Where the Atlantic meets the land

by H. Caldwell Lipsett

THE UNFORGIVEN SIN

Bella Sweeny and Terry Gallagher had a holiday, and were spending it upon the rocks at Kilcross. He was a groom and she was a maid at 'the big house,' some miles inland, and this was her first visit to the place. He had been there several times before, and was doing the honors of the scenery. They had been 'coortin'' for some time, and he sat with his arm round her waist, in silence for the most part, punctuated by occasional references to the local names for heads of the landscape: he kept severely to facts, with the practical mind of the peasant class from which he sprang.

The point at which they found themselves was the innermost end of the long line of black-faced cliffs, where the rocky strata suddenly ceased and gave way to the sandy lowlands. The rock upon which they were seated was a single flat slab, which extended a hundred yards into the sea, forming a natural breakwater for the little cove behind them. To their right there stretched inland a couple of miles of yellow glistening strand, which merged gradually in the tufted bent-grass and rounded hillocks of the dunes which sloped to meet it at high-water mark. At the furthest point of sight in this direction the rocky strata cropped up again in the shape of an immense reef which stretched out half a mile into the sea, and now at low tide lay like a gigantic alligator on the surface of the water. When the tide was full its jagged points were completely covered, and only a thread of surf was left to warn the fisherman of its hidden dangers.

'This rock that we're a-settin' on,' said Terry, 'is called the Yeough Flag, from the fishes they catch off ov it: an' yon big wan out there is Carrick Fad: an' that wan is the Connaughtman's Rock, where a boat's load from Connaught was wrecked wan winter's night an' all han's lost.' He pointed as he spoke to a spot in the sea beside them, where a mat of long golden brown wrack floated flush with the surface, and the swell broke gently with a soft gurgle and a few air-bubbles.

Behind them and to their left the cliffs rose two hundred feet in the air as they soared seaward. The first fifty feet were formed of crumbling slate, above that came a layer of gravelly soil which was scooped out in regular scollops by land slips and seamed and scarred by winter torrents. At the extreme point of the bay the rock was hollowed out beneath by the constant dash of the surf, and the bank sloping more gently overhead was clothed with the long rank grass which has never known a scythe, coarse like the hairs of a horse's tail. The diamond-shaped point where the two met cut sharply into the sky-line. Beyond that point the cliffs became one solid wall of beetling rock.

The space between the base of the cliffs and the edge of the water in the cove was covered with boulders piled pell-mell on top of each other: they were of every size, from a trunk to a small house, and of every shape: here a square-shaped block lay like a stranded whale and there a thin slab was tilted edgeways towards the sky. The débris of the Atlantic flung by winter storms here upon its outermost verge, looking like the deposit of some huge primeval glacier.

'Yon's the Cormorants' Rock,' interjected Terry, alluding to the pointed headland, 'an' there's a cormorant,' as he pointed to a black speck winging its way with steady flight low down across the water.

Then he continued with a sudden change of subject, blurting out the words as though they blistered his tongue, 'Bella, darlin', don't you think we've waited long enough? I've got enough to marry on now. When shall we be called?' He had been nerving himself for this effort all the morning, and gave a great sigh of relief now that it was over.

The girl sat silent for a minute, considering the question thoughtfully, and then replied quite calmly, 'Av ye're of the wan min' this day six months, come an' tell me, an' I'll let you give notice to the praste,' and she lifted her mouth for the official stamp to the agreement.

For some time after that they sat in awkward silence. Both of them tried to think of a remark, but neither could find one. The growing uneasiness of an anti-climax rose between them. His arm relaxed round her waist, he shuffled his feet restlessly, and at last jumping up, exclaimed:

'Let's go an' catch some s'rimps.'

'What's that?' asked Bella.

'Little wee fishes that sweem about in the pools over there.'

'D'ye think ye can catch them?' she inquired doubtfully, but she rose and accompanied him to the rock-strewn side of the cove opposite, which proved on closer view to be dotted with small pools left by the retreating tide. In these a small variety of prawns disported themselves, and were dislodged from behind stones and underneath pieces of seaweed by Terry's intrusive ash-plant. He knelt down and tried to catch some of them in his hands, but they retreated warily in front of him with outstretched feelers, and when apparently enclosed upon all sides, darted with a sudden spring out of reach, and retired backwards under the impenetrable fastness of an overhanging rock.

