Danny Quin was to be buried that afternoon. It was the third day of the wake, and his house, always dependent for light on its open door, was dark with the crowd of people inside and outside the threshold. In the corner of the kitchen, behind the brute obstruction of human beings, awkward and inert with stale drink, half-a-dozen candles made a garish night-time round the dead man. He lay with the yellow flicker on his steadfast face, a presence of extraordinary refinement and soulful trance among his late fellows. He was an old man, in his lifetime a driver of hard bargains, a teller of old tales in which his own sagacity, uprightness, and power of repartee were unflinchingly set forth. Here his super-natural pallor and tranquil lips spoke of death and resurrection to an audience whose greatest care was to accept in a seemly and gloomy manner as many glasses of whisky as were offered to them. His wife’s eyes were hollow and glazed from want of sleep; she stood in her Sunday gown and white cap, receiving condolences without a tear, and with the invariable reply, “Sure it couldn’t be helped.” She hardly knew whether it were night or day, or how often the evening light in the doorway had turned to blackness, and the blackness quickened to cold blue-grey dawn since they had pulled the feather-bed from under her husband in order that he might, in accordance with ancient custom, breathe his last on the mattress. Her two married daughters dispensed the whisky and the punch at a table near the door; in the bed-room behind the kitchen the more honourable visitors sat with their hats on, and became sapiently and solemnly tipsy. The room was set out for company; a brand new counterpane covered the mountainous bed, a naked mahogany table stood in the centre, bearing a black bottle, a loaf of bread, and a two-pound lump of butter on a plate. A dazzling three-and-sixpenny hearthrug was placed on the earthen floor in front of a fire-place without a grate. “I had not the pleasure of the--the--the dead gentleman’s acquaintance,” said one of the visitors, a stout and greasy public-house keeper, who had driven over to the entertainment with a mutual friend, from a town twelve miles away. “But I undherstand he was greatly respected in this neighbourhood, and all his family the same.” The eyes of the speaker were of a moist redness befitting the occasion; his voice had a husky roll in it, and the raw and tepid reek of bad whisky accompanied the eulogy. “As for respect,” rejoined the mutual friend, addressing the hearthrug with slow determination, “he had it, the Lord have mercy on him, and more than he’d ax of it. Ye needn’t be talking of respect.”