SEPTEMBER DAWN

I

It was late September of the finest autumn that
had been known for years. For five crowded days
the column had held out, flying from one position
to another, beaten about by a dozen companies of
regular soldiers. At Glenmanus they had taken
shelter among the trees, and fought for a few
hours with the river protecting them, but, a
second column of soldiers having crossed by a
temporary bridge a mile or two up the road, they
had found themselves completely outflanked.  Then
they had fought their way across country; seven
men holding one ditch while the other seven
retreated to the next. Again they had been headed
off and again had changed direction.  ‘It was the
sort of game a schoolboy would play with a
beetle,’ remarked Keown.

This time they had been trapped by a column
coming from the direction of Mallow. Finally in
desperation, they had come back by night and
along a different route to their old stronghold
in Glenmanus, and here they tested while Keown
and Hickey, standing, apart, held counsel.

Hickey, dressed in a black coat and green
riding-breeches, was very tall and slim. He had
the reputation of being as conscientious as he
was inhuman, and there was a strain of fanaticism
in his pale face and in the steely eyes behind
their large horn—rimmed spectacles. It was the
face of a young scientist or a young priest. He
lacked imagination, people said. He also lacked
humour. But he was a good soldier and cautious
where men’s lives were concerned. His companion
was stocky and pugnacious, with a fat,
good-humoured face and a left eye that squinted.
atrociously. He was unscrupulous, good-natured,
and unreliable, and had a bad reputation for his.
ways with women. He even boasted of it, and
added, with a wink of his sound eye, that there
wasn’t a parish in Munster where he couldn’t
find a home and children. He read much more
than Hickey, and rarely went anywhere without a
book in his pocket. It was most often an indecent
French novel, but sometimes he carried about
a book of verse which he read aloud to Hickey
in his broad, bantering, countryman’s voice.
He liked to hear himself speak, and, when his
column was in billet, practised elocution before
a mirror. The two men now stood on the river
bank, Hickey idly disturbing the sluggish water
with a switch, and Keown, small and ungainly,
with a rifle swung across his right shoulder and a
sandwich in his hand, eyeing him in silence.

After about ten minutes they returned. Hickey
glanced coldly at the twelve volunteers sitting
on the grass, chewing sandwiches and drinking
spring water out of a rusty water-bottle.  Their
rifles lay beside them. Most of them had doffed
their hats and caps. An autumn sun shone warmly
and brightly overhead, and cast spotlights
through the yellowing leaves upon their flushed
young faces, upturned to his, and their bare
brown throats.

‘We have decided to disband the column, men,’ he
said briefly.

‘Disband? Do you mean we are to go home?’ one of
them asked with a quick look of dismay.

‘Yes, there’s nothing else for it. It’s disband
or go down together; we can’t carry on as we’ve
been doing.’

They stared blankly at him.

‘And the rifles, the equipment? What are we to do
With them?’

‘Dump them.’

‘Dump them—after five days?’

‘You heard what I said.’

‘We’re genuinely sorry, boys,’ Keown put in
kindly. ‘Jim and I appreciate more than we can
say the way you’ve stuck by us through it all.
Don’t think we’re ungrateful. We aren’t. We’ve
made friends amongst you that we’ll always be
proud of.  But it’s better we should lose you
this way than another. We want to live for
Ireland, not to die for it, and die we will if we
stick together any longer. There’s no use
blinking that.  The country here is too damn flat,
too damn thickly populated, and there are too
many roads.

There was silence for a moment. The men sat
looking desperately at one another and at their
leaders. Suddenly one of them, a farm labourer
with a thick red moustache, who had been tying up
a packet of sandwiches tossed it away; it broke
through the leaves, and fell with a little splash
in the river. He rose and threw aside his cloth
bandolier, and then began to unbuckle his khaki
belt. His face was pale, and his hands fumbled
nervously at the catch. The others rose too, one
after another.

"Faith, it’ll be a comfort to sleep at home after
a week of this, neighbours.’

The speaker was a handsome youth, scarcely more
than a boy.

‘Ah, my lad,’ said the other man bitterly,
‘you’ll sleep in a different bed, and a harder
bed, before this week is out, and serve you
right.’

The speech was greeted with a murmur of approval.

‘We must only risk that,’ said Keown hastily.
‘After all you’ve only been away from home for a
week; they can’t have spotted you so easily.’

