IN a week’s time the squad was to break up: Gourock Ellen, Annie and the two men who joined at Greenock, were leaving for Glasgow; Dermod Flynn who, despite the initial success, had lost all his money at the card-table, was going to remain in Scotland and earn his living at the first job that came to hand. Such a little boy! Norah felt sorry for him, but now he hardly deigned to look at her. When at work the far-away look was always in his eyes and at night he played for hours on end at the gaming-table. Most of the players said that he was awfully plucky and that he would stake his last penny on a card and lose the coin without turning a hair.

For the whole week prior to departure Norah, who was now very restless, laughed nervously when a joke was passed, but seemingly took no heed of the joke. She was not unhappy, but in a dim, subconscious way felt that she had done something very wrong. Before knowing Dermod intimately he frightened her; it was only after knowing Morrison so well that she became frightened of him. Dermod had never kissed her; she and the boy were only friends, she said to herself time and again. Dermod was only a friend of hers, nothing more. Sometimes when alone she said so aloud, as if trying to drown the inner voice that told her it was not true. If Dermod only ceased playing cards things might right themselves, she thought, but deep down in her heart she wished everything to go on just as at present.

Morrison went to town on the day following the episode in the lane, but, before leaving, told Norah that he would come back to see her prior to her departure for Ireland.

“Don’t tell anybody that I am coming back,” he said, and, while wondering at his words, she promised not to tell.

The squad was going on Friday; on Thursday night Morrison returned, a rose in his buttonhole and a silver-handled stick in his hand. She saw him enter the farmhouse as she returned from the field, her knees sore, her clothes wet, and straggling locks of hair falling over her brow. At supper she ate little but took great care over her toilet; scrubbed her hands, which were very sore, until they bled, and spent nearly half an hour before the little looking-glass which she had brought from Ireland. She sorted her tresses, and put in its place an erring lock that persisted in falling over her little pink ear.

She put on her grey dress, tied a glossy leather belt around her waist, laced her shoes, and when she had finished left the byre, which was lit up by a long white candle stuck in the neck of a whisky-bottle, and went out to the cart-shed where the squad assembled.

Morrison was there before her, sitting beside Micky’s Jim on the end of an upturned cart, and speaking to Maire a Glan about the hardships of the field. Willie the Duck played his fiddle, now sadly out of tune; a game of cards was in progress, and Dermod Flynn, who held the bank, was losing rapidly. It was said that he had no money in hand except the wages which he had lifted that day, and now it was nearly gone. What would he do when all was spent? Nobody enquired, but it was evident that he would not return to Ireland that winter.

Norah entered, her head bent down a little, her hands clasped together and a look of hesitation on her face.

“Ha! there’s another one that’s for Ireland in the morning,” said Micky’s Jim, taking the pipe from his mouth and spitting down between his legs to the floor. It was to Norah that he spoke, and Dermod Flynn ceased playing for a moment to glance over the rim of his cards at the girl. But his mind was busy with something else and his eyes turned back almost instantly to the gaming-table. He cared nothing for her, Norah thought, and the idea gave her a strange comfort.

“You’re going to-morrow as well as the rest?” said Morrison when the girl drew up to the fire. He knew that she was going and felt that he should have said something else. Presently, however, he asked: “Are you glad?”

“Yes,” she answered, but the look in her eyes might have meant “No.” Morrison understood it thus, and the sensation which surged through him on Sunday evening surged through him again.

“Not goin’ to play any more; skinned out,” someone said at the table. Norah glanced at the players and saw that Dermod Flynn had risen. He approached the fire, one hand deep in his pocket, the other holding a splinter of wood which he threw into the flames. He had lost all his money; he hadn’t a penny in the world now. Gourock Ellen offered him a piece of silver to retrieve his fallen fortunes.

“If I don’t win I cannot pay you back,” he said, and sat down beside Morrison and facing Norah. Fixing his eyes on the fire he was presently buried in a reverie and the dreamy look of the schoolboy was again on his face. One of his hands was bleeding; it had been torn on a jagged stave which got loose on the rim of Norah’s basket earlier in the day; his knees peeped out through his trousers and the uppers of both his boots had risen from the soles.

