“I see,” said Jane. “And, of course, whatever you were, you’d naturally want to be sure that it was going to be worth your while. I mean you’d want to get something out of it?” She waited a moment, and then went on, with a complete change of voice and manner, “What are you going to get out of this?” She spoke with the utmost gravity. “If you don’t know, I can tell you. Disaster—at best a long term of imprisonment, at the worst death, the sort of death one doesn’t care about having in one’s family. The question is, is it worth it? You’re not in the least mad. You’re not a fanatic either. You are a perfectly sane and reasonable person, and you know that what I’m saying is the sane and reasonable truth. Isn’t it?” “Faith, and wasn’t I saying so to Ember myself,” said Molloy in gloomy agreement. “We’ve got money enough, and we can live on it retired, so to speak. The life’s all very well when you’re young, but a man of my age isn’t just so keen on taking chances as he was, and that’s the truth. Then there’s the old times come over him, and he thinks of the place where he was born, and he thinks, maybe, he’d like to see it again. Why, with the money I’ve got,” said Mr. Molloy, “it’s a fine house I could have in Galway, and a car, and a horse or two. That’s what I’d like.” Jane saw his face light up. “It’s a fine town Galway,” he said, “and there are people I’d like to see there, and places too. The people would be changed, I’m thinking, but not the places. I’d like well enough to go up the river past Menlough again. It’s the grand woods there are there, and then there’s a place where you’d see nothing but reeds, and no way at all for a boat. But let you push through the reeds and a way there is, and you come out to the grey open water and the country round it just as bare as if you’d taken sand-paper to it. They used to say that the water went down to hell, but I’m not saying that I believe it; but deep it is, for no one’s ever touched the bottom. Many’s the stone I’ve dropped in there, and wakened in the night to wonder if it was still sinking; and many’s the time I’ve played truant, and gone there fishing for the great pike that they said was in it. Hundreds of years old he is by the tales, and once I could swear I saw him, only maybe it was only a cloud that was passing overhead. What I saw was just a grey shadow, and all at once it come over me that I should be getting back to my work. I was black frightened, that’s the truth, but I couldn’t tell you why.”