‘Spotted us?’ exclaimed the other angrily,
squaring up to him. ‘Who talks about spotting?
Or do you know who you’re speaking to? Him and me
came up all the way to fight at Passage.  We’re
out of the one house, and we went off together in
the dead of night on our bikes to join the
brigade. We followed it to Macroom and we were
sent back from that. Just as you’re sending us
back now. We’re no seven-day soldiers, but, let
me tell you, it’s the last time I’ll make a fool
of myself for ye.’ .

Keown shrugged his shoulders helplessly without
replying.

It was the youngster who showed them where the
old dump was. It was dug into the low wall that
surrounded the wood, and after some difficulty
they succeeded in locating it. He and Keown
together took out the heavy stones, one by one,
and revealed a deep hollow beneath the
wall. There was a long box like a coffin in it,
and half a dozen sheets of oilcloth, with some
old greasy rags and a tin of oil. The rifles were
gathered together—there was no time to oil
them—and wrapped in the oilcloth. The same was
done with bandoliers, belts, and bayonets. Only
the two leaders kept their arms and
equipment. Hickey did not even pretend to be
interested in the funereal ceremony, but walked
moodily about under the shadow of the trees, his
spectacles glinting in the stray shafts of
sunlight.

When the work was finished, the stones replaced,
and all traces of fresh earth cleaned away, the
twelve men, looking now merely what in ordinary
life they were, farmers’ sons or day-labourers,
stood awkwardly about, hands behind their backs
or buried in their trousers’ pockets.

‘And now, men, it’s time we were going,’ said the
youngster in a tone of authority; already he was
testing his own leadership of the little group.

Keown grinned and held out his hand to the farm
labourer who had spoken so rudely to him.  It was
taken in silence and held for a moment.  The
rough unsoldierly faces cleared, and a smile of
tenderness, of companionship, crossed them.  The
youngster strode bravely over to Hickey’s side,
and held out his hand with all a boy’s gaucherie.

‘Well, good—bye, Mr. Hickey,’ he said jauntily.
‘See you soon again, I hope.’

‘Good-bye, Dermod, boy, and good luck,’ said
Hickey, smiling faintly, as the others shambled
over to say farewell.

Then with a last chorus of ‘Good luck’ and ‘God
be with you!’ the little group dispersed among
the trees, going in different directions to their
own homes. Their voices grew faint in the
distance, and the two friends were left alone
upon the river bank.


II

An hour later as they leaped across the fence
above the wood a shot rang out and Keown’s hat
sailed along beside him to the ground. Hickey
flattened himself against the ditch and raised his
rifle, but Keown flung himself distractedly on the
grass beside his hat, brushed it and contemplated
regretfully the little hole on top.

‘A man who’d do a thing like that,’ he commented
with disgust, ‘would snatch a slice of bread out
of an orphan’s mouth!’

"But he’s a good shot, Jim,’ he went on. I will
say that for him. He’s a great shot. One, two,
two and a half inches farther down and he’d have
got me just where I wouldn’t have known when.
Ah, well! . . .’ He picked himself up gingerly
with head well bent. ‘A miss is as good as a
mile, and talking of miles. . . .’

‘I’ll stay here until you get across the next
field.’

‘And where do we go after that, Brother James?’

‘It doesn’t matter. Anywhere out of this; we can
take our bearings later on.’

‘At this point in the battle General Hickey gave
the order to retreat,’ murmured Keown, and
scudded across the field, head low, his rifle
trailing along the grass. Hickey looked down
towards the road.

He could see nobody. The sun was high up in the
centre of the heavens, and a great heat had come
into the day. Beneath him was the wood, and the
broad shallow river shone like steel through the
reddening leaves. Beyond it the main road ran
white and clear. Beyond the road another hill,
more trees, and a house. The house one did not
see from the wood, perched as it was like a
bonnet on the brow of the hill, but from where he
stood he had a clear view of it, outhouses and
all. An old mansion of sorts it was, eighteenth
century probably, with a wide carriage-way and
steps up to the door. As he looked the door
opened and a figure appeared, dressed in white;
it was a girl whose attention had been attracted
by the shot, perhaps also by the knowledge that a
column of irregulars was in the vicinity. It
amused him to think that he had only to lift his
hat or handkerchief on the barrel of his rifle for
her to hear more from the same source. Despite
his natural caution, the idea became a
temptation; he fingered with the safety-catch of
his rifle, and began to calculate how many of the
enemy there were. Scarcely more than a dozen, he
thought, or they would have shown more daring in
their approach to the wood. She shaded her eyes
with her hand, searching the whole
neighbourhood. To wave to her now would be good
fun, but dangerous.