'These yellah wans is rock s'rimps,' he explained, 'sand s'rimps is gray.'

Bella was greatly delighted with the queer aspect of the creatures, their translucent bodies, the large heads with their serrated horn and protruding eyes, and the long flexible 'whiskers,' and begged her lover to catch one for her to see closer.

Presently they came to a large pool above the reach of any but the highest tides. The water here softened by the rain was only brackish: the stones were clothed with long green seaweed, and those underneath the stagnant surface were coated with a brownish slime. The shrimps imprisoned by a chance migration in this uncongenial spot were more sluggish than their tidal neighbors, and one allowed himself to be caught, and in a moment lay kicking on Bella's outstretched palm.

When she had looked her fill of admiration Terry put it for greater safekeeping in his mouth: at this indignity the shrimp mustered all its activity for a final effort and jumped, tail first, down the young man's throat. Terry commenced to cough and splutter and went purple in the face, and Bella in alarm hit him a violent slap between the shoulders.

Her action had the desired effect, for it dislodged the shrimp from its dangerous resting-place, but a blow from her vigorous young arm was no light matter, and Terry lurched forward onto a tuft of the green seaweed which slid away beneath his feet: to recover his balance he stepped hastily onto a brown stone in the centre of the pool, but it proved yet more treacherous than the green: his heels flew from beneath him, leaving long nail marks on the greasy surface of the stone, and he fell flat on his back in the shallow water.

He lay still for a moment, stunned by the surprise, then rose to his feet, his clothes dripping streams of water and his hair matted with the long green seaweed, and found Bella shaking with a great spasm of laughter. Her large serious gray eyes were completely closed, and her pretty face contorted with the vulgarity of excessive merriment. He grinned sheepishly and said,—

'Them stones is powerful slippy.'

But she only laughed the more, till she became so weak that she collapsed onto the nearest rock, the tears streaming down her cheeks. At the sight a vague resentment gradually crept over Terry's docile Irish nature: he felt dimly that no woman would laugh like that at a man whom she really loved, and the change worked in the appearance of her features annoyed him. He exclaimed sharply,—

'Ah, quit now. Much you care av I'd been choked.'

Bella looked up, surprised at the unusual tone, but stopped laughing at once and replied meekly:

'Niver heed me, Terry, dear, I didn't offer to vex yous.'

Peace was at once restored, and they began to scramble together hand in hand over the uneven rocks towards the sea. All that was now left of it in the bay was a single streak of silver, which lay pent and sleeping in its narrow channel, that had been worn deep in the solid rock by the current of ages. Its bottom was piled with serpentine coils of wrack, sea-ferns in all their varied beauty of form and color, and 'slock-morrows' with their thick hairy stems and long slimy leaves: some of them still gripped with their roots the stones which they had torn with them beneath the stress of storm from their ocean bed. Beneath the misty film of the breeze upon the surface the whole mass writhed with each recurring pulse of the unresting sea like a living welter of sea-snakes.

'That's the wrack-hole,' announced Terry the well informed.

'Let me see,' said Bella, clinging timidly to his arm as she crept nearer and peered into its depths, with a shrinking awe as though at some half-human monster that battened upon mankind. For its name was known through the countryside as the bane of widows and childless mothers: at half-tide the waves poured over the surrounding rocks and swept seaward through this passage in a race that the strongest swimmer could not stem, and which had hurried many a venturesome beginner to his doom.

But many a time in the after days Terry looked back upon that moment, when the girl beside him clung to his hand and confided in his protection, as the happiest in his life. Such trifles serve to uplift or cast down a lover.

Bella shuddered and drew back, and they passed onwards towards the Cormorants' Rock. The boulders ceased and they came out upon the flat bed-rock. Women were there gathering sloak and dillusk, the spinach and edible moss of the sea: the constant passage of generations of naked feet had worn a track smooth and free from barnacles over the flaky slate: a row of footholds carved by the same agency led round the projecting corner, which was whitened down to high-water mark by the droppings of the cormorants from their nightly roosting-places above. As they looked, a couple of the women attempted the passage. The day was calm, but the Atlantic is never still, and rising out of nothing 'the shining sensitive silver of the sea' broke with a dull murmur upon this outpost of the cliff. The women waited until a wave larger than usual had passed, and began their journey, but the treacherous sea regathered itself and was upon them in the midst, dashing up beneath their petticoats. They flattened their bodies desperately against the rock, and twined their fingers in the short button-wrack that grew at high-water mark: their skirts floated wide upon the surface of the swell, but its force did not avail to pluck them from their hold. It retreated baffled, and the two bedraggled figures scrambled round the corner and were lost to view.

