ss went into the kitchen. Everything
lay untouched, just as he had left it the night before. The lamp and
the remnants of the meal were on the table. The two chairs stood side
by side before the hearth, where the fire which he had covered up
smouldered feebly. He turned and went to his father's room. He could
not have explained how it was, but when he opened the door he was not
surprised to see the old man lying quite still, dead, upon the bed. His
face was turned upwards, and on it was that strange look of emotionless
peace which rests very often on the faces of the dead. It seemed
to Hyacinth quite natural that the soul as it departed into unknown
beatitude should have printed this for the last expression on the
earthly habitation which it left behind. He neither wondered nor, at
first, sorrowed very much to see his father dead. His sight was undimmed
and his hands steady when he closed the eyes and composed the limbs of
the body on the bed. Afterwards it seemed strange to him that he should
have dressed quietly, arranged the furniture in the kitchen, and blown
the fire into a blaze before he went down into the village to tell his
news and seek for help.

They buried AEneas Conneally beside his wife in the wind-swept
churchyard. The fishermen carried his coffin into the church and out
again to the grave. Father Moran himself stood by bareheaded while the
clergyman from Clifden read the prayers and sprinkled the coffin-lid
with the clay which symbolized the return of earth to earth and dust to
dust. In the presence of death, and, with the recollection of the simple
goodness of the man who was gone, priest and people alike forgot for an
hour the endless strife between his creed and theirs.

CHAPTER VIII

In Connaught the upper middle classes, clergy, doctors, lawyers, police
officers, bank officials, and so forth, are all strangers in the land.
Each of them looks forward to a promotion which will enable him to move
to some more congenial part of Ireland. A Dublin suburb is the ideal
residence; failing that, the next best thing is a country town within
easy reach of the metropolis. Most of them sooner or later achieve a
promotion, but some of them are so unfortunate as to die in their exile.
In either case their furniture and effects are auctioned. No one ever
removes his goods from Con-naught, because the cost of getting things
to any other part of Ireland is exorbitant, and also because tables
and chairs fetch