ace as he
harnessed the mare in the yellow light of a stable lantern. We mounted
the car. The groups of men drew about us, their movements again sounding
like the shuffling of shy animals on the sod, and they broke silence for
the first time.

There was more said about Kevin Hooban. From various allusions, vague
and unsubstantial, little touches in the kind, musical voices, I
gathered that they believed him to be under the influence of the Good
People. The sense of mystery and ill-omen came back to me, and I carried
away a memory of the dark figures of the people grouped about the lonely
lighted house, standing there in sorrow for the flute-player, the grass
at their feet sparkling with frost.

THE SHOEMAKER

Obeying a domestic mandate, Padna wrapped a pair of boots in paper and
took them to the shoemaker, who operated behind a window in a quiet
street.

The shoemaker seemed to Padna a melancholy man. He wore great
spectacles, had a white patch of forehead, and two great bumps upon it.
Padna concluded that the bumps had been encouraged by the professional
necessity of constantly hanging his head over his knees.

The shoemaker invited Padna to sit down in his workshop, which he did.
Padna thought it must be very dreary to sit there all day among old and
new boots, pieces of leather, boxes of brass eyelets, awls, knives, and
punchers. No wonder the shoemaker was a melancholy-looking man.

Padna maintained a discreet silence while the shoemaker turned his
critical glasses upon the boots he had brought him for repair. Suddenly
the great glasses were turned upon Padna himself, and the shoemaker
addressed him in a voice of amazing pleasantness.

"When did you hear the cuckoo?" he asked.

Padna, at first startled, pulled himself together. "Yesterday," he
replied.

"Did you look at the sole of your boot when you heard him?" the
shoemaker asked.

"No," said Padna.

"Well," said the shoemaker, "whenever you hear the cuckoo for the first
time in the spring always look at the sole of your right boot. There you
will find a hair. And that hair will tell you the kind of a wife you
will get."

The shoemaker picked a long hair from the sole of Padna's boot and held
it up in the light of the window.

"You'll be married to a brown-haired woman," he said. Padna looked at
the hair without fear, favour, or affection, and said nothing.

The shoemaker took his place on his bench, selected a half-made shoe,
got it be