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By Root 1016 0

wet on his finger from the Doyles’ font. He stood by a wall muttering the words. The people at the wall opposite had the look of a frieze, stopped there too and muttering their prayers. Behind rose the bleak black blocks of malt-houses, distilleries. There was a house at the corner, not overly dowdy-looking; he went in. He drank a whiskey choking and smoked the half of a cigar, coughing in stifled whoops. He stared at the rows of glasses and bottles, gauging how much capital would be tied up in stock. It was a question that often exercised him, the comparative worth of a corner-grocery’s stock. He went out to the pisser at back, and returning he saw another whiskey waiting for him. He drank it slowly, disremembering having ordered it. He felt very old. He was altogether sad.

Sad, and yet cheated too. He felt his youth to be stolen, so it was. That fellow above thieving the happy times from his past. What were they only young fellows together with never a thought in the world? By rights, they would have remained that, a thing of the memory, something fond and scarlet in the mists, you’d look behind on it and smile. But no, this fellow had to burst back in his life. Right into his shop he burst with his smilery and his clothery. You’d have to see him then and know your old pal for the chancer he’d made of himself, with his jokery and his fakery and his Dublin jackeenery. You’d have to be stepping over him in the street, the drunken gutter-singing rowdy. You’d hear it from biddies how he battered his woman and famished his care. And now this wheezing old skin, you’d have to smell him and take his hand and sit in his miserable hut and drink his germs with his miserable tea and his aimless pernickety wife. It was bloody, so it was, it was bloody. It would drive a man to drink—and Mr. Mack held out his glass to the curate—wouldn’t it take him to choose a house with a freckle-faced flame-haired lad for a curate—“Put the other half in that, when you’re ready. Only a nipperkin now. And a ginger beer for yourself.”

He was a touch light in the head leaving that pub, and considerably lighter in his pocket, having stood treat, for some very practical reason that escaped him now, a round or was it two for the house. He had lost Doyler’s street-directions but he held in his hand an infallible nod for the Irish National, though how he was expected to find his way to Fairyhouse he did not know. What time was it at all?

He came out at a crossroads, King Street said the sign. He stood at the corner. High and low he stared, puzzled to an amplush. He couldn’t make it out at all. It seemed to him there were evictions up and down the street. Bedsteads coming out of the little houses, mattresses, a settee even. You’d think all the bailiffs in Ireland had suddenly descended this day. And a rum set of bailiffs they looked too, no more than boys the most of them. Out of every house they came, lugging some old goods or other and piling them in the street. Children were bawling, women were tugging at their belongings, beseeching, all manner of language, dog’s abuse at the shrill of their voice. And the piles extending right across the street, sticks of furniture, any old thing. Now what sense was there in that? Only blocking the public highway.

Mr. Mack took a step towards them. The street crunched under his boot. Everywhere he looked, broken glass. Broken glass everywhere, bits of bottles and plate glass smashed. How long was this he was on the skite in that lushery? He didn’t know but a riot was after taking place in the meantime. And never a constable in sight.

A cart was jolting towards the crossroads and Mr. Mack ran out. “Halt,” he called. “Don’t come down. There’s glass in the road, she’ll slip and hurt, the beast.”

One of the bailiffs stepped out. He had a gun. He had a gun pulled on the carter. “This cart is commandeered,” he said.

“Take the gun, take it off him,” a woman shrilled. “Shirkers, they’s only cowards.”

Mr. Mack said, “What’s going on here?”

The woman turned to him. “They took me bed, they took me only bed they did.”

“The