no other. That is the inexorable rule of the
sea. So when a man wrecks his life....

What he had decided was this: go ahead. He had been fooled; pay the
forfeit. Retreat into his own heart, and go ahead. Thirty, forty
years.... He had himself to blame. And it wasn't as if he had to live in
the house all the time; he had only to come back there. All that was
killed was his heart. His frame was still stolid, his eye clear....
There would be little oases here and there, some great record of a
voyage broken, friends bravely made, a kiss now and then, freely,
gallantly given.... But ... go ahead!

And then suddenly death had come, and the scheme of life was broken,
like a piece from the end of a stick. Death he had seen before, but
never so close to him. A good man had died and he had said: "God!
there's a pity!" though why he didn't know. And a young girl might die,
and it would seem like a tragedy in a play. And a child would die, and
he would feel hurt and say, "Yon's cruelty, yon!" And death had seemed
to be an ultimate word.

But never before now had he seen the ramifications of death. Life had
seemed to him to be a straight line, and suddenly he was inspired to the
knowledge that it was a design, a pattern, a scheme.... And now he felt
it was only a tool, like a knife, or scissors, in the hands of what?...
What? Destiny?... or what?...

Section 11

"_A chraoibhin aoibhinn!_ O pleasant little branch, is there regard in
you for the last words of the dead woman?" The old _cailleach_ had come
again to ruffle the grave silence about young Shane in the haggard.

"Was it--was it anything for me?"

"And whom would it be for, _acushla veg?_ Sure the love of her heart
you were, the white love of her heart. You and me she was thinking of,
her old mother that saw a power of trouble. Ill-treated I was by
Sergeant Dolan, who fought old Bonaparte in the foreign wars, and took
to drinking in the dreadful days of peace. Harsh my life was, and
peaceful should my end be, the like of a day that does be rainy, and
turns fine at evening-time. And that was what she wanted, _a charaid
bhig_, little friend o' me."

"What now?"

"She said to me, and she dying in my arms and the blue spirit coming out
of the red lips of her--och! achanee!--'Sure it's not in that grand
Northern lad to see you despised in your old age, and the grannies of
the neighborhood laughing at you who boasted often. The wee house he'll
give you--the wee house