from me at two for a ha'penny, and there's lots of people would give them to yourself for nothing, you rotten old robber of the world! And if I had the lump of twist back that I gave you a couple of minutes ago I'd put it in my pocket, so I would, and I'd sit on it."
"Don't forget that you're talking about old things," said Billy the Music.
"If I was one of your men," shouted Patsy, "you wouldn't have treated me that way."
Billy the Music smiled happily at him.
"Wouldn't I?" said he, with his head on one side.
"You would not," said Patsy, "for I'd have broken your skull with a spade."
"If you had been one of my men," the other replied mildly, "you'd have been as tame as a little kitten; you'd have crawled round me with your hat in your hand and your eyes turned up like a dying duck's, and you'd have said, 'Yes, sir,' and 'No, sir,' like the other men that I welted the stuffing out of with my two fists, and broke the spirits of with labour and hunger. Don't be talking now, for you're an ignorant man in these things, although you did manage to steal a clocking hen off me the day I was busy."
"And a pair of good boots," said Patsy triumphantly.
"Do you want to hear the rest of the story?"
"I do so," said Patsy; "and I take back what I said about the tobacco; here's another bit of it for your pipe."
"Thank you kindly," replied Billy.
He shook the ashes from his pipe, filled it, and continued his tale.
"On the head of all these things a wonderful thing happened to me."
"That's the way to start," said Patsy approvingly. "You're a good story-teller, mister."
"It isn't so much that," replied Billy, "but it's a good story and a wonderful story."
"The potatoes are nearly done, Mary, a grah?"
"They'll be done in a short while."
"Hold your story for a few minutes until we eat the potatoes and a few collops of the rabbits, for I tell you that I'm drooping with the hunger."
"I didn't eat anything myself," repliedBilly, "since the middle of yesterday, and the food there has a smell to it that's making me mad."
"It's not quite done yet," said Mary.
"It's done enough," replied her father. "Aren't you particular this day! Pull them over here and share them round, and don't be having the men dying on your hands."
Mary did so, and for five minutes there was no sound except that of moving jaws, and by that time there was no more food in sight.
"Ah!" said Patsy with a great sigh.
"Aye, indeed!" said Billy the Music with another sigh.
"Put on more of the potatoes now," Patsy commanded his daughter, "and be cooking them against the time this story will be finished."
"I wish I had twice as much as I had," said Art.
"You got twice as much as me," cried Patsy angrily, "for I saw the girl giving it to you."
"I'm not complaining," replied Art; "I'm only stating a fact."
"That's all right," said Patsy.
The pipes were lit, and all eyes turned to Billy the Music. Patsy leaned back on his elbow, and blew his cloud.
"Now we'll have the rest of the story," said he.
"This," continued Billy the Music, "is the wonderful thing that happened to me.
"Bit by bit I got fonder of the money. The more I got of it the more I wanted. I used to go away by myself to look at it and handle it and count it. I didn't store it all in the house; I only kept enough there to make the people think it was all there, and as every one was watching that and watching each other (for they all wanted to steal it) it was safe enough.
"They didn't know it was mostly copper was in that box, but copper it was, and some silver that I couldn't fit into the other boxes.
"There was a place at the end of the big barn, just underneath the dog's kennel—maybe you remember my dog, Patsy?"
"A big black-and-white snarly devil of a bull-terrier?" said Patsy, thoughtfully.
"That's him."
"I remember him well," said Patsy. "I fed him once."
"You poisoned him," said Billy the Music quickly.
"That's a hard word to say," replied Patsy, scraping at his chin.
Billy the Music looked very fixedly at him, and he also scraped meditatively at his bristles.
"It doesn't matter now," said he. "That was the dog. I made a place under his kennel. It was well made. If you had pulled the kennel aside you'd have seen nothing but the floor. Down there I kept the three boxes of gold, and while I'd be looking at them the dog would be lurching around wondering why he wasn't allowed to eat people—I was a bit timid with that dog myself—and it was one day while I was handling the money that the thing happened.
"There came a thump on the barn door. The dog made a noise away down in the heelof his throat and loped across; he stuck his nose against the crack at the bottom and began to sniff and scratch.
"'Strangers there,' said I. I put the money away quietly, lifted the kennel back to its place, and went over to open the door.
"There were two men standing outside, and the dog sprang for one of them as if he had been shot out of a gun.
