The younger woman put a chair before the fire and invited me to sit there. While I sat before the fire I could hear the quick but quiet step of her feet about the kitchen, the little swish of her garments. Presently she drew near to the fire and held out a glass. It contained what looked like discoloured water, very like the water in the shallow river with the shingly bottom. I must have expressed some little surprise, even doubt, in my face, for she held the glass closer, as if reassuring me. There was something that inspired confidence in her manner. I took the glass and sipped the liquid. It left a half-burned, peaty taste in the mouth, and somehow smacked very native in its flavour. I thought of the hills, the lonely bushes, the slow movement of the chocolate-coloured river, the men with the primitive dark faces under the broad-brimmed hats, their mysterious, even dramatic way of grouping themselves around the lighted house. The peaty liquid seemed a brew out of the same atmosphere. I knew it was poteen. And in a moment I felt it coursing through my body, warming my blood. The young woman stood by the fire, half in shadow, half in the yellow flame of the turf fire, her attitude quiet but tense, very alert for any movement in the sick room. The door of the room stood slightly open, and the low murmur of the Friar's voice reciting a prayer in Latin could be heard. The young woman sighed, her bosom rising and falling in a quick breath of pain. Then she made the sign of the Cross. "My brother is very low," she said, sitting down by the fire after a time. Her eyes were upon the fire. Her face was less hard than the faces I had seen on the hills. She looked good-natured. "Is he long ill?" "This long while. But to look at him you would conceit he was as sound as a trout. First he was moody, moping about the place, and no way wishful for company. Hours he would spend below at the butt of the meadow, nearby the water, sitting under the thorn bush and he playing upon the fideóg. Then he began to lose the use of his limbs, and crying he used to be within in the room. Some of the people who have knowledge say he is lying under a certain influence. He cannot speak now. The holy Friar will know what is best to be done." When the Friar came out of the room he was divesting himself of the embroidered stole he had put over his shoulders. The white-capped old woman had excitement in her face as she followed him. "Kevin spoke," she said to the other. "He looked up at the blessed man and he made an offer to cross himself. I could not hear the words he was speaking, that soft they come from his lips." "Kevin will live," said the younger woman, catching some of the excitement of her mother. She stood tensely, drawn up near the fire, gazing vacantly but intently across the kitchen, as if she would will it so passionately that Kevin should live that he would live. She moved suddenly, swiftly, noiselessly across the floor and disappeared into the room.