When he came out upon the valley road he was no longer the admirable young man he had been less than a year since. He was a broken thing, and he was stained by another's blood. He was marked eternally by what he had done, and there was upon him a degradation unspeakable. He was an offense against existence and against the gathering, blessed gloom of the quiet evening.... He had murdered one who had been his friend, and it was a thing he might never be able to forget. The body, with all the lovely life so recently gone from it, he had weighted and sunk beneath the surface of the lake.... It was down there now, a poor, dead thing among the ooze of dead things from which the water had taken its color and quality. The wild spirit that had been Ulick Shannon, so contradictory in its many aspects, was now soaring lightly aloft upon the wings of clean winds and he, John Brennan, who had effected this grand release, felt the weights still heavy about his heart.  
He came on a group of children playing by the roadside. It seemed as if they had been driven across his path to thwart him with their innocence. He instantly remembered that other evening when he had been pained to hear them express the ugly, uncharitable notions of their parents regarding a child of another religion. Now they were playing merrily as God had intended[Pg 279] them to play, and religion, with its tyranny of compulsion towards thoughts of death and sin, seemed distant from them, and distant was it from him too. His mind was empty of any thought. Would no kindly piece of imagination come down to cool his spirit with its grace or lift from his heart the oppression of the leaden weights he had bound about the body of Ulick Shannon?... At last he had remembrance of his mother. It had been borne in upon him during some of his lonely cycle-rides to and from Ballinamult that things should not be, somehow, as they were. He was moving along exalted ways while his mother labored in lonely silence at her machine.... Where was the money coming from? Such an unproductive state as his required money for its upkeep. His father was no toiler, but she was always working there alone in the lonely room. Her hands were grown gnarled and hard through her years of labor.... Just presently she was probably discussing a dismal matter of ways and means with some woman of the valley, saying as she had said through the long years:
 
"Thank God and His Blessed Mother this night, I still have me hands. Aye, that's what I was just saying to Mrs. So and So this morning—Thank God I still have me hands!"
 
Thus she was going on now, he imagined, as he had always heard her, a pathetic figure sitting there and looking painfully through the heavy, permanent mist that was falling down upon her eyes. And yet it was not thus she really was at this moment. For although it was a woman who held her company, there was no mood of peace between them. It was Marse Prendergast who was with her, and she was proceeding busily with her eternal[Pg 280] whine. Mrs. Brennan was now disturbed in her mind and fearful of the great calamity that might happen. While she had bravely maintained the money in the little chest upstairs there had lingered, in spite of every affliction, a sense of quietness and independence. But now she was without help and as one distraught. Of late this gibbering old woman had obtained a certain power over her, and a considerable portion of the once proud Mrs. Brennan had fallen finally away. Although, at unaccountable moments, her strong pride would spring up to dazzle the people of the valley, she did not now possess that remarkable imperviousness which had so distinguished her attitude towards life. Now she was in a condition of disintegration, unable to maintain an antagonism or hide a purpose. The old ruined woman, the broken shuiler of the roads, was beginning to behold the ruins of another woman, the ruins of Mrs. Brennan, who had once been so "thick" and proud.
 
"So you won't hearken to me request?"
 
"I can't, Marse dear. I have no money to give you!"
 
This was a true word, for the little store upstairs had gone this way and that. Tommy Williams had had to be given his interest, and although people might think that John was getting his education for charity, no one knew better than she the heavy fees of the college in Ballinamult. Besides, he must keep up a good appearance in the valley.
 
But when Marse Prendergast made a demand she knew no reason and could make no allowance.
 
"Well, Nan, me dear, I must do me duty. I must speak out when you can't bribe me to be silent. I must do a horrid piece of business this night. I must turn[Pg 281] a son against his mother. Yes, that must be the way of it now, a son turned for good against his mother. For surely there could be no pardon in his grand, holy eyes for what you were once upon a time. But let me tell you this, that I'd have acquainted him anyhow, for I'd not have gone to me grave with that sin on me no matter what. They say it isn't right to offer a son to God where there's after being any big blemish in the family, and that if you do a woful misfortune or a black curse comes of it. And sure that was the quare, big blemish in your family, Nan Byrne, the quarest blemish ever was."
 
