foothold in the yielding clay. At
last a low, dull thud sounded up from the mouth of the pit. Our brother
in the white coffin had at last found a lasting tenure in the soil.

The official from the dark house moved over to me. He spoke in whispers,
holding the hat an official inch of respect for the dead above the
narrow white shred of his skull.

"Martin Quirke they are burying," he said.

"Who was he?"

"Didn't you ever hear tell of Martin Quirke?"

"No, never."

"A big man he was one time, with his acres around him and his splendid
place. Very proud people they were--he and his brother--and very hot,
too. The Quirkes of Ballinadee."

"And now--"

I did not finish the sentence. The priest was spraying the coffin in the
grave with the golden earth.

"Ashes to ashes and dust to dust." It fell briskly on the shallow deal
timber.

"'Twas the land agitation, the fight for the land, that brought Martin
Quirke down," said the official as the earth sprayed the pauper's
coffin. "He was one of the first to go out under the Plan of
Campaign--the time of the evictions. They never got back their place.
When the settlement came the Quirkes were broken. Martin lost his spirit
and his heart. Drink it was that got him in the end, and now--"

"Requiem aeternam dona eis, Domine: et lux perpetua luceat eis," the
priest's voice said.

"All the same," said the official, "It was men like Martin Quirke who
broke the back of landlordism. He was strong and he was weak. God rest
him!"

I walked away over the uneven ground, the memory of the land agitation,
its bitterness and its passion, oppressing me. Stories of things such as
this stalked the country like ghosts.

The priest overtook me, and we turned to leave. Down the narrow strip of
the lord's demesne were the little pauper mounds, like narrow boxes
wrapped in the long grey grass. Their pathos was almost vibrant in the
dim November light. And away beyond them were a series of great heaps,
looking like broad billows out to sea. The priest stood for a moment.

"You see the great mounds at the end?" he asked. "They are the Famine
Pits."

"The Famine Pits?"

"Yes; the place where the people were buried in heaps and hundreds, in
thousands, during the Famine of '46 and '47. They died like flies by the
roadside. You see such places in almost every part of Ireland. I hope
the people will never again die like that--die gnawing the gravel on the
roadside."

The rusty iron g