The Man from Kilsheelan hung down his old head and couldn’t answer him, but Tom Tool said: “Drifty he is, sir, he forgets his little name.”
“Astray is he? My mother said I’ve cousins in Roscommon, d’ye know ’em? the Twingeings....”
“Twingeing! Owen Twingeing it is!” roared Kilsheelan. “’Tis my name! ’Tis my name! ’Tis my name!” and he danced about squawking like a parrot in a frenzy.
“If it’s Owen Twingeing you are, I’ll bring you to my mother in Manhattan.” The captain grabbed up his bag. “Haste now, come along out of it. I’m going from the cunning town this minute, bad sleep to it for ever and a month! There’s a cart waiting to catch me the boat train to Queenstown. Will you go? Now?”
“Holy God contrive it,” said Kilsheelan; his voice was wheezy as an old goat, and he made to go off with him. “Good-day to you, Tom Tool, you’ll get all the reward and endure a rich life from this out, fortune on it all, a fortune on it all!”
And the two of them were gone in a twink.
Tom Tool went back to the Horans then; night was beginning to dusk and to darken. As he went up the ropewalk Christine came to him from her potato gardens and gave him signs, he to be quiet and follow her down to the strand. So he followed her down to the strand and told her all that happened, till she was vexed and full of tender words for the old fool.
“Aren’t you the spit of misfortune? It would daunt a saint, so it would, and scrape a tear from silky Satan’s eye. Those two deluderers, they’ve but the drainings of half a heart between ’em. And he not willing to lift the feather of a thought on me? I’d not forget him till there’s ten days in a week and every one of ’em lucky. But ... but ... isn’t Peter Corcoran the nice name for a captain man, the very pattern?”
She gave him a little bundle into his hands. “There’s a loaf and a cut of meat. You’d best be stirring from here.”
“Yes,” he said, and stood looking stupid, for his mind was in a dream. The rock at one horn of the bay had a red glow on it like the shawl on the neck of a lady, but the other was black now. A man was dragging a turf boat up the beach.