I slid out of the cart, pulling my bundle after me, and took to my heels along the dry road. "Wan cannot see yer back for dust," the man shouted after me, and he kept roaring aloud for a long while. Soon, however, I got out of the sound of his voice, and I slowed down and recovered my wind. About fifteen minutes later I overtook an old withered woman, lean as a rake, who was talking to herself. I walked with her for a long distance, but she was so taken up with her own troubles that she had not a word for me.
"Is it on a day like this," the old body was saying aloud to herself, "that the birds sing loud on the trees, and the sun shines for all he is worth in the hollow of the sky, a day when the cruel hand of God strikes heavy on me heart, and starves the blood in me veins? Who at all would think that me little Bridgid would go so soon from her own door, and the fire on her own hearthstone, into the land where the cold of death is and the darkness? Mother of God! be good to a poor old woman, but it's bitter that I am, bekase she was tuk away from me, lavin' me alone in me old age with no wan sib to meself, to sleep under me own roof. Well do I mind the day when little Bridgid came. That day, my good man Fergus himself was tuk away from me, but I wasn't as sorry as an old woman might be for her man, for she was there with the black eyes of her lookin' into me own and never speakin' a word at all, at all. Then she grew big, with the gold on her hair, and the redness on her mouth, and the whiteness of the snow on her teeth. 'Tis often meself would watch her across the half-door, when she was a-chasin' the geese in the yard, or pullin' the feathers from the wings of the ducks in the puddle. And I would say to meself: 'What man will take her away from her old mother some fine mornin' and lave me lonely be the fire in the evenin'?' And no man came at all, at all, to take her, and now she's gone. The singin' birds are in the bushes, and the sun is laughin', the latch of me door is left loose, but she'll not come back, no matter what I do. So I do be trampin' about the roads with the sweat on me, and the shivers of cold on me at the same time, gettin' a handful of meal here, and a goupin of pratees there, and never at all able to forget that I am lonely without her."
I left the woman and her talk behind me on the road, and I thought it a strange thing that anyone could be sorry when I was so happy. In a little while I forgot all about her, for my eyes caught the chimneys of Strabane sending up their black smoke into the air, and I heard some church clock striking out the hour of noon.
It was well on in the day when I got the 'Derry train, but on the moment I set my foot on the pier by the waterside I found Micky's Jim sitting on a capstan waiting for me. He was chewing a plug of tobacco, and spitting into the water.
"Work hasn't done ye much harm, Dermod Flynn, for ye've grown to be a big, soncy man," was Jim's greeting, and I felt very proud of myself when he said these words.
CHAPTER XI THE 'DERRY BOAT
"Bad cess to the boats! for it's few they take back of the many they take away."—A Glenmornan Saying.
Jim and I had a long talk together, and I asked him about the people at home, my father and mother, the neighbours, their doings, their talk, and all the rest of the little things that went to make up the world of the Glenmornan folk. In return for his information I told Jim about my life in Tyrone, the hardships of Bennet's place, the poor feeding, the hard work, the loneliness, and, above all, the fight in the bedroom where I gave Joe Bennet one in the stomach that made him sick for two hours afterwards.