that hung over his forehead, while the hair around the skull was shaved completely away. His nose was aquiline, and his lean jaws never ceased moving backward and forward; he had fixed his small blue eyes on the ground, so that his

long white lashes almost touched his temples, as though he had drifted off to sleep. Michael stood rigid and unmoving, holding the reaping-hook in his right hand and thrusting his left into his belt. Now and again he would lift his lashes, listening for the signal to begin. His

wife was nearly his equal in height, but she was full of figure and rosy-skinned. She was a silent woman, and she stood there thinking of her eight-month-old son, whom she had left at home in her mother's care.

In the middle stood Johnny Bodkin, arms folded and legs apart, talking to his wife in a low voice full of earnestness. He was a huge man, fat of arm and leg and neck, with black hair gone bald above his forehead. His forehead was pure white and his cheeks deep red, and his face wore an everlasting scowl; he would knit his black brows fiercely and suddenly. His wife Mary was short, thin, and pale of face, her upper teeth protruding a little over her lower lip.

On the right were Pat Considine and his wife Kate. Kate was big of body and hard of muscle, with a freck-led face and a very visible mustache on her upper lip. Her hair was thick, matted, curly, and dun-colored, for-ever coming loose and tumbling down. She talked to her husband in a loud, harsh voice like a man's, full of jest and banter. As for her husband, he was a small, thin man whose face had begun to be covered with wrinkles though he had not yet reached forty. His face had once been very red, but now pallor was creeping over it, and he had lost most of his front teeth. He stood slackly, looking at McDara, his

lips parted in a smile, his small, loose-limbed, thin body concealing its strength.

Then McDara waved his stick and raised his arm; a shot rang out, and the reaping race began. In a