6 STRAY -AW AYS 



and a bag of turf on me back, and she said I stood up 

 agin' a big white rock that's in it, as I'd be resting 

 the bag on the rock. Sure not a bit of me was next 

 or nigh the place. But not a bit in tlie workl happened 

 me afther it, thanks be to God." 



Anastasia sighed, in modest acceptance of her 

 favoured position. 



" It wasn't only two days afther that agin, there 

 was a man from the same village seen me the same 

 way. He thought to go over to a place he had his 

 cattle, to look at them, and he said when he was 

 starting out he seen meself coming over the road, 

 and a bag of turf on me back, and he turned back ;. 

 sure he knew I'd tell him how was the cattle." 



The man was confident in Anastasia, as he would 

 have been in any other woman of his acquaintance : 

 he knew that she would look at his cattle as she 

 passed, and that she would also be able to tell him 

 how they were ; this was a matter of course in their 

 lives. 



" Sure, I wasn't in the place at all, but whatever 

 was in it, the Lord save us, he seen the woman, and 

 he knew well it was meself, and she coming to him, 

 and she in a valley, and it was the fall of the evening, 

 in harvest-time." 



Her heavy face had not changed, and the rhythm 

 of her quiet speech had neither hastened nor slackened, 

 yet the reaped fields and the dusk must have been 

 before her eyes, must have seemed inevitable to the 

 story. Better than " dusk " or " twilight," or any 

 other motionless word, was " the fall of the evening " 

 — ^the dew was in it, and the gentleness, and the folding 

 of wings. There was tliat in the diction that sum- 

 moned suddenly to mind the Shunamite, and the 

 child who went out with his father to the reapers. 

 Anastasia had never, I felt sure, heard of the Sliuna- 



