Whenever a person from the valley went abroad now to fair or market the question was always asked:  
"Is it a fact that Ulick Shannon was expelled from the University in Dublin and is at home? And is it a fact that John Brennan is at home from the college he was at too, the grand college in England whose story his mother spread far and wide?"
 
"That's quite so, ma'am. It's a double fact!"
 
"Well, well!"
 
"And is it a fact that they do be always together, going by back ways into the seven publichouses of Garradrimna?"
 
"Oh, indeed, that's true, ma'am, and now you have the whole of it. Sure it was in the same seven publichouses that the pair of them laid the foundations of their ruination last summer. Sure, do ye know what I'm going to tell you? They couldn't be kept out of them, and that's as sure as you're there!"
 
Now it was true that if Ulick had gone at all towards Garradrimna it was through very excess of spirits, and it was for the very same reason that he had enticed John Brennan to go with him.... That time they were full of hope and their minds were held by their thoughts of Rebecca. But now, somehow, she seemed to have slipped[Pg 199] out of the lives of both of them. And because both had chosen. The feeling had entered into Ulick's heart. But in the case of John Brennan it was not so certain. What had brought him out upon the first morning of his homecoming to take a look at her? It would seem that, through the sudden quickening of his mind towards study just before the break-up of the college, he should have forgotten her.... His life now seemed to hang in the balance shudderingly; a breath might direct it anyway.
 
He felt that he should have liked to make some suggestions of his own concerning his future, but there was always that tired look of love in his mother's eyes to frustrate his intention.... Often he would go into the sewing-room of a morning and she would say so sadly as she bent over her machine—"I'm contriving, John; I'm contriving!" He had come to the years of manhood and yet he must needs leave every initiative in her hands since she would have it so.... Thus was he driven from the house at many a time of the day.
 
He went to morning Mass as usual, but the day was long and dreary after that, for the weather was wet and the coldness of winter still lay heavy over the fields. The evenings were the dreariest as he sat over his books in his room and listened to the hum of his mother's machine. Later this would give place to the tumultuous business of his father's home-coming from Garradrimna. Sometimes things were broken, and the noise would destroy his power of application. Thus it was that, for the most part, he avoided the house in the evenings. At the fall of dark he would go slipping along the wet road on his way to Garradrimna. Where the way from Scarden joined the way from Tullahanogue he generally met[Pg 200] Ulick Shannon, comfortably top-coated, bound for the same place.
 
It seemed as if the surrounding power of the talk their presence in the valley had created was driving them towards those scenes in which that talk had pictured them. Through the dusk people would smirk at them as they were seen going the road.... They would slip into McDermott's by the same back way that Ned Brennan had often gone to Brannagan's. Many a time did they pass the place in the woods wh............