Mrs. Brennan began to cry. She seemed to have come at last to the end of all her long attempt to brazen things out.... Marse Prendergast was not slow to observe this acceptance of defeat, and saw that now surely was her time to be hard and bitter. She was growing so old, a withered stump upon the brink of years, and there was upon her an enormous craving for a little money. People were even driven, by her constant whine for this thing and that, to say how she had a little store of her own laid by which she gloated over with a wicked and senile delight. And for what, in God's name, was she hoarding and she an old, lone woman with the life just cross-wise in her?... And it was always Mrs. Brennan whom she had visited with her singular and special persecution.
 
"I suppose now you think you're the quare, clever one to be going on with your refusals from day to day. I suppose you think I don't know that you have a chesht full of money that you robbed from poor Henry Shannon, God be good to him, when he used to be coming running to see you, the foolish fellow!"
 
[Pg 282]
 
"As God's me judge, Marse Prendergast, I haven't e'er a penny in the house. I'm in debt in Garradrimna this blessed minute, and that's as sure as you're there!"
 
"Go on out of that with your talk of debts, and you to be sending your son John through his college courses before all our eyes like any fine lady in the land. And think of all the grand money you'll be getting bye and bye in rolls and cartloads!"
 
"Aye, with the help of God!"
 
Even in the moment of her torment Mrs. Brennan could not restrain her vanity of her son.
 
"And to think of all that being before you now and still you keep up your mean refusals of the little thing I ask," said the old woman with the pertinacious unreasonableness of age.
 
"I haven't got the money, Marse, God knows I haven't."
 
"God knows nothing, Nan Byrne, only your shocking villainy. And 'tis the great sin for you surely. And if God knows this, it is for some one else to know your sin. It is for your son John to know the kind of a mother that he loves and honors."
 
Mrs. Brennan had heard this threat on many an occasion yet even now the repetition of it made her grow suddenly pale.... An expression of sickliness was upon her face seen even through the shadowed sewing-room. Always this thought had haunted her that some time John might come to know.
 
"Long threatening comes at last!" was a phrase that had always held for her the darkest meaning. She could never listen to any woman make use of it without [Pg 283]shuddering violently. Marse Prendergast had threatened so often and often.
 
"Ah, no, Nan Byrne, this is something I could never let pass. And all the long days I saw you contriving here at the machine, and you so anxious and attentive, sure I used to be grinning to myself at the thoughts of the bloody fine laugh I'd be having at you some day. I used, that's God's truth!"
 
It seemed terrible to be told the story of this hate that had been so well hidden, now springing up before her in a withering blast of ingratitude and being borne to her understanding upon such quiet words.... She sighed ever so slightly, and her lips moved gently in the aspiration of a prayer.
 
"O Jesus, Mary and Joseph!" was what she said.
 
The pious ejaculation seemed to leap at once towards the accomplishment of a definite purpose, for immediately it had the effect of moving Marse Prendergast towards the door.
 
"I'm going now!"
 
The words were spoken with an even more chilling quietness. Mrs. Brennan made a noise as if to articulate something, but no words would come from her.
 
"And let you not be thinking that 'tis only this little thing I'm going to tell him, for there's a whole lot more. I'm going to tell him all I know, all that I didn't tell you through the length of the years, though, God knows, it has been often burning me to tell.... You think, I suppose, as clever as you are, that the child was buried in the garden. Well, that's not a fact, nor the color of a fact, for all I've made you afraid of it so often.... Grace[Pg 284] Gogarty had no child of her own for Henry Shannon. Ulick Shannon is your own child that was sold be your ould mother for a few pound!"
 
"That's a lie for you, Marse Prendergast!"
 