He looked round for Keown and saw him hurrying
back. Clearly, there was something wrong. But
Keown, seeing his attention attracted, came no
farther, and made off in another direction,
waving his hand in a way that showed the need for
haste. Hickey followed, keeping all the time in
shelter of the ditch.

When he reached the gap towards which Keown had
run, he found him there, sitting on his hunkers,
his tongue licking the corners of his mouth, his
hands gripping nervously at his rifle.

‘James,’ he said with affected coolness, ‘we must
run for it. My tactics are particularly strong
upon that point. Leave it to me, James!  In the
military college I was considered a dab at
retreats.’

He pointed to a field that sloped upward from
where they crouched to the brow of the hill.

‘I’m afraid we’ll be exposed crossing the field,
but we must only risk it. After that we’ll have,
cover enough. Ready?’

‘Are there many of them?’ asked Hickey.

‘As thick as snakes in the D.T.’S. Are you
ready?’

‘Ready!’ said Hickey.

He closed his eyes and ran. For a full half
minute he heard nothing but the beating of his
own heart and the soft thud their feet made upon
the grass. The sunlight swam in a rosy mist
before his darkened eyes, and it seemed as if at
any moment the ground might rise out of this
nowhere of rosy light and hit him. Suddenly a
dozen rifles signalled their appearance with a
burst of rapid firing, and immediately on top of
this came the unmistakable staccato whirring of a
machine-gun. His eyes started open with the
shock, and he saw Keown, almost doubled in two,
running furiously and well ahead of him. He put
on speed. The machine—gun fire grew more intense
until it was almost continuous. Then it stopped,
and only the rifles kept up their irregular rattle
until they too trailed off and were still. It was
only then he realised that he was under cover,
and that what was driving him forward at such
speed was the impetus of his original fear.

Keown waited for him, leaning against an old
white-thorn tree, his sides perceptibly widening
and narrowing as he breathed. His head seemed to
be giddy and shook slightly; his trembling hands
mechanically sought in every pocket for
cigarettes. A faint smile played about the
corners of his mouth, and when he spoke his words
came almost in a whisper.

‘Rotten shooting, James, but still a narrow
squeak.’

‘A very narrow squeak,’ said Hickey, and said no
more, for his own head trembled as if a great
hand were holding it in a tight grip and pushing
it from side to side at a terrific speed. He
stumbled along beside his companion without a
word.

About a mile up the glen there was a stream.  The
two men knelt together beside it and plunged
their faces deep into the gleaming, ice-cold
water. They rose, half-choking, but dipped into
it again, their dripping forelocks blinding their
eyes. When the water had cleared a little they
sank their hands in, and, still in silence, drank
from their cupped palms. Then they dried hands
and faces with their handkerchiefs, and each lit
a cigarette, taking long pulls of the
invigorating smoke. . .

‘It looks to me,’ said Keown, With a faint gleam
of his old cheerfulness, ‘as if this was to be a
busy day.’

“It looks to me as if they wanted to locate the
column,’ Hickey added wearily. ‘And now the
column is broken up we’d be fools to hang round.’

‘You want to get back west?’

‘I do.’ 

‘Home to our mountains.’

‘Precisely.’

‘I don’t know how that’s to be managed.’

‘I do. If once we get outside this accursed ring
it will be simple enough. Probably it’s closing in
already. If we can hold out until nightfall we may
be able to slip through; then we have only to
cross by Mallow to Donoughmore, and after
that everything will be plain sailing.’

‘It sounds good. Do you know the way?’

‘No, but I think we might get a few miles north
of this, don’t you?’

‘Out of range, Jim, out of range! That’s the main
thing, the first principle of tactics.’

They shouldered their rifles and went on, keeping
to the fields, and taking what cover they
could. Hickey’s legs were barely able to support
him. Keown was in no better condition. Every now
and then he sighed, and cast longing glances at
the sun which was still upon the peak of heaven
and let fall its vertical beams upon the wide
expanse of open country, with its green
meadow-lands and greying stubble, its golden
furze, and squat, pink, all-too-neat farmhouses;
or looked disconsolately at the chain of
mountains that closed the farthest horizon with a
delicate, faint line of blue.

‘I know where my mother’s son would like to be
now,’ he said with facetious melancholy.

