"'Give him another one,' said the bullet-headed man, and he chewing strongly on his plug.
"'What have you got to do with it?' said I to him. 'You're not my Guardian Angel, God help me!'
"'How dare you,' said the bullet-headed man. 'How dare you set this honest party stealing the last threepenny bit of a poor man?' and with that he made a clout at me.
"'What threepenny bit are you talking about?' said I.
"'My own threepenny bit,' said he. 'The only one I had. The one I dropped outside the gates of hell.'
"Well, that beat me! 'I don't care what you say any longer,' said I, 'you can talk till you're blue and I won't care what you say,' and down I sat on the kennel and shed my blood.
"'You must repent of your own free will,' said Cuchulain, marching to the door.
"'And you'd better hurry up, too,' said the other fellow, 'or I'll hammer the head off you.'
"The queer thing is that I believed every word the man said. I didn't know what he was talking about, but I did know that he was talking about something that was real although it was beyond me. And there was the way he said it too, for he spoke like a bishop, with fine, shouting words that I can't remember now, and the months gone past. I took him at his word anyhow, and on the minute I began to feel a different creature, for, mind you, a man can no more go against his Guardian Angel than he can climb a tree backwards.
"As they were going out of the barn Cuchulain turned to me: