by Powerful New Novel Patrick Mac Gill BY ELIA W. PEATTIE. PATRICK MAC GILL Is in an aus- tere mood in " GLENMORAN " [Doi-an.] He pictures the nar- rowness and superstition of aft Irish village, writing with a certain sad conviction that can come only from ntimate knowledge and depressing ex- perience. Not that the book is pri- marily depressing. It is much too fine a piece of work for that. It sets forth with a grave beauty the characters of the little scandal monging, priest dom- inated, unprogressive town and tells the story of what befell the young na- tive of the village whose talent en- abled him to write of the place and the people and whose cleverness caused his exile. However, the reader is not impelled to lament greatly the exile of the young writer. It is true that he grieved his mother and lost his sweet- heart, but as they would in any event have found some perfectly legitimate cause for lamentation the fact that Doalty, the writer, provided it seems not to matter much. The sweetheart found a new lover; Maura The Rosses mother of Doalty mourned with a great mourning; and Doalty is some- where, no doubt her* in America, earn- ing his living with his pen. Or per- haps he is Pat MacGUl himself. GLENMORNAN PATRICK MACGILL BY PATRICK MAcGILL GLENMORNAN THE BROWN BRETHREN THE RED HORIZON THE GREAT PUSH THE RAT-PIT GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY NEW YORK GLENMORNAN BY PATRICK MAcGILL AUTHOR OF "THE BROWN BRETHREN,' "THE RAT-PIT," ETC. NEW XSJr YORK GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY COPYRIGHT, 1918, BY GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA TO MY OWN PEOPLE 2060714 CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE I MAURA THE ROSSES . . n II GLENMORNAN , 28 HI DOALTY GALLAGHER . ... . . , . 49 IV IN His MOTHER'S HOUSE ....... 77 V OINEY LEAHY ., . 97 VI THE FAIR OF GREENANORE 135 VII SHEILA DERMOD ....... . . 167 VIII BREED DERMOD . . .-* . . . 185 EX THE MOWING . .213 X THE WAKE 242 XI THE FLOOD 265 XII READ FROM THE ALTAR 285 XIII A LETTER FROM HOME , . . ' f -'. $' , . 3" GLENMORNAN GLENMORNAN CHAPTER I MAURA THE ROSSES I've learned the tale of the crooning waves And the lore of the honey-bee, The Mermaid's Song in the lonely caves Of Rosses by the sea. As I'm never let out to the dance or wake, Because I'm a gasair small, I just stay in the house for my mother's sake And never get tired at all. Ah ! many a song she has sung to me And many a song she knew, And many a story there used to be, And mother's tales are true; So I know the tale of the crooning waves And the lore of the honey bee, And the Mermaid's Song in the lonely caves Of Rosses by the sea. The Faith Of A Child. MAURA THE ROSSES was a widow with ten children. The oldest of her chil- dren was twenty-three years of age, the youngest five. She was the owner of a farm of land, fifty acres hill and holm, in the ii 12 Glenmornan townland of Stranameera, which is saying some- thing, for Stranameera has in pasture and peat no land in the barony to equal it. The townland is situated in the big Glen of Glenmornan, its back against the hills and its toes stuck in the river Owenawadda. Glenmornan is in the parish of Greenanore, or, as it was once called, the Bar- ony of Burrach. The oldest inhabitants of the Glen still call themselves the people of Burrach, the middle-aged speak of themselves, when abroad, as "the ones from Greenanore, it that used to be the Barony of Burrach in the old times," but the young generation of boys who smoke cig- arettes and girls who wear hats, are content to call themselves the Greenanore people. Maura The Rosses' maiden name was Sweeney, her marriage name Gallagher. She came from The Rosses. It was there that Connel Gallagher met her one night when he was coming home to his own Glen from the Fair of Reemora where he had been selling wool. It was the night of All Hal- low's Eve and a big gathering of young people had assembled at Maura Sweeney's house, where all manner of games was in progress. This was one of the games : , A girl carrying a knife would go out to the corn- stack in the field, thirty yards away from the house. When she arrived there she would stick the knife in the corn up to the hilt. Then, putting two fingers of one hand over both eyes and shutting them, she would walk round the stack seven times. On com- pleting the seventh circle the knife had to be drawn Maura the Rosses 13 out and waved seven times round the head. When this had been done the girl would open her eyes and they would rest on the face of her future hus- band. Connel Gallagher, on his way home to Glenmor- nan, felt tired and hungry. On seeing a house near the roadway lit up and the door open, he went across the field towards it, with the intention of getting a bit and sup to help him on his journey. He left the road and made for the door, but on the way he passed a corn-stack with somebody walking round it. Connel stopped and looked at the figure. It was a girl with her hair down her back and wear- ing short petticoats that scarcely reached lower than her knees. "What's she doin' at all?" Connel asked himself and at the same moment he recollected that the night was Hall' Eve, and he knew what the girl was doing. The same custom was kept in Glenmornan. With a quiet step he went over to the corn-stack, discovered where the knife was and waited there until the girl completed the seventh circuit. When, after waving the knife round her head, she opened her eyes, they rested on Connel Gallagher. The girl uttered a stifled cry, recoiled a few? paces, and coming to the stack leant against it. From there she fixed a pair of large frightened eyes on the spectre who had come from nowhere, out of the night. . . . Her man to be! She had never seen him before . . . who was he? Maybe the Devil himself. . . . She sank down, but the stranger seized her in 14 Glenmornan his arms and pressed her tightly to him. Glenmor- nan was never backward in making love. . . . The girl felt very frightened; not an idea remained in her head. She could see as in a dream the door of her home, the dark forms inside, the lighted lamp on the wall, the delft in rows on the dresser. . . . The stranger seemed to be crushing her ; his hands were so big ; his eyes were looking through her ; his moustache was resting on her lips and his knee was pressing against hers. "Gora ! wasn't I in luck's way !" said the man in a low voice. "Giway widye and let me be," said the girl, try- ing to escape. Now that the man had spoken just like an ordinary mortal she did not feel afraid. In- deed she became curious. "Who widye be?" she asked. "I'm from the Barony iv Burrach or Greenanore as they call it," said the man, tightening his hold on the girl. He might not have such a chance again. "But what does it matter?" he said. "I'm here anyway." I "What d'ye mane?" asked the girl. ?T>on't ye see that I'm beside me own house?" The man released his hold. "All right, golong with ye inside!" he said with a contemptuous shake of his head. "It's like the girls down here to be like that. Catch a Glenmornan girl putting up her nose at a man that she meets on a Hair Eve night just when she's out on the look to see who she's goin' to marry. . . ." "I wasn't on the look out for a man," said the Maura the Rosses 15 girl, showing no haste to get away, now that she was free. "Well, what did ye come out here for in the dark iv night if it wasn't on the look out for a man?" said Connel Gallagher. "I only came out in fun," said the girl "What is yer name ?" asked the man. "It's Mary Sweeney. And yours will be?" "Connel Gallagher. I have been down at the fair of Reemora sellin' wool, and now that I'm on the way home and tired and hungry I'm on the look for a bit to eat. I saw a light in the house beyont there and was just goin' over to it when I came across yeself." "Then come in now with me/' said the girl. "It's our house, mine and me own people's house and we'll make ye welcome." ii Connel Gallagher went in with the girl and there in the house he met her father, Murtagh Sweeney, the Fighter. Connel had seen Murtagh, a great man for using his fists, once before. It was at the fair of Greenanore, and on that occasion Murtagh cleared out the fair with a stone in the foot of a woman's stocking. Sweeney was a tall, well-set man of great physical strength, with shoulders as broad as a half door and legs as sturdy as stakes in a byre. When he was drunk nearly everybody was afraid of him and the pick of men were loth to 16 Glenmornan take him up single-handed in a fight. There was at that time a long-standing feud between the people of Rosses and the people of Greenanore and one parish was jealous of another. No harvest fair was worthy of note that had not settled a row between the Rosses people and the people of Greenanore. But no sooner was one dispute settled than another begun and the more blood shed the more compli- cated became the quarrel. Murtagh Sweeney al- ways led the Rosses party and a Glenmornan man named Oiney Leahy always was at the head of the Burrach people. On one harvest fair Oiney fought Murtagh, both men using the ashplant in the quar- rel, and Murtagh got beaten. After that the quar- rels died down, but the hate still lingered. Mur- tagh Sweeney did not like the Greenanore people. He had no great handshake for Connel Galla- gher when he went in with Mary, but for all that he made him as welcome as occasion permitted and hospitality demanded. He gave Connel a bit and sup and a taste of duty-free whiskey and let him go in peace. Connel went home, but his heart was not as easy as it might be. Mary Sweeney was a comely girl and Connel thought that she would be a worthy wife for him. His mother had just died and he was all alone on his farm, a well-stocked holding that any girl might be glad to come into. A month later he called at Murtagh Sweeney's house again, a bottle of whiskey in his pocket and a next door neighbour on his right hand. He came to ask Mary to be his wife. Murtagh would not hear of the match. A daughter of his marrying a Maura the Rosses 17 man from Greenanore! He would see her cold dead at his feet before he would sanction such a marriage ! But Mary thought otherwise and youth laughs at age. A fortnight afterwards Connel and Mary were married, and Murtagh did not come to the wedding. The girl was cut off from the decent peo- ple of Rosses for evermore. Afterwards, despite the young people's assertion that they were getting far and away superior to the old silly Hallowe'en customs, the growing girls of the Rosses placed a knife in the cornstack every Hall' Eve night and walked round the stack seven times with their eyes shut. in Married life had its troubles, even in Glenmor- nan. Children came to Connel Gallagher and Maura The Rosses. As the children increased in number, the live stock on the farm diminished and naked poverty held control over the home. Life became a hard struggle for the man and wife. One year out of every three the crops went bad, potatoes were stricken by the blight, and the corn rotted in the swathes. When the weather became wet, the hay was carried away by the floods, and the turf lay useless on the spread-fields. There was no fire in the house and no food on the table. .Connel would then look at his children and turn !8 Glenmornan to his wife. "It's a hard life the poor has," he would say. "But wait till the weans grow up I" "It will be a long time that, yet," his wife would answer. "But this was how it was meant to be and God is good !" she would add. Connel was a good, hard-working man. He got tip from his bed at five every morning and went up to the hill for a creel of turf, travelling bare-footed to save shoe leather. When he came back he had his breakfast. The meal consisted of cold potatoes (if the potatoes were a good crop) or Indian meal stirabout and buttermilk, followed by a bowl of tea and a slice of Indian meal bread. Dinner consisted of potatoes and milk and on Sundays the fare was increased by a slice of bacon. There was a drop of tea for the afternoon and supper consisted of In- dian meal stirabout and milk. Connel worked from early morning to late night and got poorer every day. Eight pounds a year had to be paid in rent to the landlord, a great gentleman who never set foot in Glenmornan. He lived abroad, out in the world somewhere and was very rich. According to the Glen people he had a great room in his house and it was full of nothing but gold. Connel Gallagher kept adding eight pounds yearly to the landlord's stock of gold and Connel got very poor, which is the way of the world. His eldest son was a boy named Doalty, a scholar who was very fond of the learning. This boy went to school and was a most intelligent lad. When he left school, he worked on the farm, then went out into the world. At eighteen he found himself in Maura the Rosses 19 London, labouring on the wharves. When there he wrote articles for the press and was eventually taken on the staff of a daily paper. He sent a great amount of money home and his parents were very pleased. "I knew Doalty would be a good boy," said the mother. "But it's a pity that we couldn't make him a priest when he was here with ourselves. But we hadn't enough money to put him through." When Doalty was twenty-three a number of his younger brothers and sisters were out pushing their way in the world. Columb, next to him in years, was away in America working in a saloon, Murtagh had a job on a Scottish railway, ^Crania and Eileen were on service away from home and money was pouring into the old home in Stranameera. There were six cows on the farm now and the hill was white with sheep. Maura The Rosses, a thrifty and sparing soul, was very pleased and thanked God for the children which He had sent her. "Them's the kind of weans to have," she often said. "Ones that never forget their own people." IV Connel Gallagher died from a very short sick- ness. One day when he was threshing corn for the mill he suddenly laid down the flail on the floor and turned to his wife. 20 Glenmornan "A sickness has come over me all at once," he said. 'Til go to bed." Maura put him to bed in the kitchen, wrapped him up in the blankets and gave him a drink of hot milk. When he had drunk the milk he turned to his wife. "Maura," he said, "where is Teague?" Teague was a youngster of eighteen and the eld- est boy now at home. "He's building up the slap between us and Breed Dermod's," said Maura. "Let him finish the work," said Connel. "Breed's cow is always comin' across and eatin' our grass. But find out where Eamon is and tell him to run for the priest." "And the doctor, too ?" asked Maura. "The doctor's no good this tide," said Connel. "The priest is enough." Maura went out to look for Eamon. On the street ' she saw Oiney Leahy's rooster and she had never seen it about there before. It was a bad sign. She crossed herself and said : "It's the priest and only the priest that himself is needin'." "Run for the priest and* tell him to come at once," she said to Eamon when she found him. "Your father has taken to his bed." The priest was a very old man with long white hair and horned spectacles. He was not the local priest, but a man from the next parish who had taken up the job of the Greenanore priest while the latter was away in hospital suffering from some Maura the Rosses 21 illness. The name of the old man to whom Eamon went was McGee. Father McGee was very fond of fishing and had no equal in the barony for casting a fly. , "Me father has taken to his bed," said Eamon when he met the priest leaving home with a fishing rod over his shoulder. "He wants you to come and see him." , "Connel Gallagher isn't it, my boy?" said the priest. "It is, Father," said Eamon. "God keep him!" said Father McGee, "and it such a day for the fishing too. Now, my boy," he continued, "you take this rod and go back and put it against the wall of my house and don't keep foolin' about with the hooks, and I'll go and see your fa- ther, good man that he is." Connel Gallagher was dead with the dawn of the next day. The offerings over him when buried were 13 :ios. 6d., a fine lump sum which showed that Connel Gallagher, a good neighbourly man, friendly to all and bounden to none, was well liked in the Barony of Burrach. Murtagh Sweeney came to the funeral. Everybody noticed this, for Murtagh had never set foot in Glenmornan since his daughter got married. Another thing noticed by the people was the well- seasoned ash-plant which Murtagh carried with him. It was said that this ash-plant was the same that he used when fighting Oiney Leahy at the harvest fair of Greenanore. Murtagh threw down a gold sovereign on the 22 Glenmornan coffin when offerings were taken. None of the Glen- mornan people ever paid as much as that and they did not like to see a Rosses man display such mu- nificence. "It's pride that made him do it," they said, for they knew that Murtagh Sweeney was a very poor man. Maura The Rosses, a widow of forty-two and the mother of a boy of twenty-three, was a woman loved by her neighbours. A very hard worker and a good hand at driving a bargain all her life, she now set herself to run the farm. To her children she was a very wise woman, knowing everything. What stories she could tell! Sitting by the turf -fire at night she told tales of Fin McCool, Deirdree of The Sorrows, The Red Headed Man and Kitty the Ashy Pet. Kitty, who was once very poor, became a princess and when married she always combed her hair with a golden comb and washed her face in a golden basin. Maura spoke of these people as if she had known them personally and one had to believe her because her words were so simple and full of conviction. When the children went to school and learned poetry they would recite it in a sing-song voice over the fire at night. The mother would listen and after a while she would say, "It's nice to know poetry be heart, but it's better to know your prayers/' She made a point of not favouring any one par- Maura the Rosses 23 ticular child, which was very sensible, seeing that she was the mother of ten. Besides, she knew that it was a sin to love one child more than another. Sometimes when a neighbour died her children would ask her if he had gone to heaven. If she liked the man she would answer, "Of course he's gone to heaven, being such a good man." But if she did not like him she would modify her answer and say, " TT C may have gone there for God is good !" If she spoke of a dead man in that way the children knew that his soul had gone to hell. The good woman had no time to exert any con- tinuous care over the children. At a certain age they were sent to school, their books in a satchel and two turf under their arms. There they learned their Catechism and could answer any question in the book, but seldom knew what the answers meant. Mere parrots, they could reel off the Three Theo- logical Virtues, the Seven Deadly Sins, The Nine Ways In Which One Could Be Guilty Of Another Person's Sins, in a high pitched sing-song voice. The girls at the school preferred to answer their Catechism in unison, the whole class swaying from side to side as they chanted. Now and again when stopped in their swing they would forget every word of the answer and find themselves in a fix similar to that of dancers in a six hand reel when the fiddle strings break. 