//(//'"I,
 
 THE MIRACLE 
 
 E. TEMPLE THURSTON
 
 BOOKS BY E. TEMPLE THURSTON 
 
 THE MIRACLE 
 
 THE GREEN BOUGH 
 
 THE CITY OF BEAUTIFUL NONSENSE 
 
 THE WORLD OF WONDERFUL REALITY 
 
 ENCHANTMENT 
 
 THE FIVE-BARRED GATE 
 
 THE PASSIONATE CRIME 
 
 ACHIEVEMENT 
 
 RICHARD FURLONG 
 
 THE ANTAGONISTS 
 
 THE OPEN WINDOW 
 
 THE APPLE OF EDEN 
 
 TRAFFIC 
 
 THE REALIST 
 
 THE EVOLUTION OF KATHERINE 
 
 MIRAGE 
 
 SALLY BISHOP 
 
 THE GREATEST WISH IN THE WORLD 
 
 THE PATCHWORK PAPERS 
 
 THE GARDEN OF RESURRECTION 
 
 THE FLOWER OF GLOSTER 
 
 THIRTEEN 
 
 180 f
 
 THE MIRACLE 
 
 BY 
 
 E. TEMPLE THURSTON 
 
 AUTHOR OF "THE GREEN BOUGH," "THE 
 CITY OF BEAUTIFUL NONSENSE," ETC. 
 
 D. APPLETON AND COMPANY 
 
 NEW YORK MCMXXII
 
 COPYRIGHT, IQ22, BY 
 
 D. APPLETON AND COMPANY 
 
 p*nrrn> IN THB UNITED STATKS or AMKEICA
 
 SRLE 
 URL 
 
 PROLOGUE 
 
 f w "y HERE was a man came all the way from Conne- 
 
 t mara, wrote a poem in Gaelic about Mary Kirwan. 
 
 It has been made into stilted English and clumsily 
 
 fitted perhaps to some tune for printed cheaply on sheets of 
 
 paper, some coloured pink, some green, some blue, it is sold 
 
 as a song in the streets of Dublin, Limerick, and Cork by 
 
 hucksters trading their wares in the gutter. 
 
 Amongst the many songs, the words of which are sold 
 like this throughout Ireland, all printed on flimsy sheets of 
 coloured paper, it is not easy to find. Maybe it is out of 
 print by now. 
 
 The first verse of it, in like character to the rest, runs 
 in this fashion 
 
 "One day I'll take my feet down the hard road, the long 
 
 road, 
 When there are sweet evenings I'll come back again to 
 
 Ardnashiela Bay, 
 For there's what they would be drinking there and good 
 
 talk by the peatty fires, 
 And a pale woman, so gentle at the listening, you'd forget 
 
 what you would say." 
 
 It continues like this in many verses in praise of Mary 
 Kirwan, in one couplet describing her still more closely 
 
 "Light had its way with her eyes and times when she'd be 
 
 listening 
 Her lips would make your words the way she'd kiss them 
 
 for their thought " 
 v
 
 vi PROLOGUE 
 
 No attention is paid to the metre of the lines and it is 
 difficult to understand to what music they could be sung. 
 But as a picture of her, they have no doubt greater accuracy 
 and sharper illumination than any verses more obedient to 
 the laws of true poetry. 
 
 A "pale woman" aptly describes her when it is understood 
 that they often speak of a girl as a woman in those parts 
 of Ireland, alluding more to her attitude towards life than to 
 her age or state. At the time that this was written of her, 
 Mary Kirwan was no more than twenty-one. But to the 
 old man who wrote it, as he saw her sitting there by the 
 peat fire in James Kirwan 's kitchen, and observed her a? he 
 must have done listening to his tales, she was no fidgeting, 
 frivolous girl, but a pale woman and so gentle at the listening 
 to his stories of the world, that, upon his own admission, 
 he often forgot the thread of his narrative in watching her. 
 
 There is something of a picture, too, in those verses, of 
 the kitchen in Kirwan' s farm at Ardnashiela. He does not 
 actually say it was in the kitchen he told his stories, but any 
 knowledge of West of Ireland life must suppose it. 
 
 Without doubt he was one of those travelling men, not 
 exactly a tinker and certainly no vagabond. There are many 
 of them in that Country who cannot stay long in one place. 
 They walk the roads from one farm to another, potato dig- 
 ging, helping at the threshing, making the corn. Sometimes 
 they are to be found seated by the fire in a cottage in the 
 far West and in return for a rough bed on the floor and 
 the food of the house, lending their hand at the making of 
 the kelp. 
 
 They ask no wage for their labours and are taken in more 
 for the love of God than any real value of service. Usually 
 they are too old to lend more than a feeble hand, yet seldom 
 is a welcome denied them. For their usefulness is not only 
 on the land, but in the house. They will drag the peat, fetch
 
 PROLOGUE vii 
 
 the water from the spring, and at nights take their seat in the 
 chimney corner, turning the bellows wheel and telling their 
 tales. 
 
 Doubtless this last is the greatest service they render and 
 perhaps it is, when their tales are all told and there are none 
 left to listen, that they go. Quietly into their hand the farmer 
 slips some pieces of silver. Into a cloth sometimes an old 
 shawl they tie their insignificant belongings, pick up the 
 blackthorn stick which, during their sojourn in that place 
 has stood in a corner of the wall and, with words of parting 
 "God rest all here," or the like they set out down the road 
 they came and the green land in the gray light of evening 
 takes them into itself. They pass out of the life of that 
 house as silently and unexpectedly as one morning they came 
 into it. 
 
 Some are reserved by nature and these stay but a little 
 while in any place. But mostly they love the sound of their 
 own voices and never weary telling their stories of Oisin 
 and Deirdre, of Conchubar and Queen Maeve of the faeries. 
 And some there are that tell only tales of the villages, of those 
 who live in the mountains and by the sea, the gossip as it 
 were of Ireland, gathered from one place to another where 
 they would be going. Some again will have the gossip of 
 the world on the point of their tongues. Often are they those 
 who in their younger days have crossed the water in their 
 travels, wandering in Scotland and England, even to the big 
 towns, and taking whatever work fell to their hands. 
 
 From these, such stories are heard as mingle in an amazing 
 medley the mythology of ancient Greece and all the visions 
 of paganism the world has ever seen. Impossible it would 
 be to know how they have gathered them, inconceivable to 
 suppose how they had threaded them together. Unable fre- 
 quently to read or write, their tales will yet contain such inci- 
 dents as are reminiscent of the wanderings of Aeneas and
 
 viii PROLOGUE 
 
 his sojourn in Carthage, of Paris and Helen, Caesar and 
 Cleopatra, Dante and Beatrice, these, as kings and queens of 
 Ireland, sometimes even with common village names well 
 known to all, will figure in those stories they tell by the peat 
 fires at night, with the folk of the house gathered around 
 them and the light of the flames lighting up the listening faces 
 as the bellows wheel is turned. 
 
 IVithout doubt it was one of these travelling men, work- 
 ing a season, long or short, at Kirwan's farm in Ardnashiela, 
 who must have written this poem about Mary, the daughter 
 of the house. 
 
 Occasionally in the verses there are thirteen in all such 
 a phrase as 
 
 " the lonesome, slipping hours, 
 When the last hand shuts the door against the fall of night" 
 
 shows with some felicity the picture of the time of day in 
 which his tales were told. So also does another couplet give 
 a sight of him telling them. 
 
 "And beyond the tale I would be telling and the sharp note 
 
 of the wheel 
 I could hear the sea come always round the bent line of the 
 
 strand." 
 
 And not of him only is that picture, but also, to those who 
 know the West of Ireland, of that farmhouse of James Kir- 
 wan's, with its whitewashed walls and its quadrangle of 
 farmyard in the square of linneys and cowsheds that stood 
 nearly a mile from Ardnashiela within the elbow of the bay. 
 All the South-West storms of the Atlantic blow upon it as it 
 stands there alone, without a tree to shelter it, two fields in 
 from the shore.
 
 PROLOGUE ix 
 
 On stormy nights, this old song-maker may well have heard 
 the sea, not only beyond but above the sound of his own 
 voice, though probably he would be the last to admit it. 
 
 Kirwan's is a lonely place, even in the best of summer- 
 time. The moonlight on clear nights, shining a liquid violet 
 on its white walls, seems to isolate rather than draw it nearer 
 to the cluster of village roofs. Only in the daytime, with 
 the sun upon it and the cattle moving in the yard, the door 
 thrown open and the coming and going of the men, does it 
 lose any of that aloofness which seems at every other season 
 of the year and time of day to set it apart from human 
 companionship. 
 
 He must have been glad, that old travelling man, of a 
 listener to his tales such as Mary Kirwan. Had he heard 
 her story, perhaps he would have immortalised that too in a 
 rigmarole of verses. But evidently, notwithstanding his 
 promise to himself, he never returned to Ardnashicla or 
 certainly, having written one song about her, just of herself, 
 he would have made another in record of all that happened 
 to her. 
 
 As it is, there is only this one line in the verses which sug- 
 gests, more than his picture of her, that fate of Mary Kirwan 
 they know of in Ardnashiela. 
 
 ' 'Twas herself would go beyond the world to walk the ways 
 of life." 
 
 That line needs no context to show the almost emotional 
 observation of him who wrote it. Seeing that he, as little 
 as any, could have known the fate of her, it is an extraordi- 
 nary vision, especially in one so lost in the self-interest of his 
 own stories, as this old wanderer must have been. 
 
 For this indeed is the key-note of the life and story of 
 Mary Kirwan, the pale woman, with her white face, her
 
 x PROLOGUE 
 
 brown hair the colour of loam, though not so red as some, 
 and those grey eyes she had, the grey of shore pebbles where 
 the water washes them. 
 
 "Light had its way with her eyes " he says. She was 
 only a farmer's daughter, with but little of the mentality that 
 education brings with it, but it was true that light did have 
 its way with her eyes. And seen, as he must most often have 
 seen them, in the deep orange light of a peat fire, doubtless 
 they had such depths as gave him the real inspiration of 
 that line 
 
 " 'Twas herself would go beyond the world to walk the ways 
 of life."
 
 PART I
 
 THE MIRACLE 
 
 THERE are nigh three miles to walk from Ardna- 
 shiela going by the first bend of the bay, across the 
 rocks at Curragh and around the second curve of 
 sandy beach to where, at Killanardrish, the Parish Priest's 
 house shelters in the trees. In that protected corner they 
 stand almost down to the shore's edge. 
 
 Joe Fennel, the fisherman, had walked those three miles 
 briskly. With the lurching gait that characterises the move- 
 ments of those accustomed to the cradling motion of the 
 sea, he had little appearance of speed. But it was a long 
 stride he took, not unlike the action of the heavy sweeps he 
 and his men rowed with in his boat. Determination had set 
 his pace and was still evident in his movements as he turned 
 away from the strand where it breaks into the sudden 
 formation of deep red sandstone rock, rising in high cliffs 
 towards Helvic Head. 
 
 Without pause or hesitation, he took the path that leads 
 from that corner of Ardnashiela Bay to a narrow lane 
 connecting ultimately with the Doonvarna road. Only when 
 he reached the iron gate in the lane opening onto the drive 
 up to Killanardrish did the urging purpose that was in him 
 appear to relax its hold upon his mind. As though recording 
 an impetus that had spent itself, his hand faltered as he 
 raised it to the latch of the gate; his eyes were filled with a 
 new consideration and his brows creased and straightened 
 
 3
 
 4 THE MIRACLE 
 
 as one determination gave place to another in his thoughts. 
 
 He opened the gate and swung it wide on its iron hinges 
 in the loose stone pillar, but it was some moments before 
 he passed through. At last, not so much from a final convic- 
 tion but as though, having come so far it were a folly to turn 
 back, he entered upon the drive and made his way slowly 
 up to the house. 
 
 It was a large square building, weather-slated, grey and 
 repellent. Had he been able to see it from the gate into 
 the drive, its uninviting aspect might have supplied just that 
 slight impression needed to turn his mind from its purpose 
 and send him back to Ardnashiela with his errand unaccom- 
 plished. A cluster of rhododendrons grew in a high shield 
 about it. The upper windows were scarcely visible from the 
 approach. Behind the screen of rhododendrons it conveyed 
 the deceptive suggestion of comfort and seclusion. But 
 once the corner of these was turned and the gaunt, grey 
 building, unrelieved by any kindly creeper, met the eye, 
 staring with its windows some of them blind across to 
 the open sea, all preconceived impressions of homeliness or 
 comfort were flung away. It was bleak and drear the very 
 picture of desolation. 
 
 Joe Fennel was not aware of any impression from his 
 surroundings as he passed through the thicket of rhododen- 
 drons and came in full view of the house. Stopping and 
 staring at the building another fifty yards or so before him, 
 he just uttered in the sound of his breath the thought that 
 leapt upon him. 
 
 "In the name of the Almighty God," he muttered, "why 
 did I come at all !" 
 
 Even at that last moment, he would have turned and gone 
 back to Ardnashiela had not a window on the ground floor 
 been opened and a duster shaken out into the air. He turned 
 at the sound, when a sharp voice from within the ill-lighted
 
 THE MIRACLE 5 
 
 room informed him that if he wanted anything there was no 
 call for him to be loitering there. 
 
 "Let ye come to the door," called the voice, with pene- 
 trating authority. The snap of the shaken duster, the sharp 
 report of the voice, the swift clatter of the window as it was 
 closed, these all fettered the fisherman's thoughts of retreat. 
 He crossed the wide sweep of mossed and weedy gravel to 
 the hall door like a prisoner to the summons of the law. 
 There, on the wide doorstep, already taking off his soft black 
 hat and twisting its broad brim in his hands, he waited until 
 the door was opened. In a moment or two the cavernous 
 hall became a dark, damp and musty-smelling background 
 to the rigid figure of Father Roche's housekeeper. 
 
 The name of Mrs. Sheehan was known in Ardnashiela and 
 as far as Doonvarna. Joe Fennel had heard it. He stood 
 before her with some misgiving, a simple man, frightened 
 of women, as some natures are frightened of anything 
 feline. Something about the sex, almost deeper than its 
 inscrutability, made him at all times eager to avoid it. His 
 eyes did not challenge, but fell precipitately before those of 
 Mrs. Sheehan, wherein there was no lustre, no generous 
 inward light. They were sharp, cruel, hard as jet, like a 
 hen's upon her nest. 
 
 In one glance, sweeping over Joe Fennel from head to 
 foot, she had weighed him in the scale of her own assessment 
 and was demanding what he wanted in tones of her own 
 valuation. A fisherman from Ardnashiela could want little 
 of importance with the Parish Priest. 
 
 "I want to speak with himself." 
 
 It was all he would give her except his name. 
 
 Forced upon her duty, she left him there, still twisting 
 his hat and, sharply closing the door, she went to Father 
 Roche's room. 
 
 "There's a man bi the name of Fennel," said she, "turn-
 
 6 THE MIRACLE 
 
 in' his hat at the door and wantin' to speak with yeerself." 
 
 The whole tone of the announcement was intended to 
 convey to him it would be a wasting of his time if he saw 
 the man. She guarded him closely. In that gaunt, isolated 
 dwelling he was her property. Outside it she put forth no 
 claim. But she knew the hot pangs of an arid jealousy when 
 any came to the door of the house at Killanardrish, claiming 
 as undeniable a right as her own to see him. He was sub- 
 limely unaware of this. In all the long period of her service, 
 which now amounted to sixteen years, he had never shown 
 recognition of the fact that she was a human being. It is 
 open to conjecture as to whether he ever thought of her as 
 such. It is doubtful whether she would have appreciated 
 it had he done so. 
 
 He looked up from the office of his Breviary. Her ap- 
 pearance at the door was scarcely an interruption. He was 
 reading it with automatic exactitude, saying every word aloud 
 in his mind as was his wont, yet in their well-known familiar- 
 ity hearing none. 
 
 "Bring him in here," he said, "in three minutes. And 
 tell him to wipe his boots." 
 
 In less than three minutes his office was finished. He 
 shut the book and sat blinking his pale, grey eyes under their 
 thick, white lashes, gazing through the window over the 
 familiar fields sloping down to the belt of trees that hid the 
 shore. 
 
 In that same chair, looking out of that' window across the 
 fields that never altered, to the sea that was different every 
 hour, the old man had sat and read his Breviary at that 
 hour every day for twenty-three years. It would have 
 shocked him considerably by this time had any one told him 
 he would not so continue to read it to the end of his days. 
 
 In the loneliness and isolation of his life in Killanardrish, 
 habit had become paramount. He could not have relinquished
 
 THE MIRACLE 7 
 
 that vision of the sea, yet long had lost all consciousness of 
 its beauty. It was the same to him in its richest blue as in 
 its clouded green when the wave crests snarled and showed 
 their teeth, and, breaking across the bay at Ardnashiela head, 
 rose grey, like ghosts, and flung their arms and vanished. 
 
 He was past a realisation of the varieties of nature. If 
 the belt of trees, bare and black all through the winter, 
 one Spring broke earlier into leaf, he did not notice it. Be- 
 yond his duties, he was a live man, dead in the grey, weather- 
 slated house, his body guarded by an old woman whose emo- 
 tions were like milk, dried to powder and thickening in her 
 blood. Yet she kept him fiercely to herself, and as fiercely 
 he would have held to his habits of life had any one threat- 
 ened to take them from him. 
 
 Once the Bishop had intimated that he might be moved. 
 
 "If ye move me from this place," said he, "ye may as well 
 dig a hole in the ground and have done with it." And, after 
 spending one day in his company in that remote house at 
 Killanardrish, the Bishop had left him to his solitude, to his 
 sloping fields and his belt of wind-swept trees and the wide 
 bay spreading out into the Atlantic. Habit had embalmed 
 him. If the wrappings had been taken from off the custom 
 of his life and the unexpected air of change had penetrated 
 the substance of his being, he would have fallen apart in dust. 
 
 To this old man, past all human capacity of sympathetic 
 understanding, Joe Fennel, the fisherman, came with the 
 secret he would not have spoken to another soul in the whole 
 country. The eagerness of his confidence had maintained 
 itself without abate for those three miles along the strand 
 from Ardnashiela, but, from the moment of approaching the 
 gate on to the drive, it had begun to leak away. By the time 
 he was standing in the big, high-ceilinged room, his boots 
 wiped to the sharp order of Mrs. Sheehan, his eyes bewil- 
 dered by the vastness of that apartment in which the old
 
 THE MIRACLE 
 
 priest seemed awesome in his loneliness, all feeling of confi- 
 dence had drained out of him. 
 
 Had he been a man of quick thought and happy ingenuity, 
 he would have called up some ready tale and kept his secret 
 close. There were many who came over from Ardnashiela 
 with complaints and gossipings. To the frosted resentment 
 of Mrs. Sheehan, unconcealed from any of them, Father 
 Roche saw them all. With three scattered villages in his 
 parish, he had the broad sense of his duties. But Joe Fennel 
 had none of the shrewd, inventive qualities of his race. 
 When the old priest looked up after the door had closed 
 behind Mrs. Sheehan, the fisherman stood in silence where 
 she had left him, still twisting the rim of the soft, black hat 
 in his hands and shifting the weight of his body from one leg 
 to another, as though to discover an easy attitude to support 
 the discomfort of his mind. 
 
 "Well?" said the Parish Priest. "Have ye come three 
 .miles from Ardnashiela to be standin' there twistin' yeer hat ?" 
 
 "I have not." 
 
 "What is it ye come for?" 
 
 " 'Twas to speak to yeerself I came." 
 
 "Well, glory be, man ! Here ye are standin' in the room 
 with me. If 'tis more comfortable ye'd be, sittin', there's 
 a chair on yeer left and a chair behind ye. I never knew 
 there were so many chairs in the room till I look at ye 
 standin' there." 
 
 "I'll remain as I am," said Fennel, as though by taking 
 a chair, he feared he should pledge himself to that which as 
 yet he felt might quite possibly never be said. 
 
 Father Roche blinked his eyes at him. He was accustomed 
 to this behavior. In and out of the confessional he met 
 it at every turn of his duties, and found that the less ready 
 of speech they were who came, albeit voluntarily, to confide 
 in him, the more incumbent it was upon him to hear them
 
 THE MIRACLE 9 
 
 out. Those who flung themselves headlong in a torrent of 
 words, he often arrested with a gesture before they had had 
 time to become immersed. 
 
 Looking at Joe Fennel, whom he knew vaguely as one 
 of his Ardnashiela people, recognizing in the blue knitted 
 jersey underneath the short coat, the occupation he followed, 
 knowing by constant contact with them on that wild coast 
 the simple-mindedness of those who answer the calling of the 
 sea and sensing that the man had something resting heavily 
 upon his mind, Father Roche curbed his impatience a moment 
 longer and made one more effort to extract his confidence. 
 
 "Ye're an egreegious fool," said he, "if ye'd come all this 
 way to be tellin' me what's on yeer mind and then not have 
 the wits to be sayin' it." 
 
 With a wrench at his hat, Fennel sat down on the chair 
 behind him. 
 
 "I'll tell ye so," said he, and gathered all the forces in 
 himself for his confession.
 
 II 
 
 "TV >fl~E lobster pots are after being taken on me." 
 V/ 1 This simple statement of fact appeared to 
 
 *--*- need no more than mere directness for its utter- 
 ance, yet Fennel lowered his voice and spoke upon his breath 
 as though others than the priest might hear him. 
 
 "It seems to me," said Father Roche slowly, "there's some 
 few of ye in Ardnashiela and up in the hills and about, have 
 a way of thinkin' this house is a court of Petty Sessions and 
 meself the R.M. and the old woman outside a sergeant of the 
 police or, maybe, a clerk of the court itself. If 'tis stealin' 
 yeer lobster pots they are, 'tis nine miles and not three ye'd 
 better be goin' to the constabulary in Doonvarna. Arn't 
 they eatin' their hearts out playin' cards and fishin' the time 
 they'd be waitin' for a case would give them a chance to 
 earn their pay." 
 
 Fennel moved uncomfortably. He had never sat upon a 
 chair with springs in the seat of it before. After the hard 
 chair in his cottage at Ardnashiela, and the rough board for 
 a seat in his boat, which often the night through would be 
 the only rest he had, this luxury of comfort had little 
 substance in it to support the discomfort of his thoughts. 
 
 ' 'Tis not stolen they were, but taken," said he, and watched 
 the priest's face and twisted his hat again and wished more 
 fervently than ever he had never come out to Killanardrish. 
 
 "Taken?" 
 
 He bit the word short and said no more. 
 
 10
 
 THE MIRACLE 11 
 
 The fisherman nodded his head, waiting uneasily for 
 the purport of his information to reach the old man's mind, 
 tracing the passage of it with unwonted observation quick- 
 ened by fear of laughter. 
 
 Father Roche locked his eyebrows together with a heavy 
 frown. 
 
 "If 'tis the way ye're comin' here," he said deliberately, 
 "an' ye thinkin' I'm one of those have lost their wits believin' 
 in mad tales of faeries and the like, 'tis three miles ye've 
 walked for nothing more than the good of yeer health. 
 What d'ye mean taken man? They're gone, are they?" 
 
 "They are." 
 
 "An' 'tis the sea has them is it ? Or one of those French 
 trawlers with their thievin* nets?" 
 
 "They're taken, I'm sayin'," Fennel persisted, obstinate, 
 unyielding, and with so deep a conviction as to make the priest 
 realise the futility of argument. Laughter, truly, was left 
 him. Watching the earnest expression on the fisherman's 
 face, he hesitated before he used it. It would have been 
 effective with many another. An instinct, untranslated into 
 conscious perception, gave him doubt as to whether it would 
 be effective here. Had it been fear that had brought the 
 fisherman there to Killanardrish, laughter was an excellent 
 antidote for fear. Whenever it came to his notice, smiting 
 its victim on dark, mountain roads, leaping out in bleak 
 farms, echoing in sounds of horses' hoofs, he laughed with- 
 out mercy, a discordant note of laughter. None cared to 
 hear it, and those who did, never confessed a belief in the 
 "gentry" to him again. He had come to believe that with 
 that laughter he was driving ignorance and superstition out 
 of his parish. He had so much as boasted of it to the Bishop. 
 Yet here, scrutinizing the steady gaze of Joe Fennel, the 
 fearless eye with its glitter of simple faith, he debated whether 
 it were wise to use it.
 
 12 THE MIRACLE 
 
 "What is it ye want ?" he asked. "Why have ye come out 
 here to me in the name of God? 'Tisn't because a priest 
 has his orders taken, he can be doin' tricks would beat the 
 cuteness of the constabulary in Doonvarna. Shure, I can't 
 help ye, man! If yeer pots are gone they're gone! Let 
 ye be makin' new ones and that's the best advice I can be 
 givin' ye. Was it the whole of them was gone in one night 
 or what was it?" 
 
 The fisherman gripped his hat and told his story of a 
 night on the sea washed pale with moonlight, when himself 
 and another of his men, spinning for mackerel, had seen a 
 cluster of black birds as big as solan geese, flying round about 
 the boat. They mewed like cats, he said, and the sound of 
 the wind in their wings as they beat about in circles was 
 the sound of voices and they all singing together with lips 
 closed, like a host of people would be humming or moaning 
 or keening, maybe, for the dead. 
 
 Father Roche sat and listened, bushing his white eyebrows 
 like grass tufts haired with frost, lacing his fingers and unlac- 
 ing them, and every few moments taking a pinch of snuff 
 from a black, horn box he kept in his waistcoat pocket, rat- 
 tling it in his nostrils and automatically brushing away the 
 fine stream of dust that settled on the lapel of his coat. 
 
 Laughter, he knew, would be of no service here. It was 
 not eagerly the story was being told him. He detected no 
 sense of a mind weighted with self-importance, anxious to 
 impress the wonder of its experiences. Here was a man in 
 a deep earnestness of faith, wrestling with the unknown in 
 the wilderness. The loss of the lobster pots was not his 
 complaint. The cluster of black birds with the moaning 
 sound of the wind in their wings was not wholly his story. 
 Sitting there on that chair in the priest's high-ceilinged 
 room, the lumps of the knuckles on his hands rising and 
 working like knots of cord as he twisted his hat, his blue
 
 THE MIRACLE la 
 
 eyes deepened in their blue with the weather tan of his skin, 
 his mouth, clean-shaven, opened sometimes like a child's in 
 wonder and at times closed tight with the mere strength 
 of man in him that saw no fear in a stormy sea or any of the 
 visible terrors of life, he was more than just a fisherman 
 telling a superstitious tale of hardship. 
 
 Some sense of this kept the laughter from the priest's lips. 
 He could no more have laughed here, than he would have 
 laughed at a heathen in obeisance before his idols of wood 
 and stone. What could laughter do but scatter fear? And 
 that was the only treatment he knew. He sat back in his 
 chair and stared at Fennel. 
 
 "What happened the birds?" he asked. The suggestion 
 that they might be cormorants, magnified in that moonlight 
 in the mind of a superstitious fisherman, was worth no more 
 than instant dismissal. He must know too well the sight of 
 cormorants to be deluded like that. Some strange birds he 
 had seen. The priest felt no doubt of that; yet it was not 
 that which seemed to matter so much as the reaching out 
 of the man's mind to touch the unknown meaning he at- 
 tached to them. 
 
 "What happened the birds?" he repeated. 
 
 Fennel laid his hat down on the ground between his feet. 
 
 "They cruishted on the water," said he, "in a black mass." 
 
 "Well?" 
 
 "Shure, we pulled up the lines an' we rowin' over to the 
 place to see what birds they were." 
 
 "What were they?" 
 
 "There were no birds at all." 
 
 He raised his head and said it squarely. There was the 
 worst of it and in the sureness of his mind, the worst of it 
 was the truth. He could of course make new lobster pots. 
 Had he not learnt how to twist sally stems into baskets and 
 pots when he was a child, sitting on the sea wall? It wa
 
 14 THE MIRACLE 
 
 not new lobster pots he wanted, or any recompense for the 
 catch he had lost. What power was there to face and defeat 
 this unknown and unknowable beyond which, if not in sus- 
 pense around the lives of every one, he had reason to know 
 well was surely about his own ? This was his quest to Killan- 
 ardrish. The Holy Church had that power the power of 
 blessing and cursing. In some way of faith, like a child to 
 hide its head in its mother's lap, he had come out those three 
 miles for the priest to protect him. 
 
 "There were no birds," he repeated. "There was the water 
 lickin' the boat, and the moonlight quiverin' on it an' it still 
 and empty like water ye'd be takin' up in the cup of yeer 
 hands." 
 
 Father Roche rose from his chair and walked to the 
 window, looking down the fields to the sea. For a few mo- 
 ments, without a thought in his mind, he watched a storm, 
 as countless times he had seen it, gathering up out of the 
 limitlessness of the Atlantic. 
 
 "What's that got to do with yeer lobster pots?" he asked 
 presently without turning. 
 
 "They were in that place," said Fennel, "and the next 
 mornin' when we pulled out round the third head to be 
 gatherin' them, they were gone." 
 
 "Mightn't they have drifted?" 
 
 "They had not. Weren't the corks there floatin' on the 
 water?" 
 
 "Then one of those French trawlers had them." 
 
 "There's been no trawlers on this coast these three weeks." 
 
 Father Roche came back to where Fennel was sitting. 
 The fisherman rose to his feet and the two men stood looking 
 at each other. 
 
 "I've a curate is in Ardnashiela," said the priest. "Why 
 didn't ye go to Father Costello to be tellin' him yeer tale? 
 Bi all accounts he has an ear to be listenin' to the mad
 
 THE MIRACLE 15 
 
 fancies of folk in these parts. "Tis a softer heart he has 
 than meself. Why didn't ye go to him?" 
 
 The fisherman gave the honest and simple reason that had 
 driven him to Father Roche's confidence. It was the power 
 of the Church he came to, he said. And was not the Parish 
 Priest out at Killanardrish nearer the head of it then his 
 curate in Ardnashiela? Had the Bishop been as near as ten 
 miles, would he not have gone to him? 
 
 A smile that lent him a moment's understanding twitched 
 the corner of Father Roche's lips. 
 
 "Ye're after tryin' to make me believe," said he, "there 
 are things outside the world we don't know the meaning 
 of. Ye might as well try and make me believe if I put me 
 hands down on the floor and threw up me legs I could stand 
 on me head. I couldn't do it. And I'll believe nothing but 
 what the Holy Church teaches me to believe. And that's 
 all I'm here for. To teach ye the same. 'Tis not believin' 
 in strange things'll help ye in this world. Let ye go back 
 to Ardnashiela and think of the miracle of our Lord's birth 
 and death and resurrection and that'll be enough to occupy 
 yeer mind the time ye're making a set of bran new pots 
 will catch half the lobsters in the bay." 
 
 It was the soundest wisdom he could offer. It was the 
 only wisdom he knew the habitual wisdom of his life. 
 In his youth he had never questioned it, and every year 
 added to the improbability that he ever would. He had indeed 
 grown to resent those events in life which troubled his wisdom 
 and continued to suggest to his mind that all meaning might 
 possibly not be encompassed in the miracles of the New 
 Testament. 
 
 To reassure Fennel's mind no less than to soothe his own, 
 he laid his hand in a fatherly fashion on the fisherman's 
 shoulder.
 
 16 THE MIRACLE 
 
 "Let ye go back to Ardnashiela," said he, "there's a 
 storm is comin' up will have ye a drowned man before ye 
 get yeer head under yeer roof." 
 
 "Will ye come and say a btessin' over me new pots when 
 I have 'em made?" 
 
 "I will not." 
 
 "What'll be the good of me puttin' em out so and they 
 taken on me?" 
 
 Father Roche threw up his hands and brought them down 
 with a clatter against the skirt of his coat. 
 
 "I dunno what's come to some of ye in these parts!" he 
 exclaimed. "Isn't it enough for ye to be believin' the mir- 
 acles of the Almighty God! Shure, there's James Kirwan 
 at me always to be sprinklin' the corners of his fields with 
 the Holy Water, and wouldn't I be admittin' the pow- 
 ers of darkness and faeries and God knows what if I did 
 that!" 
 
 Fennel stooped and picked up his hat and without another 
 word he went to the door. As he opened it, he turned 
 round. 
 
 "If ye weren't an old man, Father," said he, "I'd take 
 ye out the length of one night in me boat the time ye'd be 
 comin' to find there was strange power in the darkness and 
 a world of things ye wouldn't know or see or hear with no 
 more'n a wisp of the air between ye." 
 
 In a long pause they looked at each other and then, 
 before the priest could answer to shatter the silence with 
 common sense and rhetoric, Fennel had passed out of the 
 room and closed the door behind him. 
 
 The old man stood for a while looking at the closed door 
 before he went back to his chair by the window. There he 
 sat, with his hands met and locked on his snuff-stained 
 waistcoat. He blinked his eyes under their white lashes,
 
 THE MIRACLE 17 
 
 watching the approaching storm heaping up out of the South 
 West as he had so often seen it before, and accepted its 
 coming as surely and unthinkingly as he accepted the Immac- 
 ulate Conception of the Virgin Mary.
 
 m 
 
 FENNEL found his way to the door in the cavernous 
 hall, drawing his breath with a deeper freedom once 
 he had opened it and passed out into the daylight. 
 In that house with its fastened windows, its curtains and 
 closed doors, the very presence of air and light seemed to 
 have been forbidden. His senses had not been alive to this. 
 He had not been conscious of the musty odours that clung 
 heavily with the pervading damp to every carpet and curtain 
 and even to the wall-papers themselves in Father Roche's 
 house at Killanardrish. Such perceptions as he had were 
 not tuned to subtleties like these. In that interview with 
 the Parish Priest he had felt only the presence of the irre- 
 vocable barrier between the ritual of the Church and this 
 enveloping belief in a world beyond that wisp of the air, 
 as he had described it which surrounded him. 
 
 It was only when the outer air was again on his face 
 and the salt sting of it once more in his lungs, that he knew 
 in a dull consciousness how oppressing that barrier had been. 
 Believing surely the power of a priest of God could defend 
 and protect him with a greater magic than any in that other 
 world about him, he had come out there to Killanardrish with 
 a simple faith in which there was no questioning. All he 
 knew now was that it had failed him. It might have ex- 
 plained. But it had explained nothing. With its great wis- 
 dom and learning it might have protected him from the 
 maliciousness of that power he felt had chosen him for its 
 sport. It had even refused him this. 
 
 He walked across the unweeded gravel to the open way 
 
 18
 
 THE MIRACLE 19 
 
 through the thicket of rhododendrons, unconscious of the 
 sharp eyes of Mrs. Sheehan watching him from the lower 
 windows. Down the whole length of the drive to the iron 
 gate in the loose stone wall and out into the boreen he 
 passed with his lurching stride, lost in his mind as a dog is 
 lost in the streets. He was wandering aimlessly from one 
 incomplete and inarticulate thought to another. The priest 
 would not put a blessing on his lobster pots. Then of what 
 use was his fishing to him with the spell that was set against 
 him? To himself he was like one whom Fate has singled 
 out for the play of her power over the lives and ways of 
 man. Yet of Fate he knew nothing beyond the characteristic 
 expression of the people in those parts, "It'll all be the same 
 in a hundred years." If that was Fate, he knew it, but had 
 no other term for it than this. 
 
 But of the strange and little people, inhabiting that prox- 
 imitous world beyond the thin veil of time and space, he 
 knew all they all knew in those wild parts of the land. He 
 knew their malice, their mischief and those good services 
 they had been known to do. But how could they be pleased ? 
 And what angered them? Only the priest with his Holy 
 Water, with the blessing or the curse he had could help 
 him. And if the Father would not protect him against their 
 molesting will, what could he do? There was nothing to be 
 done. If they had singled him out, then, like many another 
 he had known of, they would have the sport of their ways 
 with him as they wished. 
 
 Down the lane to the shore where the beaten oaks and 
 hawthorns hid the light, he walked with himself in an 
 impenetrable darkness. It was not until by the footpath 
 through the trees he came out on to the shore and, beyond the 
 sand of the bay and the jagged green line of threatening sea, 
 he saw the storm gathering in its welter of inky clouds, 
 that he found the return of possession in himself.
 
 20 THE MIRACLE 
 
 Here was a power he knew and felt no need of the hand 
 of God to wrestle with. The very sight of the heaping 
 clouds braced a conscious courage in him. The rising wind 
 struck saltly on his teeth as his lips parted. That fore- 
 boding of the storm, which to so many carries with it a sense 
 of impending disaster, lifted the spirit to an exhaltation in 
 him. He turned towards Ardnashiela, knowing well the 
 Parish Priest had spoken with no exaggeration when he had 
 said he would be a drowned man before he could get his 
 head beneath his roof. 
 
 He had passed the sharp jetty of rocks at Curragh, where 
 a scatter of cottages gives that desolate place the dignity 
 of a name, before the first, leaping flash of lightning ripped 
 up the belly of the clouds and forked into the sea. Almost 
 like a song in his ears the thunder spoke out after it. This 
 was music of a world he knew, less terrible to him than the 
 music of the wind he had heard that night in the wings of the 
 circling birds. 
 
 He lifted his head as he listened to it rolling between the 
 headlands. Wind and the sweeps of spray across his face 
 were more real than thoughts. All the time he had been 
 talking to the priest, it was a mere passing of dull sensations 
 he had had, not so much as born into any form of thought. 
 Sensation was dull in him no longer now. There was a 
 wind to lean against and thunder that sounded less confusing 
 than words in his ears. Above his head the shrieking gulls 
 with toiling wings were climbing the hills of the gale to 
 turn upon the summit and scatter back like wisps of sea 
 foam blown across the land. Thickened to muddy green 
 with the sand they churned, the waves came flinging their 
 scum up the shore, grinding the pebbles and leaving the 
 brown sea-weed in dank masses, a dark line along the strand. 
 
 In all that two-miled stretch of sandy beach, his was the 
 only human figure to be seen, yet there was less loneliness
 
 THE MIRACLE 21 
 
 in his soul than when he was standing in the company of 
 Father Roche in that room at Killanardrish. 
 
 It was as he neared James Kirwan's farm, the only 
 habitation between Curragh and Ardnashiela, that the first 
 rain fell, splashes that buried in the sand and hit his face 
 and dropped with a loud noise upon his hat. 
 
 With a swift calculation, he measured the mile and more 
 it was to Ardnashiela, creeping in to the cliff side where the 
 strand broke into the sandstone rock as upon the further 
 side of the bay. With a quick eye he plumbed the depth of 
 rain to come out of the clouds heaped up in leaden masses 
 to the horizon's edge. 
 
 " 'Tis a drowned man I'd be entirely," he said aloud and 
 turned with his thought to the broken, loose stone wall 
 James Kirwan built about his field, a feeble protest against 
 the ever-increasing hunger of the sea. 
 
 In the linneys and sheds that formed the square of the 
 farmyard before the long, thatched, one-storeyed house, he 
 would find a place for shelter. There was no wish in him, 
 a shy and timid man, to be going into the house itself, 
 where maybe there would be company, and it was only the 
 farmer, James Kirwan, he had slight acquaintance with. 
 
 The gate into the yard cried a rusty tune as he opened 
 it. At any time they might have heard that in the house, 
 but the rain now was sheeting upon the thatch in a roar of 
 water and every moment the lightning rushed down the 
 black fields of the sky with the thunder leaping an instant 
 after, shaking the ground with the noise of it. 
 
 A cobbled path in front of the house, passing the windows 
 and the door, led to a shed where they cut the chafiV It 
 communicated in a procession of doors through stables 
 around the whole range of buildings, enclosing the accumula- 
 tion of mire in the farmyard. He could have chosen that 
 way and saved his feet from the muck of the yard, but they
 
 22 THE MIRACLE 
 
 would have seen him passing the windows. Instead he 
 walked through the heavy manure, with the brown liquid 
 sucking around his boots, till he came to the first door in one 
 of the sheds. He opened it and went in. 
 
 It was a cow-shed with three beasts tettered, nibbling the 
 loose hay in their troughs and fretting for the meal due to 
 them at the approach of the milking hour. He closed the 
 door and stood shaking the water off his hat, brushing it too 
 from his coat with a distaste for the wetness of rain. 
 
 Five empty stalls there were. It was a long shed. James 
 Kir wan could supply such demand as there was in Ardna- 
 shiela, and, with three cows only, keep enough for their needs 
 in the house. In two of the empty stalls, loose hay was 
 thrown ready for the cows' feeding. Fennel sat down on a 
 truss of it cut solid from the stack and listened to the rain 
 and the rush of the rivers it made in the narrow gutters, in- 
 capable of holding that sudden volume of water, spilling it in 
 loud streams into the yard outside. 
 
 With the walls of the building about him, the thoughts 
 of his errand to Killanardrish, of what the priest had said 
 and the waste of his walking, came back in a slow current 
 to his mind. With no clear knowledge of what it meant 
 or how now, with the spell that was against him, he was 
 to turn his face out to the sea again for his fishing, he sat 
 there dwelling upon the words of Father Roche and the 
 things that had happened him. 
 
 As he sat there, the soft, sweet scent of the cows crept 
 in with his breath and lingered in his nostrils and he felt 
 it mattered little what way he was treated by the world, 
 if there were kindness only coming to him that would help 
 him to be bearing the sorrows of life. For it seemed he 
 knew then, as he had never known before, that he was a 
 lonely man in his cottage on the cliff in Ardnashiela and 
 there was little use in the success of his fishing and the
 
 THE MIRACLE 23 
 
 money he had saved if in the end he was to be put away in 
 death below the grass in the graveyard on the top of the hill. 
 
 If there were melancholy in these thoughts, there was a 
 certain pleasure too he took in their sadness and it was 
 not the pleasure of pity for his loneliness, because with his 
 timidity he had always sought to be alone. More it was he 
 felt that if life could have so much sorrow in it, there must 
 somewhere be as great joy and if it were never his lot to 
 find it, still it was there. As he breathed in the air, sweetened 
 in that place with the scent of hay and the breath of the 
 cows, a kindness of life, it seemed, was not far from him 
 then. Wherever it was, could he hold it, it would not be 
 mischief or malice the faeries would be putting upon him, 
 but a good heart for his fishing and a peace when death 
 came for him to be lying down under the grass. 
 
 It was the sound of a door being swung on uneven 
 hinges and footsteps at the far end of the shed that startled 
 him out of the wandering of his mind and brought him, stand- 
 ing softly to his feet, to see who it was. 
 
 A girl had come with a bucket and stood to milk the 
 cows. Slipping her body in between their heavy carcasses to 
 give them their evening meal, she was half hidden at first. 
 He stood in silence watching her. Presently she emerged. 
 Completely unaware of his presence there at the further end 
 of the shed, she sat down on the stool, leaning her cheek 
 against the first submissive beast, and began her work. 
 
 Between the hammer blows of thunder, he stood listening 
 to the squirting of the milk into the bottom of the pail, a 
 muted note to mingle with the hiss of rain upon the thatch. 
 It had a sweet sound and of the same kindness that had 
 come into his thoughts. 
 
 With the tilted bucket gripped between her knees, he 
 could see only the lower part of her body beneath the belly 
 of the cow. A small black dog of uncertain breed, small as
 
 24 THE MIRACLE 
 
 a large terrier but with the head and long coat of a sheep 
 dog, was lying by the side of her. It had the contented air 
 of being conscious of her companionship and lay quite still. 
 Occasionally it would raise an eye as though the sight of her 
 were a satisfaction. With a fascination that had no curiosity 
 for herself, Fennel stood there, silent and motionless, watch- 
 ing the rhythmic play of her hands and the twin streams of 
 milk they guided dexterously into the pail. 
 
 Sense of time passed away from him. The storm crossed 
 over their heads, travelling inland. He did not hear the 
 sound of the thunder retreating into the distance. Only the 
 long spurts of milk grew a clearer note and the clasping and 
 unclasping motion of her hands fixed his eyes the more and 
 held them to their watching. 
 
 He was quite unprepared when, with the first cow milked, 
 she rose to her feet and, coming round the hind-quarters 
 of that beast to the next, she faced and saw him standing 
 there. 
 
 He had seen her before. It was Mary Kirwan, the daugh- 
 ter of the house. He had seen her in the street of Ardna- 
 shiela, seen her as he saw all women in any place and strode 
 by them lifting no eye to look. Now, alone in the shed, in 
 the spell of her hands he had been watching, he looked full 
 at her and saw the pale face and the grey eyes below the 
 brown hair, and the lips parted in a live astonishment. 
 
 It was then in a revelation, he beheld the kindness of life 
 that was near to him, the power, closer than a priest's 
 blessing, that would give him a good heart for his fishing 
 and bring that peace when death came for him to be lying 
 down under the grass.
 
 IV 
 
 'TTT'S a fine shtorm," he said awkwardly, intending 
 
 that remark to explain his presence there in her 
 
 father's cow-shed. As such she must have accepted 
 
 it, for she settled her stool by the side of the second beast, 
 
 continuing with her milking and telling him he would have 
 
 done better for himself had he gone into the house where 
 
 there was a fire burning and company, and a kettle over it 
 
 ready for the fresh tea they would be having when the 
 
 milk was come in. 
 
 He listened to the sound of her voice more than to the 
 words she said, and it did not occur to him to thank her for 
 hospitality. For the sound of it to him was one with the 
 scent of that place, with the music of the milk purring in 
 the pail, the contentful rattle of the cow chains, and the soft 
 constant note of the beasts at their feeding that all had inoc- 
 ulated his mind with this new sense of a kindness in the world. 
 
 When they began their speaking, he had left the end of 
 the shed where he was standing and come a few steps nearer 
 where she was at her work. There he leant with his arms 
 on one of the partitions of the stalls to make it seem he 
 was easy in himself to be talking to her and because he 
 wanted to be talking to her then more than doing anything 
 else at all. 
 
 " 'Tis the first time ever I see a young girrl milking," 
 he said presently, for there was not much they had to say to 
 each other in those first moments after she had made him her 
 invitation to the house and he had scarcely heard what it was 
 
 she said. 
 
 25
 
 26 THE MIRACLE 
 
 She looked up, turning away her cheek from the cow's 
 flank where it was laid and putting her eyes on his face that 
 was full of the simplicity of youth, with years only the 
 weather had brought to it; deep lines about his mouth the 
 storms had rutted and a rough tan the wind had seared on 
 his cheeks. It was then he saw having no readiness of 
 words for it in his mind like the wandering poet from Con- 
 nemara it was then he saw the way light had with her 
 eyes that looked through and beyond his own so that it 
 seemed to him there was never a man with just a boat and 
 a few nets to his name could ever call her his own. 
 
 "Isn't it Joe Fennel ye are ?" she asked. "Have a boat in 
 Ardnashiela and would be fishin' across the bay?" 
 
 "I am," said he, and knew it was a pleasure he felt 
 because she had recognised him. 
 
 She returned to her milking, leaning her face against the 
 side of the beast so that now her eyes were towards him 
 and he had a sense, scarcely related to any thought, of how 
 warm her cheek must be. 
 
 "Mustn't it be a grand thing," she said musingly, as her 
 hands played the streams of milk, "to be away out beyond 
 on the water and the land gone from ye, the time there'd 
 be no voices talkin' but the sea only with the song it'ud be 
 havin' in yeer ears." 
 
 Had he wished, he could not have appreciated that leaning 
 out of her mind to ways and visions of life beyond the 
 world she moved in. All he heard in her words was what he 
 wished to hear, an interest and a sympathy in the calling 
 he followed. It was not so much as of one who would be 
 quick and clever at the mending of his nets or having the 
 kettle ready boiling for him on the hearth, as of that same 
 kindness, more shielding than the words of any priest against 
 the knowledge of loneliness that had come to him. 
 
 "Have ye never been out in a boat?" he asked with some
 
 THE MIRACLE 27 
 
 astonishment, "and ye livin' little more'n a mile from Ardna- 
 shiela." 
 
 ' 'Tis no more strange than yeerself would never have 
 seen a girrl at the milking." 
 
 "Shure I've no call to be comin' to the house of those 
 would be farmin' on the land." 
 
 She smiled, without giving him her eyes to see the distance 
 and the look of vision her smiling had. 
 
 " Tis meself has no call either," said she, "but to be 
 feedin' the beasts in this place and boilin' the food for the 
 pigs and churning the cream maybe, or scatterin* the corn 
 for the chickens we'd have in the yard." 
 
 He bent over the stall where he was leaning, and in a 
 voice that pleaded rather than took for granted the virtue 
 of his offer, he promised to take her out in his boat as far 
 from the land as she could wish in her heart to be going. 
 To an amazement, confused in him with joy that beat up in 
 him like the wind of the storm outside, she said she would 
 come. 
 
 It was not so eagerly she said it. Nevertheless there was 
 gratitude, as though, coming there that time of evening, he 
 had found her imprisoned and with his promise had opened 
 a window for her to look through, having no power in him- 
 self to set her free. 
 
 "When will we go?" she asked. He named the first day 
 it was fine when the storm had cleared to a still sea, the way 
 it would not be tossing in the boat she was, but drifting 
 sweetly in the hot time of the sun. 
 
 "Isn't it night and the moon shining ye'd be goin' some- 
 times with yeer nets?" she enquired then. 
 
 He made way for her as she rose to empty her bucket 
 into a big pail that stood by the wall of the shed, and was 
 silent to her question. He waited till she was seated again 
 at the flanks of the last beast. When her hands were working
 
 28 THE MIRACLE 
 
 rhythmically once more and the milk spurting loudly as when 
 first he heard it into the empty bucket between her knees, he 
 spoke. 
 
 "Strange things would happen on the sea at night," he 
 said slowly, and watched her face, as he had watched the 
 face of the Parish Priest for laughter. In her there was 
 neither trace nor thought of it. A wonder was in her eyes 
 as she turned her face at an angle to look at him. 
 
 "What things ?" she asked. 
 
 He told her of the black birds and the taking of his lobster 
 pots, having sworn an oath within himself as he walked 
 along the shore from Killanardrish he would never give 
 word or sign of it again to a living being in that place. 
 
 "Is it a spell they have put on ye so ?" she said. 
 
 He nodded his head, and she went on with her milking. 
 She had nothing but silence to offer him, yet that, far 
 sweeter in his hearing than any words of Father Roche. 
 
 "I've no great heart for me fishin' now," he said at last, 
 hoping as much to make her speak again as needing to say 
 out the trouble in his mind. 
 
 She looked up at him with softer eyes than he thought 
 a woman could have and smiled at him for courage. 
 
 " 'Tis not a strong man is the like of yeerself should be 
 talkin' that way at all," she said. "Shure won't They have 
 Their ways with all of us and isn't the world a great place 
 for a man to be settin' his power against Them? Didn't 
 Mrs. Flynn is in Curragh beyond over have her man taken 
 from her in a dark night, they never findin' sight or trace 
 of him again and she holdin' up her head while she'd bide 
 the time till he'd be comin' back to her." She smiled at 
 him again. "Men are quare things," she added, "and isn't 
 there great fear of life is in them." 
 
 He knew then in some understanding it was fear of life 
 that had taken him out to Killanardrish, fear of life and
 
 THE MIRACLE 29 
 
 the lonesomeness there was for him in the world. But it 
 was more than this he had gained in his understanding. He 
 knew now, even in that short time as knowledge of the 
 kind does come suddenly to a man who has shut his eyes 
 to it for long that it was a woman such as this he needed. 
 If she were by the side of him where he could touch her 
 and by the side of his thoughts when she was no way near 
 and he was fighting with the storm maybe, or straining his 
 strength of haul the nets in time, she would drive the sadness 
 out of the world with the kind looks she could be giving 
 him and the soft touch of her hand. 
 
 He looked at her hands as she worked and, timid man 
 though he was, he would have spoken then and there with 
 the quick fire of the vision that was moving to flame in his 
 mind. Suddenly the door at the end of the shed was pushed 
 open and the words fell away from off his tongue. 
 
 Father Costello, the curate in Ardnashiela, helping Father 
 Roche in his scattered parish, stood in the doorway saying 
 the storm had passed and he had come to tell her they were 
 waiting about the fire in the kitchen for their tea. 
 
 Fennel touched his hat and said good-evening. All the 
 shyness of his nature was come back to him then. He was 
 amazed at the boldness her talk and the way of her looking 
 had given him. Having no desire to stay longer, he began 
 moving to the door at the top of the shed by which he had 
 entered from the yard. She had said she would come out 
 with him in his boat. A moment before, could he have hoped 
 for so much as that? If the appearance of the priest had 
 robbed him of the first sight of this new wonder to his mind, 
 at least he carried her promise with him when he went away. 
 
 "Won't ye stay," she said when she saw his movement. 
 "Won't ye be stoppin' and havin' a cup of tea in the house?" 
 
 He would not, he answered her. The storm was over and 
 he would stay no longer. Though he thought he even heard
 
 30 THE MIRACLE 
 
 an eagerness in her voice to be keeping him there, it was 
 not in the company of others he felt he could be talking to 
 her with the shyness he had and his strangeness with people. 
 
 "Let ye come down to the boat cove," he said as he lifted 
 the latch "the first mornin' is fine, and I'll take ye out 
 beyond the bay." 
 
 He opened the door quickly as though, even with that, 
 he had said more than he dared and, stepping down into the 
 mire of the yard, he went away. They heard the gate cry 
 out on its hinges. Then the last roll of thunder murmured 
 like a parting message called back to their ears as the storm 
 turned away from the sea and hid itself in the hills of 
 Doon above Doonvarna.
 
 MARY continued silently with her milking and, in 
 the same contemplative manner as Fennel had done, 
 the priest leant against the stall watching her. 
 With all the difference there can be between one man's regard 
 of a woman and another's, it was her hands too he looked at, 
 the brown of her hair, blackened against the beast's red 
 flank, and her pale cheek resting upon it like ivory laid in rust. 
 It was just a simple kindness the fisherman had seen, 
 radiating from the sound of her voice, the soft look there 
 was in her eyes, her quiet way of moving and a tenderness 
 of understanding he seemed to feel in her words when she 
 spoke to him. But what was a kindness ? It was all a vague 
 and nebulous sensation he had had. Something he knew 
 it was his life had needed without realisation for many years 
 of his loneliness. His mind had just leaned out to the spirit 
 there was about her. Now he was waiting, like a blind 
 man at the curb, sensing the propitious moment in the 
 traffic. Like a blind man he was crossing to a new thorough- 
 fare in his life the side of the street where the sun was 
 shining. It was a warmth he had felt coming from her as 
 he watched her. His impulse to reach it had become an 
 intention already. He had asked her to come out with him 
 in his boat. 
 
 Closely and more clearly than this, Father Costello was 
 seeing as he stood there watching her. But it was by no 
 means their first meeting, as it had been with Fennel, nor 
 
 was his mind that uncouth, unfashioned device registering 
 
 31
 
 32 THE MIRACLE 
 
 upon the fisherman's perceptions the thoughts almost of a 
 child. 
 
 With his training and the high measure of his intelligence, 
 unusual amongst his class who are drawn so often from the 
 land itself, he looked deeply into life and at times had clear 
 visions of it. And it was the throb of life itself he saw 
 and had seen always from the first in Mary Kirwan. Her 
 hands he watched, playing with those streams of milk, seemed 
 fitly occupied to him. Her cheek, leaning against the cow's 
 flank, lay, as he could imagine it should lie, close to the 
 warmth of life. 
 
 It was as though he felt he were watching a process of 
 life, the participation of which in himself he had renounced, 
 yet still was eager to see at work. More than any woman 
 whose shadow had just fallen across the solitary path he 
 walked on, he discerned the presence of it in her. At all 
 times he had felt her to be instinct with it. There were 
 moments too, when mere instinct seemed an empty word to 
 apply to her. She demanded life. Sometimes he felt that 
 whether she demanded it or not, the full stream of it must 
 come to her ; that its direction and intensity lay in no measure 
 of her will. 
 
 He had often wondered who in that village, cast away 
 upon a wild and almost uninhabited coast, could bring it her. 
 And now he had just been witness of the first inception of 
 one of those matches that are made with little joy or beauty 
 in them in the remote country places of that land of Ireland. 
 
 He stood there, emotionally observant, wondering, was 
 that the best that could come to her. Drawn sometimes to 
 the fateful look in her eyes and that transparent pallor of 
 her cheeks, he had often designed in his imagination a deeper 
 joy for her than this. A farmer's daughter and uneducated 
 though she was, he had found the faculty of sensitive appre-
 
 THE MIRACLE 33 
 
 ciation in her. She had a way of listening to him when he 
 talked that brought him these impressions. Sometimes he 
 had put them away, had told himself with conviction that 
 like a stream in the earth, life found its own channels and 
 only in such manner did it flow with any beauty at all. 
 Besides, what was it really to him? If she married one of 
 those men in Ardnashiela whose coarseness and crudeness 
 of mind sometimes amazed him, what else was to be expected 
 for her? There was no high opinion he had of James Kir- 
 wan, the farmer. She was his daughter. What better life 
 could be expected for her than that with which she was 
 surrounded ? 
 
 But now there was one who, in the usual way these wooings 
 were begun, had come for her. For honesty, clean living 
 and a Spartan thriftiness, there was not a man in the village 
 to equal Fennel, the fisherman. 
 
 The first thought in Father Costello was a prosaic satis- 
 faction when he heard that invitation to Mary to come out 
 with him in his boat. And then it was, while he stood watch- 
 ing her, there came back with the inevitable pressure of 
 belief, the thought that it was little the hands he saw would 
 touch the meaning of life she needed, or her cheek be 
 warmed, or the spirit he felt in her come near to any realisa- 
 tion of itself with Fennel. 
 
 The mere insistent recurrency of this idea gave him a sense 
 of discomfort. With a determined purpose he went out of 
 his way to thrust it aside. 
 
 "Was it Fennel was sheltering from the storm?" he asked. 
 
 "He was, Father." 
 
 "There's the best man in Ardnashiela." 
 
 Without lifting her head from the cow's flank, she turned 
 to look at him. 
 
 " 'Twould not be hard," said she, without pause in her
 
 34 THE MIRACLE 
 
 milking, " 'twould not be hard with all the drink they'd 
 have taken one time and another. 'Tis an idle life for those 
 would be fishin' in the sea." 
 
 He agreed it seemed idle enough at times, but it was not 
 Fennel was idle, he told her, for there was a man was always 
 mending his nets or making new pots to be putting out for 
 the lobsters. 
 
 "And hasn't he good money laid away there in his cottage 
 on the cliff road," said he, "with many a woman glancing at 
 him in Ardnashiela would be glad of the gift of a look out of 
 his eyes." 
 
 For a moment she stopped milking altogether to look 
 steadily at him. If it was reproach she felt, she did not 
 speak it. Her head bent again as she turned to the finishing 
 of her work. 
 
 "What way would ye be tellin' me that?" she asked 
 quietly. 
 
 "No way at all," he said at once, but he knew there was 
 reproach and knew moreover it was the same with which he 
 had upbraided himself. 
 
 This was a new thing he had learnt of her. In some 
 way she was conscious in her spirit of that demand for life. 
 He had not thought that possible before. Until that moment 
 he had believed she had no perception of herself. Somehow 
 it seemed he gained a fresh experience of her every time they 
 met. For a moment now he felt ill-at-ease. He wished he 
 had not spoken. 
 
 "I wanted to give you a good thought of him," he went 
 on, stumbling to explain. "There's not a man in Ardna- 
 shiela I'd think well for you to be going out with in his 
 boat a young girl like yourself but Fennel only. Shure, 
 he's as true a man as ever threw a net or took his haul out 
 of the sea." 
 
 Apparently she had no further wish to talk of it. In
 
 THE MIRACLE 35 
 
 silence she stood up. Her work was finished. She did not 
 look at him again. 
 
 When he offered to carry the bucket for her, she consented 
 with a muttered word of thanks. Taking the pail herself with 
 the steam rising in grey wisps from the froth of the milk in it, 
 she followed him down the shed with the little dog closely at 
 her heels. 
 
 They had scarcely moved away before she called to him to 
 stop. The milk, full in his bucket, had caught a way on it 
 from his walking. It began swilling over the edge and falling 
 in a puddle with every step he took. 
 
 "Ye'd better set that down on the ground, Father," she 
 said, and had no other tone in her voice but that of practical 
 necessity. Milk spilt in the shed when she was milking the 
 cows was a different matter. It was always a custom in the 
 farms to leave that for the faeries. The little streams that 
 fell to the floor when a cow moved and distracted the pre- 
 cision of her aim were always gone in the morning, but here 
 was waste. 
 
 He put it down at once with unhesitating obedience and 
 watched her lifting it easily to the balance of the pail she 
 carried in her other hand. Her body was swayed over and 
 her head set at an angle that played to the intangible beauty 
 she had in her face. 
 
 In silence he continued opening the doors for her from 
 shed to stables and on as they went. At the last, reaching 
 the door out to the cobbled path before the house, his hand 
 hung in a pause on the latch. 
 
 "Is it hurt ye are at me talking about the man?" he said 
 straightly. 
 
 "Shure, can't ye say what ye like of anny man, Father? 
 What would there be would be hurtin' me?" 
 
 "Ye thought 'twas the way I was interfering maybe, 
 meanin' he'd be a good match for ye."
 
 36 THE MIRACLE 
 
 "I didn't think it at all. Shure, I knew it well." 
 
 "An' so he would," said the priest firmly. 
 
 She had set down her buckets, waiting in a habit of mind 
 for him to open the door as he had the others. Now she 
 opened it herself and picked up her buckets again. 
 
 "He would indeed," said she quietly, as she passed through 
 onto the cobbled pathway and walked along to the door of 
 the house. "He would indeed," she repeated, "if I'd a mind 
 in me itself to be matchin' with anny man at all."
 
 VI 
 
 A' the signal of a tapping of Mary's foot against 
 it, James Kirwan opened the door of the house and 
 let her in. With his hands deep in his pockets, clink- 
 ing a few pieces of copper money, he stood on the threshold, 
 waiting for Father Costello who followed in a muse of 
 thought behind her. 
 
 It was early autumn and they had been wanting the rain. 
 The farmer was rubbing together the coins in his pocket 
 in a good humour and hopefulness that was rare with him. 
 
 " 'Twas a fine shtorm," said he. "Shure, it might have 
 been rainin' silver pieces, the worth it'll put into the corn." 
 
 He stood aside to let the priest pass into the kitchen. 
 
 "I'll just get me hat," said Father Costello. "There'll be 
 no more rain and 'tis to Cappagh I must be goin' for a 
 sick call." 
 
 "Who is it is sick?" 
 
 "Mrs. McSwiney." 
 
 The farmer tossed up his head. 
 
 "Shure 'tis not sick that woman is but old with sour 
 years. Let ye be here in this starvin' parish another month 
 or two, Father, and 'tis tied bi the leg she'll have ye to the 
 post of her bed the way she'd be goin' on greatly with her 
 pulin' and whinin'. Hadn't she Father O'Connor was curate 
 here these last three years destroyed entirely goin' out on 
 the roads to Cappagh, till he came to be knowin' the fidgetty 
 old woman she was ?" 
 
 If there was little charity in what he said, Father Costello 
 knew well it was true. Nevertheless he went into the kitchen 
 
 37
 
 38 THE MIRACLE 
 
 to get his hat. Coming out of the dairy with her empty 
 buckets, Mary saw him with his hat in his hand turning to 
 the door. Then because of the advice he had given her and 
 the retort she had made and now his going in a haste to 
 get away, their eyes met in a challenge. 
 
 "Is it goin' without yeer cup of tea, Father," she said 
 quietly, "and I gettin' the milk, and all ready for ye to be 
 drinkin' it while it 'ud be fresh?" 
 
 A longer challenge from her eyes and he might have been 
 the more set upon his going, but she looked at him no 
 further. In silence she went on with what she was doing, 
 standing her buckets down by the side of the red, painted 
 dresser, the lower portion of which was a coop where they 
 kept hens that were broody or in the spring such as were 
 hatching out their eggs. 
 
 He stood in a pause at the door. The farmer engaged 
 him in wordy talk about the crops, mingling superstition 
 with a rough knowledge of experience amongst his opinions 
 and predictions and coming, as was in the nature of him, to 
 a moody plaint about the badness of the land and the better 
 times that would never return to the farming again whilst 
 he was in that place. 
 
