"Was it ye let off the old gun out the door?" he asked.
"Nay, 'twas Mary done it," replied Mother Nolan, blinking her black eyes at him.
"An' where bes Mary now?" he asked.
"In me own bed. Sure, when she was draggin' ye into the house, didn't some divil jab her in the neck wid a great knife."
The skipper sat up, though the effort spun a purple haze across his eyes, and set a lump of red-hot iron knocking about inside his skull.
"Bes she—dead?" he whispered.
"Nay, lad, nay, she bain't what ye'd call dead," replied the old woman.
The skipper rolled to the floor, scrambled to his feet, reeled across the kitchen and into the next room, and sank at the side of Mary's bed. He was done. He could not lift himself an inch higher; but a hand came down to him, over the side of the bed, and touched his battered brow.
A week later, Mary Kavanagh was able to sit up in Mother Nolan's bed; and the skipper was himself again, at least as far as the cut over his eye and the bump on top of his head were concerned.
The skipper and Mother Nolan sat by Mary's bed. The skipper looked older, wiser and less sure of himself than in the brisk days before the raid.