oman in her grave.

But six months later, and their battles still undecided, Jack Kinsella
fell sick and followed Ellen to Kilbride. Then Mike Sheehan was
without an equal for many miles. But little comfort it was to him,
with the girl of his heart dead, and the one man he had desired to
overthrow dead and unconquered. He secluded himself from the sports
and pastimes, and lived lonely in his cabin among the gulls, eating
out his unsatisfied heart. Somehow it seemed to him that at the last
his rival had cheated him, slipping into the kingdom of souls hard on
the track of those slender feet he had desired to make his own. At
times he hated him because he had died unconquered; yet again, he had
a hot desire upon him, not all ungenerous, for the old days when he
met those great thews and sinews in heavy grips--when the mighty hands
of the other had held him, the huge limbs embraced him; and his eyes
would grow full of the passion of fight and the desire of battle. None
other would satisfy him to wrestle with but his dead rival, and indeed
he in common with the country people thought that no other might be
found fit for him to meet.

Kilbride churchyard is high on the mainland, and lies dark within its
four stone walls. The road to it is by a tunnel of trees that make a
shade velvety black even when the moon is turning all the sea silver.
The churchyard is very old, and has no monuments of importance: only
green headstones bent sideways and sunk to their neck and shoulders in
the earth. A postern gate, with a flight of stone steps, opens from
Kilbride Lane. Here every night you may see the ghost of Cody the
murderer, climbing those steps with a rigid burden hanging from his
shoulder.

But as Mike Sheehan ascended the steps out of the midnight dark he
felt no fear. He clanged the gate of the sacred quiet place in a way
that set the silence echoing. The moon was high overhead, and was
shining straight down on the square enclosure with its little heaped
mounds and ancient stones. Some mad passion was on Mike Sheehan
surely, or he would not so have desecrated the quiet resting-place of
the dead. There by the ruined gable of the old abbey was a fresh mound
unusually great in size. Mike Sheehan paused by it. 'Jack!' he cried
in a thunderous voice, hoarse with its passion. 'Come! let us once for
all see which is the better man. Come and fight me, Jack, and if you
throw me let Ellen be yours now and for ever!'

The blood was in