 James Kirwan was a thickly made man, with rounded 
 head and sharp and close-set eyes. Cunning there was in 
 them, craft and no little cruelty too, but it was the cruelty 
 of one governed by his fears, rather than the determination 
 of his nature. Coarse and inconsistent fibre he was to be 
 the stock of so finely elusive a creature as Mary. 
 
 It had not been long before Father Costello was made 
 aware of this. When first he came to Ardnashiela three 
 months before, Mrs. Troy, in whose cottage he lived in the 
 Main Street, had sent him out to Kirwan's. 
 
 " 'Tis mostly all would be gettin' their milk and eggs
 
 THE MIRACLE 39 
 
 and butter at the farm," she said. "Let ye go and be 
 speakin' them yeerself and 'tis the best ye'll be gettin'." 
 
 Partly in obedience to that advice and partly in his desire 
 to come to a close knowledge of his people, he had gone. 
 It was this arresting inconsistency between father and daugh- 
 ter that had first sharpened his interest upon them all. 
 
 Cut off by a mile and more of ragged beach and rutted 
 road from such human contact as there was in the cluster of 
 houses in Ardnashiela, it stood out above the shore to meet 
 the prevailing storms. They were glad enough of any com- 
 pany in that isolated farm. Once having made their 
 acquaintance in their own kitchen a comfortable and spa- 
 cious room to be sitting in, with the cheer of an open hearth 
 and a peat fire the bellows wheel kept glowing on the windy 
 days it was not an easy matter for the young priest to 
 refuse the eager invitations of the farmer. It was great 
 honour, he was told, he would be giving them to take a meal 
 of tea. As well as this, he liked to sit there talking in the 
 soft scent of the peat or listening to the blind man by the 
 fireside, turning the wheel and telling his tales. 
 
 Father Costello had come out there many times since, 
 as new curate to Father Roche, he had arrived in the parish of 
 Ardnashiela, and it had not taken him long to appreciate 
 there was little of the blood of the father running in the veins 
 of the daughter of the house. From her mother's stock rather 
 she came, but there were few if any in those parts and they 
 had gossip and curiosity enough to say in what part of the 
 country Kirwan had first set a wishful eye upon his wife. 
 
 A dark, silent, remote and impenetrable woman she was, 
 who sat most times in the recess of the open hearth opposite 
 that allotted to the blind man with his labour at the bellows 
 wheel. There it was she occupied a great measure of her 
 time with the plaiting of rush baskets and bags which, as far
 
 40 THE MIRACLE 
 
 as the priest could see, served no purpose in the house or 
 out of it. 
 
 To the mystery of that personality, Mary Kirwan owed 
 no doubt much of the distant beauty and elusiveness she 
 had. Even in the looks of them there was a resemblance. 
 Both were dark of eye and the loamy brown of Mary's 
 hair was nearer that of her mother's black than the farmer's 
 sandy grey the years had bleached to a nondescript shade 
 of straw which on a low forehead hung in a matted fringe 
 over his pale, grey eyes. 
 
 To a young man, coming from wide travels and a broad 
 sight of the world to this desolate parish his first appoint- 
 ment it was with a ready eagerness he sought the compan- 
 ionship and interest to be found in Kirwan's kitchen. Most 
 Sundays he came there after Benediction. There was a 
 readiness for life in him as well as for his work. The fire 
 of asceticism that had flamed to a desire for Holy Orders 
 when he was a young man in Dublin had not been monastic, 
 with a pale and sacred light, but fierce, welding and human 
 in its glow. With all the flushing confidence of youth, he 
 had told himself he had no fear of the world. Life, he had 
 said, was for living by priests and men alike, and it was into 
 the world he would go amongst the lives of men and women 
 to help them with the power of courage and the virtue of 
 faith. 
 
 The flint of his purpose gave out its sparks, sharp and 
 penetrating, in his eyes. They were kind. They had laugh- 
 ter in them. As he talked, they shone. And if his face 
 was pale and there were deep lines too readily drawn about 
 his mouth for so young a man, it was because he had found 
 life not quite so easy as he had thought, his purpose not so 
 securely simple, his courage not always so high. But faith, 
 in its fervour, had been always with him, and that faith it 
 was which gave a character to his face that many a woman
 
 THE MIRACLE 41 
 
 had gazed at in some sense of awe and many a man had 
 wished was his own. 
 
 ' Tis a good thing," he had said to Father Roche, "for 
 a young priest to be amongst the people. There's not the 
 feeling of awe in them there was at one time when a man 
 would be holding his breath talking to a priest in the street." 
 
 The pale eyes of Father Roche had searched his for a 
 moment as though here he had found a young man setting 
 out from the very beginning to interfere with the habit of 
 his life. 
 
 "They'll hold their breath," said he briefly "the same as 
 they always did, if there's a man as well as a priest inside the 
 collar he'd be wearin'." 
 
 The younger man's observation was nearer to the truth. If 
 they held their breath for Father Roche, it was more in fear 
 than in respect of him. Having no fear of Father Costello in 
 his wish to be one with them, James Kirwan threw open his 
 door and more than once declared after his departure, it 
 might not have been with a priest of the Church at all they 
 were sharing their meal, but a man only like any would 
 be coming in off the road. 
 
 So had grown an interest, passing mere acquaintance, that 
 centered in Father Costello's mind about the character and 
 distant, evasive fatality of Mary Kirwan. 
 
 With no motive of petty inquisitiveness, but rather with 
 the interest that accumulated in his visits to the farm, he 
 had made enquiries about Mrs. Kirwan, her origin, her 
 place of birth, the little if anything that was known about 
 her. There were plenty to talk, but few with knowledge in 
 their talking. When he found it was mere gossip he was 
 hearing, he asked no more. 
 
 Idle stories they had told him. But if they were idle, they 
 nevertheless revealed to him the subtle infectiousness of an 
 idea that spreads in the minds of those living in lonely places.
 
 42 THE MIRACLE 
 
 Some said it was the evil eye she had. He laughed at that. 
 Others, that she knew more of the faeries than was good 
 for a human woman to be knowing. He shook his head, 
 smiling, as though they were children talking to him and he 
 would not wilfully hurt their beliefs. It was told she had 
 given a herb to a tinker with a running sore on his foot, 
 had come begging to the door of the house. He had bound 
 it to the open wound and in three days it was healed and 
 gone from him. The man had told them himself when 
 they were drinking, all of them together, in Foley's public 
 house. He showed them his foot that was healed and there 
 was no scar or twisted skin on the place at all. 
 
 "For what would she be makin' those baskets and bags 
 with the rushes she'd have in a green heap in her lap?" 
 
 Mrs. Cotter on the cliff road, who had never been further 
 than the door of her cottage for a matter of ten years, shot 
 that question at him out of the twist that came to her mouth 
 when she had things to be telling about her neighbours. 
 
 In all innocence, thinking he was to hear a true statement 
 it was scarcely a month after his arrival in Ardnashiela 
 Father Costello enquired the reason it might be. Mrs. 
 Cotter lowered her voice and spoke on the wheeze of her 
 breath. 
 
 "Doesn't the world know," said she, " 'tis in little rush 
 bags Themselves would be carryin' the food They'd steal 
 from the house of anny place where They'd be goin'." 
 
 He asked no more questions then, feeling it was a folly 
 in him and a shame as well to the hospitality they were giving 
 him where he was a stranger amongst them all. Yet with 
 no wish on his part, insensibly it increased his interest in 
 that strange, silent woman. Often he watched her sitting 
 by the peat fire, her thin fingers slipping in and out between 
 the green rushes and, without showing them to any, laying
 
 THE MIRACLE 43 
 
 the little bags she would be making down on the ground 
 by her side in the open hearth. 
 
 It was by this, without his being aware of it, that his 
 interest had gathered about Mary Kirwan. In her he saw 
 the mother remoulded, fused with a different blood, and made 
 human with a wistfulness of understanding that even Fennel, 
 the fisherman, heavy and blunt of mind, had not been slow 
 to come upon. 
 
 There had been times in those three months of summer 
 when, in that spacious kitchen, splashed with sun on the 
 white-washed walls through the half -open door, they had 
 found themselves alone with their talking. Once, when they 
 were making the hay in the meadow by the stream that 
 gathers its way out of the hills of Boon, they were in an 
 undisturbed companionship all the hours from tea till the 
 sun set behind Helvic Head. 
 
 Their talk was of the simplest nature, conversation led 
 mostly by him, telling her beauties of the places he had 
 travelled in. Deep visions she had in her "eyes when he 
 talked of the snow flushed to the colour of a rose on the 
 summits of the Italian Alps at sunrise. Long breaths she 
 drew at the sound of life there was in his words and his 
 voice whilst he was speaking. 
 
 It was, as the old travelling man from Connemara had said, 
 the gentleness of her listening and the way her lips had of 
 making his words to hear again the sound of their thought, 
 that sped him on to his speech with her. 
 
 Nights alone in the small house he occupied in the village 
 street of Ardnashiela, he would sit reading his books beneath 
 the light of an oil lamp and find himself wondering what 
 they were doing in the kitchen at Kirwan's farm, what 
 tale the old blind man might perhaps be telling and whether 
 that silent woman of the house was even then plaiting 
 the rushes on her lap.
 
 44 THE MIRACLE 
 
 Sometimes when the wondering grew on him till it became 
 a fret in his mind, he would get up and go out into the 
 street, turning towards the strand and the way to the farm, 
 and, when he had gone no further than the sea wall where 
 the fishermen's nets hung in their black draping, turn back. 
 It was too soon to be going out to the farm again, he told 
 himself then. For what would they think of him in the small- 
 ness of that place, and was it not leaving his books he was 
 and the thoughts that ought to be near to his mind with them ? 
 Yet he knew it was life was there in that farm-house, life 
 more vital and with a deeper pulse in it than ever he could 
 find in the black print on the white page. And it was life 
 he leant to. He felt always he could meet it, face to face, 
 lending faith to it and spurring it to courage whenever it 
 came his way. 
 
 With Mary no less, it had grown to be a watching for his 
 coming, a swift focussing of her eyes upon any black figure 
 of a man she saw walking on the strand. With the new 
 interest of his conversation and the appreciative sense in 
 his mind, he was of another order of men from those with 
 whom she had any time to be speaking. Like her father, 
 they all had coarse talk who came to the house. Through 
 long familiarity it had no effect of driving the blood across 
 the paleness of her cheeks, but it left her often sick in heart 
 and mind. It was natural enough he could not have come 
 there too often for her liking. 
 
 On those Sundays when he preached at mid-day Mass in 
 Ardnashiela, she sat on the uncushioned bench, forgetting 
 the best clothes she was wearing and listened in an attitude 
 of mind which deluded her into the sensation that he was 
 speaking to her alone. It seemed he was speaking just as 
 he had spoken in the hay-field or as he talked often by the 
 peat fire in the kitchen at home. 
 
 This was a ready illusion she had, for he spoke his sermons
 
 THE MIRACLE 45 
 
 with no form of intoning. There were others who felt the 
 same as she. 
 
 Coming out of church one morning, Julia Mahon, with 
 surprise at her own daring, had whispered it in Mary's ear. 
 
 "I'd feel 'twas the way he'd taken me himself for a piece," 
 she said, "and he talkin' to meself as it might be in a 
 quiet place." 
 
 The full justification of Mary's rebuke to her was unques- 
 tionable. What should a priest with his learning and the 
 powers of speech he had, want talking to a village girl! 
 And it was in a complete unconsciousness of the right of 
 any charge to be laid against herself, that she had made 
 her censure. In a simple eagerness for life, she dissected 
 none of her sensations. They came to her as the waves 
 came with the inevitable tides, leaping up the strand in the 
 rush of the storm, or lapping idly like a pulse on the still, 
 warm days, when it seemed to her it was no more than 
 mere breathing to be alive. 
 
 With this last state of mind she had been most familiar 
 of all. Sensations had come leaping sensations of anger and 
 resentment only when the craft of her father, his cunning 
 and sometimes his cruelty had pricked her to revolt. With 
 her mother she had little antagonism, unless it were at 
 moments when her heart quested for sympathy and found 
 none. That silent unapproachable woman with her infre- 
 quent speech that only served to hide the more her hidden 
 thoughts, was as unapproachable to Mary as to any. A few 
 times through her childhood, she had turned her eyes with 
 all their intensity towards her mother, only to find that still 
 face, paled by the black hair, and dark eyes that looked at 
 her with some sense of pity too remote to speak itself in 
 words. 
 
 In this way she had come to seek in herself for the little 
 satisfactions life offers sparingly to any girl of her age.
 
 46 THE MIRACLE 
 
 A new frock, a new beast on the farm for her caring, the 
 stray dog that had come to the house, a dance on the kitchen 
 floor after the threshing with the sharp sounds of the fiddle, 
 stinging, but pleasantly, in her ears and running in quick 
 fires through her blood, these were the little events and hap- 
 penings th?t marked the days for her. 
 
 But most of all the little satisfactions, deep enough some- 
 times to stir the sensations in her to a hidden storm, were 
 the tales she heard at the peat fire from those wandering 
 men who travel the roads through the length and breadth of 
 Ireland. 
 
 Always they came to the farm looking for work they could 
 never lay their hands to for long. When their stories were 
 spent and the men of the house had grown weary of them, 
 they departed. Like the tinkers on the road, they came to 
 Kirwan's as though it were a workhouse; shelter and food 
 for them till they were ready to set out again. So sure as 
 one was gone, in a week or two another would be knocking 
 at the door. James Kirwan took them in, working them 
 for the best they would give him. For the class they were 
 in his computation less than the beasts he had in his 
 shed he treated them well enough, with food in the house 
 sometimes and a straw bed in an empty cow-stall. Some 
 were blind even, and these stayed only for the love of God 
 till they were rested from their walking on the hard roads. 
 
 But each and all had their stories, and to these she 
 had listened with a tireless eagerness since she was a little 
 girl with bare feet and hair dropping about her shoulders. 
 
 Sitting there in the kitchen, smoking his pipe, his short 
 upper lip protruding with an unpleasing expression as he 
 held it between his teeth, James Kirwan would sometimes 
 pull them up short, spitting with impatience on the floor. 
 
 "There's enough of that now!" he would exclaim. 
 "Haven't we heard that wan before. Shure the man was
 
 THE MIRACLE 47 
 
 only pretendin' to be dead, the time his wife'd be goin' her 
 nasty ways with the other fella. Begor, I'm tired of that 
 tale. Haven't all the travellin' men got it would be comin' 
 to these parts?" 
 
 If it drove the story-maker into a long silence, it was 
 Mary, when they were sitting together, who coaxed him 
 to be telling it for her ears alone. For there was a way 
 each one of them had in telling his tales that was always 
 different from another. The place would not be the same, 
 or the names varied, which made a freshness to her she 
 refused to be denied. 
 
 And then, after Father O'Connor's departure, came Father 
 Costello, the new curate, to Ardnashiela. The very first 
 Sunday he had come out to the farm, it was she who had 
 weighed out the butter he took back and gave him the 
 eggs he put loose in the pocket of his coat. 
 
 "What'll ye be doin' if they break on ye?" she had asked 
 him. 
 
 "I'll walk," said he, "the way I'd be going to a 
 funeral " And they laughed, and it was a new sound 
 to her in the house. And all the way back to Ardnashiela, 
 he had heard it, a sound of life, in and out of the splashing 
 of the sea.
 
 VII 
 
 WHEN tea was laid ready on the deal table and the 
 willow plates from the dresser set out, as Mary 
 always set them on these occasions, James Kirwan 
 closed the lower half of the door and busied himself bring- 
 ing a chair for the priest. 
 
 The sun was shining then through the upper part of the 
 door. A liquid blue the sky was, clean and wet, as though 
 the storm with its floods of rain had scoured it. Beyond 
 the fields, still in the fume of the wind, the sea clamoured 
 with an unbroken voice on all their talking. 
 
 Griddle cakes, baked in the ashes, no hand could make 
 better than Mrs. Kirwan's, fresh tea with the new milk still 
 afroth on the top of the jug and a heavy-looking cake made 
 in the house, this was the fare they had. Except for a few 
 abrupt remarks, it was in silence they partook of it, a meal 
 well needed after the work of the day. 
 
 The farmer ate with the evident relish of a hungry man 
 but not so noisily in his own hearing as to prevent him from 
 making a critical comment upon the blind man's mastication 
 of his food. 
 
 "Blind man," said he sharply. 
 
 The sightless eyes turned from the chimney corner in the 
 direction of the voice. 
 
 "If the Lord Archbishop of Dublin was in this room and 
 he with the blessing of the Almighty God on the wet of his 
 lips, I'm thinkin' 'tis not hearin' himself speak we'd be at all 
 with the sound of ye bitin' at yeer food." 
 
 He looked round for the appreciation of laughter and 
 
 48
 
 THE MIRACLE 49 
 
 finding none, he went on with his own munching. The only 
 sound of laughter was his own, a thin, uncertain note, which 
 he swallowed with a draught from his cup of tea. 
 
 The next to break the silence was the blind man himself. 
 
 "I'm done !" said he, and laid his cup down with a clatter 
 upon the hearth at his side. 
 
 Across the bare deal table, Mary looked for the first time 
 since their challenge at Father Costello. A sensitive thought 
 had come to her that with all his learning and the ideas he 
 had in his mind, he must realise in the long silence that fell 
 upon them how ignorant they were. She wanted to speak, 
 but had nothing to say. And then the voice of the blind man, 
 without warning or preliminary, set up above the long wash 
 of the sea. 
 
 "There was a man at one time in Cloongarish," he began, 
 and his voice was drawn out in the long singing note of 
 narrative such as they have who speak the lift and fall of 
 the songs of Ireland. 
 
 "Let ye be mindin' the wheel, blind man," said Mrs. 
 Kirwan imperturbably, "let ye be mindin' the wheel, 
 there's a red spark only is in the peat." 
 
 He leant down his hand in his darkness and found it. With 
 body rising and falling then to the revolutions he made, he 
 began again as though it were the first time of his speaking. 
 
 "There was a man one time in Cloongarish and his wife 
 was long ailin' in her bed with a sickness she had was beatin' 
 the minds of all the doctors would be comin' to have a look 
 at her." 
 
 Mary put her cup aside on the table and came to the stool 
 which was always near at hand to the bellows wheel. Seat- 
 ing herself there, she slipped her hand in silence over the 
 handle and took it from the hooks of his fingers so that he 
 could be going on with his tale without stay or hindrance. 
 A turn of the head in her direction he gave her. There was
 
 50 THE MIRACLE 
 
 no blindness in it. He knew well to whom he gave his 
 thanks, but said no word of them to interrupt his story. 
 
 "But with all her sickness," he went on, " 'twas a great 
 hunger she had on her to be eatin' the whole and more of 
 what they'd be puttin' out for her on the bed. An' 'twas 
 one time when it was tired of the doctors the man was, they 
 tappin' her chest and listenin' through the hole of a tube and 
 doin' mad things would never cure annywan of a sickness the 
 like of what she had on her, wasn't it that time he went with 
 himself only to an old woman had her cabin under a thorn 
 tree up there in the hills behind Cloongarish. And it was 
 a wild place he was comin' to that day, with the big birds 
 wheelin' round it all times with their long cries and the 
 mists would be comin' in great sweeps of darkness between 
 the gaps of the hills." 
 
 He took his breath and, leaning down, he felt with his 
 hands at the edge of the fire for a piece of peat half burnt 
 to be lighting his pipe with. It seemed no wonder to any 
 of them except to Father Costello that he found it in his 
 blindness. When he had lit the crust of his tobacco he 
 went on. 
 
 ' 'Twas one room of a cabin the old hag had and no 
 chimney to it but the door and wan window only and a 
 hole there'd be driven in the thatch of the roof. And there 
 was herself sittin in the smoke of the peat and an old hen 
 pickin' at the bits she'd be droppin' on the mud of the floor 
 at her side." 
 
 Short of breath, the blind man made many pauses, con- 
 serving his strength. It was the first of these tales Father 
 Costello had ever heard. Indeed a man might well live his 
 whole life in Ireland and if he did not happen upon such a 
 moment in such a place as this, would never hear them at 
 all. He looked about him and saw the little eyes of the 
 farmer waiting and intent upon the blind man's face. Even
 
 THE MIRACLE 51 
 
 the remoteness of Mrs. Kirwan was stirred to a living in- 
 terest. But it was Mary most of all who arrested his im- 
 pression that here he was close to the life of his people. 
 By the set of her eyes and the light that was in them as, 
 with face upturned, she sat there on the stool by the bellows 
 wheel, he could see she was not of that world about them, 
 but was wandering in any place where fancy led her. 
 
 "And what was it, blind man, the old woman told him 
 about his wife?" asked the farmer. 
 
 "She asked him had anything happened his wife had made 
 her sick, and he said there was nothing in his knowing. Then 
 she asked him had anywan come to the house was a stranger 
 to them. And when he'd thought a while, he said there was 
 not. Then he thought a while longer and he remembered 
 a black dog that had come straying to the place, the way it 
 had stopped with them in the room the half of one night, 
 eatin* all they'd be givin' it and it gone in the mornin'." 
 
 Involuntarily Mary's hand sought down to the black head 
 of the little dog that was laid against her skirt. The move- 
 ment was instinctive. It was protective too. With a swift 
 glance her eyes had sought her father's face. It was set 
 with his eyes upon the blind man's lips. She drew a breath 
 and turned her own away, but something in her heart fell 
 to a sickness as he spoke. 
 
 "Was it the black dog had brought the sickness to his 
 wife?" he asked. 
 
 "She told him 'twas not his wife it was at all," the blind 
 man responded, "but the body of her only and one of Them- 
 selves out of the hills was in it. 'Twas the black dog comin' 
 and goin' had taken her away. 'And if ye'd like to try what 
 I'm sayin' is truth/ said she to him, 'let ye take the shells 
 of seven eggs/ said she, 'and fill them with water/ said 
 she, 'and carry them into the room of the house where 
 she'd be lyin/ 'Supposin' 'tis not herself/ he asked her,
 
 52 THE MIRACLE 
 
 'What would I be doin' then ?' 'Let ye take a fire/ said she, 
 'and build it up at the end of the bed/ said she, 'and when 
 'tis askin' why it is ye'd be lightin* it that way on the floor 
 of the room, let ye take her up sharply with her body out 
 of the bed and give her a pitch into the fire. 'Tis herself 
 will fly up then with the smoke out of the roof, the way she'll 
 be gone from ye.' " 
 
 "Did ye know this man, at all, blind man?" said the 
 farmer, whose attention was rivetted now. So closely was 
 he listening that his pipe had gone out and all the time there 
 was a dark gap widening between the parting of his lips. 
 Father Costello stared at him in an amaze. It was n&t so 
 much as though he were listening to a tale or an adventure 
 but, by the fixture of his eyes upon the blind man's face, 
 as though he were being warned of the calamity of fate. 
 Even in his voice there sounded the note of his apprehension 
 as he repeated his question. "Did ye know this man yer- 
 self?" 
 
 "As well as I'd know ye," said the blind man, "an' I 
 sittin' here bi the fire." 
 
 "And did he do what the woman of the hills told him?" 
 asked Mrs. Kirwan. 
 
 "He did indeed, to the word and the letter of it." 
 
 "An' what happened him at all?" 
 
 "Shure, he filled the egg-shells with water, he bringin' 
 them into the room before her eyes, the way she'd be sittin' 
 up in the clothes of the bed and lettin' out a laugh at him. 
 'Never did I see the like of that before/ she cried out at 
 him, 'and I three hundred years in this place.' " 
 
 "Glory be to God !" murmured the farmer. "Wasn't that 
 a terrible thing for a man to be hearin' from his own wife !" 
 
 "Yirra, didn't he know bi that," exclaimed the blind man 
 impatiently, " 'twas not his wife at all had said it. Wasn't 
 she taken and gone from him with the black dog since the
 
 THE MIRACLE 53 
 
 sickness came to her, and wan of Themselves it was lyin' 
 with her body in his bed?" 
 
 In a long silence they all received this progress of the 
 narrative. In a long silence Father Costello looked from one 
 to the other, seeing in their faces the fact that they had 
 utterly forgotten his existence in the room. 
 
 That these people in the West of Ireland believed in faeries 
 he knew well, but it was more as a belief of children he had 
 thought of it, a wild imagination, fancying it hears faerie 
 voices in the night of the hills, believing there are glimpses 
 to be had of little people dancing on the faerie raths. 
 
 Travelling in Italy and France as he had done since he had 
 left Dublin, he had greatly lost his touch with Ireland in 
 those most impressionable years when he had come in full 
 to appreciate the forces of life. The beauty of Rome had 
 captured him. The history of his Church had monopolised 
 every interest of his thoughts. The force of Christianity had 
 swept through his being, carrying him with it beyond the 
 thoughts of Ireland or his people at home, beyond all indi- 
 vidualities towards the great mass of humanity. Yet here, 
 older than St. Patrick or St. Daeclan, was a force, the force 
 of magic, of mystery, of miracle in the common light of day 
 which, if he had heard of it at all, he had treated with the 
 easy scepticism of youth. 
 
 He knew it was a characteristic of his country and the 
 Gaelic imagination still to believe in a faerie world. He had 
 never realised as now that it was a principle of faith, more 
 deeply seated than merely in the imagination. Resting far 
 down in the fundamental streams of human urgency, he was 
 finding it those streams that dissolve into themselves the 
 whole of mystery and, for the soul's sake must live by it. 
 
 Some years before, all the civilised world had heard and 
 heard incredulously of an old woman being burnt to death 
 as a witch in the mountains in Kilkenny. Listening to the
 
 54 THE MIRACLE 
 
 blind man's story in that kitchen room of Kirwan's farm, 
 the priest remembered hearing of this event in his youth, 
 the momentary horror it had brought him at the thought of 
 the barbarity of her death, and the way in which, failing to 
 appreciate the real meaning of it, the tale of her suffering 
 had drifted out of his mind. 
 
 Here, in a sudden vision, without voluntarily recalling it, it 
 came back. If these were the mysteries they lived by, might 
 they not well be mingled with life and death? Was not that 
 the history of every belief that had moved in the minds of 
 men? He found himself startled into a new realisation. 
 
 The mysteries he believed in, the miracles of the Church 
 itself, the virgin birth of Christ, the resurrection from the 
 dead, why were these not sufficient to them as they were to 
 him ? In the fullness of their numbers there in Ardnashiela, 
 they came to Mass every Sunday. With an intentness he had 
 never expected, they listened to his sermons. On Saturday 
 evenings there were many of them, but women mostly, who 
 came to him in Confession. Yet as he listened to the blind 
 man's story and saw their eyes drawn to the blind man's 
 face, he came to the sudden consciousness that religion did 
 not fill all their needs of mystery. A force that, because it 
 was pagan was none the less real, was deeper rooted. In 
 critical moments of their lives, it might even fling aside the 
 charities of Christ. What mercy had there been in them 
 when they had burnt that old woman as a witch ? 
 
 "Ye'll find they're a quare lot," Father Roche had said to 
 him when he was taking his first meal with the Parish Priest 
 at Killanardrish soon after his arrival in Ardnashiela. " 'Tis 
 not only drink they'd be havin' in their blood, but supersti- 
 tion, an' I dunno wouldn't they sooner give up their pints 
 of porter than be misbelieving the strange things they'd be 
 seein' and hearin' in the hills." 
 
 He had accepted that statement as part of the work that
 
 THE MIRACLE 55 
 
 lay before him, to uproot that superstition as you root out 
 an encroaching weed. Whenever he had heard stray talk 
 of the faeries, he had smiled at their imagination and wished 
 with a kindly laugh that he could see one of them himself. 
 
 But now, that evening, as he sat in Kirwan's kitchen, he 
 found it was more than mere imagination and superstition 
 he had to contend with. Life needed its mystery. Without a 
 knowledge of what it could never know, life was a barren, 
 shuddering thing to live, as lifeless as the moon. And here, 
 in their belief of this tale to which they were listening, was 
 tangible essence of the mystery they clung to. He felt, as 
 he heard it, a moment of despair that the teaching of the 
 Church could never reach down far enough to refashion the 
 elemental motives of their being. 
 
 "And did he light his fire?" he asked the blind man with 
 such interest as he would have kept from his voice if he 
 could. "Did he light his fire as the old woman told him?" 
 
 "Who's that is speaking ?" asked the blind man querulously. 
 "Who's after askin' me?" 
 
 They told him who had spoken and bade him go on 
 with his tale. 
 
 "Ah, shure, why would I be tellin' it," he cried out in a 
 louder voice, "and he laughin' in the sleeves of his black coat 
 would be fallin' over the shafts of his hands?" 
 
 "I'm not laughing at all, blind man," said Father Costello. 
 He did not say he would have given much to laugh. ' Tis 
 not laughing at a word of it I am." 
 
 Still he hesitated and then an ungoverned and volcanic 
 wrath fumed up red in the farmer's face. 
 
 "Blast ye get on with the tale !" he shouted, and spat on 
 the ground at his feet and wiped his mouth with the back 
 of his hand. 
 
 The blind man was bent with his fear of the farmer's 
 anger. It might well indeed be for the love of God they
 
 56 THE MIRACLE 
 
 took him beneath their roof, but the wrath of man was not 
 far distant. He started tremblingly again, till slowly his 
 voice settled down to the swaying tone of his narrative. 
 
 "He lit his fire," said he. "At the foot of the bed he lit 
 it with sticks he had broken from an elder tree would be 
 growin* outside the house. And when it was in the flame of 
 its heat and she askin' him why was he lightin' it at all, 
 didn't he take her up in his hands and with the pitch he gave, 
 he flung her into the heart of it." 
 
 "Was it gone she was from him then?" whispered Mary. 
 
 " 'Twas a great belch of smoke out of the fire there was," 
 said the blind man, "the way it 'ud be risin' out of the roof 
 and the time he was lookin' around with the sting of the 
 smoke in his eyes, wasn't he there alone in that room with 
 the sticks burnin' and the bed empty on him?" 
 
 "Glory be!" exclaimed the farmer. "That was a fearful 
 way for a man to be losin' his wife surely." 
 
 "There's some maybe wouldn't mind what way it was," 
 said Mrs. Kirwan slowly. 
 
 It was Mary who asked him was it lost she was entirely. 
 The blind man shook his head. 
 
 ' 'Twas himself told me," said he, "and the woman of 
 his house sittin' there bi the side of him, she not knowin' 
 the half of wan word he'd be sayin' or the truth would be 
 comin' out of his mouth." 
 
 "What way did he get her back so?" 
 
 He lit his pipe again. 
 
 "It was lonesome he was in his house," he continued, 
 "with his wife gone from him, and when three months were 
 by without sight or trace of her, he went to the old woman 
 in the hills askin' her was there no way for him to be gettin* 
 his wife back from Them at all. 'Next time of a fresh 
 moon,' said she, 'when there's a fine point on the hook of 
 it, let ye go down to the cross of the roads is beyond Cloon-
 
 THE MIRACLE 57 
 
 garish. And take the coil of a rope,' said she 'and make 
 a wide loop in it. 'Tis there ye'll see her and she goin' 
 by with a company of Them. And call out her name/ said 
 she, 'in a loud pitch of yer voice and the time she's lookin' 
 back at ye over the turn of her shoulders, let ye cast the 
 rope with the loop of it round her neck and 'tis then ye'll 
 have her cot from Them that time.' " 
 
 Again he paused for his breathing and they spoke no 
 more to him then, but waited in quietness for him to tell his 
 tale as it came. 
 
 "Ten days he had to be waitin'," he went on, "till the 
 moon was fresh. Then he took the coil of the rope and the 
 wide loop he had made in it and went out one time in the 
 mouth of the night to the cross of the roads above Cloon- 
 garish. And it was waitin' there some time he was before 
 he heard the crack of a little drum and the music of pipes in 
 the tilt of the wind." 
 
 Now the blind man lowered his voice to the fall of a 
 whisper almost, and with his mouth agape, the farmer 
 leaned forward on his chair. 
 
 ' 'Twas a whole crowd of Them came by that time," he 
 said, and the words he spoke were in his throat rather than 
 upon his tongue. "And some were on the backs of black 
 horses and some on their two feet walkin'. Men and women 
 there were and some of them were tall as the tallest man 
 ye'd see shtandin' in the fair at Ballina. And there in the 
 mix of Them was herself goin', an' she laughin' in a quare lift 
 of her voice and he knew her bi the walk she had and the 
 way she'd be tossin' her head at the laugh. It was 'Norah !' 
 he cried out then, the way he'd be callin' her name three 
 times in that dark place. And at the third time she looked 
 round over her back at him. 'Twas then he threw the coil 
 of rope he had in his hand, the way the loop there was in it 
 made a ring in the air and fell down on her shoulders. Then
 
 58 THE MIRACLE 
 
 he pulled with all the power he had in his arms and 'twas 
 that way he got her back from Them and shure they never 
 troubled herself again. And that's my story." 
 
 He fell at once to silence when he had done, reaching down 
 again to the fire's edge for a piece of glowing peat and for 
 the third time lighting his pipe. James Kir wan stood to his 
 feet and knocked out the ashes of his own that was cold into 
 the flat palm of his hand. 
 
 They were not awed. Their silence was only that as of 
 people who had heard bad news ; something that might well 
 happen to themselves at any time; something inevitable al- 
 most, like news of death which none of them, when it came 
 their way, could escape. 
 
 "What man was it?" asked the farmer presently. "Did 
 ye hear his name at all?" 
 
 Feeling by the wall behind him, the blind man rose to 
 his feet. 
 
 " 'Twas Shawn Geoghan was his name," said he, "an' 
 'tis not the darkness is on me would stay me knowin' him 
 anny place bi the lisp he had on his tongue." 
 
 He took up the stick that was in the corner of the hearth 
 beside him and sensing his direction shrewdly by the walls, 
 he made his way to the door and went out into the sunlight 
 of the yard.
 
 VIII 
 
 THEY remained there, much in the same attitudes as 
 when they had been listening to his story. Only 
 the farmer had moved at its ending and he still 
 stood where he had risen to his feet, still knocking the 
 charred tobacco out of his pipe into the palm of his hand. 
 
 "That was a quare wan," he said under his breath. He 
 said it over two or three times and then, announcing that 
 he was going across to the fields to see whether the rain had 
 done any damage to his corn, he turned and went out. He 
 left the lower half of the door open. Chickens came to the 
 threshold and stood looking into the room with eyes in- 
 quisitive for food and foolish sideward jerks of the head. 
 They made querulous noises, at the sound of which Mrs. 
 Kir wan picked up the rushes in her lap and came out of her 
 place by the fire. 
 
 "Is there corn is in the bin?" she asked. 
 
 Mary nodded her head. She had no thought to deter- 
 mine why her mother was proposing to do the work she 
 usually did herself. She had no wish, evident to herself, to 
 stop her. Through the open door into the yard, she let her 
 go without question and in the dream that had come to her, 
 she moved to where the blind man had been sitting. It was 
 as though she felt the fire could best respond to her thoughts 
 and she wanted to be nearer to it. 
 
 The movement of Father Costello standing up to his feet 
 and putting back his chair by the deal table had no sound 
 in it to attract her attention. She stared at the red glow of 
 the peat, then, more to herself than to him, she said, 
 
 59
 
 60 THE MIRACLE 
 
 "Isn't it a strange world where things would be happen- 
 ing the like of that and people with no more power to be 
 stoppin' them than the rain and it fallin' or the sea would 
 be washin' up into the land." 
 
 Even with Father Costello, his mind seemed to be in the 
 toil of nebulous but entangling thoughts from which he was 
 impotent to escape. With an effort, he shook the sensation 
 from him. 
 
 " 'Tis all nonsense and idle talk," he exclaimed, with 
 warmth, "this wild chatter of foolish tales. 'Tis a shame 
 there ought to be in your mind, Mary Kirwan, a young girl 
 of these times with the good sense you'd have in you from 
 the schools, believin' the gossipy stories of an old blind man. 
 Isn't it bad pride he'd have in himself the way you'd all be 
 listenin* to him?" 
 
 At first she looked up in an astonishment. Then, rising 
 out of her place by the fire, she stood up to her full height 
 when her eyes came well to meet his own. 
 
 "Weren't ye listenin' yeerself ?" said she in a steady voice, 
 for it was a priest she was talking to and she was not yet 
 forgetting it, even with the pulse that had started in her 
 throat. 
 
 "I was listening," said he, "the way anny man might be 
 listening to a foolish tale would be told while people would 
 be idling their time around a fire." 
 
 "Idling!" She had that word clipped with her tongue 
 out of his sentence. There was a hint of mimicry in her 
 voice as she said it. "Shure 'tis not idling we'd be in this 
 place, Father," said she, "the way they'd be in the grand 
 houses of the towns or the streets of the great cities of the 
 world where ye'd be passin' yeer time." 
 
 He made no pause to consider why she had taken a per- 
 sonal resentment to what he had said. All that concerned 
 him was that she had not understood. Instead of urging him
 
 THE MIRACLE 61 
 
 to an apology of explanation, it roused his anger to think of 
 the obstacles in his way. 
 
 "Whether you're idling or whether you're working," he 
 flung at her, "what good is it to be believin' the mad trash 
 of those tales are invented by one man or another while 
 they'd be going about ! 'Tis not things like that the Church 
 'ud be teachin' you and 'tis a shame, I say, for a girl with all 
 the beauty you'd have in your mind to be taking any notice 
 of them at all." 
 
 She heard him say she had beauty in her mind. Above 
 the sound of his anger he heard himself say it too. It was 
 to linger with her afterwards. Now she thrust it out of 
 all hearing. 
 
 " 'Twas not invented it was," she cried out at him. "Didn't 
 he give the name of the man, and wasn't it speakin' with 
 himself he was, had the tale from his own lips?" 
 
 "You believe all that we heard ?" muttered Father Costello, 
 as though till that moment he had not truly reckoned upon 
 her absolute acceptance of the blind man's tale. "You be- 
 lieve 'twas the faeries themselves were in the body of his 
 wife lying there in his bed you believe " 
 
 "There's every word I believe!" she retorted defiantly, 
 "and if 'tis comin' here to the house ye are," she went on 
 with words that rushed without thought in a hot haste from 
 her, "and ye thinkin' 'tis all the grand ideas of the world 
 ye can be puttin' into our heads, 'tis sooner not seein' the 
 door open to ye I'd be at all !" 
 
 He went straight over to the barrel churn in the far corner 
 of the room where he had left his hat and took it quickly in 
 his hand. He knew he was acting upon emotional impulse, 
 but could not prevent himself. For the moment he was 
 distantly conscious of forgetting he was a priest. The man 
 in him, chagrined at his failure to reach down deep enough 
 with his faith into her mind, was uppermost. He wanted to
 
 62 THE MIRACLE 
 
 get away, quickly, out into brighter sunlight, to come down 
 to the shore of the strand where the waves were rushing in 
 the abating fret of the storm. He wanted to feel the wind on 
 his face. He knew he could not regain himself from the 
 sting with which her words had smitten him while he was 
 there alone with her in that room. Yet to go, as he was 
 doing, was only to prove how much he had felt them. The 
 mental predicament in which he found himself exasperated 
 him. He could have called out across the room at her that 
 he wished to God he had never come out to the farm at all, 
 that they had never been together in the hay-field, that he 
 had never talked to her as he had done. 
 
 Yet outwardly, except for the quick impulse of his move- 
 ments, he betrayed none of the impetuous temper of his 
 mind. She saw she had incensed him. She saw no more. 
 He was going because she had been rude, ill-bred, the mere 
 farm girl that she was. Of a sudden there was a hot sting- 
 ing in her eyes. If she could, she too would have called 
 out to him that she had not meant what she said about his 
 never coming there to the farm again. But would he un- 
 derstand that? He was a priest. How had such a situation 
 as this arisen in which she wanted to say she was sorry as 
 though she were talking to an ordinary man? She found 
 herself suddenly full of emotion, fluttering with it like a bird 
 beating its wings in a snare. And it was a priest, who had 
 angered and then smitten her with remorse, a man of God, 
 vowed to his Church, so far out of her reach or wish that 
 she wondered in an amazement at herself how it had come 
 to such touch with him as this. 
 
 The door was still open as Mrs. Kirwan had left it. He 
 put his hat on his head as he crossed the threshold. She 
 saw him, black, unrelieved, like a painted mass against the 
 blue sky over the sea. The next moment the sun lit him up 
 as he stepped out on to the cobbled path and was gone.
 
 THE MIRACLE 63 
 
 Perhaps it was for a while because she thought he would 
 return that she stood waiting. She told herself she was only 
 a farmer's daughter, bold and ignorant, and he was a priest, 
 had great learning and should be kind to her for her ways. 
 Perhaps because she could not actually believe he had gone, 
 she stood where he had left her, staring at the open doorway. 
 Her eyes met and were opposed by the blue of the sky over 
 the roofs of the farm buildings. It was a hard sky now, 
 metallic and resisting. The hope in her that he would come 
 back became blunted against it. She ran to the door and 
 looked out. He was crossing the fields down to the strand. 
 There was a quickness in his walking and she felt no thought 
 in him to return. He was gone and maybe it was never, as 
 she had said, the door would be opening to him again. 
 
 Her lip was quivering as she drew herself with a sudden 
 weariness back into the room. She had lost something of 
 which it seemed she had never really appreciated the value 
 until then. Having gone, she no longer thought of Father 
 Costello's intolerance to her belief in the blind man's story. 
 It was the times by the peat fire and that long evening in the 
 hay-field she remembered, when he had brought her the 
 sight of a world outside her own and ways of life that had 
 given her a new pride in herself. 
 
 A desolateness with the chill and volume of deep waters 
 swept over her. She felt herself thrown back, drifting, like 
 one whose hands had come near the grasping of a rock from 
 which a wave had swept them just when they were catching 
 hold. 
 
 At one moment she was wishing he had never come to 
 Ardnashiela, at another that he had never come out to the 
 farm, never talked so specially as it seemed he had to her, 
 but had left her alone with such contentment as she had had. 
 
 Then she knew she had never been contented. And then 
 for those last three months that she had had a joy and a pride
 
 64. THE MIRACLE 
 
 in herself greater than she had ever known before. The 
 days had lost the smallness of their monotony. They had 
 appeared in a wonder to her and had brought with them the 
 belief there was something almost wonderful in herself. 
 
 Last of all, there leapt up in her memory what he had said 
 in the heat of his words that surely were too swift for idle- 
 ness. She was a girl, he had said of her, with beauty in her 
 mind. 
 
 The exhilaration that brought her had the greater pain 
 now that she realised he was gone. It came back into her 
 mind as blood returns into unaccustomed veins, rushing, 
 burning, excruciating. 
 
 A cry came out of her lips, dumbly and involuntarily as 
 an animal cries. But there were no tears.
 
 IX 
 
 A* Mary had seen, Father Costello walked quickly 
 through the fields down to the strand. He walked 
 quickly with his thoughts at his heels but could not 
 escape them. The fresh wind on the shore, heavy still with 
 salted spray, scattered them about but in the momentary 
 hillings of it, they came shouting, crowding back. 
 
 In that kitchen at the farm, he had forgotten he was a 
 priest. All the inspiring visions he had seen in Rome, all 
 the enrapturing history of his Church and the uplifting 
 permanence of his faith had slipped from him in a moment 
 unawares. When he took up his hat from the barrel churn 
 and strode out of the door into the sunlight, eager to get 
 away, he had been stripped of his cloth to the mere habili- 
 ments of a man. 
 
 How had it happened ? It was too late then to go back and 
 say he had not meant to go, that there was nothing but an 
 impulsive folly in his behaviour, that he was her priest, 
 chiding her for foolish superstitions it was his duty as a man 
 of God to root out of her mind. 
 
 Not only would such an action ring untrue, but it was 
 too late to make it even appear convincing. She must have 
 seen him as then, in the sharp edge of the wind, he saw him- 
 self. Time only would blunt the impression he must have 
 given. In a month, maybe, or less, if he went back to the 
 farm, she would have forgotten the exact manner in which 
 he had left her. The priest that for the moment had de- 
 serted him, he could insinuate again with subtle suggestion 
 and impress with a delicate insistence upon her mind. 
 
 65
 
 66 THE MIRACLE 
 
 "What is it ?" he suddenly called out aloud to himself into 
 the noise of the wind. "What's happened you? Are you 
 acting the priest of God ?" 
 
 A terror came to him then. He quickened his steps as 
 though it were some physical thing he could avoid. In a vivid 
 poignancy of sight, bereft of the hallucinations of his call- 
 ing, he saw himself as an impostor, aping Christ, making a 
 mock of his faith. 
 
 Coming into the Main Street of Ardnashiela from the 
 termination of the strand in the sandstone rocks, he quick- 
 ened his pace to the doors of the little church. Entering, 
 he closed them behind him and went up the aisle and into 
 the chancel and fell upon his knees on the steps of the altar. 
 
 He prayed but he found he was praying like a man 
 offering the material substance rather than the exaltation 
 of his thoughts to God.
 
 THE blind man's story lingered not only in the 
 memory of Mary and Father Costello, but in James 
 Kirwan's as well. Going out of the house to see 
 what the storm had done to his crops, he continued muttering 
 his remark all the way to the barley fields. 
 
 "That was a quare wan," he said and every time he 
 announced that opinion to himself, his mind centered upon 
 the black dog that had appeared to Shawn Geoghan in 
 Cloongarish. 
 
 The barley was swept down in broad patches across the 
 fields, for the straw was long. It lay prostrate as though a 
 machine had passed over it, beating down the transparent 
 gold into hammered sheets of metal. He looked at it, but 
 scarcely saw the damage that had been done. He was think- 
 ing of the black dog that had appeared to Shawn Geoghan. 
 From this it was not a long turn for his mind to take to 
 the little black dog that had found its way straying to the 
 farm and been claimed for companionship by Mary. No 
 ill fortune had certainly come to them since its appearance. 
 The cows had given good milk. The crops were better than 
 he remembered for some years. If the rain had beaten down 
 the barley, a lot of it might rise again. Without doubt it 
 was rain they had wanted to fill out the corn in the last 
 weeks of ripening. He had said with truth it was worth 
 silver pieces to him. 
 
 But the mind of James Kirwan was of that nature which 
 is never contented with events as they pass. Suspicion ruled 
 in him. As Father Roche had said, he asked every year for 
 
 67
 
 68 THE MIRACLE 
 
 the corners of his fields to be sprinkled with holy water. 
 The old man had been shrewd enough to see the composition 
 of the farmer's mind in that request. 
 
 " Tis not the blessin* of God, ye want at all," he had 
 said, "but a fend for the evil might be comin' to yeer crops 
 and I'll not do it." 
 
 Kirwan's oaths to the contrary had not persuaded him. 
 He had not done it. Alert with suspicion the farmer had 
 expected each year that some misfortune would befall him. 
 But nothing had happened that could not be accounted for 
 by natural means. For all his complaints, he had had good 
 years. Beyond doubt, he was the most prosperous man in 
 Ardnashiela. If he whined in his talk about his failures, 
 there was no one believed in them. Yet they were substan- 
 tial enough to him, for if they had not happened as yet, he 
 was always secretly suspicious that they would. 
 
 At the appearance of the black dog, he had driven it off 
 the farm with a stick, shouting at it down the road with 
 the spleen of his class and race for a beast that was not his 
 own. It was when she found it still lingering near the yard, 
 pitiably in need of food, that Mary took it into the cow-shed 
 and gave it a bone. 
 
 A hungry dog has no reserve of gratitude when it is fed. 
 With its eyes and that seeking pressure of its nose into 
 Mary's hand, it found its way precipitately into her heart. 
 She gave it her confidence. Here was a friend to listen to 
 the most secret of her thoughts. With the loneliness there 
 was for her in the house that meant no little. She had 
 fought stoutly with her father to assert her right to keep it. 
 When he found that the sudden high pitched tempest of his 
 voice and the fury that sprang flashing in ugly lights into his 
 little eyes was of no avail to break her unlooked-for deter- 
 mination, he as suddenly subsided. A chilled word from his
 
 THE MIRACLE 69 
 
 wife out of the chimney corner secured his reluctant con- 
 sent. 
 
 "Ah, shure, let her be havin' her little dog," said Mrs. 
 Kirwan, and then she had added enigmatically, "there's 
 some might be glad of a dog would be comin' to them." 
 
 Mary had thanked her mother with a glance and James 
 Kirwan, having tried the flashes of his temper and failed, 
 said no more. He went sulkily out of the kitchen and 
 slammed the door. 
 
 From that day the dog had been brought into the house. 
 Having no doubt from the first as to whom it owed alle- 
 giance, it followed Mary closely. Whenever they had a 
 meal, it sat touching her legs and taking whatever she gave 
 it with a tacit understanding between them that it was best 
 to make no fuss even of gratitude. Sometimes when it came 
 sniffing to her knees and looking up with enquiring eyes, 
 Mrs. Kirwan gave it the recognition of a hand that patted 
 its head without warmth. The farmer himself it avoided 
 with a sure remembrance of the first day it had been 
 driven from the house. Whenever he came into the kitchen 
 it crept the nearer to Mary's skirts. If she was not there, 
 it retired close to the wall beneath the deal table. And the 
 more fear and the more suspicion it showed of him, the 
 more James Kirwan mistrusted and resented its existence 
 about the place. 
 
 If Mary was not there to restrain him and it came within 
 his reach, he often kicked the little beast as it went by. The 
 fact that it gave out no cry to the blow increased rather 
 than softened his dislike of it. He was annoyed by its lack 
 of response. He felt he wanted to kick it until it did 
 acknowledge the infliction of pain. 
 
 Then the story of the blind man had seemed to reveal to 
 the hasty suspicions of his mind what it was he hated in 
 that black creature with the cringing body it always dis-
 
 70 THE MIRACLE 
 
 played to him and the furtive eye that followed him with 
 as watchful a distrust as his own. 
 
 Where had it come from, that black dog? No one knew. 
 Hoping to get rid of it, he had enquired one day in Casey's 
 public house in Ardnashiela. No one claimed it. The in- 
 creasing consciousness of these circumstances played like 
 freshening winds through his thoughts, fanning them to a 
 flame. And there he stood at the edge of his barley field, 
 letting the fiery tongues of suspicion and fear leap up one 
 after another, slowly consuming the peace of his mind. 
 
 He came back to the house through the grass fields where 
 two months before they had cut the hay. Even in that short 
 while the aftermath looked greener for the rain. He noticed 
 nothing. Deep in his thoughts there was a purpose fixed. 
 His small eyes narrowed to a mere cunning look as he 
 thought upon its execution. 
 
 What was a dog after all ? It ate its food and slept about 
 on the floor, but it brought nothing to the house. He exag- 
 gerated in his mind how much food it did eat. It was a 
 useless, cringing beast. What a fool that man in Cloongarish 
 had been, not taking a red hot turf out of the fire and 
 throwing it at the black dog that had come to him. He 
 would have had little trouble with Themselves if he had 
 done that. Wasn't he a fool himself to be chasing the dog 
 down the road with a stick? If They had not wreaked their 
 vengeance upon him yet, surely They were bound to do it 
 soon. 
 
 Drops of sweat pricked out upon his upper lip at the 
 thought of the things that might happen to him. And with 
 every thought a new fear came, creeping with it into his 
 mind. What should he do if the dog had disappeared be- 
 fore he got back? It was in a moment, in the turn of an 
 eye they were gone sometimes. Might it not have Mary taken 
 already with the foolish affection she had for it ? And what
 
 THE MIRACLE 71 
 
 would he be doing if, like the woman in Cloongarish, she 
 came to her bed in a long sickness with himself having to 
 pay a girl or a man maybe to be doing her work? 
 
 Expediency threaded a recurring purpose through his 
 fears. At one moment he was debating how he might kill the 
 black dog if indeed the hand of man could destroy it the 
 next he was calculating in pounds, shillings and pence what 
 the loss of Mary's labour would mean to him. He was in 
 a fume and a sweat by the time he got back to the house. 
 But it was not his cunning that deserted him. 
 
 His wife and the blind man were alone in the kitchen. 
 The dark was falling. He could see them faintly by the 
 light of the peat. On the hearth, close by the fire, lay the 
 dog, a shapeless form, its nose curled into its body, asleep. 
 It growled when he entered, lifting its head and staring at 
 him with quickened eyes that were glittering and black in 
 that half-light. 
 
 "One of these days," said Kirwan, "that beast'll make 
 a good dog keepin' the house. Shure if he growls at meself 
 won't he be barkin' the deuce and all at a strange man or 
 woman, the way we'll have no more tinkers come thievin' 
 about the place?" 
 
 With the nerve of his cunning he walked across to it and 
 patted its head. 
 
 "Good dog," he muttered. "Good dog," and they knew, 
 neither of them, the shuddering he had as his hand touched 
 it or the fear in his mind that if he looked away, it would 
 be gone before he could look back again. 
 
 It surely seemed as he stared at it that it must know well 
 what was in his mind. He detected a fresh fear, not of 
 blows, in the furtive glance of its eye. Yet it was not fear 
 that it appeared to be to him but a sharpness of wits whereby 
 it might escape him even then. 
 
 With all the crude invention of his cunning, he began
 
 72 THE MIRACLE 
 
 talking of the rabbits he had seen in the barley field where 
 the corn was broken down by the rain. 
 
 "If that dog was good at the fetchin'," said he, "wouldn't 
 he be a good beast now for a man to be havin' on a farm?" 
 He reached for his gun over the chimney and with a simu- 
 lated carelessness in all his movements, broke it and looked 
 through its barrels into the fire. 
 
 Mary was not there. A need for haste was spurring him 
 lest she should come back. No less a need for casual 
 deliberation was warning him against any unnatural dis- 
 play of speed. As he dropped some cartridges into his 
 pocket, Mary's absence had a sudden seeming of strangeness 
 to the ready suspicion of his mind in that state of fear. 
 
 "Where's herself ?" he asked. 
 
 "Gone into her bedroom." 
 
 "What for?" 
 
 " 'Twas like she was sickening. Shure, I could get no 
 word out of her at all." 
 
 If he had any doubt of the matter as he came down from 
 the barley field, there was none in him now. He looked 
 down at the dog with fear and anger and distrust sharpen- 
 ing the quick lights in his little eyes. 
 
 "Where's the father to be puttin' his blessin' on the 
 house?" said he. 
 
 "He's gone back to Ardnashiela." 
 
 Distressed with his apprehensions, the farmer swallowed 
 in his throat. Even circumstance was full of threatening. 
 With an overwhelming conviction, he felt that nothing in 
 that place would be right with him until the dog was killed. 
 It shivered and shrank from his hand when he patted its 
 head again. To the softest blandishments of his voice, it 
 seemed to wither into itself. 
 
 "Let ye come along with me," he said coaxingly, "and 
 we'll see quickly is there any sport in ye at all."
 
 THE MIRACLE 73 
 
 He slipped the gun under his arm and dragged the dog to 
 its feet. Whatever fear he had, he was mastering it with 
 the determination to rid himself of its cause. Days after- 
 wards he knew there would be a wonder in him that he 
 could do what he was doing then. 
 
 In a still voice that had meaning in the very absence of its 
 expression, Mrs. Kirwan asked him why he was making a 
 fool of himself, dragging that dog out to be hunting rabbits. 
 
 "Isn't it wastin' yeer time ye are," she said calmly, "and 
 the dog struck with a fright of ye ?" 
 
 In all their life together, James Kirwan had scarcely been 
 aware of his wife; he certainly had never been sure of her. 
 He was in no mood to be sure of any one then. The remote- 
 ness in her voice from the fear he was suffering whipped 
 up the froth of his anger. 
 
 "What the hell's that to ye?" he shouted. "Shure the 
 dog's been fed in the house. Isn't there right he should 
 earn the food he'd be havin' ?" 
 
 He was afraid now of his own anger betraying him. He 
 wanted to get out of the room before he said any more. 
 With a piece of cord he had in his pocket, he made a noose 
 and slipped it round the dog's neck, dragging it across the 
 floor to the door. Mrs. Kirwan watched him with a quiet 
 comprehension in her eyes, but made no movement to hinder 
 or stay his going. The blind man sat listening to the resist- 
 ing claws scratching against the mud floor as the wretched 
 creature was dragged away. 
 
 "If she wants to know where is it at all, shall I tell Mary 
 ye've gone out shootin' rabbits with the dog?" she asked. 
 Her lips and eyes were inscrutable. It was impossible to 
 say whether she was smiling or not. 
 
 "Ye can tell her any damned thing !" he shouted back and 
 he slammed the door as he went out. 
 
 The blind man fell to turning the bellows wheel. By the
 
 74 THE MIRACLE 
 
 light of the thin flames that licked about the peat, Mrs. 
 Kir wan bent over the plaiting of the rushes in her lap. There 
 was a fulness in the silence when the farmer had gone. It 
 was as though the spirit of his intentions and his fears had 
 remained, lingering on like echoes imprisoned in a cave. Sit- 
 ting there by the fire they listened to them. 
 
 " 'Tis no dog to be catchin' rabbits," said the blind man 
 presently. 
 
 "It is not," said she. 
 
 " Tis a dog is trained ye'd be wantin', with eyes is sharp 
 and a quick scent to it." 
 
 "It is indeed." 
 
 "Shure that dog had no scent." 
 
 "It had not. " 
 
 "Didn't I feel the coat it had and 'tisn't the darkness is 
 in me eyes would hinder me knowin' 'twas no dog to be 
 chasin' a hare or anny runnin' thing at all." 
 
 He waited for an answer to that as though their voices 
 had become a pendulum swinging to 'ind fro and then he 
 said, 
 
 "That dog'll be gettin' in the way of the gun* maybe, the 
 time he lets off with it." 
 
 "That's what it'll be doin'," she replied. 
 
 There the pendulum of their voices ceased its swinging 
 and it was at this moment, Mary came into the room. The 
 blind man paused turning the wheel. Lifting the milk white 
 of his eyes, he stared across the fire at Mrs. Kirwan as 
 though he might see whether she were going to tell what had 
 happened. 
 
 She said nothing. Her head was bent. She did not look 
 up when Mary came across to them. Her entrance into the 
 room had welded the silence rather than broken it. It was 
 the heavier with her presence. And then, as though it had 
 been what they were waiting for, her voice shattered it with
 
 THE MIRACLE 75 
 
 a sharp note, asking where was her dog. With a fresh 
 energy the blind man turned to his wheel. Mrs. Kirwan 
 looked up, meeting the gaze of Mary's enquiry with eyes 
 that had no light of information in them. 
 
 " "Tis gone out with himself it is," she replied. 
 
 "What for?" 
 
 "Shootin' rabbits." 
 
 "Shootin'!" 
 
 That was a word that hit on her ears like the sudden blow 
 striking upon a gong. It rang and reverberated through 
 every sense in her. If her heart had been sick with her 
 thoughts of Father Costello as she lay on the bed in her 
 room, it was near to vomiting now. 
 
 W T ith a cry she could not contain in her lips, she ran to 
 the door. 
 
 "Which way has he gone?" she cried out and struggled 
 with the latch her fingers were too eager to undo. 
 
 " 'Twas to the barley fields he said," replied Mrs. Kirwan 
 imperturbably. 
 
 Mary's foot slipped on the sill of the door. She fell with 
 a cry, half of anger, half of fear, such as an animal makes 
 when it falls in pursuit. Her body had speed in it even be- 
 fore she had recovered to her feet. 
 
 There was a drift of cloud low down on the horizon, still 
 lit to a reflected fire of orange from the sun long set behind 
 the headland. She seemed to disappear into it and was gone. 
 
 The farmer's wife laid down the rush bag she had just 
 finished at her side. Cutting some slices of tobacco from a 
 roll of plug, the blind man churned it round and round in 
 the palms of his hands. 
 
 "There's no soul would be in a dog," said he, "an' 'tis 
 not a quick death would be anny harm to it."
 
 XI 
 
 THERE was a faint chrome light about the fields. 
 All that was darker than the sky was smudged with- 
 out edges in deep masses of brown. Even the 
 broken lines of the loose stone walls were soft as velvet 
 against the land. Catching that mellow light there was in 
 the air, the sea looked like a sheet of heavy steel brushed 
 with a thin wash of gold. 
 
 Scarcely able to see the places for her feet as she ran, 
 Mary sensed her way, familiar with every field and every 
 gap in the broken walls. She went in a direct line to the 
 barley field, making no distance to gain the passage of a gate. 
 The loose stones fell as she scrambled over the walls. More 
 than once she fell herself. A pressing fear sped her to 
 quick recoveries. Little cries of her voice came soon with 
 the shortness of her breath. It might have been a score of 
 miles and always she knew she would be too late. 
 
 There was never an instant of doubt in her mind as to 
 what her father had meant when he went out shooting rab- 
 bits. The dog would not have followed him. He must have 
 dragged it there, and to the barley field, the farthest corner 
 of their land. If never once during the telling of the blind 
 man's story his eyes had turned to the little creature that lay 
 against her skirt, she had divined his thoughts perhaps be- 
 fore they had any birth in his own consciousness. 
 
 Every moment as she ran she was listening. Beyond the 
 heavy sounds of her own breathing, her hearing was strain- 
 ing out through the yellow twilight for the report of a gun. 
 
 76
 
 THE MIRACLE 77 
 
 Until that had reached her ears she pressed a hope against 
 her heart to keep it from bursting. 
 
 A potato field of some few acres lay before her. The 
 earth was sodden with the rain. It clung and gathered and 
 clogged her feet with lead. Her cries were heavy now a 
 stifled moan with every breath. There was that field only to 
 cross. The barley field lay beyond. She was stumbling 
 more than running now. Her body was bent and over the 
 furrows it swayed and reeled with the motion of a drunken 
 man. 
 
 It was not only the strain upon her strength, the heaviness 
 of the ground fettering her feet, or the distance she had to 
 go. Fear was poisoning her endurance whilst all the time 
 it urged her on. At one moment she was struggling surely 
 and then in an instant every motion was arrested. Her 
 limbs refused her. Lot's wife turned to the pillar of salt 
 could not have stood more still than she. 
 
 There broke through that quietness of evening the report 
 of a gun, a violent shattering sound, and then another that 
 followed swiftly after it. After that, the stillness was full 
 of death about her. She was past the sound of a cry from 
 her lips, of any audible or visible sign of what she felt. 
 While there was hope, she could struggle on, giving voice to 
 her fears. The reports of that gun over there in the barley 
 field had ended then. It was not fear she felt now but a 
 sickness as at the sight of blood and the nauseating horror 
 of the violence of death. 
 
 Presently her limbs began to move again, carrying her 
 unconsciously towards the barley field as though, so deeply 
 impressed had been her will upon their motion, that now, 
 when all voluntary effort in her was dead, they acted auto- 
 matically in a mechanical reflex. 
 
 She reached the stone wall, conscious for the first time in 
 her wonder how she had come there. Dragging her body
 
 78 THE MIRACLE 
 
 up by the steps of the projecting stones, she looked over the 
 top. For one moment she swayed. It was not for balance. 
 The next instant she was scrambling over the stones, one 
 scream after another rushing wildly through her lips in a 
 dementia of anger, horror and revolt. 
 
 Down in a dip of the ground, at the edge of the swaying 
 corn, on the unploughed headland of the field, her father 
 was standing, beating with the butt end of his gun a writhing 
 black mass that twisted and turned spasmodically at his feet. 
 With every blow, he was grunting in his breath. With 
 every evasion of the death he was seeking to give, he mut- 
 tered curses and spat the name of God and the Virgin in 
 supplication out of his mouth. It was the life it seemed to 
 cling to that terrified him. Having missed the wretched 
 beast entirely with his first shot and wounded it but slightly 
 with the second, he had taken to the butt of his gun in an 
 agony of fear that had deprived him of every instinct of 
 pity. The fury of his impatience was not to put the dog 
 out of its pain. He was killing it to save himself from his 
 own terror. One blow after another was wild and missed 
 its mark. The more desperate he grew, the more uncertain 
 was his aim. He was breaking every bone in its trembling 
 body, but the blow that would have stilled it, in the frenzy 
 of his mind, was beyond the power of his delivery. 
 