'Holy Mother, but it's a mercy they weren't lost,' cried Bella.

'Ay,' replied Terry, 'the tide must have turned. It's top spring the day, so it must be afther twelve. Troth, it's near hand wan,' he continued, cocking his eye at the sun. It wasn't often that he had the opportunity to unload such a store of information, and he made the best of the occasion.

Bella regarded him with wide eyes as he displayed this unsuspected hoard of marine lore, and treated him with unwonted respect for the remainder of the day.

'It's time we was goin' home, or I'll be late for the milkin',' she said, and they began to retrace their steps.

When they got off the boulders once more onto the sandy floor of the little bay, the tide was coming in with long pauses and feigned retreats followed by sudden rushes. In the midst of its path stood an isolated altar of four large stones just islanded by a tongue of bubbling wavelets.

'I mind when I was a wee fellah,' said Terry, 'we used to see which of us could stay on them foor stones longest without gettin' wet.'

'Let's try,' cried Bella, gleefully.

They jumped onto the stones and off again in eager rivalry for several minutes. Often there would be a wide gulf between them and the shore, and then the sea would retreat and leave it bare again. But at last they stopped too long: the tide flowed in with a sudden rush and never came back again near their island.

'What will we do?' cried Bella in dismay, when she realized they were altogether surrounded.

'Niver fear,' replied Terry, 'I can carry yous,' and he took off his shoes and stockings well pleased at the success of his stratagem.

He took her up carefully in his arms, like a baby, and carried her ashore: she lay quite still, without a blush or tremor, as he strained her to his breast, and when he kissed her before setting her upon her feet her lips met his frankly but did not return their pressure. Terry knew little of the ways of women, but his instinct told him that either more or less warmth would have been a better augury. He felt 'a bit dashed,' as he himself would say, at her tolerant attitude.

Then he went and put the horse into the cart, which he had borrowed for the day from a neighbor. Bella sat in the bottom upon a lining of hay, and her teeth rattled in her head at every jolt of the springless vehicle behind the rough-trotting plough-horse. Terry sat on the shaft in front, swinging his legs, and got a crick in his neck turning his head to admire her dishevelled hair and the brown shadows beneath her Irish eyes, 'rubbed in with a dirty finger,' as the saying goes.

For the next six months Terry lived upon the memory of that day. It formed the high-water mark of his influence with the girl whom he grew to love the more she disregarded him: for a man's love feeds upon starvation. Upon that day the unfamiliarity of her surroundings had allowed him to appear to an advantage he had never enjoyed before or since. Up to that point in their intercourse she had always been the stronger, and now a new element appeared to have entered her life and ousted him from it. Nothing that he could say or do could touch her interest any longer: he had an impalpable feeling that every day he was more outside of her, more in the cold. When they met about their daily work upon the farm, she merely tolerated his presence as she would tolerate a necessary article of furniture.

Terry racked his brains vainly to guess what cause of offence he had given her, or to imagine a reason for this change in her attitude: but he could find none. It was true that of late 'the misthress' had taken Bella to wait upon herself exclusively with the exception of her work in the dairy: and some of the other maids threw out hints about 'them as is took notice of soon becomes overly cocked up:' but Terry knew her too well to suspect her of such littleness: he rather put down her evident weariness of him to some failure in himself, he was not good enough for her.

One day in especial this came home to him. She had driven into the neighboring town of Lisnamore with her mistress, Mrs. Fenwick, to accompany that lady upon a shopping excursion. He was passing down the opposite side of the street, and saw her sitting upon the side of the car talking with a heightened color to 'the young Masther,' Mrs. Fenwick's eldest son, who was home from Trinity for the vacation, and who was standing with one hand resting carelessly upon the cushion beside her. She did not even notice Terry, and he passed on with a desolate feeling at his heart, nearer to tears than he had been since his babyhood.

