e fire he wouldn't come, and had her heart-scalded seein' him sittin'
there in the draught of the door. And I meself was tired callin' him to
come in and spake to me, and I lyin' in bed, but next or nigh me he
niver come, not even for little Maggie that he always thought a hape
of. And the next mornin' if he wasn't quit out of it early, afore
anybody knew, in the bitter black frost, and a quare threatinin' of
snow. So then as soon as I heard tell, I up wid me and come after him.
Troth, I left the wife frettin' wild, the crathur, thinkin' I'd get me
death; but what else could I do? And now I must be steppin' on again.
Och no, thank you, lad, if I took a dhrop of spirits, I'd be choked wid
coughin'. But you might just set me on the right road."

"I'll go along wid him," said Dan, aside to his grandfather, "and if I
can bring him, or the both of them, back here, I will. It's my belief
he's as bad as he can stick together."

So Dan and old Dermody's son went out into the night. A lull in the wind
had come, and the light of the moon, hung near the horizon's rim,
flickered out dimly ever and anon as the edge of the drifting mist
lapped up wave-like and touched her. It was piercingly cold. Ned Dermody
leaned heavily on Dan as they walked, only till he fetched back his
breath, he said, but it was slow in coming. They had not gone many
hundred yards, yet vast tracts of solitude seemed to have folded round
them, before Dan caught sight of something that somehow startled and
shocked him--a group of boulders by the road, with a shadow under one of
them strangely like a human form. A few paces further on he became aware
that it really was a man--the old man--sitting huddled up under the big
glimmering stone. Thus far had he carried his forlorn quest after
Fortune, and mutiny against Fate. His snaggy stick lay at a little
distance, a black line on the snow, and the sight of that made Dan's
heart stumble. But Ned Dermody shouted out hoarsely and loud: "Be the
Lord it's himself," and, as Dan afterwards used to tell, "took a flyin'
lep at him, as if he'd a mind to ha' lep over the world."

"Musha now, and is it there you would be sittin' to catch your death of
could?" he began, in a tone of gleeful reproach, shaking the old man by
the shoulder. "Goodness forgive me for sayin' so, but it's yourself's
the pernicious ould miscreant. Fine thrampin' over the counthry I've had
after you--forby givin' us the greatest fright altogether. Sure I