Sheila was sitting on a stool in front of the door. Her uncle had gone to bed, and her aunt, tired after her day's work and her attendance on the sick man, was lying on the sofa, dosing.

"I wondered were you comin'," Sheila said as he came up to her.

"You knew I'd come," he answered.

"I didn't know anything of the sort," she exclaimed, getting up from the stool. "Fellas has disappointed me before this."

"Have you had other sweethearts?" he asked, frowning.

She laughed at him. "I've had boys since I was that high," she replied, holding out her hand to indicate her height when she first had a sweetheart. "What are you lookin' so sore about? D'ye think no one never looked at me 'til you came along? For dear sake!"

She rallied him. Was she the first girl he had ever loved? Was she? Ah, he was afraid to answer. As if she did not know! Of course, she was not the first, and dear knows she might not be the last....

"I'll never love any one but you, Sheila!..."

"Wheesht will you, or my aunt'll hear you!"

"I don't care who hears me!..."

"Well, I do then. Come on down the loanie a piece, an' you can say what you like. I love the way you talk ... you've got the quare nice English accent!"

He followed her across the farmyard and through the gate into the "loanie."

"My father wouldn't like to hear you saying that," he said.

"Why?" she asked. "Does he not like the English way of talkin'?"

"Indeed, he does not. He loves the way you talk, the way all the Ulster people talk!..."

"What! Broad an' coarse like me?" she interrupted.

Henry nodded his head. "He doesn't think it's coarse," he said. "He thinks it's fine!"

Sheila pondered on this for a few moments. "He must be a quare man, your da!" she said.

They walked to the foot of the "loanie" and then turned along the Ballymena road.

"Does he know you come out with me?" she said.

"Who?" he answered.

"Your da."

"No. You see!..." He did not know what to say. It had not occurred to him to talk about Sheila to his father, and he realised now that if it had, he probably would not have done so.

"But if you're goin' to marry me?..." Sheila was saying.

"Oh, of course," he replied. "Of course, I shall have to tell him about you, won't I? I just didn't think of it.... Then you're going to marry me, Sheila?" he demanded, turning to her quickly.

"Och, I don't know," she answered. "I'm too young to be married yet, an' you're younger nor me, an' mebbe we'd change our minds, an' anyway there's a quare differs atween us."

"What difference is there between us?" he said, indignantly.

"Aw, there's a quare deal of differs," she maintained. "A quare deal. You're a quality-man!..."

"As if that matters," he interrupted.

"It matters a quare lot," she said.

They sat down on a bank by the roadside and he took hold of her hand and pressed it, and then he put his arm about her and drew her head down on to his shoulder.

"Somebody'll see you," she whispered.

"There's no one in sight," he replied.

"Do you love me an awful lot?" she asked, looking up at him.

"You know I do."

"More nor anybody in the world?"

He bent over and kissed her. "More than anybody in the world," he answered.

"You're not just lettin' on?" she continued.

"Letting on!"

"Aye. Makin' out you love me, an' you on'y passin' the time, divertin' yourself?"

He was angry with her. How could she imagine that he would pretend to love her?...

"I do love you," he insisted, "and I'll always love you. I feel that ... that!..."

He fumbled for words to express his love for her, but could not find any.

"Ah, well," she said, "it doesn't matter whether you're pretendin' or not. I'm quaren happy anyway!"

She struggled out of his embrace and put her arms round his neck and kissed him. She remained thus with her arms round him and her face close to his, gazing into his eyes as if she were searching for something....

"What are you thinkin', Sheila?" he asked.

"Nothin'," she said, and she drew him to her and kissed him again.

"I wish I was older," he exclaimed presently.

"Why?"

"Because I could marry you, then, and we'd go away and see all the places in the world...."

"I'd rather go to Portrush for my honeymoon," she said. "I went there for a trip once!"

"We'd go to Portrush too. We'd go to all the places. I'd take you to England and Scotland and Wales, and then we'd go to France and Spain and Italy and Africa and India and all the places."

"I'd be quaren tired goin' to all them places," she murmured.

"And then when we'd seen everything, we'd come back to Ireland and start a farm...."

She sat up and smiled at him. "An' keep cows an' horses," she said.

"Yes, and pigs and sheep and hens and ... all the things they have. Ducks and things!"

"I'd love that," she said, delighted.

"We'd go up to Belfast every now and then, and look at the shops and buy things!...."

"An' go to the theatre an' have our tea at an eatin'-house?"

"We'd go to an hotel for our tea," he said.

"Oh, no, I'd be near afeard of them places. I wasn't reared up to that sort of place, an' I wouldn't know what to do, an' all the people lookin' at me, an' the waiters watchin' every bite you put in your mouth, 'til you'd near think they'd grudged you your food!"

They made plans over which they laughed, and they mocked each other, teasing and pretending to anger, and he pulled her hair and kissed her, and she slapped his cheeks and kissed him.

"I'd give the world," she said, "to have my photograph took in a low-neck dress. Abernethy does them grand!..." She stopped suddenly and turned her head slightly from him in a listening attitude.

"What's up?" he asked.

"Wheesht!" she replied, and then added, "D'ye hear anything?"

He listened for a moment or two, and then said, "Yes, it sounds like a horse gallopin'...." They listened again, and then she proceeded. "You'd near think it was runnin' away," she said.

The sound of hooves rapidly beating the ground and the noise of quickly-revolving wheels came nearer.

"It is runnin' away," she said, getting up from the bank and moving into the middle of the road where she stood looking in the direction from which the sound came.

"Don't stand in the road," Henry shouted to her. "You might get hurt."

She did not move nor did she appear to hear what he was saying. He had a strange sensation of shrinking, a desire not to be there, but he subdued it and went to join her in the middle of the road.

"Here it is," she said, turning to him and pointing to where the road made a sudden swerve.

He looked and saw a galloping horse, head down, coming rapidly towards them. There was a light cart behind it, bumping and swaying so that it seemed likely to be overturned, but there was no driver. It was still some way off, and he had time to think that he ought to stop the frightened animal. If it were allowed to go on, it might kill some one in the village. There would be children playing about in the street....

"I'll stop it," he said to himself, and half-consciously he buttoned his coat.

He tried to remember just what he ought to do. William Henry Matier had told, him not to stand right in front of a runaway horse, but to move to the side so that he could run with it. He would do that, and then he would spring at its head and haul the reins so tightly that the bit would slip back into the horse's mouth.... He moved from the middle of the road, and was conscious that Sheila had moved, too. His breath was coming quickly, and he felt again that sense of shrinking, that curious desire to run away. He saw a wheel of the cart lurch up as it passed over a stone in the road, and instantly panic seized him. "My God," he thought, "if that had been me!... He saw himself flung to the ground by the maddened horse and the wheel passing over his body, crunching his flesh and bones. He had the sensation of blood gushing from his mouth, and for a moment or two he felt as if he had actually suffered the physical shock of being broken beneath the cart wheel....

"I can't!" he muttered, and then he turned and ran swiftly to the side of the road and climbed on to the bank, struggling to break through the thorn hedge at the top of it. His hands were torn and bleeding and once he slipped and fell forward and his face was scratched by the thorns....