, vacant
corridor, and beyond it a hall where old men were seated on forms at a
long, white deal table. They were eating--a silent, grey, bent, beaten
group. Through a glass partition we could see the porter in his office
turning over the leaves of a great register.

"I find," he said, coming out again, speaking as if he were giving
evidence at a sworn inquiry, "that the remains of Martin Quirke,
deceased, were removed at 4.15."

"I am more than half an hour late," said the priest, regarding his watch
with some irritation.

We hurried out and along the road to the country, the priest trailing
his umbrella behind him, speaking of the temperance hall but preoccupied
about the funeral he had missed, my eyes marking the flight of flocks of
starlings making westward.

Less than a mile of ground brought us to the spot where the paupers were
buried. It lay behind a high wall, a narrow strip of ground, cut off
from a great lord's demesne by a wood. The scent of decay was heavy in
the place; it felt as if the spring and the summer had dragged their
steps here, to lie down and die with the paupers. The uncut grass lay
rank and grey and long--Nature's unkempt beard--on the earth. The great
bare chestnuts and oaks threw narrow shadows over the irregular mounds
of earth. Small, rude wooden crosses stood at the heads of some of the
mounds, lopsided, drunken, weather-beaten. No names were inscribed upon
them. All the bones laid down here were anonymous. A robin was singing
at the edge of the wood; overhead the rapid wings of wild pigeons beat
the air.

A stable bell rang impetuously in the distance, dismissing the workmen
on the lord's demesne. By a freshly-made grave two gravediggers were
leaning on their spades. They were paupers, too; men who got some
privilege for their efforts in this dark strip of earth between the wood
and the wall. One of them yawned. A third man stood aloof, a minor
official from the workhouse; he took a pipe from his mouth as the priest
approached.

The three men gave one the feeling that they were rather tired of
waiting, impatient to have their little business through. It was a
weird spot in the gathering gloom of a November evening. The only bright
thing in the place, the only gay spot, the only cheerful patch of
colour, almost exulting in its grim surroundings, was the heap of
freshly thrown up soil from the grave. It was rich in colour as
newly-coined gold. Resting upon it was a clean, white, un