surely be like the ewes in a storm, ready to rush to any shelter if the gale be too fierce. Afore she'd time to answer I called out what came into my head like a swear word. 'The child be mine and I'm willin' to marry the mother!' After I'd said it I could have cut my tongue out. It was just my sweetheart's eyes full of terror and dislike as she looked upon me, as did it. But the balm of the Holy Spirit fell on me and I knew I had given she the fullest of love's tokens. I had died, in a manner of speaking, that she could live. Even if she never knew the truth something of the meanin' of the great love we'd spoken of in the shepherding days would lighten her heart. I never saw her no more after that. They carried her away, for she fainted with terror and sorrow."

Dr. Bligh blew his nose as he said almost gaily, "You're a fine sporting chap, Trewidden. So you married?"

"Iss!" said Tobias, "but it were never nothin' but tendin' of my lawful wife night as well as day. Her nerves were destroyed, they said. She upbraided me for my part in it and talked continual of the dead baby. She told the neighbors I beat her and kept her short of victuals." Tobias laughed softly. "She were right with that last sure enough. It were hard work to even make cinder tea or skim milk sops, for I lost my job. At last I came here because they said the sea salts would cure her and I happened to fall in with a vet at Pinover who boarded out extra cats and dogs he'd no room for with us. Their cries were often put down by the neighbors to me beatin' of my wife. The old story got out with more put to it and a nest of adders would have had more reasonable chance than we had of a peaceful life. She died at last of a long-named chronic pain in her head, and her death was unholy and tempestuous. I've no call for remorse, sir, for I tended she as if she'd been the other woman."

"Since then," said Dr. Bligh, "you and the animals have been the best of friends."

A light broke over the dying man's face.

'They and the holy spirits," he said. "When the world have been most darkened for me strange lights came as if from

the stars and the moon and the rainbows. It's been a great home-sickness, that's all."

Dr. Bligh bent over the dying man.

"You'll be at peace soon now, Tobias Trewidden," he said. "Give me that woman's name and address and let me tell her the truth at last."

Tobias tried to raise himself but fell back.

"The truth must surely be in her heart," he said, “and will keep till the Judgment day. The lies as 'ave festered in them as be my enemies don't count, but love never harbored a lie. She loved me true and it would only wound her to know what it's all spelt to me. She were wonderful tender, you know." Dr. Bligh bit his lips.

"It must have been a living death,” he said.

"Not with love to support me," said Tobias, and I did dearly love she." The tired eyes closed. "Don't fret she. She've been married these nine years and has four children." Dr. Bligh felt the man's pulse and whispered: "Trewidden, leave me free about this matter."

A faint smile accompanied the whispered answer:

Sir, I do trust you as if you was four-footed."

The distant bark of a dog was the only sound as Tobias Trewidden passed into a rigid peace. Dr. Bligh opened the

window wide and waited a moment. A robin and a thrush were on the little grass plot. The robin hopped on the bushes close by. It suddenly sang as the doctor closed the door and left the cottage.

A few days after Dr. Bligh, partly from curiosity and partly from a desire to do justice to the dead, went to the address Tobias had given him. He found a row of villas and "The Laurels " was in the middle. A few straggling chrysanthemums did duty for laurels and two terra cotta dogs with open mouths and lolling tongues guarded the grained door on which the doctor knocked. It was opened by a dowdy maidservant with loose red hair and a cap supported chiefly by her left ear.

"Is your mistress at home?" asked Dr. Bligh.

"Yes," said the girl. Step in."

Dr. Bligh was ushered into a little best parlor and left there

to ruminate for some time. He heard voices upstairs and much shuffling of feet. The ships of blown glass on the mantelpiece, the stuffed birds under a case and a stuffed squirrel on a stand were the largest ornaments in a room given over to knick-knacks of every sort and kind. A small piano, whose top was covered with photographs of men and women in stiff clothes who were smiling in their hearty way, stood in the corner. The door suddenly opened and the woman of Tobias Trewidden's dreams entered. She was full busted, tall, and with a double, if not treble chin. Her self-satisfied eyes looked a little puzzled as she came toward her visitor.