24 Glenmornan VI The children of Maura The Rosses learned their Catechism without understanding it. One fact could not be gainsaid, however. They could an- swer any question in the book. When this stage was reached they were confirmed in their faith. They knew all about it then, its tenets were made manifest to their little souls and they had found them worthy. Their belief in the faith being strong, they were confirmed and ordered to take an oath, promising to abstain from intoxicating liquors un- til they reached the age of twenty-one. And in this way the children of Maura The Rosses were brought up in the love and fear of God. If they went wrong after leaving their home it was surely due to no fault of the good woman. Maura was very devout and not in the least emo- tional; but she believed in fortune-telling, charms, omens, ghosts and fairies. To her there were no kind fairies, though she always spoke of them as good people or gentle folk, styling them "gentle" or "good" merely to placate them. When cows calved before their season or went dry before their time, when they fell sick with shot or staggers, the mooril or the lifting, Maura ascribed all these ailments and ills to the fairies. Was it not evident that the good people were tormenting the cattle when the beasts ran wild from the pastures in the hot noon of sum- mer and galloped into the river and stood belly deep in the stream? The woman knew that all this mad- Maura the Rosses 25 ness was due to the fairies. The brute beasts were aware of this as well, and also knew that fairies cannot touch running water. That was their reason for rushing into the Owenawadda. After churning milk the good woman placed a pat of butter over the door for the good people. When this was melted by the sun, or washed down by the rain, she knew that the fairies had found it to their liking and taken it away. Maura did not like red-haired women and knew that if she met a red-haired woman on the way to market the day would be bad for a bargain. She would not go outside the door of her house on All Souls' Eve, for she did not want to see the dead passing by. She knew that Eamon the Drover's people, next door neighbours but one to her they were, always drank seven drops of blood from a black cat on the day they were born. This made them very fierce and ill-tempered for the rest of their lives. This family had the evil eye, so also had two other families in Glenmornan. If they looked on your stock it would never thrive. She also knew that Hudy Heilagh had read Harry Stattle * and was full of black magic and legerdemain tricks. One word from you that did not please him and in the shake of an eyelash he could bring the sea up to your house and drown every living soul inside. Hudy was sib to the Gal- laghers and in his young days he was a wild fellow for the girls. Maura was very kindly and never let a beggar * Aristotle. 26 Glenmornan go past her door without a bite and sup. When the cattle of the people near her went dry she gave them part from her own churning, but if she lacked milk herself she would not take any from a soul. "Our people never took charity," she would say, "and thank God they never will." She seldom left her own house, but now and again with a stocking and knit-needles in her hand, she would go out, look over the hedge that circled the house and take stock of all that was happening in the Glen. As she watched she would pass a running commentary on the doings of her neighbours. She knew that the town land was divided amongst thir- teen families and her family could marry into three of these who had acres and cows' grass equal to her own. VII On the June of 1913 Maura The Rosses got a letter from Doalty. She was standing out by the hedge when she received it. She put down her knitting on a stone and read the letter. Then she called to Norah, to Teague and to little Hughie, a boy of five, her youngest child. "Go down to Greenanore," she said to Norah. "Get a poke iv flour, a bag iv meal, a stone iv currants and raisins, a side iv bacon and a bottle iv whisky." She said to Teague: "Get the floor scrubbed clean, whitewash the house and pull that grass off that's growin' on the thatch." Maura the Rosses 27 "And you, Hughie," she said, "don't go about dirtyin' yer bits iv rags, for ye'll need them all next week, when Doalty's comin' home here to his own people." That night the Gallaghers sat up very late pre- paring the house for the returning boy. In the morning a stocking, a clue of yarn and knit-needles were discovered lying in the gutter outside the door. "To think that I forgot to put that by yester- day !" said Maura The Rosses as she looked at her ruined knitting. CHAPTER II GLEN MORN AN The Gombeen Man, scraggy and thin, Is always getting the money in, Round his throat is a red cravat, Sixpence at most he paid for that; Boots in which Decency wouldn't stand, He must have got them second hand; Face as dry as a seasoned fish, Head as bald as a wooden dish Silent and sleekit as a trout, With the hair on his chin all sprouting out Boast of belly and bare of back, A fellow that never paid his whack, He has rolls of notes and bags of gold, As much as a wooden chest can hold This he has and nobody knows What will be done with it when he goes But where will he go when he leaves it? Where? Nobody knows, or seems to care. The Gombeen Man. GLENMORNAN is a grand glen. The na- tives say it's one of the finest in all Ire- land. The glen is ringed with a line of hills, some of which rise to a height of two thousand feet, and none of which are less than seven hundred. The oldest rocks in Ireland are to be found here 28 Glenmornan 29 granite, quartzite, mica slate and limestone. Look- ing from the glen to the west Sliav-a-Tuagh can be seen, a sharp-edged peak with its feet in the sea \ and its head in the stars. Eastwards Croagh-an- ' Airgead stands aloof, a solitary peak brooding over its own isolation. Carnaween to southwards looks down in immense scorn on the valleys and moors at its feet. A river and road run through the centre of the valley, the road, dry and crooked, a good one for travel, and the river, unruly in flood time, a bad one for the hay in the bottom lands. Sometimes in wet weather, a great amount of low-lying hay in the glen is carried away by the floods when the river rises over its banks and covers the fields. In addi- tion to this the streams, coming from the hills, sweep the upper lands, carrying the corn and pota- toes down with them. The peasantry fear the floods. The streams falling from the hills have cut deep gullies in the braes, and these gullies "awlths" they are called are thick with birch, holly and hazel bushes. Trees are very scarce ; the country is now almost denuded of them. This has been due to wet seasons when few turf were saved and when wood had to be used for firing. On the eastern corner of the glen where the hill rises with a gradual incline, the floods do very little harm. Up there dwell the mountainy people, big limbed, hairy men and strong swarthy women who seldom wear boots. The mountainy man can be picked out at any fair or market. He is a sullen and suspicious creature who walks with a hop on 3O Glenmornan the most level path and has his eyes always fixed on the ground under his feet. This is due to his life on the high levels of the glen, where in his daily work he has to hop from stone to stone over the marshy lands. He lives in a wretched house, keeps his cattle under his own roof, is miserably fed, and instead of boots wears thick woollen socks, called mairteens. The people further down the glen are better set up, the young men are tall and bold, the young girls good-humoured and handsome. They never have any intercourse with the mountainy people, whom they do not consider fit society and whom they will not allow right of entry to their dances and airnalls (gatherings). With the people down the glen "mountainy" is a term of reproach: an awkward and ignorant person is termed mountainy. "You're a mountainy man and as thick as mud," is a saying of theirs. Up the glen the people seldom read anything, hav- ing neither the time, inclination or education. Down the glen they like to hear the news of the world out- side the range of the hills and read whenever they have the opportunity. They are very curious and their nature hankers after knowledge. Superstition gives an imperious explanation to everything which general ignorance cannot solve, and religion is ever at hand to supply the why and wherefore of things. To them any newspaper is always "the paper," and they are indifferent to the edition or date of print- ing. Little boys going to the neighbouring shops with three eggs in a handkerchief are generally told Glenmornan 31 to get the goods purchased, wrapped in "the paper." In this manner Glenmornan keeps in touch with the news of the world. The distance in time and space from the events described does in no way diminish the readers' in- terest in the stories. That they are so far removed from the world in which such things occur, gives the people a certain amount of comfort. "Strange things are always takin' place in foreign parts," they say to one another. "It's good to be here where things like that never take place." But more intelligent and more progressive than any of the glen folk are the residents of the village of Greenanore. These people have got the quality toss with them and have the most genteel manners. The latest English music-hall songs are all the rage in the village. Little Gwendoline Quigley (what a quality name Gwendoline!), daughter of the biggest publican, can sing two songs in French, which is more than any girl in the lower end of the glen can do. Gwendoline, of course, will not associate with any of the glen people, who in her eyes are the low- est of the low and just the merest fraction removed from the mountainy people. Neither will Gwen- doline sing an old Cumallye song like "Nell Fla- herty's Drake" or "Pat O'Donnell." But this is quite right from a quality standpoint, for the village cannot descend to the vulgar level of the glen. Gwendoline's father, old Pat Quigley, is a gombeen man full of money and land. He has a club foot and turns on his heel when walking. His nickname is "Heel-ball." 32 (jlenmornan ii There are many families in the glen and each family has its own little farm, which rises in a nar- row strip from the river to the top of the hill. The arable land is small in proportion to the extent of the glen and is not in all places of the best quality. The meadow land which fringes the river is sel- dom dug. The ground of the braes is full of stones, both upon and under the surface, and it also abounds in whin bushes, which have to be taken up by the roots before the land can be cultivated. Some of the glen farms stand practically on end, and these have to be dug uphill, a most difficult job. It is of course easier to dig downhill, but if this is done the clay at top will be gradually carried to the bot- tom. But despite the husbandman's care, the clay, continually borne down by the rains, collects in heaps at the bottom of the braes. When this rises to a certain height it has to be carried up again. Therefore cultivation is arduous and expensive in Glenmornan and requires no end of energy and la- bour. But the people never lose heart at the tilling of the soil. On it, the noblest labour of all, depends their daily bread. The people live frugally and are for the most part very poor. Most families have sufficient land to keep two cows and some can keep more. A household is judged by its stock, and a family with four cows' grass to its name, will not marry into a family which can only boast of three cattle. Glenmornan 33 There are three Protestant families in the glen, but religious rancour is not known. The class dif- ferences are more pronounced than the religious differences. The Quigleys, with one of their fam- ily a priest and another a nun, hold themselves as much aloof from the poor Catholics as from the poor Protestants. A Glenmornan house is generally a one-storeyed building with a flagged floor and a thatched roof. Only three or four houses in the place are slated. The roof beams of a house are generally of black oak which has been dug from the bogs. The prin- cipal room of a house is the kitchen, a large and spacious apartment where the household assemble for meals and where all the family foregather when the hours of outdoor work come to an end. There is seldom more than two rooms in a house and both serve as sleeping chambers. The byre is attached to the house, but ducks and pigs are kept in a sep- arate building. The food of the people, for the most part, con- sists of tea, bread, butter, potatoes and porridge. This latter dish is always called "porridge" by the quality of Greenanore; those who dwell in the butt- end of Glenmornan generally call it "stirabout," but the mountainy people always call it "brahun-ray." The various degrees of refinement in the barony can be traced by the names given to this simple dish. Eating is a very casual matter with the glen peo- ple. The women generally eat standing, breaking off at intervals to do some job or another. The chil- dren squat on the floor when eating, but the men. 34 Glenmornan for the most part sit round a table. There is no fixed hour for meals. The glen people eat when they are hungry if there is food to go round. There are very few amusements and very few holidays in Glenmornan. Work is always carried on, Sunday and Saturday. Cows have to be milked, fed and tended, children have to be cared for, dishes have to be washed on every day of the week. The labour of a farm never comes to an end. None but the very rich can observe a strict Sabbath in Green- anore. It is just the same in many other parts of the world. in It was Bonfire Night, the Eve of the Feast of the Nativity of Saint John the Baptist, and Strana- meera, never behind hand in its observance of the night, had its bonfire flaring on the hill. For weeks before the townland people had spent all their spare time gathering in bundles of heather, sticks and brambles to the pile of fuel, heaped high on the brae behind the house of Maura The Rosses, which was now ablaze. The whole townland was gathered round the fire that roared redly over a deep, sloping awlth filled with ash, birch and holly. Through the awlth ran a brook, gobbling like a clutch of young turkeys. The night was wonderfully clear and not a cloud hid the glory of the stars. On the other side of the glen, Garnaween could be seen, a calm silent peak, clear cut and dark against the sky. A slight Glenmornan 35 breeze rippled up the brae and set the birches a-quiver. The awlth was full of strange whispers, and no wonder, for the place was the home of the gentle people. If a cow strayed in there the animal was sure to be elf -shot; sickness came to the chil- dren who went to gather hazel nuts in the gentle locality, and in the awlth was stored the butter which the fairies had stole from the townland of Stranameera. Whenever Maura The Rosses looked on the place she crossed herself three times, once on the forehead, once on the lips and once on the breast. But now that it was Bonfire Night, Maura The Rosses, who seldom left her house, was one of the first to come to the fire. She could be seen a little distance away from the blaze, sitting on a ditch, a white cloud over her head and dressed in a striped blouse, a red woollen petticoat and a pair of heavy boots. She was speaking to one of her neighbours, a crook-backed, barefooted old woman, whose yel- low, wrinkled face peeped furtively out from the folds of a gosling-grey, woollen handkerchief. The woman was named Crania Coolin. Crania was a poor widow, skilled in the art of midwifery and the knowledge of the medicinal properties of various herbs. She knew that bog-bine (marsh trefoil) was a remedy for heartburn; that onions would give a person a