 At the piercing sounds of Mary's voice, he looked up. It 
 was no more than a swift glance. He saw the impetuous 
 rush of her coming, the demented figure she looked in the 
 uncertainty of that deepening twilight. The shawl she wore 
 over her head had fallen loose. One end of it was a black 
 stream behind her. Her hair was scattered and fell about 
 her face. In that glance he could see the dark gap of her 
 open mouth as she screamed. All the time he had known 
 this would happen. From the moment he had left the door 
 of the house, with his wife's parting enquiry in his ears, he
 
 THE MIRACLE 79 
 
 had been sure in his mind that it would happen before the 
 end. 
 
 Mingling with his fear of the dog, a fear of Mary herself 
 had found its way without his knowing it into his blood. 
 After that one quick glance up the field, he redoubled his 
 blows as though he thought that even then she might save 
 the life of that twitching mass of flesh at his feet. If there 
 was a madness in her at the sight of what he was doing, 
 there was no less a madness in him to be doing it. 
 
 By the time she reached him and had thrown the whole 
 impetuous weight of herself against his body and flung him 
 back, the wretched beast was lying inert and lifeless beneath 
 that last shower of blows. 
 
 He laughed when he saw it still at last. It was high- 
 pitched laughter, the departing shout of his fears as they 
 left him. The black dog was dead. Death was a sure remedy. 
 It would fret him no more with its slinking ways about the 
 house. When he laughed a second time, it was high in the 
 nature of his voice, but lower than before. The temper of 
 his confidence was returning to him. He became fully 
 aware then of Mary clinging to him as he stood, of her 
 breath, beating and sobbing against his chest, of her arms 
 binding his with convulsive clutchings and fingers that tore 
 at the sleeves of his coat. 
 
 He pushed her away. She stumbled and fell to the 
 ground, lying in a disordered heap with her body heaving 
 for its breath and her heart filling her breast and her throat 
 with its beating. She had not looked at that quivering 
 thing again. Her first thought had been to lock his arms, 
 to break the force of even one more blow before it fell. 
 It had been beyond her to think of a greater mercy and let 
 him end it all. 
 
 But when he laughed, she knew it was over then. She 
 was too late as she had thought she would be. It was his
 
 80 THE MIRACLE 
 
 laughter more than the shaking free of his body and the 
 thrusting her off with his arms that had flung her away. 
 There was no wish or power in her to stand and face him 
 then. 
 
 He looked at the stock of his gun that was a dull red with 
 the grease of blood. Stooping down, he wiped it amongst 
 the couch grass growing high at the foot of the wall. Then 
 he looked at her. 
 
 "Get up to yeer feet, Mary," he said with no voice of com- 
 passion. "Didn't I tell ye at all times I didn't want that 
 bloody black dog in the house? 'Tis meat dead it is now 
 an' shure, what's the heavin' is on ye? Get up, I'm sayin'!" 
 He lifted her with his foot but she clung in a passion of 
 revolt to the earth she was lying on. 
 
 He opened the breach of his gun and took out the empty 
 cartridges, dropping them on the ground and turning away 
 from her with contempt that came easily now that his fears 
 were gone. 
 
 "Ye'll be a damn fool of a girrl," he called back over his 
 shoulder, "if ye stay lyin' there in the fallin' dews. Isn't 
 it a good thing I've done for yeer self this night with Them- 
 selves sendin' that black beast to be takin' ye away an' it 
 lyin' there now where death 'ud have it all the days of time ?" 
 
 He paused a moment to see if she would respond to that. 
 She did not move more than the lifting and falling of her 
 body against the earth. He climbed the wall and left her 
 there. She could do as she wished. It was certainly not 
 her company he wanted to be walking back to the house with 
 him ; nevertheless there lingered a fear in him that even with 
 that thing dead by the side of her there might be harm com- 
 ing to her somehow. Whatever it was, it was not strong 
 enough to detain him. He walked away across the potato 
 field and faded into the full darkness of night that was com- 
 ing up from the sea.
 
 THE MIRACLE 81 
 
 For a long stretch of time she lay where he had left her. 
 Slowly then the course of her thoughts came back into the 
 steadying flow of her mind. And most of all, it was the 
 words she had said to Father Costello that repeated them- 
 selves again and again like a measure throbbing in her 
 brain. 
 
 "Isn't it a strange world where things 'ud be happenin' the 
 like of that and people with no more power to be stoppin' 
 them than the rain and it fallin' and the sea would be washin* 
 up into the land." 
 
 For all this time, she had not dared to look at what she 
 knew was beside her. It was not courage that came to her 
 at last but her fear that turned into the slower channels of her 
 mind. With the sensation of a chill wind blowing gently 
 across her forehead and about her lips, she raised herself 
 and stretched out her hand that trembled as it touched the 
 softness of fur. Without thinking, for the thought could 
 scarcely have come to her, a rush of pity pressed her hand 
 on its body. Then she cried out again. She could feel the 
 broken bones and the lifeless pulp that it was.
 
 PART II
 
 JOE FENNEL, that for some time had had little fortune 
 with his fishing, sat on the sea wall mending his nets. 
 A group of men and women were gathered there, chat- 
 tering as rooks do that gather from habit in a certain tree. 
 At their feet, in the street of Ardnashiela, a broad, open 
 space there where the sea-wall terminates it and rises in 
 solid masonry to protect the village from the encroaching 
 sea, a cluster of children sprawled and wriggled in the dust. 
 With their skirts and their shirts, their pink legs and their 
 brown, red faces, they were like a swarm of coloured in- 
 sects, crawling over each other in a blindness of busy pur- 
 pose. 
 
 It was a hot and cloudless day at the end of that month 
 of August. Faint emerald and misted blue, the sea lay be- 
 hind them, a sheeted, enamelled setting to the dark hair and 
 coloured shawls of the women and the soft, broad-brimmed 
 hats of the men. Their outlines were cut upon it with the 
 edges of flint. 
 
 There was a foreign look in the picture it made to the 
 eyes of Father Costello as he came down the street of the 
 village to climb the cliff path for his morning walk round 
 the open headlands. The dark rocks slipped down into the 
 still shimmer of the sea. Drifts of light in washes of liquid 
 pearl dissolved the far line of it into the sky. There was 
 no beginning of it no end. It hung there in faint suspense, 
 a coloured web of water and air behind them. With all 
 their talk and their laughter they stood out sharp against 
 his eye. 
 
 86
 
 86 THE MIRACLE 
 
 He waited a moment to look at them, thinking how near 
 to the nature of the earth they were, as though they might 
 have been lizards basking in the sun. When he realised 
 they had become aware of his watching them, he waved his 
 hand. It was as if it were to children he waved it. 
 
 "Good morning, all of ye!" he called out. 
 
 "Good morning, Father," they called back. "Good morn- 
 ing ! Good morning !" Not a voice that did not respond to 
 his salutation. 
 
 He turned away up the road of the solid rock, past the 
 fishermen's cottages and took tfie cliff path winding out 
 through the gorse and heather to the headlands. Their re- 
 sponse lingered like a chant in his ears till the music of it, 
 growing fainter and fainter, was lost in the silences over the 
 glassy sea. He sat down on a ledge of rock where the sea 
 pinks cushioned with their wiry roots in the crevices. Three 
 hundred feet the cliff descended in jutting balconies to the 
 lapping water below. About his head, circling and sweeping 
 downwards in sheer descents, the gulls sped, crying their 
 notes of joy and breaking the light with the scythe of their 
 wings. 
 
 There was no real tide of happiness in him or he would 
 have seen all this in the penetration of its beauty. He knew 
 it was there; but as he sat looking over the sea it was as 
 though he were in a shadow with the sun falling beyond. 
 Ever since that evening at Kirwan's farm his mind had been 
 in the shade of life. The thought of what he had done 
 fretted him. It fretted him still more that for three weeks 
 he had not been near the house. Most of all it fretted him 
 to feel a need in every thought, dragging him there against 
 his will. Wet or fine those days, he had turned against the 
 way of the strand and sought the headlands and the open 
 air to read his breviary. More often than was his wont he 
 prayed. They were prayers as he had offered them that
 
 THE MIRACLE 87 
 
 day in the chapel, solid, material distractions for his mind 
 poor substitutes for the quick impulse of spirit. 
 
 It seemed almost at times there was a sickness upon him. 
 Yet he had laughed at himself when for a moment he had 
 thought of driving in the nine miles to Doonvarna to see a 
 doctor. What could a doctor do that he could not accom- 
 plish with his own will ! Courage came and went from him 
 like running water. His purpose swayed in a balance of 
 insecurity. He wanted to destroy the impression he had 
 left upon Mary Kirwan and feared to do it lest, in the at- 
 tempt, he were to prove himself still more a man. 
 
 He had realised the loneliness of Ardnashiela when first 
 he came there, but it was nothing to the loneliness he felt 
 then, as he sat on that ledge of rock, with the sea birds 
 wheeling and crying in the air and the water melting with 
 a mist of heat into the sky. 
 
 They sat on the sea wall discussing him long after his 
 black figure was out of sight round the first headland. 
 Shrewd comparisons with a coarseness of truth they made 
 between him and his predecessor. He stood as it were in 
 the centre of their life there in that corner of the world. 
 They listened to his sermons. They asked his advice. They 
 confessed their sins to him. There was not a woman 
 amongst them, had not admitted him into secrets of her 
 mind that were sealed to the rest of the world. 
 
 "I'd sooner be goin' confessin' a murdher to himself," said 
 one of them, "than I would tellin' the tattle of a tale to 
 Father Roche in Killanardrish." 
 
 Remembering a sin of thought she had felt constrained 
 to confess to him, there was another to agree heartily to 
 that. 
 
 "I'd sooner be makin' a sin in meself than not goin' to 
 him at all," said a third, whose reputation entitled her to
 
 88 THE MIRACLE 
 
 the shout of laughter with which they all greeted this ad- 
 mission. 
 
 It was talk like this they were making amongst them- 
 selves, close to the nature of the earth, as Father Costello 
 had seen them. If there was a coarseness in it, there was a 
 simpleness too. Where they touched life they were like 
 children talking in wonder of a mysterious game the rules of 
 which were beyond their administration. 
 
 Most of those who sat there were fishermen and their 
 wives, mending their tackle or waiting in idleness with eyes 
 turned often to the sea, watching for the signs they read the 
 water by. At the very end of the wall, close to Fennel 
 himself, there was an old man sitting. He had spoken no 
 word that morning. His hands placed one upon another 
 were leaning on a blackthorn stick that supported the droop- 
 ing weight of his shoulders. The lower part of his body 
 was resting on the stones. With the shrewd reserve of old 
 people, he had just been listening to their talking. At last, 
 in a pause of their laughter and joking, he said in the thin 
 pipe of his voice that Father Costello was unlike any man 
 he had seen who was a priest. 
 
 When they asked him why and his lips first played with 
 his answer, they waited because he was an old man and had 
 seen long years of the world. Presently he said, 
 
 "There's a look in his eyes doesn't belong to him." 
 
 They asked him was it the way he meant he was a man 
 was not true to himself and he said it was not that way he 
 meant it at all. 
 
 "For a man can be true in himself, surely," he said, 
 "and there be other things in him he'd know nothing about." 
 
 He let them have silence with themselves for a while, 
 thinking over what he had meant by his words. But he 
 knew there was not one of them had understanding because 
 the women fidgetted with their hands at their shawls and in
 
 THE MIRACLE 89 
 
 their hair and the men in the silence were spitting on the 
 ground. Fennel only, who had not looked up at any time, 
 was bent down over the work at his nets. 
 
 With a smile then that had a wistfulness in it because he 
 was sorry for them, the old man began telling them the tale 
 of a man who lived where he was fishing in his youth in 
 the islands off the West of Galway. 
 
 They edged their bodies along the wall to be nearer to 
 him because it was a story they understood better than any 
 saying of words at all. The women pressed close together, 
 leaning forward to watch his face, while two men got up 
 from the place where they were sitting and squatted on a 
 pile of ropes at his feet to be looking at him. And it was 
 just this attention he wanted to be telling this tale. He was 
 a very old man and there was vanity in him to think he 
 could gather them about him. 
 
 This man, he said, had the same look in his face as Father 
 Costello. He had never seen it in any other man but one. 
 Married the man was, with two children. His wife was a 
 clumsy, dirty woman, so that every one wondered in the 
 place why had he married her at all. All the same, he 
 spoke well of her to his neighbours and said if it was dirty 
 she was, she made no more trouble in the house but what 
 they would be clearing up after her. 
 
 "But 'twas easy seen," the old man told them, "it was 
 not contented in himself he was. He stood fairly by her, 
 however, and would listen to no one saying a word against 
 her. But there was the look was always in his eyes." 
 
 He shifted the hold of his stick while he looked at them 
 all to see if there were any more straying in their minds 
 from his tale. All round he looked and when he saw all 
 eyes watching him but Fennel's, he went on. 
 
 "It was one night he was picking weed off the shore 
 after a storm. He wanted it to lay for manure on the little
 
 90 THE MIRACLE 
 
 patch of land he had. 'Twas that time he saw a woman in 
 the water where it was clear and deep over a spread of 
 sand at the foot of the rocks. She was singin' to him and 
 her voice was like water runnin' over the lips of the stones 
 into a pool. 'Twas then he went out into the water, leavin' 
 the weed he'd gathered in a heap, till he came to her. She 
 put her arms that were like smooth peeled branches round his 
 neck, and they were cold, he said, with the sea and the salt 
 that was on them. Then he went away with her that 
 night out into the sea where she called him. 'Twas him- 
 self was gone that time from his wife and the children he 
 had for three years. And when he came back, the look 
 was taken out of his eyes he had that didn't belong to 
 him. He was just like anny man ye'd see out on the 
 roads. But in two months' time, wasn't he dirty the way 
 she was herself? The last time I passed his house," the 
 old man concluded, "the thatch was broken on it and the 
 water droppin' in through a hole in the roof and the ducks 
 scrabblin' their beaks in the pool it 'ud be makin' on 
 the floor." 
 
 For the first time since the story had been begun, Fennel 
 looked up from his nets. 
 
 "Was it more contented he was in himself after that?" 
 he asked. 
 
 The old man wiped a drip from his nose with the 
 back of his hand. 
 
 "There's no man is contented," said he, "has lost a 
 part of himself, even if it never belonged to him. Wasn't 
 it goin' often to the shore after that time he was and 'twas 
 not for the need he was lookin'. Hadn't they sold the 
 bit of land he had while he was away to be keepin' the 
 house and there was nothin' was his but the few stones 
 would be in front of his door." 
 
 "It was one of Themselves had him taken," said the
 
 THE MIRACLE 91 
 
 woman still remembering the sin of her mind. "Isn't 
 it all ways and all times They'd be comin' to ye? 'Tis 
 little differ there'd be whether they took what was belongin' 
 to ye or what was not. Isn't it yeerself must go with 
 them?" 
 
 Fennel finished the last tear he was mending where a 
 dog fish had bitten through the hemp. With a deftness 
 that looked strange to his fingers, he tautened the knot 
 on the rope. 
 
 ' 'Tis those have great qualities," said he, "and those 
 have no content with themselves would be troubled always. 
 I never heard of one yet was easy in their mind had that 
 sort of trouble at all." 
 
 They all talked this way after the old man's story and 
 there was no more laughter amongst them. The woman 
 with the bad reputation who had lost her man and lived 
 alone in a cabin on the Doonvarna Road, sat pulling at her 
 hands and listening. 
 
 ' 'Tis those have no content," said she, "would be worse 
 troubled." 
 
 They had no laughter for her at that, for it was not 
 her bad living she was thinking of, but the dark nights 
 when she was alone with the long road outside her door and 
 the curlews crying through the storms over the peat bogs. 
 
 Fennel stood up to hang out his nets and it was then 
 he saw Mary Kirwan coming towards Ardnashiela by the way 
 of the strand.
 
 II 
 
 MANY times since the death of her dog, Mary 
 had remembered the reproaches of Father Cos- 
 tello. If her father had believed, as he believed, 
 it would never have happened. This had set her wonder- 
 ing and distressed her with doubt. Was he right after all? 
 Was it a harmful thing to believe in the trouble the faeries 
 could bring to those who opposed them? It had seemed 
 harmful enough in this. But what of the man in Cloon- 
 garish and all the stories she had heard by the peat fires? 
 There must be something to explain. Without that faith, 
 what was there left to believe when all these things were 
 happening in the world? It was not God if He had 
 mercy who could let them be. 
 
 Always at the end of these searchings, she found her- 
 self clinging to her faith to make life possible. What was 
 left her? Without it the whole world became void and 
 desolate like the peat bogs below the black hills of Boon. 
 For surely it was better for those dreary spaces to be the 
 haunt of the spirits of evil than with the cries and the 
 sounds they heard and the lights they saw moving across 
 them to say nothing was there at all but the coming and 
 going of God. 
 
 "Yirra, what would the Almighty God be wantin' Him- 
 self in the wild drifts of a peat bog?" she asked herself, 
 "an* He sittin' all the days of the year in a bright place 
 in the golden vaults of Heaven." 
 
 Yet these very questionings had smitten her conscience 
 the more when she thought of the way she had spoken to 
 
 92
 
 THE MIRACLE 93 
 
 the priest and the bold, ill manners she had had. Never 
 for a moment had it seemed to her, as it had to him, that 
 he had lost the dignity and the quality of his calling. 
 
 It was a proud way he had gone across to the churn 
 and taken up his hat. There was something in his silence 
 when he went out of the house that made her feel shame, 
 hot in her cheeks, whenever she thought about it. And 
 she had thought of little else in those three weeks of his 
 absence from the farm. For what hurt in her most of 
 all was the loss of his company and that pride she had in 
 herself when he was talking to her. 
 
 She had spoken the hope in the words of her prayers 
 at night that he might come back again. But he had not 
 come. Again and again she had made excuses to go into 
 Ardnashiela in the hope of seeing him in the street or 
 walking, maybe, on the strand. She had not found him. 
 
 Only at Mass had she seen him, when his robes and 
 his office and the chanting of his voice made him seem 
 further away from her even then by his absence. Once, 
 in the first moments of her remorse, she had thought of 
 going to confession, of admitting the faults of her boldness 
 to himself, a priest of the Church. He would see by that 
 she was sorry for what she had said. It would not be 
 hard for him to absolve her from that. In a childlike 
 simplicity, she saw him pronouncing forgiveness and 
 thereby making it possible for him to come out to the farm 
 again and talk to her once more as though nothing had 
 happened. 
 
 But when she beheld him officiating at Mass that scheme 
 and it was more of a scheme than true penitence lost 
 all its potency. It was not that way she would get near 
 enough to him to restore the pride he had given her. The 
 wide gulf of the Church was between them. She felt 
 the existence of it like the sea. Coming home along the
 
 94 THE MIRACLE 
 
 strand, she looked out into the Atlantic and told herself 
 that it was distances such as that which were between them 
 and never realised that in the very consciousness of that 
 distance she was already rousing her heart to span it. 
 
 With all the fatality there was about her, shadowing in 
 her eyes, reflecting itself in the paleness of her face and 
 that slight drooping that was about her lips, Mary Kirwan 
 was alike in the simple ingenuousness of her mind to all 
 those children of Nature living on the desolation of that 
 coast. She acted upon her unbidden and unchallenged 
 impulses. Her thoughts were no more than sensations rising 
 to the surface of speech, muttered often in her breath. 
 
 The fatality that she had was outside and remote from 
 her psychology. Had it in any sense been composed in 
 the fabric of her mind, Father Costello would doubtless 
 have found in her no more than the farmer's daughter, 
 finer in looks than most of that class, but a crude, coarse 
 nature, designed for no better than the earthiness of the 
 soil she lived on. 
 
 It was not so he had discovered her. With the old song- 
 maker, he too had seen that presence of fate drawing her 
 beyond the world that she might walk her own ways of life. 
 She must in some sense have felt it too, yet it had never 
 entered into the capacity of the conscious mind of any of 
 them. Only the wandering song-maker from Connemara 
 had seen it and he, in the uprush of inspiration, unable 
 doubtless to trace the thought from which it came. 
 
 And there was even more to it than this. That fatality 
 was not confined in her being. It drew others with it. It 
 had drawn Costello, the priest. It had drawn Fennel, 
 the fisherman. All who saw it in her, felt the dragging 
 eddies of it about them. Since she had grown into the 
 woman she was, there had been others, but they had kept
 
 THE MIRACLE 95 
 
 away. They feared the issue perhaps and sought the 
 quieter streams of life. 
 
 These two men were of that fibre that Fate involves in 
 her ravellings. The simple credulity of the one, the eager, 
 hungry enquiring of the other, they were bound, without 
 knowledge of what was happening to them, to be drawn 
 into the fate of Mary Kirwan. 
 
 With some men as it is with some women, Fate impet- 
 uously concerns herself. They must live out as it were 
 to a fixed purpose of Destiny from which there is no 
 turning either to right or left. With their own wills even 
 they contribute to the ultimate issue as though something, 
 inscrutable in the affairs of life yet inevitable to their prog- 
 ress, has essentially to be achieved. 
 
 In all history, sometimes far-reaching enough to be seen, 
 sometimes remaining inscrutable through all the long ranges 
 of time, these men and these women are to be found effect- 
 ing the hidden purposes. Fate marks them. There is a 
 look in their eyes, a fatal sense about them. Whenever they 
 wander over the wide acres, they are to be recognised, 
 though few may know them. 
 
 If Fennel had never come into shelter from the storm, 
 if Father Costello had never been sent by the Bishop to 
 Ardnashiela, the destiny of Mary Kirwan would not have 
 been altered. 
 
 It was not the seed of David fate needed to yield its 
 fruit in the Son of Man, but a woman, and with that same 
 look doubtless in her eyes that had branded her for suf- 
 fering. 
 
 That morning, as it had been with all the others, Father 
 Costello was not to be seen in the street of Ardnashiela. 
 Her eyes ranged everywhere, to every open doorway, to the 
 steps of the chapel itself, looking for a sight of him. She
 
 96 THE MIRACLE 
 
 might have believed, had she not seen him at Mass, that 
 he had left the village altogether. 
 
 In John Foley's store the one shop in Ardnashiela she 
 heard a woman speaking of him and it was her heart it 
 seemed as well as her senses that stopped to listen. She 
 wondered then for a moment what it was that had happened 
 to her to feel as she did. But never did her mind approach 
 the subtle analysis of introspection. The simple answer to 
 all her questions came back again and again, always in the 
 same way. He was a priest. If he had brought honour 
 to herself and that pride she felt when he talked to her, 
 wasn't it a grand thing for any girl of her like to be having? 
 It was more than Julia Mahon had, or any of the girls 
 she knew. Didn't they hear him from the pulpit only 
 and for all they might say, it was not the same as him- 
 self talking to her alone in the hay-fields when all the 
 workers had gone into the house and the little finches 
 were flying without fear so still they'd be standing together. 
 That was her pride; that he talked to her at all. But 
 she kept it locked in her and never boasted of it to any one. 
 
 There was no abatement to her expectancy. The moment 
 she came out into the light of the street from that dingily 
 illuminated shop that smelt of tallow and dried goods, of 
 linen and woollen things that had been stored for many 
 months, her eyes searched quickly up and down. On fine 
 days such as that, all those who had an idle hour collected 
 by the sea wall. There was no sight of Father Costello. 
 Only one man was in the street. He crossed from the' 
 other side to meet her. It was Joe Fennel. 
 
 For three weeks she had forgotten all about him, the 
 promise she had made, even the advice that Father Cos- 
 tello had given her. As he crossed the road to speak to her, 
 it all came back to her with the noise of Fate in it. 
 
 Perhaps it was because of what Father Costello had said,
 
 THE MIRACLE 97 
 
 planting the idea already to seed in hidden ways in her mind. 
 She made no reckoning of that. All she knew, as Fennel 
 approached her and escape became impossible, was that 
 here was the man her life would be mated with were she 
 to walk a thousand miles from that place to be free. 
 
 He shifted his hat as he came. It was a gesture, half 
 salute as of the hand to the forelock, half in a poor imitation 
 of the way he had seen young men lift their hats to girls 
 in the streets of Doonvarna. 
 
 "I saw ye come along from the strand into the street," 
 said he. 
 
 She told him she came there often to Foley's for the 
 things they'd be wanting in the house. 
 
 "I've seen ye," he admitted. "Anny time I've not been 
 out in the boat, I've seen ye, but I wouldn't bother ye speakin' 
 till it was a day as fine as the like of this." 
 
 She looked at the sky about them as though questioning 
 it for what he meant by that. The little deception served 
 no purpose. 
 
 When he saw that glance of her head, he reckoned it 
 was natural enough she had forgotten her promise. She 
 was not for him, though the fate there was in it pressed 
 him on. If he knew little hope, he knew no discourage- 
 ment. 
 
 With stilted, awkward sentences he reminded her of 
 that afternoon in the cow-sheds the storm their talk- 
 ing together and the promise she had made. 
 
 "This is the first real fine day we've had," said he. "It 
 isn't meself would be botherin' ye to keep it till then." 
 
 She could easily have said they wanted her at home, that 
 she had not told them she would be out for long, that there 
 was work in the farm she must be doing. There were 
 countless excuses she could have made to the unexpected- 
 ness of his reminder. But there was a friendliness about
 
 98 THE MIRACLE 
 
 him, clear there in his face, a stability of reserve too that 
 made her feel she could talk to him, somewhat as she had 
 talked to her dog. Like her dog, she was aware of an 
 honest dumbness about him in which the most sacred con- 
 fessions of her thoughts would lie buried for all time if 
 not forgotten. She could even ask him about Father Cos- 
 tello if he knew why the priest had not been out to the 
 house for these three weeks, and it would mean nothing to 
 him. There would be less suspicion in him than there was 
 in herself. It seemed, as she looked at him there before 
 her, waiting for her answer, it would frighten her less 
 to be speaking to him than aloud to herself as she often 
 did when she was alone and the sensations she had came 
 to words, like bubbles rising to the upper surfaces of her 
 mind. 
 
 It was nothing more than a sensation now that she 
 could trust him which rose in her when she said she 
 would keep her promise. 
 
 He stood, bewildered with the sudden fortune of life, 
 watching her as she went back into Foley's shop to leave 
 her parcels till she returned. 
 
 All the way down to the boat cove, he walked like one 
 who sets his stride to a tune that is in the air about him. 
 For her sake as well as his own, he avoided passing the 
 sea-wall because of the laughter they would all make and 
 the jests they would throw after them to see him going 
 out on the water with a young woman. 
 
 It was alone, as it would always be, that he wanted her. 
 If his life had been lonely, he needed no more than herself 
 to fill it, sitting with him by the fire and eating their food 
 together. If any sexual thought came to him about her, 
 it frightened him, as it frightened him always to be taking 
 the communion at High Mass. He shuddered often when 
 the wafer was put upon his tongue lest his teeth should
 
 THE MIRACLE 99 
 
 break it. He trembled when he thought of her lying close 
 to him through the whole, long darkness of night. 
 
 He felt as though he could lift the boat in his arms to 
 launch it. She stood on the rocks waiting until he brought 
 it over to her in the deeper water. He was standing knee 
 deep in the sea as he helped her in. The first touch of her 
 hand perhaps meant nothing to him, there was a subtlety 
 in her for it to have meaning. She realised the simple 
 power in the coarse grain and the grip of his fingers. But 
 once seeing her there before him, as he leant and pulled on 
 the stroke of his oars, was like a harbour coming after the 
 long darkness of a storm. 
 
 " "Tis a quare thing," he said presently, when they had 
 passed the first low headland and the roofs of Ardnashiela 
 were hidden beyond the cliffs, " 'tis a quare thing ye 
 livin' always in the noise of the sea an' yeerself never 
 goin' out anny time on the water." 
 
 "Shure, I never had anny man to be askin' me." 
 
 She sat as still as one of those wooden figure heads that 
 carry the bow-sprits of the sailing ships upon their 
 shoulders. He smiled to see how still she sat. 
 
 "There's no fear. Ye can move in the boat," he told 
 her. ' 'Tis not tossin' her about ye'll be, the way the waves 
 have her sometimes." 
 
 "Isn't it terrible when the waves are big like they'd 
 be breakin' on the strand in a storm?" 
 
 It was not in his nature to think he could impress her 
 or any one with boasting. 
 
 "It's like as if the hands of the Almighty God had got 
 hold of ye," he said simply, "the way they'd be tossin' 
 ye like a straw would be cot in the rushes of the wind." 
 
 "Aren't ye afraid?" 
 
 He answered straightly that he was not. 
 
 "But shure death's a lonely thing," she insisted, "when
 
 100 THE MIRACLE 
 
 'tis only the cold of the waters 'ud be over ye, and no priest 
 to be sayin' the last words would bring a resting to yeer 
 soul." 
 
 Scarcely dipping his oars, he sat wondering for a while 
 how she could think like that with the sea about them as 
 still as the face of glass and the sun hot upon it so that 
 the boat moved through a quivering air, with the water 
 lapping against the gunwales like the low whistling of a 
 bird. 
 
 Presently he raised his oars out of the water, resting 
 on them and looking at her, so that at first she met his 
 eyes and then, because of the meaning there was in them, 
 turned her own away. For a while they were like this 
 with the sea in a shimmering silence round them and the 
 cliffs in a warm glow, smudged with light against the sky. 
 She had never felt herself so far away from the world 
 before and tried to centre her mind, looking at the water 
 that was dripping in globes of pearl from the blades of 
 his oars. The sea took them and melted them into itself. 
 It was all a liquid pearl. 
 
 She was not afraid of him, even though they were so 
 far from the land and the world seemed misted away from 
 her till she could believe it was possible for her never 
 to come back to it. He was so simple a man that, though 
 she had had her premonition when they had met in the 
 street, it was not in any sense that he would master her 
 fate. She had seen herself mated to him rather as things 
 happen than as a strong hand brings them about. She 
 had not even supposed he thought so much of her as 
 to need her. Men amused themselves with women. Often 
 the girls in Ardnashiela were taken out in the boats by the 
 fishermen. She had heard their cries of laughter on Sun- 
 days across the water of the bay. From the hysterical 
 sound of it she had never wished to be one of them.
 
 THE MIRACLE 101 
 
 Fennel there with her was not the kind to tease a 
 woman. No doubt it was that which Father Costello had 
 meant when he had said he was the only man it would be 
 well for her to go with. He must have seen what she saw 
 that morning. He must have known what lay before her. 
 How had he known it? 
 
 But she believed it was a long distance from her yet. 
 There was a certain comfort in the security she felt that, 
 with the man Joe Fennel was, she could keep it from her 
 as long as she chose. Too little experience she had or not 
 enough shrewdness of observation perhaps, to realise the 
 emotions running strong and deep in the slow but certain 
 heart of her companion. 
 
 This is the man a woman trusts and she, was trusting 
 herself with him. 
 
 It was as though a storm had suddenly risen, beating up 
 the water of that quiet sea into the waves he had said were 
 like the hands of God, when he leaned forward on his 
 seat so that his face came close to hers and he said 
 "Mary" 
 
 It was all upon her then and when least she had expected 
 it. She looked up, startled, as though she had heard a voice 
 calling her name from the shore. 
 "What is it?" she asked. 
 
 "I'm wantin' ye," he replied. "I'm a lonely man and I'm 
 wantin' ye." 
 
 She stared away to the cliffs as though there were help 
 for her there and her eyes found and fixed themselves upon 
 a black speck, motionless, like a fly settled and clinging to the 
 far-off face of the world.
 
 Ill 
 
 THERE were two ideas, joining simultaneously to 
 the same issue, in Mary's thoughts. In a sudden and 
 unexpected moment life had swiftly closed upon 
 her. She wanted to escape. All sense of her security had 
 vanished upon an instant. It was not Fennel she was 
 afraid of. There was no thought in her that he had taken 
 advantage of her being alone there with him in the boat. 
 Her loneliness and defencelessness were not of his con- 
 triving. With a feminine sense of that which lay beyond the 
 region of her intelligence, she knew him to be an instru- 
 ment merely. She would have believed him had he told 
 her he had thought he would never speak of the thing 
 that was in his heart to say. 
 
 It was from the unseen hand wielding the sword that 
 she was shrinking. In a swift glance of premonition she 
 had seen it that morning. Now it was beating the air 
 with its song, loud and penetrating, in her ears. Below 
 his breath almost, with the intensity of his emotions, Fen- 
 nel had spoken out his heart in a simple phrase, "I'm 
 a lonely man and I'm wantin' ye." 
 
 There could scarcely have been plainer speech for her 
 to hear than that ; yet the tone of his voice might have been 
 stentorian. It struck like a hammer, beating a blow upon 
 her heart. In the simplicity of his words, it was as though 
 she heard him saying, "I want to take ye out of yeer 
 dreams and the great pride that was comin' to ye. 'Tis the 
 weight of life I want to be puttin' on ye, the way ye'll be 
 liftin' yeer head no more to be listenin' to grand talk. 
 
 102
 
 THE MIRACLE 103 
 
 Isn't it like all the rest of the women ye are and what 
 would they be doin' but scrubbin* the floor and mindin' the 
 childer and boilin' the food? What else would they be 
 doin' but that and no joy to 'em all the days of time as long 
 as water runs?" This was all that was conscious to her. 
 
 She wanted to escape from him then before she heard 
 any more. With that thought quickened to importunate 
 impulse, she had turned her eyes, searching to the cliffs, 
 a warm mist of colour in the heat and light. And then 
 the sight of that black speck, clung motionless to the face 
 of the rocks, had doubled her impulse to an uncontrollable 
 desire. 
 
 It was Father Costello. Without any knowledge of his 
 movements or the habits of his time, she knew it was no one 
 else. Instinct informed her of it with a convincing voice. 
 Then she thought if only she could be free of where she 
 was and out there on the cliffs, she could find him as for 
 all these weeks she had been seeking to do. If only she 
 could speak to him in the quietness of any place, as they 
 had been quiet and alone in the hay-field, she could make 
 him realise her penitence for the boldness of her speech 
 that day. Her heart was crying to be free, yet in a kindness 
 of some deep sense of pity she had for the fisherman, she 
 knew she must soften the disappointment to him. 
 
 She felt her whole body trembling with the urgent de- 
 mand of purpose as she turned back again to face him. 
 He was looking down at the bottom of the boat between 
 the gap of his knees. It was as though, having made his 
 confession, he was afraid to look at her lest he should 
 know her answer too soon. 
 
 When she spoke, he looked up. All he saw in her face 
 was fear when he had expected revolt, repulsion, contempt 
 anything but that.
 
 104 THE MIRACLE 
 
 "Why didn't ye tell me this before we came out?" she 
 asked, making the ease of time. 
 
 "I didn't know I should have the face to be sayin' it at 
 all," he admitted and she believed every word of that. 
 He had destroyed none of the trust she felt in him. 
 
 " 'Twas ye talkin' of the lonesomeness of death for those 
 would be drowned in the sea," he went on, "and the little 
 soft sound ye had in yeer voice and the kindness was in 
 yeer eyes made the feelin' I have about ye come up in the 
 turn of the words. I didn't bring ye out alone in the boat 
 the way I could be tellin* ye that. But 'tis said now." 
 
 She looked away with a softness of moisture in her eyes. 
 
 "I wish ye hadn't said it," she muttered. 
 
 "Why so?" 
 
 " Tis not married I want to be at all." 
 
 "Why not?" 
 
 "Shure, I dunno! 'Tis hard and bitter that life would 
 be for a woman. Isn't it left she is in the course of a 
 little piece with a man and he lookin' at her the way he'd 
 be lookin' at a dog has worn its feet on the roads." 
 
 He appeared at the moment to be unable to say anything 
 to that. Either she would take or refuse him, this was all 
 he had thought. It had never occurred to him a woman 
 could think of marriage as a condition that would alter 
 her life one way or another, unless it were with a man she 
 disliked, or one who would beat her and treat her ill. 
 There were many who submitted without complaint even 
 to that. 
 
 Did she think for a moment it was that way he would be 
 treating her once he had got her for his own? So well 
 he knew the tenderness he had for her that in his astonish- 
 ment at the thought, the question had slipped into words 
 almost before his wish to speak it. 
 
 "D'ye think I'll treat ye badly?" he asked her, and it
 
 THE MIRACLE 105 
 
 was with a gentleness of voice that smote her as she heard 
 it. "D'ye think I'm that kind of a man would raise his 
 hand to woman to be beatin' her?" 
 
 She could not answer this. He was making her way 
 harder than she had thought. 
 
 "Is it the way ye think I'm like a many of them," he 
 went on, "would be huntin' under the stones maybe if 
 they couldn't get money to be drinkin' it?" 
 
 She could only shake her head. She was learning and 
 too fast for her ease of mind, what Father Costello had 
 meant when he said the fisherman was a true man. Why 
 then was she still longing in her heart to be away, to hear 
 no more of what he was saying? Another girl, such as 
 Julia Mahon, would be simpering with delight to hear a 
 man say what he was saying to her there. Yet every word 
 stung with the pain of it. 
 
 He bent forward, leaning on the handles of his oars. 
 His voice was muffled when he spoke. She might have 
 been the painted figure of the Virgin on the altar table 
 above him and he, with too little knowledge of womenkind, 
 stammering a prayer to reach her hearing. 
 
 "I'm not that sort at all," he said in a murmur, almost 
 to himself. "Isn't it a plain man I am, but thare's great 
 kindness I'd have for one would be destroyin' the lone- 
 someness is on me. There is indeed." He looked straight 
 to her then. "And 'tis yeerself could do that, Mary Kirwan, 
 with yeer soft voice is not like the women in Ardnashiela 
 would be bringin' a great noise of shoutin' about the house." 
 
 She had not accepted him ; but she had not refused. He 
 believed he need say no more than this to convince her. 
 That a girl should not want to marry was little more than 
 words to him. Men and women married because inevitably 
 and invariably it happened so. With some girls it was not 
 even a question of whom they chose. Even that seemed
 
 106 THE MIRACLE 
 
 natural and reasonable enough to him. They changed one 
 home for another as cattle moved from this farm to that. 
 It was a matter of treaty and bargain of common consent. 
 
 Marriage was only a part of life. He had never had any 
 other view of it. Living there in Ardnashiela, as they 
 live in all the West of Ireland, there had never been any 
 possibility that he should. What more could he say than 
 he had said? 
 
 Often enough when he sat on the sea wall with the other 
 men they had teased him with their laughter and their jests 
 because he had no wife to be fretting him. Perhaps he 
 was different from them. If the women they had made a 
 fret of their days, it was all as a part of life they took it. 
 A man could forget a great deal when he had a little drink 
 taken. If there were words or a fight even he would be 
 having with his wife, wasn't there little was left to remem- 
 ber qf it in the morning? 
 
 So they all lived in Ardnashiela all but he. Until he 
 had met Mary Kirwan, he had preferred the loneliness 
 of his peat fire, the door shut against the face of night 
 and the voices of his fellow men, with the long silences 
 that fell upon his mind as he smoked his pipe and waited 
 for the call of sleep. 
 
 He preferred it no longer now. Since his lobster pots 
 had been taken from him and he had felt the tormenting 
 presence of the unseen making Their sport of him, he had 
 come to fear those long silences, that door shut close and 
 the empty room. It was fear like a child's fear. It was 
 loneliness, like a child's. That kindness of life was what 
 he wanted about him. He never spoke to her of love, or 
 thought she had any need of it. Yet he loved her even 
 then, as some men do love women for the gentleness they 
 can bring into a hard life that has little of the tenderness 
 of affection to soften it.
 
 THE MIRACLE 107 
 
 "Can't ye be givin' me the word?" he asked, looking up 
 at her. 
 
 Without the quality of comparison, she thought of her 
 dog, the way it lifted its eyes to her, as when she had found 
 it starving in the yard of the farm, gratitude already there 
 mingled with expectancy. 
 
 "It's all so quick," she said, afraid in every word to hurt 
 him. "How did I know ye were goin' to be talkin' to me 
 like this? It's too quick it is. Shure I'd want time to be 
 thinkin' of it in me mind." She sped her glance again to 
 the cliffs. The black speck was still there, still motionless, 
 but upon the surface only. Any moment it might be gone. 
 
 "I'll say no more then," said he. "Can't I wait? Shure, 
 I can indeed. If the nights are long, won't I be thinkin' 
 always 'tis yeerself is comin' to shorten them to the break 
 of the day and that'll be a grand thought for me to be 
 havin' surely." 
 
 It was because she knew that this was how it would end 
 that she cried out to him to stop. 
 
 "I have not said I would," she told him, and it was as 
 though there were some one else there and she was answer- 
 ing them. "Shure, I've given ye no word one way or an- 
 other. 'Tis not married I'm wantin' to be this time or anny. 
 Aren't there plenty of women would be goin' the time of 
 their days without a man at all to be naming them?" 
 
 It was this talk he could not understand from her. Not 
 understanding it, perhaps it frightened him even more than 
 if she had given him her direct refusal. Life was as long 
 in Ardnashiela as elsewhere and maybe when a year or 
 two had gone by, he might take her with patience. But 
 this avoidance of marriage itself, the very strangeness of 
 it to his hearing raised up a barrier he had no quickness 
 of intelligence to circumvent. 
 
 Drawing a deep breath in which there was despair of
 
 108 THE MIRACLE 
 
 his impotence, he took up his oars again. With a mechani- 
 cal stroke that brought its sense to Mary of an engine in- 
 capable of fatigue, he began pulling the boat out further 
 into the luminous mist of the sea. The sound of the oars 
 in the wooden rowlocks fell rhythmically upon her ears 
 with the fatal regularity of a ticking clock. She saw the 
 cliffs receding from them, the world her heart was crying 
 for drawing further away. In a very little while she felt 
 she could bear the sound of those relentless oars no longer. 
 With an impulsive gesture, sped to distraction, she leant 
 forward and clutched at his hands that wielded them. 
 
 "Don't go out any more!" she whispered to him. She 
 was almost beyond subterfuge with the passionate fear that 
 she was a prisoner now. "Don't go out any more! Let ye 
 be puttin' the boat across to the cliffs over. I'll be walkin' the 
 way back to Ardnashiela. Shure, I'd sooner be walkin' back." 
 
 He stared at her, a bewildered man. Every moment he 
 was understanding her less; every moment she was escap- 
 ing from him the more with her elusiveness; every moment 
 he was fearing his first thought of her, that it was not 
 a man with the nets and the boat he had and the money 
 was put by in his house who would ever be calling her 
 his own. 
 
 "What's on ye?" he asked querulously. With any satis- 
 faction to his reason, he could only think it was an illness 
 she felt, as many of the girls did when first they came 
 out in the boats. Yet the sea was marble smooth. The 
 mark of his oars lay far into the distance behind them 
 with circles that widened in scintillating rings of light. 
 
 She simply stared at him as though she could give no 
 meaning for what she had done. He asked her again, when 
 she could only repeat: 
 
 "I'd sooner be walkin' back." Then, as if this were
 
 THE MIRACLE 109 
 
 a tangible reason that would give him understanding, she 
 added: "It looks so far the land 'ud be out here." 
 
 "Yirra, I'll pull her in so, nearer to the rocks," said he. 
 
 What could she say? Her mind was searching for an 
 excuse, feverishly snatching at one thought to persuade him 
 and as feverishly putting it away. 
 
 The real issue had singled itself out in her now. She 
 knew it was to see and speak to the priest she wanted more 
 than any desire to be away from Fennel in the boat. Her 
 fear of not being able to accomplish it, had risen higher 
 now than the fear she had of the thought itself. She was 
 not stopping to ask herself what it meant in the purpose 
 of her heart. To achieve her object and before it was too 
 late, was then the only idea that dominated her. 
 
 "But I want to be walkin' back," she reiterated in a pain 
 of distress. "I want to be alone to think about what ye've 
 been sayin' to me. It isn't sittin' here with ye in the boat 
 I could have a thought of it at all. Won't ye put me out 
 on the rocks," she pleaded, "the way I can be walkin' with 
 meself only and a long quiet I'd be havin' in me mind." 
 
 Without knowing it, she had tuned her voice to its 
 gentlest note with her pleading. It sped through unex- 
 pected channels of emotion into his heart. He felt it beat- 
 ing with fear as that night when he had seen the flocking 
 birds. There was nothing he would not have done for her 
 no sacrifice he would not have made. If it was a dis- 
 appointment and a loss to him and spoilt the most wonder- 
 ful hour he had ever known in his life, it was for her and 
 in response to her wishes he was spoiling it. He had seldom 
 talked to women at any time. Never in his life had he 
 talked to one in such closeness of mind as he had to her. 
 It was wonderful enough to him that he had said so much. 
 She knew the secret desire in him. When they had set 
 out from the boat cove, he had never hoped he would reach
 
 110 THE MIRACLE 
 
 so far with her as that. If this were indeed the end of it, 
 it had been wonderful while it lasted. 
 
 Without another word, he put the boat about and, with 
 a quicker stroke, since it was her he was serving, he sped 
 them over the blue water, through the mist of light and 
 the quivering air to the silent feet of the rocks. 
 
 Sitting there in the stern, a still figure once again, 
 it was as though she measured the decreasing distance with 
 her pulses; as though she were coming with heart leaping 
 to an enchanted land.
 
 rv 
 
 HIGH away there on his ledge of rock, Father Cos- 
 tello had seen all that had happened. For a long 
 while, having read his Breviary, he had sat with 
 eyes sometimes half closed, letting his mind drift with 
 dreams and visions in the light and the heat and the still 
 shimmer of the sea. 
 
 In a pilgrimage of thought, he wandered back to look 
 upon his first enthusiasiams in Rome. There they were in 
 a clear retrospect like a painted picture. How were they 
 now? Had the colour faded? Were the outlines less 
 keen? He gazed over the glassy stretches of the sea, 
 contemplating his memories as he might have gazed into 
 a mirror, recalling the look he had when he was young, 
 setting it beside the reflection he saw and asking himself 
 how life had treated him. 
 
 They were all there, those enthusiasms. There was not one 
 he missed. Nevertheless it was not joy but something of 
 fear and disappointment he felt in finding them. As lofty 
 they were as ever they had been, yet something there was 
 in them seemed different. For a long while he regarded 
 them, gazing into the years as they had passed him by, 
 much as a man, sitting in a high window, watches the pas- 
 sage of a pageant in the street below. One costumed figure 
 after another came and went, whose characters with every 
 power of discrimination, he failed to reconcile. This that 
 should have been a man for broils and skirmishes and all 
 the rough adventures of war, was dressed as a scholar, pale 
 of face and hollow-eyed. Here, one that was a knight-at- 
 
 111
 
 112 THE MIRACLE 
 
 arms had cast his vizor for a monk's cowl and there the 
 cardinal that had been was become a humble abbot's clerk. 
 
 At "last, in a vivid instant of introspection, he saw what 
 it was. His enthusiasms had become ideals. A greater haze 
 of beauty there was about them than there had ever been 
 before, but they were more elusive to his touch. The 
 strenuous vitality had gone out of them. They had become 
 spiritualised. He felt he could no longer walk with them 
 as once he had done, conspicuously in the open streets of 
 life. All were there, but they dwelt in the inner sanctuary 
 of his soul. He knew them no longer as the common 
 blood, pulsing in a common measure through every vein 
 in his body. He could not laugh about them now, as he' 
 had once, with a free laughter. They were more sacred 
 and yet the very silent sanctuary in which they sheltered 
 now, seemed less secure than the open, noisy, light of day. 
 
 What had happened that it had become like this? It 
 was beyond a human possibility he could openly and fear- 
 lessly face the answer to such a question as that. An un- 
 flinching courage had been needed in him to reach even so 
 far in self-admission as this. 
 
 It was just life had done it, he told himself. He was 
 seven years older since those days in Rome. If it was 
 ideals they had become, whatever they were, he thanked 
 God for them. Even Father Roche perhaps had set out 
 with such enthusiasms as he. And what had life done to 
 him? It had turned those enthusiasms into mere dross of 
 habit. He felt he had no need to pray that such might 
 never happen to him. He knew well it could not. Without 
 these ideals, the mere thought of life was abhorrent to him. 
 That was something to be thankful for; a girdle to wear, 
 a staff to hold that would help him over the longest journey. 
 
 He was beginning to drive himself to courage because he 
 felt he needed it. More than that, he was finding it fast.
 
 THE MIRACLE 113 
 
 Ideals were better than enthusiasms. There was not one 
 of the latter but what life in the end did not wear it down. 
 Enthusiasm was like the breath in the body of a man run- 
 ning a race. In time it was like to give out. It always 
 gave out before the end. 
 
 It was not true that the silent sanctuary of a man's 
 soul was insecure keeping for his ideals. Where else should 
 they abide? And how could life touch them there? 
 
 And now he was feeling a new joy in his heart that 
 he had faced this relentless enquiring of his reason. It 
 seemed to him he had been like a man upon his trial, con- 
 fronting the pitilessness of his accusers. With frailty and 
 insecurity of purpose they had charged him. Now he had 
 answered the charge. It might be true that he had lost the 
 vital quality of his enthusiasms. But what if he had! In 
 place of them he had found the spiritual quality of his 
 ideals and locked them in the safe-keeping of his soul where 
 the hand of life could never touch them. 
 
 In the end he had laughed, a short laugh of contempt 
 at his fears and then in a moment the silence everywhere, 
 that had lent itself to his thoughts, was broken. The sea- 
 gulls were still wheeling with sharp cries over the cliffs; 
 there was a long humming note over the heather, but from 
 a continuous hearing this had woven itself through his 
 mind to a tangible thread of silence. The sound of oars 
 beating rhythmically in the rowlocks of a boat had snapped 
 it. In an instant the sounds of nature all came back to 
 him. He heard the humming note over the sea-pinks and 
 the heather. He heard the cries of the sweeping gulls, 
 the faint lapping of the water on the rocks below, but 
 thrusting above these came the noise of oars to bring a 
 human interest of life into the solitude. 
 
 In a few moments the black speck of the boat rounded the 
 sharp edge of the headland, with a trail of glittering ripples
 
 114 THE MIRACLE 
 
 behind it like a water spider on a still pool, except that it 
 moved with an almost imperceptible gliding. 
 
 Almost glad of the interruption at that issue of his 
 thoughts, he had hoped for the moment it was the men 
 come out to their fishing. Not even the people who had 
 lived in Ardnashiela all their lives ever lost interest when 
 the fish were in the bay. There was an excitement, a 
 sense of adventure in the air those days. It had not been 
 long before Father Costello had caught the fever of it 
 too. Boats were hurried out from the boat cove, nets were 
 gathered up with hasty hands from the sea wall. Every 
 one about the street and in the houses could be heard say- 
 ing to each other: "The fish are in the bay the fish are 
 in the bay." They brought the commotion of life with 
 them. All Ardnashiela started up from the peacefulness 
 of its sleep and for the rest of that day there was a coming 
 and going of men and women, of children running and 
 donkey butts rattling over the stones. 
 
 The moment the boat came in sight, Father Costello 
 knew there was nothing like this to turn that solitude into 
 the fret and flurry of life. It was Fennel, he thought, the 
 only industrious man amongst them, come out to look 
 after his lobster pots. 
 
 So seldom had he seen women out in the boats that at 
 first, at that distance, he had assumed both those figures 
 were men. It was only when they came across the straight 
 line of his vision, that he began to have a doubt of it. There 
 was a certain timidity with which she sat in the stern of 
 the boat that arrested his eyes, watching them. No man 
 would sit like that no man bred to the life of the sea. It 
 was a woman. In itself that was enough to prick his mind 
 to speculation. It was a woman and already he had thought 
 it was Fennel coming out there to inspect his pots. 
 
 His mind swept back to the remembrance of that evening
 
 THE MIRACLE 115 
 
 in the cow-shed, the last words of Fennel as he had gone 
 out, the thoughts that had come to him about the fisherman 
 then. 
 
 It was Mary Kirwan. 
 
 She had kept her promise. She had taken his advice. 
 So uncommon an event was it in Ardnashiela for any girl 
 on a week-day to go out with the men in the boats, that 
 he came without hesitation to the certainty of belief. If 
 on a Sunday they went out, it was more in the nature 
 of an excursion a crowd of them singing sometimes, 
 laughing always in high-pitched voices. He had never seen 
 a man alone with a woman before. The very sight of it had 
 all the significance of a wooing. Not only was she keep- 
 ing her promise with Fennel; she was taking his advice. 
 
 His eyes became rivetted upon them. There was not a 
 movement that escaped him. When Fennel rested on his 
 oars and leant forward speaking to her as she sat there in 
 the stern of the boat, it seemed he could hear the deep note 
 of earnestness in his voice. After this discovery, so rapt 
 had his attention become that he did not realise the meaning 
 of a wish, flinging itself through his mind, that he might 
 have a glass to be watching them more closely. He specu- 
 lated for a reason to explain to himself why they were drift- 
 ing. They must be talking seriously then. Perhaps in those 
 very moments, out there in the silence of the sea, Fennel was 
 talking of love to her. 
 
 What sort of talk would it be from a man like that? 
 Honest and true, he imagined it, but with a heaviness that 
 would hang, weighted upon his words. Would it lift her 
 to an exaltation? Hearing his declaration of it, would 
 she rise to a flame of passion as high even as when in so 
 many words she had turned him from the house and in 
 a flame of passion, too, shaming the priest in him, he had 
 left her?
 
 116 THE MIRACLE 
 
 He watched her with his eyes, as a hawk watches, all 
 that time while Fennel was resting on his oars. She made 
 no movement. She did not respond. He was quick to 
 realise there was no sign of exaltation there. Then close 
 upon that realisation came an urging wish in his heart that 
 there might be. 
 
 Once he thought he saw her turn. He believed he saw 
 her face, pale, even against the glint of the sea, looking 
 towards the cliffs. Had she seen him in that moment? 
 How was it possible? At such a distance he would be lost 
 to her eyes, part of the pattern only in the fretted patchwork 
 of the rocks. It was impossible for him to know the effect 
 to them of the sun striking upon his black cloth. The more 
 he gazed at them, the further away, losing substance in the 
 mist, they appeared to be. 
 
 But there, surely, if ever he had seen one, was a man at 
 his wooing. Presently would he take her in his arms? Did 
 those people make love with open demonstrations of their 
 passion? If he did, was it right that he should be looking 
 at them? Could he bear to look? Love was a sacred 
 thing but was it a sacred thing to them ? From the young 
 men and women he had often seen caressing each other 
 in public places, he did not imagine it could be. Yet he 
 felt that if Fennel were to lean forward then and take her 
 in his arms, he must shut his eyes and turn away. 
 
 Why was that? There had been no marriage service 
 since he had come to Ardnashiela, but he knew in the 
 nature of those people and the regard the men had for 
 their womenfolk, that love and passion were mere transi- 
 tory and inconsiderable states of mind with them. Why 
 should he shut his eyes? Some man, some time or another, 
 would touch her lips with his. Some time or another a 
 man would take her away alone to himself. Yet she had 
 said she never wanted to be married. What had she meant
 
 THE MIRACLE 117 
 
 by that? Surely it could not be just the look in a woman's 
 face that made her so different from her class. 
 
 Nevertheless, she was different. At all times there was 
 something impossible to know about her. He had felt it 
 himself. He confessed it freely. That interest, he was 
 ready to admit it then, had drawn him often out to Kir- 
 wan's farm. There was a latent, tragic sense about her. 
 She would not easily find a joy in life. Yet there was not 
 one amongst all those people in Ardnashiela who seemed 
 to need that joy so Tnuch as she. Perhaps she knew 
 that in herself. Perhaps that was why she had said she 
 would never marry. Perhaps, too, that was why he was 
 watching them so closely then, why he wished that she 
 might be lifted to a height of exaltation, why he knew in 
 his heart that one of the rough fibre of Fennel, the fisher- 
 man, could never carry her there. 
 
 Presently Fennel had taken up his oars again. They 
 were going further out to sea. On and away into the dazz- 
 ling mist of the light they were moving. Soon they would 
 be a blurred speck upon the water when it would be impos- 
 sible for him to see even the rhythmic movement of the 
 fisherman's arms, or the bright splashings of the oars. A 
 wish cried out in him that they would come closer to the 
 shore. Had she seen him? Was it from the watching of 
 his eyes they were drawing away ? 
 
 As though it were in some telepathic answer to his ques- 
 tion, some miraculous response to his wish, he saw Mary 
 lean forward and touch Fennel's hands upon the oars. For 
 a moment he thought it had come, the lifting of exaltation, 
 the instant before, when, dropping his oars, he would take 
 her in his arms. There was an arid heat in his eyes. But he 
 did not close them. He had not turned away as he sup- 
 posed he would. He was looking with all the searching
 
 118 THE MIRACLE 
 
 power of vision, as if every sense he had were leant to the 
 sole purpose in his mind. 
 
 But it was not what he thought. For a while they ap- 
 peared to be talking, then Fennel turned the boat and with 
 quicker strokes that shot a ripple of white foam from the 
 bows, he was rowing in towards the shore. 
 
 This was the wish answered that his heart had cried. 
 A moment later he was realising a new intent in their 
 undeviating direction and their speed. They were coming 
 right into the shore. They were going to land on the rocks. 
 
 Was it that they feared the sea too open a place? He 
 began to wonder where he could go. It was impossible to 
 stay any longer where he was. Still he waited, believing 
 now they could not have seen him or they would have 
 rowed beyond the next headland for their landing. 
 
 Down there below him those three hundred feet, the 
 boat looked a flimsy thing for human lives to trust them- 
 selves in. It lay against the mass-of rocks where Fennel had 
 brought it, no bigger than a nut-shell floating on the water. 
 
 The fisherman clung with his hands to the limpet fringe 
 the low tide had exposed to the sun. She stepped out onto 
 the rocks. Her feet slipped on the slime of sea-weed. She 
 swayed and balanced with her arms till she had climbed 
 up on to a smooth plateau. 
 
 Then she looked back. The priest heard their voices far 
 below them; the softness of her treble, the deep note of 
 his bass. He ( could distinguish no words they said. 
 
 The next moment he was swallowing in his throat to 
 keep back the rising of his heart with its sudden beating. 
 Fennel was pushing off the boat. He was leaving her there. 
 He was going away. His wooing was over. With slower 
 strokes that seemed weighted with the aching of his arms, 
 he was pulling out alone once more into the glistening soli- 
 tude of the sea.
 
 FATHER COSTELLO sat waiting. He did not 
 move from his ledge of rock. In those first days 
 of his enthusiasm he would have sought her out. 
 Now, with a supreme effort of will, he held close. With 
 movements of his eyes only, he watched her climb the easy 
 ascent there of the cliffs, or looked out to see where the 
 boat with its lonely occupant was slowly increasing its 
 distance from the shore, slowly becoming faint and nebulous 
 in the reflected lights and trembling beat of the air. 
 
 He could not suppose she had seen him yet. She climbed 
 without looking upwards, negotiating each difficulty as it 
 came. The shawl about her head was thrown back in the 
 heat of the sun. Dropping to a loose cowl it hung between 
 her shoulders. Exposed in that light, he could see her hair 
 in the fullness of its colour. 
 
 She was not climbing straightly in his direction, but so 
 nearly he knew she must pass him that their meeting 
 seemed inevitable. Did he wish that it should be? He 
 sat still with the stillness of the rock beneath him as though 
 he hoped it would not, as though by some incomputable 
 chance of fate she might pass by, ignorant of his presence 
 there so near to her. 
 
 Not in such moments as those could he determine what 
 it was he feared in their meeting. As it was with her 
 always, so it had become then with him. He had no 
 thought, but sensations only. Fear and a wild joy, a pas- 
 sionate power of restraint and then a trembling weakness, 
 when all desire to command himself seemed to have become 
 
 119
 
 120 THE MIRACLE 
 
 fluid in his will, these, in sensations he could neither check 
 nor determine, ran in a succession through his mind. 
 
 Whatever he felt he still sat motionless and then the 
 fate he somehow believed was in it all, decided the issue. 
 As she came level with him up the jutting face of the cliffs, 
 she turned and looked across the uneven ledges of the rocks. 
 In an automatic response to that, he acted at once. 
 
 "Good morning, Mary," he called out. 
 
 She called back good morning in a voice that was querul- 
 ous, perhaps because of her want of breath from climbing. 
 Then she made her way across to him. He rose to his feet. 
 In a few moments they were standing, facing each other on 
 his platform of rock with the glow of the light between them, 
 the sea-gulls sweeping and winding over their heads and 
 far across the water below them that fading speck of the 
 boat with its occupant bending in his solitude over the oars. 
 
 Father Costello summoned all the quietness in his voice. 
 
 "What made you come to the rocks?" he asked. "There 
 was I sitting here, thinking it must be a great wonder to you 
 out there on the water and no sooner had I thought it, than 
 Fennel turns the boat about and comes pulling in to the 
 shore." 
 
 "Did ye know it was ourselves?" 
 
 "I did indeed!" 
 
 "How did ye know that?" 
 
 He gave her a laugh. 
 
 "Well I can see. I've got two good eyes in my head, 
 Mary." 
 
 "But shure, how could ye be tellin' a man or a woman 
 at all with that great stretch of the sea was between ye?" 
 
 "No I can't say I recognized you at first." 
 
 "Yirra, how did ye know them?" 
 
 "I remembered that day when you were milking that 
 day of the storm that day Fennel came in for shelter.
 
 THE MIRACLE 121 
 
 You made him a promise didn't you? The first fine day, 
 you said, you would come out with him in his boat." 
 
 She looked up at him, frankly, into his eyes. In a natu- 
 ral consequence of thought, she turned her head then and 
 looked across the water. The boat was melting into the 
 mist. Though no detail of it was visible, she saw the 
 man plainly there alone at his oars. Still frankly, she 
 looked back at Father Costello as though expecting and 
 unafraid of his rebuke. 
 
 "Ye think 'tis the way I've been cruel to him," she said, 
 "I gettin' out on the rocks and leavin' him there to be 
 goin' back with himself?" 
 
 Had he anticipated her answer, he would never have 
 asked his question. It was with his mind utterly unpre- 
 pared that he enquired why she had done it at all. 
 
 "I saw yeerself sittin' here," she replied with a guileless 
 honesty, "I wanted to speak to ye. I wanted to say the 
 shame I'd had for me boldness and the bad manners I gave 
 ye that day in the house." 
 
 She had seen him. Because of that, she had asked to 
 be put out on the rocks. It was she from a wish to be 
 with him who had ended that wooing! He tried to return 
 the straightness of her look. The frankness of her eyes 
 frightened him. It was impossible. He turned his head 
 away across the water to the boat. She read in his ges- 
 ture more than in his eyes that he found her heartless in 
 what she had done. With a quaint distress in her voice 
 she begged to be told if that was what he thought. 
 
 Without looking round he said 
 
 "Did you tell him it was that you wanted?" 
 
 "I did not of course." 
 
 He breathed relief. 
 
 "Then I should think it was hard on him," he said. 
 
 "It was, I s'pose."
 
 122 THE MIRACLE 
 
 He faced her quickly with a haste in his eyes that asked 
 her why she supposed it. There was no need of his 
 saying the word. 
 
 She hesitated. She did not want to say. Yet to whom 
 could she speak better of such a thing than to a priest? 
 Even if in her heart she knew that her marriage with 
 Fennel would be the end of it, he could advise her ; he could 
 make her understand this reluctance in herself to be wife 
 to any man. 
 
 " 'Tis the way 'tis the way he wants me to marry him," 
 she stammered. 
 
 "Thank God for that," he said quickly, and with an 
 earnestness she heard plainer in his voice than he. 
 
 It was the last thing she wanted to hear. It seemed to 
 make it more inevitable than ever. Then there was no 
 escape. That was the way of her life, as she had heard it 
 in Fennel's words the way of every woman with no joy 
 to her all the days of time. 
 
 "Shure I'm not after thankin' God meself," said she. 
 " 'Tis not a married woman I want to be at all." 
 
