It occurred to him as he sat in the haggard under the riding moon, not a pitch shot from the house where his wife was being waked, that nothing was disturbed because she was dead. It was not strange that the stars kept on their courses, for the death of neither king nor cardinal nor the wreck of the greatest ship that ever sailed the seas would not move them from their accustomed orbit. But not a robin in the hedge was disturbed, not a rabbit in the field, not a weasel in the lane. Nature never put off her impenetrable mask. Or did she really not care? And was a human soul less to her than a worm in the soil?
There was a stir in the house. They would be making tea now for the men and women who said they were mourners.... The querulous voice of his wife's mother came to him as some one led her from the heated house into the coolth of the June night.
"Great sacrifices we made for him, myself and the white love that's stretched beyond in the room. All we had we gave him, and all she found was barren death, and I the barren charity of Northern men...."
"Oh, sure, 'tis the pity of the world you are, Pegeen," a neighbor comforted her.
"On his bended knees he came to her, asking for love," the cailleach went on. "On his bare and bended knees. And her heart melted toward him as the snow melts on the hills. 'And hadn't you better wait,' said I, 'Moyreen Roe? With the great looks and the grand carriage of you, 'tis a great match you can make surely. A gentleman from England, maybe, would have a castle and fine lands, or the pick of the dealing men, and they going from Belfast to Drogheda and stopping overnight at Ardee. Or wouldn't it be better for you to marry one of your own kind, would go to church with you in a kindly way?'
"'But if I don't marry this lad, he'll kill himself,' she says to me.
"'But your faith,' says I, ''avourneen, your holy faith, surely you will not be forsaking that for this boy!'"
"And what did she say to that, Pegeen?" the neighbor asked.
"'Sure it's promised to turn he has,' she answered. 'And do everything is right by me, so much I love him!'"
"The treacherous Ulster hound!" The neighbor inveighed.