"'Tis no lie at all I'm telling you, but the naked truth. I suppose neither of them lads, Ulick nor John, ever guessed the reason why they were so fond of one another, but that was the reason; and 'tis I used to enjoy seeing them together and I knowing it well. Isn't it curious now to say that you're the mother of a blackguard and the mother of the makings of a priest?... Mebbe you'd give me the little bit of money now? Mebbe?"
 
Mrs. Brennan did not answer. Big tears were rolling down her cheeks one after the other.... Her heart had been rent by this sudden flash of information. Even the last remaining stronghold of her vanity had been swept away. That she, who had claim in her own estimation to be considered the wise woman of the valley, could not have long since guessed at the existence of a fact so intimate.... Her heart was wounded, not unto death, but immortally.... Her son! Ulick Shannon her son! O Mother of God!
 
John Brennan was still in his agony as he saw the long-tongued shuiler coming towards him down the road. She was making little journeys into the ditches as she came along. She was gathering material for a fire although every bush was green.... She was always shivering at the fall of night. The appearance of the children had filled him with speculations as to where he might look for some comfort.... Could it be derived from the precepts of religion translated into acts of[Pg 285] human kindness? Momentarily he was confused as he attempted to realize some act of goodness to be done here and now. He was unable to see.
 
Old Marse Prendergast, coming towards him slowly, was the solitary link connecting his mind with any thought. To him she appeared the poor old woman in need of pity who was gathering green sticks from the hedge-rows to make her a fire which would not kindle. He remembered that morning, now some time distant, when he had helped her carry home a bundle of her sticks on his way from Mass. It had appeared to him then, as it did now, a Christ-like action, but his mother had rebuked him for it. Yet he had always wished his mother to take the place of Mary when he tried to snatch some comfort from the Gospel story. Soon he was by her side speaking as kindly as he could.... Great fear was already upon him.
 
"God bless you, me little Johneen, me little son; sure 'tis yourself has the decent, kind heart to be taking pity upon the old. Arrah now! You're alone and lonely this evening, I notice, for your friend is gone from you. It bees lonely when one loses one's comrade. Ah, 'tis many a year and more since I lost me comrade through the valley of life. Since Marks Prendergast, the good husband of me heart and the father of me children, was lost on me. Sure he was murdered on me one St. Patrick's Day fair in Garradrimna. He was ripped open with a knife and left there upon the street in his blood for me to see.... That's the way, that's the way, me sweet gosoon; some die clean and quiet, and some go away in their blood like the way they came."
 
Had she devoted much time and skill to it she could[Pg 286] not have produced a more dire effect upon John than by this accidental turn of her talk.... The scene by the lakeside swam clearly into his eyes again.
 
"I suppose your good comrade is gone away?"
 
"Whom, what?"
 
"Ulick Shannon, to be sure. I suppose he's after slipping away be this time anyway."
 
"Aye, he's gone away."
 
"That was what you might call the nice lad. And it was no wonder at all that you were so much attached to one another. Never a bit of wonder at all.... Sure you were like brothers."
 
John was so solicitous in maintaining his silence that he did not notice the old woman's terrible sententiousness.... He went on pulling green sticks from the hedge and placing them very carefully by the side of those she had already gathered.
 
"Just like brothers. That's what ye were, just like brothers. He, he, he!"
 
Although he did not detect the note of laughter in it that was hollow and a mockery, he was nevertheless appalled by what should appear as a commendation of him who was gone.... He felt himself shaking even as the leaves in the hedgerows were being shaken by the light wind of evening.
 
"Like brothers, avic machree."
 
Even still he did not reply.
 
"Like brothers, I say, and that's the whole story. For ye were brothers. At least you were of the one blood, because ye had the same woman for the mother of ye both."
 
Certainly she was raving, but her words were having[Pg 287] an unusual effect upon him. He was keeping closer to the hedge as if trying to hide his face.
 
"To-night, me fine gosoon, I'm going to do a terrible thing. I'm going to tell you who your mother is, and then you'll know a quare story. You'll know that Ulick Shannon, good luck to him wherever he's gone, was nothing less than your own brother.... It is she that is after forcing me on to it be her penurious and miserly ways. I di............