III
In the dark sleeping-room of a little ivy-covered cottage that stood end-on to the highroad through Michael a blind woman lay dying of the sickness. It was old Kerry; and on a three-legged stool before her bed her husband Hommy sat. Pitiful enough was Hommy's poor ugly face. His thick lubber lips were drawn heavily downward, and under his besom brows his little eyes were red and his eyelids swollen. In his hands he held a shovel, and he was using it as a fan to puff air into Kerry's face.
"It's all as one, man," the sick woman moaned. "Ye're only keeping the breath in me. I'm bound to lave ye."
And thereupon Hommy groaned lustily and redoubled his efforts with the shovel. There was a knock at the door, and a lady entered. It was Mona, pale of face, but very beautiful in her pallor, and with an air of restful sadness.
"And how are you now, dear Kerry?" she asked, leaning over the bed.
"Middling badly, mam," Kerry answered feebly. "I'll be took, sarten sure, as the saying is."
"Don't lose heart, Kerry. Have you not heard that the priest is coming?"
"Chut, mam! I'll be gone, plaze God, where none of the like will follow me."
"Hush, Kerry! He was in Patrick yesterday; he will be in German to-morrow, and the next day he will be here in Michael. He is a good man, and is doing wonders with the sick."
Kerry turned face to the wall, and Hommy talked with Mona. What was to become of him when Kerry was gone? Who would be left to give him a bit of a tidy funeral? The Dempster? Bad cess to the like of him. What could be expected from a master who had turned his own daughter out of doors?
"I am better where I am," Mona whispered, and that was her sole answer to the deaf man's too audible questions. And Hommy, after a pause, assented to the statement with his familiar comment, "The Bishop's a rael ould archangel, so he is."
Thereupon Kerry turned her gaze from the wall and said, "Didn't I tell ye, mam, that he wasn't dead?"
"Who?"
"Why—him—him that we mayn't name—him."
"Hush, dear Kerry, he died long ago."
"I tell ye, mam, he's a living man, and coming back—I know it—he's coming back immadient—I saw him."
"Drop it, woman, it's drames," said Hommy.
"I saw him last night as plain as plain—wearing a long gray sack and curranes on his feet, and a queer sort of hat."
"It must have been the priest that you saw in your dream, dear Kerry."
The sick woman raised herself on one elbow, and answered eagerly, "I tell you no, mam, but him—him."
"Lie still, Kerry; you will be worse if you uncover yourself to the cool air."
There was a moment's quiet, and then the blind woman said finally, "I'm going where I'll have my eyes same as another body."
At that Hommy's rugged face broadened to a look of gruesome sorrow, and he renewed his exertions with the shovel.