Honor was not asleep. Her cough had kept her awake; the restlessness,
too, and weariness of illness making it difficult for her to find any
position endurable for more than a minute or two at a time.
Grania lifted her up and remade the bed. It was a fairly good one,
consisting of a mattress stuffed with sea-grass, a small feather bed
over that again, with blankets and a single sheet, coarse but clean.
This done, and the sick woman settled again, she pulled off her own
pampooties and stockings, unfastened her skirt, muttered a prayer, and
tossed herself without further ceremony upon her own pallet.
The howl of the wind grew as the night wore on. It was not as loud as it
often was, but it had a peculiarly teasing, ear-wearying wail. Now
shrill and menacing; now sinking into a whisper--an angry whisper filled
with a deep sense of wrong and injury and complaint. Then, as if that
sense of wrong was really too strong to be suppressed any longer, it
swelled and swelled into a loud waspish tone--one which, like some
scolding tongue, appeared to rise higher and higher the less it was
opposed; then, when at its highest pitch, it would suddenly drop again
to meanings and mutterings, full, it seemed, of impotent rage and dull
unuttered malice.
Despite her day’s work Grania could not sleep. She lay staring up at the
blackened rafters, lit here and there by a dim reddish flicker from the
almost dead turf. She could hear ‘Moonyeen’ stirring in her own private
cabin hard by. Now and then came the rattle of her horns against a
beam, or a pulling noise as the rope slipped up and down the stake to
which it was tied. A stealthy scratching, apparently from a mouse,
caught her ear, while Honor’s laboured breathing, broken now and then by
a hard, agonising cough, seemed to fill every pause left momentarily by
the wind.
She was beginning to get drowsy, but she still saw the rafters and heard
the scraping noise of the cow on the other side of the partition, only
the rafters seemed to be part of a boat, and there were fish now amongst
the hay, and nets and tackle dangling overhead. Murdough was there,
throwing out a line, and turning round to tell her that he was going to
be made king of Ireland. She herself was leaning over the boat’s side,
looking into the water, deeper, deeper, deeper, watching something like
a red spark that was coming up nearer and nearer to meet her. And as it
came close she saw that it was a red hat, and was upon the head of an
old man, and then she knew that it was the _Fear Darrig_. She tried to
turn away her eyes, but could not, for they seemed caught somehow and
dragged down. And Murdough shrieked, and pulled her petticoat to draw
her back, but, when he found that he couldn’t draw her back, he left off
pulling, and got out of the boat, and ran away from her across the sea.
Then she, too, tried to get out of the boat, and follow him over the
water; but something held her fast, and she could only stretch out her
arms to him and beg him to come back. But he never once turned his head,
only ran faster and faster, and she could hear his feet going patter,
patter, patter, and getting farther and farther away from her over the
sea as he ran.
Suddenly she was wide awake, but that patter of footsteps was still
going on. She could hear them quite distinctly--bare feet they seemed
to be, moving across the flags outside, rapidly and stealthily, as if
some one was passing along under a heavy load. Her thoughts instantly
flew to the stolen turf, and, leaping from her bed, she applied her face
to the little narrow square of window which opened above it. She was not
mistaken. The silhouette of a man’s figure was clearly distinguishable,
showing black for a moment against the white of the granite boulder
beyond. He was close to the mouth of the gully when she first caught
sight of him; another instant and he had passed beyond it, and it had
swallowed him up from her sight.
Grania never hesitated. Barefooted as she was, her clothes hanging
loosely around her, she opened the door and ran down the track, calling
to the man to stop. It was bound to be an invisible chase as long as she
was in the gully, but she expected to see the thief, whoever he was, at
the other end of it, and possibly to be able to catch him. To her
surprise, however, when she emerged breathless on the other side of the
gully not a living thing was to be seen. A flare of wild moonlight was
gleaming upon the stunted thorn-bushes; the platform of rock on which
she stood stretched away, grey and level, but living creature of any
sort or kind there was none. Overhead the clouds swept to and fro in
bewildering masses; the wind blew coldly; the moon, which for a moment
had shone so vividly, disappearing suddenly between rolling clouds, so
that the whole platform became indistinguishable.
Grania waited a while, peering eagerly round into all the fissures,
hoping for another gleam of moonlight which might enable her to discover
the delinquent. Instead of this a violent storm of rain suddenly burst
upon her as she stood there, drenching her to the skin in a moment. So
sudden and violent was it, and so quickly had it followed the former
gleam, that it had the effect of momentarily confusing her, almost as if
it had formed part of her dream.
Reluctantly she turned and retraced her steps through the gully. To
right and left as she now went up it the rain was beating with a furious
pattering noise, dashing upon the flat rocks, shooting out in small
spurts of spray, and forcing its way in all directions through a
thousand tortuous channels. As she emerged upon the other side of the
gully it seemed to her that someone was moving stealthily in the
direction from which she had come. There was so much noise around her,
however, that it was impossible to make certain, and, after pausing for
a moment, she came to the conclusion that she had been mistaken.
Turning once more before entering the cabin, it was curious to see how
in an instant the whole ground, a minute before dry, had become
converted into one vast streaming watercourse. Every little hole and
fissure within sight was already choked with water, the supply from
above coming down quicker than it could be disposed of, so that hollow
groans and chuckles of imprisoned air were heard rising on all sides as
from a seashore suddenly invaded by the advancing tide. It seemed as if
the fierce little gully itself must at this rate be utterly dissolved
and melted away to a mere pulp by the morning.