On the afternoon that the six months expired he went to find her in the byre at milking time. He had questioned himself long and anxiously if it was worth while going at all, but came to the conclusion 'best give her her chanst.' So though he had already seen her several times that day, he went to his room over the coach-house and put on his Sunday clothes, the clothes he had worn that day upon the rocks at Kilcross, and a flaming scarlet tie that he had bought for this occasion a week afterwards. And in this gala dress with his heart in his boots he went to meet his fate.

He stood with a straw in his mouth leaning against the doorpost of the byre, and never said a word from the moment when the first thin thread of milk spirted into the empty tin porringer with a tinkling sound till the last porringer was emptied into the foaming pails. He walked beside her in solemn silence while she carried the pails to the dairy: but though his heart yearned over her he did not offer to help her: the men of the country do not relieve the women of their burdens. And still in silence he watched her pour the fresh milk through the strainer into the large earthenware crocks to 'set' for cream.

At last Bella herself broke the silence. 'Well, Terry, are ye ov the wan min' yet?' she asked abruptly in a mocking voice.

'I am,' replied Terry heavily, 'av ye'll take me.'

Bella flushed and looked down, then she continued suddenly in a hard, even tone:

'I'll not marry yous here. But av ye like to come wid me to Enniskilling, I'll marry yous to-morrow.'

At this unlooked for speech the blood surged over Terry's face and neck in a deep red flood. 'Ov coorse I'll come and welcome,' he answered hastily: the opportunity was too good to miss, there would be time to think later on.

But the moment that she had obtained her terms thus easily a swift remorse seized upon the girl, and she cried:

'No, no, I won't go. It's not fair on yous. I don't luv yous enough.'

But the young man replied firmly with a deep note of exaltation in his voice:

'I have yer promus, and I won't give it yous back. I know that I haven't yer luv yet, but I'm not afeard but I can win it, av ye give me the chanst. I'd come av I had to wade through a fiel' ov fire.'

Suddenly the girl burst into a flood of tears, and bowing her head, seized his hand and kissed it, murmuring through her sobs, 'You are too good for me, Terry, too good for me.'

'Too good,' he repeated wonderingly, resting his hand uncouthly upon her bright brown hair. 'Is it me? Why, I'm not fit for yous to wipe yer little feet upon.'

The next evening at the twilight hour there was a small gathering at the forge, which was perched upon the side of a hill upon the main road near the centre of the parish: it stood a little back in a square open space with its staring whitewashed walls, thatched roofs, and large unglazed window-openings. It was the district club, the meeting-place for the scattered cottagers of the countryside, the centre whence gossip radiated. The blacksmith was just finishing the last of a set of horseshoes, and the roar of the bellows formed a monotonous undertone to the fitful conversation. Patsey Brannigan, the patriarch of the place, was sitting on his usual creel, with his short clay pipe between his teeth, watching the sparks fly from the glowing metal with unblinking eyes. A group of half a dozen young men lounged about the doorway, propping the doorposts upon either side. Mac Ilrea dropped the completed shoe into the trough of water with a spluttering hiss, and said in a tone of relief, 'There, that's done, glory be.'

At that moment Hannah Sweeny, Bella's cousin, came up, carrying a couple of pails of water from the well, and put them down in front of the doorway as she asked the company at large:

'Have ye heard tell what our Bella's afther doin'?'

'De'il a hate', said Owen Gallagher, 'shpake away.'

'She's aff to Enniskilling with Terry Gallagher:' she was a red-headed girl with bare feet, and she stood with her hands on her hips as she watched the effect of her announcement.

'What, that gomeral,' exclaimed Owen in disgust. He was a connection of Terry's in a place where there are whole groups of families of the same name, and the blood is inextricably mingled; but the relationship was only close enough to throw into relief the uneasy rivalry with which he regarded his cousin.

'Yis, they wint be the mornin' thrain. An' what's more,' she continued, doling out her news with the deliberation that comes of a momentary importance, 'they do be sayin' that oul' Peggy's gone afther them be the evenin' thrain.'

'That's as it shud be,' said Mrs. Mac, coming forward from the inner room, 'her mother has a right to see they're married proper.'

'What she cud see in yon suckin' calf, bets ahl,' continued Owen, harping upon his one note.

'Troth thin it's him that might do betther than thrapesin' about the counthry afther yon flibbertigibbet,' said Hannah with heat.

'Ay,' replied her antagonist with a leer, 'yous had ahlways a saft spot for him yersilf, I doubt,' and the girl retired defeated from the contest.

