“Sure you are not going to leave us?” Norah exclaimed, gazing with large troubled eyes at her brother.
“I am,” snapped Fergus. “I am going away this evening. I’ll tramp the road to Derry and take the big boat from there to Scotland or some other place beyond the water. What are you crying for? Don’t be a baby, Norah! I’ll come back again and make you a lady. I’ll earn big piles of money and send it home at the end of every month.”
James Ryan looked at his wife, and a similar thought struck both of them at the same instant. The son had some book learning, and he might get on well abroad and amass considerable wealth, which he would share with his own people. The old man drew nearer to the fire and held out his bare feet, which were blue with cold, to the flames.
“If Fergus sends home money I’ll get a good strong and warm pair of boots,” he said to himself; then asked: “How much money is there in the teapot, Mary?”
“Twelve white shillings and sevenpence,” answered the wife. “No, it is only twelve shillings and sixpence. Norah took a penny with her to the town yesterday.”
“I have a ha’penny back with me,” said the child, drawing a coin from her weasel-skin purse. “I only spent half of the money on bread yesterday because I was not very hungry.”
“God be merciful to us! but the child is starving herself,” said the old woman, clutching eagerly at the coin which her daughter held towards her. “You can have half a gold guinea, Fergus, if you are going out to push your fortune.”
III
IN the evening when the moon peeped over the western hills, Fergus Ryan tied his boots round his neck, placed three bannocks in a woollen handkerchief and went out from his father’s door. The mother wept not when he was leaving; she had seen so many of her children go out on a much longer journey. Norah accompanied Fergus for a short distance and stopped where the road streaked with very faint lines of light merged into the darkness. The moon rose clear off the hills ... lights could be seen glowing in the distance ... a leafless birch waved its arms in the breeze ... somewhere a cow was lowing and far away, across the water, a Ballybonar dog howled at the stars.
“I never thought that I could like the place as much as I do now,” Fergus said in English.