A Young Married Woman I Used Often To Talk With Is Dying Of A Fever - Typhus I Am Told - And Her Husband And Brothers Have Gone Off In A Curagh To Get The Doctor And The Priest From The North Island, Though The Sea Is Rough.

I watched them from the Dun for a long time after they had started. Wind and rain were driving through the sound, and I could see no boats or people anywhere except this one black curagh splashing and struggling through the waves.

When the wind fell a little I could hear people hammering below me to the east. The body of a young man who was drowned a few weeks ago came ashore this morning, and his friends have been busy all day making a coffin in the yard of the house where he lived.

After a while the curagh went out of sight into the mist, and I came down to the cottage shuddering with cold and misery.

The old woman was keening by the fire.

'I have been to the house where the young man is,' she said, 'but I couldn't go to the door with the air was coming out of it. They say his head isn't on him at all, and indeed it isn't any wonder and he three weeks in the sea. Isn't it great danger and sorrow is over every one on this island?'

I asked her if the curagh would soon be coming back with the priest. 'It will not be coming soon or at all to-night,' she said.

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