'What bets me,' said Mac slowly, 'is what ud ail them not to be married quiet at home. Who's hinderin' them?'

A sigh passed through the group as they settled themselves down to consider this new aspect of the case.

Suddenly old Patsey took the pipe out of his mouth and spat upon the ground, then he leant forward deliberately while every one waited, took a red-hot turf coal from the fire with his naked fingers and sucked at it with his dhudeen, gradually cramming it down into the bowl until it had all crumbled away, then he said:

'Andy Sweeny's dahter cudn't do other.'

'Ah,' said one of the younger men interrogatively.

'He was a wild shpark, he was,' continued Patsey, meditatively, 'I doubt it's the father's blood she has in her. He was terrible fond of the gurls, so he was,' and the old man shook his head over a failing that had never appealed to him, and did not belong to his race.

'What call had oul' Peggy to take the likes ov yon?' asked Mac.

'Ahl ov us is young wanst in our lives,' replied Patsey sententiously, 'and he was a terrible han'some man. He was not from these parts, a packman from down Longford way: an' Masther Johnnie, what's home from school—'

'College,' corrected Hannah, but nobody paid any heed to her.

'—he has a power ov book-larnin', and he did be sayin' to me the other day that Sweeny come ov Spanish blood that they have in them down yonder from the times the Armady was wrecked on the shores of Longford—'

'Sorra but Longford isn't near the say,' interrupted Hannah, 'troth I larnt that meself in the National School—'

'Ah, will ye hould yer whisht, Hannah Gallagher, ye long-tongued divil ye,' cried Mrs. Mac. 'Ye're too cliver be half wid yer jography, so yous are.'

Hannah subsided, and Patsey continued, serenely impervious to criticism.

'Anyways she married him, and she only regretted it wanst, and that was ivery day ov her life afther. He was killed in a fight at a fair over a gurl, and that was the ind ov him, pace to his ashes.'

'Ye wudn't think oul' Peggy was that soort now,' persisted Mac; 'she lukes as could as yon hearthstone,' pointing as he spoke to the heap of gray ashes that had lately been a fire.

But one of the young men leant upon the handle of the bellows, and in a moment they leapt into a fierce white flame.

'Ay,' said Patsey, pointing the stem of his clay at the quickly-blackening cinders, 'yon's a betther answer nor any I cud give in a month ov Sundays.'

The following morning the rumor ran through the whole townland like fire through flax that Bella had returned with her mother unaccompanied by Terry, and unmarried.

Many were the conjectures that evening at the forge as to the meaning of this new move. Terry had been sounded on the subject, and told all he knew. He went with Bella to Enniskillen, and gave notice to the priest. Then they were overtaken by old Peggy, who spoke to her daughter privately for a few minutes. Bella came out from the conversation and said she had changed her mind and would not marry him after all. He raved and stormed, but all to no purpose: Bella was indifferent and her mother sphinx-like, he could get nothing further out of either, and he could not marry the girl in spite of herself. She went away and slept with her mother that night, and returned home by the first train in the morning. He could no nothing but follow her by the second.—Those were the facts, but as to the explanation of them he was entirely at a loss.

While they were still discussing this strange story, Terry himself passed the forge, switching moodily with his ash-plant at the 'boughaleen bwees,' the yellow rag-weed, that fringed the roadside.

When he came opposite the group at the doorway his cousin Owen called out to him jeeringly, 'Well, Terry, so yous are home again wid wan han' as long as the other. Didn't oul' Peggy think yous good enough for her dahter?'

Terry halted and looked up at them with a mild, wistful expression in his oxlike eyes, the look of a wounded animal, and said simply, 'Shure I'm not good enough for her.'

