“ ‘One must laugh,’ he continued, ‘for laughter is the health of the mind, and I have not laughed for a crore of seasons.’
“Thereupon he took up the syllable and intoned its flooding sound so that the matter beneath my hands strained against me almost unbearably.
“I turned my head and stared at the little man as he laughed happily to himself and scraped his chin.
“ ‘You are a fool,’ said I to that man.
“The smile vanished from his face and a shade of dejection took its place.
“ ‘Is it possible, Regent, that you have no sense of humour!’ said he.
“ ‘This,’ I replied, ‘is not humorous; it is only a practical joke; it is no more than incipient humour; there is no joke in it but only mischief, for to interfere with work is the humour of a babe or a monkey. You are a thoroughly serious person, and you will not make a joke in ten eternities; that also is in your karma.’
“At these words his eyes brooded on me darkly, and an expression of real malignancy came on his face: he stamped at me from the triangles and hissed with rage.
“ ‘I’ll show you something else,’ said he, ‘and if it doesn’t make you laugh it will make everybody else who hears about it laugh for an age.’
“I saw that he was meditating a personal evil to me, but I was powerless, for I could not let go my grip on the substance.
“He lifted his hands against me then, but, at the moment, there came a sound, so low, so deep, it could scarcely be heard, and with equal strong intensity the sound pervaded all the spaces and brooded in every point and atom with its thrilling breath—we were about to shape to the whirlwind.
“The man’s hands fell, and he stared at me.
“ ‘Oh!’ said he, and he said ‘Oh’ three times in a whisper.
“The sound was the beginning of the second syllable.
“ ‘I thought I had time,’ he gasped: ‘my calculations were wrong.’
“ ‘The joke is against you,’ said I to the man.
“ ‘What will I do?’ he screamed.
“ ‘Laugh,’ I replied, ‘laugh at the joke.’
“Already his flying circles had ceased to revolve, and their broad flame was no more than a blue flicker that disappeared even as I looked at them. He stood only in the triangles, and he was open to my vengeance. His staring, haggard eyes fell on the bolt in my hand.
“ ‘There is no need for that,’ said he, and he did speak with some small dignity, ‘I am caught by the sound, and there is an end to me.’
“And that was true, so I did not loose my bolt.
“Already his triangles were crumbling. He sank on his haunches, clasped his hands about his legs and bowed his head on his knees. I could see that he knew all was lost, and that he was making a last desperate effort to guard his entity from dissolution, and he succeeded, for, one instant before the triangles had disappeared, he had vanished, but he could not have entirely escaped the sound, that was impossible, and if he reached his planet it must have been as a life of the third round instead of the fifth to which he had attained. He had the entire of his evolution to perform over again and had, moreover, added weightily to his karmic disabilities.
“I saw him no more, nor did I hear of him again until the day when Brien O’Brien was thrown from the gates, and then I knew that he and O’Brien were the same being, and that he had really escaped and was a fourth round life of the lowest globe.
“Perhaps he will be heard of again, for he is an energetic and restless being to whom an environment is an enemy and to whom humour is an ambition and a mystery.”
“That is the end of my story,” said Art modestly.
Mac Cann regarded him indulgently from a cloud of smoke:
“It wasn’t as good as the other ones,” he remarked, “but that’s not your fault, and you’re young into the bargain.”
“He is not as young as he looks,” remarked Finaun.
“A good story has to be about ordinary things,” continued Patsy, “but there isn’t anybody could tell what your story was about.”
Billy the Music here broke in:
“The person I would have liked to hear more of is Cuchulain, for he is my own guardian angel and it’s him I’m interested in. The next time I meet him I’ll ask him questions.”
He glanced around the circle:
“Is there anybody would like to hear a tune on the concertina? I have it by my hand here, and the evening is before us.”
“You can play it for us the next time we meet,” said Patsy, “for we are all tired listening to the stories, and you are tired yourself.”
He lifted to his feet then and yawned heartily with his arms at full stretch and his fists clenched:
“We had better be moving,” he continued, “for the evening is coming on and it’s twenty miles to the fair.”
They harnessed the ass.
“I’m going the opposite way to you,” said Billy the Music.
“All right,” said Patsy. “God be with you, mister.”
“God be with yourselves,” replied Billy the Music.
He tramped off then in his own direction, while Mac Cann and his companions took their road with the ass.
Book IV
Mary Mac Cann
XXVIII
The search for work and food led them back, but by different paths, through Kerry, up into Connemara, and
