notice? My sense told me that friends could not be found in the
road like pebbles, but some curious feeling kept me abroad, scanning
by the light of the lanterns or the torches each face that passed me.
A low dull roar came from the direction of the quay, and this was the
noise of the sailor-men, being drunk. I knew that there would be none
found there to suit my purpose, but my spirit led me to wander so that
I could not have told why I went this way or that way.

Of a sudden I heard from a grassy bank beside me the sound of low and
strenuous sobbing. I stopped dead short to listen, moved by
instinctive recognition. Aye, I was right. It was Irish keening. Some
son of Erin was spelling out his sorrow to the darkness with that
profound and garrulous eloquence which is in the character of my
people.

"Wirra, wirra! Sorrow the day I would be leaving Ireland against my
own will and intention, and may the rocks go out to meet the lugger
that brought me here! It's beginning to rain, too! Sure it never rains
like this in Ireland! And me without a brass penny to buy a bed! If
the Saints save me from England, 'tis al--"

"Come out of that, now!" said I.

The monologue ceased; there was a quick silence. Then the voice, much
altered, said: "Who calls? 'Tis may be an Irish voice!"

"It is," said I. "I've swallowed as much peat smoke as any man of my
years. Come out of that now, and let me have a look at you."

He came trustfully enough, knowing me to be Irish, and I examined him
as well as I was able in the darkness. He was what I expected, a
bedraggled vagabond with tear-stains on his dirty cheeks and a vast
shock of hair which I well knew would look, in daylight, like a
burning haycock. And as I examined him he just as carefully examined
me. I could see his shrewd blue eyes twinkling.

"You are a red man," said I. "I know the strain; 'tis better than
some. Your family must have been very inhospitable people." And then,
thinking that I had spent enough time, I was about to give the fellow
some coin and send him away. But here a mad project came into my empty
head. I had ever been the victim of my powerful impulses, which surge
up within me and sway me until I can only gasp at my own conduct. The
sight of this red-headed scoundrel had thrust an idea into my head,
and I was a lost man.

"Mark you!" said I to him. "You know what I am?"

"'Tis hard to see in the dark," he answered; "but I mistrust you are a
gentleman, sir.