‘So do I,’ said Hickey.

‘In Kilnamartyr?’ asked Keown, thinking still of
the mountains. ‘God, Kilnamartyr and wan
melodious night in Moran’s!’

‘No. Not in Kilnamartyr. At home—in the city.’

‘Your paradise would never do for me, Jim.  There
are no women in it.’

‘Aren’t there, now?’

‘There are not, you old Mohammedan!’

‘How do you know, Antichrist?’

‘There aren’t, there aren’t, there aren’t! I’d
lay a hundred to one on that.’

‘You’d win.’

‘Of course I’d win! Don’t I know your finicking,
Jesuitical soul? You hate and fear women as you
hate and fear the devil—and a bit more. It’s a
pity, Jim, it’s a real pity, because, God
increase you, you’re a terror to fight; but
there’s as much poetry in your constitution as
there is in a sardine tin. Will you ever get
married, Jim?’

‘Not until we’ve won this war.’

"And if we don’t win it?’

‘Oh, there’s no if; we must win it!’

Keown cast an amused glance at his companion out
of the corner of his eye, and they trudged on
again in silence.


III

Five times that day they got the alarm and had to
take to their heels. Three times it resulted in
desultory fighting. One bout lasted a full three
quarters of an hour; it was hard, slogging,
ditch-to-ditch fighting, with one holding back
the enemy while the other got into position at
the farther end of the field. The last alarm came
while they were having tea in a farmer’s
house. There was no suspicion of treachery, and
the soldiers, as unprepared as they, had walked
up the boreen to the house for tea. The two
friends left in haste by the back door, Keown
hugging to his breast a floury half-cake snatched
from the table in his hurry. The cake had cost
him dear, because in securing it he had forgotten
his hat (the hat which, as he assured Jim Hickey,
he had earmarked as a present for one of his
wives).  They halved the hot cake and devoured
it, regretting the fresh tea upon the table, and
the mint of butter now being consumed by the
soldiers.

But at last, drawing on to nightfall, they seemed
to have left pursuit behind them and took their
bearings. Hickey recognised the place.  It was
close to Mourneabbey and a few miles away lived
an old aunt of his. He suggested sleeping there
for the night, and Keown jumped at the idea, even
consenting to put away his rifle and equipment
until morning, lest their appearance should
frighten the old woman.

It was darkening when they reached her house, and
having stowed their rifles away in a dry wall,
they made their way up the long winding boreen to
the top of the hill. A sombre maternal peace
enveloped the whole countryside; the fields were
a rich green that merged into grey and farther
off into a deep, shining purple. A stream flashed
like a trail of white fire across the
landscape. The beeches along the lane nodded down
a withered leaf or two upon their heads, and the
glossy trunks glowed a faint silver under the
darkness of their boughs. A dog ran to meet them
barking noisily.

The house was a long, low, whitewashed building
with a four-sided roof, and outhouses on every
side. The two men were greeted by Hickey’s aunt,
an old woman, doubled up with rheumatism, who
beamed delightedly upon him through a pair of
dark spectacles. They sat down to tea in the
kitchen, a long whitewashed room with an open
hearth, where the kettle swung from a chain over
the fire. Everything in the house was simple and
old-fashioned, the open hearth, the bellows one
blows by turning a wheel, the churn, the two
pictures that hung on opposite walls, one of
Robert Emmet and the other of
Parnell. Old-fashioned, but comfortable, with a
peculiar warmth when she drew the shutters to and
lit the lamp. And homely, when she pulled her
chair up to the table and questioned Hickey about
mother and sisters, tush-tushed playfully his
being ‘on the run’ (he said nothing of the rifles
hidden in the wall or their experience during the
day) and joked light-heartedly as old people will
to whom realities are no longer such, but shadows
that drift daily farther and farther away as
their hold upon life slackens.

Parnell had been her last great love, and for her
the hope of Irish independence had died with
him. Hickey was moved by this strange isolation
of hers, moved since now more than at any other
time what had happened in those far-off days of
elections, brass bands and cudgels seemed remote
and insubstantial. And so they talked, each
failing to understand the other.

Meanwhile, Keown kept one eye upon a young woman
who moved silently about the kitchen as he took
his meal. She was a country girl who helped the
old lady with her housework. Her appearance had a
peculiar distinction that was almost beauty. Very
straight and slender she was with a broad face
that tapered to a point at the chin, a curious
unsmiling mouth, large, sensitive nostrils, and
wide-set, melancholy eyes. Her hair was dull
gold, and was looped up in a great heap at the
poll. Her untidy clothes barely concealed a fine
figure, and Keown watched with the appreciation
of a connoisseur the easy motion of her body, so
girlish yet so strong.

