“No,” said Denis, “it is not. His rope came through the post office yesterday. For the prison master it was, a long new rope—saints preserve us—and Jimmy Fallon the postman getting roaring drunk showing it to the scores of creatures would give him a drink for the sight of it. Just coiled it was, and no way hidden, with a label on it, ‘O.H.M.S.’”
“The wind’s rising, you,” said Christine. “Take a couple of forks now, and turn the hemp in the field. Maybe ’twill scour the Satan out of it.”
“Stormy it does be, and the bay has darkened in broad noon,” said Tom Tool.
“Why wouldn’t the whole world be dark and a man to be hung?” said she.
They went to the hemp so knotted and stinking, and begun raking it and raking it. The wind was roaring from the bay, the hulk twitching and tottering; the gulls came off the wave, and Christine’s clothes stretched out from her like the wings of a bird. The hemp heaved upon the paddock like a great beast bursting a snare that was on it, and a strong blast drove a heap of it upon the Man from Kilsheelan, twisting and binding him in its clasp till he thought he would not escape from it and he went falling and yelping. Tom Tool unwound him, and sat him in the lew of the stack till he got his strength again, and then he began to moan of his misfortune.
“Stint your shouting,” said Tom Tool, “isn’t it as hard to cure as a wart on the back of a hedgehog?”
But he wouldn’t stint it. “’Tis large and splendid talk I get from you, Tom Tool, but divil a deed of strength. Vexed and waxy I am. Why couldn’t he do his murder after we’d done with him. What a cranky cousin. What a foolish creature. What a silly man, the devil take him!”
“Let you be aisy,” the other said, “to heaven he is going.”
“And what’s the gain of it, he to go with his neck stretched?”
“Indeed, I did know a man went to heaven once,” began Tom Tool, “but he did not care for it.”