 It had been all she could say to Fennel. It was all she 
 could say now to him. She knew no more really about 
 it herself than that. In just those few words her sensa- 
 tions summed themselves up in her. 
 
 They had a more distressing sound to him now than 
 when he had heard them before. In the urgent need they 
 made in him, he began pleading with her like a man hasten- 
 ing to clinch a bargain. 
 
 "He's the best man in Ardnashiela," he said, as he had 
 said before. 
 
 "Shure, I know that." 
 
 "Well, what is it in the name of God," he said, "keeps you 
 from taking him when he wants to marry ? You're a foolish 
 girl, Mary Kirwan you don't know the hardness of life,
 
 THE MIRACLE 123 
 
 or the help there'd be for a woman to have a man standing 
 always by her as he'd stand by you. Why don't you say 
 the word to him? There's not a man in the whole of the 
 street would bring you the peace of life he could be giving 
 you." 
 
 To her astonishment he suddenly took her arms as though 
 she were a child that could be shaken into obedience if he 
 had the power of will in him to be doing it. Instead he 
 just held them fiercely in the grip of his fingers. 
 
 "Marry him, Mary!" he exclaimed. "Marry him! 'Tis 
 the whole heart he has and he's giving it to you and it's not 
 for yourself or any good woman to refuse the heart of 
 a man like that!" 
 
 She had expected him to shake her, expected the action 
 of it to accompany his holding of her like that. It was what 
 men did in their tempers with things weaker than them- 
 selves. Often when she was younger, her father had 
 shaken her. In the sound of his voice, she had felt the 
 temper of the priest, because of her obstinacy perhaps, be- 
 cause of her folly too. And then, somehow, when it was 
 only his fingers that gripped and hurt upon her arms and 
 he only held her so, she sensed, without reason, as an animal 
 scents danger, that it was not his anger so much as his fear. 
 He was afraid of something. His fingers clutched with 
 fear. They clung. The strength in them was not dominant. 
 
 All this she felt distantly in her blood and her flesh. 
 It communicated with no reason to her brain. She experi- 
 enced no more than a wonder why he said what he did. 
 While he was still holding her arms, she looked up at 
 him with penetrating query in her eyes. 
 
 ''Why are ye sayin' all this?" she asked him straightly. 
 "Don't ye rightly know I could be goin' on meself in the 
 house, milkin' the cows and doin' the work there'd be for 
 me on the farm the way me father would be glad to be
 
 124 THE MIRACLE 
 
 havin' me there and himself standin' by me if 'twas a man 
 I'd be needin' at all? Why are ye standin' there, grippin' 
 me arms and hurtin' me " he dropped his hands as 
 though she had struck them down "and ye cryin' out 
 to me to marry the man? Shure 'tis not a lonely girl I 
 am, have no home to be goin' to. Why would ye be hurtin' 
 me like that?" 
 
 She lifted her arm and bared it beyond the elbow. Per- 
 haps her hands were rough with the work she did. If 
 they were, they made the more conspicuous the soft white- 
 ness of her arms. 
 
 He had seen many a woman's arms bared before and 
 never known there was beauty in them, never considered 
 that in their nakedness a woman was expressing the charm 
 they had for any one to see who found it. 
 
 She held it out that he might see the red flesh where 
 his fingers had marked her. Both of them, they stared 
 at it. It was she who glanced away first and glanced at 
 him. Somehow she knew then it was not at the mark 
 alone he was looking, but at all her arm, nearly to the 
 shoulder, like a bar of ivory in the sunlight. 
 
 Never supposing the riot in his mind or reading his 
 thoughts, she acted swiftly with an almost automatic obedi- 
 ence to the instincts of her sex. More suddenly even than 
 she had bared her arm, she pulled down the sleeve of her 
 bodice and covered it again. It was so sudden as to be 
 conspicuous, so sudden as to be a revelation to him. He 
 knew what he had done. He knew then too what he had 
 felt and thought. What was more fatal, he knew it had 
 not escaped from her. 
 
 He felt that quick movement of hers to be a reproach. 
 It smote across his conscience, whipping him to a double 
 shame, a shame of himself, a shame to think he had forced 
 her to modesty.
 
 THE MIRACLE 125 
 
 He could not meet her eyes then, but when she had 
 pulled down the sleeve of her dress, turned his head away 
 and looked over the water that in a faint change of light 
 had varied to the colour of mackerel scales with iridescent 
 blues and greens and shifting lights of pearly pink. 
 
 He thought/ as it is common to think of women, that 
 what she had done yvas a modesty in her. He did not know 
 that her heart was beating with a wild and almost pagan 
 joy as she did it. He did not know it was an automatic 
 action, rooted deep in Nature itself. He had no experience 
 with which to ask himself why a woman reveals her charm 
 until it is seen and then in an impulsive instinct snatches 
 it away. Without such an experience it was impossible 
 for him to reason that there was little of modesty in 
 it, but a purpose and as strong as life itself. He had 
 never tried to fathom the unconscious motives women lived 
 by when their hearts were stirred and, without guile or 
 malice, they became obedient to the laws of Nature, seek- 
 ing always to set free the first passionate spate of love 
 that, once loosened, may flood as it wishes and to the ulti- 
 mate sea if it will. 
 
 He did not even know that Nature was having its deter- 
 mined way with him when he seized her arms and had 
 cried to her to marry Fennel, the fisherman. Never would 
 he have believed that Nature too, was involved with her 
 when, in a distant consciousness that her arm was not an 
 ugly thing to see, she had bared it there in the sunlight 
 to show him the mark his fingers had left. Still less could 
 he conceive or she be made to realise that when, with that 
 hasty movement, she had covered her arm again, she was 
 acting at Nature's bidding to stir a deeper fire in him/ or 
 that at Nature's bidding her heart was beating, one dull 
 thud after another in her breast. 
 
 There they stood, both of them, ignorant and afraid,
 
 126 THE MIRACLE 
 
 simple sport for the rough purposes of life. The very 
 silence about them was pregnant with what it bore. And 
 she was more ignorant than he. Still he was a priest to her. 
 
 Once she had seen Father O'Connor, his predecessor, 
 with drink taken. He was leaning to steady himself against 
 a wall on the Doonvarna road. They were alone. She 
 had thought he was ill and had come hurriedly to his side 
 asking was there any way at all she could help and was it 
 the way he was sick. But the drink he had taken had gone 
 only to his limbs maybe, for his voice and his senses had 
 been clear enough for him to tell her to go away and mind 
 her own business. She had known he was drunk then, but 
 never in all that time had she admitted it to herself. It 
 was sick the poor man was, she said in her mind and 
 shielded him with that, not only to herself, but never spoke 
 of it to another soul. 
 
 It was the same here with her now. She was ignorant 
 and yet she knew. She knew but would not allow an in- 
 stant's admission in her thoughts. He was a priest. He 
 had his vows taken. There was nothing that any woman 
 could be to him. The very thought of it was a sacrilege 
 that made a shuddering in her. Yet there was the look 
 she had seen in his face and here was the knowledge, so 
 deeply implanted that she could never root it out of her 
 mind. 
 
 What had happened to Father O'Connor had never con- 
 cerned her more than in its relation to her sacred beliefs 
 in the honour and glory of the priesthood. She could for- 
 get that. She could put it utterly away. She might think 
 she could do the same here, but it was nothing more than 
 a hope and one which a surging instinct threatened at every 
 turn. 
 
 Still there was a wish below her thoughts, a fierce wish 
 begotten of her preconceived idealisms of the priesthood,
 
 THE MIRACLE 127 
 
 to shield him from evil, to keep him exalted in her mind. 
 She could not believe, as he stood there beside her, that in 
 that moment he was nothing but a man. She fixed her eyes 
 upon the familiar cloth on his shoulders, the distinguishing 
 collar about his neck and, if not in so many words, she kept 
 saying to herself he was a priest. 
 
 But these were fluid thoughts. They came and went. 
 Riding upon them and every moment with her heart beat- 
 ing, she felt a passionate joy and pride in herself. It was 
 the same joy, the same pride she had found that first day 
 when Father Costello came out to the farm. His laughter 
 as he went, saying he would walk as though he were going 
 to a funeral, that, mingling with her own laughter, had 
 struck the first spark of it. Ever since then, in the farm 
 kitchen and most of all that evening in the hay-field, it 
 had smouldered and burnt to a red glow in the inflammable 
 substance of her heart. 
 
 It was a furnace now. The heat of it suffused her. 
 She glowed with her pride that had no vanity in it. It was 
 pride in herself as a woman that has stirred a man to 
 passionate response. 
 
 It seemed to her then that she needed to know no more. 
 This in itself was a greater thing than she had ever hoped 
 of life. She would not realise there were more lofty heights 
 of exaltation than this. He was a priest. As a priest she 
 knew then she loved him, as she would have loved him had 
 he been a man. If that were a sin and she supposed it 
 was she was none the less glad of it. If it were a sin, 
 it was one that could never sully him. Always he would 
 have to her the wonder both of priest and man. 
 
 And now, having come to this, the greatest realisation 
 she believed was in the world for her, she felt in a strange 
 surprise at herself, that if it must be, she could marry 
 Fennel, the fisherman, now. All that he needed for his
 
 128 THE MIRACLE 
 
 loneliness she could give him. The pity and kindness she 
 had in her heart for him bore no relation to this. It could 
 not touch, it could not approach the leaping furnace of her 
 pride. This was a being within herself, left as it were in 
 her charge to keep unspoiled and sacred all her life through 
 for one who could never take it as his own. 
 
 The sensation of the vision it conveyed to her imagina- 
 tion almost pleased her. Renunciation did not enter into it. 
 She flattered herself with no false vanity in what she 
 thought. How could she give up what could never possibly 
 be hers? She could marry Fennel, happily even, knowing 
 the true man he was. Never in all their life together would 
 he ask anything of her pride. If it were only because of 
 the way he had spoken to her in the boat, she knew it was 
 never that he needed. This which was her own she could 
 keep always for herself and when she died she definitely 
 thought of this it was Fennel's wife they would be burying 
 under the grass up in the graveyard on the hill, whilst all 
 that was her in her soul would be a spirit, wandering maybe 
 and never at rest, but living always with the pride of the 
 love that was in her. 
 
 This was the most concrete thought she had and with it, 
 a glitter in her eyes, she looked up at Father Costello. 
 
 "I'll marry himself, if 'tis the way I ought to," said she. 
 
 He looked round at her quickly and caught the glitter in 
 her eyes. Without knowing what it meant, he felt it to 
 be the utmost edge of his endurance. The knowledge of 
 what he had done had not escaped her. Yet that light he 
 saw there was not reproach. If, as he supposed, there had 
 been modesty in her responsive action, then, with that thril- 
 ling glitter in her eyes, it only served to torture and inflame 
 him the more. Only her words saved him. With a shud- 
 dering sense of relief, he clutched at them to keep himself 
 from falling.
 
 THE MIRACLE 129 
 
 "There's no question of duty in it," he said, more sharply 
 than he meant, "it's your happiness I'm thinking of. You 
 can't suppose I'd be urging you to marry him except for 
 that." 
 
 Such belief she had of the priest he was and little under- 
 standing the true nature of the man, she asked why it hap- 
 pened that he put such a pass upon her happiness. 
 
 "Shure, there's no woman in this wildness of the land," 
 she said, "thinks one way or another would there be any 
 joy to her at all, but the things she'd be doin' with her 
 hands and the food she'd eat or the sleep she'd be gettin' 
 maybe to the last of her days." 
 
 It was her pride said it. She felt she was not one of 
 these. It was because she believed he knew it also that 
 she wanted to hear him say it, just in the words of his 
 voice. All this was part of her fatality. She scarcely knew 
 the abyss upon which she trod. With all the beauty that it 
 had, it still was the solid earth on which she was walking 
 in the sunlight of her pride. To be known, to have the 
 hidden joy in her discovered and understood, was all she 
 needed assurance of. 
 
 "And do you think you're like one of them?" he asked 
 her shortly. 
 
 She could smile at him with her eyes and her lips even 
 when she answered that. It was a smile of infinite sadness, 
 infinite in longing, and yet a certain proudness in it with 
 her brave acceptance of life. 
 
 "I dunno, am I," she replied, "and I dunno why 
 shouldn't I be. Ain't I just one of those livin' on the land, 
 might marry anny man and meself goin' with him one day 
 and another till I'd be as like the rest as one stone'd be like 
 another lying on the turn of the strand." 
 
 "You don't know you're quite different?" 
 "Shure, how could I?"
 
 130 THE MIRACLE 
 
 "I'm telling you you are." 
 
 "And what way would I be different?" 
 
 "Well perhaps you wouldn't understand if I said there 
 was a distance about you something it would never be 
 possible to get near to or understand. Do you know what 
 Fate is?" 
 
 He was speaking so quickly now that she could scarcely 
 follow him. All it seemed to her was that it had the sound 
 of something intangible she too felt about herself ; but more 
 than that was the look, like an anger in his eyes, and the 
 note of his voice that was angry too. She began to feel 
 afraid of him, afraid of what he said, as though she feared 
 any moment it was a bad woman he might be calling her, 
 so fierce he looked. 
 
 "Do you know what Fate is?" he repeated. 
 
 She trembled, as though it were a stupid folly in her 
 not to know what he meant. She shook her head. 
 
 "Things happen in the world," he said to her. "They 
 happen without people knowing why or being able to pre- 
 vent them. They seem as if they were meant to be from 
 the very beginning of time." 
 
 She nodded. She did understand that. 
 
 "Well that's Fate. It must be God that makes them 
 happen, but when a man cannot see the reason of God in 
 it at all, he calls it Fate." 
 
 He stopped and stared at her and his eyes were frighten- 
 ing, yet the fear she had was somehow exultant. There 
 was a sense that something, terrible in its intensity, was 
 about to burst upon her. Sensations were falling with 
 loud reverberations in her mind. 
 
 "That's what there is in you," he said, "a Fate about 
 you," and he said it almost with accusation in the note 
 of his voice. "That's what makes you different from all 
 the rest of them. That's why your happiness depends on
 
 THE MIRACLE 131 
 
 your marrying Fennel. He'll help you. Don't you under- 
 stand that? He'll keep you, if any man can. He'll keep 
 you from all the things that can happen to you in the world." 
 
 Every nerve in her was trembling now. When with a 
 sudden movement he turned away and passed by her on the 
 ledge of rock, when he began climbing with hasty steps 
 to the cliff path above them, she had no power to stop him. 
 She had no will even to ask him why he went. It seemed 
 right that he should go. It seemed the only thing possible. 
 She did not even watch him, but sat down slowly where 
 they had been standing. She felt she could no longer sup- 
 port the weight of her body. Her limbs refused it. She 
 knew no more than that if she died there then would be a 
 mercy of God to bring death to her; that she would not 
 fear it ; that it would be a happy freedom. 
 
 She stared at the sea and just aske,d herself from what 
 it was she had escaped and supposed it must be that which 
 he had called the Fate that was in her.
 
 VI 
 
 WHEN Fennel had left Mary on the rocks, he 
 pulled out some distance to sea before he returned 
 to Ardnashiela. He saw her meeting with the 
 priest. There was no significance in that to him. He was 
 glad of it. If she was speaking to the priest at all, it 
 was good advice he would be giving her. But he feared 
 that to be unlikely. The untraversable distance he felt 
 between himself and her did not suggest a ready confidence 
 of speech with any one. He just thought she would say 
 nothing. 
 
 Had he seen them so long there together on that ledge 
 of rock, he might have thought differently; might have 
 believed she was telling him everything. But he turned 
 the headland and was out of sight long before they parted. 
 Rowing back to Ardnashiela, his mind did little more than 
 listen to the sounds of his oars in the rowlocks and to the 
 quick running of the water along the sides of the boat. 
 
 There was no mind in him for introspection. He had no 
 ability of thought to weigh a matter out. She had neither 
 refused nor accepted him. He felt himself left like a 
 boat drifting, with no motive power, no course or direction. 
 
 In such a mood as this he dimly knew himself to be a 
 prey to the unseen powers about him. It was at night 
 most often it came upon him. Never in the daytime had 
 he seen things on the water or heard the sounds he fre- 
 quently heard when the darkness gathered like a crowd, 
 whispering about the boat. This was his loneliness. It was 
 the loneliness common to all those people, cut off there from 
 
 132
 
 THE MIRACLE 133 
 
 the world and cast away in the black solitariness of life. 
 
 Some of them on the sea-wall had observed his going out 
 with Mary Kirwan. With a measure of apprehension, he 
 expected that. He came into the boat cove quickly, timidly, 
 hoping to escape the ordeal of their laughter. If at that 
 point, without notice, he could have climbed the face of 
 the cliff to the cliff road where his cottage stood, he would 
 have done so gladly. The formation of the rocks just there, 
 however, compelled him to pass the sea-wall. 
 
 As he came up the slope of shingle to the street, a shout 
 of voices and the hard sounds of laughter greeted him. It 
 struck against his face like stones thrown, as without hesita- 
 tion and with the same kind of laughter, they would have 
 thrown them at a stray dog. He felt his cheeks in a dull 
 flame. 
 
 Some one called out asking where he had left her. 
 
 "Was it sick she was?" another one shouted to him. 
 "Was it sick she was, the way ye'd be rockin' the boat to 
 tease her?" 
 
 The woman who lived alone on the Doonvarna road cried 
 out to him in a shrill voice that pierced above the others: 
 
 " 'Tis long and lonesome the nights 'ud be, Joe Fennel, 
 for a man has no wife to be cuddlin' him." 
 
 Encouraged and emboldened by laughter she went on 
 with a free tongue to describe the joys of marriage. Her 
 coarse ironies were a delight to them. "Why wouldn't she 
 know," they said, "has been twice married herself and 
 no sayin' what's happened her since she buried her last?" 
 
 He stood there amongst them to face it out, knowing it 
 must be met sooner or later. Wasn't it better they should 
 empty themselves of their jokes on him alone, than in 
 Mary's ears for her to be hearing them? For what would 
 she think of marriage with himself or any man to hear 
 that woman spitting out the dirt of her words? More
 
 134 THE MIRACLE 
 
 than ever wouldn't she say 'twas not marrying she wanted 
 to be at all? If marriage was filth the way that woman 
 made of it, wouldn't she be saying that? 
 
 With all the signs of their amusement spending itself, 
 he turned away to the cliff road. A stray jest or a laugh 
 followed him the last stones rattling into silence at a 
 dog's heels. But he had not given them the satisfaction 
 of running away. They could not see the dull anger in 
 his eyes then. 
 
 "May they die and rot in hell!" he muttered to himself 
 as he walked down the street. "May they die and the dirt 
 is in them be a heap on their bodies till the last day!" 
 
 Unsatisfying to himself as was this voice of his hatred, 
 it was more articulate and fulfilling than the voice of his 
 love. He did not know what it was he felt about Mary 
 Kirwan. A great tenderness but he did not know what 
 tenderness was. A wish not to boast of, but to shield 
 her with his strength he could appreciate that. He knew 
 he could suffer much for her, as just then he had suffered 
 from the voices of their mocking and laughter. 
 
 What else could a man suffer for a woman besides? 
 Hunger? There should be no want under his roof as long 
 as he had breath in his body and hands to cast a net with. 
 But what if this ill-fortune still followed him, if he lost 
 his catch from the holes They made with Their mischief 
 in his nets and his lobster pots were still taken from him? 
 What could he do then? 
 
 He sat alone over the fire in his cottage for the rest of 
 that day till the night came, feeling, like a blind man with 
 his hands upon the walls, down the alleys of his mind. 
 
 He would take her away from that place if the fishing 
 failed him. If need be he would take her across the water 
 to the Western States. All who came back from there
 
 THE MIRACLE 135 
 
 said there was money falling in a stream like water running 
 into the hands of those would be strong enough to 
 work for it. He felt strong enough. That was the clearest 
 of the sensations of his love for Mary Kirwan. He felt 
 his strength in his arms and his hands and the will of his 
 heart. It was not at all when he was with her he felt it. 
 That morning it had seemed to him he was like a child, 
 fumbling with the oars. But now, alone with himself by 
 the side of his fire, he knew he could be strong for her. 
 Taking up the iron rod he had to stir the ashes with, he 
 saw his hand and the muscles starting up his arm from 
 the thick wrist. It was little more than this he knew in 
 actual thought of his love for Mary Kirwan. 
 
 With the orange glow of the fire, the darkness was a 
 deep blue outside his little window. He could see the stars 
 in a glitter piercing through it. It was still weather. If it 
 kept like that there would be sprats soon coming into the 
 bay and the mackerel after them. He had made no money 
 for three weeks. Never had he grudged so much taking a 
 shilling here and a shilling there from the box hidden 
 beneath his bed. 
 
 The thought of it brought him to his feet. He lit a candle 
 and lifted out the box from its hiding place. He had 
 never counted his money before. Whatever he realised 
 on a successful haul, he put away, only drawing from it 
 on such occasions as this, a piece of silver at a time, clung 
 with fishes' scales, reeking in a stink of decay that made 
 no offense in his nostrils. 
 
 Quite unconscious that in what he was doing he had 
 admitted a new influence into his life, he emptied the con- 
 tents of the box out on to the table. There was silver and 
 copper money and stray pieces of gold, all tarnished with 
 the salt of the sea. Here and there a dried mackerel 
 scale glittered in the light of the candle. There were a
 
 136 THE MIRACLE 
 
 few pieces of paper money like pieces of rag, begrimed with 
 the dirt of handling fingers. It all lay in a heap on the 
 table as it might have been a pile of rubbish on the counter 
 of a marine store dealer's shop. 
 
 He began counting it piece by piece with clumsy fingers 
 and laborious calculations, walking round the table while 
 he added one half-crown to another and, sitting down with 
 his head in his hands when it came to the matter of a piece 
 of gold. He was in vital earnestness about it. He wanted 
 to make no mistake. This was no miserliness he had but 
 a practical consideration of the issue before him. 
 
 He would ask for no dowry with Mary Kirwan. It was 
 herself he wanted. If James Kirwan was a prosperous 
 farmer he was well-known to be a close-fisted man. There 
 should be no price with her, laying him under obligation to 
 her family for the rest of his life. 
 
 " Tis herself I'm wantin'," he muttered sometimes in the 
 midst of his calculations. "Twenty-six pounds twenty-six 
 pounds 'tis herself I'm wantin' twenty-six pounds two 
 and sixpence Shure 'tis not money I'm wantin' with her- 
 self at all but twenty-six pounds two and ninepence not 
 money or any damned thing at all but herself only twenty- 
 six pounds three twenty-six pounds three." So he added 
 and reckoned and wrestled with the matter in his thoughts, 
 walking about in the faint candle light, his shadow moving 
 with him like a giant up and down the walls. Or he would 
 sit a moment by the fire, but always he was shifting the 
 greasy coins from one side of the table to the other as he 
 counted them out. 
 
 So engrossed was he, and so loud the words he said in 
 his breath were sounding in his mind, that a knock on his 
 door never reached his ears. 
 
 "Twenty-six pounds three and eightpence," he murmured. 
 "Twenty-six pounds three and eightpence "and then with
 
 THE MIRACLE 137 
 
 the noise of the latch and the cold air of the night suddenly 
 about him, he looked up to find Father Costello standing in 
 the doorway. 
 
 Fennel stared at him in a mute confusion. He was too 
 concerned at being discovered in his occupation to observe 
 the distress in the priest's face, the hollow appearance in his 
 cheeks, as though hunger had been at them. His mind was 
 capable of one thought only at a time. With a childlike in- 
 tuition, he supposed the priest would understand at once the 
 reason for what he was doing. 
 
 "Good evening, Father," he said and smiled awkwardly 
 and was just about to sweep all the money off the table into 
 the box again. 
 
 Father Costello shut the door and came forward quickly 
 catching his arm. 
 
 "What are you stopping for?" he said. "You haven't 
 counted it all. Go on count it all, man. Shure, I'll help 
 you meself." 
 
 "Twenty-six pounds three and eightpence," said Fennel. 
 
 "Twenty-six pounds three and eightpence," the priest re- 
 peated and began separating the copper from the silver, 
 the gold and the bank notes. In a few minutes it was all 
 counted, an evil-smelling lump of money on the table. 
 Father Costello smelt his hands and looked with a wry smile 
 at the fisherman. 
 
 "Forty-nine pounds thirteen and fivepence," he said. 
 
 Fennel's mouth was open. He was bewildered at the 
 speed with which it had all been reckoned. It was great 
 learning he must have to count money like that. He was 
 more impressed by it than any sermon he had ever heard 
 Father Costello preach from the pulpit. 
 
 "Faith, I dunno how did ye do it at all with that quick- 
 ness," he said. 
 
 Father Costello walked over to the fire and sat down.
 
 138 THE MIRACLE 
 
 He was staring into the heart of the peat glow as he said 
 "And that's all for herself isn't it !" 
 
 Not knowing what to say to that, Fennel swept all the 
 money off the table back into the box and put it away again 
 under the bed. Presently he came back to the fire and sat 
 down in silence opposite the priest. In silence he turned the 
 bellows wheel for a few revolutions. The fire breathed a 
 splutter of sparks and then broke into flame. 
 
 Still, he waited, saying nothing. The priest, he calcu- 
 lated, had some reason to be coming there to his cottage at 
 that hour of the night. Presumably he would say sooner or 
 later what it was. He waited; looking now at his nets 
 hanging over the rafters below the thatch; now looking at 
 the fire and then at the priest himself. 
 
 An intangible sense that something was the matter began 
 to stir in him. He began to feel it was concerned with 
 Mary herself. She had spoken to Father Costello about 
 it that morning. That must be what it was. She had asked 
 him to come and speak for her, to tell him it was no good his 
 hoping, that, as he had always felt it to be, she was not for 
 the likes of him. 
 
 It was not in him to feel great depths of emotion, but in 
 that moment all vitality of hope had gone out of his spirit. 
 He looked about him in a childish bewilderment. He could 
 not realise it was possible. Believing this to be the meaning 
 of the priest's visit and that here was the end of it for him, 
 he understood then to what an extent he had allowed his 
 imagination to dwell upon the thought of her. 
 
 With the dogged persistence of hope, he had brought her 
 there with him to live under the thatch of his roof ever 
 since that day they had met at the farm. They had sat by 
 the fire together not talking, but with him just g)ad of the 
 sight of her there. They had sat there together in the room 
 eating their food. It was her presence, the spirit of her
 
 THE MIRACLE 139 
 
 and her kindness he had brought back rather than her body. 
 If the physical joys of her company had entered into his 
 imagination, he would have known it sooner. He would 
 have thought of her in that time as actually there with him 
 in the flesh. He had not done that. It was only now when 
 he knew he was going to lose her that he realised she had 
 been there with him at all. 
 
 In 'almost petulant revolt at the suspense of that silence 
 between them, he turned to the priest. 
 
 "Say what it is ye're come for," he said, short of voice, 
 wishing to hear it quickly and know the worst. "Shure, 
 I saw ye talkin' on the cliffs the time I'd be rowin' away 
 from the rocks. She won't have me is it? 'Tis the way 
 I'm not the sort for the whimsy likes of her." 
 
 ' 'Tis not whimsy at all she is," said Father Costello, 
 and would have said more and could have talked of her till 
 dawn broke, but checked his tongue. 
 
 "Why won't she have me then?" 
 
 Father Costello raised his eyes that were hunted with 
 thought and weary with the effort to escape. 
 
 "I never said she wouldn't," he replied and with the sight 
 of bewildered incredulity in the fisherman's eyes he roused 
 himself to the will of his purpose. "She will have you," he 
 went on and eagerly now. "She'll have you now if you ask 
 her again. That's what I came up here to tell you. Don't 
 waste a day. Go out to the farm to-morrow ask her and 
 ask himself and settle it up between you. You needn't 
 think she's whimsy. She'll make a good wife to you." 
 
 Fennel tried to speak. His emotion was like too much 
 breath, stifling him in his throat. He saw nothing in all the 
 priest was saying except as it affected himself. The eyes 
 sharply bright in a fever that watched him, the lips, hag- 
 gard almost and thin with desperate determination, the 
 whole expression of the priest racked with the suffering of
 
 140 THE MIRACLE 
 
 those few hours since the morning, brought not the faintest 
 realisation to his mind. He just took the sense of the words 
 as he heard them. 
 
 "What's all the quickness for?" he asked thickly. Never 
 would his nature have driven him as swiftly as this if he 
 had been left to himself. "Is there another man is after 
 her ?" His eyes sought Father Costello's as keenly as when 
 he would be watching from the high point of the head- 
 lands for the sight of fish coming into the bay. 
 
 Without fear with a challenge even Father Costello 
 met his look. 
 
 "There might be," he said slowly. "D'you think a girl 
 like that is going to pass the thought of every man but 
 yeerself? Take her now, Joe Fennel, 'tis I'm telling you. 
 Don't be waiting or wasting your time. She's not like any 
 girl about these parts. Shure, how would you know what 
 would be in her mind?" 
 
 Fennel just understood that somewhere there was a dan- 
 ger lurking. With no conviction of belief, he accepted 
 Father Costello's assurance she would take him then if he 
 asked her. He understood no more than this. He never 
 knew the danger lay so near to him. There was not even 
 the suspiciousness of curiosity in him to seek it out. 
 
 She would marry him if he asked her however soon. 
 This was all he could think. But now that his vision of her 
 had become tinged with reality, his mind moved more con- 
 fusedly in a dream than ever. 
 
 The priest watched him, swaying a little with the pon- 
 derous weight of his thoughts as he sat over the fire. 
 
 This was the man Mary Kirwan was to meet and mingle 
 her life with. He knew for the first time then what it was 
 she feared in marriage. Looking at the fisherman now that 
 the fever was exhausted in his eyes with the fulfillment of 
 his purpose, he could see what it was that was lacking to
 
 THE MIRACLE 141 
 
 give her life. More than this, he knew he had it in himself. 
 She knew it too. They had learnt it both that morning by 
 the sea. How far she realised it he did not dare allow him- 
 self to think. Perhaps not at all. She had agreed upon his 
 advice to marry the fisherman. That was enough. He 
 would think no more than that. 
 
 "You'll go out to Kirwan's then to-morrow/' he said 
 presently. 
 
 Fennel looked up. There was a dull wonder in the look 
 of his face. It was the end of his loneliness. There would 
 be a kindness in life about him now. Without knowing 
 how near to the truth it was, he felt as if it were the priest 
 who had brought Mary to him and in a simple impulse of 
 gratitude he suddenly thrust out his hand. Father Costello 
 took it with a ready response. As he gripped it, he felt 
 the coarse knots of the knuckle bones and the rough grain 
 of the skin. In a torrent of physical sensation the thought 
 of her arm, bared to the shoulder, came back to him. How 
 well he knew then what she meant when she had no wish 
 to be wed! 
 
 With an effort he held the fisherman's hand. He smiled 
 even, as a man smiles, proudly giving assurance he is not 
 suffering more pain than he can bear. This was his bolt 
 shot. The smoke from the fire, the heat of the room, his 
 emotions, all were suffocating him. Had he been hemmed 
 in a crowd he could not have felt more the need for air to 
 be breathing it clean into his lungs. His sensations were 
 a riot with panic and stress, yet he behaved outwardly like 
 a man in an unconsidered calm of mind. 
 
 There was a deliberate slowness with which he dropped 
 Fennel's hand and rose to his feet. It seemed to himself 
 that if for an instant he submitted to the urging impulse to 
 get away it would be beyond his power to control what he 
 did or said.
 
 142 THE MIRACLE 
 
 Only when the latch was lifted, the door open and shut 
 behind him, when the black night was there for him to hide 
 in and the salt air a blessed chill on his face, did he set free 
 the stifled moan from his lips his breath was holding. 
 
 It was not back to the village he turned, but along the 
 path of the cliffs, rolling like a man to the driving of a 
 whip across his shoulders till he reached the ledge of the 
 rock where they had stood together that morning. His 
 spirit found no quiet till then, till pain had numbed it.
 
 VII 
 
 REVELATION had come to Mary Kirwan. 
 When, after an hour alone on that ledge of rock 
 in the surrounding silence of the sea, she had raised 
 herself out of a dream and turned her face towards Ard- 
 nashiela again, she was no longer the girl that Fate had 
 marked out for its purpose. In that hour she had become 
 a woman, virgin still, yet with her destiny begun. 
 
 She knew now that marriage was no mere happening. It 
 was not a crude and scheduled event in- life as it was in 
 the barn yard. 
 
 In little other manner than this and with no morbidity 
 of thought, she had always regarded it. In such a manner 
 as this it seemed so to be regarded by others living in that 
 custom of life in Ardnashiela. If that morning she had 
 had a glimpse of it otherwise in Fennel, it was because, by 
 then, the revelation had partly been brought her by another. 
 
 Now it was wholly brought. 
 
 The look in Father Costello's eyes as they had dwelt 
 upon her bared arm, the sound of anger in his voice and all 
 he had said when he had spoken to her afterwards, the 
 fear as well that she had heard in him, these were the out- 
 ward and visible signs that had shown her this new revela- 
 tion of life. What other than these definite things had 
 wrought the change in her, she could neither knew nor 
 understand. 
 
 There was more beside a whole world more beside 
 but her mind could not reach it. 
 
 Her perceptions simplified themselves into one thought. 
 
 143
 
 144 THE MIRACLE 
 
 Marriage the impulse that brought together the lives of 
 men and women was not what she had supposed it to be. 
 Had she known the word fusion she might have used it 
 there. But there was no wish or attempt in her to define 
 her thoughts. Life as it does with so many was educat- 
 ing her with sensations, not with ideas. 
 
 Over that mile of headland path, back to Ardnashiela, 
 winding tortuously to the bidding of the contour of the 
 cliffs, she thought of her mother and father, of their mar- 
 riage and the life together they had led. She saw her 
 mother then as she had never seen her before. Behind that 
 remoteness and solitary detachment from life, Mary seemed, 
 with no clear penetration, to discern the shadow of her own 
 life with Fennel, the fisherman. 
 
 But had her mother known what she knew now, had she 
 seen what she had seen, felt, thrilled, and responded to, 
 what she was feeling in every pulsing passage of her blood, 
 would her life have been so empty so inert? 
 
 She had said she would marry Fennel. She had meant 
 it. Even then she meant it, conscious of the dragging of 
 her steps home to the farm. There was no meaning to the 
 word lover in the whole breath of her experience. She 
 had never conceived of such a relationship. Women as she 
 knew of them, married or they went alone through life. 
 
 If Father Costello had not been a priest, then for some 
 reason not reckoned in her understanding that morning 
 had shown her they belonged to each other. There was a 
 sense of possession between her and him, between him and 
 her. But being a priest of the Church, sanctified not 
 merely because his vows had been taken, she put him utterly 
 beyond her. If there was a fear at all in the possession she 
 knew he had of her, it revealed itself in the constant hope 
 in her heart that they would not meet again till she was 
 Fennel's wife. She had felt the possibility of being that as
 
 THE MIRACLE 145 
 
 they stood together on the rocks. She had promised it. 
 She did not realise it was because of her own fear that she 
 felt the pressing need of it now. 
 
 They were seated round the deal table at the midday meal 
 when she entered the kitchen and closed the door behind 
 her. As she crossed to her chair, she found that perception 
 had been quickened in her to almost painful acuteness. They 
 knew where she had been. From the sharp looks in her 
 father's eyes as he filled his mouth with a weighty forkfull 
 she could nearly have thought he knew the fluttering that was 
 a torment in her breast. There seemed no less a new mean- 
 ing in the downcast eyes of her mother and the silence that 
 was like a veil about her face. 
 
 "Where have ye been in the name o' God?" he asked her 
 before there was room in his mouth for words. 
 
 But she knew he had heard. Some one come out to the 
 farm had brought the gossip of the news. She told him 
 plainly it was a fool he was asking when he knew right well 
 where she had been. 
 
 "Is it with Fennel, the fisherman, in his boat ye've been !" 
 
 He would have her admit it and was pacified for a moment 
 with satisfaction when she did. Another large mouthful 
 of food gave him occupation, but did not distract the thoughts 
 he had had ever since he had heard of it. He knew they 
 thought him prosperous in Ardnashiela. He had always ex- 
 pected this to happen some day or another. They would be 
 coming after his girl in the house to get his money. But if 
 they did they should bring full return with them. 
 
 Ever since Mary had come of an age so that he could see 
 by her breast under the fold of the bodice that there were 
 signs of the woman about her, he had thought in resentful- 
 ness of this moment. He never liked being compelled to sell 
 a beast from his farm, as a shortness in the crop of hay 
 sometimes made him. His success as a farmer lay in the
 
 146 THE MIRACLE 
 
 fact that he fatted well and knew the moment when to dis- 
 pose of what he had. His bargainings with Shaughnessy 
 the butcher were often lengthy and vituperative. At other 
 times they were amicable enough because they knew they 
 served each other. But on these occasions the sound of 
 their voices, emerging from Shaughnessy 's cottage where 
 in that one room he lived and slept and slaughtered and hung 
 his sheep, could be heard all down the street. 
 
 For some years he had thought of the possibility of 
 Mary's marriage with such calculations as these. The man 
 who came for her would want a dowry to be taking her. 
 Well he could want. There was all and more than its 
 value he must bring along with him when he came. It 
 would be for her welfare that he should. But this was not 
 the thought that ruled him. He wanted his bargain square 
 and if any proportion was wanting in it, he intended it 
 should be in his favour. 
 
 There was a persistent hope in him she would never marry 
 at all. He knew her worth. It was calculated in his mind 
 to a farthing and there was a secret joy he kept in his 
 heart that there was no man in that place had substance 
 enough to ask for her. 
 
 For this reason he had never allowed her to go outside 
 Ardnashiela. On one or two occasions when the opportun- 
 ity had arisen for her to go to Doonvarna, he had whipped 
 himself into the frenzy of his temper when Mrs. Kirwan 
 for the sake of peace had advised her to give up all thought 
 of it. 
 
 And now apparently there was a man at last had seen the 
 woman she was and set his eyes on her. He laughed when 
 he heard who it was. Nevertheless he knew well that the 
 Parish Priest and Father Costello would be against him and 
 that if the fisherman persisted he must lose a hand on his 
 farm that would have to be replaced to the detriment of his
 
 THE MIRACLE 147 
 
 pocket. It was quickly enough he came from laughter then 
 to the sullen anger of resentment. 
 
 "What in the name of hell," he asked, spluttering his 
 food and returning to the full measure of his wrath at the 
 pressure of events, "what in the name of hell d'ye want 
 goin' out in a boat with a man like that ! Is it the bad name 
 ye want to be gettin' for yeerself or what is it ye want? 
 Aren't they nasty fellas, those would be gettin' fish out of 
 the sea? Isn't it drinkin' always they are and shure God 
 knows what dirty women they'd be goin' with in the little 
 streets the time they'd be sellin' a catch in Doonvarna." 
 
 Mary ate her food without answering. It was like the 
 dust and the shavings of wood in her mouth. His resent- 
 ment pricked itself to anger at her silence. 
 
 ' "Pis plenty of words ye have at most times," he said in 
 the rise of his voice. "Why can't ye be speakin' now ? Was 
 it sayin' sly things he was to ye and ye away there out of 
 hearin' in the boat? Was it touchin' ye he was and soft 
 with his eyes? Begor, I'd split the head of any man with 
 the clout I'd lay on him would come sayin' nasty little 
 words to the girrl in my house !" 
 
 Mary thrust her food away. 
 
 " 'Twas sayin' nothin'," she flung at him, "but words 
 anny man might be sayin' in a decent way to a girl he 
 wanted to be havin' for his wife." 
 
 "Ah!" 
 
 With a clatter, James Kirwan laid down his knife and 
 fork. It had come then. It was a new girl he would have 
 to be getting to milk the cows and make the butter in the 
 house, and be feeding the beasts in the yard. And it was 
 Fennel, the fisherman, who wanted her and had money they 
 all said, put by in his cottage up there on the cliff road. He 
 could conceive no other reason for this turn of events than 
 the dowry which Fennel must be hoping to get with her.
 
 148 THE MIRACLE 
 
 His small eyes sharpened to shrewd calculations as he esti- 
 mated what amount he could possibly have saved up there 
 out of his fishing. 
 
 Mrs. Kirwan got up from the table. With no comment 
 on the matter, she took her seat in the open chimney and 
 picked up a handful of her rushes from the floor. The 
 blind man had come in from his food outside and seated 
 himself opposite to her. In a silence and a stillness they 
 sat, hearing the voice of Mary and her father as though it 
 were an entertainment of strolling players they were listen- 
 ing to. The look of a stubborn but distant attention set- 
 tled upon their faces. They might have been understand- 
 ing far more of the play than the players understood them- 
 selves. They might have been understanding so much less. 
 From no expression that passed across their lips or eyes 
 could it be seen if they detected the mercenary impulses in 
 the farmer's mind or the surge of passion beating behind 
 Mary's words. Like spectators they sat, rigid, remote and 
 imperturbable, facing each other in their corners of the 
 fire; yet like spectators, inseparable from the play itself. 
 
 The wavering of the flames flushed and faded on their 
 faces. The peat smoke rose, a waving scarf of blue, be- 
 tween them up the chimney. From all that was happening 
 they were inseparable, yet they took no part, or looked, but 
 listened only and waited for the end. 
 
 That clatter of Kirwan's knife and fork, the exclama- 
 tion of his voice, and the storm of his anger that it prom- 
 ised, brought the foreboding of a moment's lull into the 
 silence. Then he shattered it. 
 
 "An' why is it he wants to have ye for his wife?" he 
 shouted in the high temper of his voice. "Shure 'tis no 
 more'n the flighty bit of a girrl ye are, could not be mindin* 
 the house of anny man, or cookin' food would be fit for him 
 to eat! Isn't it the bit of money he wants to be gettin'
 
 THE MIRACLE 149 
 
 with ye, makes the soft words he'd be sayin'? Ah shure, 
 'tis a little fool ye are to be listenin' to them tales of those 
 thievin' fellas on the sea. Doesn't the world know 'tis easy 
 they are with their fine talk and their coaxy ways? Begor, 
 'tis not the sight of a silver or a copper piece at all he'll be 
 gettin' out of meself, the time he comes out here with the 
 soft sickness of love he'd be havin' in his voice to be askin' 
 for ye." 
 
 It seemed almost when first he began that she cared little 
 for anything he might say. But the new pride that was in 
 her was stung to retaliation now. She stood and faced him 
 sitting there, wiping his mouth and the food from his 
 moustache with the back of his hand. 
 
 ' 'Tis none of veer filthy money a man like himself 'ud 
 be wantin'!" she cried at him. "Shure, isn't it money he 
 has himself and what would he be wantin', takin' it from 
 ye to sour his food with? 'Tis meself he's askin' for and 
 'tis meself '11 give him the answer when he comes for it. 
 And there's Father Costello and maybe the Parish Priest 
 himself will be standin' up bi the side of me when I'd be 
 givin' it. For there's a man, surely, will not work me 
 hands to the bare bones the way ye'd be doin' in this place." 
 
 " 'Tis damned good food ye have," he retorted. 
 
 "It is," said she, "if I could ever forget it." 
 
 "And a springy bed, with a good mattrass I bought in 
 Doonvarna." 
 
 "Wisha, God help us !" she cried to a pitch of laughter 
 "Haven't ye worn the springs of that bed long ago with the 
 talk ye'd be puttin' on it." Suddenly her tone altered to a 
 note intense with tragic determination. "I wouldn't stay 
 under this roof," she told him, "not if ye gave me all the 
 beds to be lyin' in from Doonvarna to Dublin itself. Isn't 
 it the bad kind of man ye've been always to meself ?" She 
 came up close to him till he was frightened of her and
 
 150 THE MIRACLE 
 
 moved away. "That evening ye killed me little dog," she 
 said, "with the miserable fear was on ye, didn't I know 
 well 'twas not in yeer heart to be doin' the right thing by 
 me? Shure I don't care is it a sin or not, I hate ye d'ye 
 hear me now? I hate ye and there'll be hate in me always 
 with the last breath I'll take." 
 
 In the weight of silence that fell about them as her words 
 ceased, Mrs. Kirwan laid down at her side the bag she had 
 finished with a movement almost of satisfaction as of one 
 in whom something has been accomplished. With no glance 
 in their direction, she picked up the rushes from her lap to 
 begin the next.
 
 VIII 
 
 FENNEL came out from Ardnashiela to the farm the 
 next day. He walked the mile of strand as a child 
 walks distantly musing. It was not in him to 
 think what he should say. Just his first spoken words to 
 James Kirwan perhaps he knew. He could voice them as 
 they would be said by him and did voice them "I'm wantin' 
 yeer daughter Mary, to be making her me wife " till his 
 mind was tired of hearing them. It was because he could 
 not construct in his imagination what the farmer would say 
 then that he grew tired of repeating it and walked by the 
 sea's edge in a mist of thought. A gull flying, a piece of 
 sea-weed at his feet, were enough to distract his mind, but 
 for no more than a moment. The next he would be lost 
 again in shadowy speculations, or saying aloud, almost 
 without hearing himself, 
 
 "I'm wantin' yeer daughter Mary to be maldn' her me 
 wife." 
 
 Mary herself was there when, with the proclaiming music 
 of the rusty gate, he came into the yard. She was feeding 
 the chickens, a mongrel brood of them. Whites and yel- 
 lows, reds and browns, that came with flighting runs from 
 all directions to the note of her call. 
 
 He stopped before he opened the gate, listening to the 
 sound of her voice as she cried to them. The only musical 
 instruments he had ever heard in his life were the har- 
 monium in the church and the fiddle that was played at the 
 dancing in Creasy's house or at the cross roads where the 
 way from Ardnashiela forks here through the hills of Doon 
 
 151
 
 152 THE MIRACLE 
 
 and there to Killanardrish. Listening to the note she called 
 her chickens with, he might have said he had heard yet an- 
 other, sweeter to him than all. But he knew the sensation 
 only. It was not a thought he had. 
 
 When he opened the gate and it cried the shrill note on 
 its hinges, she looked up. She wore no shawl. The sun 
 was in her hair. The long oval of her face was unbroken. 
 There was no closing shadow to hide the pity he had found 
 for kindness in her eyes. And she was to be with him all 
 their lives together. 
 
 He moved towards her, wondering more than he had ever 
 wondered, how it could be true. She went on throwing the 
 scattering grain from the tin basin she carried in the curve 
 of her arm, until he was beside her. He was more drawn 
 by a fear to her then than he had ever felt or known he had 
 been drawn to her before. It was not a fear that frustrated 
 him. It impelled him blindly on. 
 
 "I never thanked ye as I ought for the row in the boat," 
 said she. It was easier for her to break their silence than 
 for him. Such native intelligence as she had was far quicker 
 than his. "Shure, God help us, 'tis come!" her heart was 
 crying out within her, and these were words that had to be 
 silenced and it was words only she could find to hide her 
 heart with then. 
 
 He muttered it was not thanks he had wanted. There 
 was only one gratitude he knew of from her. 
 
 "I've come up to see himself," he told her abruptly. 
 
 It had come on her! It had come on her! With what 
 she had said the day before at their mid-day meal, there 
 was no escape for her now. 
 
 She heard herself asking him what for it was he wanted 
 to see her father. He did not know from where in him the 
 setness of his intent had come when he said, 
 
 "To speak to him about yeerself."
 
 THE MIRACLE 153 
 
 She looked swiftly at him as a bird looks for an open 
 space when suddenly it finds itself imprisoned in a room. 
 
 "I never gave me word to ye," said she. 
 
 "But didn't ye give it all the same?" 
 
 "What way d'ye mean at all did I give it?" 
 
 "Didn't ye give it to Father Costello?" 
 
 There was no thought or wish in him to be driving her. 
 He said simply what it was he had heard. If she had said 
 that to the priest and with what the priest had said to him, 
 must there not indeed be the whole of truth in it? 
 
 How could he ever know that now in her heart she was 
 like the bird in the room that has found no opening of es- 
 cape, but is beating its wings in a frenzy against the win- 
 dow pane. 
 
 She could see the world outside, beyond the resisting sub- 
 stance of Fate against which her thoughts were bruising 
 themselves. But the sight of it was going from her. She 
 knew she was beating against the transparent walls of her 
 prison in vain. There was no escape. She was caught. 
 Human hands would soon be holding her. Father Costello 
 had told him what she had said. 
 
 With an unerring rush of her instinct, she knew why. 
 He was afraid as she was afraid. He had gone then that 
 same day to tell Fennel what she had said. Not an hour 
 had he let slip by. She had not known till then how much 
 afraid he was. She felt her own fear increase with his. 
 But more terrible than the fear she had was her joy, rising 
 like a high wind and striking a penetrating note through 
 every fibre of her being. As her heart tuned to the sound 
 of it, she wanted to hear more. Every word he told her had 
 its bitterness, but for the joy she felt, she could suffer it 
 then. 
 
 "When was it he told ye that?" she asked him. 
 
 "Last night."
 
 154 THE MIRACLE 
 
 "Where did ye see him then?" 
 
 "He came up to me cottage on the road." 
 
 "Did he say why was it he told ye at all ?" 
 
 "He did." 
 
 "Why was it?" 
 
 "Well 'twas not sayin' it he was." 
 
 She looked at him, frowning confused. 
 
 " 'Twas the way I made out from what he said. 'Twas 
 another man there was and he wantin' ye. 'D'ye think/ 
 said he, 'a girrl like that/ said he, 'is goin' to pass the 
 thought of every man but yeerself?' 'Tis those were the 
 very words he said and didn't I know bi that there was 
 another man he was meanin'?" 
 
 She had no sense of what it was that lifted her, but a 
 sudden pride and daring held her straight as she looked at 
 him. 
 
 "Did ye ask himself who it was?" she said. 
 
 "I did not," said he. 
 
 "An* is it the way ye're not goin' to be askin' me?" 
 
 "Shure, I am not. What differ does it make to me what 
 man it would be set his eyes on ye, if a be 'tis ready ye are 
 to be givin' me the word yeerself." 
 
 "Well if ye don't want to know," she suddenly volun- 
 teered, "I'll tell ye all the same, for there's no man has 
 asked me." 
 
 And she said this, not because her daring was gone, but 
 because an unbidden need to protect the priest had urged 
 itself upon her. In that very admission of the truth which 
 wore her lie upon the breast of it, she almost felt she was 
 holding him closer to her than any other man would come 
 in her life. 
 
 And then, because she could not leave it alone, she asked 
 him was there more the priest had said to him that night 
 and he told her what more there was.
 
 THE MIRACLE 155 
 
 ' 'Ye'll go out to Kirwan's then to-morrow,' shure, those 
 were the last words he said to me," he concluded. 
 
 In a swift conversion of mind, her daring left her. It 
 was now she felt the human hands in the final surrender of 
 her life. This it seemed, in a poignant but confused sensa- 
 tion, was the last glimpse she would have of the world out- 
 side. It was a distant sight. It was obscure just the 
 repetition of a few words, bringing an added light perhaps 
 about her revelation, but not repeated by the voice that had 
 said them. It was like some one sending a message of fare- 
 well, the actual words that were used, but in the voice of 
 another, sounding unutterably far away. 
 
 With a sharp gesture, she tossed her head away from him 
 to hide the sudden rise of tears. Fennel stood waiting, 
 confused with the riddle she was to him, and too timid to 
 ask for explanation of that gesture. He did not even sus- 
 pect if it was tears she was hiding. Something, he thought at 
 first, had suddenly attracted her attention. His eyes had 
 followed the swift turn of her head. There was nothing that 
 he could see to distract her and then, when still she kept her 
 head averted and with the faint droop there was about it, 
 his heart moved to a blindness of understanding and com- 
 passion. 
 
 "I won't go and see himself," he said with a real gentle- 
 ness. "If 'tis the way ye've changed yeer mind from the 
 words ye said yesterday to the Father, shure I'll be goin' 
 back now to Ardnashiela. Yirra, 'twas never the fair hold 
 of a hope I had at all to be gettin' ye. Isn't there somethin' 
 is strange and sweet about ye would be above the likes of 
 me?" 
 
 It was the first thing with a compelling note of tender- 
 ness in it he had said to her. But beside this there was the 
 response of memory of what the priest had said that brought
 
 156 THE MIRACLE 
 
 her round with the tears still gathering their weight in her 
 eyes and coursing down her cheeks. 
 
 "What d'ye mean is strange?" she asked quickly and 
 gently too, because of that first tenderness he had shown 
 her. "Shure what is there is strange about me?" 
 
 "Faith I dunno." 
 
 "Is it strange in me mind I am?" 
 
 "It is not." 
 
 "Is it the way I'd be lookin' strange then? Wisha, 
 Glory be, isn't it many girrls the like of meself there are and 
 they passin' along the roads without anny would be givin' 
 them a turn of the head !" 
 
 " Tis not lookin' strange in yeer face ye are," said he. 
 
 "Is it a fate then I have in me?" she asked him, knowing 
 no more what that meant than when Father Costello 
 had told her of it on the rocks. At a hazard she offered it 
 to Fennel with a touch of the mimicry that was in her and 
 the half of a hope beside that it might reach his under- 
 standing. 
 
 But he just stood shaking his head and looking at her 
 whom now in a tenderness he was ready to lose if it was 
 only the pain in her mind he was bringing her. 
 
 ' 'Tis strange and sweet ye are," he reiterated. It was 
 all he knew. It was all he could say. 
 
 She looked at him queerly to think he could treat her so 
 well. There was not another man she knew in all that 
 place would treat her with so much gentleness and she found 
 her heart aching for him beside the aching it had for her- 
 self. 
 
 "Would ye go back to Ardnashiela if I asked ye?" she 
 said. 
 
 "I would so." 
 
 "The way ye'd be givin' back the word I gave to the 
 priest?"
 
 THE MIRACLE 157 
 
 "I would indeed." 
 
 Knowing so little of life as she did, she felt this was the 
 supreme moment in her own. Nothing was to be made easy 
 for her but in the bitter need there was to set up some 
 barrier between herself and the priest. After what she 
 had heard from Fennel it was more plain to her now than it 
 had ever been, yet the less obscure it became the more a 
 deafening impulse to know the utmost, even if it brought 
 damnation, resounded through every sense. 
 
 Her breath was coming quickly. Her heart was pound- 
 ing its vibrations through her breast. In her mind she did 
 not know which she would choose and listened, amazed, to 
 some automatic function in her voice as she said, 
 
 "Ye'll find himself out in the fields if ye want to be goin' 
 to him now." 
 
 Fennel stared and drew his breath. 
 
 "That's yeerself then givin' me the word?" 
 
 "It is." 
 
 She turned to the house and went in through a slant of 
 sunlight that was falling across the darkness in the door- 
 way.
 
 IX 
 
 IT was drawing close to evening. There were warm lights 
 gathering. The shadows of the solitary thorn trees were 
 beginning to slope across the land. Fennel found the 
 farmer in the barley field. He was waiting with his gun for 
 pigeons that roved over the corn in marauding flocks for 
 plunder. 
 
 When Kirwan saw the fisherman coming down the head- 
 land of the field, he spat out the brown juice of his half 
 chewed tobacco on the ground. It was an instinctive ac- 
 tion, expressing annoyance with him, just as when a cat 
 spits, or a dog bristles the hair down its back. He did not 
 know he had done it. 
 
 There was no doubting what the fisherman had come for ; 
 but beside the trouble of that, there was the vexation of be- 
 ing deprived of his shooting. It was difficult enough with 
 all his cunning to trick them to a sense of security. There 
 would be no pigeons coming there that evening with two 
 men in the field. 
 
 He cursed the fisherman with an oath under his breath 
 and released the hammers of his gun. As Fennel came up 
 he told him with no tone of grace he had spoilt his shooting 
 for him that evening. 
 
 There was no treatment that suited the fisherman better 
 than this. A storm at sea and an angry man were about 
 the only two things that eased him of his timidity. The 
 pigeons that ate James Kirwan's barley were of little ac- 
 count to him then. He knew he was there to ask no fa- 
 vours. He had Father Costello with him and even the 
 
 158
 
 THE MIRACLE 159 
 
 Parish Priest would be all for upholding marriage, between 
 a man and a girl who had given her word. 
 
 "I've come to ask for yeer daughter, Mary, James Kir- 
 wan," he said, and he made no doubt in his voice that this 
 was a mere formality. 
 
 The farmer became obsequious at once. He knew no 
 other method of treating a man who spoke like that. Yet 
 with all his fawning, he kept the suppleness of his cunning 
 ready to serve him when it came to the question of her 
 dowry. 
 
 "I wouldn't be surprised at anny man comin* to me for 
 that," said he. " 'Tis a fine girrl she is and quick and steady 
 with her hands. Shure, God knows what I'll be doin' in this 
 place the time some man'll be takin' her away." 
 
 Fennel informed him the time was come now and that 
 it was himself was there to be taking her the first day she'd 
 come with him and the priest was ready to say the word 
 over them. 
 
 James Kirwan had a sniggle of laughter for this. It was 
 easy to talk in this grand way, but there were things to be 
 settled between them and with a man of the law too, maybe, 
 in Doonvarna, before he could be rushing off with her to 
 the priest. 
 
 "There's no dowry ye'll be gettin' out of her with the 
 quickness of that sort of talk," said he. "Let ye be tellin' 
 me what it is ye have saved up there, the way I can see it 
 put out in gold and silver pieces. Shure, 'tis then I might 
 be thinkin' out what I could spare with her. Isn't it good 
 money is goin' out of me pocket the day she'll be turnin' 
 from this place and amn't I driven hard enough as it is 
 with the bad crops I'd be havin' and the crool time for the 
 farmers over the land is comin' to me? Yirra, there's little 
 at all I can spare with herself. Isn't there money I'd be
 
 160 THE MIRACLE 
 
 paying out to the new hand I'd have to be gettin' in and 
 wouldn't that be loss enough itself agin me?" 
 
 Fennel was listening so quietly that Kirwan pressed on 
 with his words. He felt he was putting a sore case of 
 hardship and putting it well and that it was not impossible 
 he might persuade the fisherman to accept a merely nominal 
 sum with Mary when he took her. 
 
 " Tis a man like yeerself ," he said with the oiled voice 
 of flattery, "will be findin* it in ye to do the right thing be 
 me with the sickness and want ye'd have in yeer heart for 
 the girrl." 
 
 Fennel looked at him as he would have looked at a dog 
 fish in his nets. 
 
 "I want no money with her at all," he said. "Haven't I 
 plenty enough of me own?" 
 
 James Kirwan had never received such a surprise in his 
 life. He did not know there were men like this in Ardna- 
 shiela or elsewhere in the world at all. The magnanimous 
 generosity of it astounded him, yet it stirred no sense of 
 gratitude. He was not carried to any answering impulse of 
 bounty. He did not even offer the niggardly proposal of 
 that purely nominal sum he had been fondling in his hopes. 
 In the true conception of his nature, Fennel was a fool and 
 having no respect in him for the folly of pride, he always 
 took such advantage of it as he could. Yet it was nowhere 
 within his policy to let any man see what a fool he thought 
 him. That sort of folly did not thrive in exposed places. 
 He sheltered it with the artificial heat of his approval and, 
 changing the hold of his gun with an impulsive gesture, he 
 offered the grip of his hand. 
 
 "Begor," said he, "didn't I know the first time I put me 
 eyes on ye, 'twas an honest man ye were ?" 
 
 Fennel took his hand. 
 ' 'Tis not every man," Kirwan continued in a voluble
 
 THE MIRACLE 161 
 
 enthusiasm, "would say the like of what ye've pledged 
 yeer word to now. There is not. Aren't they mean as bog- 
 water in this place and there's not a man in it like yeer self 
 has a shilling piece saved at the back of him, the time he 
 could be standin' up with a pride in him like that." 
 
 To the fisherman this was all superfluous tackle. He had 
 no want to be hearing the praise of James Kirwan or any 
 man. There was a singleness of heart about him which no 
 flattery could beguile. He took the hand that was offered, 
 but felt this was all that was demanded of him. There was 
 no appetite in him to be hearing he was an honest man. 
 What he wanted to know he asked. 
 
 "Is it the way ye're givin' yeer word for her then?" he 
 said, and the slight tremor of emotion there was in his voice 
 sounded like a bell tinkling in a far distance in the far- 
 mer's ears. With a speedy cunning, he judged its signifi- 
 cance. Not such a mere matter of formality was it to the 
 fisherman after all as had seemed in the first temper of his 
 speaking. He was not so sure of his bargain as all that. 
 
 James Kirwan had no idea in his nature of what love 
 might be; but he knew men hungered and thirsted after 
 women. And here surely was one thirsting now. In such 
 a fever they were quick to make concessions, eager to give 
 their souls away for the sake of their bodies. He had seen 
 men like that over women. They were much as men who 
 had drink taken; their senses were besotted with lust. 
 
 If Kirwan had any failing or weakness at all, it was for 
 his card playing. He had never been drunk in his life, or 
 in his life had he ever lusted after a woman. It gave him 
 the shrewd powers of calculation to make use of it in an- 
 other when it came his way. 
 
 Still gripping Fennel's hand, his eyes narrowed as he 
 heard that tremor in his voice. 
 
 "Shure, I'll give me word I will of course," said he,
 
 162 THE MIRACLE 
 
 "but what in the name of God am I to be doin' in the house 
 with herself gone and no hand to be milkin' the cows, of 
 makin' the butter or feedin' the chickens at all? Yirra, 
 isn't it hard on a man, the years he'd be givin' a roof to 
 the daughter of his house and good food to be eatin' and a 
 soft bed for her sleep, the way she'd be taken on him and 
 he left complainin' with the work on his hands. Shure the 
 mattrass she hev herself, didn't I buy it for thirty shillins 
 in Doonvarna? And what will the good of that money be 
 to me now with none to be sleepin' on it and meself called 
 in from the fields to be milkin' the cows?" 
 
 Surely enough Fennel knew that he wanted something 
 in return for his word over them. There was scarcely any- 
 thing he was not ready to give, but searched blindly in his 
 mind to know what it could be. For the gift of her was 
 so near to him now, that all his timidity had come back with 
 the close consciousness of it. 
 
 "Shure what can I do?" said he. "There's many a man 
 has the same would be happenin' to him." 
 
 "Scarce wan there is," replied Kirwan, "would be losin' 
 as good a girrl as meself. Would ye let her come and make 
 the butter for me," he said suddenly, as though he had that 
 moment thought of it and it provided a way out of all his 
 difficulties. "And maybe just the two days in the week 
 she'd be doin' that, 'tis milkin' the cows she might be or 
 doin' anny little odd thing at all." 
 
 To one in Fennel's exaltation of joy it seemed a little 
 thing to be giving his word for. So far as he could speak 
 for himself, he said he would not mind if she came down 
 sometimes to the farm and gave the help of her hands. He 
 made no promise as to what she would say to it herself. 
 
 Kirwan agreed he could say nothing fairer than that. It 
 was the man he was inclined to be doubtful about in this 
 matter. With Fennel's promise to let her come, he had his
 
 THE MIRACLE 163 
 
 own ideas of his power over Mary. He had taken no notice 
 of her saying that she hated him unless it were to convince 
 him of the fear he knew she had of him in her heart. He 
 believed by wheedling and alternate flashings of his tem- 
 per, he could still get so much work out of her as would 
 save him the expense of a paid hand. 
 
 This then was his bargain made, a better one than he 
 had ever hoped for. Still holding the fisherman's hand as 
 he had been doing for the last few minutes, he wrung it 
 with a hearty grip and let it fall. 
 
 "Very well so," said he, "that's fair and square. Let 
 ye be coming back now with me to the house and we'll be 
 takin' a drop between us for the luck of it." 
 
 He picked up his gun and was just about to march up 
 the headland of the field when his eyes caught the sight of 
 a chaffinch settling on one of the stacks of barley. Its chirp 
 ceased as it fell to its meal with the trustful effrontery of 
 its kind. 
 
 "God blast those finches !" he exclaimed and flung up the 
 gun to his shoulder and fired. 
 
 A little heap of fluttering feathers, of torn flesh riddled 
 with shot and red with thick drops of blood, fell down into 
 the stubble. 
 
