ng about the building. He would run across that landing, swaying
and tottering. His little voice would fill the building. Arms would be
reaching out to him. They would be the soft white arms of Rose Dempsey,
or maybe, they would be the arms that raised up the building--his own
strong arms. Or it might be that he would be carrying down the child
and handing him over the rails there into the outspread arms of Rose
Dempsey. She would be reaching out for the child with the newly-kindled
light of motherhood in her eyes, the passion of a young mother in her
welcoming voice. A child with his very name--a child that would grow up
to be a man and hand down the name to another, and so on during the
generations. And with the name would go down the building, the building
that would endure, that would live, that was immortal. Did it all come
to him as a sudden revelation, springing from the idle talk of a
neighbour boy brought up to work from one season to another? Or was it
the same thing that was behind the forces that had fired him while he
had worked at the building? Had it not all come into his life the
evening he stood among his fields with his eyes on the crest of the
hill?

Ah, there had been a great building surely, a building standing up on
the hill, a great, a splendid building raised up to the sight of all the
world, and with it a greater building, a building raised up from the
sight of all men, the building of a name, the moulding of hearts that
would beat while Time was, a building of immortal souls, a building into
which God would breathe His breath, a building which would be heard of
in Heaven, among the angels, through all the eternities, a building
living on when all the light was gone out of the sun, when oceans were
as if they had never been, a name, a building, living when the story of
all the worlds and all the generations would be held written upon a
scroll in the lap of God.... The face of the dreamer as he abandoned
himself to his thoughts was pallid with a half-fanatical emotion.

The neighbours were more awed than shocked at the change they saw
increasing in Martin Cosgrave. He had grown paler and thinner, but his
eyes were more tense, had in them, some of the neighbours said, the
colour of the limestone. He was more and more removed from the old life.
He walked his fields without seeing the things that made up the old
companionship. His whole attitude was one of detachment from everything
that did not sa