Norah gazed at him covertly, saw the wound on his hand, the bare knees showing through the trousers, and the toes peeping through the torn uppers. Then something glistened brightly and caught her eyes. It was the ring on Morrison’s finger. The young man was speaking.

“ ...and it will be ten months before you are back in the squad again. Such a long time!”

“It’s not much comfort we have in this country anyway,” said Maire a Glan, who was turning the heel of a stocking, stopping for a moment to run one of the needles through her hair.

“I have got to go into the house now,” said Morrison, rising to his feet and holding out a hand to the fire. “I hope you’ll all have a good voyage across to-morrow night.”

“The Lord will be with us,” said Biddy Wor, who had just come in from the byre carrying a small frying-pan in one hand and a pot of porridge in the other.

“How long does it take to cross from Greenock to Londonderry?” Morrison asked Biddy Wor, meanwhile fixing his eyes on Norah Ryan.

“Derry, ye mean,” said the old woman. “We always say ‘Derry,’ but it’s the foreigner, bad luck be with him! that put London on to it. From Greenock it takes ten hours, more or less.”

Morrison drew a cigarette from a leather case which he took from his pocket. As he was lighting the cigarette he dropped the case and it fell beside Norah’s feet. He bent down hurriedly.

“Come out into the open, for I have something to say to you,” he whispered in a low voice to Norah as he stooped; then he went out, taking leave of the party in one “Good-night,” and five minutes later Norah rose from her seat and followed him.

“Where are ye goin’, girsha?” asked Maire a Glan.

“Down to the byre,” said the girl without turning round.

Morrison was standing in the shadow which fringed the fan-like stretch of light thrown from the shade.

“Is that you, Norah?” he asked, knowing well that it was she, and as he spoke he took her into his arms and kissed her. To Norah there was something dreadful in this kiss, and while not knowing that it gave expression to the pent-up passion of the man, she felt nervous and afraid. She looked back to the shed, saw the faces round the gaming-table, old Maire knitting in the corner, her needles showing brightly as the firelight played on them. A disused cart-wheel hung from the wall; she had never noticed it before.... Here in the dark beyond the circle of light something terrible threatened her, something that she could not comprehend but which her beating heart told her was wrong, and should be avoided. Why should she be afraid? Norah had all the boldness of innocence: her virtue was not armed with that knowledge which makes it weigh its every action carefully. Morrison was speaking, asking her to come further out into the darkness, but she still kept her eyes fixed on the shed. Safety lay there; freedom from what she could not comprehend. The man had hold of her hands, pressing them tightly, entreating her to do something. She freed herself from his grasp and ran back to the shed, half glad that the whole incident had taken place, and more than a little desirous to go out again. Her love for the well-dressed youth imparted a recklessness to her timid nature. When she went to her sleeping quarters two hours later old Maire a Glan accompanied her. The gamblers were still playing, the fire blazed merrily, and Ginger Dubbin held the bank and was winning heavily.

“What’s that, that’s shinin’ in front of us?” asked Maire a Glan as she came out. “Maybe it’s only seein’ things that I am, for me old eyes play tricks in the darkness.”

“It looks like a live spark lyin’ on the ground,” said Norah.

“That’s not on the cold ground,” answered the woman. “See, it’s movin’! It’ll be the farmer’s son with the gold ring on his finger. Now what will he be after waitin’ for there?”

“How am I to know?” said Norah, but in such a low voice that the old woman had to draw near to catch the words. “I’m sleepy,” she said after a pause; “it’s time we were in bed.”

II

ON the morning of the day following, the squad prepared for their departure, and gathered up all their spare clothes, their pans and porringers, and packed them in woollen handkerchiefs and tin boxes. The blankets, eighteen in all, were tied up in a parcel, ready to be sent off to the merchant in town.

“God knows who’ll sleep in them next year!” said Willie the Duck in a pathetic voice, and everybody laughed, some because they enjoyed the remark and others because it was the correct thing to laugh at every word uttered by Willie the Duck.

Dermod Flynn watched the preparations with impassive face. He was not going home; in fact, he had not as much money in his possession as would pay the railway fare to the nearest town. All his wages had been lost on the gaming-table; he had nothing now to rely on but the labour of his own hands and the chance of getting a job.

“What will ye do, Dermod?” Maire a Glan asked.