decent sleep; that tansy could destroy worms and that houseleek was a spe- cific for sore eyes. She also knew several other herbs which were certain remedies for toothache, .warts, gravel, headache and various other ills. 36 Glenmornan Crania believed in fairies, but what woman in Glen- mornan does not believe in the gentle people? In addition to believing in them, Crania knew where they were hidden, and she generally placed the first butter from a churning, the first meal from a mill- ing and the first glass of whisky from a keg of potheen on the ground outside the haunted raths. The fairies always accepted Crania's gifts, for on the day following that on which the woman ten- dered butter, meal or whisky to them, not one trace of the gifts could be found on the ground where she had placed them. The old woman believed in dreams. One night she dreamt that there was a crock of gold hidden in Hohn-a-Thiel (The Rump of the World), a hob of hill which rose behind her house. Next morning she went out with a spade at dawn and started to dig for the gold. When she had dug for a while a great pain came on her wrist and a wild animal called a dorcha (it had seven legs and an iron nose on it) came and attacked her. Crania had a red woollen petticoat and she took it off of her and put it on a rock beside her. The dorcha does not like red petticoats and it came forward with one roar and hit the petticoat with its nose. And it was killed. Then Crania Coolin came home. Crania believed that this had happened to her and she often told the story to her neighbours. The old people believed the story, but the young of the glen made fun of the old woman. "Poor old Crania!" the youngsters would say with a wink. "She's a plaish- am (fool), God help her!" Glenmornan 37 On the brink of the awlth, beside Crania and Maura The Rosses, a number of ragged children jwere rolling over on the ground and tormenting a little puppy. One of the little children was Hughie Gallagher, Maura's youngest child, a brave little rascal of five, who was gripping hold of the pup- pie's tail and striving to drag it into the ravine. When the little dog whimpered Maura would raise her head and shake her finger at the youngster. "Now, Hughie Beag," she would say, "don't ye be pullin' the wee dog about. If ye do it again I'll take ye in and skelp yer wee bottom." On hearing this Hughie would let go the puppy, stick his finger in his mouth and fix a pair of big eyes on his mother. Standing thus he would wait until the woman took up her conversation with Grania Coolin, then he would turn to the dog again. . . , ; IV The young boys and girls of the townland, who had come out in crowds, were assembled round the fire, flinging banter to one another and grinning broadly, showing their white teeth. A little distance apart from the fire a boy and girl were seated on the ground, the boy with his arms around the maiden's waist and placing wild flowers plucked from the ground in her hair. The girl was trying to push him away, but even when she succeeded in freeing herself from his embrace she did not get to her feet and run off. This showed that she did not 38 Glenmornan object to his attentions. But what girl could? for the boy was Dennys Darroch, or Dennys the Drover as he was popularly called, one of the handsomest youngsters in the glen. All the girls round about the place were wild after him. Even Sheila Der- mod, with whom he was sitting, was said to be in love with him, and Sheila had had the privilege of refusing three wealthy suitors, full of money and land. She was a girl of eighteen, living with her widow mother, a woman who had hard work to do to make both ends meet. Dennys suddenly got up to his feet, looked round at the assembled crowd and then bent down over the girl who was still seated on the grass. "Well, and if ye won't, ye won't," he said with a laugh, apparently referring to some subject under discussion, and made his way towards the fire. He walked with a great swagger, swinging his shoul- ders. He was a fine rung of a fellow, sinewy as a seasoned ash-plant, with a handsome face, grey shrewd eyes and a voice like an echo on the Done- gal hills. He spoke quickly and as quick speakers do, loudly. Words rushed from his lips like a torrent, just as they would when calling from one hill to another as he was on the look-out for sheep. He possessed a dauntless view of life, had a careless, defiant manner and upright courage. The sharp, steady glance of a face from which a certain ex- pression of scorn was never wholly absent, marked him as a man who was afraid of nothing. He lived with his mother and sister on a little farm which boasted two cows' grass and hill enough for twenty Glenmornan 39 sheep. But Dennys did very little labour on the farm. He preferred to deal in cattle at the fairs and made a tidy penny in that manner. He seldom bent over a spade. "Cuttin' worms is not for me," he often said with an oath and nobody was offended, for strength gets its due respect in Glenmornan. Having left Sheila Dermod, Dennys went to the fire, raised a heavy lump of wood which was lying on the ground and flung it with one great heave into the centre of the flames. The young girls uttered a startled shriek as a shower of sparks flew into the air and careered away on the breeze. "Finished skiftin'* now, Dennys?" asked an old man who was standing near, his hat well back over his white hairs and a fiddle under his arm. Dennys the Drover laughed. "Wouldn't ye like to be in my place, Oiney?" he asked the old man. "Years ago when I was yer height I wouldn't leave a girl to sit be her own self," said the old man. "I would sit be a girl till she got up! But now- adays young men are not worth their boxty.f Sheila Dermod would rather have meself sittin' be her side than any young man in all the four corners in the glen. Wouldn't ye now, Sheila?" "I would indeed, Oiney," Sheila answered, com- ing up to the fire. As she spoke she looked at Dennys and laughed, her teeth sparkling as the firelight caught them. * Flirting. f Potato-bread. 40 Glenmornan "Is it Oiney Leahy that I hear speakin' ?" some one called at that moment. "It's me that's in it, Maura The Rosses," Oiney replied. "I've come with the fiddle. But tell me before I begin if it's true?" he asked, going across to the ditch on which the woman was seated. "It must be true, for every one is talkin' about it up and down the glen." "Oh! it's true," Maura The Rosses replied. "I got the letther there-yisterday * and he says that he's comin' back to his own people." "For good?" Oiney asked. "For good as far as I can see," said Maura The Rosses. "He'll have made his fortune, I suppose," said Oiney, as he put a short black clay pipe in his mouth. "There's fortunes to be made over there if all accounts bees true. Some people are lucky when they go out into the world. There was Wee Micky Eamon from Meenaroo, second cousin to me wife, God rest her ! he was, and he went away beyont the water and stayed there for short on five years and came back and bought old Columb Beag's farm. A hundred and thirty-five pounds, money down, he gave for it. I was there meself when the luck's- money was handed over. Think iv that ! And all made in less than five years ! And how long would it be now since Doalty went away? Seven years, come the end of next month, isn't it? I mind the time, for there was a big flood in the glen the day * Ere yesterday. The day before yesterday. Glenmornan 41 he went away, and the mountainy sheep came down be the river." "It's just short on six years since he went away," said Maura The Rosses. "He's been a good boy since he left us, too, and he's never backwards in sendin' some money home to his own people." "And he had the learnin' too," said Oiney. "There's nothin' like the learnin'. D'ye mind the song about it?" "Sing it, Oiney," a voice called from the fire. "That's Sheila Dermod that's speakin'," said Oiney, putting his pipe back in his pocket. "She's the one to be ski f tin' about with the boys and it looks as if it was only yisterday that she was playin' tig and Jackstones on the road to school. . . . I'll sing the song for ye, Sheila," and without another word Oiney began the song : "Labour for learnin' afore ye grow old, For learnin' is better nor silver and gold ! Silver and gold it will vanish away, But learnin' itself it will never decay, And a man without learnin' wearin' good clothes Is like a gold ring in a pig's nose." "That's the song and a very true one it is," said Oiney, cuttin' a caper with his legs and jumpin' up in the air. "Not bad, that, for a old shanachie !" he laughed, looking at the party round the fire. "There's many a good honest soul that has gone down the road, carried on big shoulders, since first I stood on a dancin' floor, and there's life and to spare in the old dog yet." "Come on, Oiney, and play the fiddle," Dennys 42 Glenmornan the Drover shouted. "It's time for us to be shakin' our legs if we want to make a night iv it. Meena- warawor and Meenawarabeag have their fires all lit up and the dancin' is goin' on over there." Oiney went over to the fire, sat down on the grass, tuned up his fiddle and lit his pipe. The dancing started. Midnight passed by and the fire was dying down. Old women like Maura The Rosses and Grania Coolin had gone down to their homes long since, taking the young children with them. Meenawara- wor was still aflare and the shouting from there was echoing across the glen. Meenawarabeag was silent and lights showed in the houses of that townland. The people there were going to bed. But the danc- ing was yet going on at Stranameera and old Oiney Leahy was still playing the fiddle, a happy look in his eyes and a good-humoured smile all over his wrinkled face. The old man had reached his eightieth year and in his young days he had been a great man for fighting, drink and the women. Even now his day's work was not to be laughed at, and as a fiddler he knew no equal in the barony. As long as boys and girls were able to dance Oiney was willing to play. A dance came to an end and the young were slow in starting another. "Shake yer legs, me buckos !" Oiney shouted, as he took his pipe from his mouth. "There's life in Glenmornan 43 me, an old dog, yet. The hand is ready if the feet are willin'. Get to yer feet again, ye rascals. Show Meenawarawor what ye can do." Dennys the Drover and Sheila Dermod got to their feet "The six-hand reel, Oiney," Dennys shouted, looking round at the other couples who were wait- ing to start. "I wonder what Doalty Connell will be like when he comes back," Sheila remarked to her partner. "He was a nice quiet gasair when he left here." "He'll just be like any tea-man or shop-boy when he comes back," said Dennys in a disparaging voice. "A big, high, white collar he'll have round his neck and he'll be looking over it like a donkey over a whitewashed wall. They're all the same when they come home. One wouldn't think that they were brought up on scaddan and sgiddins.* And they won't talk to a soul that they knew. I can't stand them." "He'll have plenty of money, no doubt," said Sheila. "Maybe he will and maybe not," said Dennys, "but he'll try and look as if he had it, anyway. . . . But Sheila, am I to lave ye at home the night ?" Dennys asked, bending down and almost touching the girl's hair with his lips. "I haven't asked ye to come home with me, have I now?" said Sheila. "That means that ye're not goin' to let me, then?" "Take it that way if ye like." * Scaddan and sgiddins sprat and small potatoes. 44 Glenmornan "Then I'm goin' with ye." "I didn't ask ye to come, did I ?" the girl enquired, with a chuckle. "All right then, Sheila Dermod," said Dennys in an impatient voice. "Go home be yerself if ye want to." "The first time that I ever seen Dennys The Drover not able to stick a dance out !" Oiney Leahy shouted through the flying figures in the maze of the six-hand reel. Dennys and Sheila edged in and took their places. When the dance came to an end Sheila went over to her girl chum, Eileen Kelly, and caught her arm. "I think it's time to be goin' home," she said. "My mother won't know what's keepin' me." "But isn't Dennys goin' home with ye?" asked Eileen. "He hasn't left ye all the night. . . . And it's not time yet to go home." Eileen was a pretty little girl, with a three-cor- nered mouth and dark eyes that darted to and fro elusively. She was mischievous, merry and fond of fun. "Time!" said Sheila. "It's time to be home and past time. I don't want to be beholdin' to Dennys for to take me home. He's so full of pride and thinks that everybody is dyin' after him. . . . Well, I'm not." She spoke emphatically. "That's like ye, Sheila," said Eileen. "All the men are mad after ye and ye won't take no notice iv them." "But I don't want them to be after me." Glenmornan 45 "Ye would then if they took no notice at all iv ye," said Eileen Kelly. "That might be," said Sheila quietly. "But I don't want any iv them." "It's because ye're so good lookin'," Eileen, who was more than a little envious of her beautiful 'friend, remarked. "Well, we'll go home together the both iv us. Come, we'll run down the brae as Quick as we can. Tig on ye!" she laughed, and hitting Sheila on the shoulder she scampered off, to be followed by her friend down the hillside. The pair of them came to the bottom of the hill to- gether and Eileen sat down on the dew-wet grass. "Do you know who was wanting to come home with me the night ?" asked Eileen. "Not Dennys, was it ?" asked Sheila, catching her breath a little as she spoke. "No, not Dennys," said Eileen. "He has never eyes for anybody when ye're there, Sheila Dermod. But who asked me but Owen Briney! He's forty if a day and as near-goin' as an eyelid." "But he has money and a good bit of land," said Sheila with a little laugh of mockery. "If he had the whole parish and beholdin' to no- body I wouldn't be seen comin' home the same road from a dance as him," said Eileen, puckering up her three-cornered lips and allowing a thoughtful smile to steal over her face. "Tig on yerself then !" Sheila cried, touching her friend on the arm with her fingers. Then running away, she skipped across the ditch and made for her home. 46 Glenmornan VI Eileen walked down to her own house, her head sunk down over her breast, apparently deep ini thought. She went to the door of her home to find it open. Inside all was dark, for her father and mother, who had been up at the bonfire, were now in bed and fast asleep. She went back along the road she had come and was in time to meet Dennys The Drover returning from the fun of the night. "Ah! ye're not in bed then, Eileen Kelly?" said Dennys on seeing her. "If the priest hears about this he'll not like it at all." "But what'll he know about it?" said Eileen. ''Nobody'll tell him." Dennys laughed quietly as if he did not want to be heard. "But ye must tell him the next time ye go to confession," he said in a whisper. "And then there will be such a penance. Ye'll have to go to Lough Derg on yer two knees." Both of them were silent for a moment. Dennys kept his eyes fixed on the girl's face and thought her wonderfully beautiful. . . . Surely no girl in the glen . . . Even Sheila was not as fair to look at. . . . "Why do ye keep yer eyes on me, Dennys The Drover?" she asked. "A cat can look at a nice print iv butter if it likes," said Dennys In a husky voice. "Can't it now?" Glenmornan 47 "There's somebody comin'!" said Eileen in a whisper as a man could be heard approaching, hum- ming a tune as he walked. "It must be old Oiney gettin' home." "Then we'll run down the lane and hide," said Dennys, catching the girl's hand in his own. The two of them ran off together, keeping on the grass to deaden the sound of their footsteps. "We'll stand here," said Dennys when they came to the gable-end of Eileen's home. "We've got to be as quiet as two wee mice." As he spoke he pressed her hand with a firm grip. "What are ye doin' with me hand, Dennys The Drover?" asked the girl. "Let it be, won't ye?" "Why should I?" Dennys asked in a low whis- per. "Do ye think that I'm goin' to run away with yerhand?" As he spoke he bent down, caught both the girl's hands and kissed her red three-cornered lips. She tried to break away from him, but her efforts were useless. Instead of breaking free from his arms she felt herself getting pressed closer and closer to his breast. A sense of grandeur and desolation swept over her and she no longer resisted him. She felt as if dropping into a swoon. . . . Dennys spoke and released her from his arms. "Ye almost made a fool iv me and iv yerself , too, Eileen Kelly," was what he said. "Away into the house and get ye to bed. Ye should have been in bed an hour ago!" He walked away towards his home swinging his shoulders and humming a tune under his breath. ^8 Glenmornan Once or twice he came to a sudden halt and looked at the mountains. "I was near making a fool iv meself," he muttered each time he stopped. "If it isn't one woman it's another, and I suppose they'll get hold iv us in the long run." By "us" he merely meant himself. When he entered his home he took a meal of stirabout and milk; then he went to bed and slept soundly till morning. Eileen Kelly did not close her eyes in sleep that night. CHAPTER III DOALTY GALLAGHER I will go back to my father's house and live on my father's land, For my father's house is by Rosses' shore that slips to Dooran strand, And the wild mountains of Donegal rise up on either hand. Going Home. SO you're going back to Ireland again? Bade to your own people and leaving London! Boys will be boys I suppose and will rove about all over the world before they settle them- selves to the ordinary routine of daily life. . . . But sit down while I pour out a cup of tea and tell me all about yourself." The time was late June of 1913, the place a draw- ing-room in "Ermara," a large house on the banks of the Thames near London. Lady Ronan, the owner of "Ermara," was speaking to a visitor, young Doalty Gallagher, son of Maura The Rosses, who was now employed on the editorial staff of a large London daily paper. He had come down that day from London and was going to spend the week- 49 50 Glenmornan end with the Ronans. Young George, Lady Ro- nan's only boy, was working on the paper with Doalty and both men were great friends. Lady Ronan poured out the tea, handed Doalty a cup and sat down on a sofa facing him. She was a well-preserved woman of forty-five, who had once been beautiful, and was now graceful. "Now, tell me everything, Doalty," she said, speaking in a voice so low and coaxing that Doalty felt that she hoped to hear some wonderful secret. She always called him by his Christian name. "There's nothing to tell," said Doalty, "I'm go- ing home. I'm tired of London. That's all." "I know you want to go home," said Lady Ronan. -Who doesn't, especially to Ireland, where the peo- ple are so charming. But to stay there !" There was protest in the woman's voice. She spread her fingers out on her knee and fixed her eyes on her daintily manicured nails. "You have been there," said Doalty. "But you never told me how you liked it." "I loved it," said Lady Ronan, nodding her head with the decision of a verdict beyond repeal. "Everything was so nice, and the Irish I met so kind and good-humoured. But it was always raining." "It generally is," said Doalty. "WEat part of the country were you in ?" "The South. Killarney and about there." "Saw the old monastery of Ballyruden?" asked Doalty. "I was there," said Lady Ronan, tapping a long,, Doalty Gallagher 51 tapering forefinger on her knee as she spoke. "And the old man who told me the history of the place! He was so delightful." 