'Here is my little sister, stranger, who will give you her arm.'
And so it went. Quiet as these women are on ordinary occasions, when
two or three of them are gathered together in their holiday
petti-coats and shawls, they are as wild and capricious as the women
who live in towns.
About seven o'clock I got back to Kilronan, and beat up my crew from
the public-houses near the bay. With their usual carelessness they
had not seen to the leak in the curagh, nor to an oar that was
losing the brace that holds it to the toll-pin, and we moved off
across the sound at an absurd pace with a deepening pool at our
feet.
A superb evening light was lying over the island, which made me
rejoice at our delay. Looking back there was a golden haze behind
the sharp edges of the rock, and a long wake from the sun, which was
making jewels of the bubbling left by the oars.
The men had had their share of porter and were unusually voluble,
pointing out things to me that I had already seen, and stopping now
and then to make me notice the oily smell of mackerel that was
rising from the waves.
They told me that an evicting party is coming to the island tomorrow
morning, and gave me a long account of what they make and spend in a
year and of their trouble with the rent.
'The rent is hard enough for a poor man,' said one of them, 'but
this time we didn't pay, and they're after serving processes on
every one of us. A man will have to pay his rent now, and a power of
money with it for the process, and I'm thinking the agent will have
money enough out of them processes to pay for his servant-girl and
his man all the year.'
I asked afterwards who the island belonged to.
'Bedad,' they said, 'we've always heard it belonged to Miss - and she
is dead.'
When the sun passed like a lozenge of gold flame into the sea the
cold became intense. Then the men began to talk among themselves,
and losing the thread, I lay half in a dream looking at the pale
oily sea about us, and the low cliffs of the island sloping up past
the village with its wreath of smoke to the outline of Dun Conor.
Old Pat was in the house when I arrived, and he told a long story
after supper: -
There was once a widow living among the woods, and her only son
living along with her. He went out every morning through the trees
to get sticks, and one day as he was lying on the ground he saw a
swarm of flies flying over what the cow leaves behind her.
