Mac Cann would have thrown himself on his enemy, but at that moment he caught sight of Eileen Ni Cooley and her face drove the other out of his head.
He stared.
“It’s yourself!” said he.
“It is me, sure enough, Padraig.”
“You’ll be going away in a minute, I suppose,” said he grimly.
He sat on the grass and there was peace once more. He was sitting beside O’Brien, and the ass was still thinking deeply with his hocks touching against their shoulder blades.
When he seated himself they were all silent, for, in face of everything, Mac Cann took the lead, and they waited for him to speak.
O’Brien was looking at him sideways with a grin on his hard jaw. He creaked out a little laugh and then covered it up with his hand as one who was abashed, but Mac Cann paid no attention to him.
His attention was on Eileen Ni Cooley.
“You’re a great woman,” said he, “and you’re full of fun surely.”
“I’m everything you like to call me,” replied Eileen.
“Which of the men are you with this time, or are you travelling with the pair of them?”
“I don’t want either of them, Padraig, but I can’t get away from them anyhow. They won’t let me go my own road, and they’re marching at my elbows for two days and two nights, cursing and kicking and making a noise every step of the way.”
“They’re doing that!” said Patsy.
“They are doing that, Padraig. It’s O’Brien is the worst, for the other fellow is only helping him and doesn’t care for me at all. Catching me they do be, and holding me. …”
“Aye!” said Patsy.
“I can’t get away from O’Brien,” said she, “and I thought that if I could find yourself—”
“You were looking for me?”
“I was looking for you this time, Padraig.”
“Aye!” said Patsy, and he turned a black eye on Brien O’Brien, and his eye looked like a little, hard ball of stone.
“You’ll be left alone from this day out,” said Patsy.
“Mind yourself!” growled Brien O’Brien. “Mind yourself, my hardy man, or you’ll waken up among the spooks.”
Patsy held him with that solid eye.
“Spooks!” said he, and suddenly he rolled on top of Brien O’Brien, his left hand grabbing at the throat, his right fist jabbing viciously with packed knuckles.
Down went Brien O’Brien’s head and up went his heels; then he gave a mighty wriggle and started to come up, his hands threshing like the wings of a mill. As he came up they rolled, and now Mac Cann was below; but Brien O’Brien’s head had disturbed the donkey, and, without emerging from cogitation, the ass let his two heels fly at the enemy of thought behind him; Patsy saw for an instant the white flash of those little hoofs across his face, but Brien of the O’Brien nation took them full on his forehead and his brows crackled in like the shell of an egg; he relaxed, he sagged, he drooped and huddled limply to Patsy’s bosom, and for three seconds Mac Cann lay quietly beneath him, captured by astonishment.
The donkey had again related the infinity without to the eternity within, and his little hoofs were as peaceful as his mild eye.
Mac Cann tugged himself from beneath that weighty carcass and came to his feet.
Mary and Eileen were both sitting rigid, with arms at full stretch and their fingers tipping straitly on the ground, while their round eyes were wide in an unwinking stare.
Caeltia was on his feet and was crouching at an equally crouching Cuchulain. Patsy saw the curl jerking as the lips of the seraph laughed.
Art was frozen on one knee in the mid act of rising, and Finaun was combing his beard while he looked fixedly at Eileen Ni Cooley.
Twenty seconds only had elapsed since Mac Cann rolled sideways on Brien O’Brien.
The seraph Cuchulain was staring under Caeltia’s arm. He blew the golden curl from his lips and sounded a laugh that was like the ringing of silver bells.
“What will Rhadamanthus say this time?” quoth he, and with that he turned and tripped happily down the road and away.
Mac Cann regarded the corpse.
“We had better bury the man,” said he gloomily.
He took a short spade from the cart, and with it he made a hole in the roadside.
They laid Brien O’Brien in that hole.
“Wait for a minute,” said Mac Cann. “It’s not decent to send him off that way.”
He pushed a hand into his pocket and pulled it out again with money in it.
“He should have something with himself and he taking the long journey.”
He lifted O’Brien’s clenched fist, forced it open, and put a silver threepenny piece into it; then he tightened the pale hand again and folded it with the other on his breast.
They wrapped a newspaper about his face, and they threw the clay over Brien of the O’Brien nation and stamped it down well with their feet, and as they left him the twilight stole over the land, and a broad star looked peacefully down through the grey distances.
XXXI
They walked through the evening.
Dusk had fallen and in the drowsy half-lights the world stretched itself in peacefulness.
They had come to a flat country that whispered in grass; there were no more of the little hills that roll and fall and roll; there were scarcely any trees; here and there in great space a beech swung its slow boughs and made a quiet noise in the stillness; here and there a stiff tree lifted its lonely greenness, and around it the vast horizon stretched away and away to sightlessness.
There was silence here, there was deep silence, and over all the dusk drowsed and folded and increased.
With what slow veils the darkness deepened! the gentle weaver spun her thin webs and drooped soft coverings from the sky to the clay; momently the stars came flashing their tiny signals, gathering their bright hosts by lonely clusters, and one thin sickle of the moon grew from a cloud and stood distantly as