 "That's emptied his crop," said he, and blew the smoke 
 in a grey wreath out of the barrel of his gun.
 
 KIRWAN'S was the only farm within a wide radius 
 of Ardnashiela where they had machinery for the 
 threshing. It was an antiquated contrivance relying 
 upon horse power. Harnessed to two long shafts attached 
 to a kind of windlass, the two animals walked round and 
 round in a wide circle, treading a pathway that had long 
 been beaten into a hard, bare track. This device connected 
 with the flails and winnows in a barn close by behind the 
 house. It was a slow process and, excepting that it saved 
 the labour of men, little in advance of the flails worked by 
 hand on the threshing floor. 
 
 Two days after Fennel had talked with the farmer in the 
 barley field, the thrum of the old cogged wheels and the 
 murmur of the flails in the barn was heard in Ardnashiela 
 like the note of a corncrake across the still air. Kirwan 
 had begun his threshing. The extra hands were called in 
 girls from the village, a man or two from neighbouring farms 
 where they had no arable land and labour could be spared. 
 From early morning till the light went as the sun drifted and 
 drooped behind the headlands, there was a humming of life 
 around the farm buildings. The throb of the thresher was 
 its tuning key, vibrating in an endless note. Round and 
 round to the unsparing whip in Kirwan's hand, the horses 
 beat out their circle. In and out of the barn, like ants 
 toiling, empty or laden with their pitchforked burdens of 
 straw, the men came and went, came and went. With 
 their shawls tightly fastened about their heads to keep the 
 
 164
 
 THE MIRACLE 165 
 
 dust out of their hair, the girls carried the fine dross of the 
 cavell to a temporary stack behind the house. 
 
 Around and amongst this troupe of workers, a ring- 
 master with the insignia of the whip, always ready in his 
 hand for the tiring horses Kirwan moved with a sharp eye 
 for indolence. His temper flashed out when he found it. 
 He was paying wages and dared to abuse. The curses of 
 God and the Mother of God he called down upon their sloth. 
 The spittle bubbled at the corners of his mouth. Because 
 they were receiving wages they went on with a momentary 
 quickening of their movements. The blows that seemed 
 imminent at every one of these outbursts never materialised. 
 They settled down to the comparative stillness of the throb- 
 bing flails, the tread of the horses and men and the constant 
 whispering rustle of the straw. 
 
 For three days it was the prevailing music about the 
 farm and across the distance hummed with a muted note in 
 every cottage in Ardnashiela. At the washing the women 
 heard it through the splashing of the water in the tub. Still 
 at the mending of his nets on the sea-wall, Fennel heard 
 it too. 
 
 Every sound those days had a ring of joy in it to him, 
 but none so loud or uplifting in his ears as that. It had all 
 been settled that day at the farm but no one as yet had been 
 told of it. With a feeling for ceremony where Fennel had 
 none and Mary had seemed not unkindly indifferent, Kirwan 
 had said he would announce it and drink their health in 
 proper fashion the time they would be dancing on the floor 
 of the house after the threshing. 
 
 Father Costello, the only man to whom the fisherman had 
 wished to tell his good news, was not seen by him for any 
 of those three days. He was in the village, but Fennel was 
 too timid about the whole matter now it was settled to go 
 and seek him out where he lived in the Main Street.
 
 166 THE MIRACLE 
 
 Kirwan had met him. Going out to Killanardrish to 
 inform the Parish Priest and make arrangements for Mary's 
 marriage, he had found Father Costello returning from a 
 visit to Grange by the road that forks left to Doonvarna. 
 
 "Couldn't I tell ye a bit of news!" he called out before 
 they met. " 'Tis grand for the house itself, Father, is this 
 day." 
 
 Father Costello nodded his head. 
 
 "Well tell me what it is," said he. 
 
 With great praise he had to be saying for the virtues of 
 Fennel, the farmer told him. He made a great match of 
 it. She had got the best man in Ardnashiela, with the money 
 he had saved and the steadiness he had for his work. 
 
 "The best man there is," Father Costello agreed. 
 
 "Shure, 'tis pounds and pounds he has up there in his 
 cottage on the cliff road, the way he'll be able to put herself 
 in a grand way of living." 
 
 The priest's eyes looked into Kirwan's. 
 
 "And the fine dowry," said he, "you'll be able to be giving 
 her yourself." 
 
 The father shifted his look to the sky as though he feared 
 the weather were changing for his threshing. 
 
 "Ah well," said he, "shure I dunno what'll be settled 
 yet. Isn't it takin' a hand away from me he is, the way I'd 
 be losin' more money in a year than I can ever spare herself 
 for a dowry. I dunno what'll be settled yet. Faith, there's 
 no man in these parts will say I'm not generous with the 
 little bit I'd have. There is not." 
 
 "You'll want all the generosity you've got," said the 
 priest, "to be doing the right thing by her. When are they 
 to be married?" 
 
 "I'm goin' out to see himself about that at Killanardrish 
 now."
 
 THE MIRACLE 167 
 
 "And they all know about it in Ardnashiela?" 
 
 A look of gross mischief winked in the farmer's eyes. 
 
 "There's not a soul will know but yeerself and Father 
 Roche till we'd be havin' the dancin' on the floor after the 
 threshin'. Shure, if I give it that time, 'tis not another feast 
 they'll be wantin' at all with the weddin'. 'Tis that way they'll 
 be able to go quiet up to their own place for the grand night 
 they'd be havin' with themselves and no waitin' till they're 
 all drunk. Shure, isn't that pints of porter it'll be savin' 
 me for I must give them a fling after the threshin'." 
 
 Father Costello stood there on the road and stared at 
 him. He had not the emotion to be judging him fairly for 
 just his meanness as a man. Disgust was in him. He 
 could not hide it out of his face. Doubtless the farmer 
 saw it, for in his eagerness to defend himself, he added, 
 
 "Shure, there's no harm in that. Won't a man is timid 
 the way Fennel is, be glad of the quietness he'd be gettin' 
 on his marriage night? He will of course. Yirra, can't I 
 see with me both eyes, 'tis himself is achin* for her" 
 Father Costello turned away "an' 'tis not a man is like 
 that," Kirwan called after him, "would want to be wastin' 
 his time steppin' round to a scratchy tune." 
 
 He stood there watching the departing figure of the 
 priest, wondering what he had said to offend him, thinking 
 how little good a man was to be understanding the plain ways 
 of life once he had entered the Church. 
 
 "Will ye come yeerself to the dancin'?" he called out, 
 "and 'twill be a grand thing, ye givin' them yer blessin' 
 on the floor." 
 
 The priest half turned as he walked. 
 
 "I will not, thank you," he called back. 
 
 "Shure, p'raps there mightn't be so much porter drunk if 
 ye was there yeerself!"
 
 168 THE MIRACLE 
 
 He did not answer. He did not look back again. Per- 
 haps with the sound of his feet on the hard road he had not 
 heard. 
 
 James Kirwan turned on his heel and continued his way 
 to Killanardrish.
 
 XI 
 
 THERE was a barrel of porter ordered from Creasy' 
 for the feast after the threshing. They sat about 
 on long forms in the kitchen, men and girls eating 
 and drinking, in silence mostly with undivided attention, 
 as though a free meal were an occasion that needed full 
 justice done to it. A flitch of home-cured bacon had been 
 boiled the day before. It was portioned out to them in greasy 
 lumps. They held it with their fingers to the bread and ate 
 them both together. Sometimes a piece slipped away on to 
 the floor and was picked up, rubbed not infrequently with the 
 sleeve of a coat, and then consumed. 
 
 The kitchen was filled with the sounds of eating and 
 drinking, with the rancid odours of perspiration and the 
 smell of porter that hangs heavily in the sweetest air. While 
 the feast was going on, there was little that was gentle or 
 human about them. There was greed in their eyes as they 
 consumed their food. Glances shot here and there lest any 
 one of them should not be ready when the plates of bacon 
 and bread came round again. And when they did, shrewd 
 eyes picked out the meatiest morsels, while hands were half 
 lifted, waiting with unconcealed impatience for their turn. 
 
 None of them seemed to notice Fennel's presence amongst 
 them, unless in a sort of resentment that he had done no 
 work at the threshing and was an extra mouth to feed, 
 delaying the plate or the jug of porter as it came round. 
 
 It was to their astonishment when the feast was nearly 
 over and they could only have eaten more had it been 
 thrust upon them, that James Kirwan stood up to his feet and 
 
 169
 
 170 THE MIRACLE 
 
 held aloft his glass of porter. A row of open mouths turned 
 to him as they prepared to listen. 
 
 "Have ye all eaten yeerselves?" he began. 
 One or two of the men spoke up to say they had. The 
 drooping lethargy of the rest answered for itself. There 
 was no longer any quickness of movement amongst them. 
 Their eyes turned sluggishly with the surfeit of food. But 
 their imaginations were sharp enough to quicken to the sense 
 that something unexpected was about to happen. 
 
 "Have ye all got a drop of porter in yeer glasses ?" Kirwan 
 continued. They had. So long as it was a drop only he 
 made no offer to fill them. 
 
 Hoping that more was to be given him, one of the men 
 swallowed hastily what he had and held up his empty glass. 
 "I could take a drop here," he called out. 
 With eyes that seemed to be seeing nothing and with 
 her limbs moving as they move who walk in their sleep, 
 Mary brought the jug to him and filled his glass. 
 
 Fennel snatched one glance at her. It was timid and 
 nervous he thought she was, like himself. They knew what 
 was about to happen. In such little talk as he had had with 
 her since that day in the yard, she had shown nothing but 
 the quietness of consent. That had satisfied him. It was 
 human enough in him and would have been in any man, to be 
 easily dissuaded from his magnanimous offer to set her free 
 from her word. She had continued in her consent. That was 
 enough to him. He was unable to recognise in it the tragedy 
 of submission. With that swift glance, he looked no more. 
 "Now," said Kirwan, "I've a grand health itself for ye 
 to be drinkin'. Thanks be to God we've got the corn in, 
 and shure the Lord Himself knows 'tis no fine crop on land 
 is starvin' the like of this, for 'tis not the floors of Heaven 
 we're standin* on, but the land of Ireland God help us! 
 But faith, if there's no fine crop I have to be shoutin* about,
 
 THE MIRACLE 171 
 
 there's a better thing has happened me. Will ye drink the 
 porter out of yeer glasses to Joe Fennel, the fisherman him- 
 self, that has asked the word from Mary, the daughter of 
 the house." 
 
 She heard the moment's pause of silence, then the laughter 
 and the voices confusing each other with their congratula- 
 tions closed in about her ears and were like sounds of the 
 sea when the winter storms were flinging it up onto her 
 father's land. She knew that the hands of the girls were 
 taking her hands and smacking her on the shoulders, for 
 there were few of them there had not thought of Fennel for 
 themselves and none without the pride in that company to 
 conceal it. 
 
 She knew she was smiling at those about her. A self in 
 her that self they would one day be taking up to lie under 
 the grass in the graveyard on the hill had already begun 
 the automatic performance of those duties it would from 
 this onward be her calling to obey. They whispered things 
 in her ears, the ones who knew her best, as they clung about 
 her. It was perhaps her fortune that she did not hear them. 
 The confusion of it all and just the realisation that it was 
 all inevitable now blunted her senses. 
 
 One clear impression only shot with a piercing vividness 
 into her mind. In the midst of all that clamour of laughter 
 and talk, she caught sight of her mother in the chimney 
 corner, looking on at it all with an inscrutable smile that 
 played about her lips only and had no confirmation of pleas- 
 ure or satisfaction in her eyes. 
 
 With no subtlety of insight it seemed to Mary as though 
 her mother were looking on at a familiar scene, none of the 
 meaning of which was hidden from her. In that smile she 
 felt there was pity, amusement, and a certain bitterness, but 
 nothing of joy. In all that crowd of people, she, it appeared 
 to Mary, was the only one who was not deceived by the
 
 172 THE MIRACLE 
 
 jollity of the occasion. Like Mary herself, she seemed aloof 
 and outside it all and with nothing but a relentless loneliness 
 that had made her what she was. 
 
 With that smile, it was as though in so many words 
 she were saying in a silence to herself, "Women are beasts 
 like the cattle in the yard 'tis only times of sale maybe 
 they'd have the passin' joy of a few ribbands in their hair 
 while the chains 'ud be fastened round them." 
 
 And when it was this she saw, Mary's heart cried out 
 in dumb sounds to the thought of the priest the look in his 
 eyes that day on the rocks, the sound of anger in his voice 
 and his going that very night to Fennel, urging him to be 
 swift in getting her word. 
 
 It was true he had hinted there was another man. There 
 was ! There always would be ! All her life long she would 
 remember that morning and her pain as she lay afterwards 
 alone upon the rocks. 
 
 If pain was all life had, then it was pain she wanted. To 
 be hurt deep down into her soul would be better than this 
 submission to content. It seemed no pain was greater than 
 she could bear, if only it was a real pain, cutting, excruciating, 
 wounding her to death if it must. 
 
 The cry of those dumb sounds were upon the edge of 
 her lips when the blind man struck up the tune upon his riddle 
 and they were all hurrying to clear the floor for the dancing. 
 Then the smile she had that was set about her mouth, turned 
 into a shrill laugh. She found she was dancing with the 
 boldest of the men amongst them who had caught her by the 
 waist and was muttering into her ear what a lucky fellow 
 was Fennel, the fisherman, to be having the word from her 
 that day. 
 
 They all called out to him to let go his arm of her for 
 that it was Fennel himself she ought to be stepping the first 
 dance with. Yet he still clasped her till Mary slipped from
 
 THE MIRACLE 173 
 
 him and stood there on the floor, waiting for the fisherman 
 to take her. 
 
 "Ah, shure, let her go on," he muttered in a pain of 
 confusion. "There's never a step I danced in me life and 
 'tis sooner I'd be watchin' herself with her feet movin' to 
 the tune than meself stampin' the way I'd be goin' on to it." 
 
 It was early in the evening and they let him have his 
 way then because they all knew he was a timid man and had 
 never been seen at the cross-road or dancing in any place 
 at all. 
 
 So she was swept again into the swirl of them and there 
 were some girls whispering it was a poor manner he was 
 taking the joy that was coming to him and wasn't Mary 
 herself too light in her heart, the way she was dancing, for 
 the likes of him. 
 
 Even James Kirwan himself, who had no ear for a tune, 
 seized a girl round the middle and flung her out into the 
 dancing, for he was in a good humour, counting the money 
 he had saved without giving Mary her bounty. 
 
 From one tune to another the blind man plied his fiddle, 
 whether they were dancing or the men were drinking in the 
 heat of the room or whatever they were doing. If for an 
 instant he stopped to put fresh grip of resin to his bow, it 
 was Mary first who called out to him to be going on. The 
 sound of a fiddle at all times leapt quickly in her blood. 
 It was witchcraft to her now. She gave her feet to madness 
 in the measure of it. She laughed aloud when they flung her 
 round. If she looked at Fennel at all, it was with her eyes 
 bright and fevered in which he saw nothing but laughter 
 and wondered was there ever a man like himself to be taking 
 so young a girl into his home. 
 
 In the midst of it suddenly there was one man with her 
 who stopped and said he would dance no more till himself 
 and herself had had their step on the floor. There were
 
 174 THE MIRACLE 
 
 many of them had drink taken by then and whether they 
 were glad to be sitting down or not, the idea caught their 
 fancy. Some of them left their partners at once and sat 
 down to be making room on the floor. 
 
 "Shure what the hell does it matter," the man called out, 
 "can he dance or not? 'Tis herself can dance well enough 
 for the both of them and 'tis not at a wake he is, sittin' there 
 with his hands in the gap of his legs !" 
 
 She was laughing still as she came to him and lifted him 
 to his feet, still unwilling and protesting pathetically. But 
 the laughter that was never in her heart went out of the 
 light of her face as the blind man stopped his jigging tune 
 and, lifting his bow again, began one of his minor melodies 
 of Ireland that have little step to them but music of a heart 
 would be wandering through the waste land of the bogs, 
 climbing sometimes with a far-off laughter amongst the bent 
 thorn trees on the hills, then on again, still wandering 
 through the glens. 
 
 "In the name of God let ye be playin' a smarter tune 
 than that !" James Kir wan called out. 
 
 "He will not !" cried Mary. "Let him play the tune would 
 be comin' to him. 'Tis easier it is for one would not be 
 havin' the way of his steps." 
 
 They were all sitting down. It was Mary and Fennel 
 alone who were dancing. She moved her steps so simply 
 that it was not hard for him to be moving with her. Not 
 one of them in all the room was laughing at them then, for the 
 music of the fiddle had got into their ears and the sadness of 
 Ireland was in it and there was not one of them, however far 
 gone he was in drink, but knew there was death and a strange 
 wandering at the end of all things. 
 
 To Mary herself in her ears, the sadness was the sound 
 of that other self that was calling her. And she knew in 
 some dream her mind was in, she could never leave the arms
 
 THE MIRACLE 175 
 
 that held her. But as long as the voice was calling her out 
 of the notes of the blind man's fiddle, she was content to go 
 on dancing there, with Fennel's hand gripped at her waist 
 and her head near against his shoulder. 
 
 So they were dancing, stepping it alone in all the room, 
 with the others sitting round on the forms, some nodding 
 their heads to the plaint of it, some tapping their feet to the 
 tune, when the door opened into the farmer's kitchen and 
 Father Costello stood there with the night behind him. 
 
 As if there were a spell over all of them, they made no 
 disturbance of greeting. Softly he closed the door behind 
 and stood there while the dance went on. When they passed 
 close to him for the first time, he forced himself to look at 
 Mary and over the breadth of Fennel's shoulder as she 
 moved by, her eyes fell into his.
 
 XII 
 
 I HE blind man was sitting on the table. His legs 
 were swinging in the air as he played and his heels 
 knocking to the beat of the tune. When their dance 
 was finished and the greetings of the priest were done with 
 as they were called out by one or another and made much 
 of in his pride by Kirwan himself, Father Costello drew 
 away from the rest of them and took the blind man's cus- 
 temary seat in the recess of the chimney. 
 
 "Well this is a great night for you," he said across the 
 peat fire to Mrs. Kirwan. 
 
 She nodded her head as the fiddle started up again and 
 the noise of the heavy feet scraped and the light feet tapped 
 on the floor. There was a weariness in her eyes now as 
 though the heat of the room and the sound of the music and 
 voices could lift her to pity or amusement no more. Even 
 the smile that Mary had seen was gone, the bitterness that 
 was in her, tired. She raised herself to her feet as a woman 
 that is old. 
 
 " 'Tis a grand night it is indeed," she echoed him, "for 
 those would have no knowin' what there'd be for them in 
 sleep." 
 
 "Faith, 'tis not going to your bed you are!" 
 
 "I am so." 
 
 She moved quietly out of the chimney corner onto the 
 floor at the fringe of the passing girls and men. 
 
 "Shure, they won't let you go till 'tis all over." 
 
 She smiled then. It was like a smile on the lips of a 
 mask, but the eyes that were behind it looked into his own. 
 
 176
 
 THE MIRACLE 177 
 
 They told him he knew well it was only words he said and 
 that when there is young blood quick and hot in young veins 
 it was not a woman going to her sleep they would be noticing 
 one way or another. 
 
 They brushed against her and jostled her as they went by, 
 but not one of them saw her leaving them. It was when 
 she was gone and Father Costello heard the door out of the 
 room close behind her, that he knew what it was she had 
 said to him. 
 
 "It's a grand night indeed," he said over to himself, 
 "for those would have no knowing what there'd be for them 
 in sleep." 
 
 Then he tried to look at the dancing, yet never at Mary 
 herself. The men and the girls began to float rather than 
 dance in their movement before his eyes. The tune of the 
 fiddle beat to a pulse in his head as though the bow with 
 its resin were scraping backwards and forwards, backwards 
 and forwards against his brain. The odour of the men and 
 women and the smell of the porter, that had been a stench 
 to him when first he came in from the sweet night outside, 
 had passed the sense of his nostrils and lay heavily like a 
 dead weight, aching upon his mind. 
 
 He knew his reasons for coming, but he began to wonder 
 why he had obeyed them at all. The heat of the room was 
 stifling him and then a whiff of smoke from the peat fire 
 with its dry, clean aromatic scent, came across his senses. 
 It reminded him of incense. The music of High Mass, as he 
 had heard it in the cathedrals abroad, floated by him, above 
 and beyond the sound of the fiddle. With a deep breath 
 of it, he dragged his thoughts away from their spell of 
 lethargy and told himself he was glad he had come and that 
 he had all the strength of ideals a man needed, if he could 
 face the danger to his soul as he was facing it there. 
 
 With the courage of that thought in him, he dared to
 
 178 THE MIRACLE 
 
 look straight at Mary as she went by. He thought there 
 was a calmness in his eyes. He did not know how eagerly 
 they stared and his heart dropped to a beat of sickness and 
 fear when he saw her whisper a word to her partner and 
 leave him there standing on the floor to find his way back 
 to the place where he had been sitting. 
 
 She threaded her way through the dancers and came across 
 to the fire, taking the seat where her mother had been and, 
 with eyes that still had fever in them, looking across the 
 fire at him. 
 
 "Why did ye come?" she asked. 
 
 He could not judge from her voice whether she were 
 glad or sorry that he had. His courage was gone again. It 
 seemed to drift out of him, to be burnt in the fire and, 
 charred and light, like the ashes of paper, to be borne away 
 with the heat and the blue smoke up into the black cavern of 
 the chimney. 
 
 He tried to tell her the real truth, his first reason, the 
 reason of his spirit, that unless he could see her there in 
 the arms of the man who had chosen her and without fear, 
 he had known there would be no more courage in him again. 
 He tried to say that. The words seemed to come boldly 
 to the very edge of his lips. But they were not the words 
 he said. 
 
 "It was two days ago what your father said to me on 
 the road." 
 
 "What did he say?" 
 
 "'Perhaps there mightn't be so much porter drunk,' he 
 said to me, "if ye were there yerself." 
 
 With no hesitation or doubt, she knew why her father 
 had said that. At any other time she would have laughed at 
 it, but now she sought only to learn how it had brought him
 
 THE MIRACLE 179 
 
 there. When he would not answer the question there was in 
 her eyes, she asked him. 
 
 "I knew you didn't like a man with much drink taken," 
 he said, "I knew it was ugly you'd find it, if they were 
 rowdy and dirty in their drink. I just thought that was all 
 if I came" 
 
 He had thought all that. It was true what he said, but 
 he had never meant to tell her this. If there was anything 
 he had wished to show her that night, it was that there was 
 the full spirit of courage in him to put her away; to let her 
 understand, without the words of it, that if she had known 
 what his look upon her bare arm had meant that day, or 
 divined the meaning of the anger he had had in his voice, 
 there was notwithstanding no lasting power in her to find 
 the weakness in him again. 
 
 Yet this was what he had said and she was there begging 
 him for a closer explanation of his words. Still weaker 
 in him than all, he had given it her. 
 
 When he looked up at her from speaking across the 
 smoke of the fire, her eyes were leaden and heavy with 
 tenderness and there was a sullen look of passion, almost to 
 sulkiness, about her lips. 
 
 "Go back and dance," he muttered. "Go back." 
 
 Without another word or look at him, she got up and 
 went out into the midst of them and presently he heard 
 her laugh above the voices of the others. It passed through 
 him, burning and searing as it went. He leapt up quickly 
 to his feet. It was beyond his endurance to stay there longer. 
 There was not a man dancing on the floor, with all the 
 drink that had been going, but had the senses clearer in him 
 than this. 
 
 It was as he stood up that an old clock on the dresser 
 struck the hour of midnight and ushered in the Friday morn- 
 ing of the new day.
 
 180 THE MIRACLE 
 
 Whether this was a contrivance of Kirwan's or not, begin- 
 ning his threshing on the Tuesday so that the entertainment 
 should be on the Thursday, it certainly was into a fast day 
 they had danced and drunk and eaten themselves. The priest 
 was there. This it was perhaps what the farmer had meant 
 when he said there was less porter would be consumed. 
 
 The sounds of the fiddle died away. The scratching and 
 the tapping of the feet ceased. Their threshing feast was 
 over. 
 
 The very first to go was Fennel. It was sadly enough 
 he had felt out of his element all that evening and knew the 
 chaff and laughter they would heap upon him walking back 
 along the strand to Ardnashiela. With a hurried word of 
 parting and a deep breath as he held her hand, he had left 
 Mary and slipped out of the door. She could not tell with 
 what emotion it was she had let him go. She had not offered 
 to keep him, yet in a vague apprehension wished he had 
 not gone. 
 
 When her father heard he had departed and in his absence 
 blasphemed and swore it was a poor way to be leaving a girl 
 on the last note of the tune; when with some of the men 
 he too went out to see could they overtake or call him to 
 bring him back for the priest's blessing on them both; 
 when, one by one, the men flung on their hats and the girls 
 tossed their shawls over their heads, having the jest of a 
 word or a laugh to give Mary as they went out, she began 
 to know what her apprehensions had been. 
 
 They were leaving her alone with the priest. He saw 
 the approach of it, yet could not move. There was no 
 stability in any intention now that came into his mind. A 
 moment before he could stay no longer. Now he could not 
 force himself to go away. 
 
 Seeing the approach of it too, she stood near the door 
 as they went out, her smile coming and going as they passed
 
 THE MIRACLE 181 
 
 her. And when they were all gone, with no apparent voli- 
 tion, but as if she had been told to do so, she shut the door. 
 There was the blind man still there. He could not save 
 them from each other's eyes, but the speech she had feared, 
 and the sound of the priest's words and the vibrations in 
 her heart his voice made whenever she heard it now, she 
 was safe from these. 
 
 It was still at the doorway she was standing and the 
 silence was throbbing with the beat of her pulse. He knew 
 as well it was not that way they could endure it much 
 longer. As well with her, he looked to the presence of the 
 blind man to save them. There he still sat on the table 
 beside his fiddle and the glass of porter they had given him. 
 Still swinging his legs and clacking his heels, he was humming 
 over the tunes he had played with a melancholy in his voice 
 as though he were loth to leave them. 
 
 "What was that slow tune you were playing, blind man?" 
 asked Father Costello with any words that came first to 
 him to say. "Where did it come from? I never heard it 
 before." 
 
 "Shure I've played thirrty tunes this night and wasn't 
 there a time itself to all of them?" 
 
 Mary knew well which tune he meant. Seeking no con- 
 firmation for the instinct she had, she told him it was that 
 her father had called to him to cease playing. 
 
 He took up his fiddle at once and played the first snatch 
 of it. 
 
 "That's the one," said Father Costello. "Where did you 
 learn that tune?" 
 
 The blind man raised his chin from the instrument and 
 stared with his eyes out into the room. 
 
 "'Twas one night I heard that," he whispered, "high 
 away and alone in the hills of Galway." 
 
 "How was it you heard it there ?' J
 
 182 THE MIRACLE 
 
 " 'Twas in the wind I heard it and the shiverin' of the 
 heather in the brown water was creepin' under the moss 
 and the long cry of hoverin' birds over the grey crags of 
 the rocks." 
 
 "You mean you made it yourself ?" 
 
 "I did not. 'Twas with the both of me ears I heard it. 
 Weren't They playin* it in the long blue drift of the lone- 
 some light and 'twas Their feet steppin' it on the stones, I 
 heard meself. And may God and all His saints and the 
 Holy Mother herself leave me alone in me darkness if that's 
 not the truth I'm tellin* ye now." 
 
 With an instant's tremor that seemed to pass through 
 him, like a wind chilling his blood, he snatched the fiddle 
 again to his chin and began to play it from the beginning, 
 and, when he had once started, continued muttering in his 
 breath, 
 
 "Let me hear the feet let me be hearin' them, I'm sayin'. 
 Let me hear the feet." 
 
 Father Costello had kept his eyes away from Mary till 
 then. Now he looked and she felt it was not only he that 
 was asking her what she would do, but the voices that had 
 been calling to her all the night, lifting themselves to warn 
 yet urge her on. She knew as her feet began to move upon 
 the floor it was into flames and the torture of pain they 
 were taking her and when she looked up to find his eyes 
 upon her still, it brought her no astonishment when she saw 
 him leave where he was standing and come down the room 
 to her side. It seemed they both had known it would be 
 so as soon as the blind man had begun to play. 
 
 With a fainting gesture of compliance, she let him put 
 his arm about her and held him droopingly to move with her 
 as she moved to the sound of the fiddle that might have been 
 playing as it had played to the blind man in the height of 
 the hills, so far away did it sound to both of them.
 
 THE MIRACLE 183 
 
 Once they crossed the floor and then she felt her head 
 leaning forward against him. Sweet noises had come into 
 her ears, that were not the fiddler's tune, but like the song 
 of a voice other than her own in an ecstasy of joy. And 
 always as she leant nearer, she knew his head was lowering to 
 meet hers. She looked up. A faint wind that was cold out of 
 another world blew over her eyelids. She saw his eyes that 
 seemed to be taking her own into them. Then she knew that 
 what would happen was more than she could bear to see. 
 Her eyes closed as his lips came nearer and leant upon her 
 own. It seemed to her then no more than that she just 
 went away, out of that kitchen where they were, out of 
 the world itself, to where there was nothing but a darkness. 
 A moment she saw him and then she could see him no 
 more. The blind man was still playing his fiddle with his 
 feet swinging and his heels clacking as Mary Kirwan slipped 
 with her weight out of Father Costello's arms. 
 
 When James Kirwan returned he found them patting her 
 hands and sprinkling her face with water from the earthen- 
 ware jug that stood always in a corner in the coolest part 
 of the room.
 
 XIII 
 
 MRS. SHEEHAN happened to be in the kitchen 
 premises at Killanardrish that Friday morning when 
 the bell rang. The kitchen was her sanctuary. 
 Every other room in the house, except that expressly occu- 
 pied by the Parish Priest, was as a tower to her upon the 
 battlements. From all quarters she could watch those who 
 approached the castle where she kept her charge. It was 
 in her judgment and discretion alone to raise the portcullis 
 of that hall door and give admission to those who wished to 
 see her master. 
 
 From his room overlooking the fields sloping down to 
 the sea, Father Roche could neither hear the bell nor was 
 he likely, from that direction, to see any one approaching the 
 house. Once in Killanardrish he was sequestered from the 
 outside world and like a sentinel, never sleeping at her post, 
 though not always upon the ramparts, Mrs. Sheehan kept 
 watch over her lord. 
 
 It was always a cause of annoyance to her when the 
 bell rang while she was in the kitchen. From the kitchen, 
 which looked out into an enclosed backyard, she could see 
 nothing. It was still more aggravating that from no window 
 in the front of the house unless indeed she opened one 
 and looked out could she see who was standing at the front 
 door. Some vein of caution and inherent secretiveness in 
 her nature had always rebelled against such a measure as 
 this. She never wished to appear unready for these attacks 
 upon her master's privacy. 
 
 Filled with suspicion and shod in slippers that made no 
 
 184
 
 THE MIRACLE 185 
 
 sound, she approached the door in that chill and lofty hall. 
 Not until her fingers, accustomed to silence, were fully pre- 
 pared upon the handle, did she turn it and open the door, 
 not with violence but always so suddenly that the visitor 
 outside upon the step was always unprepared. 
 
 She took a secret, acid pleasure in the sight of the invari- 
 able surprise that appeared upon their faces. She felt that 
 the advantage of their silent approach was then lost to them 
 and that her own position as guardian was still secure. 
 
 There was a sharp resentment in her mind that morning 
 when she opened the door in this manner and was con- 
 fronted by the back of Father Costello in which there was 
 no symptom of surprise or registration of any feeling what- 
 soever. He turned slowly and with a stare that was in his 
 eyes, making her feel as though she scarcely existed at all, 
 he asked her if Father Roche were in the house. 
 
 "He's in the house," she replied. 
 
 "I want to see him." 
 
 "I dunno whether 'tis at his meditations he is. There'd 
 be sometimes he'd be readin his Breviary now." 
 
 "Does he mind you coming into the room to him?" 
 
 A smile of any nature was not in the gamut of expressions 
 peculiar to Mrs. Sheehan's face. What might have been a 
 smile of superiority in another twisted itself in her features 
 then. 
 
 "Shure, he doesn't mind meself, anny time," she said. 
 
 "Then go and tell him I want to speak to him." 
 
 She had never felt herself mastered before and it was 
 not so much Father Costello himself, but something as it 
 were about and beyond him that compelled her without 
 another word to do as she was bid. 
 
 The old man was sitting in the same position, in the same 
 chair, in which he had talked to Fennel, as Father Costello 
 was ushered into the high-ceilinged room.
 
 186 THE MIRACLE 
 
 With all the soulless drought and jealous acidity of her 
 nature, Mrs. Sheehan had never felt the temptation of lis- 
 tening at a door in her life. For some reason, utterly inex- 
 plicable to herself, she felt it then. As she always did, she 
 had closed the door so quietly. She heard the noiselessness 
 of her slippered feet as she walked away. They would 
 never know if she turned back and, with the service of eye 
 and ear at the keyhole, kept watch and listened. 
 
 The sudden assault of the temptation shook her in fear 
 of herself. She had never feared herself before. Blood 
 she had never felt in her veins rushed astoundingly with a 
 flame into her cheeks. She almost ran to the kitchen. She 
 was plucking a fowl for Father Roche's dinner. Each 
 feather she pulled out she found to be a pain in herself and 
 snatched at it viciously to make the hurt the more. 
 
 Father Costello came down the room into the light of the 
 window and stood black against the fields and the sea as 
 the old man looked up. 
 
 "If there's trouble in Ardnashiela," said he, "don't play 
 with yeer words on it, but have it right out. They're a 
 drinkin' lot, and there's not one man wouldn't cut the throat 
 of another if 'twas a bit of land he wanted for himself." 
 
 "Well I don't find them like that," said Father Costello. 
 
 "Don't ye ! Is it four months ye've been there ?" 
 
 "It is not quite." 
 
 "I've been Parish Priest and in this house twenty-five 
 years. And I'll die in it, if Mrs. Sheehan'll let me. Four 
 years ago there was a farmer near Grange had a man come 
 behind his back, biddin' privately for a bit of land the 
 farmer wanted to get in the open market. Did ye hear at all 
 what he did?" 
 
 Father Costello shook his head. 
 
 "He waited for him behind a hedge with the gun he had 
 shootin' rabbits and when the man came along the road, up
 
 THE MIRACLE 18 
 
 stands me fine fella and empties the shot out of his gu 
 into his face the way it looked like a sieve with his blooi 
 pourin' out of the holes in it. Ye didn't hear that?" 
 
 "I did not." 
 
 "Ye've only been four months in the place. Did ye hear 
 tell the way they burnt a woman in Kilkenny for a witch?" 
 
 "I heard that long ago when I was a young boy." 
 
 "D'ye know they'll cut the horns off of the cows the 
 way they'd be bleedin' to death and the tits off their udders 
 for fear the man that owned them might be gettin' milk to 
 put in his mouth?" 
 
 "I have I've heard that." 
 
 "Well now let ye be tellin' me in plain words the trouble 
 there is in Ardnashiela." 
 
 "There's no trouble like that." 
 
 "The Lord be thanked ! They're gettin a civilised lot 
 these last four months. What is it so?" 
 
 The old man's eyebrows pricked out like brushes in a 
 shield over his pale eyes, as he looked up at his curate. 
 
 "I want ye to let me go away for a few days a week 
 or so just for a little while." 
 
 Father Roche closened the scrutiny in his eyes. 
 
 "Is it the way time's got to seem like a piece of elastic 
 to ye? Shure, if ye can stretch a few days into a week or 
 so, God knows what it'll be when it becomes a little while." 
 
 " 'Tis the way I don't know quite how long I want to 
 be away. It's ill I'm feelin'." His voice was threatening 
 with the note of desperation. "It's no good me comin' back 
 till I'm well again and can go on with me duties. I can't do 
 them as I'm feelin' now." 
 
 He stood looking out of the window, down the fields and 
 over the sea and through all the despair that was in him he 
 could feel the mind of the Parish Priest about his own mind
 
 188 THE MIRACLE 
 
 like a dog blindly sniffing and scenting for a trail that had 
 gone from it. 
 
 "There are two good doctors in Doonvarna," said Father 
 Roche presently, "though please God I'll die without the 
 need of 'em if Mrs. Sheehan'll let me." 
 
 "A doctor couldn't do me any good." 
 
 "Why not?" 
 
 "It's a change I want." 
 
 "From what?" 
 
 "Faith I don't know. Perhaps this place is lonely. It's 
 oppressing me. I feel desperately depressed sometimes." 
 
 "Ye've been here four months ?" 
 
 "Oh, sure I know that sounds no time at all to be feeling 
 the weight of a place on you." 
 
 "Twenty-five years is longer," said Father Roche. 
 
 "Ah, but surely you must have felt the desolation of it at 
 first." 
 
 "I did." 
 
 "Well didn't you feel you wanted to get away?" 
 
 "From the place?" 
 
 "Shure, what else?" 
 
 "Yirra, I might have felt I wanted to get away from 
 meself." 
 
 In the silence that came between them then, Father Cos- 
 tello could feel the pale eyes watching behind him. 
 
 " 'Tis not places or people," Father Roche went on pres- 
 ently in a slow voice, "would be makin' this or that in a man's 
 life, but the way himself 'ud be lookin' at 'em. Glory be to 
 God, sure I've come that way meself. I can look at nothin' 
 at all and if a circus was to come into that field there now, 
 I dunno would I see was it elephants or camels they had to be 
 drawin' the cars." 
 
 Father Costello turned round on him, keeping, but no 
 more, the cry of desperation out of his voice.
 
 THE MIRACLE 189 
 
 "What d'ye mean by all this?" he asked. "Shure, I can't 
 understand you. Will you give me leave to go away or won't 
 you? I know it's heaping work on your shoulders but you 
 must believe me or not, I wouldn't ask if I didn't want." 
 
 For a long measure of time they stood looking far into 
 each other's eyes. There was no fear in Father Costello's 
 of the pointed scrutiny in every expression on Father Roche's 
 face. He opposed and held it out with all the despairing in 
 his own. 
 
 When the Parish Priest had looked and looked and seen no 
 more than the full years of his life had given him a shrewd- 
 ness of, he turned with a glance over his shoulder. 
 
 "Would ye like to turn the key in that door," said he 
 quietly, "and make yeer confession here in the room?" 
 
 A thousand times the heart of the priest in Father Cos- 
 tello could have cried* out in his gratitude for that. It 
 would cleanse his soul he felt to be smirched with all the 
 thoughts his mind had flung before it since the night before. 
 But something that was instinctive man in him rose uppermost 
 to keep his love and the passion of it a secret and a sacred 
 thing in him till of himself he could burn it out of his heart. 
 
 "I would not," he said and said it so quietly and with 
 such conviction in his voice, that the old priest asked no more. 
 
 With a shrug of his shoulders and a meeting together of 
 the tips of all his fingers, he looked up at his curate. 
 
 "Ye can go to-morrow," said he, "I'm not stoppin' ye. 
 But mind ye, 'tis more afraid ye'll be to come back. No- 
 nogo to-morrow. If ye can't meet fear ye can't meet 
 God on the last day,"
 
 XIV 
 
 IN a bewilderment, leaving nothing in her consciousness 
 but dull pain, Mary had lived through that night and 
 passed into the next day. It had been a mercy to her 
 if her fainting had held her in the place of her darkness 
 till the next morning, but before the priest had left, they 
 had brought her round. She lay all night with hot eyes 
 staring and waiting for the dawn, her body shaken with 
 sudden gusts of trembling, her voice sometimes whispering 
 a cry "Oh oh " the inarticulate voice of her pain. * 
 
 In the morning she rose early to her work. The cows 
 were milked betimes. Kirwan looked at her once with cal- 
 culating eyes. She was pale as a shroud. But she was 
 always pale. Women were unaccountable cattle. The danc- 
 ing had excited her. It was that way she had fainted. If 
 she could get up early to her work, when, from all he had 
 seen of his wife, women were like animals the way they 
 loved their beds, there could be little that was wrong with 
 her. He did not look again. 
 
 All that day, she moved from one duty to another absorbed 
 and silent. When her mother heard what had happened the 
 night before, she asked her why she had fainted. 
 
 "Shure, I dunno," said Mary. 
 
 "There's never a woman does," Mrs. Kirwan replied. 
 "Wisha, if she did maybe she'd know the way to be healin' 
 it." 
 
 Alternately Mary was hoping that Fennel would not come 
 to see her that day then that he would. Even when she 
 heard the iron gate swing that evening at sunset and saw 
 
 190
 
 THE MIRACLE 191 
 
 him walking up the cobbled path to the door of the house, 
 she did not know whether she was grateful or not for his 
 coming. It must have been grateful she was, for, watching 
 him there from one of the sheds in the yard, she called to 
 him. He turned with an eager movement and there was 
 joy in his face as he crossed the yard and went into the 
 shed to her. 
 
 If he was to hear about her fainting the night before, 
 it was not herself was going to tell him. She stood, just 
 with her arms at her side and, always in gratitude for his 
 gentleness but in greater pity for him now because of her 
 own pain, she had a smile on her lips to greet him with. 
 
 It was the greatest tenderness she felt for him that in 
 his timidity and the simple emotions that ruled his mind, 
 he had never sought to embrace her yet. Knowing now 
 what passion was, she knew that somewhere it must exist 
 in him. He was a man. It was therefore with an intuitive 
 sense she felt the presence of the wonder he must have for 
 her. A year, a few months before, she might have given 
 out of her heart to the strangeness and beauty of that and 
 marvelled at rinding it in a man of her class. It would 
 indeed have been a revelation to her. But a greater revela- 
 tion had begun to unveil itself in the depths of her nature 
 before ever she had met the fisherman. And now she knew 
 wonder that was not timid as in a man kneeling before the 
 altar of the Mother of God, but fierce and subjugating with 
 rushing sounds of pain and sweeping visions of joy. 
 
 She smiled at him. Even she held out her hand. There 
 was just one thing the oppressive fear that was in her wanted 
 to ask him. She said it then as he took her hand and before 
 he could speak. 
 
 "When is it we're goin' to be married?" 
 
 His eyes could do no more than stare back at hers. Not
 
 192 THE MIRACLE 
 
 only had she become willing. She was eager now. It 
 was not too deaf he was to hear that in her voice. 
 
 "What makes ye so kind to me?" he asked, with words 
 he found difficult to urge from his throat to the clear sound 
 of them on his lips. 
 
 " "Pis not kind I am !" she cried then. 
 
 He did not understand. 
 
 ' 'Tis the greatest kindness ever I had in me life. Haven't 
 I been the way of a net and it drifting empty in the water 
 and isn't it full now out of the deep places of the seas and 
 I drawin' it into meself with the power I'd have in me arms ?" 
 
 This was the simple native poetry in him, strangely vivid 
 with all their coarseness and cruelty in them all. By the 
 hand he held, he drew her gently towards him as he said it. 
 
 "We'll be married," he muttered, "as soon as the priest 
 is ready for us," and then stammering in his shyness, he 
 asked her was it the way she could kiss him, for it was him- 
 self had never felt the lips of a woman in his life. 
 
 In a still obedience to his asking, she turned her face 
 upwards and he kissed her, but it was not his kiss she felt. 
 
 This was the first time he had ever kissed a woman. He 
 could not have believed how strange it was. Her lips 
 were cold as a stone you'd pick out of the water and she 
 seemed to have no breath.
 
 XV 
 
 THERE was one determination Mary had firmly made. 
 She would not go near Ardnashiela again until the 
 day she was to be married. In some orthodox and 
 conventional concept of thought, she believed this ceremony 
 was to save her from the danger that threatened from every 
 corner of her mind. 
 
 The sense of desecration and profanity there had once 
 seemed to be about her because Father Costello was a priest, 
 compelled no longer with reality. That moment when his arm 
 was around her and his lips had left his breath on her 
 lips, there was no thought that was unholy or sacreligious in 
 her mind. She had felt no horror at what had happened. 
 She had felt no shame when they had brought her round 
 and she remembered it all to the slightest detail of sensation. 
 It must not be. It could not be. But she had no shame 
 in her now. In all the chill bleakness of her life, there 
 were moments of exultant joy in that kiss he had given 
 that warmed her. She knew well how barren her life was 
 to be, yet the remembrance of that one moment alone seemed 
 to give her strength to face it all. She had no regret of it 
 no remorse. In a passionate defiance of all subservient 
 obedience to the teaching of the Church, she swore to 
 herself she would never confess it. It was hers hers and 
 his and as long as she breathed or had a tongue to speak 
 with, the secret of it would be a joy to keep. 
 
 But until she was married, she dared go no more to 
 Ardnashiela. Apart from this, which no longer she felt 
 
 193
 
 194 THE MIRACLE 
 
 to be a sin, it would have been her duty to go in to Confession 
 the next day. She would not go. 
 
 Instead, that evening, when the milking was finished, the 
 cream skimmed from the pans in the dairy and the buckets 
 cleaned, she crossed the fields to the Doonvarna road because 
 it had become a greater pairr to her to stay in the house. 
 All through the warm and peaty atmosphere in that kitchen, 
 she could still hear the notes of the fiddle playing and the 
 sound of the priest's voice when he spoke ; she could see that 
 last look his eyes had before she had gone away into the 
 darkness, she could feel the quick heat of his breath on her 
 lips that had carried her into that world beyond the imme- 
 diate perception of pain. 
 
 It was nine miles to Doonvarna. Two miles beyond Ard- 
 nashiela Bay, the road, doubly rutted with lines of the cart 
 tracks and the wheel marks of the donkey butts, led through 
 the lonely marsh-land of the bogs. There in the Spring, 
 the muffled drum of the snipe sounded often to those who 
 did not know the ways of birds, like the drums of the faerie 
 armies marching out to battle in the glens of the hills of 
 Doon. All the year and long through the winter nights, 
 the curlews called their sharp cries of fear, their quick cries 
 of warning and that long, low moaning whistle of their 
 content. 
 
 She passed the road that forks to Killanardrish. Without 
 a thought of how far she was going or any consideration 
 of time, she went on across the peat bog where the only 
 signs of human life were the solitary stacks of peat to show 
 where the hands of men had been and the sharp incisions 
 in the bog itself where pools of black, brown water trapped 
 the last lights of the fallen sun and delayed them there in 
 smears of purple, of orange and of gold. 
 
 There was nothing of any beauty that she saw over those 
 dark wastes of land in the still lights of evening. Beyond
 
 THE MIRACLE 195 
 
 and before her, the grey hills of Doon called her to them 
 like a voice calling. 
 
 It is a sign of madness, they say, that wish to be alone. 
 Before the fatal rabies siezes upon its victim, a dog will 
 hide away in dark places and wander upon far, solitary 
 journeys. If that is so, then it was love madness that was 
 calling Mary Kirwan up into the hills. She paid no hee.d to 
 the creeping grey lights that followed the warm lights and 
 mingled with them in purple across the sky. It was the 
 long twilight of evening that was closing around her as she 
 left the marsh land and the rising shadows of the hills began 
 to deepen the pale thread of the road. None of these signs 
 of the passage of time were apparent to her. There was 
 night already in her heart. It could not well grow darker 
 there. 
 
 Through that pass of the hills, the road wound upwards 
 for a mile and more before, mounting the lowest crest, it 
 began to descend in tortuous twistings to Doonvarna and 
 the sea again. It was known always as the Gap. There is 
 scarcely a word having a lonelier sound to it than that in all 
 of Ireland. 
 
 Once there had been a man or a woman maybe, who had 
 faced the solitariness of night and day between the gloom 
 of those crags and fallen boulders where the sun never shines 
 for more than a short hour. They may have faced it out 
 to the end. Like a waiting beast it may have leapt upon 
 them in a dark night before the end had come. All that 
 remained in desolate vision of their life there were the 
 broken four walls of the cabin still standing away from the 
 roadside. The thatch was nearly rotten through. It clung 
 in places to the remaining rafters as rags hang upon the bones 
 of an old woman in whom all life is dead and only death alive. 
 
 With no sense of the forsaken tragedy of its solitude, Mary 
 passed it by with a look that saw no more than what all
 
 196 THE MIRACLE 
 
 can see upon any road in Ireland. It roused no drifting 
 speculation in her. She had no picture in her mind of those 
 who had struggled against life there, had failed and gone 
 away. There was little in the sight of those crumbling 
 walls, the sightless windows and the gaping black mouth 
 where the door had hung that was so different or strange 
 to life as she knew it then acutely in herself. Up the 
 hill of the road she walked on into the first grey promise 
 of the night that was gathering out of the sea beyond 
 Doonvarna. 
 
 Before she reached the crest of the Gap, four miles away 
 then from Ardnashiela, a mist rolled over the hills in grey 
 sheets of suspended moisture and tumbled down in thick,, 
 ^'et, sullen layers into the valley of the pass. 
 
 She had no time to reckon upon the result of its coming. 
 In a few moments it was close around her, shutting her 
 in and bringing sounds to her ears she had not heard before 
 in the clear light. In these mists that came up often from 
 the sea,*people had been lost all night in the hills. She felt 
 no fear because of that. There was the road. She had 
 only to keep to it and she could not lose her way. It did 
 no more than bring her to a consciousness of how far she 
 had come and that it would be well into the night before she 
 could hope to get home. 
 
 That mattered little. There was enough dull sanity of 
 purpose in her to know that sometime or another she must 
 get back. Without pause to calculate how long it would take 
 her in the uncertainty of that light, she turned at once and 
 set her face back towards Ardnashiela. For no more than 
 a few yards before her the road lay at her feet. After that it 
 ended in the mist and might have been the sharp edge of an 
 abyss. So intense the silence was about her, that when a 
 stone tumbled down the side of the hills, she stood listening 
 to the sharp sounds of it till it lay still.
 
 THE MIRACLE 197 
 
 Perhaps it was a quarter of a mile she had walked with 
 watchful steps when a low wind came up, companion of the 
 mist. It stole with soft murmurs by her ears, hurrying the 
 grey layers of moisture past her as she walked. They came 
 after a time to be like ghosts to the quickening of her 
 imagination ghosts hastening by her, heedless of her as she 
 walked, but brushing their cold scarves against her face and 
 making almost a whisper in the air as they went, so bodily 
 their shapes began to be. Each one seemed to bring the 
 faint burden of a fear in its arms as it swept by. More and 
 more as she walked they left a sense of fear in her heart 
 when they were gone. 
 
 She knew at last she was afraid and that it was death, not 
 an ordinary death, she was beginning to fear, but death 
 coming to her there alone and holding its cold fingers vio- 
 lently at her throat. It pictured itself at last in a concrete 
 vision in her mind. She saw Shaughnessy, the butcher, kill- 
 ing his sheep in the solitude of the room, when the door was 
 closed upon him in that cottage of his in Ardnashiela. She 
 saw him wrestling with it, wearing the grim smile she always 
 knew must be on his face. Now, as she walked along the 
 road, she saw herself like that sheep, struggling, and if there 
 could only have been the warmness of her blood flowing, 
 she would not have felt death so cold or so alone. But 
 though she knew it was with a knife, a sharp, pointed knife, 
 Shaughnessy stabbed the necks of the sheep he killed, it 
 was not in that manner she saw death then. There was 
 chill in it and violence as when in drowning the body must 
 struggle and fight in the cold water. And permeated through 
 all this vision was the sense of the inevitable sacrifice, the 
 powerless beast and she, no less, herself, both dedicated 
 sacrament to the needs of life. 
 
 She began to feel she was fighting against death there in 
 the clinging darkness of that mist. Any moment she be-
 
 198 THE MIRACLE 
 
 lieved it might leap in some form upon her from the road- 
 side. There seemed no reason at all to be quickening her 
 steps, for the sense of it was always there as the ghosts 
 shuffled by her, yet she was breaking now almost into a run. 
 The very sound of her feet as they grew to haste, clattered 
 on the road as though they were clattering against her 
 brain. Terror was pursuing her now, swift terror, more 
 relentless than fear, and faster than her feet could run. 
 
 She knew at last there were screams hiding in her voice 
 demons of her fear which, once they thrust their way be- 
 tween her lips, would make the cries of madness and then 
 the end. The death that was terrifying would be upon her. 
 She fought to keep them back. If she kept them back she 
 believed she could defy that death, outrun it and escape. 
 
 Nearer and nearer to her lips they came and faster and 
 faster as she ran, the ghosts of the mists slipped by, when 
 suddenly out of the deepening darkness, she heard a sound. 
 There was no judging in that demented world she was mov- 
 ing in what sound it was. With eyes staring and lips open, 
 she stood, feet set apart, waiting on the road as it came 
 towards her. It grew, like a giant out of the mist. In 
 a solid volume of real substance it heaped itself upon her 
 out of the rushing shapes of the ghosts. 
 
 It was a man. He was riding a bicycle. The cries hung, 
 held on her lips. There was a real world. She stood and 
 laughed. 
 
 Scarcely an instant's laughter it was. He had stumbled 
 more than dismounted from his bicycle. When she looked 
 with sight that was concentrated on more than the mere 
 presence of him come there out of the mist, it was Father 
 Costello she saw. She stood trembling with the fear she had 
 had, the release of it and its re-action and now with the 
 emotion of awe at her swift thought that in all her efforts 
 to escape there was none.
 
 THE MIRACLE 199 
 
 He stared at her, saying no more than her name. It 
 made no impression upon either of them that it was the first 
 time he had used it without her surname. Then, perhaps 
 because of the hill on which they were standing and the 
 wetness of the handles of his machine as he held it, the 
 wheel of his bicycle turned. He lost its balance. It fell over 
 sideways on the stones. He did not try to save it. They 
 scarcely noticed its clattering down but, as if their eyes 
 were locked, gazed at each other until the unnatural fate it 
 seemed to be was gradually superimposed by reality. 
 
 "What's brought you out here?" he said under his breath. 
 
 She shook her head. 
 
 "No reason at all?" 
 
 "Just I wanted to be alone. I I couldn't stop in the 
 house the way I was." 
 
 "What way?" 
 
 She did not answer. 
 
 "What way?" 
 
 "After last Thursda' night." 
 
 "So you came out here ! No reason ! Just to be alone ! 
 God Almighty !" 
 
 They were silent. He looked down at his bicycle lying 
 on the road but made no movement to pick it up. Her 
 head had turned with his. With his it turned back. Their 
 eyes met again. 
 
 "What was it brought yeerself out here?" she whispered. 
 
 "I'm going away." 
 
 She caught her breath. 
 
 "I'm going to Doonvarna. There's an early train to 
 Dublin in the morning. I just waited to hear confession to 
 save Father Roche the trouble of coming in to Ardnashiela 
 and then I came away." 
 
 "Why are ye goin' away ?" 
 
 She had not wanted to see him until she was married,
 
 200 THE MIRACLE 
 
 yet the thought that he was going away was a desolation. 
 He did not answer until she had asked him again. 
 
 "Why did you come out here?" he asked in reply. 
 
 She bowed her head, lifting it the next moment and 
 crying out in her misery and despair 
 
 " "Tis meself has driven ye away !" 
 
 He shook his head and declare^ it was not her. 
 
 " 'Tis not yourself, but me," he said emphatically. "You 
 didn't know. How could you know! Shure I ought to 
 have known meself long before that morning we talked on 
 the cliff. Perhaps I did know and I hid it from meself, 
 because there was always a joy I had to be talking to you." 
 
 He looked at her and knew she was trembling but thought 
 it was because of the cold of the mist as she stood there in 
 those bitter wastes of the hills. 
 
 "You're cold," he said gently. "You should be walking 
 back and there's three more miles before you'll be home. 
 Come down the road now and I'll be walking with you 
 till you're out of the gap." 
 
 She reminded him there was his bicycle. 
 
 "It can lie there," said he. "Shure there's no one will be 
 coming this road now to-night." 
 
 "But ye'll be late yeerself in Doonvarna." 
 
 He said he could not leave her going alone. It pressed 
 in his mind that with that mist she must be getting back to 
 Ardnashiela, but he could not say good-bye to her then. 
 He could not turn away and ride off into the hills. It was 
 scarcely half a mile more out of the Gap. Even then she 
 had the lonely road across the peat bogs. Just that half 
 mile. It was little enough if, as in his heart it was seeming 
 then, he should never come back to Ardnashiela again. How 
 could he come back ? He would never dare to meet her again 
 after this. A secret? Yes, they could keep it a secret 
 perhaps. But there was something more than mere secrecy
 
 THE MIRACLE 201 
 
 between them. Love was no secret. With a persistent 
 vigilance of self-control, they might be able to hide it from 
 others. They could not hide it from themselves. And how 
 could the priest in him live through all that? He knew it 
 was the last time they would ever see each other. He knew 
 well he was never coming back. What was just that half 
 mile then to be walking beside her ? A few minutes to feel 
 themselves near to each other! That was all. It seemed 
 there must be some little pity God must extend to those of 
 His creatures suffering as they were suffering by no will 
 or seeking of their own. 
 
 "I'll walk back with you," he insisted, "just till we get 
 out of the Gap. The mist'll be drifting more there over 
 the marsh land. It's all pent up here between the hills. 
 Why, it's wetting you through." 
 
 He touched the sleeve of her bodice. 
 
 "You're drowning wet," said he. 
 
 This tenderness of solicitude for her welfare was all as 
 new and strange to her as love itself. That night in the 
 kitchen when he had told her why he had come out to the 
 threshing feast had bewildered and overwhelmed her. This 
 affected her in the same way. She looked up, in every ex- 
 pression giving herself wholly over to him in the passivity of 
 surrender. 
 
 He turned quickly away. They began walking down the 
 hill together, silent, because they dared not speak, and with a 
 clear space of the road between them. 
 
 As the ruined cottage loomed up out of the grey darkness 
 the mist turned to gusts of rain. It slashed against his 
 shoulders, but he only felt it whipping her. 
 
 "Why on earth did you come out to this place?" he mut- 
 tered, as though the rain were all and when he glanced at 
 her, he could see the shawl clinging to her hair. 
 
 It seemed suddenly then he beheld all the helplessness of
 
 202 THE MIRACLE 
 
 her the wind and rain driving her down the road as Fate 
 was driving her through life, as it had driven her out there 
 to the Gap, that day of all days, that hour of all hours. 
 With a sharp consciousness of power in himself created by 
 that vision of her, he took her arm and turned her off the 
 road. In those four walls of tumbling stone and beneath 
 the rotting cover of the thatch, there was sufficient shelter 
 to protect her till the lashing rain had passed. 
 
 She went with him in a dumb obedience. In the masterful 
 manner in which he had taken her arm, it had not passed 
 in her thoughts to protest, to warn him, to urge their going 
 on. " 'Til the worst of this is over," he said, and she stepped 
 through the black mouth of the door into the shelter of the 
 walls. 
 
 It had been a cabin of two rooms. Both rafters and 
 thatch had been swept away from that part in which the 
 occupants had lived and cooked their meals. The gap of the 
 chimney, like an old man's mouth with toothless gums, was 
 still black with the smoke of the fires that had burnt there. 
 The stack itself had fallen long ago. The stones that had 
 fallen inwards to the floor were green and weathered. 
 
 It was over the other room that the rafters and thatch 
 still held. They swayed and muttered as the wind had its 
 way with them, yet they clung tenaciously to the roof plate 
 and would not leave go. Behind those walls of the kitchen 
 they were partly sheltered from the wind but the rain 
 drove in. 
 
 "You'd better go right in," he told her and, without ques- 
 tion, she turned through the narrow doorway into the semi- 
 darkness beneath the broken thatch. 
 
 He followed, still forgetting all but the strength he felt 
 at the sight of her helplessness. Only two nights before 
 she had dropped fainting out of his arms. The vision of that 
 was lingering with him. He saw her weaker than she was
 
 THE MIRACLE 203 
 
 and himself with a greater strength than the nature of a 
 man can hope for. He believed in mastering her, he was 
 mastering himself. He thought, seeing her as she stood 
 trembling there, that he could forget himself in the presence 
 of her needs. 
 
 "Take off that shawl for a bit," he said, "it's drenched 
 with water. Here give it to me." 
 
 She took it off. He did not look at her as she handed it 
 to him, but in his ringers wrung out the drops of water 
 from it and then shook it out. 
 
 With that characteristic garment about her head and hair, 
 cutting down the line of her face, she was just the peasant 
 girl of her class. Although he knew, he had not reckoned 
 what she would look without it. Then, when he saw her 
 with her hair about her forehead, the full oval of her face 
 revealed, and felt he was as near to her as when, to the sound 
 of the blind man's fiddle, she was in his arms, a clear sight 
 of himself broke out with a light that blinded him. 
 
 There was no strength in him! More than that, there 
 was no weakness that was real in her. Rather it was she 
 who was strong with a power, not of her own exerting, but 
 more insidious, more irresistible than that. As she stood 
 there, returning his look and trembling with his eyes upon 
 her, there was something in her against which he now rec- 
 ognised himself to be powerless. She might conceal it in 
 silence, but it was not hidden from him there. She might 
 drop her eyes to the look in his. It was not hidden there. 
 
 If ever he had thought of women who tempted men and 
 from whose temptations he had not supposed he would be 
 exempt, it was always in definite and active ways he had 
 visioned them. Against such invitations to passion he had 
 believed that always, in the strength of his ideals, he would 
 be secure. 
 
 But this this submissive surrender of soul and heart and
 
 204 THE MIRACLE 
 
 body servant and slave to any purpose he might choose 
 he had left utterly out of his estimate of the forces of life. 
 He knew then as their eyes met and hers fell, it was some- 
 thing against the pounding pressure of which ideals fell away 
 like water. Perhaps he had learnt it for one instant that 
 night in the farm kitchen. He had not known it until now. 
 The world of all conscious right and wrong, of good and 
 evil, slipped away from him. There had been a space in his 
 mind where there was light falling. A shutter had been 
 swiftly closed. He was in darkness a darkness that radi- 
 ated and breathed of her. 
 
 As if it actually were a darkness in which they were 
 standing, he stretched out for her with his arms and his 
 hands groping. She felt his fingers catching upon her shoul- 
 ders. As the full clutch of his hands held her, it seemed 
 as if she were floating upon a swiftly moving stream, that 
 quickened and quickened in the race of its water, bearing 
 her onwards to the edge of the torrent when the rush of his 
 kisses beat like thunder in her ears.
 
 PART III
 
 JAMES KIRWAN had gone out of Ardnashiela that 
 Saturday evening for a game of cards they were hav- 
 ing at the cottage of Kelleher, the smith. It was a mile 
 out of the village, going West away from Doonvarna, at 
 Cantlin's Cross, and he was coming home when the night 
 had fallen and all the mist that had blown up from the sea 
 was gone in rain and sheets of moisture over the land. 
 
 There were stars, flung in myriad points of steel across 
 the sky, and beyond, where the sea lay, a late harvest moon, 
 dilated with faint light of flame, was cutting through the 
 band of purple mist on the horizon. 
 
 He was in a good humour because he had won a few 
 shillings at spoil-five, yet such was his mood, that his humour 
 was no joy to him. It was Kelleher who had lost and, what 
 with the drink he had taken and his temper at losing the 
 shillings that were gone from him, he had broken up the 
 game and said he would play no more. They might have 
 played another hour and longer so that although Kirwan 
 was jingling the money he had in his pocket, he was annoyed 
 to think it was less than there might have been, for his 
 luck was in with him and he had known he could not lose 
 that night. 
 
 In a way to satisfy and prove to himself how much the 
 fortune of the cards was with him, he took the pack he had 
 brought from his pocket. The cards that Kelleher had had 
 to be playing with were dirty and worn and marked. There 
 was no telling a king from a queen or a jack of spades 
 because of the dirt that was on them. It*was his own he had 
 
 207
 
 208 THE MIRACLE 
 
 brought there for them to be using that night and if there 
 was the scratch of a mark he knew on the back of the 
 knave of diamonds, he used it to no advantage unless he saw 
 it there in the hands of one of those he was playing against. 
 And when it was in his own hand it was, shure, what did 
 it matter how marked it might be so long as the others had 
 no knowledge of it to be using against him? 
 