“I’ll try and.... But what does it matter to you what I do? One would think to hear you talk that I was a child.”

“I suppose there’ll be a lot of drunk people on the boat this night,” said Micky’s Jim as he tied a tin porringer in a rag and placed it in his box. “There’ll be some fightin’ too, I’ll go bail.”

“The Derry boat is the place for fightin’, as the man said.”

“Aye, sure, and the Irish are very fond of fightin’ when they’re drunk.”

“It’s more in the blood than in the bottle, all the same,” said Eamon Doherty.

“I mind one fight on the Derrier,” said Micky’s Jim, biting a mouthful from the end of his plug. “I was in the fight meself. (If the cork comes out of that bottle of milk, Owen Kelly, it’ll make a hell of a mess on yer clothes.) It started below. ‘There’s no man here,’ said I, ‘that could——’ (Them trousers are not worth taking with ye, Eamon Doherty. No man would wear clothes like that; a person would better be painted and go out bare naked)—‘that could put up his fives to me.’ (If ye dress yer hair like that, Brigit Doherty, I’ll not be seen goin’ into Greenanore with ye.) Then a man drove full but for my face and I took the dunt like an ox. (Willie the Duck, are ye goin’ to take that famine fiddle home again? Change it for a Jew’s harp or a pair of laces!) ‘That’s how a Glenmornan man takes it,’ says I, and came in with a clowt to the jowl——”

“Stop yer palaver about fightin’, Micky’s Jim, and let us get away to the station,” said Maire a Glan. “We’ll not auction time while we’re waitin’, as the man said.”

“If we go off now we’ll only have three hours to wait for the train,” remarked Jim sarcastically.

“And poor Dermod Flynn,” said Maire a Glan, tying her bundle over her shoulders with a string. “Not a penny at all left him. Where’s Norah Ryan? She’s the girl to save her money.”

At that moment Norah was outside with Morrison and the young man was asking a question. The wish to find an answer to it had kept him awake for nearly half the previous night.

“Why did you run away from me yesterday evening, Norah?”

“I was frightened.”

“Of what?”

“I don’t know.”

“Well, I certainly don’t know what caused you to run away.”

Morrison knew that, innocent though Norah was, some subtle instinct warned her the night before to hurry off to the safety of the shed.

“I would like to know why you did it, why you ran away, I mean?” he asked, knowing in his own heart that, if she understood, she had good reason to be afraid. “Does the girl understand?” he pondered. He had heard them talk of most things in Micky’s Jim’s squad, but perhaps the girl paid no heed to the talk.

“Are you coming back next year?” he enquired.

“It’s more nor likely.”

“Do you care for the life in the squad?”

“It could be worse.”

“That’s no recommendation,” said Morrison with a laugh, but seeing that Norah failed to understand him, he went on: “I don’t think you could have a life much harder than this.”

“I did not even kiss you last night,” he said after a short silence, “and now you are going away and maybe never coming back again. I would kiss you now, only some of the squad might see us, and you wouldn’t like that.”

But for the squad Morrison cared nothing. He was just on the point of kissing Norah when he noticed his father looking at him through a window of the farmhouse. Although not respecting his father overmuch, for old Morrison was a hard-drinking and short-tempered man, the son did not want the little love affair to be spoken of in the house.

“If you stay to-night in Greenock, Norah, I’ll go down with you,” said the young fellow. “Will you stay?”

“Why should I stay?” asked Norah, who did not understand what Morrison’s words meant.

“Because—well, you see—” stammered the youth. “Oh! I think you’d better go with the rest. I’ll see you next year.”

He held out his hand, clasped hers almost fiercely and without another word turned and went towards the house. On the way he lit a cigarette, rubbed a speck of dirt from the knee of his well-creased trousers, and wondered why he wanted to take possession of the innocent girl. Despite his high-flown views on the equality of man, Morrison never thought of marrying Norah. Besides, there was Ellen Keenans, the advanced woman and author of Songs of the Day, and it was Ellen who taught him what man’s conception of duty towards the race should be. At the present moment Morrison did not see how he could fit in with Ellen’s teachings.

That night most of the squad sailed for Ireland; Gourock Ellen and Annie took their way to Glasgow, and Dermod Flynn set out on the open road, ragged, penniless, and alone.