His attention was distracted from her by the
appearance of a bottle of whisky, and, ignoring
Hickey's warning glance, he filled a stiff glass
for himself and sipped it with unction. For a
week past he had not been allowed to touch drink;
this was one thing Hickey insisted on with
fanatical zeal—no bad example must be given to
the men.

When the two women had left the room to prepare a
bed for their visitors, Keown said leaning
urgently across the table: ’

‘Jim, I give on fair warning that I'm going to
fall in love with that girl.’

‘You are not.’

‘I am, I tell you. And what’s more she’s going to
fall In love with me, you old celibate! So I’m
staying on. I’ve been virtuous too long. A whole
week of it! My God, even the Crusaders--- ’

You’re drinking too much of that whisky. Put it
away!’

‘Ah, shut up you, Father James! Aren’t we on
vacation, anyhow?’

When Hickey’s aunt came back she led off the
conversation again, but Hickey carefully watched
his companion make free with the whisky and cast
bolder and bolder eyes at the girl, and, as he
leaned across to fill himself a third glass,
snatched the bottle away. That was enough, he
said, forcing Keown off with one hand and with
the other holding the bottle, and he remained
deaf to Keown’s assurances that he would take
only a glass, a thimbleful, a drop, as he was
tired and wanted to go to bed, as well as the old
woman’s pleading on his behalf that no doubt the
young gentleman had had a tiring day and needed a
little glass to cheer him up. Hickey could be
obstinate when he chose, and he chose then; so
Keown went off to bed, sticking out his tongue at
him behind the old woman’s back, and blinking
angrily at the sleep that closed his eyelids in
his own despite.

Hickey felt as if he too were more than half
asleep, but he remained up until his aunt’s
husband returned from Mallow. He heard the pony
and trap drive into the cobbled yard, and at last
the old man entered, his lean brown face flushed
with the cold air. The wind was rising, he said
cheerfully, and sure enough it seemed to Hickey
that he heard a first feeble rustle of branches
about the house. ‘God sends winds to blow away
the falling leaves,’ the old man said oracularly.
‘Time little Sheela was in bed,’ said his
wife. The girl called Sheela smiled, and in her
queer silent way disappeared into a little room
off the kitchen.  ‘That’s another terrible
rebel," the old woman went on, ‘though you
wouldn’t think it of her and the little she have
to say. She was never a prouder girl than when
she made the bed for the pair of ye
to-night. ‘“You never thought,” says I to her, “I
had such a fine handsome soldier nephew?”
. . . Ah, God, ah, God, we weren’t so wild in our
young days!’ ‘Happy days!’ said her husband
nodding and spitting into the ashes.  ‘But not so
wild,’ she repeated, ‘not so wild!’ She brewed
fresh tea, and then they sat into the fire and
talked family history for what seemed to Hickey
an intolerably long time. Once or twice he felt
his head sag and realised that he had dropped off
momentarily to sleep. It was his aunt who did
most of the talking. Occasionally the old man
collected his wits for some ponderous sentence,
and having made the most of it nodded and smiled
quietly with intense satisfaction. He had a
brown, bony, innocent face and a short grey
beard.

At last he rose and saying solemnly, ‘Even the
foolish animal must sleep,’ went off to bed.
Hickey followed him, leaving his aunt to quench
the light. Even with Keown in it the house seemed
spiritually still, abstracted, and lonely, and
thinking of the danger of raids and arrests which
their presence brought to it, he half-wished he
had not come there. For worlds he would not have
disturbed that old couple, spending their last
days in childless, childish innocence, without
much hope or fear.

He stood at the window of their room before
striking a match. The room was a sort of lean-to
above the servant’s room downstairs, and smelt
queerly of apples and decay. The Window was low,
very low, and he stood back from it. It gave but
a faint light and outside he could distinguish
nothing but the shadows of some trees grouped
about the gable end. The wind, growing louder,
pealed through them, and they creaked faintly,
while the slightest of slight sounds, as of
distant drumming, seemed to emanate from the
boards and window—frame of the little bedroom. As
he lit the candle and began to undress Keown
stirred in the bed, and, raising his fat,
pugnacious face and squint eye out of a tumble of
white linen and dark hair, said thickly but with
sombre indignation, ‘In spite of you I’ll have
that girl. Yes, my f-f-friend, in—spite—of you——.

