ave had no help. He kept to his work from such an early hour
in the morning until such a late hour of the night that the people
marvelled at his endurance. But as the work went on the people would
talk about Martin Cosgrave's building in the fields and tell strangers
of it at the markets. They said that the like of it had never been seen
in the countryside. It was to be "full of little turrets and the finest
of fancy porches and a regular sight of bulging windows." One day that
Martin Cosgrave heard a neighbour speaking about the "bulging windows"
he laughed a half-bitter, half-mocking laugh.

"Tell them," he said, "that they are cut-stone tracery windows to fit in
with the carved doors." These cut-stone windows and carved doors cost
Martin Cosgrave such a length of time that they provoked the patience of
the people. Out of big slabs of stone he had worked them, and sometimes
he would ask the neighbours to give him a hand in the shifting of these
slabs. But he was quick to resent any interference. One day a
stone-cutter from the quarry went up on the scaffold, and when Martin
Cosgrave saw him he went white to the lips and cursed so bitterly that
those standing about walked away.

When the shell of the building had been finished Martin Cosgrave hired a
carpenter to do all the woodwork. The woodwork cost money. Martin
Cosgrave did not hesitate. He sold some of his sheep, sold them
hurriedly, and as all men who sell their sheep hurriedly, he sold them
badly. When the carpentry had been finished, the roofing cost more
money. One day the neighbours discovered that all the sheep had been
sold. "He's beggared now," they said.

The farmer who turned the sod a few fields away laboured in the damp
atmosphere of growing things, his mind filled with thoughts of bursting
seeds and teeming barns. He shook his head at sight of Martin Cosgrave
above on the hill bent all day over hard stones; whenever he looked up
he only caught the glint of a trowel, or heard the harsh grind of a
chisel. But Martin Cosgrave took no stock of the men reddening the soil
beneath him. Whenever his eyes travelled down the hillside he only saw
the flock of crows that hung over the head of the digger. The study of
the veins of limestone that he turned in his hands, the slow moulding of
the crude shapes to their place in the building, the rhythm and swing of
the mallet in his arm, the zest with which he felt the impact of the
chisel on the stone, the ring of