There was a curious hush about the lake next evening, although the little cottage of Hughie Murtagh was swept by winds which stirred mournfully through all the bright abundance of early summer. Even the orange-blossoms of the furze seemed to put on an aspect of surrender. There was no challenge in their color now; they looked almost white against a somber sunset. John Brennan moped about among the fir-trees. He came to a stand-still by one that had begun to decay and which was even more mournful in its failure to contribute another plumed head to the general effect of mourning. But it seemed to shake enraged at this impotence in its poor foundation over the deserted warren, from which Shamesy Golliher had long since driven the little rabbits towards that dark Chicago of slaughter which was represented to them by Garradrimna.  
The same color of desolation was upon the reeds which separated him from the water. The water itself had, beneath its pretense of brightness upon the surface, the appearance of ooze, as if it had come washing over the slime of dead things.
 
It was here that John Brennan had come to wait for Ulick Shannon, and, as he waited, his mood became that of his surroundings.... He fell to running over what had happened to him. Alternately, in the swirl of his consciousness, it appeared as the power of the valley and[Pg 272] as the Hand of God. Yet, whatever it might be in truth, this much was certain. It had reduced his life to ruins. It was a fearful thing, and he shuddered a little while he endeavored to produce a clear picture of it for the chastisement as well as the morbid excitement of his imagination.
 
But there came instead a far different picture, which seemed to have the effect of lifting for a moment the surrounding gloom. He saw Rebecca Kerr again as upon many an afternoon they had met. For one brave moment he strove to recover the fine feeling that had filled him at those times. But it would not come. Something had happened, something terrible which soiled and spoiled her forever.
 
For love of her he had dreamed even unto the desire of defeating his mother's love. And yet there was no triumph in his heart now, nothing save defeat and a great weariness. Neither his mother nor Rebecca Kerr were any longer definite hopes upon which his mind might dwell.... His thoughts were running altogether upon Ulick Shannon. It was for Ulick he waited now in this lonely, wind-swept place, like any villain he had ever seen depicted upon the cover of a penny dreadful in Phillips's window when he was a boy. He now saw himself fixed in his own imagination after this fashion. Ulick Shannon would soon come. There was no doubt of this, for a definite appointment had been made during the day. He had remained at home from the college in Ballinamult to bring it about. Soon they would be endeavoring to enter what must be the final and tragic bye-way of their story. And it must be all so dreadfully interesting, this ending he had planned.... Now the[Pg 273] water came flowing towards him more rapidly as if to hurry the tragedy. It came more thickly and muddily and with long, billowy strides as if it yearned to gather some other body still holding life to its wild breast. Its waters kept flowing as if from some wide wound that ached and would not be satisfied; that bled and called aloud for blood forever.
 
Now also the evening shadows were beginning to creep down the hills and with them a deeper hush was coming upon the wild longing of all things. Yet it was no hush of peace, but rather the concentration of some horrible purpose upon one place.
 
"I am going away on Friday," Ulick had written in one of the two notes that had been exchanged between them by the messenger during the day, "and I would like to see you for what must, unfortunately, be the last time. I am slipping away unknown to my uncle or to any one, and it is hardly probable that I will be seen in these parts again."
 
At length he beheld the approach of Ulick down the long Hill of Annus.... His spirit thrilled within him and flamed again into a white flame of love for the girl who was gone.... And coming hither was the man who had done this thing.... The thickest shadows of the evening would soon be gathered closely about the scene they were to witness.... The very reeds were rustling now in dread.
 
The lake was deep here at the edge of the water.... And in the rabbit-warren beneath his feet were the heavy pieces of lead piping he had transported in the night. He had taken them from his father's stock of plumber's materials, that moldy, unused stock which had so long[Pg 274] lain in the back yard and which, in a distant way, possessed an intimate connection with this heaped-up story.... In a little instant of peculiar consciousness he wondered whether it would be pliable enough.... There were pieces for the legs and pieces for the arms which would enfold those members as in a weighty coffin.... And hidden nearer to his hand was the strangely-shaped, uncouth weapon his father had used many a time with such lack of improvement upon the school slates and with which one might kill a man.... The body would rest well down there beneath the muddy ............