This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
64
THE SNAKE'S PASS.

a detective after me all the time." "It's all very well to be a good Samaritan as a luxury—but as a profession it becomes monotonous." "Confound Andy! I wish I'd never seen him at all."

This last thought brought me up standing, and set me face to face with my baseless ill-humour. If I had never seen Andy I should never have heard at all of Shleenanaher. I should not have known the legend—I should not have heard Norah's voice.

"And so," said I to myself, "this ideal fantasy—this embodiment of a woman's voice, has a concrete name already. Aye! a concrete name, and a sweet one too."

And so I took another step on my way to the bog, and lost my ill-humour at the same time. When my cigar was half through and my feelings were proportionately soothed, I strolled into the bar and asked Mrs. Keating as to my companion of the morrow. She told me that he was a young engineer named Sutherland.

"What Sutherland?" I asked. Adding that I had been at school with a Dick Sutherland, who had, I believed, gone into the Irish College of Science.

"Perhaps it's the same gentleman, sir. This is Mr. Richard Sutherland, and I've heerd him say that he was at Stephen's Green."

"The same man!" said I, "this is jolly! "Tell me, Mrs. Keating, what brings him here?"

"He's doin' some work on Knockcalltecrore for Mr. Murdock, some quare thing or another. They do tell me, sir, that it's a most mystayrious thing, wid poles