'Told you how St. Patrick fought the serpent in the adjoining lake and how the serpent got killed?" "Yes." "And called the serpent 'the worm ?' " "That's so." "And how the story was a true one because the lake is there still as proof of the incident" "Yes, that was what he said," said Lady Ronan. ,"And so charmingly Irish!" "One could not wish I mean an English person could not wish for anything more Irish," said Doalty Gallagher. "That old scoundrel knows it too. A few stupid remarks like those are his pro- fessional jokes. His little townland is his stage and the English tourists are his audience and his prey. They find him there, looking into the lake as if he had been sitting on its banks since the be- ginning of time and would remain there until the crack of doom. That is how they expect to find him and he knows it. To them, that lazy creature with a faked fund of so-called humour, is Ireland. They put a whole race in the same category as that professional entertainer who has borrowed his jokes from the stage Irishman. Judgment is passed on the Irish race by professional tourists who have come into contact only with Killarney guides and Dublin Jarveys." Lady Ronan shrugged her shoulders in a help- less fashion. 52 Glenmornan "You young men are so clever/' she said. "George is just like you. He can prove black is white and vice versa. But he is not in earnest about it." "But I am in earnest," said Doalty, placing his cup on the floor. "I'm not saying clever things just to drive a point home. I mean what I say. It's the truth. The English don't know the Irish." "The poor English!" said Lady Ronan, lifting Doalty's cup from the carpet and pouring the cold tea into the slop-basin. "So you think that they're not as intelligent as your countrymen?" she asked. "No, I don't mean that," said Doalty. "Far from it. What I mean is this : the English don't know us and never will. They think we are lazy, for ex- ample." "But if that's true about Irish at home it's not true about them when they get out of their own country," said Lady Ronan. "When they're over here they soon get to the top." "One or two may get to the top," said Doalty. "You hear about it when they do, but one never hears about the thousands who remain weltering at the bottom. Now take my glen for example. Dozens of young people leave it yearly. They go away to Scotland, to England, to America. The boys become masons' labourers, navvies and rail- way porters, the girls become drudges in the kitch- ens of big houses. One may get on well. I might, for example, if I stuck to journalism." "Of course you would," said Lady Ronan. "Your editor who came down here the other day was loud Doalty Gallagher 53 in his praises of you. Said that in a couple of years you would have made a great name for yourself." "I might even get to the top of the tree," Doalty assented, sarcasm in his voice, "that dear, delight- ful tree under which the poor grovel as they bring sap to its roots. One day people might notice me and then they would say : 'How the Irish people get on abroad!' One man out of every ten thousand might get on as well at home if there was such an opportunity. But there isn't. . . . The people talk about the laziness of the Irish peasantry. Listen." Lady Ronan lay back on the sofa, one eye on her finger-nails, one on the window, which looked out on the avenue leading to the road. Her son, when he returned from town, would come in that way. "In my glen at home there is an old man," said Doalty. "His name is Oiney Leahy. He has a farm of land, a mile in length and about the width of this floor across. The farm runs from the river to the top of the hill and the public road runs through it. From the river to the road the bottom land is a level strip. From the road to the top of ' the hill the farm stands on end, and half way up this precipice, which the poor man calls (real Irish humour this time) his farm, the farmhouse is sit- uated. Oiney's house, a mere hovel, could not be built from east to west, for the farm is too narrow. It had to be built from north to south, one gable- end looking on the road, the other looking up hill. From the upper gable wall to the top of the hill the brae was one mass of rocks thirty years ago. Oiney took it into his head that this tract of land 54 Glenmornan was going to loss, so he decided to turn the rocky brae into a pleasant field. I don't think he ever heard that remark about the man who could make two blades of grass grow where only one had grown before. But whether he heard it or not he set him- self out to do it. When he had any time to spare he put a creel on his back and went down to the bot- tom land by the river, filled the creel full of clay, carried it up the precipice and emptied it on the rocks. It took him three-quarters of an hour to carry the burden up and he did the job bare-footed, for the stoney path up hill was too severe on shoe- leather. And so he worked day after day using every spare moment to make a little field amidst the rocks of Glenmornan. Old Oiney was a man who out-rivalled Columbus the explorer. The lat- ter discovered new land, Oiney made it. And then when this poor peasant had a field laid out on the precipice the landlord saw it and raised the rent of the farm." ii At this moment a young man and a girl entered, Lady Ronan's two children, George and Myra. George had a certain talent for writing and was gifted with a ready pen. He was a handsome, graceful fellow, a dandy in dress, a master of smart conversation and as much at home in a drawing- room as in an editor's sanctum. Amusing and easy mannered, with complete con- fidence in himself, he was received cordially every- Doalty Gallagher 55 where. Now and again he was a little violent, but his friends liked him none the less for that, for he looked as if he never meant his words to be taken seriously. He appeared to regard everything tri- fling as serious and everything serious as trifling. In his stories, for example, he would write in a jok- ing fashion about a workman's strike and take up a serious standpoint when dealing with a dog-show. From his utterance one might gather that the for- mer was a holiday amusement and the latter a mat- ter of national importance. Despite this he was very serious about his newspaper work and as a matter of course he spoke lightly about it as befitted a man of the world who tries to act as if he did not attach any particular value to his toil. Myra Ronan sat down on the sofa near the win- dow, giving a careless nod to Doalty Gallagher as she did so. She was a girl just past her twentieth year, wilful and passionate, with an impulsive spirit and a great love for out-door life. In her whole bearing, the lines of her perfectly- formed body, the contour of her full bosom, the curve of her neck, the sweep of her eyebrows, the bold look in her eyes, there was something attractive to all men and dan- gerous to herself as well as others. Doalty Galla- gher had known her for eighteen months, but he had never been on very intimate terms with her. She held herself aloof, treated him with an almost wilful carelessness, and even her manner to him had a shade of something like hostility. She was a strange girl, one whom he could not understand. Young Ronan looked at Doalty. 56 Glenmornan "So you are really here," he said, and went across to his mother and kissed her on the cheek. Then he sat down. "Now a cup of tea, mater," he said. "I'm fam- ished. I promised to meet Doalty at Paddington, but couldn't get off in time. I had to scrap one story and work up another. The old man is the deuce of a temper to-day." "I never hear about him being other than in a bad temper," said Lady Ronan. "But when he comes down here he is as gentle as a lamb." "He is a lion in Fleet Street," said George. "A lion with a thorn in his paw. But putting him to one side, has Doalty been telling you ?" "He has," said Lady Ronan. "Going home. . . . Going to remain in Ireland and work on his wee farm just the same as his neighbour . . . what was that man's name, Doalty? I've forgotten." "Oiney Leahy." "Yes, that's it," said Lady Ronan, nodding her head. "Poor old man. He was. . . . But does not George know the story ?" "I suppose I do," said George with a careless shrug of his shoulders. "I hear these tales about Glenmornan so often. . . . It's a funny thing though. When Doalty came to the office two years ago it was impossible to get a word from him. He sat at his desk every evening biting the tip of his pen and brooding, as it seemed, over the destiny of the universe. But one day, he had been a year with us then, he spoke about Ireland and he seldom talks about anything else now. It's strange the way Doalty Gallagher 57 Irishmen learn to love their country more, the longer they are out of it. The greatest Irish pa- triots are American born, I believe. . . . Wait till Doalty is three months in his own country and then he'll be glad to come back here. . . ." "Never," said Doalty. "I'm never going to come back. I would prefer " "A wee Greenanore girl in an ould plaid shawl," 1 said Myra Ronan with a malicious shrug of her shoulders. "Now children, no argument on such a fine even- ing," said Lady Ronan, rising to her feet and look- ing at her nails. They seemed to be a source of perpetual interest to her. "Run out and take the boat on the river. I'll come with you, if you behave yourselves and leave the Irish questions to Red- mond and Carson." Ten minutes later the four of them were on the river. in Doalty Gallagher and George Ronan were sitting in the library, George on the sofa swinging his legs aimlessly and Doalty on a chair, his hands under his thighs, his head erect and his eyes staring through the window into unfathomable distances. A butler with an official smile on his red, fat face, came in, bearing a tray of coffee. Doalty looked at the butler, took in, with one swift glance, the man, his red face and his smile. This smile seemed to be always there on duty, now and again asleep, of 58 Glenmornan course, like a sentry on guard, but ready to wake up at the sound of a foot or the rustle of a skirt. When Lady Ronan's guests asked him to do them a service he did it so hastily that one would think the man was more interested in the guest's welfare than in his own. He placed the coffee on the table, retired a few steps, walking backwards, bowed and went out. "Now why are you going back to Ireland ?" young Ronan enquired, lighting a cigarette and lying back on the sofa. "Are you in love with some dainty Irish coleen, like Biddy Cassidy, with a little pig and a brogue and an old mother that sits all day at a spin- ning wheel? And Biddy, God bless her, will have a wolf hound and a harp." "The former's extinct and I've never seen the latter until I left Ireland," said Doalty. "It's a funny country," he went on. "Its people are diffi- cult to understand. In the first place they hate this country with a traditional hatred, the hatred of a vendetta. And no wonder, for English laws have ground them down to the very dirt. The gombeen man is just as bad, nay ! he is worse than the land- lord, and the poor respect him after a fashion. Why should they not, for is not the priest and the gom- been man the greatest friends in the world ? Is not one half of the Irish priests the sons of gombeen men? You should hear the priest make a sermon on the torments that await men who are damned be- cause they have not paid the debts due to a gombeen man. Good God! If I had my way with priests Doalty Gallagher 59 like those I'd hang every man of them from the crosses of their own altars." "Easy, Doalty my boy, easy/' said young Ronan smiling lazily. He looked round to see if an ash- tray were near, but not seeing one he flicked the ash from his cigarette on the carpet. He was always a good listener, and Doalty, when the mood was on him, was a great talker. "It's enough to drive one mad at times to find the way things are done," said Doalty. "Now in my own place, for example, who is left there? The young men and the young girls grow up and when they reach a certain age they clear out of the coun- try. Nine go away out of a family of ten. The tenth remains and he is generally the weakling. Not much good in him going away, so he stays at home and marries a weakling like himself. Soon there will be none in the country but the inefficient." "All that is very evident," said Ronan with a smile, flicking some more ash to the carpet "But I can't follow your meaning. Why are you going home? Have you made a fortune and are eager, to spend it?" IV "My worldly wealth is some thirty pounds," sai'd Doalty. "I'll spend that easily. No place like Ire- land for spending money. I'll have to give some of it to my mother. She is always putting a little by. That is her one ambition, to put some money in the bank. If I gave her ten thousand pounds she 60 Glenmornan would put every penny of it in the bank and con- tinue living just as she is living now. She might, of course, buy another bit of land and get so su- perior that she would not speak to a neighbour. In her own townland she is a great swell; she looks down on her neighbours as it is, because she has six cows' grass and most of the people about her have only feeding for two or three cattle." j "But still you have not told me yet why you want to get back there/' said Ronan, again flicking the ash to the carpet. "I want to get back to my own people," said Doalty. "I am going to work as they work and toil in the fields and mow the hay and dig the pota- . toes. I am g^ing to do some real work, not such as I do here. What do we, the moulders of public opinion, really do? For myself, I get out of bed in the morning at nine o'clock. In Glenmornan half a day's work is finished by then. I go down to the office and hang about there, chewing the top of a pen until lunch. After lunch I come back to the office to find that the news editor has found a story for me. I have got to call on old Mr. Plodder, who has made a fortune as head of Plodder's Gro- cery Stores. He will be in the next honours list, for he has given piles of money to charity. He has risen from the gutters and now he is at the top of the business world. I have to get his photograph (an easy matter) and interview him, get the story of his wonderful career, how he got rich, etc. Two things I know before I see the man. One is that he had read Smiles' Self-Help and the other is that he Doalty Gallagher 61 does not know how he amassed so much money. He will say that he became rich by steady toil and honest endeavour. But that means nothing. Oiney Leahy, of Glenmornan, is as steady a worker as Plodder, and Oiney hasn't got a penny. So I see him, write him up in the most glowing manner. I do it to make my living, the newspaper does it be- cause Plodder advertises in its columns. I'm not in earnest about the job; it gives me no pleasure. In short, I'm sick of it. I'll be much happier in Glen- mornan." "And you'll be glad to get back here again, I bet," said Ronan. "Six months will be quite enough for you there. Let me know when you're coming back, Doalty. I'll see that you're taken on the pa- per again." Lady Ronan was part proprietor of the daily on which Doalty was employed. She was a very wealthy woman. Her husband who had died re- cently left a large fortune. "And if you get any good stuff send it on," said Ronan. "The old man will give it a place, I know. He likes your work." There was a tap at the door and Myra Ronan entered. "Are you two coming with me for a walk?" she asked. "Down by the river. It's such a fine night for a