rative is that he was a commentary on Anna.
He was only once in our house, but that was an "occasion," and for many
years we dated things that happened about that time as "about," "before"
or "after" "the night Hughie stayed in the pigsty."

We lived in the social cellar; Hughie led a precarious existence in the
_sub-cellar_. He was the beggar-man of several towns, of which Antrim
was the largest. He was a short, thick-set man with a pock-marked face,
eyes like a mouse, eyebrows that looked like well-worn scrubbing
brushes, and a beard cropped close with scissors or a knife. He wore two
coats, two pairs of trousers and several waistcoats--all at the same
time, winter and summer. His old battered hat looked like a crow's nest.
His wardrobe was so elaborately patched that practically nothing at all
of the originals remained; even then patches of his old, withered skin
could be seen at various angles. The thing that attracted my attention
more than anything else about him was his pockets. He had dozens of them
and they were always full of bread crusts, scraps of meat and cooking
utensils, for like a snail he carried his domicile on his back. His
boots looked as if a blacksmith had made them, and for whangs (laces) he
used strong wire.

He was preeminently a citizen of the world. He had not lived in a house
in half a century. A haystack in summer and a pigsty in winter sufficed
him. He had a deep graphophone voice and when he spoke the sound was
like the creaking of a barn door on rusty hinges. When he came to town
he was to us what a circus is to boys of more highly favored
communities. There were several interpretations of Hughie. One was that
he was a "sent back." That is, he had gone to the gates of a less
cumbersome life and Peter or the porter at the other gate had sent him
back to perform some unfulfilled task. Another was that he was a
nobleman of an ancient line who was wandering over the earth in disguise
in search of the Grail. A third, and the most popular one, was that he
was just a common beggar and an unmitigated liar. The second
interpretation was made more plausible by the fact that he rather
enjoyed his reputation as a liar, for wise ones said: "He's jist lettin'
on."

On one of his semi-annual visits to Antrim, Hughie got into a barrel of
trouble. He was charged--rumor charged him--with having blinked a
widow's cow. It was noised abroad that he had been caught in the act of
"skellyin'" at her. The stor