“Bhoy, ye are soaked clane through! Will ye have some duds ov mine? No, then? Bedad, there’s a betther tu ahl things, will ye bhut foind ut, Ormond. Sit ye down now, an’ talk ut out. Whose blame is ut, then?”
Ormond answered questions wearily and without elaboration. He sat with his elbows on his knees, propping his chin on his hands, and staring at the fire. It was a plain face at best, weather-marked and lined. But all the endurance and the alert decision were gone out of it.
“I’m tired,” he said. “Tired! Tired! There isn’t much good in anything after all. A man puts the best of himself into a thing, and—do you know what he feels like when he’s told that his best isn’t worth a tinker’s curse?”
“Ut is only a man’s own sowl can tell him that.”
“Is it? Then my soul has told me, I suppose. But Kiliat said it first.”
When a man has had seven years of his life—and near thirty years of experience before that—assessed at rather less than nothing, there are two dangers that lie under his feet. Father Denis knew and faced them both, using the straight unflinching speech that alone could meet a straight man’s needs. And the thunder cannoned round the hills, and the lightning snickered by the window as Argyle cowered under the anger of a full-waked storm.
