They told me that an evicting party is coming to the island tomorrow morning, and gave me a long account of what they make and spend in a year and of their trouble with the rent.

‘The rent is hard enough for a poor man,’ said one of them, ’but this time we didn’t pay, and they’re after serving processes on every one of us.  A man will have to pay his rent now, and a power of money with it for the process, and I’m thinking the agent will have money enough out of them processes to pay for his servant-girl and his man all the year.’

I asked afterwards who the island belonged to.

‘Bedad,’ they said, ’we’ve always heard it belonged to Miss—­and she is dead.’

When the sun passed like a lozenge of gold flame into the sea the cold became intense.  Then the men began to talk among themselves, and losing the thread, I lay half in a dream looking at the pale oily sea about us, and the low cliffs of the island sloping up past the village with its wreath of smoke to the outline of Dun Conor.

Old Pat was in the house when I arrived, and he told a long story after supper:—­

There was once a widow living among the woods, and her only son living along with her.  He went out every morning through the trees to get sticks, and one day as he was lying on the ground he saw a swarm of flies flying over what the cow leaves behind her.  He took up his sickle and hit one blow at them, and hit that hard he left no single one of them living.

That evening he said to his mother that it was time he was going out into the world to seek his fortune, for he was able to destroy a whole swarm of flies at one blow, and he asked her to make him three cakes the way he might take them with him in the morning.

He started the next day a while after the dawn, with his three cakes in his wallet, and he ate one of them near ten o’clock.

He got hungry again by midday and ate the second, and when night was coming on him he ate the third.  After that he met a man on the road who asked him where he was going.

‘I’m looking for some place where I can work for my living,’ said the young man.

‘Come with me,’ said the other man, ’and sleep to-night in the barn, and I’ll give you work to-morrow to see what you’re able for.’

The next morning the farmer brought him out and showed him his cows and told him to take them out to graze on the hills, and to keep good watch that no one should come near them to milk them.  The young man drove out the cows into the fields, and when the heat of the day came on he lay down on his back and looked up into the sky.  A while after he saw a black spot in the north-west, and it grew larger and nearer till he saw a great giant coming towards him.

He got up on his feet and he caught the giant round the legs with his two arms, and he drove him down into the hard ground above his ankles, the way he was not able to free himself.  Then the giant told him to do him no hurt, and gave him his magic rod, and told him to strike on the rock, and he would find his beautiful black horse, and his sword, and his fine suit.