"But that man was quick. He took the beast on the jump, caught him by the chaps, and slung him with a heave of his arm. I don't know where he slung him to; I never saw the dog alive after that, and I did think it was that jerk killed him."
"Begor!" said Patsy.
"It must have been within half an hour or so that you gave him the poisoned meat, Patsy."
"It was a lengthy mutton bone," murmured Mac Cann.
"Whatever it was!" said Billy the Music.
"The men walked in, they shut the barn door behind them and locked it, for the key was inside whenever I was.
"Well! I always had the use of my hands and my feet and my teeth, but I had no chance there, so in a few minutes I sat down on the kennel to get my breath back and to mop up the blood that was teeming out of my nose. The two men, I will say, were very quiet with it all—they waited for me.
"One of them was a middle-sized block of a man, and he looked as if his head had been rolled in tar—"
"Eh!" said Patsy loudly.
"The other one was a big, young man with a girl's face; he had blue eyes and curls of gold, and he was wearing a woman's skirt—the raggedest old——"
"Begor!" cried Patsy, and he leaped furiously to his feet.
"What's wrong with you?" said Billy the Music.
Patsy beat his fists together.
"I've been looking for that pair of playboys for a full year," he barked.
"Do you know them?" said Billy the Music, with equal excitement.
"I don't know them, but I met them, and the girl yonder met them too, the thieves!"
"They are a pair of dirty dogs," said Mary coldly.
"And when I do meet them," said Patsy savagely, "I'll kill the pair of them: I will so.
Billy the Music laughed.
"I wouldn't try killing them lads; I did try it once, but they wouldn't let me. Tell us what they did to yourself, and then I'll go on with my story, for I'm real curious about those two."
Mac Cann put his pipe into his pocket.
Said Patsy:
"There isn't very much to tell, but this is how it happened.
"About two weeks before your dog died myself and the girl were tramping up towards Dublin. We hadn't got the ass with us that time, for it was in pawn to a woman that peddled fish in the south-west of Connemara. She was keeping the ass and cart for us while we were away, and she was going to give us something for their loan at the heel of the season. She was an old rip, that one, for she sold the ass on us to one man and she sold the cart to another man, and we had the trouble of the world getting the pair of them together again—but that's no matter.
"One morning, fresh and early, we were beating along a road that comes down fromthe mountains and runs away into Donnybrook. I had just picked up a little goose that I found walking along with its nose up, and I thought maybe we could sell the creature to some person in the city who wanted a goose.
"We turned a bend in the road (it's a twisty district), and there I saw two men sitting on the grass on each side of the path. The two men were sitting with the full width of the road between them, and they were clean, stark, stone naked.
"They hadn't got as much as a shirt; they hadn't a hat; they hadn't got anything at all on them barring their skins.
"'Whoo!' said I to myself, and I caught a grip of the girl. 'We'll be taking another road,' said I, and round we sailed with the goose and all.
"But the two men came after us, and what with the goose and the girl, they caught up on us too.
"One of them was a bullet-headed thief and he did look as if he had been rolled intar, and I hope he was. The other was a dandy lad that never got his hair cut since he was a mother's boy.
"'Be off with the pair of you,' said I, 'ye indecent devils. What do ye want with honest folk and you in your pelt?'
"The bullet-headed one was bouncing round me like a rubber ball.
"'Take off your clothes, mister,' said he.
"'What!' said I.
"'Take off your clothes quick,' said he, 'or I'll kill you.'
"So, with that I jumped into the middle of the road, and I up with the goose, and I hit that chap such a welt on the head that the goose bursted. Then the lad was into me and we went round the road like thunder and lightning till the other fellow joined in, and then Mary welted into the lot of us with a stick that she had, but they didn't mind her any more than a fly. Before you could whistle, mister, they had me stripped to the buff, and before you could whistle againthey had the girl stripped, and the pair of them were going down the road as hard as ever they could pelt with our clothes under their oxters."
"Begor!" said Billy the Music.
"I tell you so," grinned Patsy.
"There was herself and myself standing in the middle of the road with nothing to cover our nakedness but a bursted goose."
"That was the queer sight," said Billy the Music looking thoughtfully at Mary.
"You keep your eyes to yourself, mister," said Mary hotly.
"What did you do then?" said Billy.
"We sat down on the side of the road for a long time until we heard footsteps and then we hid ourselves.