Forgive my intrusion," he said, "but I'm a doctor." He bowed. "Dr. Bligh of Venvin. A week ago I was at the deathbed of Tobias Trewidden." He paused. She put a plump hand to her forehead. He noticed how deeply the wedding ring was embedded in her flesh.

"I thought you would like to know his end," said Dr. Bligh. A giggle was the answer.

"This is The Laurels," she said, "and I'm Mrs. Albert Tremayne."

Dr. Bligh coughed.

"I know," he said. Once, I believe, you were to have married Tobias Trewidden."

She paled and her plump hand clasped the other in agitation. "I'd fair forgotten for the moment," she said anxiously. "Bert, that's my husband, can't abide any of that mentioned. He says he must have been a blackguard from birth and he don't even allow me to speak of him, that's why "-she spoke apologetically-"I didn't fall on the name all at once."

"Did it never strike you," asked Dr. Bligh, "that he was faithful in spirit to you and innocent of all the crimes laid to his charge?

The woman laughed.

"Go on," she said, familiarly. "It was all proved. And even if it wasn't it was a poor enough job anyway. When Ma and me come to look into things we found he'd saved nothin' at all and he'd always have been a worrit. His face spelt dreaminess and crotchetiness. 'Mary, my Handsome,' Ma have said

to me many a time, 'it's just been God's Providence that you've wedded a man as can drive a hard bargain and who doesn't grumble at his victuals.' The woman tossed her head and smiled. "Bert be some dapper, I can tell you, and the four children takes after him."

Her face beamed with pride.

"He's saved a pile already besides bein' insured in four clubs. He can wear a gold watch chain with the best and he's a scholard, too."

"Listen," said Dr. Bligh, leaning forward and looking keenly at Mrs. Tremayne. "Tobias Trewidden was a fine scholar, too!"

She tossed her head.

"As far as I can remember," she said, " he never even wrote me a single love letter. Bert began, I own, with ruled lines, but he ended like a gentleman born and never made use of crosses for kisses. Tobias was dust and ashes by the side of Bert."

ing like that when I saw Trewidden last. Just flame-all flame." He raised his hat as he went out of the little garden. Mrs. Tremayne hurriedly called her maid into the parlor and the two peered behind the long muslin curtains.

Sarah," she said, "that surely must be a madman, like one I knew years ago. Don't tell Master he've been here and if he comes again say I'm dead and buried."

It might have been the truth judging by the open mouth of the horrified drudge.

AT THE FLOWING OF THE TIDE*

EDWARD J. O'BRIEN

"Wise hearts are full of ashes: better flame!"

ARTHUR UPSON

[Prefatory Note: Art, when it comes into creative contact with a dream which is true, most often tends to project its images in the form of concentric and ever-widening circles, tokening in their outward journey the aspirations of the soul; and I believe that if we are permitted to turn these aspirations intensely inward, as Raftery was permitted to do for the many wandering years of his life, we shall come at last through the narrowing borders of sorrow to the deep-burning core of beauty which is timeless in its joy. The essence of such a journey is sameness, expressing itself in a tidal recurrence of ebb and flow, the stress of which is to be reflected in the cadence of the phrase.

Now since the moment of life in which this mystery exists is poised between memory and desire, it lives outside the bounds of time and space, when it lives at all, in a land where there is no shadow and no history, and where every beautiful dream comes true. In life, tradition tells us that Raftery did not find happiness, and so I have violated history to win for him the fruit of his desire. Whether the poet wove through the years this golden nest for his love I cannot tell, nor whether the beauty of Mary Hynes lived only in his song. But this I know, that the symbol of beauty for which she lives to-day in the soul of Ireland has been woven into just such a golden nest by many wanderers since Raftery died, and it is this spiritual truth only that I wish to claim for my dream.

I am gratefully indebted to Lady Gregory and Dr. Douglas Hyde for their English renderings of Raftery's two songs.]

* All rights reserved by the author, including rights of production, translation and adaptation.