 There was little visibility that night as he went along 
 the road, but he could just see the faces of the cards when 
 he took them out in his hands. He began shuffling them 
 then as he walked and every moment cutting a card to see 
 what it was. First it was the ace of hearts and then the king 
 of diamonds that he cut and almost every time it was a card 
 of some high value, so that he knew the luck was well in with 
 him. If they had gone on playing for another hour, it might 
 surely have been a small piece of gold he would have brought 
 home with him in his pocket, instead of those three shillings 
 rubbing against the copper pieces that he had. 
 
 About a quarter of a mile outside Ardnashiela there was 
 a pile of stones on the grass waiting for any man that 
 might be found to be breaking them up for the mending 
 of the road. They had been there two years and more and 
 the couch grass, the docks and ragwort were growing thick 
 about them. 
 
 Kirwan was still shuffling and cutting the cards in his 
 hands when he came to the place. It was not at the heap 
 of stones he was looking at all when the voice of a man jerked 
 out of the silence and stopped him where he was. 
 
 "How's the luck in with ye?" the man said, as though he 
 knew what it was the farmer had in his mind when he was 
 shuffling and cutting the cards. 
 
 With fear always ready to him in darkness and lonely 
 places, Kirwan stared at him with quick suspicion. As far 
 as he could see in that light, the man had clothes that were
 
 THE MIRACLE 209 
 
 not in rags on him and if it was a tinker he was, it was a 
 strange thing for him to be dressed like that. 
 
 "Who is it is askin' me that?" demanded Kirwan with a 
 sharpness in his voice to hide the fear he had. 
 
 "Shure what's it matter who another 'ud be, if yeer luck's 
 well in with yeerself?" 
 
 There was some meaning in that if there was not an 
 answer to his question. It was true enough the farmer little 
 cared who a man was if he could be winning pieces of money 
 out of him at cards. That answer seemed to satisfy him. His 
 suspicions were gone as swiftly as they had come. A slow 
 curiosity took their place. He drew a step nearer. 
 
 "If 'tis me luck is in or out," said he with a grin on his 
 lips, "there's little matter that could be to yeerself is walkin' 
 the roads the way the stones themselves 'ud be a rest to ye." 
 
 The man did not move. There appeared to be no offence 
 in him at Kirwan's imputation that he had no money to 
 be playing with, but was begging his way from one door to 
 another. 
 
 "I'd play a game of forty-five with anny man," said he. 
 
 Kirwan drew nearer another step and looked the more 
 closely at his face. He was no tinker. Then what wa he 
 doing there like a man would be worn out with the hardness 
 of the roads? But the curiosity of the farmer had stayed 
 little longer than his fear. He thought of his luck and the 
 cards he had been cutting as he came along the road. He 
 thought of the time he had lost for his playing with the hour 
 that Kelleher had broken up the game and told them all 
 they could go to Hell with the cards they were holding 
 against him. 
 
 "I'd play ye a game of forty-five," he said, "if ye'd come 
 along to the kitchen in me house is beyond Ardnashiela. 
 
 " 'Tis not that way I'm going," said the man, "and 'tis 
 here as well as any place we could be playin' now with the
 
 210 THE MIRACLE 
 
 flat of the stones to be laying our cards on and no heat of 
 any fire in a room or the lift of the drink might be gettin' 
 into our heads." 
 
 There was a persuasiveness in his voice. It was without 
 realising till afterwards what was happening to him that 
 Kirwan fell under the spell of it. His luck was tempting 
 him too and there were few men in Ardnashiela that could 
 hold out against him in a game of forty-five. 
 
 "Have ye got any money with ye?" he asked cautiously 
 as he sat down on the stones. 
 
 "I have indeed," said the man. 
 
 "Will ye show it me then, for 'tis not meself would 
 be playin' with anny strange man I'd be meetin' on the roads 
 but what I'd know had he money to be payin' with and he 
 losin' with the faces of the cards." 
 
 The man laughed at him and said it was easy seen the 
 farmer knew that pennies were not to be picked off thorn 
 bushes. Then he thrust his hand into his pocket and when 
 Kirwan saw the two half crowns, the threepenny piece in 
 silver and the copper money he brought out in the palm 
 of his hand, he was satisfied and began shuffling the cards. 
 
 The look of money always excited him and he was thinking 
 already how much of that he had seen would presently be 
 lying in the warmth of his pocket with the shillings he had 
 won at Kelleher's. 
 
 There was soon a silence from them as they played and 
 all the time Kirwan was thinking how he could be telling them 
 at Creasy's house in the street the way he had played cards 
 with a strange man on the road, taking the risk of winning 
 or losing and going back to his house with two half-crowns 
 and a threepenny piece of silver in his pocket. Perhaps it 
 was thinking of it so much took his mind off what he was 
 doing. He had good cards dealt out to him, but the other
 
 THE MIRACLE 211 
 
 man had better and again and again he won the trick that 
 Kirwan thought surely would be his own. 
 
 After the first game he had lost eightpence. Nevertheless 
 he knew his luck was still with him because there were good 
 cards coming to him and with the skill he had at the playing 
 and his cunning with the cards he put down, he knew he 
 must win in the end. All the same he lost the second game 
 and then the third and there was only fourpence left to him 
 out of the money he had won from Kelleher in his house. 
 
 "God blast the cards!" he exclaimed at last, "for 'tis not 
 the badness of the luck I'd be havin' mesdf but the diwle's 
 own luck is comin' to ye." 
 
 The man laughed softly with a long murmur in his throat 
 and he said nothing, but dealt the cards for the fourth game 
 on to the flat face of the big stone they were playing on. 
 Still the best of the luck was with him and he was successful 
 again. This time it was more than the three shillings he 
 had won that were gone from Kirwan and it was with a poor 
 grace he threw the cards down. It was bad enough to him 
 to be losing what he had won, but when it came to money 
 that was his own he had taken with him out of the house, his 
 temper was worse than Kelleher's temper had been. 
 
 But it was more than mere anger now at the fortune he was 
 having. Insidious thoughts, mingling with fear, were begin- 
 ning to sense their way into his mind. He began to wonder 
 what a queer thing it was and unlike himself to be playing 
 cards with a strange man at night on a heap of stones by the 
 roadside. He tried to remember the thought that had first 
 induced him to it. As he shuffled the cards, he seemed to 
 recollect it was the persuasiveness of the man's voice that 
 had invited him and made it appear reasonable enough to 
 him then when he first sat down. 
 
 From under the pale red tufts of his eyebrows, he snatched 
 a glance at the man playing with him there in that odd com-
 
 212 THE MIRACLE 
 
 panionship. It was quite an ordinary man he seemed to be, 
 but whether he was a tinker with clothes that had been given 
 him at the door of a good house, or whether he was a trav- 
 elling schoolmaster going from one place to another with his 
 books hidden in the pocket of his coat, or what he was, 
 Kirwan found it impossible in his mind to say. 
 
 He was dealing out the cards then and not looking as 
 closely as he might have been at what he was doing for he 
 dropped a card on the grass. As he stooped to pick it up at 
 the side of the man's foot where it lay, his heart was bound 
 in the swift ice of fear. Out of the end of the leg of his 
 trousers, it was not a foot that was protruding but what 
 looked like a horned lump of flesh and to Kirwan's eyes as 
 the fear shot into them and linked with the horror in his 
 mind, seemed cloven as a hoof. 
 
 He looked no more. 
 
 With a scream, as of one who screams in terror in his 
 sleep, he scrambled to* his feet and ran. Down the road 
 towards Ardnashiela he pelted. His hat flew off. He did 
 not know it had gone. And behind him in the darkness he 
 heard the hobbling feet of the man, like a spancelled cow, 
 running behind him. 
 
 He was crying out that the farmer had not paid him for 
 the last game he had lost. In the black night, between the 
 clatter of his own feet on the road, Kirwan heard his voice 
 and it seemed to be words of a curse he was crying out so 
 that he ran the faster down the road. It was not until the 
 houses in the street were at both sides of him that he stopped 
 to listen. 
 
 All the night was still. 
 
 The wind that had blown the mist up from the sea had 
 not left a murmur behind it
 
 II 
 
 IT was close upon ten o'clock when Kirwan came home 
 that night. He did not walk by the road and across 
 the fields as he would have done at any other time, but 
 to the end of the village and along the strand where the noise 
 of the sea was a quiet for the sound of his fears. Notwith- 
 standing, he looked over his shoulder every few steps he took. 
 Once he trod upon a piece of sea-weed that spat and crackled 
 under his feet. At the unexpected sound his heart came to 
 a sudden leaping. The sweat was cold as drops of dew on 
 his forehead. 
 
 It was the real panic of fear that was on him. Fears of 
 the unknown disembowelled him of all instincts of a man. 
 It was a beast at bay he became as they crept about him. 
 Any escape he would have seized, flying from one darkness 
 to another. It was only by muttering and singing in his 
 voice as he hurried home that he kept the hold of his reason 
 and came a sane man to his door. 
 
 "We are the boys of Wexford 
 Who fought with heart and hand " 
 
 He sang in a cracked voice which when presently he 
 heard it break on a high note terrified him with the sound 
 of its fear into a moment of silence. But he could not bear 
 the silence and then he talked aloud. 
 
 "May the Lord God Almighty have mercy on me," he 
 muttered, invoking blessings from the only source he knew 
 could defend him from evil. "May the Holy Mother and all 
 
 213
 
 214 THE MIRACLE 
 
 the Saints of God have a care of me this night till the first 
 tint of dawn." 
 
 It was not too long he would ask for that care and bless- 
 ing. Surely it might be granted him just that little while 
 till dawn broke. It was not a greedy man he was, with all 
 the terror that was on him. If it was the angels of God 
 were round him just that night, he felt it was any damned 
 thing he could face at all with the light of morning. He 
 forced himself to see that the grace of God had been with 
 him already. 
 
 "Shure if it weren't for that card droppin'," he whispered, 
 "mightn't I have been playin* with himself now at this 
 hour and he puttin' the stroke on me with every little look 
 he'd be twistin' out of his eyes." 
 
 That was a terrible thought. The sweat broke out on his 
 forehead again. But it brought its consolations. The grace 
 of God must have been with him, no matter what had hap- 
 pened him that night, for there he was walking with the 
 firm sand under his feet, the sound of the water breaking in 
 his ears and the start of orange light from the kitchen win- 
 dow of the farm not far distant now in his eyes. 
 
 With a thankfulness to the Almighty that had no greater 
 depth to it than the safety of his skin and his reason, he came 
 at last to his door and tumbled into the reassuring light of 
 the peat fire and the oil lamp that was burning on the table. 
 With a slam he shut the door behind him and ran the bolt 
 far home into its socket. 
 
 The blind man was sitting there alone in the recess of the 
 chimney. He was turning the bellows wheel. As Kirwan 
 entered, he stopped and his head bent to listening that served 
 him for sight, but he said nothing. 
 
 The farmer took no notice of him. With a trembling that 
 was still in him, he went straight to the cupboard of the deal 
 dresser and took out a bottle of whisky, half filling a tumbler
 
 THE MIRACLE 215 
 
 and drinking it neat like water. As the warmth of it ran 
 in his throat and down into the hollow void of his stomach 
 he drew a deep breath of relief. The voice of Mrs. Kirwan 
 reassured him then from the room beyond, where they slept. 
 
 "Is that yeerself ?" she called. 
 
 "It is thanks be to God !" said he. 
 
 "Is Mary with ye?" 
 
 "Shure, why the hell should she?" 
 
 "Where is it ye been then?" 
 
 ' Tis a game of cards I've been playin* with Kelleher 
 beyond over and the Lord God knows what 'ud be happenin' 
 to me the time I came away from that place." 
 
 He waited an instant for her to be asking him what it was 
 had happened to him on his way home and the next moment 
 he saw her there in the doorway herself with her black hair 
 in tangled shreds lying greasily over the doubtful whiteness 
 of her cotton shift. 
 
 He was ready with that residue of fear that was still 
 lingering in him to be over-surprised at anything that hap- 
 pened that night. Standing with his legs apart, gripping his 
 empty glass, he stared at her in astonishment. 
 
 "What's on ye in the name of God!" he exclaimed, "to 
 be gettin' out of yeer bed and comin* standin' there at the 
 door?" 
 
 "Where's Mary?" she asked. 
 
 "How the hell would I know?" said he. 
 
 "She's gone." 
 
 "Where has she gone?" 
 
 "Wisha, I dunno." 
 
 "When was she gone?" 
 
 "I dunno." 
 
 "When did ye see her last?" 
 
 "The time she'd be comin' in from the milkm'/ 
 
 "And 'tis not since ye've seen her?"
 
 216 THE MIRACLE 
 
 "It is not." 
 
 There was no sound of anxiety in her voice. On the 
 usual dull monotonous note she gave her answers to all his 
 questions. Impatiently he turned on the blind man. 
 
 "Has she said ere a word to yeerself at all, blind man?" 
 he asked. 
 
 "She has not." 
 
 James Kirwan looked about the room and as he looked 
 he saw in his mind the remembrance of the dancing and the 
 sight in the eyes of Fennel, the fisherman, that had followed 
 her round and round as she laughed and danced. He laughed 
 himself then and it was with a lewd grin on his face he 
 turned to his wife standing there in her shift. 
 
 " 'Tis up with the fisherman in his cottage she's gone," 
 said he, "and isn't it keepin' her he is till he's had his way 
 with her?" 
 
 It was with the first note of feeling in her voice that she 
 asked him if he would not go up there to the cliff road and 
 bring her back with him. 
 
 "I will not !" he shouted against the call he felt to be doing 
 what she said. "God knows there's enough I seen in the 
 darkness this night and there's not all the sin is in the pits 
 of hell 'ud be drawin' me out there to be stoppin' it. Shure 
 didn't I know always there was a bad streak of blood was 
 in her, and if 'tis that way she be goin' without the words 
 of the priest, let her go. 'Tis not meself'll be fetchin' her 
 away this night. Get into yeer bed, woman, for God's sake 
 get into yeer bed !" 
 
 In silence she did as he told her. He came presently him- 
 self to lie beside her. With his hot breath on her shoulders, 
 he told her in heavy whispers the thing he had seen on the 
 road that night
 
 Ill 
 
 FENNEL had brushed the dust off his boots and was 
 reaching down the best coat he had to go to Mass in 
 that Sunday morning when the door of his cottage 
 opened without knock or warning and James Kirwan stood 
 on the threshold. He looked about him and long at the bed 
 in the room before he spoke. 
 
 "Where's Mary?" he said at last. 
 
 Fennel gaped at him. 
 
 "Where's Mary?" he repeated. 
 
 The fisherman walked across the room and stared in his 
 face. 
 
 "Where should she be ?" he asked. "And why in the name 
 of God are ye lookin' for her here?" 
 
 "Mightn't she be here," said Kirwan, "and she not in the 
 house itself down beyond?" 
 
 "What would she be here for this hour of the morning?" 
 
 If in his soul a man can grin, when it is not revealed either 
 in his countenance or in a consciousness of his mind, yet is 
 surely there somewhere in the utterance of his nature, James 
 Kirwan grinned then. 
 
 "Oh shure she may have gone this time and early, the 
 way I'd miss her meself comin' up." 
 
 Every feature in the fisherman's face bent into the bewil- 
 derment of a frown. 
 
 "What is it ye're talkin'?" he muttered. 
 
 "I'm talkin'," said Kirwan, "what I'm after wantin' U 
 know. What time is it she left ye for she was not milkin 1 
 the cows in the shed when I left the place." 
 
 217
 
 218 THE MIRACLE 
 
 Fennel murmured she had not been there and suddenly 
 with that statement as he made it, he partly recognised what 
 the farmer was imputing against him. 
 
 "D'ye mean was she here last night?" 
 
 There was a suspicious quiet in his manner of saying it, 
 too delicate almost to stir the caution always ready in the 
 composition of James Kirwan. Rubbing his hands together 
 and with the sly lasciviousness of a smile, he said it was that 
 he meant surely and added some gross recognition of it as 
 of something that might happen to any man and girl on the 
 eve of their marrying. There were many reasons why the 
 farmer had no cause to be sorry for what he believed had 
 happened. If it were so, there was no turning round from 
 his promise left to the fisherman now. He would not dare 
 to be asking for a dowry or anything at all. 
 
 Joe Fennel stood there a moment in silence looking at 
 Kirwan, not only with contempt as he had before, but with 
 a quivering of anger that strained his lips and dilated his 
 nostrils as he breathed. 
 
 "Is it that sort of man ye think I am?" said he, "to be 
 bringin' sin and shame to a girrl before the priest has said 
 the word over her ?" He did not know what to do with his 
 hands to keep them away from Kirwan's face. It was a wide 
 and a flabby face and he hated the look in it. In but the 
 shortest space of time he knew he could disfigure it, almost 
 beyond recognition. For Mary's sake and for no other rea- 
 son at all, he kept his hands to himself. 
 
 "Ye're a dirrty man, James Kirwan !" he said, when with 
 peculiar grimaces and quick snorts of his breath, he had mas- 
 tered himself. "I dunno how was it ye came to gettin' a 
 child with the sweetness and gentleness of that girrl at all. 
 Isn't it mean as a dish of d'irrty water ye are? Shure, it 
 makes me sick to be tastin' the looks of ye and let ye be 
 rememberin' that the time " He stopped. As though a
 
 THE MIRACLE 219 
 
 voice had called him to silence, his words ceased. With a 
 changed look in his eyes as the light of the whole matter 
 penetrated the density of his intellect, he gazed in a sharpen- 
 ing fear at Kirwan. 
 
 "Where is she?" he shouted. 
 
 Relieved to observe that transition in the course of the 
 fisherman's thoughts, Kirwan was only too glad to let pass 
 all he had said. 
 
 "Shure, I'm askin' ye that meself," he cried back at him. 
 A show of spirit here pledged him to no vindication of any- 
 thing the fisherman had said. He saw quickly enough that 
 Fennel was frightened now. His fighting mood was gone. 
 This lifting of the farmer's voice was a suitable contrivance 
 to preserve his dignity. 
 
 "Amn't I after tellin' ye she was not in the house last 
 night," he went on, "and she's not there this morning? 
 Shure, there's not a crease on her bed and diwle a sight or 
 sound of her anny place at all." 
 
 They gaped from one to the other in a witlessness of mind. 
 
 "Where was it last she was seen?" muttered Fennel. 
 
 "Herself saw her comin' in from the milkin'." 
 
 "What time was that?" 
 ' 'Twas five or a half after it may be." 
 
 "Did she say annything where she was goin' or anny 
 word at all?" 
 
 "Diwle a word." 
 
 "Where were ye yeerself that time ?" 
 ' 'Twas in the barn I was, trussin' and stackin' the straw." 
 
 "Ye had no sight of her yeerself ?" 
 
 "I had not." 
 
 For a moment, that seemed to exhaust all the questions 
 the wit of Fennel could conceive. He stood in silence look- 
 ing at Kirwan, bemused with the effort of his catechism and 
 confounded with the answers he had received. In a mute
 
 220 THE MIRACLE 
 
 helplessness he turned away to the window, staring out across 
 the wide space of the bay to the distance of Helvic Head and 
 that far cluster of trees in their isolation at Killanardrish. 
 
 The best of the weather had gone since the threshing was 
 over. That mist the evening before was merely a herald 
 of rain and wind gathering up out of the South- West. The 
 clear interval that had followed it had been swept over with 
 clouds before midnight. The sea was now a slaty grey with 
 gusts of wind whipping it till it seemed to be snarling with 
 a treacherous anger. 
 
 "When did ye first find 'twas the way she's gone?" mut- 
 tered Fennel without turning. 
 
 "At ten bi the clock when I came home." 
 
 "Where were ye that time of the night?" 
 
 "Havin* a game of the cards I was at Kelleher's, the 
 smith." 
 
 "And was there no trace ye saw of her on the road comin' 
 back?" 
 
 Whether enlightening or not, he asked any questions that 
 were new in his mind. For it was being borne upon him 
 now that all that was left for them was to search and search 
 until they found her. At the sound of the farmer's silence 
 to that last enquiry, he turned round. 
 
 "Was there no trace ye saw ?" he asked. 
 
 Kirwan's eyes were set wide and his mouth was gaping. 
 He had fully realised at last that Mary had not been that night 
 with the fisherman and with the sound of this last question 
 a light, freshened with the memory of his fears of the night 
 before, had lit up the whole latitude of his imagination. 
 
 With stammerings of awe and the sickness of fright in his 
 voice, he told Fennel of the man he had seen, the game of 
 cards he had played sitting on the stones, the money he had 
 lost and the way it had ended for him. 
 
 " Twas the hoof of a foot he had," he whispered, "an'
 
 THE MIRACLE 221 
 
 it peepin' out with a cleft in it like a cow or a wild beast 
 maybe. Wasn't it that time we were playin' he was puttin' 
 the stroke on me to be leadin' me astray? He was indeed. 
 And wasn't it great sense I had to be runnin' down the road 
 puttin' crosses on meself without waitin' for the cards he 
 had in his hand or the hat would be f allin' off of me head ?" 
 
 The mind of the fisherman now was wandering like a 
 child lost in a trackless wood, all power of reason and se- 
 lection gone from it, turning this way and then that in 
 fruitless efforts to find a path out into the clear light. One 
 vivid idea only was constant in his thoughts. The power 
 of that unknown world was still about him. Still, directly 
 or indirectly, he knew himself to be the sport of its will. 
 From the tale he had heard, in which there could be no 
 suspicion of incredulity and of which there was only one 
 explanation, he knew They were abroad with Their malice 
 and Their mischief to be doing harm and bringing sorrow 
 into his life. 
 
 Mary was gone. Just in that moment before she would 
 be coming to bring him the softness and kindness of life 
 and drive out of his days the long loneliness that was 
 there, the faeries had taken her. 
 
 Why had They taken her? Oh, shure, there were a 
 thousand reasons why They should. Wasn't it the gentlest 
 voice she had and that look away from the world there 
 was always in her face? The wonder of all women was 
 in her eyes and it was ones like that they would be taking 
 more than others who had not such great quality in them- 
 selves. 
 
 He sat down on the chair by the side of his fire, looking 
 no more at Kirwan, but rocking his weight to and fro 
 from one foot to the other. 
 
 A mood of fatalism and helplessness had come over him. 
 
 "Wisha, God be with the days," he muttered and despair
 
 222 THE MIRACLE 
 
 was so overwhelming upon him then, that though a few 
 moments before he had been casting about in the lively 
 fear of his mind where they might search, now all volition 
 and energy of thought was gone from him. 
 
 He gave himself up as if he were its victim to the 
 belief that he would never see her again. Truly, some- 
 times they came back who were taken that way. They 
 came back, but their wits were gone from them. Once 
 he had seen a woman, babbling with loose and drooping lip 
 who, after being lost for seven months, had returned to 
 the door of the place where she had been living. And of 
 what use was she to the man of the house who had let her 
 in? There was nothing she remembered of the room where 
 she had eaten her food, or the bed she had slept in. With 
 a stream of spittle running always from her lips she had 
 no power to be keeping in her mouth, she had lived with 
 him there in his cabin in the hills for three years and more, 
 and in the end they had found her with her head in a 
 bucket of water, with her hair floating and her body twist- 
 ing to keep herself there till death came to her. And didn't 
 it come soon after in the black of one night? 
 
 He prayed God that Mary might never come back at 
 all if it was that way she would be coming. 
 
 Then he stood up by the fire and beat his hands and 
 shut his fist and hammered it against the breast of the 
 chimney. "Ah shure, God help us!" he cried out in the 
 pain of his loneliness and despair. "Isn't it long the days 
 have been for me and wasn't I thinkin' they were goin' 
 to be slippin' by like water over the smooth of the stones?"
 
 IV 
 
 FATHER ROCHE served Mass at ten o'clock that 
 morning and was gone out of Ardnashiela on the old 
 white horse he rode about his straggling parish before 
 the disappearance of Mary Kirwan was put about the village. 
 Even by then it would have been hard to know who was 
 the first to spread the story. Mrs. Kirwan went to Mass 
 and spoke no word to any one. All that morning the blind 
 man sat by the fire in the farm kitchen, smoking his pipe and 
 turning the wheel when the peat needed it. As in the 
 manner of a dumb animal, having lost all central purpose in 
 his being, less than a vagrant and by physical contact alone 
 keeping in touch with the meaningless movement of life, Fen- 
 nel wandered out onto the cliffs. If he were aware of any 
 motive in himself, it was that he was looking for Mary. 
 He was not searching for her. There was no hope, only a 
 fear in him that he would find her. But fear in him was 
 not the over-mastering emotion as it was in Kirwan. With 
 all the terror that he had of finding her witless, demented, 
 a sight of horror where beauty had once been, there was 
 nothing in his nature to drive him to shirk the truth if this 
 was what it had to be. 
 
 With the heavy steps of one wandering in sleep, he walked 
 round the headlands as far as where he had landed her 
 that morning upon the rocks. At every opening rent in the 
 cliffs where the sea had cut a way, he stopped. Down every 
 crevasse he looked. With the first glance, his eyes narrowed 
 as though to hide rather than discover the thing he might 
 find. When there was nothing there, they opened wider. 
 
 223
 
 224 THE MIRACLE 
 
 Then he dared to look and from there went onwards from 
 one headland to another. 
 
 All that day he wandered, climbing sometimes down the 
 cliff side to the water's edge and looking helplessly over 
 the grey leaden fret and fume of the sea. For the first 
 time in all his life as a fisherman, the water revealed a 
 sullen relentlessness to him. It did not move him to fear. 
 It broke his spirit to surrender. At the feet of the rocks, 
 black with their slime of weed, the waves an unbroken hiss 
 and clamour in his ears and the spray licking his face, he 
 stood in a humility of submission. Life had its way with 
 men and women. He recognised that then. The sea was 
 life to him. He knew no abstract sense of it. If somewhere 
 in the mass of those grey waters her body was lying in the 
 drag of the waves as he had seen the bodies of big fish lie 
 that had died in their own element, floating half submerged 
 till the birds consumed them, that then was the way life had 
 with her and with him a way as fixed and inevitable as the 
 tides themselves. 
 
 Through all that day, it never occurred to him to adopt the 
 usual measures that are resorted to in a civilized community 
 in such a case of sudden disappearance. There was a sergeant 
 and one policeman in a cottage, called the barracks, in the 
 street of Ardnashiela. It never entered his head to communi- 
 cate with them. This was not so much because of what they 
 could or could not do, but rather because one thing only was 
 certain in his mind. The faeries had taken her. How else 
 in so sudden a way could she have disappeared? Had he 
 never heard that story from Kirwan of his encounter with 
 one of Them the night before, this was the inevitable con- 
 clusion he would have come to. 
 
 The only normal things that happen in the life of such 
 a place as Ardnashiela are of such small account as almost 
 to pass unnoticed. Births, the natural deaths of old people,
 
 THE MIRACLE 225 
 
 quarrellings and occasional emigrations, these make up the 
 only spectacular conditions of existence. 
 
 It is the press of life that robs life of its significance the 
 crowd of people in which the souls of people are lost. 
 
 Whatever one may think in reason of that significance 
 they put upon these happenings on the wild coasts of Ire- 
 land, it is not inconsequent. It is not one of neglect. The 
 ways of life are real to them. They move with an unerring 
 and compelling destiny. If the vast purposes of it are not 
 divulged, they are at least revealed. 
 
 It was not by the agency of police or recognised authority 
 that Fennel thought he would ever be able to find Mary Kir- 
 wan. The faeries had taken her. It was They alone who 
 could give her back. 
 
 In such a manner the mind of James Kirwan was at 
 work though driving him to different measures. The thought 
 of communicating with the police never entered his head when 
 he left Fennel's cottage. There was the truth of it. They 
 were abroad. If it was at the cards he had lost, surely the 
 luck was with him that night when he had pelted down the 
 road and escaped. 
 
 All that night he had lain upon his bed, listening for the 
 ever-expected knock upon the door. They had left him in 
 peace. It was Mary They had taken. What other reason 
 was there for her disappearance than this? 
 
 The countless things that might happen to people in 
 crowded places could not happen here. Where had she gone, 
 how had she been spirited away into nothingness if it was 
 not Their work? 
 
 He had said the night before to his wife he had always 
 known there was a bad drop of blood in her. It was more 
 than that he had known. He had known, but he had never 
 made it conscious to himself in words, that there was
 
 226 THE MIRACLE 
 
 something was queer in her. Daughter though she might 
 be of his, and useful with her hands and steady about the 
 farm, she was no ordinary girl. Why had she gone on as she 
 did when he killed the black dog? What was there was in 
 her to be fondling a little beast like that? And why had 
 it ever come to the house at all? 
 
 He knew. He had known all along. But never had he 
 known as surely as now. 
 
 One person his thoughts turned to if help could be given 
 or were of any account in such an event as this. With no 
 such uncertain steps as Fennel's, wandering over the head- 
 lands, he walked down the cliff road and turned into the 
 street, knocking at Shaughnessy's door and waiting for the 
 thin voice responding within before he entered. 
 
 It was a cottage of one room with a wash-house beneath 
 a sloping roof at the back. In the distressed light from the 
 one little window, the sheep, Shaughnessy had killed in that 
 room late in the week, hung from the beam below the thatch. 
 A basin of blood, darkened in its contact with the air, stood 
 on the floor beneath it. The last drop had fallen. A thick 
 solid skein of red swung from the end of the beast's nos- 
 trils. There was no longer any flow of blood to carry it 
 away. The animal hung there with its skin half ripped 
 from it, falling in woolly folds from its pale flanks as gar- 
 ments that are dropping from a naked body. A stench of 
 blood, viscous and heavy, lay upon the air. The smell of 
 the peat could not cleanse or overcome it. 
 
 To Kirwan the sight of that carcase and the reek of blood 
 were nothing. His eyes passed by the pale thing, suspending 
 with its attenuated flesh from the beam. It was at Shaugh- 
 nessy he looked, lying in the disorder of his bed with the 
 dirty clothes heaped up about him. His long, grey hair was 
 gathered in greasy masses on his neck. His watery eyes,
 
 THE MIRACLE 227 
 
 blood-shot and dropping in the lids, stared where they looked 
 without human meaning. Notwithstanding the unnatural 
 largeness of his head, with the absence of any lines above 
 the small features he had, even to the curve of his lips, 
 he was more like a woman than a man a woman grown old, 
 who has dragged her looks with her through every condition 
 of life to the edge of the grave. 
 
 To this man and in that place, the farmer told his story 
 of what had happened him the night before and the way 
 Themselves had taken his daughter out of the house so 
 that she was no more to be seen in any place at all. 
 
 Shaughnessy sat for a long while silent in his bed, blink- 
 ing his eyes. The water rolled out of them, one thin drop 
 after another down his cheeks. 
 
 ' 'Tis often the way with a young girrl has 'ticin' looks 
 with her," he said presently, "and she be the side of her 
 marriage bed. Shure what would They be wantin' with 
 her but her body itself can have no childer of their own." 
 
 Kirwan accepted this with a nodding head. His relations 
 with the butcher in their transactions over sheep were very 
 different from what they were here. In business matters, 
 being the only farmer nearer than five miles, he could afford 
 to bully and coerce. Now he came as a novice to one knowing 
 mysteries and being acquainted with the meaning of dreams. 
 
 Wherever these occult beliefs exist in any community, 
 the seer, the soothsayer, the prophet is to be found. It was 
 known by nearly all in Ardnashiela that Shaughnessy could 
 read a dream and had told queer things at times from them 
 that had come true. There were many stories whispered 
 about him having foundation perhaps in his trade. No one 
 conceived it dirty, or unhealthy for him to be killing his 
 sheep in the room where he slept and draining the blood out 
 of it into a basin on the floor. Yet there was scarcely one
 
 228 THE MIRACLE 
 
 who, when his door happened to be open, had seen the drab 
 beast hanging there, who did not feel an inward revulsion at 
 the thought of such a companion through the length and 
 darkness of night. He dealt with death. It was his trade. 
 Every woman in Ardnashiela, seeing him from her windows 
 as he drove his victim through the street from Kirwan's 
 fields shuddered in herself at the placidity of that smile that 
 seemed always to be lingering at such times about the curve 
 of his lips. It was not because killing an animal was an ugly 
 business to them, but because it was to be killed by Shaugh- 
 nessy and with a laugh maybe in that little room of his 
 with the door shut fast and the firelight trembling on the 
 window pane. 
 
 Thus the stories about him had grown around his person- 
 ality and the work he did. Kirwan was not the only one who 
 in secret had come to him to explain and advise and read the 
 meaning of hidden things. 
 
 Having accepted this first pronouncement as reason enough 
 for the disappearance of Mary, the farmer asked was there 
 anything in the name of God that he could do. 
 
 "Wasn't it a useful hand she was to me," he said, "with 
 the work she'd be doin' on the farm and hadn't I the promise 
 of Fennel himself, 'twas comin' to help me she'd be after 
 she was married, the way I could have saved meself pay in* 
 for labour ? Shure God knows 'twould have been hard enough 
 as it was and isn't she gone entirely from me now ?" 
 
 With grunts and shaking breaths, for he was an old man 
 and the years had given him a weight of flesh he carried 
 with some difficulty, Shaughnessy lurched out of bed. Cross- 
 ing the floor in his naked feet, he bent down and with his 
 fingers he pulled away the thick skein of blood from the 
 sheep's nostrils.
 
 THE MIRACLE 229 
 
 "Let ye take that," said he, "and boil it down in a sup of 
 new milk would be warm out of the cow. And when ye're 
 goin' to yeer bed, let ye open the door of the house and put 
 the bowl of it down on the sill. And if 'tis gone it is in the 
 mornin' maybe 'tis that will pacify Them and perhaps then 
 ye'll be findin' her, though God knows I wouldn't say the 
 way she'd be at all. I would not."
 
 FATHER ROCHE had scarcely gone on home when 
 the news was broadcast over Ardnashiela. Women 
 gathered at their doorways. There were groups stand- 
 ing at the sea wall. Men leaned about on the barrels in 
 Creasy's house, drinking, but with no sound of laughter as 
 they talked. 
 
 In the opinion of Mrs. Troy, who, perhaps because of 
 her association with the priests who always lodged in her cot- 
 tage, had little belief in faeries, it was as great a pity as 
 any that Father Costello had gone away to Dublin. 
 
 ' 'Tis not himself," said she, "would have stood idle at 
 corners talkin' the trashy things they're all sayin' down the 
 street. Tis out and lookin' for herself he'd have been. 
 Isn't it shame that man Kirwan ought to have for hisself 
 the way he'd be standin' at Creasy's talkin' mad tales of a 
 man he saw on the road that night ? Shure, if 'tis gone she 
 is and no sight of her, mustn't she be somewhere or surely 
 they'd be findin' her some place or another !" 
 
 The conclusiveness of that argument convinced her. 
 Father Roche, whose shrewd comments upon character some- 
 how always became public property and clung to people like 
 adhesive labels, had once said she was the only civilised 
 creature in Ardnashiela. She remembered that and lived up 
 to her reputation. Others remembered it and nodded their 
 heads at everything she said as though it came from the 
 fount of wisdom. They nodded their heads as they listened 
 to her then. But it was not the common sense of Mrs. Troy 
 or the calculated opinions of the profoundest learning could 
 
 230
 
 THE MIRACLE 231 
 
 alter one point in the fixed and narrow compass of their 
 beliefs. 
 
 They nodded their heads, but they knew well what had 
 become of Mary Kirwan. It was doubtful in the mind of 
 any of them whether she would ever be seen in that place 
 again. And if it was her escape she made, or was sent back 
 from where she was gone, it was no gladness, but a fear 
 they would have to be talking to her or looking at her at all. 
 
 "Shure, what good is it her sayin' the Father would have 
 been lookin' for her !" one of them exclaimed as they walked 
 away from the common sense of that sort of talk. "Yirra, 
 how could himself be findin' her more than another ! Doesn't 
 the world know 'tis in the thin of the air They'd be most 
 times, an' if 'twas seein' her himself it was, and he makin* 
 a grab at her, wouldn't They have her the way she'd be slip- 
 pin' out of his fingers with all the curses he'd be puttin' on 
 'em! She would indeed!" 
 
 Sergeant McGrath felt it his duty to take the matter into 
 his own hands. He found Kirwan coming away from 
 Shaughnessy's door and drew him aside into a corner of the 
 street. A small crowd at a distance stood watching them 
 as they talked. 
 
 "When was it ye missed her first ?" asked McGrath. 
 
 "Last night." 
 
 The Sergeant wrote it down in a thumbed and dirty note- 
 book containing at one end statements made to him about 
 strayed dogs, drunkenness and obscene language in the open 
 street, while at the other were records of small amounts lost 
 and won at games of forty-five. 
 
 "Why didn't ye come and tell meself about it then?" he 
 continued. 
 
 "Shure, 'twas not at that hour of the dark night I'd be 
 trustin' meself to go out at all." 
 
 "Why not?"
 
 232 THE MIRACLE 
 
 "Faith, I'd just come in." 
 
 The Sergeant lifted his shoulders and settled himself down 
 to a closer cross-examination. By the time he had extracted 
 the story of the man with the cloven foot and the game of 
 cards on the stones by the roadside, his mouth was wide 
 open and he was wrestling within himself between the in- 
 herent superstition in him on one side and the official capacity 
 of his intelligence on the other. 
 
 "If it comes into the court," said he, and said it with 
 dignity, the court being the ultimate destination to him of 
 any matter of importance, "they'll not listen to that story 
 at all. The magistrate'll wave his hand like that " he gave 
 ocular demonstration. "That's what he'll do." 
 
 "Shure, he can wave his hand," said Kirwan, "and he 
 can do anny thing he damned well likes, but 'twas meself 
 playin* the cards, the time I saw the hoof he had, peepin' 
 out of the leg of his trousers. An' shure, if there are things 
 like that in the world, is it strange at all the faeries would 
 be takin' her?" 
 
 The Sergeant was loath to admit it was not strange. 
 
 "But I won't put it down in me book," said he, "for they 
 wouldn't listen to it." 
 
 Feeling that some questionable opprobrium was cast upon 
 his story by being thus omitted from the book, Kirwan began 
 to lose his temper. 
 
 "Well, if 'tis not the faeries have taken her," he said, "will 
 ye tell me where is it she's gone ? She was milkin' the cows 
 last evenin' an' 'tis nowhere in anny place she is now. Where 
 is she?" 
 
 McGrath confessed himself with reluctance as unable to 
 answer that question. Every suggestion that came into 
 his mind was over-ruled by the prevailing belief from which 
 he found no escape. He could not have denied that he had 
 known of people in those parts who, in this sudden manner
 
 THE MIRACLE 233 
 
 had disappeared, returning in a week, a month, a year, and 
 sometimes more maybe, with their wits lost, babbling like 
 children and unable to give any coherent account of where 
 they had gone, or what they had seen. He knew of one 
 who had never come back and of whom all trace for ever 
 had been lost. 
 
 Still there was his duty to perform and the certain dignity 
 attached to it he could not afford to lose. Wetting his pen- 
 cil at his lips, he made minute enquiries as to how she 
 was dressed when last seen, whether anything had hap- 
 pened to be frightening her and was she given to going 
 off like that for long walks maybe, the way she might just 
 have been lost. 
 
 "How would she be lost !" shouted Kirwan in the exaspera- 
 tion coming easily to one of his nature when submitted to a 
 fire of questions. "Isn't the place open, with the roads about, 
 the way ye can see all ways for miles and miles ! And what 
 the hell is there should be a fright to her ? Isn't she goin* 
 to be married in a few weeks and isn't that enough for a 
 girrl to be holdin* to where she is?" 
 
 All these things the Sergeant admitted and went away 
 with such information as he could get and none of which 
 he believed was of any use to him in such a case. 
 
 Going back to the barracks, he called out Tim Cotter, the 
 constable, to be bringing out the bicycles. 
 
 "If we don't get off up the hills," he said, "we shall be 
 catchin' himself as he comes away out of Mass at Grange !" 
 
 They over-took Father Roche on his way back to Killan- 
 ardrish. With the stiff brushing of his eyebrows, he looked 
 down at them from the back of his white horse. Having 
 heard the plain statement of the case, he sat there pondering 
 over it with the reins loose over the back of his horse's neck. 
 At last with a slow turn of his eye upon them and leaning
 
 234 THE MIRACLE 
 
 forward a little as though he would have lowered his voice, 
 he said, 
 
 "What does Kirwan himself say about it? What does 
 the fisherman say? What do they all say?" 
 
 The Sergeant cleared his throat. He looked at his note- 
 book, but read nothing in it, then he raised his head. 
 
 "They're sayin' 'tis taken bi the faeries she is." 
 
 Father Roche set his gaze into the Sergeant's eyes, which 
 tried to meet his look, shifted, lost their balance of control 
 and fell. When he raised them again it was no higher than 
 the boots of the Parish Priest, sunk deep in his stirrups. 
 There was no smile on Father Roche's face, but somewhere in 
 the glint of his eye, there was a glimmering light of satisfac- 
 tion. He picked up the reins again and fitted them between 
 his fingers. 
 
 "Ride on into Doonvarna/' said he, "go to the police there. 
 Tell them. Ask them to make enquiries at the station. Give 
 them all the particulars ye've got. 'Twill break their hearts 
 when ye read out all ye've got in that book. Get over there 
 and come back to me this evening." 
 
 He jogged his heels into the flanks of the white mare and 
 he rode away.
 
 VI 
 
 WHEN Sergeant McGrath returned that evening to 
 Killanardrish, he brought no news with him. 
 Nothing had been seen or heard of Mary Kirwan 
 in Doonvarna. The only train leaving the little town on Sun- 
 day was that going by a circuitous route and taking many 
 hours to reach Dublin. Amongst the few passengers that 
 had got into the train, there was none answering to her de- 
 scription. Father Costello had gone by it. Taking a room 
 at the Ship Hotel, he had slept the night there and departed 
 the next morning. All the other passengers were known 
 to the station master. There was no trace of Mary Kirwan. 
 
 The Sergeant had questioned people on the road as he 
 went and returned. There was not one had seen her. In 
 obedience to instructions from Father Roche and accom- 
 panied, like a shadow on the road behind him, by Tim 
 Cotter, the constable, he went North the next day to Bally- 
 brishlawn. 
 
 The result there was the same. No one had seen, no one 
 had heard of her. At every cottage on the road they had 
 enquired. The same answer was given them. 
 
 "There's no girrl has been here along the roads. Wouldn't 
 we have seen her if she had?" 
 
 It would indeed have been a wonder if they had not. 
 In that part of the West of Ireland, the habitations of 
 human beings are few and far apart, having all the mys- 
 teriousness of fortuity, like mushrooms chancing their soli- 
 tary life in the wide acres of the green meadows. Here a 
 farm and there a peat-lifter's cottage with great wastes of 
 
 235
 
 236 THE MIRACLE 
 
 barren and uncultivated land in between, rocks thrusting 
 their grey heads from beneath the soil, heather and ling 
 growing and little belts of wind-swept thorn trees. The 
 light of a glow-worm on the grass at night can well seem 
 to a lonely traveller the welcome beacon in a cottage window, 
 can well draw him on over the stony land and the desolate 
 peat bogs to find a shelter for the night, can well, when it 
 disappears and he finds the bleak land all about him with no 
 sign of living man or the roof that covers him, strike the 
 string of imagination upon that delicate instrument of his 
 mind and set its vibrations throbbing with the wild tunes of 
 fear. 
 
 The Sergeant returned from Ballybrishlawn with no news 
 of Mary. There as well he acquainted them at the con- 
 stabulary barracks with the particulars of her disappearance. 
 Inevitably into his account of it, as in Doonvarna too, there 
 had filtered fragments of Kirwan's story of the man play- 
 ing cards with him on the road that night. The spirit of their 
 beliefs tinctured it all. They may have searched and en- 
 quired, questioned this one and that, but underlying all their 
 endeavours, spread the sense of their fatalism. 
 
 What was the good of looking for one who had gone 
 that way? Wouldn't it be all the same in a hundred years 
 whether they found her or not? And where was it a girl 
 would be going at the time of her marrying to be disappear- 
 ing the like of that? It wasn't like a woman at all to be 
 going on that way and if it wasn't like a woman, then 
 what was it like? They smoked their pipes and shook 
 their heads over it across the barrack fire at Ballybrishlawn 
 and if they did not say what they thought, it was only because 
 the printed regulations of the Crown were always there upon 
 the walls to remind them what they were. 
 
 North and South and East across the country, Fennel, the 
 fisherman, wandered, looking for her too. As far as the
 
 THE MIRACLE 237 
 
 entrance of the Gap and enquiring amongst those few scat- 
 tered farms at the foot of the hills of Doon, he made his 
 search that had no impulse in it to discovery. It was not in 
 a wide range he quested, but here and there amongst the 
 pools in the peat bogs and through the long spiked rushes 
 by the streams that gathered out of the hills, as though she 
 were just hidden from him; as though it were her body 
 alone he expected to find, believing in his heart that her spirit 
 was lost to him forever. 
 
 As the days of that week went by and no word was heard 
 of her, it was less and less that he looked into the hidden 
 places and further that he wandered, even into Ballybrish- 
 lawn and beyond, but without asking, without speaking to 
 any one of what he sought. He was indeed seeking no longer 
 but roaming merely, with no will in the dumb courage of his 
 heart. Sorrow had met him at the door of joy and the falling 
 of his hopes had crushed the spirit of life out of him. 
 
 And all that time, Father Roche, secluded in Killanardrish, 
 waited for whatever news there might be. 
 
 Towards the end of the week, Mrs. Sheehan laid a letter 
 on his plate at breakfast. It was in Father Costello's writing. 
 Whenever she brought him a letter, she lingered with trivial 
 occupations in the room until he had opened it. In the whole 
 sixteen years she had been there, no post had ever brought 
 any communication to her. If she had relatives, they had no 
 wish to correspond with her. She could have had no interest 
 outside her duties. Like the Parish Priest, she was buried in 
 Killanardrish. It was her only contact with life. In this 
 respect, the post, as it affected his calling and letters from his 
 few remaining relatives, was the only post she knew. 
 
 He could have said with truth he had no friends, certainly 
 none that would ever bother themselves to write to him. So 
 it was that whenever she took a letter for him from the 
 postman who drove over every morning from Doonvarna,
 
 238 THE MIRACLE 
 
 and whenever she gave him one on his return journey in the 
 evening, she looked closely at the writing, at the address 
 of those that went away, at the postmark of those that came. 
 Finally she read their contents in the face of Father Roche 
 as she lingered in the room while he perused them. 
 
 That morning she lingered until there were no more trivial 
 occupations to be done. As long as her ingenuity provided 
 her with the faintest justification, she waited on and still 
 Father Roche left the letter lying on his plate. It was from 
 Dublin. 
 
 Associating one fact in her knowledge with another and, 
 with a dim recollection of having seen the writing before, she 
 had correctly judged it to be from Father Costello. Some 
 thought, deeply rooted in the intuitive functions of her nature, 
 was rousing her curiosity as to this letter, more even than 
 when she had known him to receive a communication from 
 the Bishop respecting his continuation in the parish of Ard- 
 nashiela. 
 
 When she had settled the curtains and straightened one of 
 the blinds, when she had picked up a thread of cotton, a 
 feather from the brush she swept with, and a piece of paper 
 from the floor and rolled them into a ball in the hard, thin 
 palm of her hand, the letter was still lying there on his 
 plate. 
 
 It was then the pale blue eyes of the Parish Priest lifted 
 from his ham and eggs and for one moment dwelt upon 
 her. She was equal to that look. In this one concentrated 
 and centralised capacity of life, Mrs. Sheehan was a woman 
 of undeviating purpose and infinite resource. 
 
 Reading that look as surely as a blind man reads the raised 
 letters beneath his sensitive finger tips, she was neither 
 startled nor perturbed by it. Seeing a little tuft of hair 
 beneath the table from the old spaniel that roamed in a 
 blindness of age about the house, she stooped deliberately and
 
 THE MIRACLE 239 
 
 picked it up. Not obviously she held it in her fingers for 
 him to see before she pressed it away into the collection 
 of litter in her closed hand. 
 
 "That dog's losin' his hair with the age he has," said she, 
 "I must take and brush his coat out in the yard." 
 
 Not till then did she leave the room and even then not 
 without a last studied glance at the table for his comfort. As 
 soon as she had closed the door, he took up the letter and 
 opened it. If it had been possible for his pulse to beat any 
 the faster, it would have done so at that moment. The faint 
 throb of it never altered. 
 
 After the formality of address, the letter continued 
 
 "Perhaps I should have made my confession to you as 
 you suggested when last I saw you at Killanardrish. I 
 have made it since a more terrible confession than I should 
 have made to you that day and with all the mercy of God, 
 I do not feel that the sin I have brought to another and to 
 myself can ever be taken from me. I am waiting here at 
 the Bishop's discretion and I understand I shall most likely 
 be sent abroad. Perhaps you will have heard by now that 
 a new curate is to take my place." 
 
 The Parish Priest admitted to himself it was a plain state- 
 ment. At least there was no unnecessary emotion about it. 
 He did not whine about the weakness of the flesh. He did not 
 complain of the just retribution that with the sure and mer- 
 ciful hand of the Church had fallen upon him. He did 
 not eat the dust of humility and penitence. Reading the 
 letter again, the old man began to question himself whether 
 in that letter there was any sign of penitence at all. Except 
 that he acknowledged his sin and felt the weight of it, it 
 seemed as though he were considering it more for that other 
 than for himself. 
 
 That other ?
 
 240 THE MIRACLE 
 
 Putting the letter away in his pocket, he rang the bell. 
 When Mrs. Sheehan entered, he was quietly finishing his 
 breakfast. 
 
 "D'ye remember that man," said he, "came one day about 
 a month ago to see me, had his hat in his hand and played 
 with it the way it might have been an accordion?" 
 
 "Fennel the fisherman from Ardnashiela." 
 
 He nodded his head with approval for her memory. If 
 there had been the quality of admiration in him, he would 
 have had it then, but he was much more concerned in 
 giving her the impression that she had revived his memory. 
 
 "That's the name of the fella!" 
 
 "What's about him?" 
 
 "I want him out here to me. Send one of the children from 
 the cottage up the lane. If he comes by the strand he'll be 
 here in two hours." 
 
 "Have ye heard something of that girrl ?" she asked boldly. 
 
 He looked with the directness of a steel blade into her eyes. 
 She felt the sharp point and met it. 
 
 "I may hear something," he replied, "if he has anything 
 to tell me. They say he's been roaming the face of the earth 
 since last Sunday." 
 
 The sharp point still held her. She knew she would hear 
 no more than that. Without another word, she turned out 
 of the room. 
 
 Before the two hours were passed, Father Roche went out 
 of the house. Mrs. Sheehan saw him go and knew there 
 was to be no meeting with Fennel between those walls. There 
 was admiration in her. She smiled. Knowing nothing, but 
 well fed now with nutriment for thought which was as much 
 as could be hoped for in that house, she went on with her 
 work. 
 
 Between Killanardrish and the little hamlet of Curragh, 
 Father Roche met Joe Fennel. The fisherman was walking
 
 THE MIRACLE 241 
 
 with the fatigue of a man who has spent the last substance 
 of his energy. As they met, he looked up at the Parish Priest 
 with the heavy want of sleep in his eyes and a weight of 
 despair that dragged about his lips. 
 
 "Ye've not found her?" said Father Roche. 
 
 "I have not." 
 
 "Where have ye looked ?' 
 
 He mentioned one place and another to which he had been. 
 The exhaustion of mind and body was heavy in the lethargy 
 of his voice. 
 
 "Have ye been up in the hills ?" 
 
 "I have not." 
 
 "There are cabins and small farms up there in the North 
 where she might have gone." 
 
 "Shure that's a heap of miles away, Father." 
 
 "Well it must be wandering she is. Isn't she ?" 
 
 "I dunno." 
 
 "What d'ye think has happened her yeerself ?" 
 
 "I dunno." 
 
 "Ah man, shure, ye must think something! Is there 
 nothing she's said to ye gives ye the inklin' of a thought? 
 D'ye think it's dead she is?" 
 
 Fennel lifted his eyes wearily and gazed at the priest. 
 
 "Yirra, what's the use me sayin' what I think! Wasn't 
 it moithered ye were entirely, the last time I came out here 
 to be talkin' to ye." 
 
 Father Roche nodded his head 
 
 "That's the tale, is it?" said he. " 'Tis the way the faeries 
 have herself ?" 
 
 The fisherman made no reply. Of what use was any 
 answer to that? The priest had his learning, but with all 
 his knowledge, he could no more give help or advice here 
 than over the matter of the lobster pots. He turned his eyes 
 away and looked over the sea and was silent.
 
 242 THE MIRACLE 
 
 " 'Tis the way ye think she'll never come back ?" 
 
 Father Roche received no reply. 
 
 "What'll ye do if she does ?" he persisted. "Is it treatin* 
 her like an outcast ye'll be, for 'tis little mercy or kindness 
 ever I found in the hearts of those would be believin' in the 
 faeries, good or bad? What'll ye do with her the whole 
 savage lot of ye?" 
 
 " Tis I'll see to that," said Fennel and it was the first 
 live note he had spoken in his voice. "She's mine, isn't she ?" 
 he added, "whatever way she'd be isn't she mine?" 
 
 Father Roche raised up his hand and dropped it on the 
 fisherman's shoulder. 
 
 "God help ye," said he. " 'Tis in me prayers I'll have ye 
 this night I will so."
 
 VII 
 
 TEN days had passed. It grew beyond all doubt in 
 Ardnashiela that Mary Kirwan had been spirited 
 away. Fennel at last abandoned his wanderings. 
 As though returning to serve out a sentence of life, he 
 came back to his nets and rowed out one morning round 
 the headlands to lift his lobster pots. 
 
 Kirwan alone amongst them all preserved a hope of her 
 return. 
 
 He had told no one of his visit to Shaughnessy. Then 
 one evening over the fire in the fisherman's cottage, he 
 spoke of it in a rush of confidence to Fennel. The sheep's 
 blood and the new milk, boiled together and set out on the 
 sill of the door, had disappeared by the next morning. The 
 basin was empty. No wonder he had hope. Even Fennel 
 lifted his eyes from the lethargy of their gaze. If it were 
 possible to propitiate the powers of this hidden world about 
 them, might They not in Their turn make concessions? 
 
 The two men sat there, thinking of it in plain terms of 
 human barter and exchange. Something there was, that 
 hidden world demanded of them. There was no denying 
 that. As Fennel thought of it, he remembered that even the 
 Parish Priest had not denied it when they had spoken to- 
 gether on the strand. Father Roche had rigorously opposed 
 his belief that by those same unseen hands his lobster pots 
 had been taken from him. But he had not opposed this. 
 Who other than Themselves, beyond that thin veil of wind 
 and light and darkness and sound, could have taken her 
 away? There were no tangible means here to account for 
 
 243
 
 244 THE MIRACLE 
 
 her disappearance as when the priest had talked of the 
 thieving French trawlers and the grasping wash of the 
 tides. 
 
 It seemed to the fisherman in his memory of that meet- 
 ing, that Father Roche had allowed the truth of what they 
 all knew. Had he not laid his hand on him in a blessing? 
 Had he not promised to have him in his prayers that night ? 
 
 Sure, he knew of course he began to say in his mind as 
 his thoughts became more articulate didn't he know well 
 'twas taken she was. And was there anything in this world 
 at all a man had that he could say was belonging to him, 
 when always there was Themselves beyond it with the 
 power to take and keep and give back what they took ? And 
 God Almighty, what had Himself to do with it? Weren't 
 They, as some believed, the spirits themselves fallen out of 
 Heaven? Hadn't he heard a priest say that once himself? 
 And if it was fallen out of Heaven They were and wander- 
 ing the ways of the 'earth, what could frighten Them and 
 drive Them off but the curse of God itself? 
 
 And without that, what could a man do, but make his 
 peace with Them? Perhaps with the t blessing of God the 
 priest had put on him that night and They liking the little 
 sup of food was put out for Them, perhaps after all They 
 might be giving her back. 
 
 He did not know whether he most wished for that or 
 feared it. The thought of her with her wits gone and her 
 beauty disfigured with that aimless look they had who some- 
 times came back, plunged him into a depth of sadness from 
 which he could not raise his head with hope. 
 
 What was it They had wanted with her? He asked that 
 of Kirwan as they sat there over the fire. 
 
 " 'Tis a young girl has not been touched They'll take," 
 he replied as Shaughnessy had told it him, " 'Tis a young 
 girrl ready for her bed with the man has chosen her They
 
 THE MIRACLE 245 
 
 do always be wantin' for the child she could give Them- 
 selves." 
 
 Fennel bent his head and rocked himself to and fro where 
 he sat. 
 
 All he had thought that evening came out in the truth of 
 what happened. There was a man came wandering over 
 from Doonvarna to Ardnashiela. He was one of those 
 clowning men who go from house to house, arraying them- 
 selves from the bundle they carry in the bedraggled gar- 
 ments of a jester, singing songs and cracking obscene jokes 
 between the fair at one place and the fair at another. A 
 penny here, a penny there, sometimes a meal and sometimes 
 a night's lodging they earned for themselves. On his way 
 from Doonvarna, he had been up in the hills amongst the 
 scattered farms that are hidden there in the glens and 
 valleys. 
 
 It was this man, when he heard what they were all talk- 
 ing of in Ardnashiela, brought news of Mary Kirwan. He 
 had heard of a girl, he said, was seen in the hills, she going 
 from one place to another asking her bread and offering 
 the work of her hands for those would give her a roof over 
 her head and some straw to be sleeping on. 
 
 They sent for Fennel who was in his cottage and for 
 Kirwan too and stood about them in a crowd as they talked. 
 
 He had not heard what way she was, but that her clothes 
 were torn on her and the soles of her boots broken with the 
 long walking she had had. 
 
 "Did she give her name at all at anny place?" asked 
 Kirwan. 
 
 "She did not," said the clown. 
 
 Fennel touched his arm. 
 
 "Was it lost in her wits she was?" he asked. 
 
 "Shure, what sense would she hev to be wanderin' like
 
 246 THE MIRACLE 
 
 that with a house and good food and she starvin* would be 
 tearin' at the bread they gave her in her hands !" 
 
 When there were some ready to go with Fennel on his 
 search, he turned round upon them all and the light he had 
 in his eyes drove them back. 
 
 "Let ye go on with yetr talk," said he, "and himself 
 there makin' his jokes for ye. I'll find what belongs to me. 
 With meself alone I'll find it." 
 
 They stood in a group, watching him as he went up the 
 street. There was no new life that was in him as he walked, 
 but they could all see by his steps that nothing would stay 
 him in his walking till he found her. 
 
 By midday he had begun his searching amongst the hills 
 of Doon. They are a long range, rising to sharp spurs, 
 falling to deep valleys for twenty miles inland. Miles dis- 
 tant from each other, the farms are scattered wherever a 
 moderate pasture is to be found. Even there only the 
 hardiest breed of sheep can face the winter storms off the 
 Atlantic and a cow grazing is never to be seen except in 
 the most sheltered valley and then only in the summer and 
 the autumn months. 
 
 The desolation of the West of Ireland broods over the 
 crests and glens of the hills of Doon, a solitary desolation 
 with its voice in the screaming buzzards that swoop and 
 hover and climb the air in eddying circles all day long 
 amongst the crags. In some of the valleys, strewn with 
 fallen rocks from the heights above, a littered playground 
 of the games of giants, it would seem as if the feet of men 
 had never trod. Never a sheep strays there. Never a 
 voice but that of the wheeling buzzard is heard in the still 
 heights of the air. For an hour or so at noon the sun lights 
 them with a passing warmth and the shadows fall again, 
 sweeping up the sides of the hills, chill and blue. 
 
 Before the night had fallen, Fennel had found the first
 
 THE MIRACLE 24? 
 
 place where Mary had been seen. It was a farm house in 
 an open hollow, free to the sun for the better part of the 
 day and leaning against the hillside that rose sharply from 
 the walls themselves at the back of the house. 
 
 The flames of sunset were burning in its meagre win- 
 dows as he saw it when he came round an outer bend of 
 the hills. He had been walking for six hours and apart 
 from the two cabins where he had asked his questions and 
 the one farm where he had stayed for a drop of milk to 
 quench his thirst, he had seen but one man gathering a few 
 sheep on the slopes. None of them had seen or heard of 
 any young girl in those parts. What would a girl want 
 walking there? They had looked at him queerly and 
 watched him away from their doors when he went. 
 
 He was thinking in a dull wonder, confused with fatigue, 
 where he could lay his head that night for the sleep he felt 
 coming over him when, turning the bend of the hills into 
 the open hollow, he saw the farm. His feet led him there. 
 No volition was in his thoughts. It was his body seeking 
 for sleep. His mind was too inert to care whether he 
 rested well or ill. 
 
 A dog barked in answer to his knocking. A moment 
 later an old man opened the door, but offered no invitation 
 for him to come within. Fennel stood out on the hillside, 
 swaying a little, like a drunken man who is fast losing all 
 pride in himself to hide the stupor of his condition. 
 
 Not until he had explained where he had come from and 
 his purpose out there in the wastes of the hills did the old 
 man admit him. Even then it was with quick glances of 
 suspicion. He behaved like an animal disturbed in his lair, 
 moving here and there about his room and watching Fennel 
 always, who neither cared nor observed his manner one 
 way or another. 
 
 It was little the old farmer had seen of Mary. Such as
 
 248 THE MIRACLE 
 
 it was, he told in short statements made between long inter- 
 vals of silence while he ate his food and later, when they 
 were sitting over the fire, while he sucked at his pipe. He 
 was as uncommunicative as an owl in a barn. Twenty-five 
 years he had lived in that place and for most of them he 
 had been alone, raising his sheep and going down two or 
 three times a year to the fairs. Between one fair and an- 
 other, he scarcely saw a human soul. He was seventy-one. 
 He had no wish for company now. 
 
 "Shure, what's the good of this one or that," he mumbled 
 in his beard, "wouldn't they be grabbin' from ye all times? 
 And there's little a man can spare out of a thin field of grass 
 and a few sheep wearing down the hillsides with their 
 eating." 
 
 It seemed Mary had come late one evening, knocking on 
 his door. 
 
 "A girrl of a woman," he described her, "with a long 
 look in her eyes." 
 
 It was many years since he had seen a strange woman 
 wandering in those hills. Indeed, had he ever seen one at 
 all ? He had felt the want of shutting the door in her face. 
 Only for the way she looked at him, he would have done so, 
 for he was a quiet man and had the use of his lonesomeness 
 after all those years. 
 
 "When was this?" asked Fennel. The fear that was now 
 more than ever in him to be finding her, alone kept him 
 from following at once and wherever he might be told she 
 had gone. His fatigue left him as he listened. She had 
 been there. She had been there at the door where he was 
 standing a short while since. But how long ago was it and 
 where was she now? 
 
 He had to repeat his question before he could get an an- 
 swer. Then he was told it was more than a week ago. 
 
 She had asked for a bite of food, a sup of milk and some
 
 THE MIRACLE 249 
 
 place to be lying down in till the morning. She was used to 
 the work on a farm, she had said, and would be doing any 
 thing he cared to set her hands to. It was not money she 
 wanted or any real thing at all but food only and a place for 
 the sleep was hanging on her. 
 
 "Did she say where it was she was going?" asked Fennel. 
 
 She had said no more apparently than just that she was 
 going away, but where from and where to, the farmer had 
 not learnt in the short words he had spoken to her. 
 
 The fisherman hid his face in his hands. If any convic- 
 tion of his beliefs were needed, this was the last that would 
 be given him. That morning after the threshing feast, when 
 he had spoken to her in the yard she had been eager that 
 they should be married soon. If it was seeking to go away 
 she was, what else could it be but Themselves that had led 
 her astray. 
 
 More than a week ago! Where was she now? He sat 
 with his elbows fastened to his knees, his hands clenched 
 against his cheek-bones, still, as if he had been chiselled out 
 of wood. He said no other word and waited till all was told 
 him. 
 
