Almost before the train stopped I saw Father Dan, with his coat collar turned up, waiting for me on the platform.  I could see that he was greatly moved at the sight of me, but was trying hard to maintain his composure.

“Now don’t worry, my child, don’t worry,” he said.  “It will be all ri. . . .  But how well you are looking!  And how you have grown!  And how glad your poor mother will be to see you!”

I tried to ask how she was.  “Is she . . .”

“Yes, thank God, she’s alive, and while there’s life there’s hope.”

We travelled straight through without stopping and arrived at Blackwater at seven the same evening.  There we took train, for railways were running in Ellan now, and down the sweet valleys that used to be green with grass, and through the little crofts that used to be red with fuchsia, there was a long raw welt of upturned earth.

At the station of our village my father’s carriage was waiting for us and a strange footman shrugged his shoulders in answer to some whispered question of Father Dan’s, and from that I gathered that my mother’s condition was unchanged.

We reached home at dusk, just as somebody was lighting a line of new electric lamps that had been set up in the drive to show the way for the carriage under the chestnuts in which the rooks used to build and caw.

I knew the turn of the path from which the house could be first seen, and I looked for it, remembering the last glimpse I had of my mother at her window.  Father Dan looked, too, but for another reason—­to see if the blinds were down.

Aunt Bridget was in the hall, and when Father Dan, who had grown more and more excited as we approached the end of our journey, asked how my mother was now, poor thing, she answered: 

“Worse; distinctly worse; past recognising anybody; so all this trouble and expense has been wasted.”

As she had barely recognised me I ran upstairs with a timid and quiet step and without waiting to take off my outer clothes made my way to my mother’s bedroom.

I remember the heavy atmosphere of the room as I opened the door.  I remember the sense I had of its being lower and smaller than I thought.  I remember the black four-foot bedstead with the rosary hanging on a brass nail at the pillow end.  I remember my little cot which still stood in the same place and contained some of the clothes I had worn as a child, and even some of the toys I had played with.

A strange woman, in the costume of a nurse, turned to look at me as I entered, but I did not at first see my mother, and when at length I did see her, with her eyes closed, she looked so white and small as to be almost hidden in the big white bed.

Presently Father Dan came in, followed by Doctor Conrad and Aunt Bridget, and finally my father, who was in his shirt sleeves and had a pen in his ear, I remember.

Then Father Dan, who was trembling very much, took me by the hand and led me to my mother’s side, where stooping over her, and making his voice very low, yet speaking as one who was calling into a long tunnel, he said: