“Good day to you, Mrs. Deely,” Denis Donohoe said, showing his strong teeth.

“Welcome, Denis.  Won’t you step in and warm yourself at the fire, for the day is sharp, and you are early on the road?”

Denis Donohoe sat with the woman by the fire for some time, their exchange of family gossip quiet and agreeable.  The young man was, however, uneasy, glancing about the house now and then like one who missed something.  The woman, dropping her calm eyes on him, divined his thoughts.

“Agnes is not about,” she said.  “She started off for the Cappa Post Office an hour gone, for we had tidings that a letter is there for us from Sydney.”

“A letter from her sister?”

“Yes, Mary is married there and doing well.”

Denis Donohoe resumed his journey.

At the appointed spot he ravenously devoured the oaten bread, then stretched himself on his stomach on the ground and took some draughts of water from a roadside stream, drawing it up with a slow sucking noise, his teeth chattering, his eyes on the bright pebbles that glittered between some green cress at the bottom.  When he had finished the donkey also laved his thirst at the spot.

He reached the market town while it was yet morning.  He led the creel of turf through the straggling streets, where some people with the sleep in their eyes were moving about.  The only sound he made was a low word of encouragement to the donkey.

“How much for the creel?” a man asked, standing at his shop door.

“Six shilling,” Denis Donohoe replied, and waited, for it was above the business of a decent turf-seller to praise his wares or press for a sale.

“Good luck to you, son,” said the merchant, “I hope you’ll get it.”  He smiled, folded his hands one over the other, and retired to his shop.

Denis Donohoe moved on, saying in an undertone to the donkey, “Gee-up, Patsy.  That old fellow is no good.”

There were other inquiries, but nobody purchased.  They said that money was very scarce.  Denis Donohoe said nothing; money was too remote a thing for him to imagine how it could be ever anything else except scarce.  He grew tired of going up and down past shops where there was no sign of business, so he drew the side streets and laneways, places where children screamed about the road, where there was a scent of soapy water, where women came to their doors and looked at him with eyes that expressed a slow resentment, their arms bare above the elbows, their hair hanging dankly about their ears, their voices, when they spoke, monotonous, and always sounding a note of tired complaint.

On the rise of a little bridge Denis Donohoe met a red-haired woman, a family of children skirmishing about her; there was a battle light in her wolfish eyes, her idle hands were folded over her stomach.

“How much, gossoon?” she asked.

“Six shilling.”

“Six devils!” She walked over to the creel, handling some of the sods of turf Denis Donohoe knew she was searching a constitutionally abusive mind for some word contemptuous of his wares.  She found it at last, for she smacked her lips.  It was in the Gaelic. “Spairteach!” she cried—­a word that was eloquent of bad turf, stuff dug from the first layer of the bog, a mere covering for the correct vein beneath it.