the map, I think of old Master Diver and the days I spent under him in the little Glenmornan schoolhouse.

CHAPTER IV THE GREAT SILENCE

I was nearly twelve years old when Dan, my youngest brother, died. It was in the middle of winter, and he was building a snow-man in front of the half-door when he suddenly complained of a pain in his throat. Mother put him to bed and gave him a drink of hot milk. She did not send for the doctor because there was no money in the house to pay the bill. Dan lay in bed all the evening and many of the neighbours came in to see him. Towards midnight I was sent to bed, but before going I heard my father ask mother if she thought that Dan would live till morning. I could not sleep, but kept turning over in the bed and praying to the Blessed Virgin to save my little brother. The new moon, sharp as a scythe, was peeping through the window of my room when my mother came to my bed and told me to rise and kiss Dan for the last time. She turned her face away as she spoke, and I knew that she was weeping. My brother was lying on the bed, gazing up at the ceiling with wide-staring eyes. A crimson flush was on his face and his breath pained him. I bent down and pressed his cheek. I was afraid, and the kiss made my lips burn like fire. The three of us then stood together and my father shook the holy water all over the room. All at once Dan sat up in the bed and gripped a tight hold of the blankets. I wanted to run out of the room but my mother would not let me.

"Are ye wantin' anything?" asked my father, bending over the bed, but there was no answer. My brother fell back on the bed and his face got very white.

"Poor Dan is no more," said my father, the tears coming out of his eyes. 'Twas the first time I ever saw him weeping, and I thought it very strange. My mother went to the window and opened it in order to let the soul of my brother go away to heaven.

"It is all in the hands of God," she said. "He is only taking back what He sent us."

There was silence in the room for a long while. My father and mother wept, and I was afraid of something which was beyond my understanding.

"Will Dan ever come back again?" I asked.

"Hush, dearie!" said my mother.

"It will take a lot of money to bury the poor boy," said my father. "It costs a good penny to rear one, but it's a bad job when one is taken away."

I had once seen an old woman buried—"Old Nan," the beggarwoman. For many years she had passed up and down Glenmornan Road, collecting bottles and rags, which she paid for in blessings and afterwards sold for pence. Being wrinkled, heavy-boned, and bearded like a man, everyone said that she was a witch. One summer Old Nan died, and two days later she was carried to the little graveyard. I played truant from school and followed the sweating men who were carrying the coffin on their shoulders. They seemed to be well-pleased when they came in sight of the churchyard and the cold silent tombstones.

"The old witch was as heavy as lead," I heard the bearers say.

They set down their burden and dug a hole in the soft earth, throwing up black clay and white bones to the surface with their shovels. The bones looked like those of sheep which die on the hills and are left to rot. The air was heavy with the humming of bees, and a little brook sang a soft song of its own as it hurried past the graveyard wall. The upturned earth had a sickly smell like mildewed corn. Some of the diggers knew whose bone this was and whose that was, but they had a hard argument about a thigh-bone before Old Nan was put into the earth. Some said that the thigh-bone belonged to old Farley Kelly, who had died many years before, and others said that it belonged to Farley's wife. I thought it a curious thing that people could not know the difference between a man and a woman when dead. While the men were discussing the thigh-bone it was left lying on the black clay which fringed the mouth of the grave, and a long earth-worm crawled across it. A man struck at the worm with his spade and broke the bone into three pieces. The worm was cut in two, and it fell back into the grave while one of the diggers threw the splinters of bone on top of it. Then they buried Old Nan, and everyone seemed very light-hearted over the job. Why shouldn't they feel merry? She was only an old witch, anyhow. But I did not feel happy. The grave looked a cold cheerless place and the long crawling worms were ugly.

So our poor Dan would go down into the dark earth like Old Nan, the witch! The thought frightened me, and I began to cry with my father and mother, and we were all three weeping still, but more quietly, when the first dim light of the lonely dawn came stealing through the window panes.

Two old sisters, Martha and Bride, lived next door. My mother asked me to go out and tell them about Dan's death. I ran out quickly, and I found both women up and at work washing dishes beside the dresser. Martha had a tin basin in her hand, and she let it drop to the floor when I delivered my message. Bride held a jug, and it seemed for a moment that she was going to follow her sister's example, but all at once she called to mind that the jug was made of delft, so she placed it on the dresser, and both followed me back to my home. Once there they asked many questions about Dan, his sickness and how he came to die. When they had heard all, they told of several herbs and charms which would have cured the illness at once. Dandelion dipped in rock water, or bogbine[2] boiled for two hours in the water of the marsh from which it was plucked, would have worked wonders. Also seven drops of blood from a cock that never crowed, or the boiled liver of a rabbit that never crossed a white road, were the very best things to give to a sick person. So they said, and when Bride tried to recollect some more certain cures Martha kept repeating the old ones until I was almost tired of listening to her voice.

"Why did ye not take in the docthor?" asked Martha.

"We had no money in the house," said my mother.

"An' did ye not sell half a dozen sheep at the fair the day afore yesterday?" asked Bride. "I'm sure that ye got a good penny for them same sheep."

"We did that," said my mother; "but the money is for the landlord's rent and the priest's tax."

At that time the new parish priest, the little man with the pot-belly and the shiny false teeth, was building a grand new house. Farley McKeown had given five hundred pounds towards the cost of building, which up to now amounted to one thousand five hundred pounds. So the people said, but they were not quite sure. The cost of building was not their business, that was the priest's; all the people had to do was to pay their tax, which amounted to five pounds on every family in the parish. They were allowed five years in which to