stroll." Doalty had got to his feet and stood looking at the girl. George stretched himself out on the sofa and puffed rings of smoke into the air. "I'm not going for a walk at this hour," he said. 62 Glenmornan "I've got to go on some job or another (I forget what it is) to-morrow morning. Take Doalty with you, Myra. He's leaving here on Monday and maybe he'll never come back again." "Will you come, Doalty?" Myra enquired. Like her mother and brother she always called the young Irishman by his Christian name. "I'll be happy if you allow me," said Doalty eagerly. Five minutes later they were both on the bank of the river. There was a breath of freshness from the quiet water and a soft breeze rustled through the tall grass that was not yet tramped down by the feet of holiday makers. The night was very clear, with a sky studded with stars. The horizon on the east across the fields glowed a pale white and her- alded the moon which would presently rise. "To think of remaining indoors on a night like this !" said Myra in a voice of feeling. "If nobody came with me I would have come out alone. Shall we have a long walk, ever such a long walk? You don't mind, Doalty?" "Mind! Certainly not. Where shall we go?" "Oh ! anywhere," she said, as if abandoning her- self to Doalty's guidance, then paused as if consid- ering the question. "I know," she exclaimed, after a moment's silence. "We'll go along the river till we pass the church in the fields. Then we'll go across through the meadows to Pyford. . . . lYou've never been to the village of Pyford, Doalty?" "Never," he replied. Doalty Gallagher 63 "Then you'll like it, especially by moonlight, when all the people are asleep," she said, stepping out briskly, as if on the point of breaking into a run. "It's a little village with a crooked street and such old houses. I have often gone out there on moon- light nights. . . ." "Alone?" asked Doalty. "Why not?" queried the girl, casting a cursory glance at Doalty. "I'm able to take care of my- self." "But one never knows what might happen." "So mother says," Myra replied. "But I did not think that you would have ideas like that. They are so old-fashioned. A girl is as well able to protect herself as a man." "From whom, and from what?" "From anybody and anything, from a tramp or a mad dog," said Myra. "From oh !" Doalty bent to lift her almost as soon as she reached the ground. "What happened ?" he enquired as he helped her to her feet. "My foot caught in a root and I tripped," she said. "It's so dark, and going through this grass you don't know what you are going to step on." "Have you hurt yourself?" ?'No." "Well, let me take your arm, and I'll try and save you from falling when you meet the next root." He took her arm as he spoke and both proceeded pn their way along the river. The moon withered 64 Glenmornan at one of its corners, rose over the fields and lit up the whole country with a strange misty light. The air was full of the perfume of recently cut hay and from the distance came the sound of a train on its journey to London. "What a wonderful night !" Myra exclaimed. "If I had the choice of dying when I pleased I would choose a night like this. And this wonderful walk, Doalty! Do you like it?" "Yes, it's wonderful," Doalty replied, then spoke again, as if he had not already concluded his sen- tence. "Very wonderful, Miss Ronan," he said. She drew her arm away from his, stood still and looked at him. Doalty knew that she was going to ask a question and he guessed what that question would be. "Why do you always call me Miss Ronan?" she asked. "I always call you Doalty. I hope it does not annoy you." "I would have called you Myra long ago, but I was afraid to do so," said the Irishman in a voice which had suddenly become strangely husky. "It somehow seems that I have no right to do so." "You have as much right as I have." "Havel?" "Have I what?" "Myra." "Now you may take my arm again, Doalty," said the girl, with a smile. "There are roots all through this grass. And here is the church." It showed through the elms near the river, an old building with its spire standing clear cut against Doalty Gallagher 65 the sky. The base of the church was steeped in coal-black shadows, through which wisps of mist were wandering aimlessly. "It's hundreds of years old," said Myra, "and there's no road near it. Do you know why that is ?" "I'm afraid I don't know, Myra." He dwelt on the name lovingly and his hand touched hers. "The church was built at a time when the coun- try was covered with trees and when people trav- elled more by water than land," said the girl. "They came to church by boats. Services were held here hundreds and hundreds of years ago. Proba- bly the ghosts of the old worshippers are about the place yet. Suppose we saw one of them come out now. Oh ! I would be so frightened !" As she spoke a slight shudder ran through her and she clutched Doalty's hand. "So you are really afraid of something?" he asked, pressing her fingers tightly. "But there are no ghosts, you know," he assured her. "At least not in England." "But there are some in Ireland," she said. "Oh, yes. Behind every hedge and under all the holly trees." "And you want to go back to see all these ghosts again," said the girl. "It's not altogether for that purpose, Myra," said Doalty. "I'm homesick and I'm tired of liv- ing here." "Tired of us all ?" she asked, but by her tones it was evident that "us all" meant herself alone. "Oh! I'm not tired of you, but still " 66 Glenmornan "Then I suppose you really are," she said diffi- dently, then as if some work had been accomplished to her satisfaction, she remarked: "It's about time that we went back. Mother will be anxious." They turned round and retraced their steps arm in arm, their hands clasped and the little village of Pyford quite forgotten. Doalty's mind was filled with the thoughts which can never be absent from a young man's mind on such an occasion. What Myra was thinking of it was impossible to say. Anyway, she did not withdraw her hand. They walked along the river in silence, passed through the gate and up the carriage drive. The hall-door of Ermara was left half open and a lamp was still alight in the hall. Not a soul was to be seen there. Myra withdrew her hand from Doalty's as they crossed the threshold. "I must go up and tell mother that we have come in," she said, and without bidding her com- panion Good-night she tripped upstairs. Doalty followed her and went to his bedroom. It opened out on a long narrow passage in the sec- ond floor. Opposite it was the bedroom in which Myra slept. Doalty sat down on a chair, lit a cigarette and left the door half -open. The passage outside was in darkness save where the light from Doalty's room showed across the floor and lit up the door of Doalty Gallagher 67 Myra Ronan's bedroom. He would see her go into her room when she came along the passage. Why did he want to see her? He did not love her and he was certain that she did not love him. But he did not think of this. All he could think of was the pressure of her hand when she clasped his by the old church, her white throat, her soft delicate cheeks, her charming eyes, the poise of her chin. ... A feeling passionate and primitive, which is never wholly absent at twenty-one, welled up in Doalty's breast, almost choking him with its ex- quisite pain. Myra came along the passage, stopped opposite her bedroom door and looked in at Doalty in his room. "You're not in bed yet, Doalty," she said in a whisper, as if afraid that somebody, other than Doalty, was listening to her. "Neither are you in bed," he replied, getting to his feet. He spoke as if the fact of Myra not yet being in bed was sufficient excuse for him to be up. "Oh ! neither of us could be as yet, for we have only just come in," said Myra, placing her fingers on the handle of her door and drawing them away again. "You did like that church in the moon- light?" she asked in a whisper. "Yes, it interested me very much," he whispered in reply. It almost seemed that the sight of the old building by moonlight was a secret known only to the two of them and which had to be kept hidden from all other mortals. Myra came to the door of Doalty's bedroom, (68 Glenmornan stepping very softly on the carpet and trembling a little as she reached him. "There's a picture of the church hanging on your wall near the window," she said nervously, blush- ing as she spoke. "A painting?" "Yes." "Which of these pictures is it?" He went across to the window and looked at one picture in a gilt frame. It was certainly not the painting of a church, but he looked at it as atten- tively as if his very gaze would transform an etch- ing of two children playing with a dog into an an- cient home of religious worship. When he looked round again he found Myra be- hind him, looking at the same picture. "That's not it," she said, "I don't think it is really here. It was, some time ago, but I think mother has taken it away for her own room. She is always changing things." "And this picture of the boy and girl playing with a dog," Doalty said. "You are the girl, I sup- pose." "She's not like me, is she?" "I don't know. It's so dark here that I cannot see it very well." "Well, I'll get up on a chair and have a look," said Myra, drawing forward the chair on which Doalty had been sitting a few minutes earlier. She sprang up on it with a bound, active as a kitten, and her head became level with the etching. "It is very dark," she said, "and this chair is so Doalty Gallagher 69 woggeldy. Just don't let me fall on the floor, Doalty. If I come down I'll waken the whole house/' He held her arm and steadied her while she ex- amined the picture. As he did so his heart was filled with a strange, joyful emotion and a great feeling of tenderness towards the girl. "Well, I hope I never looked like that/' she whis- pered. "She's an ugly little creature. . . . Whisht ! there's somebody coming up the stairs. One of the servants maybe, putting out the lights." Doalty rushed to the door of the room and looked out. Nobody was to be seen, but the soft thud of heavy feet in slippers could be heard coming up. Doalty shoved the door to and shut it. Then he turned round to see Myra standing in the middle of the room near the bed, her head thrust a little for- ward and one hand over the ear in a listening at- titude. Outside the steps sounded along the passage, halted for a moment at the door, then went back again and died away. "It's the butler, I think," said Myra in a hoarse whisper. "He's always prowling about like a fox." "If he had come in!" Doalty hazarded. "If he had," said the girl with a deep intake of breath, and a horrified expression showed in her eyes. Never before had Doalty seen the girl look so beautiful. Her look, her eyes, her round chin magnetised Doalty. Something fierce and ungov- ernable, a mad wild passion took possession of him, 70 Glenmornan and the next moment he found himself sitting on the bed by her side, his arm round her shoulders, his lips resting on hers, pressing them in against her white teeth with wild undisciplined violence. And the girl yielded to his embrace, returning his kisses and caresses. . . . Ah, the glorious passion of twenty-one. "Suppose somebody saw us in here/' she asked shyly, when several minutes had passed, apparently conscious for the first time of the position in which she had placed herself. if lt doesn't matter," Doalty said with a superior masculine smile, resting her head in the crook of his arm and kissing one eye, then another. "You are not afraid, are you?" "No, Doalty, but still, it doesn't seem right, somehow," said Myra. "If anybody knew." She sat up, drew a deep breath and ran on tip- toes towards the door. She stood there for a mo- ment, listening, then waved Doalty, who was ap- proaching her, away. "I'm going to my own room," she whispered, looking at him and then averting her eyes. "It was wrong of me to come in. ... Good-night, Doalty." With these words she opened the door, rushed out into the passage and disappeared. Doalty could hear the door of her room open and close. Then silence followed. He drew his chair up to the door and sat down on it, with his eyes fixed on the closed bedroom, Doalty Gallagher 71 and imagined many things for a full hour after- wards. "She'll be asleep now," he said at last, and get- ting up he undressed, put on his pyjamas and lit a cigarette. Then he went up to the mirror which stood over the washstand and looked at his face in it, while a wild sensual feeling surged through his blood. The novelty of an hour ago had died away, only the desires remained, leaving Doalty dissatisfied and despondent. He should not have allowed her to run away. If he had been firm she would have remained she would be in the room now. He rubbed his handkerchief over the mirror where his breath had dimmed it and looked at his reflection again. His heart beat violently, the veins on his temples throbbed, and his arms shook as if with cold. He threw his cigarette into the empty fireplace, put another in his mouth but did not light it. Instead he went out of his room, stepped softly up to Myra's door and listened with his ear to the keyhole. No sound was to be heard, no movement, no breathing. He went back to his room again, turned out the light and got into bed. VI On the following morning he was late in getting out of bed. When he went down to the dining-room he found nobody there. Lady Ronan had gone off to church and George had departed for London. He would return to his home that night. But Myra 72 Glenmornan was also absent. She generally had breakfast with Doalty when he had visited the house before. Breakfast was laid for him and he sat down and poured himself out a cup of tea. It was then that lie noticed a letter addressed to him lying on a plate by his side. The writing on the envelope was Myra Ronan's. He opened it and read the hastily scrawled letter. This was what it contained: DEAR DOALTY, I am sorry that I have to go away without bidding you good-bye. I intended to tell you about my intended depar- ture last night when we were out for the walk along the river. I am going to stay with a girl friend at her home the other side of London and I shall be there for several days. You shall be in Ireland by the time I'm back home again. I hope you'll enjoy life over there. Let us know how you are getting on when you have time to write a line. We'll, all of us, be delighted to hear from you. Excuse this hurried scrawl. Yours sincerely, MYRA RON AN. "Well, I'm 'damned !" said Gallagher in a puzzled voice as he placed the letter back in the envelope. " 'Let us know how you are getting on !' " He took out the letter again, read it twice before replacing it in the envelope. Then leaning over the table he looked in the cup as if the tea had suddenly possessed some great attraction for him. "All this had to be," he muttered to himself. "What was I expecting? I did not love her, I could not love her. She does not love me, and I knew it. ... I amused her I suppose," He smiled bit- Doalty Gallagher 73 terly and lifted the tea-cup from the saucer, plac- ing it on the table. Then he sat upright, placed both hands in his pockets, lay back on the chair and fixed a vacant look on the window opposite. Doalty was a well-built young man with light brown eyes and very dark hair. He left school, the mountain school of Glenmornan, when he was fourteen. At fifteen he came to London with a crowd of Irish labourers and got a job as nipper in the employ of a jobbing contractor. He was a voracious reader and tried his hand at writing when he was seventeen. At nineteen, when work- ing at the London Docks, he sent some contribu- tions to a daily paper, stories of labourers, sailors, tramps and doss-house residents. All the stories were published and paid for. He sent more stuff to the paper and this was also taken, then he him- self was taken as reporter on the staff. He had now been on the paper for two years. Now as he sat there alone in the Ermara break- fast room, thinking of Myra Ronan, he recalled women he had known and a little typist in the news- paper office came to his mind. The journalists called her Fluffie amongst themselves. She was a pretty, fair-haired girl of nineteen when Doalty first saw her. She attracted him and he fell madly in love with her. She was in his thoughts all day and in his dreams all night. But he never dis- closed his passion to the girl. In her presence he felt tongue-tied, impotent. Even once when he had a chance. . . . But no. ... It was in the office, in a dark passage on the ground floor that he met her. 74 Glenmornan . . . She was coming along with a sheaf of papers, and as he passed her she gave a little shriek and clutched his arm. "What's wrong?" Doalty stammered as if the sweet shiver which ran through his body had com- municated itself to his tongue. "I thought I saw a mouse running along there !" said the girl, with a slight catch in her voice. "No . . . nothing!" said Doalty with a little laugh. "I'm so sorry, but I'm terrified of mice," said Fluffie, and a little smile hovered on her eyelashes. Then she scuttled away. That night Doalty sat in his room, lighting cig- arette after cigarette and throwing them in the grate when they burned to his fingers. At four in the morning he went to bed. When he fell asleep he dreamt of Fluffie, and in the dream she was asking him to save her from a dreadful mon- ster that was attacking her. He tried to help her, but his efforts were futile. The monster was drag- ging her down, down along with him into a dark pit. Doalty tried to drag the girl back but could