s of limestone from the nearby quarry. Some of the
neighbours who came his way found him a changed man, a silent man with
his eager face set, a man in whose eyes a new light shone, a quiet man
of the fields into whose mind a set purpose had come. He struggled up
the road with his donkey-cart, his hand gripping the shaft to hasten the
steps of the slow brute, his limbs bent to the hill, his head down at
the work. By the end of the week a pile of grey-blue stones was heaped
up on the crest of the hill. The walls of the fields had been broken
down to make a carway. Late into the night when the donkey had been fed
and tethered the neighbours would see Martin Cosgrave moving about the
pile of grey-blue stones, sorting and picking, arranging in little
groups to have ready to his hands. "A house he is going to put up on the
hill," they would say, lost in wonder.

The spring came, and with it all the strenuous work on the land. But
Martin Cosgrave went on with the building. The neighbours shook their
heads at the sight of neglect that was gathering about his holding; they
said it was flying in the face of Providence when Martin Cosgrave weaned
all the lambs from the ewes one day, long before their time, and sold
them at the fair to the first bidder that came his way. Martin Cosgrave
did so because he wanted money and was in a hurry to get back to his
building.

"What call has a man to be destroying himself like that?" the neighbours
asked each other.

Martin Cosgrave knew what the neighbours were saying about him. But what
did he care? What thought had any of them for the heart of a builder?
What did any of them know beyond putting a spade in the clay and waiting
for the seasons to send up growing things from the seed they scattered
by their hands? What did they know about the feel of the rough stone in
the hand and the shaping of it to fit into the building, the building
that day after day you saw rising up from the ground by the skill of
your hand and the art of your mind? What could they in Kilbeg know of
the ship that would plough the ocean in the harvest bearing Rose Dempsey
home to him? For all their ploughing and their sowing, what sort of a
place had any of them led a woman into? They might talk away. The joy of
the builder was his. The beech trees that made music all day beside the
building he was putting up to the sight of all the world had more
understanding of him than all the people of the parish.

Martin Cosgr