"I peeped over the hedge and there was a man coming along the path. He was a nice-looking man with a black bag in his hand and he was walking fast. When he came exactly opposite me Ijumped the hedge and I took the clothes off him—"
Billy the Music slapped his palm on his knee.
"You did so!"
"I did so," said Patsy.
"He was grumbling all the time, but as soon as I let him loose he started to run, and that was the last I saw of him.
"After a bit a woman came along the road, and Mary took the clothes off her. She was a quiet, poor soul, and she didn't say a word to either of us. We left her the goose and the man's black bag for payment, and then the pair of us started off, and we didn't stop running till we came to the County Kerry.
"These are the clothes I'm telling you about," said Patsy; "I have them on me this minute."
"It's a great story," said Billy the Music.
"I can tell you something further about these people," said Caeltia smiling.
"Can you so?" cried Patsy.
"I can, but the man here hasn't finished what he was telling us."
"I was forgetting him," said Mac Cann. "Put another pinch in your pipe, mister, and tell us what happened to you after that."
Billy the Music did put another pinch of tobacco into his pipe, and after drawing on it meditatively for a few minutes he snuffed it out with his thumb and put it into his pocket. Naturally he put it in upside down, so that the tobacco might drop from the pipe, for he was no longer a saving man.
"They were surely the two men that I'm telling you about," said he, "and there they were standing up in front of me while I was sneezing the blood out of my nose.
"'What do you want?' said I to themselves, and all the time I was peeping here and there to see if there wasn't a bit of a stick or a crowbar maybe lying handy.
"It was the boyo in the skirt that answered me:
"'I wanted to have a look at yourself,' said he.
"'Take your eye-full and go away, for God's sake,' said I.
"'You dirty thief!' said he to me.
"'What's that for?' said I.
"'What do you mean by getting me thrown out of heaven?' said he.
"...! Well, mister honey, that was a question to worry any man, and it worried me. I couldn't think what to say to him. 'Begor!' said I, and I sneezed out some more of my blood.
"But the lad was stamping mad.
"'If I could blot you from the light of life without doing any hurt to myself, I'd smash you this mortal minute,' said he.
"'For the love of heaven,' said I, 'tell me what I did to yourself, for I never did see you before this day, and I wish I didn't see you now.'
"The bullet-headed man was standing by all the time, and he chewing tobacco.
"'Have it out with him, Cuchulain,' said he. 'Kill him,' said he, 'and send him out among the spooks.'
"But the other man calmed down a bit, and he came over to me wagging the girl's skirts.
"'Listen!' said he, 'I'm the Seraph Cuchulain.'
"'Very good,' said I.
"'I'm your Guardian Angel,' said he.
"'Very good,' said I.
"'I'm your Higher Self,' said he, 'and every rotten business you do down here does be vibrating against me up there. You never did anything in your life that wasn't rotten. You're a miser and a thief, and you got me thrown out of heaven because of the way you loved money. You seduced me when I wasn't looking. You made a thief of me in a place where it's no fun to be a robber, and here I am wandering the dirty world on the head of your unrighteous ways. Repent, you beast,' said he, and he landed me a clout on the side of the head that rolled me from one end of the barn to the other.
"'Give him another one,' said the bullet-headedman, and he chewing strongly on his plug.
"'What have you got to do with it?' said I to him. 'You're not my Guardian Angel, God help me!'
"'How dare you,' said the bullet-headed man. 'How dare you set this honest party stealing the last threepenny bit of a poor man?' and with that he made a clout at me.
"'What threepenny bit are you talking about?' said I.
"'My own threepenny bit,' said he. 'The only one I had. The one I dropped outside the gates of hell.'
"Well, that beat me! 'I don't care what you say any longer,' said I, 'you can talk till you're blue and I won't care what you say,' and down I sat on the kennel and shed my blood.
"'You must repent of your own free will,' said Cuchulain, marching to the door.
"'And you'd better hurry up, too,' said the other fellow, 'or I'll hammer the head off you.'
"The queer thing is that I believed everyword the man said. I didn't know what he was talking about, but I did know that he was talking about something that was real although it was beyond me. And there was the way he said it too, for he spoke like a bishop, with fine, shouting words that I can't remember now, and the months gone past. I took him at his word anyhow, and on the minute I began to feel a different creature, for, mind you, a man can no more go against his Guardian Angel than he can climb a tree backwards.
