The neighbours were more awed than shocked at the change they saw increasing in Martin Cosgrave.  He had grown paler and thinner, but his eyes were more tense, had in them, some of the neighbours said, the colour of the limestone.  He was more and more removed from the old life.  He walked his fields without seeing the things that made up the old companionship.  His whole attitude was one of detachment from everything that did not savour of the crunch of stone, the ring of steel on the walls of a building.  He only talked rationally when the neighbours spoke to him of the building.  They had heard that he had gone to the money-lender, and mortgaged every perch of his land.  “It was easy to know how work of the like would end,” they said.

One day a stranger was driving by on his car, and when he saw the building he got down, walked up the hill, and made a long study of it.  On his way down he met Martin Cosgrave.

“Who built the house on the hill?” he asked.

“A simple man in the neighbourhood,” Martin Cosgrave made answer, after a little pause.

“A simple man!” the stranger exclaimed, looking at Martin Cosgrave with some disapproval.  “Well, he has attempted something anyway.  He may not have, succeeded, but the artist is in him somewhere.  He has created a sort of—­well, lyric—­in stone on that hill.  Extraordinary!”

The stranger hesitated before he hit on the word lyric.  He got up on his car and drove away muttering something under his breath.

Martin Cosgrave could have run up the hill and shouted.  He could have called all the neighbours together and told them of the strange man who had praised the building.

But he did none of these things.  He had work waiting to his hand.  A hunger was upon him to feel his pulse beating to the throb of steel on stone.  From the road he made a sweep of a drive up to the building.  The neighbours looked open-mouthed at the work for the days it went on.  “Well, that finishes Martin Cosgrave anyway,” they said.

Martin Cosgrave rushed the making of the drive; he took all the help he could get.  The boys would come up after their day’s work and give him a hand.  While they worked he was busy with his chisel upon the boulders of limestone which he had set up on either side of the entrance gate.  Once more he felt the glamour of life—­the impact of forging steel on stone was thrilling through his arms, the stone was being moulded to the direction of his exulting mind.

When he had finished with the boulders at the entrance gate the people marvelled.  The gate had a glory of its own, and yet it was connected with the scheme of the building on the hill palpably enough for even their minds to grasp it.  When the people looked upon it they forgot to make complaint of the good land that was given to ruin.  One of them had expressed the general vague sentiment when he said, “Well, the kite has got its tail.”