Stories of Red Hanrahan | Page 5

the Greeks.
He took the Virgil out of the big pocket of his coat, but the cover was
very black and swollen with the wet, and the page when he opened it
was very yellow, but that was no great matter, for he looked at it like a
man that had never learned to read. Some young man that was there
began to laugh at him then, and to ask why did he carry so heavy a
book with him when he was not able to read it.
It vexed Hanrahan to hear that, and he put the Virgil back in his pocket
and asked if they had a pack of cards among them, for cards were better
than books. When they brought out the cards he took them and began to
shuffle them, and while he was shuffling them something seemed to
come into his mind, and he put his hand to his face like one that is
trying to remember, and he said: 'Was I ever here before, or where was
I on a night like this?' and then of a sudden he stood up and let the
cards fall to the floor, and he said, 'Who was it brought me a message
from Mary Lavelle?'
'We never saw you before now, and we never heard of Mary Lavelle,'
said the man of the house. 'And who is she,' he said, 'and what is it you
are talking about?'
'It was this night a year ago, I was in a barn, and there were men
playing cards, and there was money on the table, they were pushing it
from one to another here and there--and I got a message, and I was
going out of the door to look for my sweetheart that wanted me, Mary
Lavelle.' And then Hanrahan called out very loud: 'Where have I been
since then? Where was I for the whole year?'
'It is hard to say where you might have been in that time,' said the
oldest of the men, 'or what part of the world you may have travelled;
and it is like enough you have the dust of many roads on your feet; for
there are many go wandering and forgetting like that,' he said, 'when
once they have been given the touch.'
'That is true,' said another of the men. 'I knew a woman went wandering
like that through the length of seven years; she came back after, and she

told her friends she had often been glad enough to eat the food that was
put in the pig's trough. And it is best for you to go to the priest now,' he
said, 'and let him take off you whatever may have been put upon you.'
'It is to my sweetheart I will go, to Mary Lavelle,' said Hanrahan; 'it is
too long I have delayed, how do I know what might have happened her
in the length of a year?'
He was going out of the door then, but they all told him it was best for
him to stop the night, and to get strength for the journey; and indeed he
wanted that, for he was very weak, and when they gave him food he eat
it like a man that had never seen food before, and one of them said, 'He
is eating as if he had trodden on the hungry grass.' It was in the white
light of the morning he set out, and the time seemed long to him till he
could get to Mary Lavelle's house. But when he came to it, he found the
door broken, and the thatch dropping from the roof, and no living
person to be seen. And when he asked the neighbours what had
happened her, all they could say was that she had been put out of the
house, and had married some labouring man, and they had gone
looking for work to London or Liverpool or some big place. And
whether she found a worse place or a better he never knew, but anyway
he never met with her or with news of her again.

THE TWISTING OF THE ROPE.
Hanrahan was walking the roads one time near Kinvara at the fall of
day, and he heard the sound of a fiddle from a house a little way off the
roadside. He turned up the path to it, for he never had the habit of
passing by any place where there was music or dancing or good
company, without going in. The man of the house was standing at the
door, and when Hanrahan came near he knew him and he said: 'A
welcome before you, Hanrahan, you have been lost to us this long
time.' But the woman of the house came to the