‘Ah, go to sleep like a good-man!’ said Hickey
crossly, and clad only in a light summer singlet,
slipped into bed beside him.


IV

The wind! That was it, the wind! He could not
have slept for long before it woke him, It blew
with a sort of clumsy precision, rising slowly in
great crescendos that shook the window-panes and
seemed to reverberate through the whole
ramshackle house. The window was bright so there
was no rain. ‘God sends winds to blow away the
falling leaves,’ he thought with a smile.

He lay back and watched the window that seemed to
grow brighter as he looked at it, and suddenly it
became clear to him that his life was a
melancholy, aimless life, and that all this
endless struggle and concealment was but so much
out of an existence that would mean little
anyhow.  He had left college two years before
when the police first began hunting for him, and
he doubted now whether it would ever be in his
power to return. He was a different man, and most
of the ties he had broken then he would never be
able to resume. If they won, of course, the army
would be open to him, but the army he knew would
not content him long, for soldiering at best was
only servitude, and he had lived too desperately
to endure the hollow routine of barrack
life. Besides, he was a scientist, not a
soldier. And if they lost? (He thought bitterly
of what Keown had suggested that afternoon and
his own reply.) Of course, they mustn’t lose, but
suppose they did? What was there for him then?
America? That was all—America! And his mother,
who had worked so hard to educate him and had
hoped so much of him, his mother would die,
having seen him accomplish nothing, and he would
be somewhere very far away. What use would
anything be then? And it was quite clear to him
that he had realised all this that very
morning—or was it the morning before? Above
Glenmanus Wood, just at the moment when the door
of that old house opened, and a girl dressed in
white appeared, a girl to whom it all meant
nothing, nothing but that a column of irregulars
was somewhere in the neighbourhood and being
chased off by soldiers. At that very moment he
had felt something explode Within him at the
inhumanity, the coldness, of it all. He had
wanted to wave to her; what was that but the
desire for some human contact? And then the
presence of immediate danger and the necessity
for flight had driven it out of his mind, but now
it returned with all the dark power of nocturnal
melancholy surging up beneath it; the feeling of
his own loneliness, his own unimportance, his own
folly.

‘What use is it all?’ he asked himself aloud, and
the wind answered with a low, long-ebbing sound,
a murmur, hushed and sustained, that seemed to
penetrate the old house and become portion of its
secret grief.

He felt his companion stir beside him in the
bed. Then Keown sat up. He sat there for a long
while silent, and Hickey, fearing the intrusion
of his speech lay still and closed his eyes, At
last Keown spoke, and his voice startled Hickey
by its note of vibrant horror.

‘Jim!’

‘I mustn’t answer,’ thought Hickey.

‘Jim!’ A hand felt about the bed for him and
closed on his arm. '

‘Jim, Jim! Wake up! Listen to me!’

‘Well?’

‘Do you hear it?’

‘What?’

‘Listen!’

‘Do you mean the wind?’

‘Jim!’

‘Oh, do for Heaven’s sake go to sleep!’

‘Listen to that, Jim!’

‘I’m listening!’

‘Oh, my God! There it is again!’

The wind. It kept up that steady murmur that
filled the old house like the bellows filling an
organ. Then a clear, startling, note rose above
the light monotone, and the boards creaked, and
the windows strained, and the trees shook with
the noise—of a breaking wave.

‘Jim, I say!’

‘Well, what is it?’

‘Christ Almighty, man, I can’t stand it!’

Keown tossed off the bedclothes, fell back upon
the pillows and lay naked with his arms covering
his eyes. Hickey started up.

‘What’s wrong with you?’

‘It’s them, Jim! It’s them!’ His voice half-rose
into a scream.

‘Shut up, do, or you’ll wake the whole house!  Is
that what we came here for? Come on, out with it!
What are you snivelling about?’

‘I tell you they’re outside. Don’t you hear
them, blast you?’

Hickey’s hand closed tightly over his mouth.

‘Be quiet’! Be quiet! There are old people in
this house. I won’t have them disturbed I tell
you.

‘I won’t be quiet. Listen!’

The wind was rising again. Once it dropped at all
it took a long time to mobilise its scattered
fury. Hickey could feel the other man grow rigid
with fear under his hands.

