.

As the cart came crawling past where Mrs. Duff and Con stood, a furious
rush so tilted it over that the horse fell, breaking a shaft, and some
of the topmost sacks tumbled off, dropping with dull thuds, like dead
bodies, upon the damp cobblestone pavement. Con saw a little cloud of
white dust rise up over each as it dumped down, and melt away on the
air, making him wonder to himself: "Is it smokin' hot they are?" But in
another moment they were hidden for a while by a wild wave of the crowd,
which threw itself tumultuously upon them. One of the sacks burst,
spilling the soft flour in flakes, and round it the jostling and
writhing grew fiercest. The faces that got nearest to it looked hardly
the whiter for their smears and powdering.

A young woman, all black eyes and elf locks, with a baby wrapped in her
shawl, crouching low and making a desperate long arm, grasped a covetous
handful, which spirted away wastefully between her clenched fingers. She
moistened some of this in a puddle as she knelt, and held the paste to
her baby's mouth. But its head was drooping wearily aside, and its lips
did not move when she touched them. "Ait it up, me heart's jewel," she
said; "ait it up, mother's little bird. 'Deed, then, but you're the
conthrary little toad. It's breakin' me heart you'll be roarin' when
I've ne'er a bit to give you, and sleepin' dead, when I've the chance to
feed you." She was beginning to shake it, but a young man who stood
behind her put his hand on her shoulder, saying: "Whisht, whisht, you
crathur, for God's sake. It's done wid wantin' and cryin', and a good
job for it too, the Lord knows." Then the girl shrieked again and again,
and the people about her said from one to the other: "It's her child's
starved on her." And an old man caught up the little body, and held it
high over his head, shouting, "Boys, boys--look yous at that. There's
the way Henderson's cartin' off the childer's bit of food to make his
fine fortin in England." And the crowd shouted back through a surge of
curses: "Divil a fut will he this day."

A very little old woman seized hold of an outlying sack and tried to
lift it, a ludicrously impossible feat, at witnessing which a cripple
leaner than his crutches laughed boisterously, saying, "Och, good luck
to you, granny. You're makin' a great offer at it entirely. Is it often
you do be liftin' up the Hill of Howth? More power to your elbow." And
the crowd yelled with laughter too.

At th