ild, it's hard, _agra vig_. My
little love, it's hard."

"Maybe it's in your head, Bridget Roe. My Uncle Robin says there's a lot
of sickness that's just in your head."

"I trust to my God so, and maybe your Uncle Robin's right, for there
does be a lot in my head, and it going around like a spinning-wheel. I'm
a experienced woman, wee Shane, too experienced, and that's the trouble.
You've no' heard because you're too young and you would no' understand.
I was away from here for twenty years," she said, "for more nor twenty.
And I knew a power of men in my time, big men, were needful of me. And
a power of trouble I raised, too, and it does be coming back to me and
me in my old days.... But you'll be wanting to be getting on?"

"Och, no, Bridgeen Roe; there's no hurry."

"It does me good to have a wee crack, the folk I see are so few ... Aye!
There was a power of trouble. There were two men killed themselves and
families broken up all by reason of me. I meant no harm, wee Shane, but
it happened, and it does be troubling me in my old days. And I sit there
afeared by the peat fire, and when I've thought too much on it, I get up
and go to the half-door. And I look out on the Moyle, wee Shane, and I
think: that's been roaring since the first tick of time, and I see the
stars so many of them, and the moon that never changed its shape or
size, and it comes to me that nothing matters in the long run, that the
killed men were no more nor caught trout, and the rent families no more
nor birds' nests fallen from a tree.... None of us are big enough that
anything we do matters.... And then another feeling comes on me, that
God is around, and that He'll be dreadful hard.... And a wee bit of luck
comes my way. The hens, maybe, are laying well, and there's a high price
on the eggs, and I think, sure He's the Kindly Man, after all.... But
if my eyes leave me, Shane Beg, what will I do? Sure, I won't have the
moon or the stars or the waters of Moyle to put things in their place.
And there'll be no luck about me, so as I'll know Himself is the
Unforgiving Man."

"But some one will take care of you, Bridget Roe."

"And who, _agra_? 'Tis not me to go to the poorhouse, and take charity
like a cold potato. And my name is MacFarlane, wee Shane, and they're a
clan that fights till it dies, that never gives in. And it isn't to the
big ones I knew I'd be writing for help.... Sure I see them now, what's
left alive of them, sitting by their fir