There were various opinions expressed of this narrative. I quietly asked the needy outsider as we left the club at sunrise:
“Will you tell me who your pal was—the man who buried his wife on the mountain-top?”
There was contemptuous pity in the outsider's look as it dwelt a moment upon me before he replied: “The man was myself.”
And then he condescended to borrow a quarter from me.
VIII. — TIME AND THE TOMBSTONE
Tommy McGuffy was growing old. The skin of his attenuated face was so shrunk and so stretched from wrinkle to wrinkle that it seemed narrowly to escape breaking. About the pointed chin and the cheekbones it had the colour of faded brick.
Old Tommy had become so thin that he dared not venture to the top of the hill above his native village of Rearward on a windy day.
His knees bent comically when he walked.