isdom and it has broken your neck.

I lost my knowledge and I am yet alive raising the keen over your body,
but it was too heavy for you, my little knowledge.

You will never go out into the pine wood in the morning, or wander
abroad on a night of stars.

You will not sit in the chimney-corner on the hard nights, or go to bed,
or rise again, or do anything at all from this day out.

Who will gather pine cones now when the fire is going down, or call my
name in the empty house, or be angry when the kettle is not boiling?

Now I am desolate indeed. I have no knowledge, I have no husband, I have
no more to say."

"If I had anything better you should have it," said she politely to the
Thin Woman of Inis Magrath.

"Thank you," said the Thin Woman, "it was very nice. Shall I begin now?
My husband is meditating and we may be able to annoy him."

"Don't trouble yourself," replied the other, "I am past enjoyment and
am, moreover, a respectable woman."

"That is no more than the truth, indeed."

"I have always done the right thing at the right time."

"I'd be the last body in the world to deny that," was the warm response.

"Very well, then," said the Grey Woman, and she commenced to take off
her boots. She stood in the centre of the room and balanced herself on
her toe.

"You are a decent, respectable lady," said the Thin Woman of Inis
Magrath, and then the Grey Woman began to gyrate rapidly and more
rapidly until she was a very fervour of motion, and in three-quarters
of an hour (for she was very tough) she began to slacken, grew visible,
wobbled, and fell beside her dead husband, and on her face was a
beatitude almost surpassing his.

The Thin Woman of Inis Magrath smacked the children and put them to bed,
next she buried the two bodies under the hearthstone, and then, with
some trouble, detached her husband from his meditations. When he became
capable of ordinary occurrences she detailed all that had happened, and
said that he alone was to blame for the sad bereavement. He replied:

"The toxin generates the anti-toxin. The end lies concealed in the
beginning. All bodies grow around a skeleton. Life is a petticoat about
death. I will not go to bed."

CHAPTER III

ON the day following this melancholy occurrence Meehawl MacMurrachu,
a small farmer in the neighbourhood, came through the pine trees with
tangled brows. At the door of the little house he said, "God be with all
here," and marched in.

The Philo