 The farmer had given her some food, potatoes he had 
 cooked for himself and milk there was from his cow. She 
 had sat in that chair where the fisherman was sitting then. 
 Her clothes were good on her at that time, but it was easy 
 seen there was little dryness in them for it had been misting 
 and wet for three days in the hills. 
 
 He had asked her would she sleep there in the chair where 
 she was or out in the shed by the yard where he kept his 
 cow. And it was out in the shed she said she'd go. When 
 she had found a piece of hay for herself to be lying on, 
 he left her there and it was little comfort he had in himself 
 that night to think of what a girl like that could be doing, 
 wandering in the hills, or the way she might be putting a
 
 250 THE MIRACLE 
 
 spell on the place with the strange look she had in her eyes. 
 
 It was when he went to the shed in the morning that he 
 found some food cut up for his cow and the beast herself 
 milked with the milk standing in a bucket against the wall. 
 But only for the cow and a small cat he had, the shed was 
 empty. 
 
 He thought she had surely stolen some of the milk. But 
 when he took it into the house and measured it, there was 
 nearly a cupful more than any drop he had got out of that 
 beast since she had calved in the pitch of summer. 
 
 ' 'Twas findin' her gone," said he, "and more milk there 
 in the bucket than ever I'd had at anny time, has been 
 botherin' me since to know what she was at all." 
 
 He looked across at Fennel to hear what it was he could 
 be told about her. The fisherman's head had sunk down be- 
 tween his wrists. He was away in sleep.
 
 VIII 
 
 WITH the daylight that came stepping from one 
 hill's spur to another down the whole range of 
 Doon, Fennel left the farm the next morning. 
 Now he was upon the path of his quest. By noontime, 
 when the sun was falling in the valleys, he had discovered 
 evidence in three more places of the way that Mary had 
 gone. 
 
 Closer and closer through the length of that day he came 
 to her, following her down to the earth on which at last he 
 found her. 
 
 That second night he slept in a shepherd's hut. An old 
 man and his wife lived there beneath the leaking thatch. 
 God alone knew, he told the fisherman, how he scraped to- 
 gether the means of life, minding sheep for a man who lived 
 in the townland. The old woman, his wife, sat listening to 
 their talking and said no word all the hours that Fennel was 
 beneath the roof. 
 
 It was only two days before they had seen Mary. The 
 shepherd was on the hillside minding his sheep when she 
 appeared out of the crags of the big rocks. At first sight of 
 her, he had crossed himself and sped a swift prayer to the 
 Mother of God. Her clothes were torn on her, the times 
 she had fallen climbing over the sharp stones. Her boots 
 were worn the way the soles were breaking away from them. 
 But it was only food she said she wanted and no rest at all 
 to be getting on with her walking. 
 
 He would not find her that night, the shepherd told him, 
 with the little light that was left in the sky. There was no 
 
 251
 
 252 THE MIRACLE 
 
 ,moon at that time. It was not safe for a man that did not 
 know his way, walking about the hills in the darkness, for 
 there were deep hollows he might be falling into and lakes 
 of black water where a stone that was flung would never 
 reach the bottom for the great depth they had in them. 
 
 So he slept that night as he had slept before, sitting in a 
 chair by the fire with his head hung on his chest and his 
 hands folded in his lap. In the first pallid, grey light of the 
 next morning, he set out again into a mist the hills had 
 gathered. A dumb, sensing instinct guided him. He be- 
 came as a dog with a scent in its nostrils. Blind reason told 
 him she must continue the direction she had chosen. He had 
 no thought to construct that direction as it may have been 
 in her mind. Had she had any direction at all? None that 
 he could imagine or suppose. Yet always upon one course 
 her movements had seemed to have been made. From the 
 different places where she had been seen or heard of, it was 
 persistently away from Ardnashiela she had gone. Per- 
 sistently, as when a dog runs with its nose to the earth, he 
 followed that course, turning now to the right and now to 
 the left, wherever there was a hollow or a glen to hide her. 
 But it was always away from Ardnashiela he went and al- 
 ways the traces he had found of her had led him still further 
 on. 
 
 For the whole of that third morning, he saw no living 
 thing, or was there sight of any habitation. It was the bar- 
 ren waste of the hills the shepherd had warned him of. No 
 food was there for beast or man. Here it was now he felt 
 the despair of finding her. From all the description the 
 shepherd had given him of her condition when she had beg- 
 ged him on the hillside for a piece of bread, he knew she 
 must have been too spent to reach the nearest farm, five 
 miles away from the shepherd's cottage. But where amongst
 
 THE MIRACLE 253 
 
 the stony gaps and hollows of those hills could he look for 
 her? 
 
 He sat down on a stone that had cut itself a resting place 
 in the earth and, slowly spreading his hands over his face, 
 he began sobbing with low moaning sounds that were torn 
 resistingly from him in that vast breadth of silence. Fatigue 
 of mind and body was too heavy on him to keep them back. 
 The more he struggled with them, the more bitter and de- 
 spairing was the wrench of sound escaping from between 
 his hands. 
 
 It was well into the third day now that he had been looking 
 for her in the hills and it was the fatigue of his despair 
 more than the exhaustion of his body that was overcoming 
 him. For a long while he sat there and a shame of his 
 sobbing kept his hands pressed hard against his face. It 
 was not courage that had come to him when he rose to his 
 feet again, but a greater despondency than had been with 
 him before. 
 
 He felt now as he walked, there was no compassion or 
 mercy in the world at all ; that not only the unseen powers 
 about him but the hand of God itself was cruel and malig- 
 nant. In all that time since Mary had disappeared, he had 
 said prayers on his knees, prayers as he walked, vague, in- 
 coherent mutterings of his soul, but cries he felt in some 
 consistency of his belief that would reach in an intelligible 
 fashion to the hearing of God. 
 
 So far now was he past the mystery and mercy of prayer 
 that suddenly as he was walking, he stopped his feet on the 
 hillside and flung back his head to the sight of the sky. 
 
 "God damn the ways of God!" he cried. 
 
 As he fell to a trembling at the sound of his words that 
 had burst like a thunder from the silence about him rather 
 than come from himself, he saw some black thing, lying on 
 the ground, a distance away from him. In a nausea of
 
 254 THE MIRACLE 
 
 fear he walked to it and picked it up. It was a piece of 
 cloth a piece of a shawl torn with ragged edges. It was 
 from Mary's shawl. He had no reason from this trace of 
 her for supposing it, but he knew he was near her then. 
 
 Quickly here and there he began running, calling her 
 name. All the full energy of his mind for the search had 
 returned to him. It was as though his nature had gone 
 back to the merest elemental functions he possessed. 
 
 "Mary ! Mary ! Mary !" he cried out and more than ever 
 it was like a dog he was, lifting his voice, hot and close upon 
 the pursuit of its quarry. 
 
 In a sunken pit of the hills where the night before she 
 must have stumbled and fallen, he found her lying. A mere 
 heap of clothes she looked, with her face turned to the 
 earth and a loose arm flung with her fall across the half- 
 hidden outline of her cheek. 
 
 He knelt at her side, whispering her name. She did not 
 answer. He turned her gently over. Her face was still. 
 There was a strange peace about it and none of the dis- 
 figurement he had feared to find. It was paler than he had 
 ever seen it before. That was all. Hunger was in it, even as 
 she slept;, if that unconsciousness was sleep. There was 
 pain too that hurt in his heart as he looked at her. But 
 there was no madness. 
 
 He lifted her up in his arms. She lay there with her 
 dead weight and her head limply fell from the neck against 
 his shoulder. 
 
 From the height of the hills where he stood, he could see 
 across the waste miles of bog-land to the green country of 
 the scattered fields. With a focussing of his eyes he picked 
 out the spot where the walls of Kirwan's farm made a point 
 of white against the edge of the sea. Ten miles he reck- 
 oned it, going direct across the peat bogs ten miles ! Turn- 
 ing his face there, he settled her in his arms. With the
 
 THE MIRACLE 255 
 
 new strength that had come to him, he shifted her as 
 though she were a baby. Then he strode down the side of 
 the hill with the exultant joy of his burden. 
 
 Late that night he knocked at Kirwan's door, and when 
 they took her out of his arms he stood leaning against the 
 lintel of the door and laughed as a man laughs when he 
 has won a game of chance, or cheated the devil, as they 
 say.
 
 IX 
 
 MARY KIRWAN lay on her bed for three days 
 passing and repassing from the faint light of con- 
 sciousness into a deep obscurity of mind and 
 body, more profound than sleep and from which at times 
 in their ignorance it seemed to them she would never 
 return. 
 
 " "Pis Themselves still have her," said Kirwan, "and only 
 her body is left he brought back into the house. Yirra, 
 wouldn't it have been better if himself had never found her 
 at all, than she lyin' there through the days and nights to 
 be tormentin* us all with her sickness." 
 
 For those three days, he fretted the house with his com- 
 plaining in the hearing of all but Fennel, yet he would not 
 go near her himself. There was a fear he had of her now 
 and could not hide it. Fearing with him was to hate the 
 thing he feared. His tongue was bitter when he talked of 
 her. By the quiet of his fire, when the fisherman was not 
 there, he openly supposed that Fennel would never marry 
 her now. 
 
 "How the hell would he know what he was gettin' for a 
 wife!" 
 
 This was the summing up of his opinions on that matter. 
 He would have married no girl himself under such circum- 
 stances, but he swore in his next breath he would make the 
 whole village drive Fennel from the street if he deserted 
 Mary when her sickness was passed. 
 
 There was no foundation in anything Fennel had said 
 or done for the spleen of these conjectures. They were 
 
 256
 
 THE MIRACLE 257 
 
 the voice of Kirwan's fear speaking. He had no regard for 
 the justice of what he said. Each of those three days the 
 fisherman came down to the farm and sat in the kitchen, 
 his eyes never leaving that door leading into the room where 
 Mary lay, his hands hardly a moment still in their readiness 
 to be doing any service Mrs. Kirwan might require of 
 them. 
 
 Here as well as when he had sought for her in the hills, 
 he was like a dog a dog guarding a door. The functions 
 of scent, the quick ear for sound, these were of no benefit 
 to him now. Like a dog with all the alertness of its in- 
 stincts in the open field, he was helpless in a house of sick- 
 ness. Like a dog, whenever Mary passed into those drift- 
 ing moments of consciousness, Mrs. Kirwan called him to 
 the door to see her and much in the manner of a faithful 
 beast he came, inarticulate, smiling only, a smile that slowly 
 left his lips and stole out of his face when Mary's eyes no 
 more than stared at him across the distance of the room. 
 As they closed again, he would turn away and go back in 
 a patience of waiting to his chair in the kitchen. So it con- 
 tinued for three days. 
 
 Those moments of consciousness to Mary were moments 
 of torturing pain. With each one as it came, she felt as 
 if she were a soul returning to the agony of life from which 
 of her own will, she believed she had set her body free. 
 With deep breaths of relief she sank back into the dark- 
 ness of unconsciousness. With tremors that shuddered 
 through all her body she returned to those instances of sen- 
 sation again. 
 
 The moment of that night when she had fallen into the 
 hollow in which Fennel had found her, had seemed the last, 
 the end of suffering, the infinite mercy of release. Finding 
 herself stumbling, then falling down and down, she had 
 cried out in her voice. It was no cry of fear. A moment's
 
 258 THE MIRACLE 
 
 physical revulsion of pain and violence may have forced a 
 note in it. Deep in her soul it was a cry of welcome for 
 the end. The darkness like water had poured over her. 
 For a while, as she lay there with her senses lingering, she 
 was just conscious that an unending peace was coming. 
 Then it had swept over her. 
 
 With the first opening of her eyes, lying on that bed 
 where she had thrown herself the evening when Father 
 Costello had left the house after the blind man's story, 
 where she had wakened to reality after the night of the 
 threshing feast, she knew they had snatched her peace from 
 her. For a while it came back, torturing her with its mercy. 
 Then consciousness again, her mother moving in the room, 
 the sight of that honest man at the door, the sound of her 
 father's voice quickening her to her old fears of him across 
 the silence of the house. 
 
 How could she bear it ! How could she come back ! Why 
 had they not left her alone! Who had found her there, 
 where she thought she was hidden from all life in the des- 
 olate wastes of those hills? She was gone firmly she had 
 believed she was gone for ever with the joy and the sor- 
 row of shame, with the knowledge of her good and her 
 evil and no regret or remorse for all that had been. She 
 had surrendered herself without complaint to the inevitabil- 
 ity of its ending. With all this she thought she had de- 
 parted from them there in Ardnashiela, never to see them 
 again. 
 
 In some vague purpose of her mind, she had formed the 
 indefinite plan of finding work to earn her money enough 
 to pay her passage on a ship to America. This had held 
 her together. Just this ambiguous project had had sub- 
 stance enough in her mind to urge her on. Each day it 
 had become fainter. She had known she was nearing the 
 end of her strength. The last day of all, before Fennel
 
 THE MIRACLE 259 
 
 had found her, it was death only she craved for then. And 
 it had come. That was the moment of death, the utmost 
 mercy of it, when she stumbled and fell in the darkness. 
 She had escaped from them. She would never have to tell 
 them the truth. She would never see them again. 
 
 So when first her eyes had opened in that room, when 
 first she saw her mother moving and heard about her in 
 the distance the familiar sounds of the house, she had cried 
 faintly in terror and turned her face sharply to the wall. 
 When Mrs. Kir wan came to her side at the sound of that 
 cry, it was to find her unconscious once more. The wrench 
 of that moment had brought its own release with its pain. 
 She had drifted back into the compassion of oblivion. 
 
 But gradually as the days went by, those moments of 
 sensation became longer. For an hour sometimes, and 
 sometimes through the length of the night, she would lie 
 with her eyes open, scheming, conceiving, planning what it 
 was she could say. For surely in the strange wonder of 
 all that had happened to her, it seemed the truth must be 
 known. There was her child. She could not hide that. 
 There must be a child. The whole passion of her nature 
 in its ignorance told her that. In those moments with the 
 priest she had been lifted in an overwhelming ecstasy to 
 the high summit of human experience. What other result 
 in her mind could there be than this? It was enough that 
 she knew it. And how could she hide it from them? 
 
 One thought only obsessed her. She must save the man 
 she loved. 
 
 Gradually through those days, in the moments of her 
 consciousness, a story formulated itself out of the con- 
 triving of her invention. She had been for a walk along 
 the Doonvarna road. In the Gap, a man had come towards 
 her on his way into Ardnashiela. Had she given herself to 
 his blandishments? Had he taken her by force? She
 
 260 THE MIRACLE 
 
 cared little which it was, yet the human instincts of self- 
 protection prevailed. Out of her imagination she pictured 
 him with meticulous care. There was a shrewdness and a 
 cunning even in her, she had not known she possessed. 
 Every word he had said, she prepared in her mind. The 
 touch of his hands, his violence, the horror of what had 
 happened, the dull shame when it was past had sped her 
 with terror into the hills, wandering away from them, 
 afraid to return. All this she visioned and stamped with 
 the lasting picture of it upon her memory. 
 
 These inventions came to be a fierce joy to her, a joy 
 of vengeance for the bitter cruelty of those who had 
 brought her back. When in those three days the chilled 
 sanity of her normal condition returned, she often feigned 
 oblivion, lest they should begin to ask their questions before 
 she was fully prepared. And then, on the evening of the 
 third day, when her door had been left open and that into 
 the kitchen also stood ajar, she heard the voices of her 
 father and Fennel talking by the fire. An impulse of cu- 
 riosity, combined with the purpose of her plan, urged her 
 to creep from her bed and listen. At the hinge of the door 
 she stood, holding her breath and hearing her heart beats 
 pulse across the sound of their voices. 
 
 "And what'll we be doin' with herself at all," Kirwan 
 was saying, "if 'tis the way she never overs it and she 
 lyin' there through the long stretch of the days and 
 nights?" 
 
 There was no answer from Fennel. It was her mother 
 who replied in a quietness of conviction: 
 
 "Ah shure, she'll over it. Wisha, there's many have a 
 sickness like that, the way the length of the days would 
 cure 'em of it." 
 
 What did she mean? That quietness and sureness of
 
 THE MIRACLE 261 
 
 voice those words she had said "length of the days 
 would cure 'em of it?" 
 
 Could she know and did she believe it was time that 
 would heal the pain in her heart? Mary's suspicions were 
 roused. Here she came to that first acquaintance with con- 
 science that was to live on now for always with a constant 
 distress in her soul. She trembled as she stood there listen- 
 ing. Could the blind man have heard that night of the 
 threshing feast, when their steps, their bodies and for that 
 one instant of delirious joy, their lips had been together 
 before she fell in his arms? With all the sharpness of his 
 remaining senses and notwithstanding the darkness that 
 was upon his eyes, could he have known what had hap- 
 pened then? Could he have spoken of it to her mother? 
 If he had spoken to her, might he not have spoken to 
 others? Father Costello had gone away the same night 
 that she had gone. Had he come back? Would he ever 
 come back? What had they thought of his going? The 
 voice of fear lifted now in tune with the voice of her con- 
 science. They both fell to stillness as she heard Fennel 
 begin to speak. 
 
 "If it was in the hills They took her," he said, "and I 
 findin' her there and carryin* her here, 'tis surely givin' 
 her back They are, and whatever sickness there is is on 
 her, there's no need for ye, James Kirwan, to be spoilin' 
 yeerself with the fret of havin' her in this place. 'Twas 
 her word she gave me before They led her astray and I'm 
 holdin' to that, whatever way she is." 
 
 In a bewilderment of sudden realisation, Mary crept back 
 to her bed. Through the open doors from the kitchen came 
 the ticking of the old clock and the muffled murmur of their 
 voices. All her impulse of curiosity was at rest. She had 
 heard enough. It was the faeries they thought had taken 
 her.
 
 262 THE MIRACLE 
 
 Knowing all she knew and confronted in this manner 
 with the merciful error of their beliefs, she found herself 
 suddenly wondering which was true and which was false. 
 
 Was this Their meaning? Was this what had happened 
 to Shawn Geoghan's wife? Was it life or love or good 
 or evil that took people away, as she had been taken? Or 
 were there faeries indeed as she had always believed there 
 to be? 
 
 Her mind, her intelligence, failed her to pursue the 
 thoughts that crowded by. She lay in the darkness there in 
 her bed, knowing but one thing in any certainty of com- 
 prehension. 
 
 There was no need for the lies of her story. Was she 
 glad of that? It seemed to her that she was; yet now again 
 her conscience was stirring to a comfortless awakening. 
 What was she doing? She was letting them tell the lie- 
 the lie of their beliefs. What was there wrong in that? 
 Something seemed wrong, yet she could not discover how. 
 One certain thing there was. The truth must be kept from 
 them. That she did not question. Then why not let them 
 think on what they believed. Was it because it was easier ? 
 Did her conscience torment her with that? 
 
 She drifted into a dazed confusion of thought. They 
 believed the faeries had taken her. Well they believed. 
 Let them believe. 
 
 Sleep came and parted her from her conscience.
 
 MARY was sitting up in bed the next morning when 
 her mother came into the room. 
 Mrs. Kirwan smiled. There was the same dis- 
 tance in her smile, the same remoteness about her eyes. If 
 there was anything she knew, neither Mary nor any other 
 living soul could have read it there in her face. 
 
 "Didn't I know ye'd over it," she said and she seated 
 herself at the foot of the bed, steadying her eyes on Mary's 
 face with that inscrutable expression on her own which 
 always had seemed vacant and meaningless till now. 
 
 With this new life of Mary's conscience that had slept 
 when she slept and wakened with her when she awoke, the 
 old world that had been about her was altered, transformed. 
 All truly was as she had left it. What seemed to have 
 happened was as if the light which once had presented 
 everything to her perceptions, fell now conversely upon all 
 she saw. No more than in the sound of his voice and the 
 few words she had heard him say in the kitchen, she beheld 
 her father differently. Even Fennel, with his simple hon- 
 esty, was not the same. From the dim and indiscernible 
 woman, her mother had suddenly come forth to her in the 
 sharpness of light. It was not wholly that Mary under- 
 stood her, but that instead of fading away into an obscurity 
 of dull shadow, she saw her now, invested in poignant 
 meaning, clear and defined, but beyond the capacity of her 
 analytical investigation. 
 
 It was life itself that had educated her. All in that short 
 time, she had passed through the inflexible school of expe- 
 
 263
 
 264 THE MIRACLE 
 
 rience, swiftly fashioned by it, remoulded, re-made a dif- 
 ferent being in her soul's vision from that girl who had 
 milked her father's cows and danced with quick laughter 
 to the sound of the fiddle at the threshing feasts. In mental 
 compound she was the same. She had been taught not how 
 to think, but how to feel, and all the equipment of intel- 
 ligence she possessed sharpened and refashioned itself for 
 the change that had come to her. 
 
 They had brought her back from the merciful release 
 of death. No thought came to her of seeking to escape 
 them again, but life had no longer any meaning for her. 
 One thing alone held her to a clear purpose of being. She 
 had heard herself crying it aloud in her dreams; through 
 every waking hour it sounded itself in her ears. They 
 should never know! Never should they know the truth. 
 She had no doubt of her power or her endurance against 
 all suspicion to keep that from them. 
 
 When her mother sat down at the foot of her bed and 
 the impassivity of her eyes with the faint smile that played 
 about them fell like a shadow upon Mary's eyes, she met 
 their look with the steady gaze of her soul's assurance. 
 Whatever that look might mean, she could oppose it. Even 
 when Mrs. Kirwan in that empty quiet of her voice asked 
 her what it was had taken her up there into those starving 
 gaps of the hills, though her breath caught as she drew it 
 and in her throat she swallowed the swift rising of her 
 fear, it was still with all the outward signs of composure 
 and a quick assumption of perplexity that she made her 
 reply. 
 
 "Was it in the hills they found me?" she asked. 
 
 Mrs. Kirwan told her the story of Fennel's search 
 
 " 'Twas ten miles he carried ye in his arms," she con- 
 cluded. "Wasn't it comin' to the door here he was one 
 night, with yeerself the weight of a dead thing, the way
 
 THE MIRACLE 265 
 
 he was broken entirely to be holdin' ye. 'I have her back 
 from Them,' he said, and there was every one of us heard 
 him but himself, he laughin' and sittin' down like a man 
 would never be risin' to the day again." 
 
 This was the new Fennel she was finding with greater 
 pity than she had ever felt for him before and a clearer 
 warmth of perception in her understanding. She remem- 
 bered the distant sight she had had of the farm that day 
 which the night had ended for her. That was the last 
 vision she had believed she would ever have of Ardnashiela, 
 He had carried her from there. In his arms he had car- 
 ried her. Her eyes glittered and her lip trembled. Other 
 arms had held her. It was that she remembered. It was 
 because of that she understood. 
 
 "What brought ye that way at all?" asked Mrs. Kirwan 
 without the note of persistence. 
 
 "I was walkin'." 
 
 "Where?" 
 
 "On the road to Doonvarna." 
 
 "Shure, why?" 
 
 "Faith, I dunno. 'Twas walkin' I was when the work was 
 finished and there was nothin' to be doin' in the house." 
 
 "What happened ye then?" 
 
 The glitter in Mary's eyes gave swift place to a dull 
 resistance. 
 
 "Yirra, I dunno what happened me. Was it knowin' any- 
 thing at all I was when he found me?" 
 
 "Ye were not but hadn't ye been walkin' ten days and 
 more in the hills, the time ye were askin' a drop of milk 
 and a bit of bread in one place and some straw to be lyin' 
 on in another? Wasn't it findin' it that way himself came 
 up with ye?" 
 
 The impassive eyes were still dwelling upon her. The 
 quiet incurious voice was beginning to beat like a pulse in
 
 266 THE MIRACLE 
 
 her brain. With the fatigue and weakness of body that 
 was still fretting her as she lay there, she felt herself 
 assailed by the even flow of these questions. It was like 
 water dropping with a regular and unceasing patter as it 
 fell. She knew she was not nerved then to resist its grad- 
 ual attrition. In the end it would wear away the stone of 
 her reserve. 
 
 "What is it ye're askin' me for!" she cried out. "How 
 would I know what happened me? Wasn't it walkin' I was 
 that's all I'd know against the time I'd be wakin' up here 
 in the bed. 'Tis the wits ye think I've lost on me, maybe. 
 Well maybe it is! Shure, God knows what might happen 
 to anny one in the silence of that place!" 
 
 She flung herself down in a passion of resentment upon 
 her pillow and buried her face from the quiet look of her 
 mother's eyes. 
 
 Mrs. Kirwan stood up from the bed. 
 
 "God help ye," she said. " 'Tis queer indeed the ways 
 He have with all of us. Shure, the wits were gone from ye 
 they were of course. Isn't it easy they be goin' from a 
 woman and a hard life indeed for those would be brought 
 back?" 
 
 In the muffled retreat of her pillow, Mary heard her. 
 She heard her leave the room, never to know what that 
 strange woman had meant by her words, the last she ever 
 spoke to her daughter about those days of her disap- 
 pearance. 
 
 Closing the door of Mary's bedroom, she went out into 
 the kitchen. It was early in the day, but Fennel was 
 already waiting there. 
 
 "She's overed it," said Mrs. Kirwan indifferently. 
 
 He thanked God with more than the words that sprang 
 from him. 
 
 "Can I see herself so?" he asked.
 
 THE MIRACLE 267 
 
 She nodded her head to the door. 
 
 "Let ye mind," said she as he went. "Let ye mind not to 
 be askin' herself the way They took her that night. 'Tis 
 light like a feather itself her wits are. Shure, ye would 
 blow them away with a word if ye questioned her. And 
 don't be frettin* her with the word she gave. Let herself 
 speak that if she's a mind for it. Those the faeries have 
 taken are queer when they come back 'tis queer they are 
 for a long time. Why wouldn't they? Yirra, God help 
 them why wouldn't they?" 
 
 He took the handle of the door and turned it. Stifling 
 the heavy fall of his feet to the stillness that had come about 
 his heart, he crept into the room,
 
 XI 
 
 FENNEL closed the door. Mary was still lying with 
 her face pressed against the pillow. He waited. 
 Her bare arm lay out on the bed. Her hair was 
 about her shoulders. He had plucked her back to him 
 from the world beyond the thin veil of wind and light. She 
 was his. He stood there with a great longing in him for 
 words that had a meaning for the surging sense of his 
 gratitude. He knew none. She was there, back again out 
 of the dark emptiness of those days when he was searching 
 in a deserted world. There was no wandering in her mind 
 to be disfiguring her. She was the same as when that 
 time of their first meeting he had thought there was no 
 hope in the world for any man to be claiming her. One 
 day when her health came back, there would be the same 
 look of kindness in her eyes. He would come back from 
 his fishing and find her at his open door. She would be 
 beside the table with him as they ate their food. By the 
 fire she would sit with him and there would be no more 
 lonesomeness in the house. 
 
 His eyes rested on her there to assure him of the truth 
 of it all. There she was lying. It was true. When she 
 looked up from her pillow, the remembrance of him would 
 be coming back into her eyes. She had passed the hours 
 of her sickness. She was well again. 
 
 With a sudden voice of memory, he heard himself cursing 
 the ways of God on the hillside. Remorse shook him. 
 There was a swift alarm in his heart to think how that 
 curse might fall upon himself. Out of the silence of his 
 
 268
 
 THE MIRACLE 269 
 
 standing there, he moved quickly to the side of the bed 
 and fell clumsily upon his knees. When Mary looked up, 
 his head was thrust into his hands that were buried in the 
 clothes of the bed. 
 
 When he had remained there some little time, she raised 
 her hand without thought of her reason, but just because 
 a sudden gentleness had come to her, seeing him there at 
 his praying she raised her hand and laid it on his head. 
 
 "What is it ye have in yeer prayers?" she whispered. 
 
 He looked up. It was this gentleness from her he had 
 known was coming to him. The faint touch of her hand 
 awed him. Had the little painted statue of the Virgin in 
 the chapel descended from Her altar and laid her hand on 
 him he could scarcely have felt more subjection of humility. 
 
 "I cursed the ways of God," he said, and told her all 
 the despair, the hope, the agony of mind, the fears he had 
 had when the faeries had taken her from him. 
 
 Without comment or question, in a dumb silence of won- 
 der at the endurance in his heart, she lay on her pillow 
 listening to the simple story of his belief and the fate of 
 her they all accepted in the undoubting sincerity of their 
 minds. 
 
 Scarcely did she reckon the effect it had upon her. She 
 did not realise how still, with every word of his story, she 
 was being submitted to the education of life; nor did she 
 comprehend the might and meaning of those forces, power- 
 ful beyond all her conception, working, actuating, controll- 
 ing them at the root of their beliefs. 
 
 It was not laughter she felt when she heard the story 
 of the man with the cloven foot, who had played at cards 
 with her father on the road, that night of her disappear- 
 ance. Yet she could have laughed, shrilly, hysterically, 
 with no merriment. Her fingers gripped in the substance
 
 270 THE MIRACLE 
 
 of the pillow beneath her head to keep that laughter from 
 her lips. 
 
 Back again and again across her thoughts as she listened 
 to him, came the memory of Father Costello's words to her 
 that day in the kitchen with the shame he had flung at her 
 for believing the story of Shawn Geoghan's wife. 
 
 There were no faeries! There was no unseen world 
 beyond them! She did not argue it with herself. She 
 knew it as she heard the story of her going that stumbled 
 from Fennel's lips. Life, if that was life what had hap- 
 pened to herself and she knew must happen to others 
 this was what lay beyond them all; this was what took 
 them away; this was what troubled some the way their 
 wits seemed to be gone from them, who had mad laughter 
 in their eyes and whose lips babbled the foolishness of 
 words. 
 
 She knew then how nearly that had been the way with 
 her. Another day in those hills and reason surely would 
 have left her. No she did not believe in faeries any 
 more. Then what was there in which she could believe? 
 This, in a sudden illumination of thought she asked her- 
 self, pointing the question, an accusing ringer, at her heart. 
 
 She believed in the priest. She believed in all the joy 
 and pain and suffering and ecstasy she had felt that night 
 in his arms. She believed in the child she knew must be 
 the meaning of all that had happened to her. If that was 
 life then her beliefs lay there, for the need of belief 
 pressed hard upon her. Without it, the thought of the 
 days and years had nothing but terror for her soul. There 
 was the Almighty God and the pity and mercy of the Vir- 
 gin Mary. But could they bring him back to her? Would 
 she ever hear again the words, burning with unbelievable 
 wonder, so utterly new and unknown to her, he had cried in 
 her ears that night in the darkness of the hills? She knew
 
 THE MIRACLE 271 
 
 she could never hear them from him or any man again. 
 Was it through all of time she must go on believing in the 
 silence that would be about her? Could that belief con- 
 tinue to uphold her until they brought her body to lay it 
 away in that ground up on the hill? 
 
 In the midst of Fennel's story, she broke into a terror of 
 weeping. He stopped at once, amazed and concerned. He 
 had said too much. Not once had he questioned her. But 
 he had said too much. This was the lightness of her wits 
 that had blown away with the words of his talking. 
 
 "Oh, shure, God help me 'tis a fool I am !" he muttered 
 helplessly. He stared down at her, sobbing convulsively, 
 wondering what it was he could do when, bewildering him 
 with the surprise of it, she turned suddenly in the bed and 
 flung her arms about him. He had a quick sight of her 
 face stained with tears and the next moment it was hidden 
 with the mass of her hair against his coat. Both her arms 
 and her hands were clutching at him. She was crying in 
 an agony like a child in mortal dread. He tried to listen 
 to what she was saying. Her sobs muffled and choked the 
 sound of her words. 
 
 "Keep me! Keep me!" he thought he heard her say 
 and in a distress of perplexity he looked about him. 
 
 Was it They were trying to take her from him then? 
 "Keep me keep me!" What did she mean but that? And 
 then it seemed she was begging him to hold her, close and 
 fast in his arms. If that could keep her from Them, there 
 was no man's arms so strong for holding as his. The iron 
 muscles flexed and hardened as he caught her to him. Not 
 one thought of passion had he as he felt the softness of the 
 body he had in his arms. Closely and with no yielding of 
 his grasp, he held her to him till her sobs broke, shivered 
 and died away and she was lying still like a child saved 
 from the terror of darkness against his breast, with faint
 
 272 THE MIRACLE 
 
 intaken breaths that told the passing of the storm about her. 
 
 "Is it the way ye're goin' to marry me after all that hev 
 happened me?" she asked, her voice still broken with quick, 
 involuntary breaths. "Is it ever a girrl has been taken a 
 man would wish to be livin' with through the stretch of 
 his days?" 
 
 "I dunno what men there are," said he, "would give up 
 the peace that was gone from them, once they had it back 
 again in the holt of their arms." 
 
 She trembled, partly in gratitude, mostly in fear. The 
 utmost was yet for knowing. Nothing could shake her con- 
 viction she was going to have a child. It was a truth, an 
 indelible reality to her. She allowed no doubt of it in her 
 mind. No woman who had known what she had known, 
 who had been carried to that high crest of joy, could de- 
 scend alone the same woman she had been. 
 
 Would his belief encompass that? She slipped with a 
 quick determination out of his arms. It must be then he 
 must know; better then than dragged from her later. She 
 did not wish to hide it. There was no alarm in her to con- 
 ceal that which must ultimately be known. They should 
 never have the truth, but this must be heard. 
 
 With a look in her eyes, now bright with hardness to 
 encounter all that might befall her, she told him the thing 
 her instinct knew. 
 
 Strangely to him it seemed she told it. He thought her 
 defiance was that lingering of the spell they had put upon 
 her. If for one instant the truth had ever occurred to him, 
 it would have been shame he would have expected in a 
 woman with such a confession as that. But not for one 
 moment did it enter his thoughts. Nothing could alter his 
 belief of the power that unseen world had over the ways of 
 men. Something was demanded of them. It took away
 
 THE MIRACLE 273 
 
 and it gave back. In all their lives it swayed with a mean- 
 ing there was not one who could explain. 
 
 She had been taken by Them. However long the days 
 had been when she was away, it was few they were for 
 any girl to be having such knowledge of herself as this. 
 How could she have learnt it, unless it was away with 
 Themselves she had been? He neither argued this nor 
 did he hear one conscious utterance of it in his thoughts. 
 It was that which Shaughnessy had said They had wanted 
 with her. What man was it could feel he had been robbed 
 by Them? They had given her back. She was there to 
 the touch of his hand with the kindness of life she could 
 still be bringing to him. 
 
 He looked back into the defiance of her eyes and, as 
 though he were speaking of a world of time behind them, 
 he said: 
 
 "There's no more word we'll have of it. Shure, if 'tis in 
 the comin' of a day or so the priest says the words over 
 us, won't they think 'tis me own child ye'll be havin' the 
 way they can't be pointin' a finger at it or whisperin' anny 
 strange talk at all." 
 
 She lay on her elbow and stared in a wonder at him, 
 
 Was it like that she had once believed herself?
 
 PART IV
 
 IN places like Ardnashiela, time is not visibly to be as- 
 sociated with change. It is so approximately related to 
 a process of transmutation as to conceal all sign of 
 progress and give to those whose eyes chance that way the 
 thought that there life is stagnant, swept by an eddy of the 
 stream into a still pool where the stray flotsam on the cur- 
 rent drifts in to remain until it rots away in waste. 
 
 Change nevertheless is working. For all its tranquillity 
 life is not still. The great and invariable process continues 
 in Ardnashiela as elsewhere. Ever persistently the washing 
 tides gnaw their way into the crumbling land around the 
 low shore. From one year to another the fields between 
 Kirwan's farm and the sea varied imperceptibly in outline 
 and substance. With secret burrowings and submerged ex- 
 cavations, the long roll of the Atlantic waves worked at the 
 foundations of the mightiest battlements of the cliffs. No 
 fruits of that labour were apparent. Only the sound of the 
 hammer blows, like a thunder far beneath the land some- 
 times when the storms were off the sea, were to be heard 
 and these, so persistently, so monotonously, that the; 1 lost 
 all sense of that slowly moving process of change. 
 
 From year to year nothing happened and then suddenly 
 one day a giant rock would shift in the clamp of the soil. 
 No one was out there on those headlands to watch it. As 
 though it were a blast in the quarrying of time, it leaped 
 from its holding. Down with a roar into the sea it rushed 
 in one instant of bounding freedom and all the light earth 
 and clinging satellites of smaller stones that had depended 
 
 277
 
 278 THE MIRACLE 
 
 upon it for their existence of place in that vast structure 
 of the cliffs, fell in a cloud, a dust, a fume of the sudden 
 cataclysm after it. 
 
 Who was there to know what had happened who had not 
 heard the uproar of that sudden calamity of change? A 
 sea-pink uprooted, withering to death, a cloud of dust upon 
 the rocks soon licked oft" by the curling tongues of water, a 
 gaping wound in the face of the cliff swiftly made whole 
 by the healing winds and the restoring rains and eager 
 plant life finding a hold again in the loosened earth, what 
 was there to show of the gradual labour of time wrought 
 to a climax in that one instant of disintegration? 
 
 In such secretive measures time moves and change effects 
 its inexorable purpose. Where, as in Ardnashiela, life 
 seems stillest, there yet is the ever-onward progress of ad- 
 venture in a mutable world. 
 
 Within two days of her recovery, Mary Kirwan was 
 married to Fennel, the fisherman. The words were said 
 over them by Father Roche in the little church that stands 
 in the open place above the sea-wall at the end of the vil- 
 lage street. 
 
 Marriages in Ardnashiela were usually rowdy cere- 
 monies. There was laughter even in church and much jest- 
 ing. Often the feast afterwards, broken with dancing, 
 sometimes amounting to wild horse-play, was little less than 
 a drunken debauch. In Ardnashiela, numbering some two 
 hundred souls, there were five cottages with the license to 
 sell drink and tobacco painted up over their doors. A liv- 
 ing was to be found for all of them. 
 
 "There's not a man," Father Roche had once said in a 
 sweeping condemnation, "there's not a man in Ardnashiela 
 has a soul with the courage to face the Lord God without 
 he had a drop of drink taken to stiffen him." 
 
 At Mary's marriage there was none of this, no laughter,
 
 THE MIRACLE 279 
 
 no jesting flung, no feast, to Kirwan's profound satisfac- 
 tion, in the kitchen at night. There was a hush of wonder 
 over them all, some seeing her for the first time since her 
 disappearance, as she had knelt at the altar that day. With 
 open lips and following eyes they had watched her out of 
 the church and, in a crowd at the foot of the cliff road, had 
 stood gaping after her as she walked with her man up to 
 her new home. 
 
 Some had said it was more than they would do them- 
 selves to be marrying one had the strange name to herself 
 with the queer things had happened her. Some had said 
 it must be mad in love he was, seeing that those who had 
 once had the touch of Them were never the same again 
 after it. All of them wondered at the courage of him and 
 there were looks of pity Mary had cast upon herself and 
 looks of awe as she had walked out of the church. 
 
 " 'Tis gone from himself yet again she'll be," said the 
 old man who had lived once in the islands off the coast of 
 Galway. "Those that are once taken only come back for a 
 time. For the stretch of a year he may have her and maybe 
 'tis more, but 'tis not Themselves'll leave her with him for 
 long." 
 
 He had waited for a pause in their talk to say his words 
 so that every one might hear them. They nodded their 
 heads, for it was an old man like himself who had seen 
 long days in the world, had more wisdom to be knowing 
 these things than those who were quick with the ways of 
 life in their youth. 
 
 "Let him have a care of her," Shaughnessy had muttered 
 into Kirwan's ear as they stood outside the crowd watching 
 them both walking up the cliff road, "let him have a care 
 of her, I'm sayin'. 'Tis not a drop of food put out in the 
 black of the night would pacify Them always it is not." 
 
 He had shaken the greasy grey hair about his shoulders;
 
 280 THE MIRACLE 
 
 with the back of his hand he had brushed away the gather- 
 ing drops of thin water in his red eyes and nodding and 
 muttering to himself, he had slouched away up the street. 
 
 The two most concerned of them all had said no word 
 to each other the whole way up the cliff road. There were 
 a few who had not been down to the church that were 
 standing at their doors to see them go by. Those who 
 had a wish of good luck to offer them muttered it so softly 
 that none heard it but themselves. 
 
 To Mary it had seemed in a silence they had gone by, a 
 silence of shame as her new-found conscience interpreted 
 it. Yet there was then no shame in her heart. Perhaps 
 she had clung a little closer to Fennel's arm. Perhaps she 
 had even felt a little glad of him in the solidity of his 
 strength beside her. Mostly she was still in a dazed won- 
 der of life, performing every act of that morning with an 
 automatic precision scarcely realising any significance in 
 all she said and did. 
 
 When Fennel had closed the door behind her and they 
 were alone, he went down on his knees beside the table, 
 dragging her with him, in the first conscious sense of won- 
 der she had felt that day. 
 
 "I thank the Almighty God," he had said and then he 
 had put an arm about her and when she looked up he had 
 kissed her for the second time in his life, still wondering 
 a woman's lips could be so cold, yet with a triumphant 
 pride of her in his heart now that she was his own. 
 
 Two years had gone by them since that day, and if there 
 was no change in the life of Ardnashiela, there was a new 
 world in the difference of life for these two. Fennel had 
 taken another cottage on the upper road above the cliff, 
 secluded from and independent of the rest of the village, 
 with a patch of ground and room in it for them to be
 
 THE MIRACLE 231 
 
 growing their potatoes. Mary's child had been born, when, 
 according to his promise, Fennel spoke no word to her 
 again of what she had told him. 
 
 Gradually but utterly the whole soul's prospect of Mary's 
 being was turned to a vision of the sweet gentleness of life. 
 Long before the birth of her child that vision had come 
 to her; faintly at first with a weary man returning to the 
 door, the salt of the sea on his face and listless hands, too 
 tired to do anything but wait until there was food ready 
 for his eating. It grew to clearness with the sound of a 
 voice that never knew anger, with eyes that followed her 
 about the room, taking with a ceaseless gratitude all that 
 she gave them, never feeding upon her and reverent always. 
 Clearer still it grew with the peace that fell about her days 
 and the simple work there was, mending his nets and mind- 
 ing the house until it became the rounded compass of her 
 heart's quiet content. 
 
 So also in those months her conscience, soothed by time 
 and lulled by circumstance, had gradually withdrawn into 
 the silent retreat of her soul. Almost immediately after 
 her marriage, the blind man had gone from the farm, de- 
 parting upon his wanderings without apparent cause of 
 reason, drift-wood, caught and then released upon the cur- 
 rent. It was not long before some other wanderer from 
 the weariness of those desolate roads took his place. 
 
 He had been the visible substance, the flesh and blood of 
 Mary's conscience. So long as she saw him there by the 
 fireside in the farm kitchen, her imagination found it pos- 
 sible to believe that without his sight he had known what 
 had happened that night of the threshing feast, and, with 
 Father Costello's departure coinciding with her own, had 
 come at some shadow of the truth. 
 
 The day when she had gone down to help her father at 
 the farm and had learnt how that morning at sunrise he
 
 282 THE MIRACLE 
 
 had shouldered his bundle and they had heard his stick tap- 
 ping down the road, she felt as though a narrow path had 
 been cleared for her. There was still that fear he might 
 have spoken before he went. She had looked for signs 
 of it in her mother, but there were none. Mary's sickness 
 had called her to action and more speech than was her 
 wont; but now that was passed, she had become the same 
 silent woman once more. Returning to her retreat in the 
 corner by the fire, she had continued plaiting her rushes, 
 the voiceless spectator of that same slow process of life, 
 forcing its gradual inroads by the low line of shore and 
 working night and day beneath the high battlements of 
 the cliffs. 
 
 Only one thought had remained, rising and falling, 
 rising and falling, to distress the tranquillity of her mind. 
 Fennel's belief in the faeries that had taken her away had 
 withstood suspicion when she had just told him of her con- 
 viction about her child. Was it strong and simple enough 
 in him to withstand the actual fact which, after some little 
 time, she had known was to come to pass? 
 
 Father Costello had not returned. Another curate had 
 taken his place. However they got their information in the 
 village, she had not questioned, but she heard it said he had 
 gone abroad. If she had had any regret for that, the grow- 
 ing affection and sense of responsibility in her heart for 
 Fennel soon wore it away. Nothing it seemed had been 
 left them but the test of his faith when her child was born. 
 
 She knew its father. Nothing could uproot her knowl- 
 edge there. Already she was feeling the passion she had 
 known deflected into an absorbing love for it. Never could 
 she or would she deceive her husband into the thought that 
 it was his own. A faerie child it might be if he believed 
 it so, a creature of shadows and mist out of the silences 
 and darkness of those hills, but to her always the living
 
 THE MIRACLE 283 
 
 voice of the eternity of that little while, when love had 
 leaped in its scorching fire about her and she had been 
 lifted in body and soul into the resistless pulse of life. 
 
 This was the test of faith she had waited for, expecting 
 always as it drew nearer to her hour, his doubt would rise 
 and break the pledge of silence he had given. 
 
 He had said nothing. A doctor had come over from 
 Doonvarna and left her with her child. It was a boy. 
 
 With questioning eyes, she had watched Fennel's face 
 when first he saw it lying against her breast. A little more 
 than eight months it had been since their marriage. He 
 had stood a while by the side of the bed, regarding her 
 tenderly. Then at last he had sat down. 
 
 "Shall I tell ye something?" he had said. 
 
 Now was it coming? How could his faith believe! She 
 had known it must prove more than the human heart of 
 any man could endure. But it was not his child! His 
 faith must hold or the truth must break it. 
 
 "What d'ye want to be say in'?" she had asked. 
 
 He had heard all the quietness in her voice. She only 
 had heard all else there was. 
 
 ' 'Twas the way I thought," he had said, "when I heard 
 the cry ye had with the pain that was on ye I thought 
 'twas Themselves had come for ye that time and 'twas gone 
 from me for ever ye'd be then." 
 
 She had looked up, higher it had seemed than it was ever 
 possible she could have looked again, and when he leant 
 over her to kiss her lips they were blood warm as she had 
 taken him close with her child into her naked arms. 
 
 From that day onwards, the very fullness of peace and 
 contentment had come to her. With the exacting care of 
 her child for the next few months, it had been impossible 
 for her to give any help to her father at the farm. Hating
 
 284 THE MIRACLE 
 
 him always and much as he hated the thing he feared, this 
 had been the last disturbing presence to be removed from 
 her life. 
 
 As the slow months of her motherhood had slipped by, 
 seeing nothing of her family, hearing no voice about her 
 but that in an eager consideration of all she wished, Mary 
 Kirwan had come to think very differently of the ground 
 where that Mary Fennel would lie buried. 
 
 Beneath the accumulation of time and that dense shield 
 of their belief, her secret was overgrown hidden some- 
 times almost from herself. Falling away into the softening 
 mist of the past, with no word of the priest ever to disturb 
 or call it from its resting place, there were moments when 
 she played with the thought it was the faeries indeed that 
 had taken her that night. Dandling her baby on her knee 
 or rocking it at her breast, she would often when she was 
 alone sing to it a song she had once heard from one of 
 those travelling men who had come to the farm when she 
 was a child. 
 
 "Knock at the door of a white thorn tree 
 
 Lift up the latch and cry 
 
 'Are you there are you there ? My love is gone. 
 
 Have you heard her feet go by ?' " 
 
 Only it was his feet as she sang it and to some minor 
 tune she had heard from a fiddler perhaps at the dancing in 
 Kirwan's kitchen. 
 
 In this manner with the care of her baby and the mind- 
 ing of the fisherman's house, time spun itself out to the 
 length of two years. Memory became no longer a pain to 
 her, but some distant vision, wrapped in a haze of light that 
 hid all the poignant meaning it had had. On the hot sum- 
 mer days, when Fennel was out on the water, she could and
 
 THE MIRACLE 285 
 
 often did, carry her charge round by the headland path 
 to that very ledge of rock where she had stood with Father 
 Costello. Sitting there, she would place it on her knee so 
 that the round wonder of its eyes were staring back into 
 hers and without a wrench of any pain at her heart, would 
 sing: 
 
 "Knock at the door of a white thorn tree 
 Lift up the latch and cry 
 
 'Are you there are you there ? My love is gone. 
 Have you heard her feet go by ?' " 
 
 When her baby was weaned and there was time again to 
 be spared from the house, she went back with reluctance, 
 when sometimes her help was needed on the farm. 
 
 It was one morning, just two years after her marriage, 
 that she went down to make the butter. There was none, 
 James Kir wan admitted in a moment of praise, who could 
 work the churn like herself. A fiddler's tune was draw- 
 ing itself out in her breath as she walked along the strand 
 in the bright, sharp light of that autumn morning. She was 
 another woman now and knew it, and the knowledge was a 
 gladness in her. 
 
 Entering the farm by a door on the field side of one 
 of the sheds, she passed through the cow stalls, where first 
 she had met the fisherman. It was without conscious 
 thought of recalling it that the tune swelled to the round 
 fullness of her voice, for she passed on without pausing 
 through the other sheds onto the cobbled path before the 
 house. 
 
 Now she was facing the iron gateway with its rusty 
 hinge that opened onto the road. There she stopped. A 
 sound first had held her an even tapping, tapping, te-
 
 286 THE MIRACLE 
 
 ping, like the labour of a wood-pecker in the silence of 
 some forest place. 
 
 She looked through the gateway to the turning of the 
 road and waited with her heart unaccountably still to learn 
 its meaning. It was but a few moments and she knew. 
 
 After the two years of his wandering, the blind man, 
 sensing his way with the touch of his stick and the sliding 
 motion of his feet, had come back for a roof to his head 
 and the grace of God they could be giving him.
 
 II 
 
 IT was in the month of September that sprats and mack- 
 erel came in their shoals into Ardnashiela Bay. A net 
 that was not mended then, a boat that was not ready for 
 the water, lost the best of the year's fishing. No little of the 
 secret of Fennel's success as a fisherman lay in the fact 
 that his tackle was always clean, his boat always seaworthy. 
 
 Early those mornings of that autumn month, he was out 
 about the headlands every day with the oldest of his men 
 in whose family for generations had been vested that singu- 
 lar quality of sight, like the water-diviner's power. From 
 the high altitude of the cliffs these men can see the ap- 
 proaching shoals where to the ungifted eye never a shadow 
 stains the water's blue. 
 
 A week after the blind man's return to the farm, Fennel 
 was sitting with Shawn Troy on the close grass at the cliff's 
 edge beyond the third headland. All signs of the weather 
 and the wind's direction pointed to the incoming of the fish. 
 Five or six miles out, clusters of gulls had been cruishting 
 on the pearly surface of the water since daybreak. In the 
 still air, when the note of a bee was a clarion over the 
 heather, their cries came lingering, sometimes lifting, with 
 faint shrilling sounds the breath of a breeze had carried 
 swifter than the rest. 
 
 Below them, close at the rock's edge, the boat lay wait- 
 ing for the first trumpet cry of command to put out with 
 the nets. Two days already they had spent, waiting in vain, 
 returning to the boat cove as evening fell. The men were 
 lounging, stretched out in the sun across the seats. Some 
 
 287
 
 288 THE MIRACLE 
 
 were smoking their pipes; others chewing their tobacco, 
 spitting the brown juice out into the green water and idly 
 watching it trail away into the clear deep, emerald shadow 
 of the boat. There was little talk between them. When 
 they did speak, their voices rose in a soft murmur, the 
 human organ note no other sound in nature can convey. 
 
 The two men on the cliff's edge sat with their chins upon 
 their tilted knees, head, body, hands and limbs cut in sharp 
 silhouettes of graven stillness. Only their eyes roamed, 
 never resting, north, south and west. For more than an 
 hour they had not spoken. Gods of a pagan world they 
 might have been brooding over and determining the fates 
 of those who waited on the sea below in human submis- 
 sion for the empyrean voice of destiny. 
 
 It was nine o'clock in the morning. They had been there 
 since six. Shawn felt in his pocket and produced a piece 
 of bread and cheese rolled in a red handkerchief. After a 
 moment Fennel followed his example. Their eyes never 
 left the sea. They munched their food in silence. De- 
 stroying that graven stillness, their jaws were rolling to- 
 gether. With the tranquillity remaining about them they 
 suggested now two animals, scarce men, at their food time. 
 
 Shawn's voice broke the surrounding quiet and made 
 them human. 
 
 " 'Twould be a good thing," said he, "in the course of a 
 piece, me bringing that boy ye have out here round the head 
 to be sittin' with me. 'Tis young eyes can see the fish as 
 well as the old when they'd have a sight is me own to be 
 teachin' em.'" 
 
 Fennel finished his crust of bread before he answered. 
 
 "Maybe he's not for the fishin'," he said. 
 
 There was no inflection needed in his words to convey 
 their disappointment. The mere statement upheld it. For 
 the first moment in a long hour, Shawn's eyes left the sea,
 
 THE MIRACLE 289 
 
 snatching a glance at Fennel's face and returning imme- 
 diately to their watching. 
 
 "Shure what's he for then?" 
 
 ' Tis the farming maybe. Herself goes down there 
 often these days. She takes him with her. Isn't it a surer 
 thing to be farming the land, has the crops risin' from it to 
 the man would be sowin' em? Shure God knows what is 
 it brings the fish into the Bay or keeps them driftin' out 
 in the wastes of the water." 
 
 Shawn spat on the ground between his tilted knees. 
 
 "And he with a boat and nets and all when he's grown !" 
 
 There was no reply from Fennel. 
 
 "Shure I'd make a son of me own what I'd have him be." 
 Shawn continued and they fell to silence again. 
 
 "A son of me own !" Those words lingered. They 
 hung in the air, repeating themselves again and again, like 
 a thread running backwards and forwards through a 
 thought that for some time had found the substance of 
 being in Fennel's mind. 
 
 Might it not after all be his child? It had been born a 
 week or two sooner than they expected. But he had heard 
 of children being born in seven months. Some, a few in- 
 deed, in less, but sure, they all knew what that meant. 
 
 Every one there in the village believed it was his own. 
 Without word or question, Father Roche had christened it. 
 It was those asking him, as they often did down on the sea- 
 wall, about his child, who had set the seed of that thought 
 to grow in a ready soil. 
 
 Never since those fifteen months it had been born, had 
 they spoken of it as a faerie child, nor for that matter, as 
 his, but hers only. 
 
 "Look at him now," she'd say in the pride she had of him 
 and often, when he was not close, it was my baby she'd
 
 290 THE MIRACLE 
 
 be calling it. But what was that to say one way or another 
 whose it was? 
 
 She had said she was going to have a child, that time he 
 brought her back from Them out of the hills, but how the 
 Hell could she be knowing that in herself? There was no 
 woman could know such a thing in the time there must be 
 for a child to be born! 
 
 Why shouldn't it be his? That very night of their mar- 
 rying, cold though she was compared with the tenderness 
 that had come to her in those two years, he had had her in his 
 arms. What the deuce did Shaughnessy know about 
 Themselves, more than any other man in those parts ? And 
 if 'twas Their child it was, wasn't it likely fetchin* it away 
 for Themselves They'd be? He did not doubt Their ex- 
 istence, or had he lost conviction of the presence of that 
 unseen world, but now that the lonesomeness of his life 
 had fallen from him, it was more sure of himself he was. 
 His fishing had been successful all that time. He was 
 beginning to believe They could not touch him now. And 
 all those months, hearing her singing to that thing in her 
 arms, knowing in himself his own manhood and envious 
 sometimes of the love she gave it, he had come first to enter- 
 tain the wish that it was his own and at last to give admit- 
 tance to the thought. 
 
 It was true enough he would have wished the boy to be a 
 fisherman, taking the nets he had and putting out his 
 boat when he was come to be a man. But latterly she had 
 begun again going down to the farm and now for the last 
 week had gone each day. That was the thought he had had, 
 that she wished her son to live the life she had known and, 
 in the brooding of his mind, had found the edge of a 
 shadow falling over the peace and contentment that had 
 come about his days. Being a man of no words for the 
 vague sensations of his thoughts, he had said nothing.
 
 THE MIRACLE 291 
 
 Each day of that week, Mary had gone down to the farm. 
 They were busy, she said, and in a toil of work after the 
 threshing. Perhaps they were. He had let her go, pur- 
 suing no thought that might have come to him. And now 
 this old man beside him had put words to it all which, once 
 spoken in the stillness of that air, lingered on the silence 
 about them and would not be 'dumb. 
 
 All there was that could outcry them happened then a 
 moment later. Stiffening in all his body and then, as 
 though a powerful hand had lifted him, Shawn Troy sprang 
 to his feet. In his excitement, with his native tongue he 
 cried out in Gaelic that the fish were drifting into the rocks. 
 Sprats they were. He could see that from where he was, 
 though never a shadow seemed to have fallen upon the 
 water. The mackerel were after them. They were bearing 
 into the fourth headland. Seizing his hat in his hand for 
 a signal to direct them, he yelled out to the boat below 
 to make ready. 
 
 Every thought he had had was swept in the sudden gust 
 of action out of Fennel's mind. At the first glimpse of that 
 rigidity that had set about the body of his companion, he 
 had stood to his feet. Now he was climbing down the face 
 of the cliffs to the water's edge. Oars were rattling in the 
 boat below as they fitted them into the rowlocks. A fever 
 of action was a leaping fire in every vein. Their eyes glit- 
 tered with it. Their voices were high-pitched. There was 
 a commotion in the boat like a lot of children let out of 
 school. They trampled upon each other to reach their seats ; 
 they cursed and swore and every moment seemed as though 
 they would be fighting amongst themselves. 
 
 Only the presence of Fennel, when he reached the boat, 
 steadied them. At last with the. noise only of the sweeps, 
 they put away from the rocks and with short strokes, leav- 
 ing the marks as it were of the countless feet of a centipede
 
 292 THE MIRACLE 
 
 upon the water, they sped across the glass of the sea to 
 the fourth head. 
 
 From the cliffs above, with waving arm and the screech- 
 ing cries of his voice, growing more and more hoarse as 
 he yelled one swift direction upon another, Shawn Troy 
 guided them to their destination. In those adventures, 
 there is no time to be lost. The shoals move swiftly. With 
 one last stentorian effort of his voice, that broke as he 
 made it with a whistle in his throat, he screamed to them 
 to begin paying out the net. 
 
 From one point of the rocks where a man was landed 
 clinging to the rock the boat edged round in a sweeping 
 circle from the shore. Like coils of spawn the net was 
 baled out into the sea, sinking below the green water with 
 only the floating corks to mark its course. And then, when 
 the other end was landed, the slow hauling began. 
 
 Closer and closer to the rocks, the circle of corks nar- 
 rowed as the net was drawn in and at last, as the boat 
 closed round to lift the catch, the emerald water was a 
 fume of liquid silver boiling in a cauldron with the leap- 
 ing fish. 
 
 An hour was passed before the haul was ladled into the 
 boat, a shine of simmering silver, full to the seats, that 
 cooled and cooled from the fret in that cauldron, till it 
 was lapping only with the sway of the boat as the men 
 waded knee-deep in its glittering mass. 
 
 Two men were all she could carry with the weight of that 
 load. The water was up to the gunwales as they sat to 
 their oars, their legs submerged in silver and the sway of 
 that molten metal washing against their bodies as they 
 rowed. 
 
 The lightest men had been chosen for the boat, that they 
 might take the utmost of the catch. Even then a cloud of 
 shimmering bodies lay floating on the water for the screech-
 
 THE MIRACLE 293 
 
 ing gulls to eat. Fennel went with the rest of the men 
 back to Ardnashiela by the headland patch. If they 
 walked swiftly, there was no need. With that burden in 
 her, the boat would be long behind them. But they were 
 laughing and easy in their minds now that their work was 
 over. It was the biggest haul they had had that year. 
 
 News by that time was in the village that Fennel's boat 
 had landed a catch of sprats. A donkey butt was already 
 waiting on the slip of sand in the boat cove to hawk the 
 fish from one outlying farm to another even as far as the 
 hills and into Doonvarna itself. Idlers were gathered in 
 groups on the sea-wall. Women and children were ready 
 with plates and baskets for their purchase fresh out of the 
 boat. And there, sitting alone on the rocks, with her baby 
 on her knee, was Mary, waiting to see her man's boat 
 come in. 
 
 There were none eager to be talking with her, even in 
 those days. It was fear perhaps, or a strangeness they 
 had. Never did she pass through the street but what heads 
 were turned to look at her. It would only be when she was 
 grown to be an old woman that they would have courage 
 to ask her what memory she had of those days when she 
 was taken in the hills. 
 
 Fennel himself had never spoken of it again and seeing 
 her there, sitting alone, his thought came swiftly to realise 
 her isolation. Speeding his steps, he went on ahead of the 
 men and came with sure foothold across the rocks to her 
 side. 
 
 "Is it a big haul?" she asked. 
 
 He said it was. 
 
 "There was word came out to the farm." 
 
 He nodded. 
 
 She nodded down at her baby and with her eyes directed 
 Fennel's eyes to look at it.
 
 294 THE MIRACLE 
 
 "I had a thought," said she, "to bring him down to see 
 his first catch come in." 
 
 Fennel felt a quick tightening upon his heart. So sud- 
 den was it, it might have been a hand her hand that for 
 an instant held it and then let the blood flow free. His 
 eyes stayed a moment on the baby's face and then lifted, 
 resting on her own. 
 
 "His first catch " he repeated. 
 
 "Maybe it won't be his last," said she. 
 
 He tried to believe it all at once. Was life like that? 
 So sudden a coincidence after his talk with Shawn Troy on 
 the cliffs and the shadow of his thoughts that had followed 
 swift upon their words? Had it so much warmth of joy 
 in it as this? Since she had come to him, it had seemed 
 to be so. The last shadow was gone now. It would not 
 be his last catch ! It was a fisherman she wanted him to be. 
 Surely 'twas that way she meant it. He asked her was 
 it that? 
 
 " 'Tis not for the land ye want him so ?" said he. 
 
 Almost with vehemence she shook her head. 
 
 "I've known one these two years is fishin' on the sea," 
 she replied, "and it's sooner with that one I'd leave him 
 than anny would be workin' on the land." 
 
 She lifted her baby up in her hands and with a laugh at 
 his awkwardness and timidity, she laid him in Fennel's 
 arms. It was the first time he had held him. He heard 
 them laughing away there on the sea wall. They could 
 laugh! Shure, what the Hell did they know of the things 
 he knew then! 
 
 Why was it they didn't go on laughing? What was 
 stopping them? He was ready to stand there, with his 
 head thrown back if it was safe with that creature he was 
 holding and laugh with them and at them and above the
 
 THE MIRACLE 295 
 
 voices of every single one of them with the loud shout of 
 the joy in his heart. 
 
 Why didn't they go on with their laughter? What had 
 happened? There was a boy had run down the cliff road 
 from the path round the headlands. They were all gath- 
 ered about him like gulls over the netted sprats. What was 
 he saying? What was the matter? 
 
 He put the child back in Mary's arms. An instinct of 
 uncertainty drew him over to the sea-wall. They told him 
 then, one voice breaking in upon another. The boy led 
 them. He had seen. The substance of the story came 
 from him. 
 
 In a sway from the rowing of the men, the boat had 
 shipped water. In a moment she had settled down with the 
 sea pouring over the gunwales. She had capsized. The 
 catch was lost and one of the men one of the men who 
 could not swim 
 
 "Yirra, say it in the name of God !" shouted Fennel. 
 
 "He's drowned," said the boy, " 'tis under the water he 
 is and his hat floatin* out there beyond the second head of 
 the cliffs."
 
 Ill 
 
 THE visible semblance of Mary's conscience had taken 
 flesh and blood again with the return of the blind 
 man. Rather than driving her from it, fear drew her 
 each day to the farm. She could not stay away. The revival 
 of apprehension in her had come with an added terror to 
 disturb her peace. She had the inarticulate sensation that all 
 that had happened that night in the hills would not die out 
 of her life as in those days of contentment it had seemed to 
 have done, but must live on, always lingering with her 
 never at rest. 
 
