The door of the room stood slightly open, and the low murmur of the Friar’s voice reciting a prayer in Latin could be heard.  The young woman sighed, her bosom rising and falling in a quick breath of pain.  Then she made the sign of the Cross.

“My brother is very low,” she said, sitting down by the fire after a time.  Her eyes were upon the fire.  Her face was less hard than the faces I had seen on the hills.  She looked good-natured.

“Is he long ill?”

“This long while.  But to look at him you would conceit he was as sound as a trout.  First he was moody, moping about the place, and no way wishful for company.  Hours he would spend below at the butt of the meadow, nearby the water, sitting under the thorn bush and he playing upon the fideog.  Then he began to lose the use of his limbs, and crying he used to be within in the room.  Some of the people who have knowledge say he is lying under a certain influence.  He cannot speak now.  The holy Friar will know what is best to be done.”

When the Friar came out of the room he was divesting himself of the embroidered stole he had put over his shoulders.

The white-capped old woman had excitement in her face as she followed him.

“Kevin spoke,” she said to the other.  “He looked up at the blessed man and he made an offer to cross himself.  I could not hear the words he was speaking, that soft they come from his lips.”

“Kevin will live,” said the younger woman, catching some of the excitement of her mother.  She stood tensely, drawn up near the fire, gazing vacantly but intently across the kitchen, as if she would will it so passionately that Kevin should live that he would live.  She moved suddenly, swiftly, noiselessly across the floor and disappeared into the room.

The priest sat by the fire for some time, the old woman standing by, respectful, but her eyes riveted upon him as if she would pluck from him all the secrets of existence.  The priest was conscious, a little uneasy, and a little amused, at this abnormal scrutiny.  Some shuffling sounded outside the house as if a drove of shy animals had come down from the mountain and approached the dwelling.  Presently the door creaked.  I looked at it uneasily.  The atmosphere of the place, the fumes of the poteen in my head, the heat of the fire, had given me a more powerful impression of the mysterious, the weird.  Nothing showed at the door for some time, but I kept my eye upon it.  I was rewarded.  A cluster of heads and shoulders of men, swarthy, gloomy, some awful foreboding in the expression of their faces, hung round the door and peered silently down at the Friar seated at the fire.  Again I had the sense that they would not be surprised to see any sort of apparition.  The heads disappeared, and there was more shuffling outside the windows as if shy animals were hovering around the house.  The door creaked again, and another bunch of heads and shoulders made a cluster about it.  They looked, as far as I could see them, the same group of heads, but I had the feeling that they were fresh spectators.  They were taking their view in turn.