The reception looked as if it had been
rehearsed, both women painfully anxious to do what was right.

There appeared some little misunderstanding, and I was too dazed with
the cold--which I had only fully felt when I got off the car and found
my legs cramped--to come to the rescue as interpreter. The Spanish Friar
was accustomed to these little embarrassments, and he had a manner of
meeting them with a smile. The misunderstanding and the embarrassment
seemed to thaw the formality of the reception. The women looked
relieved. They were obviously not expected to say anything, and they had
no fear now that they would be put to the ordeal of meeting a possibly
superior person, one who might patronise them, make a flutter in their
home, appal them by expecting a great deal of attention, in short, be
"very Englified." The Spanish Friar had very quick intuitions and some
subtle way of his own for conveying his emotions and his requirements.
He was in spirit nearer to the peasantry than many of the Friars who
themselves came from the flesh of the peasantry. And these two peasant
women, very quick in both their intuitions and their intelligence,
seemed at the very moment of the breakdown of the first attempt at
conversation to understand him and he to understand them. The elder of
the women led the priest into a room off the kitchen where I knew Kevin
Hooban lay ill.

The younger woman put a chair before the fire and invited me to sit
there. While I sat before the fire I could hear the quick but quiet step
of her feet about the kitchen, the little swish of her garments.
Presently she drew near to the fire and held out a glass. It contained
what looked like discoloured water, very like the water in the shallow
river with the shingly bottom. I must have expressed some little
surprise, even doubt, in my face, for she held the glass closer, as if
reassuring me. There was something that inspired confidence in her
manner. I took the glass and sipped the liquid. It left a half-burned,
peaty taste in the mouth, and somehow smacked very native in its
flavour. I thought of the hills, the lonely bushes, the slow movement of
the chocolate-coloured river, the men with the primitive dark faces
under the broad-brimmed hats, their mysterious, even dramatic way of
grouping themselves around the lighted house. The peaty liquid seemed a
brew out of the same atmosphere. I knew it was poteen. And in a moment I
felt it coursing through my body, warmi