 Something there was had given it a deathlessness of being. 
 Nothing could destroy it. She felt it in the eyes that watched 
 her wherever she went. In her acceptance of their beliefs 
 she had given it life. As long as she lived there in Ard- 
 nashiela, she would be to them one of those whom the 
 faeries had led astray. They could never forget that and, 
 so long as it was remembered by them, there would remain 
 in vivid consciousness, her memory of that night in the 
 Gap of Doon. 
 
 She would have forgotten it now if she could. But would 
 they ever allow her to do that? Knowing the soft sweet- 
 ness there could be in life, she longed sometimes that they 
 might leave Ardnashiela and never look upon it again. 
 
 Yet these were but indefinite ideas compared with the 
 actual presence of the blind man in the farm kitchen, always 
 sitting there at the bellows wheel, an ever-present voice of 
 her conscience, if indeed he had knowledge and should 
 choose to speak. These daily visits of hers now to the farm 
 
 296
 
 THE MIRACLE 297 
 
 were set with one fixed determination. Once and for all 
 time she must discover what he knew of that which had hap- 
 pened after the threshing feast. There was no suspicion in 
 her now that he had spoken to her mother. If any, it was 
 her father she most feared. It was a wide berth always he 
 gave her. In short and abrupt sentences he answered her 
 only when she spoke her words to him. Sometimes he did not 
 answer at all when by his eyes, furtively kept from her, 
 she knew he had heard what she said. 
 
 Did he know? Had the blind man whispered the secret 
 to him? Anxious as he had been for help on the day of 
 his settlement with Fennel, he seemed none too glad of her 
 presence there now in the house. She had sought to propi- 
 tiate him by the help she offered. Her fear increased when, 
 after the disaster to Fennel's boat, he hired the labour of a 
 hand out of the village. It was not only to milk the cows 
 this girl had come. Any of those little things Mary might 
 have done, she was set with her hands to do. It was a pro- 
 test a notice a warning. He did not want her to be com- 
 ing near the place at all. Did he know ? Had the blind man 
 whispered his secret to him? 
 
 Fear still drove her there to learn the worst, whatever 
 it might be. For many days after the blind man's return, 
 no opportunity arose to speak with him alone. Always her 
 mother was there, silent, a shadow falling obliquely across 
 the light she sought. 
 
 It was not until five days after the catch was lost and 
 Michael Kelleher, brother of the smith, was drowned, that 
 her moment came. The blind man was alone in the kitchen, 
 rousing the fire for the hour of tea. She sat down on the 
 hearth by his side as he turned the bellows wheel, waiting 
 for long moments while she summoned courage and cun- 
 ning to begin, watching the milk white of those eyes and 
 wondering how deep was the darkness that was in them.
 
 298 THE MIRACLE 
 
 "Is it the way ye can't see at all?" she asked presently 
 "and ye starin' at me now with the look of watchin' is in yeer 
 eyes?" 
 
 "I was born dark an' 'tis the darkness itself will always 
 be on me. But isn't there a touch comes to those would 
 be in the ends of their hands and can't they hear the sound of 
 the wind the time it'ud be turnin' to the softness of the rain? 
 Shure, if 'twas the light I could see now, mightn't the ears 
 be goin' deaf on me and what 'ud I be doin* to know what 
 was happenin' about me then?" 
 
 "Can ye hear everything ?" 
 
 "I can, of course." 
 
 " 'Tis sweet music ye'd be hearin* then the time ye'd be 
 playin* yeer fiddle in the night." 
 
 A faint smile spread about his lips with the pride that 
 came to him when she said that. For there was none of her 
 cunning he heard or wished to be hearing in it while the 
 praise of her words was a sweet sound in his ears. 
 
 "Well, glory be," said he. "There's many a one I've 
 played to for them to be singin* or dancin', has never said 
 the like of that to me before." 
 
 Whether that were invitation or not for her to be flattering 
 him still, it was readily she accepted it. This was the narrow 
 way to his confidence and all the subtlety and charm of her 
 sex she drew forth from herself to take it. 
 
 "Shure, I never heard a man had his sight, ' said she, 
 "could play the way ye can with the strings." 
 
 He began telling her how he had learnt his fiddle, sitting 
 by roadsides in the hills and down the valleys and listening to 
 the tunes would be always in the air for those were dark f r/>m 
 the hour of their birth. For a time, while his pride was riding 
 him with speech, she let him go on with his stories of the 
 hours he had played at this dance or that at the fairs, without
 
 THE MIRACLE 299 
 
 stopping to put the resin on his bow or wasting his hand for 
 a drink. 
 
 ' 'Twas a long hour ye played that night of the threshing 
 feast," she interrupted him at last, "and shure, when 'twas 
 all gone they were, didn't ye start again with that tune him- 
 self was askin' ye for?" 
 
 "Ah that's a grand one," said he, and there was a linger- 
 ing in his voice with the memory of it, so that she knew his 
 heart was gone back to the night in the hills when it had come 
 with the wind in the air to his ears. 
 
 "That's a tune would be takin' ye away, the time ye'd hear 
 it played well with the soft rise and the fall of it." 
 
 "Does it take ye away as ye play?" she asked. 
 
 He nodded his head. 
 
 "Shure it didn't take ye away that night." 
 
 "Why so?" 
 
 "Weren't ye askin' for the feet to be dancin' to it ye sit- 
 tin' on the table there and knockin* the tap of yeer heels?" 
 
 "Did I ask that?" 
 
 She held a sudden breath. 
 
 "Ye did of course." 
 
 "Yirra, who was there to be dancin' and they all gone ?" 
 
 She laughed aloud. 
 
 "Wasn't I dancin' meself !" she said and, understanding 
 nothing of it, he heard the high rise in her voice. 
 
 "Ye were?" 
 
 "I was indeed. Maybe 'twas the tune itself took me away, 
 the time I fell down in a weakness on the floor. Shure, glory 
 be, ye haven't forgotten that, have ye, with yeerself and the 
 priest was there and ye pattin' me hand and himself runnin' 
 for the cold water to be throwin' over me face!" 
 
 " 'Tis not that I've forgotten," said the blind man, "but 
 meself askin' for the noise of the feet or the sound of any 
 dancin' I'd be hearin' at all. Well isn't that a strange thing
 
 300 THE MIRACLE 
 
 now, the way ye'd be doin' and sayin' things and there be 
 no knowing in yeerself what ye'd be sayin' or doin' at all." 
 He fell into a muse of thought, as though his life were 
 full of those things he had done and said if in his recollection 
 he could only recapture them. It was nodding his head he 
 was then and with sharp sounds in his breath as thoughts 
 knocked at the door of his memory and, when he opened it, 
 ran away.
 
 IV 
 
 THERE was thunder hanging low about the hills of 
 Doon that evening when Mary went home. Her heart 
 laughed at it. Scarcely a civil word had her father 
 spoken to her that day. The thought of it came lightly to her 
 now. She hated him in her heart no less than she had ever 
 done. Doubtless he hated her too. But he knew nothing and 
 could never know. Fear was gone from her hatred. She 
 felt an exultant satisfaction in it that could easily have 
 turned to laughter with every other thought she had. 
 
 Let him believe the faeries had taken her shure, let 
 him believe! What harm could that do to her or the 
 sweet tenderness there was in life for her now? 
 
 As she went up the street to the back road where their 
 cottage was, she passed Maggie, the sister of that Kelleher 
 who had been drowned. The body had been recovered from 
 the water. They had waked him two days before. The 
 new curate had buried him in that grave-yard by the upper 
 road. She had not gone. Fennel had persuaded her it 
 would only be a fret to herself if she went. She was 
 willing to obey. None sought her company now and surely 
 they did not want it then in the sorrow that was on them. 
 Maybe he had realised that too. They never spoke of 
 it. Maybe that was why he had dissuaded her. 
 
 Maggie was approaching her on the same side of the 
 street. At the first sight of Mary and for no apparent 
 purpose, she crossed out of the way of their meeting. The 
 deliberateness of the action caught her in surprise. She 
 realised it had been done with intent. In that moment 
 
 301
 
 302 THE MIRACLE 
 
 she had not grasped what the intention was. Some quick 
 determination in her urged her to test its meaning. She 
 gave her some words of salutation across the street. Maggie 
 kept her eyes away and hurried by. 
 
 A stupor of confusion then fell over Mary's thoughts 
 as she walked home. In her heart she knew what it meant. 
 It was in her mind only she refused to accept its meaning. 
 Was that what her father was thinking too? Was that 
 why he avoided her at every opportunity? Were they such 
 fools as to believe that she could bring them misfortune? 
 Did they think it was because of her that Kelleher, the 
 fisherman, had been drowned? This was a new thought 
 to take the place of that fear of her conscience. Her eyes 
 were staring at it as she walked. They were still staring 
 at it as she entered the door. All that evening, sitting by 
 the fire they fixed themselves upon that dark veil of signifi- 
 cance drawn close across the clear meaning it concealed. 
 
 For a long while Fennel was aware of her mood before 
 he spoke. Then, as often was his habit when they talked 
 together, he leant forward across the fire, stretching out 
 for her hand. She gave it and looked up. 
 
 "What's on ye?" he asked, gently. 
 
 She shook her head. 
 
 "There's something is on ye," he persisted. 
 
 She tried to shake her head again. The steady look 
 in his eyes broke down her wish for silence. Surely he 
 did not believe what they believed! Was this her penance, 
 her punishment? Was she to be isolated even from him? 
 
 The desire to know and to know all rushed upon her 
 then. It was things hidden she feared. 
 
 "Why was it Kelleher was drowned?" she asked. 
 
 It was the suddenness of her question that confused 
 him. The steadiness fell from his eyes. He turned then
 
 THE MIRACLE 303 
 
 to look in the fire. He looked anywhere for that moment 
 but at her. Then with a new firmness his eyes returned. 
 
 ' 'Twas rowin' careless they were," said he, "and the 
 boat full as it could hold with the catch. Shure, 'twas no 
 more than a twist or turn of them would do it and once the 
 water was in with that weight of fish there was, who could 
 save her? Didn't Cronin say himself 'twas pullin' careless 
 they were and they pressin' on to be gettin' into the cove?" 
 
 She held him straightly with her look. 
 
 "Is that what ye believe yeerself ?" she asked. 
 
 "It is." 
 
 "Why did Maggie Kelleher cross the street a while since 
 the time I was comin' home and she with no tongue in her 
 head or a look for me would be in her eyes when I'd be 
 givin' a good-evenin' to her?" 
 
 He knew well why that was. There was talk at the wake 
 and the burying, too, they had not been able to keep away 
 from his ears. But what was the good of his telling her and 
 fretting her with the words of it? Wasn't it for that reason, 
 knowing what they were saying, he had kept her away 
 and what was the sense in telling her now when it was 
 past? 
 
 He made no answer and suddenly she went down on her 
 knees on the floor at his side, catching at his arms and 
 searching his face. 
 
 "Tell me!" she whispered. "Can't I see ye know why 
 a thing like that would be in her mind to be doin' it to 
 me ? What is it ? Shure, I'm not afraid. I'm not afraid !" 
 
 They did not notice how it was herself who first spoke 
 of fear. He put an arm on her shoulder and held her 
 closely to him. 
 
 "Shure, 'tis only a lot of talk they have amongst them- 
 selves. Yirra, what's talk! There's no hurt in it." 
 
 "Well what is their talk? What is it they're sayin'?"
 
 304 THE MIRACLE 
 
 She dragged it from him, all he had heard in the street 
 and on the sea-wall, at the wake and when they were burying 
 the body of Michael Kelleher up there in the grave-yard. 
 It was she, taken those two years ago by Themselves in the 
 hills they were remembering and it was that way mis- 
 fortune had come to the fisherman, the time she was wait- 
 ing there with her baby in her arms by the cove. 
 
 "Shure, what one would be comin' home safe?" they 
 had asked each other, "with the like of herself waitin' 
 there for them? Wasn't it a wonder himself had been 
 kept from harm these two years with her waitin' always by 
 the fire?" 
 
 With the fast holding of her hands, Mary clung to him. 
 
 "Is it the way ye believe that yeerself !" she cried to him. 
 "Wisha, God help us isn't it a sweet time the days have 
 been with our two selves sittin' here and surely to God 
 'tis no harm but the end of yeer lonesomeness I've 
 brought ye." 
 
 ' 'Tis a sweet time it's been," he comforted her, "and 
 it's not meself could be thinkin' there's any harm comin' 
 with ye at all. Wasn't it careless they were with the 
 sweeps and wouldn't that happen to anny man if 'twas the 
 diwle itself was waitin' for him?" 
 
 He held her so closely that she clung to him no more 
 but lay there with little breaths now of her weeping and 
 most of her fear driven away. So long as he did not 
 believe, that was all she cared. Let her father and all 
 of them think what they liked! She need never go to the 
 farm again. Never any more need she be seen in the 
 street. But, oh, to be taken far away from it all! There 
 was completeness of life she needed, with her child and 
 in the strength of those arms that were holding her. 
 
 With the impulse of that, she was suddenly whispering 
 in his ears to take her away.
 
 THE MIRACLE 305 
 
 "Haven't ye money is put by?" she pleaded with him, 
 "and couldn't we go to America? Isn't there many have 
 gone there to be gettin' away from the starvin' waste of 
 this land? Take me away!" she begged of him,. "Ah, 
 shure, take me away! Isn't it hatin' this place I am and 
 won't there be new life comin* to us over there?" 
 
 He set her away from him, so that she was sitting down 
 on the floor at his side, watching him, waiting for his 
 answer, content so long as she could see his thought of 
 it to let him be staring in a silence at the fire. 
 
 Presently he stood up. With a sharp eagerness her eyes 
 followed him as he went to the bed. From beneath it, 
 where well she knew it was, he pulled out the same wooden 
 box that was lying on the table that night when the priest 
 had helped him with his counting. In a questioning silence, 
 she joined him as he laid it on the table. 
 
 "Are we goin'?" she whispered. "Is it really goin' away 
 from here we are?" 
 
 "What's the fear is on ye?" he asked her gently. 
 
 She shivered and opened the lid of the box. 
 
 "Let ye begin countin' to see is there enough," said she, 
 and with her hands and her reckoning she helped, laying 
 out the little heaps of measured pounds till they were cov- 
 ering the table. Once he stopped in his calculations. 
 
 "D'ye know when I did this last ?" said he. 
 
 She shook her head and when he told her, it was some 
 unaccountable fear she had, with no room for regret or even 
 a sadness in her memory. 
 
 "Go on countin' !" she whispered, "ye'll forget how much 
 it is. There's twenty-four is here. Go on." 
 
 He had drawn upon his savings for their marriage. Now 
 and again he had given her money to buy things for her- 
 self. There had been the doctor from Doonvarna. Thirty- 
 eight pounds was all that remained. She looked up at him,
 
 306 THE MIRACLE 
 
 eagerly waiting, feeling out with her hand to touch his arm. 
 Her lips were parted. Life was a pause with her, even in 
 her breathing. 
 
 "We could go," he said presently, "and bi the time I'd 
 sold me boat and the nets I have, there'd be a matter of 
 twenty or thirty pounds maybe for ourselves and we over 
 there. But shure, what would I be doin' in a strange place, 
 with no work to me hands?" 
 
 Weren't there fishermen in every land she asked him, 
 and couldn't he be turning his hand to that which suited 
 him best? 
 
 He led her with him back to the fire, seating himself and 
 holding both her hands so that he could be looking at her. 
 
 "Is it feared ye are of the things they'd be say in' of ye?" 
 
 "It is," said she. 
 
 "Shure, words can't harm ye." 
 
 She knew only one thing to say, that he should take her 
 away from that place and it was down on her knees she 
 said it, pleading with the softness of her voice and tears 
 gathering in pools in her eyes. For it was not only the 
 people in Ardnashiela she felt were against her. What did 
 she really care for the disregard of Maggie Kelleher or the 
 silence of her father and the furtive look now always in his 
 eyes when he met her own? She need go no more into the 
 village. Her father had his paid hand to be milking the 
 cows and doing the work that she had done. There was 
 no need for her ever to go to the farm again. 
 
 It was not so much the people she feared, as this sense 
 that her life itself was a lie which something, stronger than 
 her motive to tell it, was binding her to with fetters clamped 
 about her soul. 
 
 In those two years she had touched the hem of the veil 
 of peace. Forever this seemed to cast her from it now. 
 Never among all those about her would she be able to
 
 THE MIRACLE 307 
 
 pass beyond the lie that guarded her and find that full vision 
 of contentment her heart had glimpsed and now so dearly 
 longed for. 
 
 Once away from there, away from them all, the sight 
 of those hills of Doon, the desolate road through the bog- 
 land, it even seemed to her she could tell him all and once 
 told, her life could begin again. 
 
 She caught his hand in her hands, looking up and plead- 
 ing piteously with her eyes. 
 
 "Ye're the only one," she murmured, "would believe I 
 was not bringin' harm to them and how can there be anny 
 joy at all for me or the both of us with them thinkin' there's 
 nothing but misfortune I'd be havin* in me face?" 
 
 How could he refuse? Even if it meant the beginning 
 of his life all over again, how could he refuse her? Was 
 there anything he knew of in life he would not give her 
 if he could? There was nothing. 
 
 "We'll go away," he said quietly, "as soon as the time of 
 the fishin' is over this year and I've got all I can out of 
 me boat we'll go away. Shure, God help us, haven't I pair 
 of hands and would I break the world for ye I would 
 indeed !" 
 
 She cried out aloud as she came into his arms.
 
 FEAR is contagion, a slow and subtle fever reaching 
 its climacteric by imperceptible degrees. It is no 
 sudden disorder of the mind, but lingers and germi- 
 nates in the blood, feeding here and there upon the little 
 events in the lives of those who suffer from it. 
 
 For those two years since Mary Kirwan's disappearance, 
 the disease had been planted in the minds of all those in 
 Ardnashiela and in none so virulently as in James Kirwan. 
 There was only Fennel, the fisherman, it had not infected. 
 Love becomes immune from fear. He believed no less that 
 They had taken her that night. His faith in that unseen 
 world was not diminished. A greater faith had set it aside. 
 No more had happened to him than that. She had become 
 to him his highest and closest touch with life. 
 
 This is the determination of all; how near and at what 
 point of spiritual altitude they find their contact. In the 
 Christ story, the point of altitude is such that love conquers 
 death, for love is the only emotion, translated into various 
 qualities of selflessness, which lifts the contact with life 
 transcendently above the laws of nature. 
 
 There was no vestige of that emotion in the whole com- 
 position of James Kirwan. His touch with life was only 
 where nature laid her hands upon him. She had laid her 
 hands upon him and deeply smitten him with that fever 
 of fear since the night of Mary's disappearance. 
 
 Secretly in his heart, he wished often that Fennel had 
 never brought her back. Lacking the courage to tell her 
 openly that he did not want her help on the farm, yet using 
 
 308
 
 THE MIRACLE 309 
 
 it with no great gratitude when she gave it, he had done 
 his best to show her she was no longer welcome in her 
 home. 
 
 To his ears had come easily the stories of all those little 
 things that had happened in the village during those two 
 years, for which Mary alone was held responsible. She 
 had stopped in the street and spoken to Mrs. Cotter's young- 
 est girl as she was passing by. The next day the child 
 was sick and brought to its bed for two weeks. And what 
 was that' but herself putting her eyes on her? God alone 
 knew what she said for the child was in a fever and could 
 not remember a word of it. 
 
 It had rained the year before when the corn was being 
 cut and Mary was there in the fields, sheaf-binding. There 
 had been no sign of rain the previous evening. The wind 
 had been set in a dry quarter for three days before and then 
 in the midst of cutting the barley, it had come down, sheet- 
 ing with solid water. A good part of the crop had been 
 nearly ruined. Would that have happened at all if she had 
 not been there in the fields to be bringing it? 
 
 There was no virtue of loyalty in him. Much that he 
 heard when he was playing cards at Creasy's licensed 
 house was said in his presence because he made no conceal- 
 ment of his suspicions. 
 
 "Didn't I always know," said he sometimes at his own 
 fireside, "there was a queer drop was in her? Hadn't she 
 the look of it always in her eyes? Shure I knew well that 
 black dog was one of Themselves with her. Didn't she 
 have it sleepin' with her in the room at nights? Maybe 
 'twas in her own bed she had it. And well I knew that 
 time I had it killed in the barley field, 'twas not the last bit 
 of harm she'd be bringin' me." 
 
 He thought these things to himself, by day and night 
 sometimes, when his sleep was not coming to him. Through
 
 310 THE MIRACLE 
 
 those two years the fever accumulated with its poison in 
 his blood. And then came the disaster to Fennel's boat and 
 that man God help him ! drowned in a still sea, the way 
 it was not the rough of the waters had him at all, but her- 
 self waiting there on the rocks had brought him the mis- 
 chance of his death. 
 
 He was not the only one who thought that, but in him 
 it was vehement, rising above the pitch of the hatred in his 
 fear to a lurking desire for vengeance. What difference 
 was there between one who did murder and another who 
 brought with her the misfortune of death? He asked him- 
 self that question. He asked it by his own fireside when 
 his wife was not there and the blind man, turning the bel- 
 lows wheel, seemed no more than an animal to whom he 
 might speak his thoughts aloud. 
 
 "If it isn't murder to be bringin' death to a man," he ex- 
 claimed with no context to the thought he was voicing, 
 "shure what is it in the name of God?" 
 
 The blind man made no answer. In the silence that 
 was expected of him, he continued turning the bellows 
 wheel, till the fire was throwing its sparks into the black 
 mouth of the chimney and there were red embers at the 
 edge for him to be lighting his pipe. 
 
 No one heard the storm of thunder that night after Mary 
 had been for her last time at the farm. In all Ardnashiela 
 she was the only one lying awake, watching the sudden 
 illuminations in the room as the lightning flared through 
 their little window. 
 
 They were going away. The sweetness of life was hold- 
 ing out its hands, beckoning to her once again. They were 
 going away from the sound of all those memories that had 
 their voice in the winds and the breaking sea, from the sight 
 of them too always remindful in the headlands of the cliffs 
 and that long purple line of the hills of Doon.
 
 THE MIRACLE 311 
 
 Once, for a time, she had thought in the security of her 
 growing contentment, that she could play with those memo- 
 ries tender and gentle things that could never hurt her 
 again. That which they brought her now was more terrible 
 than pain. She was afraid. 
 
 With the looks she had seen in the eyes of every one, and 
 now with what she had heard and all she could imagine was 
 yet untold, her memories and everything that had happened 
 to her were assuming the significance of some avenging 
 and relentless power. From every side it seemed to be 
 approaching and surrounding her. In the sound of the 
 thunder that night, in those quick vindictive eyes of lightning 
 that peered with their flashes into the room and seemed 
 above all to be searching for the dread that was in her 
 soul, she felt the advancing presence of it. 
 
 There was only one escape she could see. That lay open, 
 a thread of narrow light piercing the darkness. They were 
 going away. As soon as the season of the fishing was 
 over, they were leaving that place forever. It was this 
 which seemed to her of all the most uplifting proof of 
 Fennel's love for her. Could any man have done more? 
 
 For well she knew what a wrench it would be to him 
 to sell his boat and nets and begin life again in a new 
 world. Yet he had not failed her. They were going away. 
 In little more than a month, the fishing would be over. If 
 the weather did not hold, it might be less. 
 
 His hand lay on the pillow beside his head as he slept. 
 Through all the noise of the storm, he was breathing like 
 a child. His faith had held with him and had not turned 
 to fear. There was no suspicion of her in his heart as in 
 the hearts of all those others. He could lie beside her there 
 in the restful peace of sleep. Was it true that she brought 
 misfortune to others ? Was it misfortune she had brought to 
 the priest? Might she yet bring it to him there beside her?
 
 312 THE MIRACLE 
 
 A sharp cry of dread forced its way between her lips. 
 Then a fork of lightning splashed the room with a pallid 
 yellow light. She saw the hand with its coarse weather- 
 broken skin and the heavy knuckles lying on the pillow 
 beside her. 
 
 It was no delicate thought she had, except that she would 
 not wake him. Just an impulsive gratitude she felt. Gladly 
 she could have hidden herself in his arms. As it was, she 
 kissed his hand and a while later found her sleep. 
 
 The next morning, the hired girl at the farm came in from 
 the dairy into the kitchen to inform Kirwan that all the milk 
 of the evening before had soured in the pans. There was 
 no milk was fresh, she told him, for him to be selling in the 
 village that day and it might as well be given to the pigs for 
 all the butter it would be making, so rank it was. 
 
 The farmer looked at his wife. She returned his glance 
 with no meaning, no expectancy, no wonder in her eyes. 
 
 "D'ye hear that !" he shouted. 
 
 She nodded her head. She had heard. 
 
 "Wasn't herself here yesterday?" he asked. 
 
 "She was," replied the girl. 
 
 "Was she in the dairy at all?" 
 
 "She was askin' couldn't she help skim the milk." 
 
 He strode to the door and took down his hat from its peg. 
 
 "Where are ye goin'?" asked Mrs. Kirwan imperturbably. 
 
 "Never mind where I'm goin'," he exclaimed and went 
 out with his coat flying open in the wind. 
 
 With hasty steps in which there was a driven impulse 
 rather than a desire for speed, he paced down the farm road, 
 turning to the left on the Doonvarna road and hurrying on 
 till he came to Shaughnessy's cabin. 
 
 He had to wake the old man up from his sleep and it was 
 with no gentle hand he did it. Shaughnessy sat blinking his 
 eyes, with the stupor of sleep hanging heavily on the pale
 
 THE MIRACLE 313 
 
 lids. Without pause or explanation for his coming, Kirwan 
 began at once. 
 
 "Didn't ye tell me, the day she was married, 'twas not a 
 sup of food would pacify Themselves always? Didn't ye 
 tell me that?" 
 
 "I did." 
 
 "Then what will pacify Them now, for as long as she's 
 about this place, 'tis destroyed I'll be with me farmin' and 
 the work I'd be doin' on the land ?" 
 
 He enumerated all the things that had happened in those 
 two years, each one of which he found no difficulty with the 
 ready imagination of his suspicions to be relating to Mary 
 herself. The control of his emotions was out of balance. 
 Fear was mastering him and riding his thoughts with the 
 spurs of hatred. 
 
 He walked up and down that room with the stale stench 
 of blood that was there in his nostrils, cursing the day she 
 was born and calling down the mercy of God upon himself 
 for begetting her. 
 
 "What can ye do for me now !" she shouted. "Wasn't it 
 yeerself, with the charm ye had and I puttin' it on the sill 
 of the door that night, had her brought back to us and 
 amn't I wishin' every day since that time, 'twas throwin' it 
 in the sea I was the time I was bringin' it home?" 
 
 For a long while, Shaughnessy sat rocking himself to and 
 fro in his bed. As the farmer watched, the sharp twinkle 
 of a cunning thought took a light to his eyes. 
 
 "Let ye be workin' it out in yeer mind," said he, "for 
 there's diwle another beast I'll be lettin' ye have if 'tis not 
 helpin' me through the trouble is on me now." 
 
 The old man made no motion that he had heard. Without 
 his trade, there was no living for him in Ardnashiela. Five 
 miles away was the nearest farm. He knew the soft bulk 
 of his limbs would not be carrying him that distance to be
 
 314 THE MIRACLE 
 
 fetching his sheep. If Kirwan took to killing his own beasts 
 as some of the men did in the isolated farms of that neigh- 
 bourhood, it was into Doonvarna he would have to be going 
 in his shame to the Union. 
 
 Yet there was no sign of fear he betrayed at the sound of 
 Kirwan's threat. Just swaying himself, he sat there and it 
 was a long time before he spoke. 
 
 "A beast's blood is no good," he said at last. 
 
 Kirwan watched and listened with his lips parted. 
 
 " Tis not the blood of anny beast would pacify Them- 
 selves. Haven't They left her the evil eye and 'tis there 
 is the harm she's bringin'. A beast's blood is no good." 
 
 Below his breath, Kirwan heard his voice muttering as he 
 asked was it blood or what charm was it at all would ever 
 take away the evil eye from one once it was put upon them. 
 
 "If it was her own blood we could get," said Shaughnessy 
 with an impassive voice. 
 
 There was one thing he knew as well as, if not better than, 
 Kirwan. Not anything in spells or charms could remove 
 the curse of the evil eye. Once They had put it upon man 
 or woman, there was no contriving it away. Those in his 
 knowledge that had had the stroke of it, it was never safe 
 to be trusting oneself with them again. 
 
 He had no fear as Kirwan had, unless it were his fear 
 of the farmer's threat. But it made no coward of him. He 
 knew with shrewd intuitiveness the kind of man he dealt 
 with. Cruelty in the butcher was a deep delight in his 
 nature. When they saw him driving home his beast for 
 the slaughter, they were close to the truth when they thought 
 they saw a gleam of joy in Shaughnessy's eyes. Those ex- 
 piring struggles of the wretched animal in his hands were 
 moments to him when he felt the pleasant sense of life, the 
 sense of power, the consciousness of his own virility. 
 
 Kirwan was far too afraid of death to kill like that in
 
 THE MIRACLE 315 
 
 cold blood and find an expression of the vigour of himself 
 in killing. In terror only could he take life. It was in a 
 clear conviction of mind Shaughnessy knew that. This was 
 how he had killed the black dog in the barley field. In such 
 a horror of fear only would he rid himself now of the curse 
 that was upon them all. For what but misfortune to him- 
 self would Mary bring with the evil that was in her, if he 
 failed with his charm and Kirwan carried out his threat? 
 
 She must be put away, as the black dog had been put away 
 and that was not like killing a sheep. He knew well enough 
 what murder was and there was no fear in him great enough 
 for him ever to commit it. The meaningless glance of his 
 eye lingered over Kirwan's face as he considered how the 
 witless fear of that nature he knew so well could be driven 
 to the blind deed of murder. 
 
 Her own blood ! What might not happen ? His imagina- 
 tion worked in him underground, never rising to the surface 
 of clear vision. He could not foresee what would happen. 
 But her own blood! How he did not know, but it seemed 
 a step in the direction he sought. Her own blood! The 
 sight of it perhaps. He felt none himself but knew there 
 was fear in the sight of blood. 
 
 "If 'twas her own blood we could get," he repeated. 
 
 Kirwan knew there was a pallor over his face. Fear was 
 already rising with his thoughts and the sight they brought 
 him fear in a thin stream, oozing through the feeble 
 sluice-gates that secured his soul against the torrent and 
 terror of life. He felt the sweat start out upon his lip. 
 
 "Well then yeerself can get it," he said quickly. "Isn't it 
 handy ye are with a knife, the way ye could be drawin' the 
 bad drop out of her and she not hurt at all?" 
 
 A smile of pity parted the placid curve of Shaughnessy's 
 lips. More than ever like a woman he looked in that mo-
 
 316 THE MIRACLE 
 
 merit, a seared woman and old, smiling at the petulant folly 
 of a little child. 
 
 "Ah shure, there's no good meself doin' it," said he. 
 "Yirra, what harm have I had from her? Maybe Kelleher 
 the smith, would do it for the misfortune she brought on 
 himself. But 'tis your own blood she is and I wouldn't 
 swear what way the charm would work if 'twas anny but 
 yeerself did it." 
 
 "How will I get it?" 
 
 "Faith, isn't it easy enough to be slippin' a little bit of her 
 skin with a knife?" 
 
 "Easy! Shure, glory be, isn't there himself there is al- 
 ways with her. I wouldn't dare be touchin' a hair of her 
 head while he'd be in the place." 
 
 "Can't ye get her down to the farm ?" 
 
 "I might." 
 
 " 'Tis the only way to be riddin' yeerself of the bad drop 
 is in her," said Shaughnessy, "and that's not so sure as 
 what might be." 
 
 "What's that?" Kirwan wet his lips. 
 
 The old man squeezed the water out of his eyes and from 
 his fingers flicked the drop of it on to the floor. 
 
 "Oh there's no talkin' about the other," said he. "Let 
 ye be doin' what I tell ye and maybe she'll never trouble ye 
 again." 
 
 It was all against his will and with fear driving him that 
 Kirwan enquired what other way he meant. He had a dread 
 to be hearing it in an apprehension of what it was, yet the 
 words came involuntarily from his lips. 
 
 "Maybe 'twould be easier," said he. 
 
 Fear clung to the little hopes he had. 
 
 Shaughnessy shook his head and, in the silence through 
 which they looked at each other, all understanding passed. It 
 was the sure way, that other way the way he had rid him-
 
 THE MIRACLE 317 
 
 self of the curse of the black dog. The old man was quite 
 right. There was no talking about the other. He had not 
 talked about it that day he had taken the dog out into the 
 barley field. 
 
 He shuddered with the terror there was in life.
 
 VI 
 
 FOR the next few days in the fields or the yard or by 
 the kitchen fire, Kirwan pondered over Shaughnessy's 
 advice, contriving and scheming in his mind how it 
 could be carried out. He feared the violence of Fennel and 
 had that been all, would never have persisted. But the 
 physical fear of violence was nothing in him to those appre- 
 hensions and forebodings which lurked in hidden thoughts 
 and leapt upon him unawares. And when he had achieved 
 the thing he sought to do, would it avail? Was there not 
 only one way to rid himself forever of the curse she had 
 brought upon his house? And that would be murder. He 
 was amazed to find that that thought did not frighten him. 
 Almost dispassionately he could regard it, telling himself a 
 man would be a fool indeed to risk his neck, though God 
 knew, anything was better than the terrors of a thing unseen. 
 Still, so long as it was not close about him then, he could 
 reason with himself. It was in those troubled contempla- 
 tions, a fretting irritant to all his thoughts, that sometimes 
 he spoke aloud and heard no sound of his voice. 
 
 "Ye couldn't do it," he muttered one evening. "It isn't 
 in ye to be doin' it." 
 
 "Be doin' what?" asked Mrs. Kirwan, searching his face. 
 
 He started to the consciousness of what he must have 
 said, and, mumbling an evasive answer, had gone out into 
 the fields where the night was falling, walking up and down 
 through the stubble, mistrusting his own tongue. 
 
 When Mary had not come down to the farm for three 
 days, he grew easier in his thoughts. Fear turned to pro- 
 
 316
 
 THE MIRACLE 319 
 
 crastination. If only she would keep away no harm might 
 come of her. It was the very sound of that word blood 
 that frightened him. By the time a week had passed and 
 she had made no appearance, his fears, easily roused and 
 easily soothed, had fallen from the sharp stress of fever. 
 Only when he remembered the hatred she had flung at him 
 that night when he had spoken to her of Fennel, did he 
 doubt his wisdom of postponement. He had laughed and 
 made nothing of it then, but for all the offers of her help 
 about the place, he knew well how hatred like that, as she 
 had spoken it, with quick light in her eyes and the thin, 
 white line of her lips, does not easily die in a living heart. 
 And now, with the power of evil that she had, at what mo- 
 ment and in what way might she not hurt him with her 
 vengeance ? 
 
 But to draw that bad drop of blood from her ! In quieter 
 moments, he was not blind to the craze of madness of which 
 fear could drive him. While he was beating out the life of 
 the black dog in the barley field, he had known nothing of 
 what he did. But afterwards he had seen himself when 
 terror was gone. It was mad he had been. He knew and 
 admitted that. The sight of the blood of the little beast 
 and the life that was still in it had frenzied him. Supposing 
 she would not consent that she struggled that he cut 
 deeper than he meant! 
 
 He sickened sometimes at the sight of the pictures his 
 imagination recalled to him. Only too ready was he to 
 procrastinate. He made no comment upon her absence. He 
 sent no message asking for her help. All he did in prepara- 
 tion was to sharpen his knife upon the grindstone in the 
 yard glad when it was done glad when it was lying back 
 again in the depth of his pocket out of sight. 
 
 To Mary, going down into the village as the evening fell 
 and only when it was necessary to buy food at Foley's shop,
 
 320 THE MIRACLE 
 
 ignorant of those things that were happening at the farm, 
 time dragged itself by in a weary procession of days. Fen- 
 nel could make no certain promise that they would go to 
 America. Nevertheless he had given his word that as soon 
 as the fishing season was over, they would leave Ardnashiela 
 and North or East or whichever way it was, they would put 
 the long miles between them and that place. 
 
 Once she was sure of this, then, as in the manner of slow 
 water falling drop by drop, the days began to loiter away 
 with her counting of them. It was not difficult to hide her 
 fears from him. A smile could dispel his suspicions. He 
 had promised more than it had seemed possible that any man 
 would do for a woman. Summoning all her courage, she set 
 herself to face those remaining weeks with a cheerfulness 
 that should hide her distress from him. Partly it was hidden 
 from herself. She did not actually know herself what it 
 was she feared. 
 
 The sense of calamity was about her. She was aware of 
 little more than that. Every time she went down into the 
 village, even in the dark of evening, there were sullen 
 glances from those who had once looked at her with pity. 
 
 She was half conscious, without the materialisation of 
 words to name it in her thoughts, of a power to do her harm. 
 It was not in this person or in that. It was not in Maggie 
 Kelleher she feared it, or in any one of those who sped their 
 sombre looks across her as she passed down the street. 
 There were those in Foley's shop who drew away from her 
 when she went in. Her fear was not of these. In all that 
 place there seemed to be not only the wish to do her evil, 
 but behind it some indefinite force, slowly encompassing her 
 just as she had seemed to feel the ghosts of death surround- 
 ing her that evening in the Gap of Doon. 
 
 In some voiceless instinct of perception, she reached the 
 faint recognition of their faith. It was far from her power
 
 THE MIRACLE 321 
 
 to realise its deep significance. It was not in her to appre- 
 ciate how life treads always, however wide its hold, upon 
 the verges of the unknown. She could not have reasoned 
 how with just that quality of faith it leans out into the void 
 and, with its beliefs, preserves itself from the abomination 
 of desolation in the supportless realms of space. 
 
 All in sensation that she felt in conscious impulse was 
 the craving desire to shout aloud the truth, to cry out to 
 them, there in the street, that it was none of the faeries that 
 had taken her, but life only in a mad moment of love. Then 
 they would understand the empty folly of all they believed 
 and if it was shame it brought her, there were moments 
 when even that seemed better than this accumulating sus- 
 picion of evil, gathering with all the sounds of fate about 
 her. 
 
 Nothing but her care, her pride and tenderness for her 
 man held her from this as the days went by. As well there 
 was the faint light of that narrow way of escape, distant 
 though it seemed those days, beyond which she had her mo- 
 ments of vision of the sweetness of life she had known with 
 her child and him. With all the courage in her soul, arming 
 her against the heaped forebodings of fate, she summoned 
 the strength of her spirit to meet the weary waiting of the 
 days. 
 
 The weather held. The wind from the West persisted. 
 Nearly every day there were shoals of sprat and mackerel 
 and quantities of pollock and whiting in the Bay. 
 
 "If we go on this way," Fennel informed her, " 'twill 
 be the best year ever I had at the fishin'. Maybe 'tis to 
 America we'll be goin' yet." 
 
 No one was catching fish anywhere else along the coast. 
 Fennel was sometimes taking his hauls into Doonvarna 
 around the headlands and getting an exceptional price for 
 them.
 
 322 THE MIRACLE 
 
 He laughed at the good fortune that was coming to him. 
 
 " Tis none of the bad luck ye're bringin' me," he said to 
 her. "Didn't I know always 'twas the kindness of life ye 
 had for me from that day when I first saw ye milkin' the 
 cows ?" 
 
 She laughed with him, but felt none of it in her heart. 
 When would it end, she cried to herself. When would the 
 weather break and the wind turn ? Each morning when first 
 she woke, she looked out of the window at the little ships of 
 the lofty clouds, sailing high above the water line with no 
 freight of rain. 
 
 They were always coming from the West. 
 
 It was about ten days after her last visit to the farm, 
 when Fennel was out with the nets in the middle of the bay 
 where she could see his boat at work. She was sitting in 
 the open doorway, for even the far sight of him out there on 
 the water was a comfort to the timid thing her heart had 
 become. 
 
 Except when there was a burying in the grave-yard on 
 that upper road, few passed that way. The cliff road, where 
 they had lived before, was shorter to the headlands. When- 
 ever she heard any one coming, she withdrew into the cot- 
 tage and closed the door, watching who it was from within 
 behind the pieces of lace curtain she had hung in the 
 window. 
 
 The sun was as hot as ever that morning the clouds as 
 high, the wind as faintly blowing in a steady stream of 
 warmth from the West. Presently, as she sat there sewing, 
 a sound, familiar more in her heart than her ears, grew into 
 the silence around her. She held her needle with a stitch 
 half made. It was the tapping tapping tapping of a stick 
 along the road. 
 
 With no thought conscious to arrest it, her heart stood 
 still. She stood up and stepped down from the doorway and
 
 THE MIRACLE 323 
 
 saw what she had supposed. It was the blind man from the 
 farm. Had he taken the wrong road? What was he doing 
 there? Did he know it was only to the cliffs that way could 
 lead him? 
 
 She stood there on the roadside silent, waiting to see what 
 he would do. If it was blind he had been from his birth, 
 the sense of touch he had, served him with faithful precision. 
 Feeling the grass tufts at the side of the road, he came 
 steadily onward towards her with unerring steps. 
 
 On the further side was a steep grass bank, sloping 
 precipitately to the backs of the cottages on the cliff road. 
 With true judgment for his safety, he had chosen his path 
 on that side on which the cottage stood. There the bank rose 
 above him. If he strayed from his path, he could only fall 
 against it. 
 
 What was it he wanted? If he was leaving the farm 
 again, why had he come that way ? She waited, almost with 
 her breath held as she watched his approach. 
 
 With the first outer wall of the cottage, the grass tufts 
 ceased. His stick, feeling out like the antennas of a moth 
 in the blindness of light, struck the stone of the wall. He 
 paused and raised his head. She could see the knowledge 
 with its accompaniment of calculation that had come to him. 
 Then, tapping the wall, he came on. She slipped into the 
 open door before he was near. 
 
 Along the wall, his stick came tapping and then, waving it, 
 with sensing curves and motions in the open space of the 
 door, he stopped and raised his hand again. 
 
 "Are ye there, Mary Fennel?" he said, as though even in 
 that silence, he were certain of her presence, he had not even 
 raised his voice to call her. It was in the mere address of his 
 words that he spoke out. 
 
 "What is it ye want, blind man?" she murmured. 
 
 "Is himself there?"
 
 324 THE MIRACLE 
 
 "He is not." 
 
 "Is he out in the Bay with the wind is in the West?" 
 
 "He is." 
 
 "Himself at the farm is wantin' ye." 
 
 She swallowed back a sensation in her throat. 
 
 "What's he wantin' me for?" 
 
 "There was a cow died in the sudden throw of a stroke 
 this morning." 
 
 She summoned the sound of her voice in her throat. 
 
 "What's that to do with meself ?" she asked. 
 
 He did not answer that. 
 
 " 'Twas himself told me to tell ye to be comin' down to 
 the farm," he said, "and shure, haven't I told ye? I have 
 indeed." 
 
 He turned up the white of his eye-balls and with such 
 direction of his blindness as he could imbue them with, he 
 rested them on her eyes as he leant forward into the doorway. 
 
 "Don't go," he whispered. " 'Tis I'm tellin' ye don't go." 
 
 When he had said that, he turned away. Down the length 
 of the cottage wall his stick tapped loudly and then fell to a 
 muffled note as it beat once more upon the tufts of grass at 
 the roadside.
 
 VII 
 
 MARY slept ill that night. She told her husband 
 nothing of the visit of the blind man. The pre- 
 sentiment that something would happen to prevent 
 their going away was shadowed across every thought that 
 passed in her mind. If she were to tell Fennel of her fears 
 that her father wished to do her harm, that might happen 
 which would fall across her slender passage of escape. The 
 fisherman was not one to bear malice, but nothing would 
 ever have induced an affection in him for James Kirwan, 
 while the slightest offence against a thing so near to his 
 heart as Mary might easily rouse him to the vehemence of 
 hatred. 
 
 All that had happened she kept closely to herself. When 
 Fennel informed her they had lost a cow down at the farm, 
 information of common property he had heard the moment 
 his boat came in, she professed to have heard it for the first 
 time. 
 
 Again that night before he went to sleep, she asked him, 
 as she had done so many times in the last few days, when he 
 thought the fishing would be over. 
 
 "How much longer will the wind last in the West?" she 
 said. 
 
 Sleep was close about him, hovering on his eyes. He mur- 
 mured something about good promise in the fall of the sun 
 and then sleep had him away from her. She lay alone with 
 her wakefulness, watching the stars that hung like dew in 
 a cobweb through the mesh of her lace curtains. The first 
 film of dawn had swept them away before she found her 
 
 325
 
 326 THE MIRACLE 
 
 release and lay with such little peace as there was in 
 her dreams beside him. 
 
 After his breakfast in the morning, Fennel went down to 
 the sea-wall to mend a patch in his net. 
 
 "Can't ye use that one is hangin' over the rafter?" she 
 asked him," and be sittin' with meself this mornin' till they 
 call ye out for the boat?" 
 
 He laid a hand about her shoulder. He told her he had 
 used that net all those days that his good luck was coming 
 to him and it was not putting it aside he'd be then for the 
 mere stretch of a rent was in it. 
 
 "Shure come and sit down with me yeerself, on the sea- 
 wall. There's the full warmth of the sun is there in that 
 place." 
 
 He stopped. For the moment until he saw her eyes, he 
 had forgotten the things they were all saying and the wish 
 there was in her to be away forever from Ardnashiela. 
 
 "Ye never go out at all these days," he said in another 
 tone. 
 
 She had her baby in her arms and did no more than look 
 at it and then at him. He took the little creature's face in 
 his fingers. The skin of its cheeks was soft like the skin of 
 a mushroom and his hands knotted and dark as the twisted 
 roots of a tree. 
 
 "Doesn't he sleep at all?" he asked, "and couldn't ye be 
 slippin' out for a while then? There's warm health for ye 
 in the light of the sun." 
 
 She would have health enough, she told him, once they 
 were away from Ardnashiela with the peace that would be 
 for her then. She roused the courage to smile and put up 
 her face when she had said it, asking with her eyes for a kiss 
 from him and, as he kissed her, she said 
 
 "I've never said I loved ye, Joe Fennel." 
 
 "Ye have not," said he.
 
 THE MIRACLE 327 
 
 "Then God hears me sayin' it now," she whispered. 
 
 He went out of the door and down the slope of the bank 
 to a passage between the cottages on the cliff road. There 
 were some through their open doors heard him singing as he 
 walked down to the sea-wall, and wondered what there could 
 be to drag a song out of him with the wife he had. 
 
 Mary stood looking after him till, head and shoulders, he 
 dropped out of sight below the sharp descent of the bank. 
 
 That was true what she had said. Tenderness had turned 
 to love, so different from that she had once known as to seem 
 a language in another tongue and in another world. She 
 thought of that other now as of some miracle that had hap- 
 pened, Fate choosing her out for the hidden meaning of it. 
 For surely if this was love, this quiet gentleness she felt in 
 her heart for her man, it was no less than a miracle that 
 other could have been. Out of time and space and the world 
 about, it had lifted her. She was all too conscious of what 
 was happening and could happen to her now. 
 
 Here she had no faith or trust in life. But then her belief 
 in the wonder of it transcended circumstance. It had 
 had wings. It flew as the gulls flew over the headlands, 
 mounting the utmost pinnacles of the wind, casting them- 
 selves down, immune, with rigid wing into the abysses of 
 the storm. 
 
 She loved now. That was true. A gentle fashion of love 
 only that had no urging passion of faith in it to nerve her 
 heart against that void of the unknown. Even in Fennel's 
 strength and the close protection of his arm, she had no 
 wholesome trust. There was something beyond her in that 
 place, from which, with all the confidence she had in him, 
 he could not save her. 
 
 These were her presentiments. Only the day before that 
 visit of the blind man had intensified them. She did not 
 know what that something was, but surely she felt the heavy
 
 328 THE MIRACLE 
 
 oppression of its presence. Sometimes she even wondered 
 whether it would not pursue her wherever they went. Never 
 once in her love for Father Costello had she felt the pressing 
 weight of evil. She allowed that she had committed sin, but 
 sin for which it seemed to her there was ease of absolution. 
 It was not this that followed her mind with fear, but more 
 the consciousness of that false foundation upon which now 
 the whole of her life was built. 
 
 With the indeterminate wanderings of these thoughts, 
 Fennel left her that morning when he went down to the sea- 
 wall. For a long while she stood at the doorway in the 
 bright heat of the sun, pursuing one consideration after 
 another to its vague and inconclusive issue. When at last 
 her eyes settled with a changed focus upon things she saw, 
 her baby was asleep in her arms. 
 
 He surely was something no retribution in life could rob 
 her of. She touched her lips first upon one of his eyes and 
 then upon the other. He did not wake. Carrying him over 
 to the bed, she laid him down. 
 
 Now she might be slipping out for a while an hour out 
 there alone on the headlands. More and more did her pre- 
 sentiments drive her to carry by herself the burden of her 
 thoughts. She kissed her baby again, mere breaths of kisses 
 about his neck and in the soft yellow down of his hair, then, 
 closing the door behind her, she went out. 
 
 The day was cloudless, the West wind faint and fitful that 
 carried with it the cries of the gulls out at sea and again in 
 moments let them fall to a breathless stillness. 
 
 Just such a day as that it had been when she had first gone 
 out in the boat with Fennel and seen that black figure, painted 
 without motion against the face of the rocks. 
 
 Her mind wandered uneasily about her memories, seeking 
 release from her forebodings in this or that, then, one after 
 another, casting them worthless aside. There was some
 
 THE MIRACLE 329 
 
 shiftless spirit of disquiet in her mind she could not escape. 
 She had had it the night before. She had wakened with it in 
 the morning. It would not be put away. 
 
 In a sudden moment, one of those imperative fears which 
 leap into being unawares, started in her thoughts the appre- 
 hension of an unknown danger to her child. Notwithstand- 
 ing all her efforts to put it away, the folly of it clung to her. 
 Yet what harm could come to him ? He was sure to sleep for 
 an hour at least. For scarcely fifteen minutes had she been 
 out. She tried to force herself to walk on. If apprehension 
 as unreasonable as this should master her, what mercy or 
 quiet would there be for her in life at all? 
 
 She knew just how far it was to go back, yet there was the 
 impulsive desire in her mind just to see and measure it with 
 her eye. She looked round over her shoulder. 
 
 On the cliff path by the first headland, she saw the figure 
 of a man. For an instant she stood still. In all those wide 
 stretches of heather and gorse and rock, across that still 
 breadth of sea, there seemed no life but his and hers. In 
 every sense of her body all of nature seemed dead to her but 
 just the life there was in him and the life there was in her. 
 The world about her was empty and void. Every memory, 
 every thought and every hope she had clung to to save herself 
 from that falling over the verge of the unknown, snatched 
 their support away. It was her father. 
 
 She looked about her with quick, starting eyes. There was 
 no debate in her mind, no question of why he sought her 
 there or whether it was her he sought at all. Her one thought 
 was to get away. 
 
 Over the rise of the next headland was the edge of rock 
 below the cliff's edge where she had talked that morning with 
 the priest. It could not be seen from the top of the cliff. 
 There was no beaten path to it. There was hiding there. 
 She caught her breath and she ran. Over the rise of the
 
 330 THE MIRACLE 
 
 headland she would be out of sight. He would not see where 
 she had gone. 
 
 A witlessness was come to her now in all her thoughts. 
 Did she think he would never find her ? Did she think she 
 could stay there all night? Was there real cause for her to 
 be running away from him at all? Two thoughts had the 
 high voice of terror in her mind above all others. She was 
 remembering him that evening in the barley field when he 
 killed her dog. She was hearing the voice of the blind man 
 as he said, "Don't go 'tis I'm tellin' ye don't go !" 
 
 At the crest of the headland's rise she looked back over 
 her shoulder again. He was running as well. Then a faint 
 cry leapt from her lips as she sped on. 
 
 It seemed to her in her descent of the cliff as her feet 
 slipped over the loose stones, that now it was only the repeti- 
 tion of life, the fateful recurrence of what had happened 
 when she was struggling over the potato field and heard those 
 two gun shots in the still air. Or again in the Gap of Doon 
 when the mist had flung down upon her from the hillside, 
 pursuing her with the ghosts of death. Now, here once more, 
 pursuit. No step she took held for her. The stones rattled 
 down the face of the cliff and fell with deep sounds into the 
 caverns and hollows below. 
 
 Breath was exhausted and all strength gone from her when 
 she reached the ledge of rock. In the fierce sunlight she lay 
 there, her face against the hot stone, with the sea pinks in 
 bloom about her. Between the distress of her breathing, she 
 listened with every sense. The cries of the gulls passed her 
 on a breath of wind. Then there was silence. They passed 
 again. Then silence once more silence all silence. 
 
 At last, from the cliff above her, the faint sound of her 
 name. 
 
 The stillness of death lay upon her. Only her nostrils 
 worked for her breath. When she heard it again it was
 
 THE MIRACLE 331 
 
 nearer. Had he seen her make the beginning of her descent ? 
 Would he find her in the end? What did he come for? 
 What did he want ? She rose to her knees to listen. In the 
 warm quiet of that sunlight, where there were bees hum- 
 ming over the heather tufts, and rock pigeons flying with no 
 alarm between the headlands, and a few sheep grazing peace- 
 fully on the short grass of the cliffs above, there she was 
 kneeling with hands clutching together and lips parted in 
 terror that was painted on her white face like a pale mask. 
 
 There and like that, Kirwan found her. It was as though 
 fate had chased her to its end. She could not move. She 
 could not cry out. She stared at him. 
 
 "What was it ye were runnin' for and hidin' down here ?" 
 he asked her with short breaths. 
 
 Even to that she could not reply. 
 
 "Why didn't ye come down yesterday to the farm when 
 I sent for ye?" 
 
 She shook her head and stood unsteadily to her feet, 
 moving such distance as the narrow ledge would give her 
 from him. 
 
 "Did the blind man tell ye what happened on us yester- 
 day?" 
 
 "He did." 
 
 "Did ye know the milk was soured a week or so ago ?" 
 
 Her answer was in her breath. He did not hear it. 
 
 "And me crops have been spoilt on me and Cotter's child 
 was sick a while back, and weren't ye waitin' there on the 
 rocks the time Michael Kelleher got his death?" 
 
 He had said it all, the whole count of her arraignment. 
 When he saw that mask of horror on her face, it was not, he 
 felt, that she was afraid of him. More and more as he stood 
 there with her close in that place, the sheer cliff dropping 
 down three hundred feet and more into the sea, fear of her 
 was lifting to a panic of alarm in him.
 
 332 THE MIRACLE 
 
 Why had he trusted himself there with her ? Wasn't it a 
 fool he had been to be coming out there on the cliffs alone 
 with one had the power of evil that was hers. As they stood 
 there, staring at each other, the very sound of their breathing 
 was a frightening noise in his ears. He spoke again to hear 
 himself speaking. 
 
 "There's a bad drop is in ye," he said, "aren't they all 
 sayin' that ? Tis not meself only." 
 
 His hand felt to his pocket. The knife was ready there. 
 Fixed as her eyes were upon his face, they were swift away 
 to see that movement of his hand. 
 
 "What is it ye're goin to do to me ?" she cried out. 
 The note in her voice shrilled through him and sickened 
 his heart with misgiving. That cry, as of one terrorised in 
 sleep, has the voice of the lowest instincts in it. It is scarce 
 human. He heard it then. It was of something that was not 
 human in her. He wished, with the name of God muttered 
 in his throat, he had never come out there to that place alone. 
 "Be still, blast ye!" said he but much more it was his 
 own heart he was silencing. And then he told why it was he 
 had sent for her and what it was he wanted now that he had 
 followed her out there. She listened, smothering the sound 
 of her breathing with her hand against her mouth. 
 
 Her blood ! And it was Shaughnessy had told him ! She 
 saw him then again when he moved towards her, as she had 
 seen him in the barley field with the frenzy of fear fuming 
 to murder in his face. All this was a trick and no mere folly 
 of belief. Her blood ! She knew well what he meant to do. 
 That cajoling note in his voice! That was how he had 
 enticed the dog out of the house and then dragged it away 
 to the seclusion of the fields, as here he had driven her. Her 
 blood ! It was all her life he wanted. 
 
 Every need and desire there was in her then for living 
 sped in vivid thoughts and loud-sounding voices through her
 
 THE MIRACLE 333 
 
 mind. She must live! How could she die there in that 
 sudden moment without word of a priest in her ears! She 
 thought of her baby waking and finding none there in that 
 room. She heard its cry, calling to her across the headlands. 
 When she turned to look behind her, there was no escape. 
 Only the sheer height of the cliff death everywhere about 
 her. 
 
 The truth came then at last with a loud cry of her voice 
 out of that black secret hidden in her heart. With words 
 that flung upon each other in their speed to be free and out 
 of the resentful prison of her soul, she thrust upon him the 
 story of all that had happened her that night in the Gap 
 of Doon. 
 
 "Faeries !" she cried at him. "Is it fools ye are the lot of 
 ye and ye thinkin' when women lose their wits 'tis the faeries 
 have them taken ! Shure, God help ye ! Aren't there mightier 
 things in life to be frettin' the souls of us than Themselves 
 or any wispy sight or sound ye'd be hearin' on a dark night !" 
 She leant back against the rock with her eyes spent in their 
 terror watching his face to see the truth strike him back. 
 
 During all that time, while she had been speaking, he had 
 stood, waiting as he listened, with the knife open and ready 
 in his hand. Not until she had finished and the sound of the 
 last word had gone from her lips did he move. She heard 
 him laugh. 
 
 "D'ye think ye can make me believe the turn of a tale like 
 that?" he said slowly, "with all the things that have hap- 
 pened me since ye came back, and Michael Kelleher lying 
 there a dead man up in the grave-yard! Is it turnin' the 
 world upside down ye'd be, with a lie on ye're lips is the like 
 of that?" 
 
 If it was the truth she had told him, it was a greater truth 
 she herself was facing now. Here was the power the power
 
 334 THE MIRACLE 
 
 of their faith, that had pursued and driven her in her pre- 
 sentiments to this. 
 
 He believed he still believed. All of them, were she 
 to shout it in the village street, they would still believe. It 
 was not the truth of circumstance that mattered ! 
 
 As he laid his hand on her, all thought fled from her mind 
 and left her to the terror of his first touch upon her arm. 
 Her voice lifted to that same shrilling cry. She struggled 
 and beat her hands upon his head and face as his arms 
 bound about her. 
 
 His thought only was to use his knife. Then suddenly it 
 seemed to him in her strength and the sound in her voice he 
 was fighting against some power the darkness of which even 
 that sunlight could neither penetrate nor dispel. As he felt 
 her hands beating against his face, the sight of his reason 
 went from him. He lifted her from her feet and flung her 
 down. Death was the only way to rid himself of the evil he 
 felt about him. 
 
 She fell away from the thrust of his hands. It was death 
 he was wishing for her then, and down that three hundred 
 feet onto the rocks below, she fell into the long, waiting 
 arms of it.
 
 VIII 
 
 FENNEL sat mending his net on the sea-wall, but there 
 was no moment while he worked that his thoughts 
 were wholly with what he was doing. Again and 
 again across the listening ear of his memory, he heard the 
 voice of Mary claiming the witness of God that she loved 
 him now. 
 
 It was early morning for any of them to be sitting out 
 there on the wall. All but Fennel himself in Ardnashiela 
 had the name for laziness. Only the old man from the 
 islands above the coast of Galway was there for company 
 with him because it was a poor house he lived in and there 
 was more pleasure for him to be sitting out there on a warm 
 day than by the empty grate in his little room. 
 
 Sometimes there was a song below the spoken sound of 
 Fennel's voice as he worked, and between the lagging inter- 
 ludes of their talk the old man watched him, listening to his 
 song, with an enquiring expression in his face. 
 
 "Ye've a song in yeer heart," said he presently. 
 
 The fisherman did not look up from the twine he was 
 knotting. 
 
 "Why wouldn't I?" he replied. 
 
 "Aren't ye feared at all the harm might be comin' to ye, 
 with herself in and out of the house?" 
 
 "I am not." 
 
 "Well, God save ye from it, for ye're the most deservin' 
 man in this mean corner of a place." 
 
 Fennel laid down his net on the wall. 
 
 335
 
 336 THE MIRACLE 
 
 "Were'nt we all say in' here wan time," said he, " 'twas 
 those only had a poor content with themselves would be 
 troubled with the harm might be comin' to them ? Didn't ye 
 tell us of wan yeerself, was cot away by a woman he saw 
 singin' to him in the water and when it was three years he'd 
 gone away with her, wasn't he comin' back as discontented 
 with himself as ever, the way he took no care of his house 
 at all and the water drippin' in through the roof of it ?" 
 
 "I mind that well indeed," said the old man, "for 'twas 
 a man in Gal way. Didn't I see him meself sittin' at the door 
 of his house in the sleeves of his shirt and they torn on him !" 
 
 " 'Twas those would be like that are troubled," said Fennel, 
 "and 'tis not that way I am meself at all. Haven't I a child 
 up there in the house and herself with a great kindness is 
 about her at all times?" 
 
 "Maybe 'tis not believin* in Them one way or another 
 ye are?" 
 
 Fennel laid his net down and stood up from the wall the 
 more he talked of her, the more he heard her words that she 
 loved him, and he was thinking now it was a poor thing in 
 him to have gone away from her then when she had wished 
 him to stay. Had she not made her heart open as it were for 
 him to be hiding in it? 
 
 "Yirra, what would I be believin' in at all," he said, as he 
 stood there high above the old man and looked down at the 
 withered waste of the body he was carrying to its grave, "if 
 it wasn't believin' in Themselves I was? But isn't it kind 
 They are as well as cruel and if there's anything at all I have 
 lying with a fear in me heart, 'tis Themselves takin' her back 
 again for the sweet kindness there is in her." 
 
 It was a fear that was not deep in him then, for the old 
 man could hear the song in his voice as he walked back to his 
 house up the cliff road. Even when a few minutes later
 
 THE MIRACLE 337 
 
 he opened the door and found the room empty of her, and 
 the child asleep on their bed, there was no thought of fear 
 in him. She had gone out. She had taken his advice and 
 was away on the headlands maybe, and for a moment he 
 thought of following her there to say, if he could find the 
 words for it, that he was ashamed of himself to be leaving 
 her that morning with the sweet sound of her love she had 
 left in his ears. 
 
 It was even to the door he was going when the baby woke 
 at the sharp sound of his moving in the room. It woke with 
 the tremor of a cry and he came back to it. She would wish 
 that, more than his going out there to meet her. He sat 
 down on the side of the bed and tried to soothe it in its 
 crying. But still it cried and tossed where it lay, so that he 
 knew somehow it was the want of the feeling of hands about 
 it that it had, and nothing would quieten it till it felt the 
 warmth and rest of a body's arms to be lying in. 
 
 With timid hands, he took it up. To the best of his 
 memory, he tried to hold it as he had seen her do. Bringing 
 it then to the doorway where the sun fell, he sat down on 
 the sill. With constant misgivings he placed it upon his knee, 
 and looked into the blue circle of its eyes. 
 
 "Shure, I don't want anything more human than yeerself ," 
 he said to it. "D'ye hear that ? Isn't it mine ye are ? Didn't 
 she put ye in me arms the other day? And what was that 
 but herself knowin' it with the love was comin' to her that 
 time?" 
 
 The blue eyes looked back into his own. A twinkle spread 
 about them. Then there came three bubbles of a laugh splut- 
 tering out of the corners of its lips. Fennel laughed with it. 
 Out of the voice of his gladness then came the sound of the 
 song he had been singing all that morning beneath his 
 breath
 
 338 THE MIRACLE 
 
 "Knock at the door of a white thorn tree 
 Lift up the latch and cry 
 
 'Are you there are you there ? My love is gone. 
 Have you heard her feet go by ?' " 
 
 He had heard her sing it as women do to suit their love. 
 And he sang it himself as a man would to suit his own 
 
 "Have ye heard her steps go by ?" 
 (i) 
 
 THE END
 
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