The Project Gutenberg eBook, Waysiders, by Seumas O'Kelly

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Title: Waysiders

Author: Seumas O'Kelly

Release Date: September 15, 2004 [eBook #13472]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)

***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WAYSIDERS***

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WAYSIDERS

Stories of Connacht

by

SEUMAS O'KELLY

Author of "The Shuiler's Child," "The Lady of Deerpark,"
"The Bribe," &c.

New York

MCMXVIII

Contents

The Can with the Diamond Notch

Both Sides of the Pond

The White Goat

The Sick Call

The Shoemaker

The Rector

The Home-Coming

A Wayside Burial

The Gray Lake

The Building

THE CAN WITH THE DIAMOND NOTCH

I

[Illustration: _Festus Clasby_]

The name stood out in chaste white letters from the black background of
the signboard. Indeed the name might be said to spring from the
landscape, for this shop jumped from its rural setting with an air of
aggression. It was a commercial oasis on a desert of grass. It
proclaimed the clash of two civilisations. There were the hills, pitched
round it like the galleries of some vast amphitheatre, rising tier upon
tier to the blue of the sky. There was the yellow road, fantastic in its
frolic down to the valley. And at one of its wayward curves was the
shop, the shop of Festus Clasby, a foreign growth upon the landscape,
its one long window crowded with sombre merchandise, its air that of
established, cob-web respectability.

Inside the shop was Festus Clasby himself, like some great masterpiece
in its ancient frame. He was the product of the two civilisations, a
charioteer who drove the two fiery steeds of Agricolo and Trade with a
hand of authority. He was a man of lands and of shops. His dark face,
framed in darker hair and beard, was massive and square. Behind the
luxurious growth of hair the rich blood glowed on the clear skin. His
chest had breadth, his limbs were great, showing girth at the hips and
power at the calves. His eyes were large and dark, smouldering in soft
velvety tones. The nose was long, the nostrils e