winter,
and I never told it to a living soul and you are the first person now I
ever told it to. I disremember if it was October or November. It was
October because it was before I came up here to join the matriculation
class.

Stephen had turned his smiling eyes towards his friend's face,
flattered by his confidence and won over to sympathy by the speaker's
simple accent.

--I was away all that day from my own place over in Buttevant.

--I don't know if you know where that is--at a hurling match between
the Croke's Own Boys and the Fearless Thurles and by God, Stevie, that
was the hard fight. My first cousin, Fonsy Davin, was stripped to his
buff that day minding cool for the Limericks but he was up with the
forwards half the time and shouting like mad. I never will forget that
day. One of the Crokes made a woeful wipe at him one time with his
caman and I declare to God he was within an aim's ace of getting it at
the side of his temple. Oh, honest to God, if the crook of it caught
him that time he was done for.

--I am glad he escaped, Stephen had said with a laugh, but surely
that's not the strange thing that happened you?

--Well, I suppose that doesn't interest you, but leastways there was
such noise after the match that I missed the train home and I couldn't
get any kind of a yoke to give me a lift for, as luck would have it,
there was a mass meeting that same day over in Castletownroche and
all the cars in the country were there. So there was nothing for it
only to stay the night or to foot it out. Well, I started to walk
and on I went and it was coming on night when I got into the Ballyhoura
hills, that's better than ten miles from Kilmallock and there's a
long lonely road after that. You wouldn't see the sign of a christian
house along the road or hear a sound. It was pitch dark almost. Once
or twice I stopped by the way under a bush to redden my pipe and only
for the dew was thick I'd have stretched out there and slept. At last,
after a bend of the road, I spied a little cottage with a light in the
window. I went up and knocked at the door. A voice asked who was
there and I answered I was over at the match in Buttevant and was
walking back and that I'd be thankful for a glass of water. After
a while a young woman opened the door and brought me out a big mug
of milk. She was half undressed as if she was going to bed when I
knocked and she had her hair hanging and I thought by her figure and
by something