not. Instead of helping her he fell with her down, down. . . . He woke up. Next day the editor called him to his office. Fluf- fie was there, bending over the typewriter. As Doalty went in the girl left, first fixing a knowing look on him, as if some secret of his had been re- vealed to her. "Well, how do you like this work?" asked the editor when the room was left to the two men. Doalty Gallagher 75 '"I like it well," said Doalty. "But it needs get- ting used to a bit." "It does," said the editor, smiling slightly and fashioning letters with his forefinger in the air. This was a habit of his when immersed in thought. "Life is not the same here as in the East End where you have been working," he said. "There a man can do his job with a cap on; here a man needs to wear a hat. There a man can wear trou- ; sers patched and baggy, but here For my own part, I don't care what a man wears ; it's the man that counts and not his rags. But when reporters go out on a story they have a better chance of get- ting there in a top-hat than in a cap. It's funny, but still Well, I've got a story for you," said the editor without changing his tone of voice. "It's about," etc. As Doalty went out Fluffie came in again. It al- most seemed as if she had been waiting behind the door. Probably she had been listening to the con- ; versation. Next morning Doalty came to his work in a velour hat, a new lounge suit and trousers that were carefully creased. Hitherto he had worn a cap and trousers that were both a little the worse for wear. A week later Fluffie left the office. He never saw her again. Then there was a girl at the tea-shop where he and his mates used to have tea in the afternoons. All the young journalists, with the exception of Doalty, vowed that they were in love with the girl, whom they called Pussie. They made collections 76 Glenmornan amongst themselves and bought the girl boxes of chocolate. The boxes were always bound in pink ribbons with pink bows. Pink was Pussie's fa- vourite colour. After a time she went from Fleet Street to a job in a Piccadilly teashop. All the young men, with the exception of Doalty, made love to the girl who came to replace her. Doalty, however, went to tea in Piccadilly afterwards and continued going there until Pussie got married to a taxi driver. He read Myra's letter again, crumpled it up and put it in his pocket. "It doesn't matter and I don't care," he said, gazing ruefully at the cup in which the tea had be- come quite cold. CHAPTER IV; IN" HIS MOTHER'S HOUSE I have been gone from Donegal for seven years and a day, And true enough it's a long, long time for a wanderer to stay, But the hills of home are aye in my heart and never are far away. 7 Will Go Back. F I ^HE soft Summer night was falling and a few stars already showed over Carna- -* ween, though the colours of the sunset still lingered behind Sliav-a-Tuagh, where that hill rose over Meenawarawor to look out on the sea. [The evening twilight settled on boreen and brae and showed densely dark in the awlth behind the house of Maura The Rosses. The brooks reeling] 'down to the river looked white and ghostly as they [fell over the rocks. A young girl was driving the cows home from the hills and the cattle could be seen, coming down carefully, picking their way over hillock and hobeen. The girl could be heard shouting in a shrill, clear voice : "Come home with ye now, ye silly crathur! Have sense and get on with ye, ye wee divil ye I" 77 78 Glenmornan The peasantry were coming in from the fields, the men walking with a slow, decided step, their pipes in their mouths and their spades over their shoulders. The women, more in a hurry, were coming into their homes well ahead of their men folk, singing as they made their way through the long grass of the meadows. They had much work to do still, for the cows had to be milked, the stir- about had to be made ready. The men had been working hard all day and it would not do to keep them waiting for their suppers. Many of the cows were already in the byres tied to the stakes, their full udders yearning for the hands of the milkers. Doalty Gallagher, home from foreign parts, was sitting on the ground outside the door of his moth- er's house, his soul drinking in all the glory of the Irish nightfall. A bat, whirring in the air over his head, now and again swooped down and round him, almost touching his ear. He had come home that day at noon, and up till a few moments ago, he had been inside the house speaking to the neigh- bours who had come to see him. He felt very happy. Everything in the glen and around him seemed beautiful and full of meaning. His soul was filled with peace and goodwill towards all men and he wished to every one the same happiness as that which filled his own heart. He was looking on everything with a fresh mind in which there was no bitterness. The smell of the midden, the turf fire and the rich grass was in his nostrils and all this woke pleas- ant remembrance in the young man. It recalled In His Mother's House 79 to him his childhood and the days that had gone. "Ah I how very good it is to be back again," he said. "Everybody is so happy and they are all so glad to see me ! And the little boy, Hughie ! What a rip- ping little rascal. He's not in the least afraid of me. But why should he be?" He got to his feet and walked along the field for a couple of hundred yards, then sat down again in the grass that was already getting wet with the dew. He bent his lips to the ground, kissed it and looked round to see if any one had observed him. Nobody was nigh. "If they saw me they would think that I was a fool!" he laughed. "Wonder what mother would do if she saw me kiss Ireland? She would shake the holy water over me, I'm sure. And I saw the bottle of holy water to-day. Under the roof beam, just where it used to be seven years ago. And the bottle was once used for whisky. The label is on it yet." The air was pure and fresh, making him feel a little drowsy. He looked down the dip of the meadow and he could see the white streak of the glen road losing itself in the gloom. Lights ap- peared in the houses and more stars were creeping timidly out in the heavens. "Just as it used to be," he said. "Just the same as I mind it. In London I used to have pleasure in looking forward; here somehow the pleasure is in looking back." "Go on little cow, now! Do ye not want to be milked the night?" 8o Glenmornan The girl up on the hill was still calling to the cattle. ii "Doalty ! Where are ye? Come in and have yer supper !" It was his sister Norah who was calling. She had just milked the cows, two of which were giv- ing milk. Three were springing and it was ex- pected that one of these, a white faced animal with a belly taut as a drum, would calve twins. So Maura The Rosses told her son. "I'm here," said Doalty in answer to his sister. He had got to his feet and lit a cigarette. "Come in then, afore yer supper gets cold," she said. He went across to her. "How many cigarettes d'ye smoke in a day?" she asked. "About I don't know how many twenty maybe." "And what d'ye pay for them?" she asked. "About a shilling for twenty," he said. "A shilling," said Norah. "What a lot iv money. Can I have one?" "Of course you can," said Doalty and handed her a cigarette. "D'ye know who's comin' to see ye ?" Norah said. She was a very handsome girl, well proportioned and light on her feet. "Who?" In His Mother's House 81 "Old Oiney," said Norah. "I met him on the hill a minute ago when I was up for the cows and he said that he was comin' in to see ye when he got his cattle in. He is very fond iv ye." "I like old Oiney," said Doalty. "Is he as lively as ever?" "He's an old omadhaun," said Norah. "He's al- ways talkin' about the old times and we are all sick iv listenin' to him." "Go on, wee cow, now ! I'm tired iv ye, ye wee divil ye!" "Who's that on the hill?" asked Doalty, as he heard the voice of the girl again. "She seems to have trouble enough with the cows." "It's Sheila Dermod," said Norah. "The Der- mods have only two cows on their bit iv land, and to hear her speak one would think that she has whole drove iv them." "You're not friendly with her, are you?" asked Doalty. "Our ma and her ma fell out two years back, and we have never passed a word with her since then," said Norah. "Breed and Sheila live to- gether and they are as proud and distant as the hills. And Sheila thinks that every boy in the glen is mad after her." "So you're jealous of her," said Doalty with a laugh. "Me jealous iv her!" Norah exclaimed. "Jeal- ous iv Sheila Dermod and her one iv the lowest iv the low. God forbid me that I would !" 82 Glenmornan in Doalty and Norah went in home together. A good red turf fire glowed on the hearth and beside the fire Maura The Rosses was seated, on a wooden stool, a stocking in her hand, and her bare toes peeping out from under her red woollen petticoat. Wee Hughie was rolling on the floor, a puppy dog frollicking around his bare legs and barking mer- rily. Doalty's youngest sister, Kitty, a girl who was getting her education at the convent school of Greenanore, was seated at the stirabout pot which stood on the floor, eating her supper. A lamp hanging by a nail from the wall, lit the smoky at- mosphere of the room with a soft, mellow light. The walls were turf brown, a tint which harmonised with the dun colourings of the floor. A long beam of bog-oak stretched across the rigging of the house, under the scraughs, and from this beam and the rafters, raying fanwise out from it, all man- ner of utensils were hanging, trahooks,* scythes, spades and shovels. "So here ye are, Doalty," said the mother, ris- ing from her seat and pouring out a bowl of milk which she placed on the table in front of a dish of stirabout. "There's yer brahun-ray, so make a good meal iv it." "I'll make a good meal, never fear," said Doalty. "When is Oiney coming in to see me ?" "He'll be in at any minit now," said the mother, *Trahook: A twister used in making ropes. In His Mother's House 83 sitting down again by the fire and resuming her knitting. "There he's comin', I think. I hear his steps." At that moment Oiney Leahy entered without rapping. They never rap on the door in Glen- mornan. With his hat on, for the people never re- move their hats when entering a house, Oiney went up to Doalty and caught both the young man's hands. "And is it yerself that is back to the barony iv Burrach again, Doalty Connel?" he said, his eyes gleaming with emotion. "I'm so glad to see ye again after all the time that ye were away from yer own home. . . . And ye've got to be a fine hearty man too. And a Gallagher, a Gallagher, every inch iv ye 1" "So he hasn't changed so much that ye wouldn't know him?" asked Maura The Rosses, touched by the old man's hearty welcome for her son. "And d'ye think that I wouldn't be knowin' Doalty, the oldest son iv Connel Gallagher, God rest him !" said Oiney in a voice of protest. "Know him ! Be Goigah ! I'd know his skin on a bush." The old man released Doalty's hands and stepped back a few paces and surveyed him minutely from head to heel. "Just as I expected him to look," he said, when the inspection came to an end. "He might just be the same as he is now, if he had never left home. Just sittin' down to his brahun-ray and butther- milk like any one in the glen. . . . And how long will ye be stayin' with us now ?" he enquired. 84 Glenmornan By "us" Oiney meant the people of Glenmor- nan. "I'll stay for quite a long time," said Doalty. "Iv course ye will," said Oiney, again clasping the young man's hands and shaking them. "There's maybe no place like yer own bit iv the world when all's said and done. ... It must be an awful thing to live away in the big town where ye're seein' hun- dreds iv people day after day and never the same face two times over. And I'll bet ye now, that there's no place like Glenmornan after all! Isn't that so, Doalty me boyo?" "That is so," said Doalty. "And you're look- ing quite well on it, Oiney." "Then I'm as well as can be expected," said Oiney with an air of decision. "But all the same I'm a worn-out old fellow," he continued, not with- out a certain complacency, and paused, as if wait- ing to hear his remark contradicted. "Mary and Joseph! but ye're not old lookin', Oiney," said Maura The Rosses, working her knit- needles violently, as if to emphasise her assertion. "Ye look as young this very day as ye did ten years ago. Now what age are ye ?" she enquired. "Well, I'll tell ye," said the old man. "And this is how I know. 'Twas on the day that I was mar- ried and Condy Mor iv Meenawarawor, since dead, God rest him! said to me, 'Oiney/ says he, If ye're alive and well, come Candlemas next, ye'll be such and such an age on that day/ So ever since then I know me years. Eighty years, Candlemas past, is my age." In His Mother's House 85 "Well, ye look a young man yet," said Maura The Rosses, pandering to Oiney's coquetry the coquetry of years. "Do ye think so, Maura ?" "Think it, Oiney!" said the woman. "I don't think it. I'm sure iv it." "Well, ye may be right, thank God," said Oiney, seating himself on the chair which Norah Gal- lagher had pushed up towards him, and drawing his old, weather-worn hat down over his eyes. -'There's life and to spare in the old dog yet. And happy! Be Jarra! I never was as happy in all me life. An old dog for the hard road and a pup for the level, as the sayin' is ! I was always on the hard road and I've never had a doctor to me in the whole iv me life." "Is that true ?" asked Doalty, sitting down again to his interrupted meal. "May I die where I sit if there's one word iv a lie in it," said Oiney. "Look at me! Eighty years if an hour I am, and I've never had a doctor to me in all me life. No, nor a taste iv physic either. . . . But what's the good iv it anyway ? It won't keep a man alive for iver. If sickness comes me way it's just what would come to any one, and if it came I would hold me peace and not give it the nose to let it draw one yelp from me. But look at the people in the barony nowadays! If they're goin' to die their first thought is on the doctor and not on the Last Sacrament. It was different when yer father, God rest him, was taken with the sick- ness, Doalty. He said, 'Send for the priest and 86 Glenmornan don't trouble about the doctor.' . . . Ah! the old times " "There were no times like them," said Doalty Gallagher. "There were no times like them and niver will be again," said Oiney, as he pulled out a little black clay pipe from his pocket and put it in his mouth. Oiney was an adept in the art of colouring clays. "Don't light up yet for a wee minit," said Maura The Rosses, as she rose from the stool and made her way to the big room. When she came back she had a large bottle of whisky in her hand. Fill- ing a glass she handed it to Oiney. The old man raised it to his nose, smelled it, then put it down again. He reached out his hand and clasped Doal- ty's. "Ah! It's glad to see ye back here again that I am," he said, and a new warmth had crept into his voice. "I often have been thinking iv ye, Doalty, me boy. And it's glad that I am to know that ye made any amount iv money beyont the water. Nobody deserves to make it more than a son iv Connel Gallagher." He raised the glass to his lips and emptied it at one gulp. IV "It's good stuff," he said. "And d'ye know," he went on, launching into a fresh subject, as if the drink had given him the inspiration. "I used to make a lot iv money meself at one time. But In His Mother's House 87 that was years back. . . . Now it's everybody for himself. But in the times that wor there wor good men in this arm iv the glen. That was thirty years ago, when yer father, God rest him, was a young man, Doalty. He was a splendid gasair and would give ye the very sugar from his tay." "And you could make money then?" said Doalty. "Lashin's and lavin's iv it, me boy," said Oiney, thrusting his hat back and running his fingers through his white hair. " 'How did I make it?