"What?" said Mat, in an audible soliloquy, "is Irish life?" And then he answered the question himself as she remained silent. "A tragedy, a squalid tragedy!" But she looked at him cold, irresponsive, defiant, and he rushed away before the old man came back with the whiskey.
The wreck of this girl's nature; her acceptance in full faith of the sordid and terrible gospel of loveless marriage; the omnipotence of even a little money in a land of abject and hopeless and helpless poverty, brought the realities of Irish life with a clearness to his mind more terrible than even uprooted houses and echoless streets.
He accepted the invitation of a friend to take a row up the river, beautiful with its eternal and changeless beauty amid all this wreck of hopes and blasting of lives.
They passed a small island.
"What is that called," asked Mat of the boatman.
"Dead Man's Island."
"What did you say?"
"Dead Man's Island."
"A——h,——Dead—Man's—Island!"
The End.