JAMES Ryan’s cabin lay within half a mile of the sea, and his croft, a long strip of rock-bespattered, sapless land, ran down to the very shore. But this strip of land was so narrow that the house, small though it was, could not be built across, and instead of the cabin-front, an end gable faced the water. In Frosses most of the land is divided into thin strips, for it is the unwritten law that they who have no land touching the sea may not lift any sea-weed to manure their potato patches. In Frosses some of the crofts, measuring two miles in length, are seldom more than eight paces in width at any point.

All over the district gigantic boulders are strewn, huge rocks that might have been flung about in play by monstrous Giants who forgot, when their humour was at an end, to gather them up again. Between these rocks the people till for crops, plots of land which seldom measure more than four yards square, and every rock conceals either a potato patch or cornfield. It was said years ago that Frosses had twenty-one blades of grass to the square foot, but this was contradicted by a sarcastic peasant, who said that if grass grew so plentifully with them they would all be wealthy.

Fishing was indulged in, but very little fish was ever landed: Scottish and English trawlers netted the fish off-shore, and few were picked up by the peasantry, whose boats and nets were of the most primitive pattern. The nets were bad, the boats, mere curraghs, were untrustworthy, and a great deal of the fishermen’s time was usually spent in baling out water. At best fishing was for them an almost profitless trade. They had no markets and no carts to send their fish to town. For the most part the fishers used the fish themselves or traded them in kind with their neighbours.

On the morning following the women’s visit to Greenanore two men came up from the sea towards the door of James Ryan’s cabin. One was an old man, bearded and wrinkled, whose brows were continually contracting as is the habit with those who live by the sea and look on the wrath of many winds. He was dressed in a white wrapper, a woollen shirt, open at the neck, trousers folded up to the knees, and mairteens. The other was a youth of nineteen, dark-haired, supple of limb and barefooted. In the two men a family likeness might be detected; they were father and son, James Ryan and his only boy, Fergus. There were now only four in the family; death had taken away most of the children before they were a year old.

Fergus opened the door of the cabin, to be met with the warm and penetrating breath of the cattle inside. The cows, always curious to see a new-comer, turned round in their beds of fresh heather and fixed their big, soft eyes on the youth. Beside the cow nearest the door, a young calf, spotted black and white, turned round on long, lank, awkward legs and sniffed suspiciously; then, finding that no danger was going to befall him, snuggled up against his mother, who commenced to lick her offspring with a big rough tongue. Suddenly a pig ran in from the outside, rushed between the youth’s legs and disappeared under the bed. Its back was bleeding as if a dog had bitten it.

“Is not the pig’s flesh like a human’s?” said Fergus, turning to his father. “White; almost without hair and it bleeds just like a man’s. I hate pigs; I wish we could live without keeping them.... Oh! here is Norah at the fire. Have you just got up?”

The child, shivering from cold, was sitting on the hassock, her hands spread out to the peat blaze.

“She has only just come in from the other side of the water,” said the mother, who was sitting up in bed, knitting stockings. “She lay out all night, poor creature! Twenty-seven women in all were lying out on the snow. And she got no yarn! Thanks be to God! but it’s a bad time.”

“A bad time, a hard time, a very hard time!” said the old man, sitting down on an upturned creel and taking off his mairteens. “No yarn! and there was not a fish in all the seas last night.”

“None but the ones we didn’t catch,” said Fergus. “It is that dirty potato-basket of a boat that is to blame.... Are you cold, Norah?”

“I am only shivering; but the fire will do me good.”

“She didn’t ate one bit of her breakfast yesterday,” said the mother. “Left it all for you when you came in from the sea, she did!”

Norah blushed as if she had been caught doing something wrong; then drank from the bowl of milk which was placed on the floor beside her. The father looked greedily at the bowl; the mother spoke.

“It is nice and warm, that milk,” said the old woman. “I wish we had more of it, but at this time of the year the milk runs thin in the cow’s elldurs. But even if we had got enough bread, never mind milk, it would not be so bad.... And there is not one bit for you this morning.... Do you know what the soggarth says, Shemus?”

II

THE husband looked at his wife, and an expression of dread appeared on his face. “What does he say, Mary?”

“He is offering up no prayers for your soul.”

“Mother of God, be good to me!”

“You must pay him that pound at once, he says.”

“But barring what we are saving up for the landlord’s rent, bad scran to him! we have not one white shilling in the house.”

“That does not matter to the priest, the damned old pig!” exclaimed Fergus, who had been looking gloomily at the roof since he had spoken to Norah.

“Fergus!” the three occupants of the house exclaimed in one breath.

“What’s coming over the boy at all?” the mother went on. “It must be the books that Micky’s Jim takes over from Scotland that are bringing ruin to the gasair.”

“It is common sense that I am talking,” Fergus hotly replied. “What with the landlord, Farley McKeown, and the priest, you are all in a nice pickle!”

“The priest, Fergus!”

“Robbing you because he is a servant of the Lord; that is the priest’s trick,” the youth exclaimed. “We are feeding here with the cows and the pigs and we are not one bit better than the animals ourselves. I hate the place; I hate it and everything about it.”

“Sure you don’t hate your own people?” asked Norah, rising from her seat and going timidly up to her brother. “Sure you don’t hate me, Fergus?”

