the barrack door. It proclaimed the attractiveness of service in the British army. It moved him to no interest, because he had seen it every day since he first came to Ballymoy. The gaudy uniforms depicted on it excited no envy in his mind. His own uniform was of sober colouring, but it taught him all he wanted to know about the discomfort of such clothes in hot weather. His eyes wandered from the poster and remained fixed for some time on the front of the office of the Connacht Advocate. The door was shut and the window blind was pulled down. An imaginative man might have pictured Mr. Thaddeus Gallagher, the editor, penning ferocious attacks upon landlords at his desk inside, or demonstrating, in spite of the high temperature, the desperate wickedness of all critics of the Irish Party. But Moriarty was by temperament a realist. He suspected that Thaddeus Gallagher, divested of his coat and waistcoat, was asleep, with his feet on the office table. Next to the newspaper office was the Imperial Hotel, owned and managed by Mr. Doyle. Its door was open, so that any one with sufficient energy for such activity might go in and get a drink at the bar. Moriarty gazed at the front of the hotel for a long time, so long that the glare of light reflected from its whitewashed walls brought water to his eyes. Then he turned and looked into the barrack again. Beside him, just outside the door of the living-room, hung a small framed notice, which stated that Constable Moriarty was on guard. He looked at it. Then he peeped into the living-room and satisfied himself that the sergeant was still sound asleep. It was exceedingly unlikely that Mr. Gregg, the District Inspector of the Police, would visit the barrack on such a very hot day. Moriarty buttoned his tunic, put his forage cap on his head, and stepped out of the barrack.

He crossed the square towards Doyle's Hotel. A hostile critic of the Royal Irish Constabulary—and there are such critics even of this excellent body of men—might have suspected Moriarty of adventuring in search of a drink. The great heat of the day and the extreme dulness of keeping guard over a barrack which no one ever attacks might have excused a longing for bottled porter. It would have been unfair to blame Moriarty if he had entered the bar of the hotel and wakened Mr. Doyle. But he did no more than glance through the open door. He satisfied himself that Mr. Doyle, like the sergeant and Mr. Thaddeus Gallagher, was sound asleep. Then he passed on and turned down a narrow laneway at the side of the hotel.

This led him into the yard at the back of the hotel. A man of delicate sensibilities would have shrunk from entering Mr. Doyle's yard on a hot day. It was exceedingly dirty, and there were a great many decaying things all over it, besides a manure heap in one corner and a pig-stye in another. But Constable Moriarty had no objection to bad smells. He sat down on the low wall of the pig-stye and whistled "Kathleen Mavourneen." He worked through the tune twice creditably, but without attempting variations. He was just beginning it a third time when a door at the back of the hotel opened and a girl came out. Moriarty stopped whistling and grinned at her amiably. She was a very pretty girl, but she was nearly as dirty as the yard. Her short skirt was spotted and stained from waist-band to the ragged fringe where there had once been a hem. Her boots were caked with dry mud. They were several sizes too large for her and seemed likely to fall off when she lifted her feet from the ground. A pink cotton blouse was untidily fastened at her neck with a brass safety pin. Her hair hung in a thick pig-tail down her back. In the higher ranks of society in Connacht, as elsewhere, girls are generally anxious to pose as young women at the earliest possible moment. They roll up their hair and fasten it with hairpins as soon as their mothers allow them. But girls of the peasant class in the west of Ireland put off the advance of womanhood as long as they can. Wiser than their more fashionable sisters, they dread the cares and responsibilities of adult life. Up to the age of twenty, twenty-one, or twenty-two, they still wear their hair in pig-tails and keep their skirts above their ankles.

"Is that you, Mary Ellen?" said Constable Moriarty.

The girl stood still. She was carrying a bucket full of a thick yellow liquid in her right hand. She allowed it to rest against her leg. A small portion of its contents slopped over and still further stained her skirt. She looked at Constable Moriarty out of the corners of her eyes for a moment. Then she went on again towards the pig-stye. She had large brown eyes with thick lashes. Her hair was still in a pig-tail, and her skirt was far from covering the tops of her boots; but she had a precocious understanding of the art of looking at a man out of the corners of her eyes. Moriarty was agreeably thrilled by her glance.

"Is it the pig you're going to feed?" he asked.

"It is," said Mary Ellen.

A very chivalrous man, or one trained in the conventions of what is called polite society, might have left his seat on the wall and helped the girl to carry the bucket across the yard. Moriarty did neither the one nor the other. Mary Ellen did not expect that he would. It was her business and not his to feed the pigs. Besides, the bucket was very full. That its contents should stain her dress did not matter. It would have been a much more serious thing if any of the yellow slop had trickled down Constable Moriarty's beautiful trousers.

She reached the pig-stye, lifted the bucket, and tipped the contents into a wooden trough. Constable Moriarty, still seated on the wall, watched her admiringly. Her sleeves were rolled up above the elbows. She had very well-shaped, plump, brown arms.

"There's many a man," he said, "might be glad enough to be that pig."

Mary Ellen looked up at him with an air of innocent astonishment.

"Why would he then?" she said.

"The way he'd have you bringing his dinner to him," said Moriarty.

This compliment must have been very gratifying to Mary Ellen, but she made no reply to it. She set down the empty bucket on the ground and rubbed her hands slowly on the sides of her skirt Moriarty probably felt that he had done as much as could be expected of him in the way of pretty speeches. He whistled "Kathleen Mavourneen" through once while Mary Ellen wiped her hands dry. She picked up her bucket again and turned to go away.

"Tell me this now," said Moriarty. "Did ever you have your fortune told?"

"I did not," she said.

"It's what I'm good at," said Moriarty, "is telling fortunes. There was an aunt of mine one time that was terrible skilful at it. It was her taught me."

"It's a pity she had no more sense."

"If you was to sit up on the wall beside me," said Moriarty, "and if you was to lend me the loan of your hand for one minute——"

"Get out," said Mary Ellen.

"You'd be surprised, so you would," said Moriarty, "at the things I'd tell you."

"I might."

"You would."

"But I won't be," said Mary Ellen, "for I've more to do than to be listening to you."

"Where's the hurry?" said Moriarty. "Sure the day's long."

The affair might have ended in a manner pleasant to Moriarty and interesting to the pig. The attraction of the occult would in all probability have overcome Mary Ellen's maidenly suspicions. She might not have sat upon the wall. She would have almost certainly have yielded her sticky hand if a sudden sound had not startled Moriarty. A motor-car hooted at the far end of the village street. Moriarty jumped off the wall.

"There's one of them motor-cars," he said, "and the fellow that's in her will be stopping at the barrack for to ask his way to somewhere. It's a curious thing, so it is, that them motor drivers never knows the way to the place they're going to, and it's always the police they ask, as if the police had nothing to do but to attend to them. I'll have to be off."

He left the yard, hurried down the