As she strode along the Thin Woman lapsed again to her anger, and became so distant in her aspect that the children could get no companionship from her; so, after a while, they ceased to consider her at all and addressed themselves to their play. They danced before and behind and around her. They ran and doubled, shouted and laughed and sang. Sometimes they pretended they were husband and wife, and then they plodded quietly side by side, making wise, occasional remarks on the weather, or the condition of their health, or the state of the fields of rye. Sometimes one was a horse and the other was a driver, and then they stamped along the road with loud, fierce snortings and louder and fiercer commands. At another moment one was a cow being driven with great difficulty to market by a driver whose temper had given way hours before; or they both became goats and with their heads jammed together they pushed and squealed viciously; and these changes lapsed into one another so easily that at no moment were they unoccupied. But as the day wore on to evening the immense surrounding quietude began to weigh heavily upon them. Saving for their own shrill voices there was no sound, and this unending, wide silence at last commanded them to a corresponding quietness. Little by little they ceased their play. The scamper became a trot, each run was more and more curtailed in its length, the race back became swifter than the run forth, and, shortly, they were pacing soberly enough one on either side of the Thin Woman sending back and forth a few quiet sentences. Soon even these sentences trailed away into the vast surrounding stillness. Then Brigid Beg clutched the Thin Woman’s right hand, and not long after Seumas gently clasped her left hand, and these mute appeals for protection and comfort again released her from the valleys of fury through which she had been so fiercely careering. As they went gently along they saw a cow lying in a field, and, seeing this animal, the Thin Woman stopped thoughtfully. “Everything,” said she, “belongs to the wayfarer,” and she crossed into the field and milked the cow into a vessel which she had. “I wonder,” said Seumas, “who owns that cow.” “Maybe,” said Brigid Beg, “nobody owns her at all.” “The cow owns herself,” said the Thin Woman, “for nobody can own a thing that is alive. I am sure she gives her milk to us with great goodwill, for we are modest, temperate people without greed or pretension.”