Mysterious Behaviour
Day by day they ate, unquestioning, the coarse food their poor hostess set before them, and the black bread which was the best food obtainable in those terrible days, but they added to it wine, rich and red, from their own private store, and they paid her lavishly in good red gold, so that she wondered that any men should stay in the famine-stricken country when they could so easily leave it at their will. Gradually, too, speaking now in the Irish tongue, they began to ask her cautious questions of the people, of the land, of the famine, how men lived and how they died, and so they heard of the exceeding goodness of the Countess Cathleen, whose bounty had saved so many lives, and was still saving others, though the deadly pinch of famine grew sorer with the passing days. To their hostess they admired Cathleen’s goodness, and were loud in her praises, but they looked askance at one another and their brows were black with discontent.
Professed Errand of Mercy
Then one day the kingly merchants told the poor widow who harboured them that they too were the friends of the poor and starving; they were servants of a mighty prince, who in his compassion and mercy had sent them on a mission to Ireland to help the afflicted peasants to fight against famine and death. They said that they themselves had no food to give, only wine and gold in plenty, so that men might exert themselves and search for food to buy. Their hostess, hearing this, and knowing that there were still some niggards who refused to part with their mouldering heaps of corn, setting the price so high that no man could buy, called down the blessing of God and Mary and all the saints upon their heads, for if they would distribute their gold to all, or even buy the corn themselves and distribute it, men need no longer die of hunger.
A New Traffic
When she prayed for a blessing on the two strangers they smiled scornfully and impatiently; and the elder said, cunningly:
“Alas! we know the evils of mere charity,
And would devise a more considered way.
Let each man bring one piece of merchandise.”
“Ah, sirs!” replied the hostess, “then your compassion, your gold and your goodwill are of no avail. Think you, after all these weary months, that any man has merchandise left to sell? They have sold long ago all but the very clothes they wear, to keep themselves alive till better days come. Such offers are mockery of our distress.”
“We mock you not,” said the elder merchant. “All men have the one precious thing we wish to buy, and have come hither to find; none has already lost or sold it.”