Martin Cosgrave walked up steadily to his holding after Ellen Miscal had read to him the American letter.  He had spoken no word to the woman.  It was not every day that he had to battle with a whirl of thoughts.  A quiet man of the fields, he only felt conscious of a strong impulse to get back to his holding up on the hill.  He had no clear idea of what he would do or what he would think when he got back to his holding.  But the fields seemed to cry out to him, to call him back to their companionship, while all the wonders of the resurrection were breaking in fresh upon his life.

Martin Cosgrave walked his fields and put his flock of sheep scurrying out of a gap with a whistle.  His holding and the things of his holding were never so precious to his sight.  He walked his fields with his hands in his pockets and an easy, solid step upon the sod.  He felt a bracing sense of security.

Then he sat up on the mearing.

The day was waning.  It seemed to close in about his holding with a new protection.  The mood grew upon him as the shadows deepened.  A great peace came over him.  The breeze stirring the grass spread out at his feet seemed to whisper of the strange unexpected thing that had broken in upon his life.  He felt the splendid companionship of the fields for the master.

Suddenly Martin Cosgrave looked down at his cabin.  Something snapped as his eyes remained riveted upon it.  He leapt from the mearing and walked out into the field, his hands this time gripping the lapels of his coat, a cloud settling upon his brow.  In the centre of the field he stood, his eyes still upon the cabin.  What a mean, pokey, ugly little dirty hovel it was!  The thatch was getting scraggy over the gables and sagging at the back.  In the front it was sodden.  A rainy brown streak reached down to the little window looking like the claw of a great bird upon the walls.  He had been letting everything go to the bad.  That might not signify in the past.  But now—­

“Rose Dempsey would never stand the like,” he said to himself.  “She will be used to grand big houses.”

He turned his back upon the cabin near the boreen and looked up to the belt of beech trees swaying in the wind on the crest of the hill.  How did he live there most of his life and never see that it was a place fashioned by the hand of Nature for a house?  Was it not the height of nonsense to have trees there making music all the long hours of the night without a house beside them and people sleeping within it?  In a few minutes the thought had taken hold of his mind.  Limestone—­beautiful limestone—­ready at hand in the quarry not a quarter of a mile down the road.  Sand from the pit at the back of his own cabin.  Lime from the kiln beyond the road.  And his own two hands!  He ran his fingers along the muscles of his arms.  Then he walked up the hill.