Somehow the laugh that had begun died away immediately, and Owen withdrew behind his companions, and began to light his pipe in a dark corner of the forge. His pipe was already alight. But Terry went upon his way pondering these, the first rough words of outside criticism that had fallen upon his ears. His mind was slow to move, and needed a jog from another hand to start it: but once stirred it moved deeply, and entertaining few ideas it was all the more tenacious of those which did manage to effect an entrance. His fancy for Bella, at first a young man's liking for a maid, had been fanned by opposition till now it had become a slow fire consuming his marrow. He thought of her all day, and in the night he lay awake biting his pillows, to prevent himself crying aloud for very loneliness of spirit. Bella remained at home with her mother, and he never saw her now, but her picture was too indelibly printed on his imagination for propinquity to add to her charms: absence but idealized them. He went about his work brooding eternally over his loss, and for the first time no one ventured to intrude upon his solitude. They laughed at him behind his back for a soft who had been jilted at the altar: but he had acquired a fresh dignity, which saved him from open ridicule or unsolicited advances. In those days when his trouble lay heavy upon him he shunned human creatures and found companionship only in the society of his horses. Their large calm soothed his fevered nerves. They grew to know his step, and whinnied when they heard him coming: and they would caress him with their tender muzzles as he rubbed them down with the soft hissing noise that they loved. For in sorrow animals are our most comforting companions: they are so silent and placid and self-contained, 'not one is respectable or unhappy over the whole earth.'

But at the end of six months a fresh shock convulsed the neighborhood. As on the first occasion it was Hannah that brought the news to the forge, but this time it was the morning, and there was nobody there but the blacksmith and his wife.

'Have ye heerd tell what's come to oul' Peggy's Bella,' she asked, standing breathlessly in the doorway, and added without waiting for a reply, 'she had a child last night.'

'You don't tell me,' cried Mrs. Mac in amazement.

'They had the oul' wumman from the Poorhouse there ahl night, an' I just seen the dishpensary docther lave the dure this minute wid me own two eyes.'

'An' her such a soft-spoken crathur,' continued Mrs. Mac; 'ye'd think that butther wudn't melt in her mouth, but it's ahlways them soort that goes wrong.'

Swiftly the news spread, and by half-past twelve at dinnertime all the workers in the fields about had left their haymaking, for it was harvest-time once more, to gather at this central spot and discuss the situation.

At first everybody was incredulous: such an event was almost unheard of in a community where chastity was a tradition, and insufficient nutriment kept the blood thin and the passions cold. But soon the testimony of a neighbor who had been called in put the question of fact beyond doubt.

'What did I tell ye about Andy Sweeny's dahter?' said old Patsey, taking credit for his hall-prophecy in the fuller light of after events.

'Ay, ay, deed so,' murmured the group in chorus.

Then curiosity centred itself on the point of who was the father of the child.

'It cudn't be Terry Gallagher, now,' said Mrs. Mac judicially, 'troth I'll be boun' he knew nahthin' about it, the crathur.'

'Ah, him is it?' said Owen contemptuously, 'he's too great a fule.'

'He's had a lucky escape anyways,' continued Mrs. Mac meditatively, 'I wunner now why she didn't marry him when she had the chanst, an' no wan wud ha' been a hate the wiser. Oul' Peggy'll be quare an' mad that she stopped the weddin'.'

'I cud make a boul' guess then,' broke in Hannah, who had been waiting for an opening. 'I'll houl' ye I know who owns it, an' more shame for her to lave her own wans for them as doesn't want her now that she's in trouble. I'm thinkin' it's some of the quality has a finger in it.'

'Betther kape a still tongue in yer head about the quality,' interrupted the blacksmith hastily, 'laste said's soonest mended.'

'Here's himself,' interjected one of the group by the door warningly, as Terry came into sight, climbing the hill towards them. As he drew near it could be seen that his steps were hurried and uneven, and his face as white as chalk.

He came straight up to them, and asked in a tense whisper, 'Is it thrue?' looking from one to the other.

They all avoided his eye and looked uneasily away, except Owen, in whose breast the memory of his self-humiliation of six months ago still rankled. He stepped a pace forward, and answered,—

'Aye, it sames you was good enough for her afther ahl.'

His cousin looked at him with a lack-lustre eye, as though he did not take in the meaning of the words, and, encouraged by his quiescence, Owen continued in a more pronounced tone,—

'More like it was her that wasn't good enough for yous.'

For a moment Terry stood rooted to the spot, while the blood surged upwards and veiled his eyesight with a mist, then he crouched and sprang headlong at his adversary's throat with an inarticulate snarl like a wild beast.

Owen was borne backwards by the impetus of his weight, and fell striking his head against the spike of the anvil: and Terry was torn from him by two of the men, his eyes staring and his limbs trembling with rage. When they released their hold of him, his sinews, all unstrung by the violence of his passion, gave way beneath him and he collapsed in a heap upon the floor. For a moment he sat there: then he rose to his knees, and thence to his feet, and staggered out of the door and down the road, reeling to and fro in the sunlight like a drunken man.

