They shared the food: there was little of it, and some of it was wet; but they each had a piece of bread, a knuckle of cheese, and three cold potatoes.

Mary said there was something wrong with her, and she passed two of her cold potatoes to the cherub Art, who ate them easily.

"I wish you had given them to me," said her father.

"I'll give you one of mine," said Eileen Ni Cooley, and she thrust one across to him.

Mac Cann pushed it entire into his mouth, and ate it as one who eats in a trance: he stared at Eileen.

"Why did you give me your potato?" said he.

Eileen blushed until not a single freckle in her face was visible.

"I don't know," she answered.

"You don't seem to know anything at all this day," he complained. "You're full of fun," said he.

He lit his pipe, and, after pulling for a while at it, he handed it to the woman.

"Take a draw at that pipe," he commanded, "and let us be decent with each other."

Eileen Ni Cooley did take a draw at the pipe, but she handed it back soon.

"I never was much at the smoking," said she.

Caeltia had his pipe going at full blast. He was leaning against the wall with his eyes half closed, and was thinking deeply between puffs.

Finaun had a good grip on Mary's hair, which he was methodically plaiting and unloosening again. He was sunken in reverie.

Mary was peeping from beneath her lids at Art, and was at the same time watching everybody else to see that she was not observed.

Art was whistling to himself in a low tone, and he was looking fixedly at a spider.

The spider was hauling on a loose rope of his tent, and he was very leisurely. One would have thought that he was smoking also.

"What did you have for dinner?" said Art to the spider.

"Nothing, sir, but a little, thin, wisp of a young fly," said the spider.

He was a thick-set, heavy kind of spider, and he seemed to be middle-aged, and resigned to it.

"That is all I had myself," said Art. "Are the times bad with you now, or are they middling?"

"Not so bad, glory be to God! The flies do wander in through the holes, and when they come from the light outside to the darkness in here, sir, we catch them on the wall, and we crunch their bones."

"Do they like that?"

"They do not, sir, but we do. The lad with the stout, hairy legs, down there beside your elbow, caught a blue-bottle yesterday; there was eating on that fellow, I tell you, and he's not all eaten yet, but that spider is always lucky, barring the day he caught the wasp."

"That was a thing he didn't like?" queried Art.

"Don't mention it to him, sir, he doesn't care to talk about it."

"What way are you going to fasten up your rope?" said Art.

"I'll put a spit on the end of it, and then I'll thump it with my head to make it stick."

"Well, good luck to yourself."

"Good luck to your honour."

Said Patsy to Caeltia, pointing to Finaun:

"What does he be thinking about when he gets into them fits?"

"He does be talking to the hierarchy," replied Caeltia.

"And who are themselves?"

"They are the people in charge of this world."

"Is it the kings and the queens and the Holy Pope?"

"No, they are different kinds of people."

Patsy yawned.

"What does he be talking to them about?"

"Every kind of thing," replied Caeltia, and yawned also. "They are asking him for advice now."

"What is he saying?"

"He is talking about love," said Caeltia.

"He is always talking about that," said Patsy.

"And," said Caeltia, "he is talking about knowledge."

"It's another word of his."

"And he is saying that love and knowledge are the same thing."

"I wouldn't put it past him," said Patsy.

For he was in a bad temper. Either the close confinement, or the dull weather, or the presence of Eileen Ni Cooley, or all of these, had made him savage.

He arose and began striding through the narrow room, kicking stones from one side of the place to the other and glooming fiercely at everybody. Twice he halted before Eileen Ni Cooley, staring at her, and twice, without a word said, he resumed his marching.

Suddenly he leaned his back against the wall facing her, and shouted:

"Well, Eileen a grah, the man went away from you, the man with the big stick and the lengthy feet. Ah! that's a man you'd be crying out for and you all by yourself in the night."

"He was a good man," said Eileen; "there was no harm in that man, Padraig."

"Maybe he used to be putting his two arms around you now and then beside a hedge and giving you long kisses on the mouth?"

"He used to be doing that."

"Aye did he, indeed, and he wasn't the first man to do that, Eileen."

"Maybe you're right, Padraig."

"Nor the twenty-first."

"You've got me here in the house, Padraig, and the people around us are your own friends."

Caeltia also had arisen to his feet and was staring morosely at Eileen. Suddenly he leaped to her, wrenched the shawl from her head with a wide gesture, and gripped her throat between his hands; as her head touched the ground she gasped, and then, and just as suddenly, he released her. He stood up, looking wildly at Patsy, who stared back at him grinning like a madman, then he stumbled across to Finaun and took his hands between his own.

"You must not hurt me, my dear," said Finaun, smiling gravely at him.

Mary had leaped to Art, whose arm she took, and they backed to the end of the room.

Eileen stood up; she arranged her dress and wrapped the shawl about her head again; she gazed fearlessly at Mac Cann.

"The house is full of your friends, Padraig, and there's nobody here with me at all; there's no man could want better than that for himself."

Patsy's voice was hoarse.

"You're looking for fight?"

"I'm looking for whatever is coming," she replied steadily.

"I'm coming, then," he roared, and he strode to her. He lifted his hands above his head, and brought them down so heavily on her shoulders that she staggered.

"Here I am," said he, staring into her face.

She closed her eyes.

"I knew it wasn't love you wanted, Padraig; it was murder you wanted, and you have your wish."

She was swaying under his weight as she spoke; her knees were giving beneath her.

"Eileen," said Patsy, in a small voice, "I'm going to tumble; I can't hold myself up, Eileen; my knees are giving way under me, and I've only got my arms round your neck."

She opened her eyes and saw him sagging against her, with his eyes half closed and his face gone white.

"Sure, Padraig!" said she.

She flung her arms about his body and lifted him, but the weight was too much, and he went down.

She crouched by him on the floor, hugging his head against her breast.

"Sure, listen to me, Padraig; I never did like any one in the world but yourself; there wasn't a man of them all was more to me than a blast of wind; you were the one I liked always. Listen to me now, Padraig. Don't I be wanting you day and night, and saying prayers to you in the darkness and crying out in the dawn; my heart is sore for you, so it is: there's a twist in us, O my dear. Don't you be minding the men; whatever they did it was nothing, it was nothing more than beasts playing in a field and not caring anything. We are beside one another for a minute now. When I would put my hand on my breast in the middle of a laugh it was you I was touching, and I do never stop thinking of you in any place under the sky."

They were kissing each other like lost souls; they babbled and clung to each other; they thrust one another's head back to stare at it, and pursued the head with their violent lips.

It was a time before they all got to sleep that night, but they did sleep at the end of it.

They stretched in the darkness with their eyes closed, and the night folded them around, separating each one from his fellow, and putting on each the enchantment of silence and blindness. They were no longer together although they were lying but a few inches apart; there was only the darkness that had no inches to it; the darkness that has no beginning and no end; that appears and disappears, calling hush as it comes and goes, and holding peace and terror in either invisible hand; there was no silver moon in the sky and no sparkle of white stars; there was only darkness and silence and the steady hushing of the rain.

When he awoke in the morning Mac Cann rolled urgently on his elbow and stared to where Eileen Ni Cooley had stretched herself for sleep—but she was not there, she was not anywhere.

He shouted, and the company sprang to their feet.

"She got out through the window," he roared.

"The devil damn the soul of her," said he.

BOOK III

BRIEN O'BRIEN