‘Arrah, Grania child, don’t be destroying yourself ... breaking the heart in your body with trying to do what you ... can’t do. Sure ’tis killing yourself I see you are! The fog ... yes, I know ... Molly Muldoon told me! Arrah, can’t I see with my own eyes how the house is filled with it ... in at all the cracks and down the chimney! Saints in glory, ’tis terrible wicked-looking weather, and how could Father Tom come out such an evening if you did get to ... Aranmore itself?’ She paused, breathless and panting. ‘The Holy Mother will stand between me and ... and all harm,’ she then whispered painfully. ‘She’ll know it wasn’t my ... fault. She’ll know ’twas the fog ... and the men afeard ... as ... who could blame them? She’ll speak the word for me ... I know she will ... she’ll ... speak ... the ... word for me.’ Again she paused. Suddenly her eyes turned upon Grania. ‘Arrah, my bird, don’t be fretting yourself,’ she murmured tenderly. ‘Don’t I know you would have got him for me if you could?’ Then, with another great effort, ‘Take heart, my bird, take heart; ’tisn’t long I’ll be in it, you know, to be disappointed, and whether or not--sure I can bear it, honey sweet; I can bear it, I tell you; bear it ... easy.’ But a fresh impulse had now seized hold of Grania. Her momentary apathy was gone. A new determination was setting her eyes ablaze. ‘You _shall_ have him, Honor, and he _shall_ come to you, if I have to bring him swimming through the water after me, so he shall,’ she exclaimed fiercely. ‘Don’t be afraid, dear; keep up your poor heart a little, a very little longer, sister darling, and he’ll be with you.’ She kissed her hastily, and dashed out of the door again, turning this time in the direction of the O’Shaughnessys’ cabin. Maybe Teige would be back, after all. Most probably, almost certainly, he would be back by this time. Anyhow, with Teige or without Teige, to Aranmore and to Father Tom that night somehow or other she would get. CHAPTER V She hurried desperately on over the flagging, heedless of the cracks, but keeping always upon the same level which must in time, she knew, bring her to the shore exactly opposite the O’Shaughnessys’ cabin. The fog was too thick now to dream of keeping to any path, but the levels on Inishmaan are always the same, so that by following any one of them you are sure to reach a given point sooner or later. From time to time she came to some unusually wide fissure, and had to scramble across as best she could, the edges feeling like ice under her feet, or like some sort of half-melted substance, such as wax or spermaceti. The short thick thorn bushes growing out of the rocks brushed her ankles, and now and then she found herself suddenly out upon the cliff-like edge of the step, and had to work her way back to where the terrace broadened, and the walking was comparatively safe.