cate adjustment of right and wrong, that would balance the
account at the appointed audit.

He had an inarticulate understanding of these things as he moved from
the stable door. He tripped over a barrow unseen in the darkness and
fell forward on his face into the field. As he lay there he heard the
thudding of hooves on the ground. He rose, dizzy and unnerved, to see
the dim shapes of some cattle that had gathered down about the place
from the upland. He felt the rain beating upon his face, the clothes
hung dank and clammy to his limbs. His boots soaked and slopped when he
stepped. A boom of thunder sounded overhead and a vivid flash of
lightning lit up for an instant a great elm tree. He saw all its
branches shining with water, drops glistening along a thousand stray
twigs. Then the voices of the labourers returning over the hills broke
in upon his ears. He heard their shouts, the snatches of their songs,
their noise, all the ribaldry of men merry in their drink.

The Herd groped through the darkness for his house like a half-blind
man, his arms out before him, and a sudden gust of wind that swept the
hillside shrieked about the blood of the white goat that was still wet
upon his hands.

THE SICK CALL

A man wearing the grey frieze coat and the soft black hat of the
peasantry rode up to the Monastery gate on a wiry, long-tailed nag. When
he rang the bell at the hall-door there was a clatter of sandals on a
flagged hall inside.

The door was opened by a lay Brother in a brown habit, a girdle about
the waist from which a great Rosary beads was suspended. The peasant
turned a soft black hat nervously in his hands as he delivered his
message. The Friar who visited ailing people was, he said, wanted. A
young man was lying very ill away up on the hills. Nothing that had been
done for him was of any account. He was now very low, and his people
were troubled. Maybe the Friar would come and raise his holy hands over
Kevin Hooban?

The peasant gave some account of how the place might be reached. Half an
hour later the Spanish Friar was on a side-car on his way to the
mountain. I was on the other side of the car. The Spanish Friar spoke
English badly. The peasantry--most of whom had what they called _Bearla
briste_ (broken English)--could understand only an occasional word of
what he said. At moments of complete deadlock I, a Mass server, acted as
a sort of interpreter. For this, and for whatever poor companionshi