“Wid joy! Wid joy I’m drunk!” the old man shouted, dancing on the sands and slippery sea-litter like one possessed, and whirling his arms about his head.
“Murphy, man! What ails ye? In the name of the Lord—what—”
The browned, wild-eyed, ragged old madman had started at a headlong pace across the wet waste of weeds, and plunged now through the breakers, wading with long strides—knee-deep, then immersed to the waist. He turned for an instant to shout back: “I’ll swim to him if I drown for it! ’Tis the master come back!”
The girl fell to her knees on the sand, then reverently bowed her head till it rested upon the box before her.
CHAPTER XXV—BERNARD’S GOOD CHEER.
Sorra a wink o’ sleep could I get the night,” groaned the wife of O’Daly—Mrs. Fergus—“what with me man muthered, an’ me daughter drowned, an’ me nerves that disthracted ’t was past the power of hot dhrink to abate em.”
It was early morning in the reception hall of the convent. The old nuns sat on their bench in a row, blinking in the bright light which poured through the casement as they gazed at their visitor, and tortured their unworldly wits over the news she brought. The young chaplain, Father Jago, had come in from the mass, still wearing soutane and beretta. He leaned his burly weight against the mantel, smiling inwardly at thoughts of breakfast, but keeping his heavy face drawn in solemn lines to fit these grievous tidings.
The mother superior sighed despairingly, and spoke in low, quavering tones. “Here, too, no one sleeps a wink,” she said. “Ah, thin, ’t is too much sorrow for us! By rayson of our years we’ve no stringth to bear it.”