“Be silent, woman,” said Grig, “and take my old great coat and fix it under me.”
She did that; and Theegerje came, and a load of faggots with him, and he put down a good fire, and Morrocha got food to eat, and when he warmed himself at the fire he was weary-wet, and he was falling asleep.
“The death-bands on you,” said Grig; “you’re not like a doctor, for you’ve never asked what kind of sickness is on me.”
“It is not that,” said Morrocha; “but there are numbers of people, and their blood runs all together when they see strangers.”
“I was not going to feel your pulse until you got quiet.”
When he became quiet Morrocha arose and felt his pulse.
“And great is the pity,” said he, “that a fine man like you should be lying in that place on one bed, and I will cure you. If you got potatoes and butter, and ate the full of your fist, you would not be long sick.”
“That’s true,” said Grig, “and if Njuclas Croanj gave me that I wouldn’t be lying here.”
Morrocha asked if they had any food in the house, and Njuclas Croanj said they had,—that Theegerje was just after coming from the mill, and that he had three pecks of oatmeal. And Morrocha bade them give him a peck of meal, and she gave him that. And he asked if there was any butter in the house, and she said there was. “Bring me down a crock of fresh butter,” said he. And she brought that to him, and Morrocha mixed the meal and the butter up together, and he asked for a spoon, and he thrust the spoon into the dish.
“You won’t get it,” said Morrocha, “till you tell me what was the horde of people from whom you came.”
“I will tell you that,” said Grig. “I am Grig, son of Stubborn, son of Very-evil, Shanrach, son of Canrain, son of the Soldier, who made people loathe him greatly.”
“The death-bands on you,” said Morrocha. “Weren’t they ugly names they had?”
“The death-bands on you,” said Grig. “Isn’t it you that are ugly? They were prosperous, blessed.”
“I give in that they were,” said Morrocha. “It was ignorance made me say that. But what sort was that one, the son of the Soldier?”
“This,” said Grig, “was one of the fathers who came before me; and the snout of a pig was on his forehead; and he had two daughters, whose names were Maywa, the big, Molloy’s daughter, and the other’s Sahwa, the big, daughter of Cricheen, and they went to Cornelius (?) the tailor, and they gathered the clippings the tailors threw away, and they made up two lying books of them, and they failed to make the books agree upon one story; and they struck one another, and the father came, and they struck their father and cut him; and he went, and he in his blood, and the pig’s snout on his forehead, and there is not one that saw him, but they would flee from him in thousands. And at last they got the two books to agree upon one story, and when the clergy heard they had the books, they desired to possess them, and they would not give them. And they banished them; and if they banished them we will not leave the night supperless.”