I silently took out of my dress the bunch he had given me, and handed them, all limp and faded, to him. He took them without looking at me, and, turning his back to me, walked to the chimney-piece. He leaned both his arms upon the narrow shelf, and laid his head upon them.
When I left the room, he was still standing motionless in the same position.
CHAPTER IV.
MYROSS CHURCHYARD.
“O fair, large day!
The unpractised sense brings heavings from a sea of life too broad.”
“Such seemed the whisper at my side.
‘What is it thou knowest, sweet voice?’ I cried.
‘A hidden hope,’ the voice replied.”
The old graveyard on the promontory was at most times the forlornest and least frequented spot about Durrus. The dead people who lay in crowded slumber within the narrow limits of the grey, briar-covered walls seldom heard any disturbing human voice to remind them of the life they had left. Their solitude was ensured to them by the greater solitude of the sea, which on three sides surrounded them, and by the dreary strip of worn-out turf bog which formed their only link with the rest of the world. There was nothing to mark for them the passing of time, except the creeping of the shadow thrown dial-wise by the gable of the broken-down chapel, or the ever-increasing moaning in the caves beneath, which told of the yearly encroachments of the sea.