He insisted:
“Are the statements in your mother’s letter true?”
“My mother’s letter!” said she.
“Have I reason for this jealousy?” he breathed.
Her reply was also but a breathing:
“I will not tell you anything,” said she.
Once again the silence drowsed and droned between the two people, and again they repaired to the secret places of their souls where energy was sucked from them until they existed only in a torpor. The woman rose languidly from her chair, and, after an instant, the man stood also.
Said he:
“I will leave here in the morning.”
“You will let me see the boy,” she murmured.
“If,” said he, “I ever learn that you have spoken to the boy I will kill you, and I will kill the boy.”
The woman went out then, and her feet tapped lightly along the corridor. The man turned down the lights in the yellow globes and stepped to the door; his footsteps also died away in the darkness, but in a different direction.
Mac Cann stood up:
“Begor!” said he, stretching his cramped knees.
About him was a great darkness and a great silence, and the air of that room was more unpleasant than any atmosphere he had ever breathed. But he had the nerves of a bear and a resolute adherence to his own business, so the excitement of another person could only disturb him for a moment. Still, he did not like the room, and he made all haste to get out of it.
He lifted the sacks, stepped carefully to the window, and dropped them out. Then he climbed through and picked them up.
In five minutes he was on the road again. Along it for some dozen yards he trod like a great cat until he had left the gatekeeper’s lodge well behind him; then, with the sacks across his shoulders, he shook to the steady jog trot which was to last for about three hours.
XXXIV
Mary awakened early.
The morning was grey and the sky flat and solid, with here and there thin furrows marking its gathered fields.
She raised her head, and looked towards her father’s place, but he was not there, and the sacks were crumpled on the ground.
Finaun’s great length was lying along the ground, and he was straight as a rod. Caeltia was curved a little, and one hand was flung above his head. Art was rolled up like a ball; his hands were gripped about his knees, and he had kicked the sacks off his body. Eileen Ni Cooley had her two arms under her face; she was lying on her breast, and her hair streamed sidewards from her head along the dull grass.
As Mary lay back, for it was still too early to rise, a thought came to her and she rose to her feet again. She thought that perhaps her father had come softly in the night and moved the ass and cart away with him, and that thought lifted her breast in panic.
She ran down the road and saw the cart with its shafts poked in the air, and further away the donkey was lying on his side.
She came back on tiptoe smiling happily to herself, and, with infinite precaution, she restored the sacks to Art’s body and composed herself again to sleep. She did not raise the camp, for she wished to give her father all possible time so that he might return unnoticed.
And while she slept the sky unpacked its locked courses; the great galleons of cloud went sailing to the west, and thus, fleet by fleet, relieved those crowded harbours. The black cloud-masses went rolling on the sky—They grew together, touched and swung apart and slipped away with heavy haste, as when down narrow waters an armada weighs, filling listlessly her noisy sails, while the slender spars are hauled to the breeze; the watchmen stand at the posts, and the fenders are still hung from the pitching sides; almost the vessels touch; the shipmen shout as they bear heavily on their oaken poles; and then they swing again, the great prows bear away, the waters boil between, and the loud farewells sing faintly to the waves.
And now the sky was a bright sea sown with islands; they shrank and crumbled and drifted away, islands no more, but a multitude of plumes and flakes and smoky wreaths hastily scudding, for the sun had lifted his tranquil eye on the heavens; he stared afar down the grey spaces, and before his gaze the mists went huddling and hiding in lovely haste; the dark spaces became white, the dark blue spaces became light blue, and earth and sky sparkled and shone in his radiant beam.
The camp awakened before Mary did, and again the enquiry went as to the whereabouts of her father:
“He will be here shortly,” said Mary. “He must have gone along the road to see if there was anything he could find for us to eat,” and she delayed the preparation of their breakfast to the last possible moment. She spilled a pot of boiling water to that end, and she overturned the brazier when the water boiled again.
They were about sitting to their food when Mac Cann came in sight, and she held the meal until his arrival with his hat far to the back of his head, the happiest of smiles on his face, and a newspaper bundle in his hand.
Mary gave him a look of quick meaning:
“Were you able to find anything for the breakfast?” said she, and then she was astonished.
“I was indeed,” he replied, and he handed her the bulky newspaper package.
She used that occasion to whisper to him:
“Well?”
“That’s all right,” said he, nodding at the bundle, but really in answer to her query.
She opened the parcel.
There were slices of bacon in it and slices of beef; there were ten sausages in it and the biggest half of a loaf—these, with a small flat bottle full of rum and two pairs of stockings, made up the parcel.
“Put the sausages in a pan,” said Patsy, “and share them