'Who'd ha' thought it?' said Patsey, looking after him: 'It's wunnerful what stuff a taste of the gurls does be makin' into a man. Yon wan was a suckin' calf a while ago, and now he's a young bull.'

'May the divil roast him,' exclaimed Owen, scrambling to his feet, and looking regretfully at the pool of his own blood upon the floor. 'He has me disthroyed, but I'll be even wid him yit.'

When his momentary rage had died down a great tumult was left in Terry's mind. The scene which he had just passed through had brought sharply home to him the attitude that the neighbors would take towards Bella's transgression. He pictured her to himself defenceless before her persecutors, and longed to give her the shelter of his arm and of his name. But could he offer to marry her still, and consent to be pointed at for the remainder of his life as the husband of a wanton? for scandal dies hard in the country. On the one side was ranged the whole force of a public opinion which it had never entered into his head to question until now, and of his own inherited racial instincts, and on the other his great love for this girl. He could not put it into words, but he felt dimly within him that it was she herself that he loved, and that her outward actions did not affect her inward essence, that he knew her better than any neighbor, and was a better judge of her than blind convention. He was not strong enough yet to be himself in the face of his world, but the balance wavered ever more deeply on the side of this new self that he was discovering. That he should have an opinion of his own at all was a great advance upon anything that he could have felt a year ago. But there is no forcing-house for the growth of character like disappointed love.

At the end of a fortnight he was still wavering in mind, but he could no longer rest without seeing Bella. So he put on his holiday suit, and went down the road towards her mother's cottage; but this time he did not wear the scarlet tie. As he approached the house he realized that it had a forlorn and neglected air, as though it shared the fallen estimation of its occupants; the grass grew thickly in the front yard and upon the thatched roof, and the geraniums upon the window-sill were withered and unwatered.

He pushed open the half-door and entered unasked, as was his wont. Bella was seated in the window, working at her sprigging and rocking a small wooden cradle with her foot; at the sound of his footstep she looked up with a strained hungry light in her eye, but at the sight of him a shade of disappointment flitted across her face and she continued to look past him over his shoulder as though expecting some one else. The old woman was seated on a three-legged stool crouched over the hearth while she stirred an iron pot of stirabout with a wooden pot-stick; she did not even turn her head when he entered.

'God save all here,' said Terry, awkwardly standing in the middle of the floor. His head nearly touched the blackened beam which ran across the middle of the room and supported a half-floor, whence the mingled smell of apples and dried onions came distinctly to his nostrils. He coughed and sat down upon the edge of the nearest chair, tucking his feet well under the rail and crunching his soft felt hat nervously in his hands. The swish of the thread being drawn through the embroidery was the only sound that broke the stillness, as he watched the regular sweep of Bella's arm against the window-pane.

'What's yer wull, Terry Gallagher?' snapped old Peggy abruptly, after a time.

Terry turned his hat over several times, examined the lining very carefully, and finally replied to her question with another:

'Why didn't ye let on to me yon time, mother, and let me marry her while there was time?'

At this heathenish question old Peggy rose to her full height and pointed the pot-stick accusingly at her daughter, as she said in a tone of concentrated bitterness:

'I wudn't let a wumman like yon soil an honest man's hearth.'

Bella sat unmoved, without taking the slightest notice of the words. Her mother and Terry belonged to a world outside of her which no longer affected her by their phantom movements.

But at this embodiment of the ghostly voices which he had been fighting against so long Terry sprang to his feet. In the face of concrete opposition a blind antagonism seized him which swallowed up all hesitation, and he dared to be individual. He took a stride forward, and, throwing out one arm towards the girl, said in a loud voice as though to penetrate her understanding:

'Bella, darlin', I'll marry ye now, av ye'll have me.'

Bella looked up with a faint smile of surprise, and opened her lips to answer. At that moment a thin cry came from the cradle at her feet; at the sound, while she still looked at him, a light crept over her face which transfigured it.

Then Terry knew that he had seen for the first time the love-look on a woman's face, and it was not for him. And, boor as he was, the knowledge came home to him at that instant, that for any one to marry her save the man who had the power to raise that look upon her face would be a sacrilege.

He turned with drooped head, and stumbled out of the cabin without a word.