* ye'll ask. Well, I'll tell ye, but never a word, mind. I don't want the people iv the barony to know how I made it. In the old times I was able to help them when their rent was due, but nowadays they look at me and laugh behind me back. They helped me to spend the money and gave me nothin' in ex- change for it but the bad name. . . . And God knows why! I was never stingy, for what is the good of being near-going and close-fisted? Greed puts wrinkles in the soul as well as on the forehead. I have seen this though people may be laughin' at me and callin' me a droll ould card. But mind ye, I can talk sense though I never put money by. I take life easy, have a drink when I can get one, am merry and say me prayers. Take everything as it comes from God is me way and if one job isn't fin- ished at night I can take it up again in the mornin'. But look at some of the people about here," said the old man with a sly grin as he put a live coal to his little black clay. "They're workin' late at night and up again in the mornin' before the blackbird shakes itself. Not 88 Glenmornan to go further away than next door but one, looE at Owen Briney. . . . He's always workin' and lavin' by and what will be the end iv it all for him and men like him ? They have days to make money but never an hour to spend it. Accordin' to their way iv lookin' at things they have nothin' done as long as there's anything to do. They'll begrudge the hour to die in. "When they go there'll be somebody to spend the money for them," Oiney went on. "I know many a man who has gone and left a fortune behind him. Then his sons drank the money or his daughters spent it on hats and dresses. I don't know what's comin' over the glen girls nowadays," said the old man, fixing his eyes on Norah Gallagher as if the remark was meant for her. "It's all flounces and hats and fine boots and shoes, and paper pads over their breasts and over their bottoms. They puff out their bodies in a way that God never intended them, and they think that they are queens. But in the ould days yer hand could feel what the eye saw and ye were never disappointed. Now it's hood- winkin' us that they be all the time. They can't go outside the door without puttin' their boots on. "But look at me," continued Oiney, running the pipe-shank through his chin-whiskers. "Eighty | years if a day and I can go out and do a night's cuttin' iv green rushes on Meenawarawor without a boot to me feet. Once ye wouldn't think it now, widye? I had as much money as any man in Glenmornan and ye know what that means." "What does that mean?" asked Doalty. In His Mother's House 89 "Mean !" said Oiney. "It means everything, me boy. I could at that time go into the fair iv Greenanore and put every man in shoe-leather as drunk as a king. I was a man then and could carry a bag of Indian-buck, two hundredweight that, home on me back after drinking glass for glass with every man I met. That, too, at the heel iv the day, and never put me bottom down for a rest on the whole journey, and all the way up- hill. But look at the men nowadays ! Not one in the whole barony, bar young Dennys The Drover maybe, can do the same. I would be ashamed to be like that, wouldn't I now, Maura The Rosses?" "Ye would, indeed, Oiney," said the old woman, placing her stocking on the floor and bringing out her snuff-box from her breast. She handed it to Oiney Leahy. He got hold of the snuff between finger and thumb and drew it through one nostril. Then he tried the other, the right, but finding it stopped, he drew it a little apart and inhaled vio- lently. "It never gives me the sneeze iv late," he said and looked round. . . . Nobody was up now ex- cept Doalty and his mother. Little Hughie was lying in the kitchen bed, his two big blue eyes star- ing out at the old man. "Oo don't see me, Oiney," he called. "I see ye, ye vagabone," Oiney said. "Ye're there in the bed and yer two eyes lookin' out." "Not my two eyes," said Hughie. "Whose eyes, then, tell me?" 9O Glenmornan "Eyes iv the Wee Red Head Man," Hughie an- swered. His mother often told Hughie the story of the Wee Red Headed Man who went to Tir- nanoge, The Land of Eternal Youth, to marry the jQueen of The Fairies. "Ye get to sleep, Hughie," said Oiney as he got Jo his feet. "I've got to go home now and have me sleep meself." "Another drop of this before you go," said Doalty as he filled a glass and handed it to Oiney. "Fuxey very nice," Hughie called from the bed, but Oiney did not hear him. Raising his glass the old man gripped Doalty's hand once more and tears started to his eyes. "I'm glad to see ye here again," he said. "Ah I Doalty Connel! it's grand to see ye back again, a big man. And I can mind when ye were a wee gasair not the height iv me leg. I can mind it well, Doalty Connel, and yerself not the height iv me knee!" So saying, the old man drank the glass at one gulp and walked out sideways through the door; without another word. Maura The Rosses looked at her son, and her half-drowsy, half-watchful eyes had in them a look of tenderness, not unmixed with curiosity. "Well, and how d'ye like him ?" she enquired. "He's a grand old man," said Doalty. In His Mother's House 91 "He'll be at the turf now," said Maura The Rosses. "What?" Doalty questioned. "He'll be at turf now and taking a creel home with him," said Maura The Rosses. "He hasn't got one turf on his bit iv a hill, for he didn't cut them in time last year, and so he did not save a clod. But all the same he must get his bit of a fire, poor man. And he's so proud that he'll not ask any one about the place for the len iv a creel. He comes round at night and steals them. It's us one night, and then it's Owen Briney the next night, and round and round he goes, stealin' them, the old fool, when he could get them for the askin'." "Oiney's a feef," said Hughie from the bed. "Ye get to sleep, ye rogue," said the mother. "If ye don't get a sleep on ye this very minit I'll give ye no breakfast in the mornin'." "Come into bed, maw," the little boy called after a moment's silence. "Want oo tell me a story." "That's like the wee vagabone," said Maura The Rosses, looking at her son Doalty. "It's a story every night before he goes to sleep for him, and he won't sleep one wink without it." "Me want story, maw," the little boy called again from the bed. "And what's that Oiney was saying about the time when he could make plenty of money?" Doalty asked. "Was it when he belonged to the Schol Gaelig (Irish School) ?" "That was the time he was talkin' about," said Maura The Rosses. "He was making good money. 92 Glenmornan as a Cath Breac * then. Twelve pounds a year it was, I think." "And he was trying to turn everybody Protes- tant, wasn't he?" Doalty enquired. "I think that was what it was for, the Schol Gaelig," said Maura The Rosses. "Oiney had a wee school in his house, and the glen boys used to go there just to help poor Oiney to make a decent penny. There used to come a man twice a year and put out the Catechis on the boys, but the Catechis was different to that put out in the schools. One question used to be: 'How many Apostles were in it ?' And the answer to that was : There was twelve Apostles and one iv them was the divil/ . . . The man who used to come and put out the questions was always dressed in black, and one night when this man was seen going away from Oiney's house the glen boys that lay out be the road to have a look at him, saw that he had two horns stickin' out iv the top iv his head. Think iv that! and the man used to say that he was teachin' the Gospel. His money was good anyway, arid Oiney at the time that he was gettin' the money was one iv the best dressed men that went to Mass iv a Sunday. "Yer father, God rest him in peace! used to go to Oiney's and was a scholar in the Schol Gaelig school," said Maura The bosses. "Oiney in ad- dition to his pay, used to get two shillin's for every scholar he had in the school, and one shillin' he used to give to the scholar and one Oiney kept him- * Speckled cat. In His Mother's House 93 self. . . . And sometimes on a dark night the young gasairs used to go before the Man in Black three times, dressed different each time. . . . Oiney had no light in the house barrin' the turf fire and it was hard to say whether a man had been in before or not Sometimes a scholar used to pass three times and that would be six shillin's to the good iv the glen. Often, too, after an examination, when the strange man left, the boys used to get hold iv him as he was crossin' the bogs on his way to the town in Donegal and pitch him into a hole. But it has all stopped now because the priest came to hear about it and he said, from the steps iv the altar, that he would make every Cath Breac in the parish go to Lough Derg on their knees as penance for their sins. After that was read out the peo- ple did not like Oiney because they thought that he was half a Prodesan." "Isn't oo comin' bed the night?" Hughie called. Doalty got to his feet and went outside, to smoke a cigarette. When he returned his mother was in bed and telling a story to Hughie Beag. VI "Once upon a time when the cows were kine and the eagles iv the air used to build their nests in the chin-whiskers iv giants," Maura was saying, in a low monotone, "there lived a funny people in a funny wee wood. There was the cow and the sow, and the ox and the fox, and the cat and the 94 Glenmornan bat, and the wren and the hen, but one day there came a big famine and all died iv the hunger, all bar the cat and the bat and the wee red hen." "Maw!" said a little voice from the blankets. "What's wrong widye, now, Hughie Beag?" "Don't like that story, maw. Tell me nuvver story." "Ye get a sleep on ye and close yer eyes, Hughie Beag," said the mother, and went on with her tale. "Well, when it was Spring the cat and the bat and the wee red hen went out to dig the ground for the corn. They had a wee crooked spade " "Oiney has a cookit spade, maw," said Hughie. "True for ye," said the mother. "Well, they went out to the field and looked at one another. 'Who's goin' to dig the ground?' they asked. 'I'll not/ said the bat I'll not,' said the cat. 'But I will/ said the wee red hen." "Me never heard cats or hens say anyfing," said Hughie from the blankets. The mother took no heed of the remark of the youngster but continued the story. It told how the cat and the bat would do no work at all and the wee red hen did everything, dug the ground, planted the grains of corn, one for the mouse and one for the crow, one to rot and one to grow. When the corn grew up the hen cut it with a wee crooked scythe in the harvest season. Then when it was winnowed the hen carried the corn to the mill in her beak and it took her seven days to do the job. The miller was a wee hedgehog who had a wee mill, in a wee hole, in under the holly In His Mother's House 95 bush, beside the holy well. He milled the corn and the hen carried the meal back to her little home in the funny little wood. Her neighbours never did a hand's turn to help her, for the cat was always washing its whiskers and the bat was always blind. But for all that, they were, both of them, ready to eat the bannock of bread, made from the meal, when it was baked by the wee red hen. The brown bannock was placed on the floor when ready and the hen went out to the well to get some water for the tea, and when she came back the bat and the cat had eaten the whole loaf. "And that is the way iv the world, Hughie Beag," said Maura The Rosses, in the same low monotone. "It's the hardest workers who go most often without their bit iv bread. Isn't that the way iv the world, Hughie Beag?" she asked in a whis- per. There was no answer. The little boy was asleep. Doalty went into the big room, and began to undress. How grand and great this day had been, he thought to himself. How dull and useless Lon- don seemed compared to this. The hills, the mead- ows, the turf smoke, the girl calling the cows in from the braes, old Oiney. ... "I love them all," said the young man. "To-morrow I'll go out to the bog and gather the turf. . . . I'm so happy. ... 'It must be awful not to see the same people one day after another.' ... It is, Oiney. Here everything stands still. The table, the stool by the fire, the holy water bottle. . . . All the same 96 Glenmornan as when I left years ago. If I was away fifty years and came back there would be no change. The hills, the glen, the river, the thatched houses, the lamps getting lit in the evening, all, all the same. . . . And old Oiney. . . . What a fine story I could make about him. . . . But that would be a sin." Doalty went into bed and was presently asleep. CHAPTER V OINEY LEAHY If there's no woman in the house, To milk the cow, or wash the delf, The poor, old man, who's left his lone, Is always talking to himself. He makes the fire and rakes it out, He leaves the ashes by the hob, And all the time his heart is sore For there's no woman on the job. It's funny when a man gets old And no one heeding what he'll say, He'll sit beside the fire his lone And speaking to himself all day. A Peasant Song. OINEY LEAHY lived all alone, in his little, house on the brae. He had married when he was a young man of twenty, and twa sons were born to him. These went out into the world, and as he never heard from them after-, wards, he did not know what had become of them. Probably both were now dead. His wife, a good upright woman, died when Oiney was fifty years of age. Since then he had lived by himself and worked hard, tilling his little bit of land. Strange stories were going the rounds of tha 97 98 Glenmornan barony about him. His neighbours knew that he had been a Cath-Breac in his young days, and gossip had it, that he had often stuck a red-hot dagger through the statue of the Virgin Mother. For this he was supposed to receive the sum of twelve pounds. The fact of the matter was that Oiney belonged to the Hibernian Bible Society, a body which had for its aim the propagation of the Gospels through the medium of the Irish language. Oiney became a teacher of the Gospels and as a teacher he received a certain wage from the Soci- ety.. The Glenmornan peasantry were not loth in aiding and abetting Oiney to get as much money as possible from the "dirty straps that were trying to make everybody a Protestant," and the young of the glen came to the old man's school for ex- amination once a year, when a mysterious Man In Black attended Oiney's house to ask questions on the Gospel. These scholars got a shilling apiece when the examination was over, and for each scholar who appeared Oiney got another shill- ing in addition to his regular pay. When the Man In Black left Oiney's, the master and his scholars had a night of feasting and drinking. Duty-free whisky was plentiful in Glenmornan then and the stills were always at work on the hills. Being a Cath-Breac gave Oiney a bad reputa- tion, however, and the more educated people of the glen did not like it. Old Heel-Ball, of the village of Greenanore, who had a son a priest and a daugh- ter a nun, disliked Oiney, not so much owing to the fact that Oiney was a Cath-Breac, but because Oiney Leahy 99 he was one of the most clever makers of potheen in the parish. The publican did not like the potheen makers, for their illicit stills interfered with his legitimate business. He complained to the village priest, old Father Devaney. The priest put a curse on Cath-Breacs from the steps of the altar and Oiney gave up teaching the Gospel from that day forward. Oiney, handy man with his fists, was also very strong, and as a young man he had no equal at cudgel-play, wrestling or fighting, in the whole barony. He also had a reputation as a poacher, and no policeman had ever caught him at the job. Once, after his marriage, a process-server came to his house to serve him with a process for the rent. The neighbours went into the house an hour after- wards to see how Oiney was dealing with the man and they found the process-server, sitting in front of the fire, eating the process while Oiney stood over him with an ash-plant in one hand and a bot- tle of potheen in the other. The ash-plant was needed to give the man an appetite; the potheen would help to wash the meal down. So Oiney explained to the neighbours. His little house was not a very clean one. The outer wall had once been whitewashed, but the lime, having grown dim, now formed a back- ground for various layers of dirt which had settled on it. These layers, drying up, grouped them- selves into strange and fantastic patterns. Near the ground the wall was slimy black and plastered with dung, but further up towards the thatched ioo Glenmornan roof, on which the corn was sprouting, the dirt lay in solitary little dots that stood out in strong relief against the white lime. Inside, Oiney had a dresser for crocks and delf, a bed, with a straw mattress, a fireplace flush with the flagged floor, a fiddle, generally out of tune, a dog, always busy hunting fleas, and a cat with a taste for eggs. When alone and not busy, Oiney was either speaking to the animals, or playing the fiddle. But the old man was seldom idle. He had a ready hand for any job. He could gueld young cattle, kill a pig, apply a leech to a sick neigh- bour, treat a cow for disease, build a creel, let ropes for the thatching of a haystack, cut scollops for a house, mediate between neighbours who had a quarrel about trespassing cattle or march bound- aries, wash a corpse and dress it for burial. Oiney was a handy man and very willing to oblige a friend when called upon to do so. Despite the fact that he was read from the altar, the neigh- bours liked the old man. II Doalty Gallagher left His Home the next morn- ing and made his road over the braes to see Oiney Leahy. On his way he had to go through Breed Dermod's bit of land, and there he saw Sheila, the girl whom he had heard driving the cattle in from the hill on the previous evening. She was Oiney Leahy 101 herding a cow on a green verge of grass which ran round the cornfield. Now and again when the cow reached out and plucked a mouthful of corn Sheila ran up with a switch and hit the ani- mal's flanks with it. "Get away from here, ye wee divil ye," she would shout. "Can't ye be- have yerself?" Suddenly the girl looked round and saw Doalty gazing at her. The blood rose to her cheeks, she laughed shyly and began beat- ing the green corn with her switch. The jcowj which had just run off, came across the field to the corn again. "Away with ye, ye rogue," the girl shouted, and ran after the cow. Without speaking a word to her, Doalty went across to Oiney's house. He had only a very dim remembrance of Sheila, but he recollected that she was a girl going to school with two turf under her arm when he left Ireland seven years ago. Oiney was in his home as Doalty went in. He found the old man feeding the dog and cat with milk from a hole in the earthen floor. "Ah! it's a stranger ye are, me boyo," he said, looking up and seeing the young man. "It's a long while since ye've crossed this door-step now, isn't it?" "A long while indeed, Oiney," said Doalty. "Lie down widye, won't ye!" said the old man, catching the dog by the tail and drawing it away from the milk. "Let the wee cat have her's. It's wantin' it all, ye are, yerself." 