Part II

THE evening before I returned to the west I wrote to Michael--who
had left the islands to earn his living on the mainland--to tell him
that I would call at the house where he lodged the next morning,
which was a Sunday.

A young girl with fine western features, and little English, came
out when I knocked at the door. She seemed to have heard all about
me, and was so filled with the importance of her message that she
could hardly speak it intelligibly.

'She got your letter,' she said, confusing the pronouns, as is often
done in the west, 'she is gone to Mass, and she'll be in the square
after that. Let your honour go now and sit in the square, and Michael
will find you.'

As I was returning up the main street I met Michael wandering down
to meet me, as he had got tired of waiting.

He seemed to have grown a powerful man since I had seen him, and was
now dressed in the heavy brown flannels of the Connaught labourer.
After a little talk we turned back together and went out on the
sandhills above the town. Meeting him here a little beyond the
threshold of my hotel I was singularly struck with the refinement of
his nature, which has hardly been influenced by his new life, and
the townsmen and sailors he has met with.

'I do often come outside the town on Sunday,' he said while we were
talking, 'for what is there to do in a town in the middle of all the
people when you are not at your work?'

A little later another Irish-speaking labourer--a friend of
Michael's--joined us, and we lay for hours talking and arguing on
the grass. The day was unbearably sultry, and the sand and the sea
near us were crowded with half-naked women, but neither of the young
men seemed to be aware of their presence. Before we went back to the
town a man came out to ring a young horse on the sand close to where
we were lying, and then the interest of my companions was intense.

Late in the evening I met Michael again, and we wandered round the
bay, which was still filled with bathing women, until it was quite
dark, I shall not see him again before my return from the islands,
as he is busy to-morrow, and on Tuesday I go out with the steamer.

I returned to the middle island this morning, in the steamer to
Kilronan, and on here in a curagh that had gone over with salt fish.
As I came up from the slip the doorways in the village filled with
women and children, and several came down on the roadway to shake
hands and bid me a thousand welcomes.

Old Pat Dirane is dead, and several of my friends have gone to
America; that is all the news they have to give me after an absence
of many months.

When I arrived at the cottage I was welcomed by the old people, and
great excitement was made