ame to their doors and looked at him with eyes that
expressed a slow resentment, their arms bare above the elbows, their
hair hanging dankly about their ears, their voices, when they spoke,
monotonous, and always sounding a note of tired complaint.

On the rise of a little bridge Denis Donohoe met a red-haired woman, a
family of children skirmishing about her; there was a battle light in
her wolfish eyes, her idle hands were folded over her stomach.

"How much, gossoon?" she asked.

"Six shilling."

"Six devils!" She walked over to the creel, handling some of the sods of
turf Denis Donohoe knew she was searching a constitutionally abusive
mind for some word contemptuous of his wares. She found it at last, for
she smacked her lips. It was in the Gaelic. "_Spairteach!_" she cried--a
word that was eloquent of bad turf, stuff dug from the first layer of
the bog, a mere covering for the correct vein beneath it.

"It's good stone turf," Denis Donohoe protested, a little nettled.

The woman was joined by some people who were hanging about, anxious to
take part in bargaining which involved no personal liability. They
argued, made jokes, shouted, and finally began to bully Denis Donohoe,
the woman leading, her voice half a scream, her stomach heaving, her
eyes dancing with excitement, a yellow froth gathering at the corners
of her angry mouth, her hand gripping a sod of the turf, for the only
dissipation life now offered her was this haggling with and shouting
down of turf sellers. Denis Donohoe stood immovable beside his cart,
patient as his donkey, his swarthy face stolid under the shadow of his
broad-brimmed black hat, his intelligent eyes quietly measuring his
noisy antagonists. When the woman's anger had quite spent itself the
turf was purchased for five shillings.

Denis Donohoe carried the sods in his arms to the kitchen of the
purchaser's house. It entailed a great many journeys in and out, the
sods being piled up on his hooked left arm with a certain skill. His
route lay through a small shop, down a semi-dark hallway, across a
kitchen, the sods being stowed under a stairway where cockroaches
scampered from the thudding of the falling sods.

Women were moving about the kitchen, talking incessantly, fumbling about
tables, always appearing to search for something that had been lost, one
crooning over a cradle that she rocked before the fire. The smell of
cooking, the sound of something fatty hissing on a pan, broug