“Hate you?” laughed the young man stroking her hair with an awkward hand. “No one could hate you, because you are a little angel.... Now run away and sit down at the fire and warm yourself.... They are going to make you a nun, they say.”

There was a note of scorn in his voice, and he looked defiantly at his mother as he spoke.

“What better than a nun could she be?” asked the mother.

“I would rather see her a beggar on the rainy roads.”

“What is coming over you atall, Fergus?” asked the old man. “Last night, too, you were strange in your talk on the top of the sea.”

“How much money have you in the house?” Fergus asked, taking no heed of his father’s remark. “Ten shillings will be enough to take me out of the country altogether.”

“Fergus, what are you saying?” asked his mother.

“I am going away from here and I am going to push my fortune.” He looked out of the window and his eyes followed the twist of the road that ran like a ribbon away past the door of the house.

“But, Fergus dear—!”

“It does not matter, maghair (mother), what you say,” remarked the youth, interrupting his mother. “I am going away this very day. I have had it in my head for a long while. I’ll make you rich in the years to come. I’ll earn plenty of money.”

“That’s what they all say, child,” the mother interposed, and tears came into her eyes. “It’s more often a grave than a fortune they find in the black foreign country.”

“Could any place under the roof-tree of heaven be as black as this,” asked the youth excitedly. “There is nothing here but rags, poverty, and dirt; pigs under the bed, cows in the house, the rain coming through the thatch instead of seeping from the eaves, and the winds of night raving and roaring through wall and window. Then if by chance you make one gold guinea, half of it goes to Farley McKeown and the priest, and the other half of it goes to the landlord.”

“But Farley McKeown doesn’t get any money from us at all,” said the mother in a tone of reproof. “It is him that gives us money for the knitting.”

“Knitting!” exclaimed Fergus, rising to his feet and striding up and down the cabin. “God look sideways on the knitting! How much are you paid for your work? One shilling and threepence for a dozen pairs of stockings that takes the two of you more than a whole week to make. You might as well be slaves; you are slaves, slaves to the very middle of your bones! How much does Farley McKeown get for the stockings in the big towns away out of here? Four shillings a pair, I am after hearing. You get a penny farthing a pair; a penny farthing! If you read some of the books that comes home with the harvestmen you would not suffer Farley McKeown for long.”

“That is it,” said the mother, winding the thread round her knitting-irons. “That is it! It is the books that the harvestmen take home that puts the boy astray. It is no wonder that the priest condemns the books.”

“The priest!” said the youth in a tone of contempt. “But what is the good of talking to the likes of you? How much money have you in the house?”

“Sure you are not going to leave us?” Norah exclaimed, gazing with large troubled eyes at her brother.

“I am,” snapped Fergus. “I am going away this evening. I’ll tramp the road to Derry and take the big boat from there to Scotland or some other place beyond the water. What are you crying for? Don’t be a baby, Norah! I’ll come back again and make you a lady. I’ll earn big piles of money and send it home at the end of every month.”

James Ryan looked at his wife, and a similar thought struck both of them at the same instant. The son had some book learning, and he might get on well abroad and amass considerable wealth, which he would share with his own people. The old man drew nearer to the fire and held out his bare feet, which were blue with cold, to the flames.

“If Fergus sends home money I’ll get a good strong and warm pair of boots,” he said to himself; then asked: “How much money is there in the teapot, Mary?”

“Twelve white shillings and sevenpence,” answered the wife. “No, it is only twelve shillings and sixpence. Norah took a penny with her to the town yesterday.”

“I have a ha’penny back with me,” said the child, drawing a coin from her weasel-skin purse. “I only spent half of the money on bread yesterday because I was not very hungry.”

“God be merciful to us! but the child is starving herself,” said the old woman, clutching eagerly at the coin which her daughter held towards her. “You can have half a gold guinea, Fergus, if you are going out to push your fortune.”

III

IN the evening when the moon peeped over the western hills, Fergus Ryan tied his boots round his neck, placed three bannocks in a woollen handkerchief and went out from his father’s door. The mother wept not when he was leaving; she had seen so many of her children go out on a much longer journey. Norah accompanied Fergus for a short distance and stopped where the road streaked with very faint lines of light merged into the darkness. The moon rose clear off the hills ... lights could be seen glowing in the distance ... a leafless birch waved its arms in the breeze ... somewhere a cow was lowing and far away, across the water, a Ballybonar dog howled at the stars.

“I never thought that I could like the place as much as I do now,” Fergus said in English.

“It’s the way with everyone when they’re going away,” answered his sister. “And I’m sick at heart that ye are goin’, Fergus. Is Derry far away?”

“A longish way—”

“Out beyont the moon, is it?” asked the child, pointing at the hills and the moon above them.

“Maybe,” said the youth; then in a low voice: “D’ye know what they do in other countries when they are saying ‘Good-bye’?”

“Then I don’t,” answered Norah.

“They do this,” said the young man, and he pressed his lips against his sister’s cheek.

“But they never do that here,” said the girl, and both blushed as if they had been discovered doing something very wrong. “I’ll say a long prayer for you every night, when you are away, Fergus.”

The boy looked at her, rubbed one bare foot on the ground and seemed on the point of saying something further; then without a word he turned and walked off along the wet road. Norah kept looking after him till he was out of sight, then, with her eyes full of tears, she went back to her home.