'Him,' turning away her head, 'he's wid another woman.' She said no more, and William asked no more. Instead, he said gently, 'Well, acushla, you'll be putting together the few things you'll take with you. There's a cattle boat going at six in the mornin', an' we can get a passage by that.'
She looked up at him. 'But the child?' she said.
'He'll go wid us,' the man replied. 'He'll sleep sweeter on the Island than in this sorrowful town.'
'May God reward you, William,' she said. 'You're savin' more than you know. For if he'd come back I wouldn't answer for it that I wouldn't have kilt him as he slep'.'
The morning rose green and livid, with a sky full of snow though the world was covered with it. Now and again the snow drifted in their faces as they trudged through the streets before daybreak, and it came dryly pattering when they were out on the waste of green waters cleaving their way under the melancholy daylight. William had found a corner for the woman under shelter of the bridge, and there she sat through the hours with the dead child wrapped in her shawl, and the cold of it aching at her heart. The snow came on faster, and the deck passengers huddled in for shelter. 'God save you, honest woman,' said a ruddy-faced wife to her. 'Give me the child, and move yourself about a bit. You'll be fair frozen before we're half way across.' Mary shook her head with a gesture that somehow disarmed the kind woman's wrath at the rejection of her overtures. 'That crature looks to me,' she said to her husband, 'fair dazed wid the sorrow. Maybe it's the husband of her the crature's after buryin'.' There were a great many curious glances at Mary in her corner, but no one else had the temerity to offer her help.
William brought her a cup of tea at mid-day, which she drank eagerly, still holding the child with one arm, but she pushed away the food he offered with loathing.
In the evening they disembarked, and from a pier swept by the north wind were huddled into a train, ill lit and cold as the grave. Mary crouched into a corner with her face bent over the dead child. 'A quiet sleeper, ma'am,' said a cheerful sea-faring man. Mary looked at him with lack-lustre eyes and turned away her head.
Presently she began to sing, a quaint old Island lullaby, which rang weird and melancholy. William looked at her in alarm, but said nothing, and the other passengers watched her curiously, half in fear. She lifted her child from her knee to her breast, and held it there clasped a moment. 'I can't warm him,' she said, looking helplessly at all the wondering faces. 'The cold's on him and on me, and I doubt we'll ever be warm again.'
Presently they drew up at a bleak way-side station for the ferry, and the brother and sister without a word stepped out in the night and the snow. The man did not offer to carry the child. He knew it was no use. But he put a strong arm round the woman and her burden, where the snow was heaviest, and the wind from the sea blew like a hurricane.
They were the only passengers by the ferry, and neither the ferryman nor his mate knew Mary Cassidy, with the shawl drawn over her eyes. But as they stepped ashore and touched the familiar rock on which she and hers for many a forgotten generation had been born and cradled, the piteous frozen madness melted away from her face. She turned to her brother—