sails had dropped under the horizon.  Then Costello turned homeward, his life gaping before him, and walked all day, coming in the early evening to the road that went from near Lough Gara to the southern edge of Lough Cay.  Here he overtook a great crowd of peasants and farmers, who were walking very slowly after two priests and a group of well-dressed persons, certain of whom were carrying a coffin.  He stopped an old man and asked whose burying it was and whose people they were, and the old man answered:  ’It is the burying of Oona, Dermott’s daughter, and we are the Namaras and the Dermotts and their following, and you are Tumaus Costello who murdered her.’

Costello went on towards the head of the procession, passing men who looked at him with fierce eyes and only vaguely understanding what he had heard, for now that he had lost the understanding that belongs to good health, it seemed impossible that a gentleness and a beauty which had been so long the world’s heart could pass away.  Presently he stopped and asked again whose burying it was, and a man answered:  ’We are carrying Dermott’s daughter Winny whom you murdered, to be buried in the island of the Holy Trinity,’ and the man stooped and picked up a stone and cast it at Costello, striking him on the cheek and making the blood flow out over his face.  Costello went on scarcely feeling the blow, and coming to those about the coffin, shouldered his way into the midst of them, and laying his hand upon the coffin, asked in a loud voice:  ‘Who is in this coffin?’

The three Old Dermotts from the Ox Mountains caught up stones and bid those about them do the same; and he was driven from the road, covered with wounds, and but for the priests would surely have been killed.

When the procession had passed on, Costello began to follow again, and saw from a distance the coffin laid upon a large boat, and those about it get into other boats, and the boats move slowly over the water to Insula Trinitatis; and after a time he saw the boats return and their passengers mingle with the crowd upon the bank, and all disperse by many roads and boreens.  It seemed to him that Winny was somewhere on the island smiling gently as of old, and when all had gone he swam in the way the boats had been rowed and found the new-made grave beside the ruined Abbey of the Holy Trinity, and threw himself upon it, calling to Oona to come to him.  Above him the square ivy leaves trembled, and all about him white moths moved over white flowers, and sweet odours drifted through the dim air.

He lay there all that night and through the day after, from time to time calling her to come to him, but when the third night came he had forgotten, worn out with hunger and sorrow, that her body lay in the earth beneath; but only knew she was somewhere near and would not come to him.