‘Wild weather! God save all mariners upon the sea, far and near, this night, amen!’ muttered old Durane from his own corner behind the door, the one most out of the draught, and partially protected also by the _corrag_, or screen of dry branches of furze and alder. He was only half awake, but the formula was so familiar that it rose unbidden to his lips even in his sleep. ‘True to you, father, the same, amen!’ dutifully responded his son, as he skipped back across the cabin and into his own lair, pulling the great coat which was his chief covering by night as well as by day close up to his chin. ‘Yerra! you’re the nice pair, the two of you, talking and carrying on in the black heart of the night as if it was the broad middle of the day!’ his wife exclaimed angrily. ‘And I that have not had one taste of sleep yet, and my two arms broke with holding up the child! I take the holy Mother of God to witness that ’tis enough to make any woman curse the hour she was born, let alone the day she ever laid her two eyes upon such a man--not to say he is a man at all, for he isn’t, nor hasn’t the spirit nor the courage nor the sense of a man, only clever at putting upon one that’s too soft and easy ever to say a ‘no’ to him! Yerra! give him his bit and his sup and his bed, and his easy life, and ’tis all he wants. _Wurrah deelish! Wurrah deelish!_ ’tis the queer husband _I_ have, anyhow! God, He knows that, so He does!’ To all this, Pete the submissive made no reply, only rolled himself up into a ball, trying to get his feet out of the piercing draught, a performance which, despite the shortness of his legs, he utterly failed to accomplish. By degrees the scolding voice died away for mere lack of anything to feed upon; the baby, too, slept; little red-headed Norah crept closer and closer to her brother, pushing him against another sister who lay just beyond, till the three became an indistinguishable mass of small mottled arms and legs. The old man had relapsed into the placid dreamless slumbers of old age. Up in the chicken-loft poor, much-abused Juggy Kelly lay, her troubles and stupidities alike forgotten, one fat arm, utterly bare of covering, hanging outside the thin coverlet, her mouth wide open, and deep snores heaving her capacious chest.