n listening to the conversation of two farmers the
evening before, replied, "I do. To make turnips grow."

"Nonsense!" said the shoemaker, reaching out for an awl. "God makes it
rain to remind us of the Deluge. And I don't mean the Deluge that was
at all at all. I mean the Deluge that is to come. The world will be
drowned again. The belly-band of the sky will give, for that's what the
rainbow is, and it only made of colours. Did you never know until now
what the rainbow was? No? Well, well!... As I was saying, when the
belly-band of the sky bursts the Deluge will come. In one minute all the
valleys of the earth will be filled up. In the second minute the
mountains will be topped. In the third minute the sky will be emptied
and its skin gone, and the earth will be no more. There will be no ark,
no Noah, and no dove. There will be nothing only one great waste of grey
water and in the middle of it one green leaf. The green leaf will be a
sign that God has gone to sleep, the trouble of the world banished from
His mind. So whenever it rains remember my words."

Padna said he would, and then went home.

II

When Padna called on the shoemaker for the boots that had been left for
repair they were almost ready. The tips only remained to be put on the
heels. Padna sat down in the little workshop, and under the agreeable
influence of the place he made bold to ask the shoemaker if he had grown
up to be a shoemaker as the geranium had grown up to be a geranium in
its pot on the window.

"What!" exclaimed the shoemaker. "Did you never hear tell that I was
found in the country under a head of cabbage? No! Well, well! What do
they talk to you at home about at all?"

"The most thing they tell me," said Padna, "is to go to bed and get up
in the morning. What is the name of the place in the country where they
found you?"

"Gobstown," said the shoemaker. "It was the most miserable place within
the ring of Ireland. It lay under the blight of a good landlord, no
better. That was its misfortune, and especially my misfortune. If the
Gobstown landlord was not such a good landlord it's driving on the box
of an empire I would be to-day instead of whacking tips on the heels of
your boots. How could that be? I'll tell you that.

"In Gobstown the tenants rose up and demanded a reduction of rent; the
good landlord gave it to them. They rose up again and demanded another
reduction of rent; he gave it to them. They went on rising up, asking