102 Glenmornan He gripped the dog by the tail, raised it in air and let it hang head downwards. "Not a yelp," he said, turning to Doalty. "That's what shows ye what it's like. A good dog and no mistake. And the cat," he continued, "it's a wise wee divil. Washin' itself behind the ears it was this mornin'. That's a sign iv rain." "How does it know that the rain is comin'?" Doalty enquired. "Oh! he knows," said the old man. "An ani- mal is as cute as anything. Look at the hare! He can see out iv the back iv his head. And he has two holes to his den, one at the back and one to the front. He never sleeps and he can always see what's comin' at the front or back and he al- ways rests with his tail to the storm. And the weasel! If ye annoy him he'll spit poison into yer milk. I saw him do it. 'Twas in a bowl iv milk that I left outside the door that he spit. I would be a dead man this good day if it was not that old Micky Thady of Meenawarawor came over here to help me at a day's work; and Micky, he's dead now, God rest him! never did any harm to a weasel. So when the little animal saw him comin' it came up again and turned the bowl of milk over on the street. It did not want Micky to be killed because its spite was only against me. Wasn't that a strange thing now ?" "It was indeed, Oiney," said Doalty. "The animals have more sense than people allow them," said Oiney. "There's the granaghay (hedgehog), a cute fellow. He'll climb an apple Oiney Leahy 103 tree, stick his pins into an apple and carry it down on his back. Then there's the cat that can come home even if ye lose him at the other end iv the barony, and the bee that can find his nest in a ten- acre meadow. Then there's the trout that ye put in the well to keep it clean and eat the worms. I have two meself in the well under the rock behind the house. When one of these will die he'll turn, belly up, to let ye know. They have more sense than a man has. Don't ye think so, yerself ?" "I think so, Oiney," said Doalty. "Where are these two trout?" "I'll show them to ye in a minit," said Oiney. "Just a minit. But wait now." The old man went across to the bed which stood in the corner of the room, groped under the straw mattress and brought out a big bottle. "Not a word, Doalty Gallagher!" he said, plac- ing his left eyelid flush on his cheek. "Just have a drink iv this, and tell me what ye think iv it." He poured part of the contents into a bowl and handed it to the young man. "Drink it," he said. Doalty drank. "It's good stuff, Oiney," he said. "Where did it come from?" "Not a word, me boyo, not a word," said the old man, and he winked as he spoke. "Seven years old, if a day, and duty free. But they never make a drop like it in the hills now. It's potheen, and ye'll go far before ye'll get a better sup. . . . Come out with me now and see the well." 104 Glenmornan The two men went out to the well, which was hidden under a rock. Oiney bent over it, shoved a twig under a stone, which lay at the bottom. Two trout came out, circled round and round the Stone for a moment, then disappeared. "They know me," said the old man proudly. "They're not in the least afeeard!" "And that's me wee pratee patch," he said, get- ting to his feet and pointing at a plot of potatoes which lay behind the well. "Oh, yes," said Doalty. "That was the little field that it took you years to make. Had to carry it up from the holm?" "That's right," said the old man. "There's some blood and sweat in that wee patch, I'm tel- lin* ye. And then the foreign lady that came to Glenmornan some years back!" The old man shook his head, and a curl of superior disdain showed at the corner of his lips. "Who Was she?" asked Doalty. in "Oh! a grand lady intirely," said Oiney. "She came here, and her goin' to cure the decline. 'Ye are to be much cleaner than ye are/ she says, 'and ye're not to have yer duhals (dung-heaps) so near yer houses/ She came up here one day and pointed out where the duhal was to be. 'Well back there/ she says, and points to that wee gubben iv pratees. 'Dig down there/ she says, 'and make Oiney Leahy 105 a hole, and it will do well for a midden. It'll be a good distance away from the house and then ye'll be free from disaise/ she says. I looks at her. 'Lady/ I says, 'that gubben iv land was at one time nothin' but a bare rock and I set about to improve it. I began to carry up creels iv clay from the holm, and every creel took me the best part iv an hour to carry. I did it all barefut too and I'm tellin' ye I left some blood and sweat on the wee caisin (path). It took me hours and hours, and days and days, and years and years to make a lit- tle patch iv land fit to bear a crop. 'Now/ says I, 'if I make a duhal in the middle iv that spade- land, it will take away the ground-space iv four pratee ridges. Besides that/ I says, 'it's not the place for a midden at all, for the soft iv the byre will ceep out between clay and stone and get lost. Also, how am I to get the soft iv the byre up here?' I asks. 'I can't carry it in a creel, and to take it in a bucket will take the whole day, every day, at the job/ j " 'But what about yer health?' outs me lady. "I looks at her. There's not much bad health about here, lady/ I says. 'In this, a townland iv twelve families, there are fourteen old people get- tin' the old age pensions. And people have to die anyway, when God sees fit to call them. If a man has decline he'll go, it doesn't matter how far away from the midden he is.' . . . But sorrow take the woman away, the foreigner! Her people sucked the marrow out iv our bones in the old days and now they come over here and teach us how to keep 106 Glenmornan in good health. . . . I'm gettin' the old age pen- sion," said the old man, looking at Doalty, "and it's more than some iv them will ever get, though they maybe haven't seen a midden in all their life." Doalty Gallagher laughed, but it was not at Oiney's remark. "That drop of potheen you gave me, Oiney, was very strong, I think," he said. "It has gone to my head." "Iv course it has," said Oiney, and a good-hu- moured twinkle stole into his eyes. "It's the best stuff goin'." "Where was it made?" Doalty asked. "Ah!" said Oiney, winking and laughing. "Where was it made? Ah, me boyo, that can't be said! Ears and tongues are too long in Glenmor- nan nowadays, to say where anything is made. Where was it made?" the old man repeated, with a chuckle. "I don't know," he replied, as if in answer to his own question. "And if I knew, wild horses wouldn't draw it from me." Doalty lit a cigarette. "Will you have one, Oiney?" he asked. "I'll keep to the pipe," said the old man, pulling his little black dudheen from his pocket and put- ting it in his mouth. "There's nothin' like a clay," he went on. "Look up there, in that pratee field, and see the white rocks." Doalty looked and saw a number of white stones placed here and there amidst the potato tops. "What are they for, Oiney?" he asked. Oiney Leahy 107 "They're markin' me pipes," said the old man. "I put the pipes under the ground there and let them lie for a while. Then I dig them up again, and to smoke them then, it's somethin' not to be forgot for many a season. It's like havin' a woman's arms round ye and ye behind a holly bush and nobody about." "So you like the women, Oiney V Doalty en- quired. "Once on a time I would go far to spend a night with one," said the old man. "That was when I was yer size, Doalty. And yerself," he enquired. "Don't ye like to speak to them at all? There's many a nice girl in this glen now, and mad after the boys. There's Ellen Kelly and Sheila Dermod, both iv them laughey cutties and wild for the gasairs. Did ye not see Sheila this mornin' when ye were comin' across here?" "I saw her, but I didn't speak to her," said Doalty. "Young Dennys The Drover is mad after her," said the old man. "But she'll not have anything to do with him, for she is so proud. She'll have to have a man shortly, for only herself and her mother are workin' the farm and it's too much for two women to do. But Sheila!" he added. "As nice a make iv a girl as ever put white feet on green grass !" "Her father died shortly after I went away, didn't he?" Doalty enquired. "That was the time he died, God rest him," said Oiney. "He was a thran man, as busy as a pis- io8 Glenmornan mire and hasty as a brier. . . . Speak a man fair he would not, for he was full iv malice, which is not a good thing, for malice kills itself with its own poison. He was always tellin' lies about every- body, and though the way to truth is but one and simple, he never found the way there. God for- give me for sayin' the hard thing about the dead, but old Shan Dermod was a hard man to put up with. And ye've never heard how he died, I sup- pose? Well, this was how it was. He was lyin' on his death-bed and it was a harvest day, and the hay was lyin' on the holms, ready for the tramp- cocks. All at once he got up and goes to the door. 'Breed,' he says, turning to his wife, 'there's a big black cloud over Carnaween, so it's better for yer- self and Sheila to go out and gather the hay in at once.' He goes back to his bed, and just as he lay down, he heard the rain rattlin' on the window panes. Then he dies, God rest his soul! He'd have died happier if he went away an hour earlier. ... I hope it won't be rainin' the morrow," said Oiney, as if the memory of Shan Dermod's death had turned his mind to the weather. "I'm goin' to get some iv me turf rikkled the morrow and young Dennys The Drover is comin' to give me a hand." "I'll come too and help you if you'll let me," said Doalty. "Come if ye can and I'll be glad iv yer help," said the old man. "I'll be needin' the new turf in a wee while, for I haven't many left over from last year now. So ye'll come, will ye, Doalty?" "Of course I'll come," said the young man. Oiney Leahy 109 "Well, a dhrop to sweeten our partin'," said Oiney. "Come in with me to the house and have a drink afore ye go back across the brae." IV Doalty went up to the hill with Oiney Leahy and Dennys The Drover the next morning. They had their breakfasts at Oiney's house and Oiney brought out the black bottle again. The bottle was filled with potheen to the neck. "So you've got some more," said Doalty. "Ah ! a wee drop," said .the old man. "It was the fairies that gave it to me." "If the polis sees them fairies it'll be a black day for them," said Dennys The- Drover, lying back on his chair and lighting his pipe. "Isn't it a good thing that the rain didn't come this mornin'," said the old man, as if to change the conversation. "I thought that it would be rain after the cat was washin' himself behind the ears yesterday." Dennys The Drover winked at Doalty, as if to show that he thought old Oiney was a fool. Doalty liked Dennys, liked his hearty laugh, his frank, open countenance and alert and supple fig- ure. Dennys had a quiet look of assurance in his eyes and a proud bearing; in. fact, he had the car- riage of a young man who had a very high estima- tion of his own worth. When Doalty asked him a question, he closed his eyes and pondered for a no Glenmornan minute before answering. No doubt he was en- deavouring to discover why the young man back from beyond the water was anxious to know so many things. But The Drover liked Doalty. "He doesn't dress up like a shop-boy or a teaman/' Dennys said to Oiney that morning when he saw the young journalist coming across the fields to the day's work. "But ye never can tell what the like of him is up to," he added, with the air of a man who was not as yet certain of his own judg- ment. When speaking to Oiney, Dennys was never at a loss for words. He spoke rapidly and without the awkwardness which he showed when convers- ing with young Gallagher. "We'll get up to the hill now, me boys," said Oiney, when breakfast was at an end. "It's a long step from here to the top iv the hill. So, God with us! and we'll get away." The journey from the house to the bog was a long, trying one, and Doalty was glad when he got there. The turf lay all over the spread-field, bundled together into little heaps. A fair amount of the turf, not yet ready for stacking, but dry enough for a slow fire, had to be built in clamps. A clamp is a narrow little heap in which the turf could dry a little more before the stacking season came round. In the event of wet weather com- ing, the clamps would hold through the winter, though the turf in them might not be the best qual- ity for the fire. Still it was better to have turf half -dry than to have none at all. Oiney Leahy III From the spread-field Doalty could see the whole of Glenmornan below him, the white road running through the meadows from the mountain down to the village of Greenanore, and the river, a sliver of silver, that sparkled brilliantly under the rays of the sun. A light haze rose from the meadows and cornfields, but Carnaween and Sliav-a-Tuagh stood aloof, clear cut against the blue sky, looking at one another. The little thatched houses rested snug and warm under the cliffs, the cows were out on the pastures, eating the green grass, and the young children were herding them. Sounds of laughter and singing could be heard, rising shrill and clear over the roar of the waters falling from the rocks. . . . Everything down there was in amity and repose. Never had Doalty beheld such peace. A great happiness, not unmixed with sor- row, filled his soul. Conscious life, at that mo- ment, seemed a very meagre interval to him, a mere moment, giving so little time to enjoy the great glory and wonder of created things. "That's Sheila Dermod that I'm seein' down there, isn't it?" asked Oiney, fixing his eyes on a green field in which a young barefooted girl with a shawl over her head was herding her cow. "Sheila it is," said Dennys The Drover. "A fine girl she is, isn't she?" asked the old man, fixing a pair of roguish eyes on the young man. "Not so bad," said Dennys. "She's wild after ye," said Oiney. "He thinks that every girl in the parish is mad after me," said Dennys, looking at Doalty and al- 112 Glenmornan luding to Oiney. "I do find them willing to dance with me," he continued, not without a certain pride, "but that is nothin'. They must have their bit iv fun, just the same as ourselves." "I know the kind iv fun ye want," said Oiney with a laugh, winking at Dennys, and poking him on the chest with a miry thumb. "Ye're just the same as I was when I was yer own age. And the girls I used to have hangin' about me. Ah!" he shook his white head mournfully "I don't think they ever told the truth about their doin's at con- fession after I spent a while with them," he added. "Why not?" asked Doalty with a laugh, which could not hide his interest in the old man's avowal. "Why? Ah! me boy, why?" said Oiney, draw- ing himself up and pulling his chin in. "If they told everything that took place between themselves and me ye would see all the girls in Glenmornan goin' to Lough Derg on their two knees. I was a funny bucko then. . . . And Dennys The Drover! He's just the same now as I was then. I was just the same cut iv a boy. And ye do have yer bit iv fun with the girls, don't ye now, Dennys?" "I do iv course, Oiney," said the young man. "I try and have any fun that's goin'." "And what sort of fun is that?" Doalty asked, looking at the young man. Dennys closed his eyes for a moment, then opened them again. "Oh, just any kind iv fun at all," he said in a non-committal voice, nodding his head as he spoke. "That's the way to hide it," said Oiney in a Oiney Leahy 113 bantering voice. "Yer fun can't bear the light iv the world on it, Dennys. I mind once, a good many years back it was, and it was at a hay-stack that old Shan Dermod God rest him ! was build- ing. I had a drop too much in me when night came on, and if my legs were stiddy my head was in a maze. That's always the way with me in the drink. Well, I got up to me feet in Shan Dermod's house when all the townland were there and I says, : I was told of what I said afterwards, for I didn't mind a word iv it meself, I says, 'Hide it as much as ye like, but one person is as bad as another in this glen. There's a down-drop in every thatch,' says I, 'and I'm goin' to tell everything that bad report has about everybody in the townland. Aye/ says I, 'if the priest iv the parish was here himself I could tell him things about his own doin's that ud make him redden to the butts iv his ears. Now I'll tell ye/ I goes on, 'tell ye all yer sins that ye think are hidden, for ye are all sinners in the eyes iv God and man/ I was as wild as a March hare then, and there was no stoppin' me when I made up me mind to go on. Well, widye believe me! but not a soul stopped in the house to hear what I had to say barrin' Sheila Dermod, and she couldn't leave the house, for she was then a child in the cradle. But the others went out and I often won- der what it was that took Anna Gorth first out iv the house, and her holdin' up to be the holiest woman in the barony." "But who told you about it afterwards, seein' 114 Glenmornan that ye didn't remember it yerself ?" asked Dennys ,The Drover. "Who, guess, but Owen Briney, the sly cadger !" said Oiney. "He told me all about it the next mornin'. 'And ye went out too?' I says to him. 'I didn't want to stay in when all went out,' says Owen, and be the way he spoke ye would think that butter wouldn't melt in his mouth. 'So ye stayed outside iv the door,' says I, 'and listened to hear what I said?' " 'I did not, for I didn't want to hear any bad about meself,' he says, laughin' as if to put it by. " 'Ye would endure that,' says I, 'to hear bad about yer neighbours.' And if ye, yerself, Dennys