A trick had been played him, like some tricks the sea and sun play. Afar off he had seen an island like an appointed dancing place, like the Green of Fiddlers, and he had asked to be put ashore there, to live and be a permanent citizen. And when he was landed, he found that his dancing place was only a barren rock where the seagulls mourned. Past the glamour of the sun and sea mists, there were only cold, searching winds and dank stone.... But he came of a race that are born men, breed men, and kill men. Crying never patched a hole in a brogue, and a man who's been fooled is no admirable figure, at least to Antrim men. So shut your mouth! When a master loses a ship he gets no other. That is the inexorable rule of the sea. So when a man wrecks his life.... What he had decided was this: go ahead. He had been fooled; pay the forfeit. Retreat into his own heart, and go ahead. Thirty, forty years.... He had himself to blame. And it wasn't as if he had to live in the house all the time; he had only to come back there. All that was killed was his heart. His frame was still stolid, his eye clear.... There would be little oases here and there, some great record of a voyage broken, friends bravely made, a kiss now and then, freely, gallantly given.... But ... go ahead! And then suddenly death had come, and the scheme of life was broken, like a piece from the end of a stick. Death he had seen before, but never so close to him. A good man had died and he had said: "God! there's a pity!" though why he didn't know. And a young girl might die, and it would seem like a tragedy in a play. And a child would die, and he would feel hurt and say, "Yon's cruelty, yon!" And death had seemed to be an ultimate word. But never before now had he seen the ramifications of death. Life had seemed to him to be a straight line, and suddenly he was inspired to the knowledge that it was a design, a pattern, a scheme.... And now he felt it was only a tool, like a knife, or scissors, in the hands of what?... What? Destiny?... or what?... Section 11 "_A chraoibhin aoibhinn!_ O pleasant little branch, is there regard in you for the last words of the dead woman?" The old _cailleach_ had come again to ruffle the grave silence about young Shane in the haggard. "Was it--was it anything for me?" "And whom would it be for, _acushla veg?_ Sure the love of her heart you were, the white love of her heart. You and me she was thinking of, her old mother that saw a power of trouble. Ill-treated I was by Sergeant Dolan, who fought old Bonaparte in the foreign wars, and took to drinking in the dreadful days of peace. Harsh my life was, and peaceful should my end be, the like of a day that does be rainy, and turns fine at evening-time. And that was what she wanted, _a charaid bhig_, little friend o' me." "What now?"