“I could tell ye stories about them all, Gypo,” she cried, waving her arm wildly in Gypo’s direction. “I could tell ye, so I could, but what’s the use of tellin’? Wha’? What’s the use of anythin’? An’ Fr. Conroy refused to give me absolution. Well, he can go to hell. I can get along without his absolution. I’m not afraid o’ hell. Oh, Mother o’ Mercy!” she cried, suddenly crossing herself; “what have I said? What——” “Ha! Cross yersel’, cross yersel’,” croaked Louisa Cummins. “But it’s no good to ye. Down ye’ll go. Down ye’ll go. Ha, ha, ha!” “There’s a curse on me family, Louisa, since me second cousin the Duchess of . . . of . . . of . . . where is that place she was Duchess of? . . . I forget it, although I was there often with me mother. It’s somewhere out be Killiney. Well, she put a curse on me family anyway. She used to have thirteen monkeys sittin’ at the breakfast table with her.” “Yer a liar, yer a liar,” cried the old woman in a sudden fury. “She couldn’t have thirteen monkeys. She couldn’t have thirteen. It’s them drugs yer takin’ that’s gone to yer head. Thirteen! Foo!” Gypo mumbled something in a tremendous whisper. Both women looked at him. His lips were moving, but the words were unintelligible. His massive chest heaved up to an enormous extent and collapsed again slowly, with a great outrush of breath from the nostrils. His tawny face stood out impassively in the glimmer of the firelight. It looked sorrowful and oppressed. Sleep, sleep, sleep. He was wafted away by heavy gusts of sleep, to the thunderous music of fantastic nightmares. Primeval memories assumed form in the clouds of sleep that pressed down about him. They assumed form and shape, the shape of the beings that pursued him. Sleep, sleep, sleep. His strength was becoming unbound, dissolved in sleep, loosened out and swaying limply on vapours of sleep. Sleep, sleep, sleep. “D’ye know what I’m goin’ to tell ye, Louisa?” continued Katie in a low, hushed voice. “When I’m dead they’re goin’ to canonize me. Then I’ll have a holy well out on the Malahide Road, an’ I’ll put a spell on everybody I don’t like, an’ make them get up in the middle o’ the night, an’ walk out barefoot to the well, to drink three cupfuls o’ the holy water. An’ never knowin’ that I’ll have it poisoned. This is a queer world, Louisa, an’ ye’ll soon be out of it, ’cos yer——” “Sorra a fear o’ me,” croaked the old woman. “I’ll dance on yer grave. Ye little rip o’ divilment. Yer not the first nor the fifth that has come into me house this ten years an’ gone the same road. No yer not. An’ ye won’t be the last. Oho! Ye all got pretty faces. Ye all get the fine strong men to kiss ye. But old, dirty-faced Louisa Cummins ’ll dance on yer graves. She dances on yer graves. So she does. Now what are ye doin’ with him? Are ye puttin’ yer evil spell on him? Informer an’ all that he is, I’ll not let ye put yer evil spell on him. I’ll not let ye do that. Go away from the bed.”