‘Listen! Oh, Jim, what am I to do?’

‘For the last time I warn you. If you don’t keep
quiet, so help me, God, I’ll smash you up!
You’ve drunk too much, that’s what’s wrong with
you.’

‘Oh! oh!’

‘Careful now!’

It was coming. The wind rose into a triumphant
howl and Keown struggled frantically. He dragged
at Hickey’s left hand which tried to silence him,
and his mouth had formed a shriek when the
other’s fist descended with a blow that turned it
suddenly to a gasp of pain.

‘Now, Will that keep you quiet?’

Hickey struck again.

‘Oh, for Jesus’ sake, Jimmie, don’t beat me!  I’m
not telling lies, it’s them all right.’

He was sobbing quietly. The first blow must have
cut his lip for Hickey felt the blood trickle
across his left hand.

‘Will you be quiet then?’

‘I’ll be quiet, Jimmie. Only don’t beat me, don’t
beat me!’

‘I won’t beat you. Are you cut?’

‘Jimmie!’

‘Are you cut? I said.’

‘Hold my hand, Jimmie!’

Hickey took his hand, and seeing him quieter lay
down again beside him. After a few moments
Keown’s free hand rose and felt his arm and
shoulder, even his face, for company. A queer
night’s rest, thought Hickey ruefully.

For him, at any rate, there was no rest. His
companion would lie quiet for a little time,
gasping and moaning when the wind blew strongly;
but then some more violent blast would come that
shook the house, or whirled a loose slate
crashing on the cobbles of the yard, and it would
begin all over again.

‘Jim, they’re after me!’

‘Be quiet, man! For the good God’s sake be quiet!’

‘I hear them! I hear them talking in the yard.
They’re coming for me. Jim, where in Christ’s
name is my gun? Quick! Quick!’

‘There’s nobody in the yard, I tell you, and it’s
nothing but a gale of wind. You and your gun!
You’re a nice man to trust with a gun!  Bawling
your heart out because there’s a bit of a wind
blowing!’

‘Ah, Jim, Jim, it’s all up with me! All up, all
up!’

It was just upon dawn when, from sheer
exhaustion, he fell asleep. Hickey rose quietly
for fear of disturbing him, pulled on his
riding-breeches and coat, and, having lit a
cigarette, sat beside the window and smoked. The
wind had died down somewhat, and, with the
half-light that struggled through the flying
clouds above the tree-tops, its rage seemed to
count no longer.  A grey mist hugged the yard
below, and covered all but the tops of the
trees. As it cleared, minute by minute, he
perceived all about him broken slates, with straw
and withered leaves that rustled when the wind
blew them about. The mist cleared farther, and he
saw the trees looking much barer than they had
looked the day before, with broken branches and
the new day showing in great, rugged patches
between them. The beeches, silver-bright with
their sinewy limbs, seemed to him like athletes
stripped for a contest.  Light, a cold, wintry,
forbidding light suffused the chill air. The
birds were singing.

At last he heard a door open and shut. Then the
bolts on the back door were drawn; he heard a
heavy step in the yard, and Sheela passed across
it in the direction of one of the outhouses,
carrying a large bucket. Her feet, in men’s boots
twice too big for her, made a metallic clatter
upon the cobbles. Her hair hung down her back in
one long plait of dull gold, and her body,
slender as a hound’s, made a deep furrow for it
as she walked.

He rose silently, pulled on his stockings, and
tiptoed down the creaking stairs to the kitchen.
It was almost completely dark, but for the mist
of weak light that came through the open door.
When he heard her step outside he went to meet
her and took a bucket of turf from her hand.
They scarcely spoke. She asked if he had been
disturbed by the wind and he nodded, smiling.
Then she knelt beside the fireplace and turned
the little wheel of the bellows. The seed of fire
upon the hearth took light and scattered red
sparks about his stockinged feet where he stood,
leaning against the mantelpiece. He watched her
bent above it, the long golden plait hanging
across her left shoulder, the young pointed face
taking light from the new-born flame, and as she
rose he took her in his arms and kissed her. She
leaned against his shoulder in her queer silent
way, with no shyness. And for him in that
melancholy kiss an ache of longing was kindled,
and he buried his face in the warm flesh of her
throat as the kitchen filled with the acrid smell
of turf; while the blue smoke drifting through
the narrow doorway was caught and whirled
headlong through grey fields and dark masses of
trees upon which an autumn sun was rising.