One dream blended with another. It was morning: the sun tipped the hills and lighted Glenmornan; strips of gold in the clouds of the east were drawn fine as the wrinkles on the brow of a woman; a mist rose from the holms of Frosses, and the water of the streams sparkled merrily. In the pools trout were leaping, breaking the glassy surface and raising a shower of rainbow mist that dissolved in the air. A boy came along the road; there was a smile on his face and his eyes were full of dreams, as the eyes of a youth who goes out to push his fortune well may be. In one hand he carried a stick, in the other a bundle. Dermod Flynn was setting out for the hiring fair of Strabane....
II
SO Norah Ryan dreamt, one vision merging into another and all bringing a long-lost peace to her soul. She did not hear the first rap at the door, nor the second. The third knock, louder and more imperative than the others, roused her to a sense of her surroundings. In the fabric of her existence the black thread of destiny again reappeared and she rose, pushed back the erring lock of hair from her white forehead, placed some more coal on the fire, turned up the lamp and lit it, then went and opened the door. A young man dressed in sailor’s garb, his face cut and covered with blood, stood on the threshold; behind him on the ground lay a prostrate figure, the man with the empty sleeve.
“Come in,” said Norah. She did not look at the visitor; all men were the same now to her; all were so much alike. The sailor rubbed a handkerchief over his face, staggered past the girl and sank into a chair.
“What’s that one-armed swine doin’?” he cried. “Strikin’ a man, an A.B. before the mast, without any reason; him and his gabblin’ fools of women! But I learned him somethin’, I did. One on the jowl and down he went. An A.B. before the mast stands no foolin’. Has he got up?” he called to the woman at the door.
The ex-soldier staggered to his feet on the landing, and swore himself along the passage. Norah closed the door.
“He’s up on his feet and away to his own room,” she informed the sailor.
“This No. 8?” he asked.
“No,” answered Norah. “It’s three doors round on the left; I’ll show you where it is.”
“But is this house one like No. 8?”