"As they were going out of the barn Cuchulain turned to me:
"'I'll help you to repent,' said he, 'for I want to get back again, and this is the way I'll help you. I'll give you money, and I'll give you piles of it.'
"The two of them went off then, and I didn't venture out of the barn for half-an-hour.
"I went into the barn next day, and what do you think I saw?"
"The floor was covered with gold pieces," said Patsy.
Billy nodded:
"That's what I saw. I gathered them up and hid them under the kennel. There wasn't room for the lot of them, so I rolled the rest in a bit of a sack and covered them up with cabbages.
"The next day I went in and the floor was covered with gold pieces, and I swept them up and hid them under the cabbages too. The day after that and the next day and the day after that again it was the same story. I didn't know where to put the money. I had to leave it lying on the floor, and I hadn't as much as a dog to guard it from the robbers."
"You had not," said Patsy, "and that's the truth."
"I locked the barn; then I called up all the men; I paid them their wages, for what did I want with them any longer and I rolling in gold? I told them to get out of my sight, and I saw every man of them offthe land. Then I told my wife's brother that I didn't want him in my house any longer, and I saw him off the land. Then I argued my son out of the house, and I told my wife that she could go with him if she wanted to, and then I went back to the barn.
"But, as I told you a minute ago, I was a changed man. The gold was mounting up on me, and I didn't know what to do with it. I could have rolled in it if I wanted to, and I did roll in it, but there was no fun in that.
"This was the trouble with me—I couldn't count it; it had gone beyond me; there were piles of it; there were stacks of it; it was four feet deep all over the floor, and I could no more move it than I could move a house.
"I never wanted that much money, for no man could want it: I only wanted what I could manage with my hands; and the fear of robbers was on me to that pitch that I could neither sit nor stand nor sleep.
"Every time I opened the door the place was fuller than it was the last time, and, at last, I got to hate the barn. I just couldn't stand the look of the place, and the light squinting at me from thousands and thousands of gold corners.
"It beat me at last. One day I marched into the house, and I picked up the concertina that my son bought (I was able to play it well myself) and said I to the wife:
"'I'm off.'
"'Where are you off?'
"'I'm going into the world.'
"'What will become of the farm?'
"'You can have it yourself,' said I, and with that I stepped clean out of the house and away to the road. I didn't stop walking for two days, and I never went back from that day to this.
"I do play on the concertina before the houses, and the people give me coppers. I travel from place to place every day, and I'm as happy as a bird on a bough, for I've no worries and I worry no one."
"What did become of the money?" said Patsy.
"I'm thinking now that it might have been fairy gold, and, if it was, nobody could touch it."
"So," said Mac Cann, "that's the sort of boys they were?"
"That's the sort."
"And one of them was your own Guardian Angel!"
"He said that."
"And what was the other one?"
"I don't know, but I do think that he was a spook."
Patsy turned to Finaun:
"Tell me, mister, is that a true story now, or was the lad making it up?"
"It is true," replied Finaun.
Patsy considered for a moment.
"I wonder," said he musingly, "who is my own Guardian Angel?"
Caeltia hastily put the pipe into his pocket.
"I am," said he.
"Oh, bedad!"
Mac Cann placed his hands on his knees and laughed heartily.
"You are! and I making you drunk every second night in the little pubs!"
"You never made me drunk."
"I did not, for you've got a hard head surely, but there's a pair of us in it, mister."
He was silent again, then:
"I wonder who is the Guardian Angel of Eileen Ni Cooley? for he has his work cut out for him, I'm thinking."
"I am her Guardian Angel," said Finaun.
"Are you telling me that?"
Mac Cann stared at Finaun, and he lapsed again to reverie.
"Ah, well!" said he to Billy the Music, "it was a fine story you told us, mister, and queer deeds you were mixed up in; but I'd like to meet the men that took our clothes, I would so."
"I can tell you something more about them," Caeltia remarked.
"So you said a while back. What is it you can tell us?"
"I can tell you the beginning of all that tale."
"I'd like to hear it," said Billy the Music.
"There is just a piece I will have to make up from what I heard since we came here, but the rest I can answer for because I was there at the time."
"I remember it too," said Art to Caeltia, "and when you have told your story I'll tell another one."
"Serve out the potatoes, Mary," said Mac Cann, "and then you can go on with the story. Do you think is that ass all right, alannah?"
"He's eating the grass still, but I think he may be wanting a drink."
"He had a good drink yesterday," said her father, and he shifted to a more comfortable position.