I sat for nearly an hour beside the fire with a curious feeling that I should be quite alone in this little cottage. I am so used to sitting here with the people that I have never felt the room before as a place where any man might live and work by himself. After a while as I waited, with just light enough from the chimney to let me see the rafters and the greyness of the walls, I became indescribably mournful, for I felt that this little corner on the face of the world, and the people who live in it, have a peace and dignity from which we are shut out for ever.
While I was dreaming, the old woman came in, in a great hurry, and made tea for me and the young priest, who followed her a little later drenched with rain and spray.
The curate who has charge of the middle and south islands has a wearisome and dangerous task. He comes to this island or Inishere on Saturday night—whenever the sea is calm enough—and has Mass the first thing on Sunday morning. Then he goes down fasting and is rowed across to the other island and has Mass again, so that it is about mid-day when he gets a hurried breakfast before he sets off again for Aranmor, meeting often on both passages a rough and perilous sea.
A couple of Sundays ago I was lying outside the cottage in the sunshine smoking my pipe,
64
