d the kindly word where the people are normally taciturn and
unsmiling. The Island girls were disappointed when Patrick brought a
wife from the mainland, and Moya never tried to make friends with
them. She was something of a mystery to the Achill people, this small
moony creature, with her silver fair hair, and strange light eyes, the
colour of spilt milk. She was as small as a child, but had the gravity
of a woman. She loved the sea with a love unusual in Achill, where the
sea is to many a ravening monster that has exacted in return for its
hauls of fish the life of husband and son. Patrick Lavelle had built
for her a snug cabin in a sheltered ravine. A little beach ran down in
front of it where he could haul up his boat. The cabin was built
strongly, as it had need to be, for often of a winter night the waves
tore against its little windows. Moya loved the fury of the elements,
and when the winter storms drove the Atlantic up the ravine with a
loud bellowing, she stirred in sleep on her husband's shoulder, and
smiled as they say children smile in sleep when an angel leans over
them.

Higher still, on a spur of rock, Patrick Lavelle had laid the clay for
his potatoes. He had carried it on his shoulders, every clod, and
Moya had gathered the seaweed to fertilise it. She had her small
garden there, too, of sea-pinks and the like, which rather encouraged
the Islanders in their opinion of her strangeness. In Achill the
struggle for life is too keen to admit of any love for mere beauty.

However, Patrick Lavelle was quite satisfied with his little wife.
When he came home from the fishing he found his cabin more comfortable
than is often the case in Achill. They had no child, but Moya never
seemed to miss a child's head at her breast. Daring the hours of his
absence at the fishing she seemed to find the sea sufficient company.
She was always roaming along the cliffs, gazing down as with a fearful
fascination along the black sides to where the waves churned hundreds
of feet below. For company she had only the seagulls and the bald
eagle that screamed far over her head; but she was quite happy as she
roamed hither and thither, gathering the coloured seaweeds out of the
clefts of the rocks, and crooning an old song softly to herself, as a
child might do.

But that was all over and gone, and Moya was a widow. She had nothing
warm and human at all, now that brave protecting tenderness was gone
from her. No one came to the litt