"There's a good time comin', though we may never live to see it."
—Moleskin Joe.
A watery mid-November sun was peering through a leafless birch tree that rose near my sleeping-place when I awoke to find a young healthy slip of a woman looking at me with a pair of large laughing eyes.
"The top o' the morn to ye, me boy," she said. "Ye're a young cub to be a beggar already."
"I'm not a beggar," I answered, getting up to my feet.
"Ye might be worse now," she replied, making a sort of excuse for her former remark. "And anyway, it's not a dacent man's bed ye've been lyin' on all be yerself, me boy." I knew that she was making fun of me, but for all that I liked the look of her face.
"Now, where would ye be a-goin' at this time o' the morn?" she asked.
"That's more than I know myself, good woman," I said. "I have been working with a man named Sorley, but I left him last night."
"Matt Sorley, the boycotted man?"
"The same."