Soon afterwards we passed into a little village, and he turned down a lane and left me.  It was not long, however, till another old man that I could see a few paces ahead stopped and waited for me, as is the custom of the place.

‘I’ve been down in Kilpeddar buying a scythe-stone,’ he began, when I came up to him, ’and indeed Kilpeddar is a dear place, for it’s three-pence they charged me for it; but I suppose there must be a profit from every trade, and we must all live and let live.’

When we had talked a little more I asked him if he had been often in Dublin.

‘I was living in Dublin near ten years,’ he said; ’and indeed I don’t know what way I lived that length in it, for there is no place with smells like the city of Dublin.  One time I went up with my wife into those lanes where they sell old clothing, Hanover Lane and Plunket’s Lane, and when my wife—­she’s dead now, God forgive her!—­when my wife smelt the dirty air she put her apron up to her nose, and, “For the love of God,” says she, “get me away out of this place.”  And now may I ask if it’s from there you are yourself, for I think by your speaking it wasn’t in these parts you were reared?’

I told him I was born in Dublin, but that I had travelled afterwards and been in Paris and Rome, and seen the Pope Leo XIII.

‘And will you tell me,’ he said, ’is it true that anyone at all can see the Pope?’

I described the festivals in the Vatican, and how I had seen the Pope carried through long halls on a sort of throne.  ‘Well, now,’ he said, ’can you tell me who was the first Pope that sat upon that throne?’

I hesitated for a moment, and he went on: 

’I’m only a poor, ignorant man, but I can tell you that myself if you don’t know it, with all your travels.  Saint Peter was the first Pope, and he was crucified with his head down, and since that time there have been Popes upon the throne of Rome.’

Then he began telling me about himself.

‘I was twice a married man,’ he said.  ’My first wife died at her second child, and then I reared it up till it was as tall as myself—­a girl it was—­and she went off and got married and left me.  After that I was married a second time to an aged woman, and she lived with me ten year; and then she died herself.  There is nothing I can make now but tea, and tea is killing me; and I’m living alone, in a little hut beyond, where four baronies, four parishes, and four townlands meet.’

By this time we had reached the village inn, where I was lodging for the night; so I stood him a drink, and he went on to his cottage along a narrow pathway through the bogs.

The People of the Glens