The demesne farm, as it was called, was at some distance from the house—at least ten minutes’ walk down a stony lane, worn into deep ruts by the passing of the carts of hay; and now that the ruts had been turned into pools by heavy showers, it was anything but a pleasant walk. The boreen passed through the fields in which Willy had schooled Alaska; it came out into the road near the lodge, and thence led directly to the house, whose gleaming slate roof and tall chimneys I could see from where I was sitting, above the trees of the plantation. The short December day was already beginning to close in; the setting sun was level with my eyes, and was sending broad rays up the long slope that lay between the farm and the sea. Everything for the moment was transfigured; all the wet stones and straw lying about the yard shone and glistened. The pigs were splashing through pools of liquid gold; and the geese, who were gabbling in an undertone near the hayrick, looked blue on the shadow side, and silver-yellow on the side next the sun—one could believe them capable of laying nothing but golden eggs. The wind was going down with the sun, and it seemed as if we should have no more rain; but there was a dangerous-looking black cloud over Croaghkeenen. I wondered if Nugent had come. That cloud certainly meant rain; perhaps it would serve as an excuse to get home.
Willy was as good as his word about coming back quickly, and brought with him not one, but two small sons of the house of Sweeny, with shock heads of hair, as fluffy as dandelion seed, and almost as white, and big grey eyes that looked doubtfully at me from under the blackest lashes and out of the dirtiest faces I had ever seen in my life.
“Come, Timsy,” said Willy to the smaller of the two, “in you go; and if you get a grip of him at all, hold on to him, no matter if he eats the nose off your face.”
In no wise discouraged by this injunction, Timsy crawled into the hole, until nothing but the muddy soles of his bare feet were visible. But the ferret was evidently beyond human reach. I sat impatiently enough, looking on, and trying to summon up courage to say that I would go home, when I felt a drop or two of rain on my hand, and saw that the heavy cloud now shut Croaghkeenen altogether out of view, and that a thick shower was coming across the sea and along the slopes of Durrus. In another instant we were enveloped in a gusty whirl of rain.
“Run to the Sweenys’, Theo!” cried Willy, jumping up from his knees, and abandoning his attempt to push little Sweeny deeper into the hole; “we must shelter there.”
“Couldn’t we get home?” I said, standing undecidedly in the downpour, and thinking with despair that my deserted visitor was possibly arriving at Durrus now.
“No; you’d be drowned getting there. Come on.”
We ran up the lane as fast as was possible from the nature of it, with the mud splashing up at every step, the rain trickling down the backs of our necks, and the dogs racing along with us, getting very much in the way by ridiculous jumps at the bag in which Willy carried the ferret, and evidently believing that this unusual rushing through the mud was only a prelude to something far more thrilling. I picked my way after Willy through the Sweenys’ yard, along a path which ran precariously between a manure heap and a pool of dirty water, and saw Mrs. Sweeny flinging open her door to receive us.
“Oh, ye craytures! ye’re dhrowned! Come in asthore. Get out, ye divil!”—slapping the bony flanks of a calf which was trying to thrust itself into the house. “Turn them hins out, Batty! Indeed, ’tis a disgrace to ask ye into that dirty little house, and me afther plucking a goose.”
We entered the low, narrow doorway; and the hens, seeing that they were hemmed in, and disdaining even at this extreme moment to yield to Batty’s practised pursuit, took to their wings, and flew past our heads through the doorway with varying notes of consternation.