“Is it comfort ye’d be speakin’?” he began again, filling his glass.  “Me dear fellow, divvle a doubt I’ll fetch round tight an’ safe.  Ould Mick Sullivan—­he that built the Wild Girl, the fastest vessel that iver put out av Limerick—­ould Mick Sullivan used to swear he’d make any ship seaworthy that didn’ leak worse than a five-barred gate.  An’ that’s me, more or less.  I’m an ould campaigner.  But listen to this.  Me feelin’s have been wrung this day, and that sorely.  I promised ye the story, an’ I must out wid ut, whether or no.”

It was the hour when the benches of the Cheese begin to empty.  My work was over for the day, and I disposed myself to listen.

“The first half I spent at the acadimy where they flagellated the rudiments av polite learnin’ into me small carcuss, I made a friend.  He was the first I iver made, though not the last, glory be to God!  But first friendship is like first love for the sweet taste it puts in the mouth.  Niver but once in his life will a man’s heart dance to that chune.  ’Twas a small slip of a Saxon lad that it danced for then:  a son av a cursed agint, that I should say it.  But sorra a thought had I for the small boccawn’s nationality nor for his own father’s trade.  I only knew the friendship in his pretty eyes an’ the sweetness that knit our two sowls togither, like David’s an’ Jonathan’s.  Pretty it was to walk togither, an’ discourse, an’ get the strap togither for heaven knows what mischief, an’ consowl each other for our broken skins.  He’d a wonderful gift at his books, for which I reverenced um, and at the single-stick, for which I loved um.  Niver to this day did I call up the ould play-ground widout behowldin’ that one boy, though all the rest av the faces (the master’s included) were vague as wather—­wather in which that one pair av eyes was reflected.

“The school was a great four-square stone buildin’ beside a windy road, and niver a tree in sight; but pastures where the grass would cut your boot, an’ stone walls, an’ brown hills around, like the rim av a saucer.  All belonged to the estate that Jemmy Nichol’s father managed—­a bankrupt property, or next door to that.  It’s done better since he gave up the place; but when I’ve taken a glance at the landscape since (as I have, once or twice) I see no difference.  To me ’tis the naked land I looked upon the last day av the summer half, when I said good-bye to Jemmy; for he was lavin’ the school that same afternoon for Dublin, to cross over to England wid his father.

“Sick at heart was I, an’ filled already wid the heavy sense of solitariness, as we stood by the great iron gate wishin’ one another fare-ye-well.

“‘Jemmy avick,’ says I, ’dull, dull will it be widout ye here.  And, Jemmy—­send some av my heart back to me when ye write, as ye promise to do.’

“‘Wheniver I lay me down, Ned,’ he answered me (though by nature a close-hearted English boy), ‘I’ll think o’ ye; an’ wheniver I rise up I’ll think o’ ye.  May the Lord do so to me, an’ more also, if I cease from lovin’ ye till my life’s end.’