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Updated: February 11, 2025
Right away in the west of Ireland lies a tiny hamlet called Kraighten. It is situated, alone, at the base of a low hill. Far around there spreads a waste of bleak and totally inhospitable country; where, here and there at great intervals, one may come upon the ruins of some long desolate cottage unthatched and stark.
Joll worked early and late, and his shoulders had a tell-tale stoop for he was a man in the prime of life, perhaps some five years older than his wife. One Saturday evening he unburdened his heart to Taffy. It happened at the end of the hay-harvest, and the two were leaning over a gate discussing the yet unthatched rick.
Next moment there was a shock; he was flung headlong forward, and found himself sprawling half suffocated on a damp yielding mass, which, when he had recovered his wits, he knew to be the unthatched top of a hayrick. His first thought was for the aeroplane. Raising himself, and dashing the clinging hay wisps from his face, he shouted "Is she smashed, Roddy?"
John the Clerk was saying that he had to bury the Deemster; Jonaique, the barber, that he had been sent for to "cut" the Bishop; and Claudius Kewley, the farmer, that he had three fields of barley still uncut and a stack of oats unthatched. "Oh, Lord," cried Claudius, "let me not die till I've got nothing to do!"
For every of which, they first fastened deep into the ground, three or four great posts with forks: upon them, they laid one transom, which was commonly about twenty feet, and made the sides, in the manner of the roofs of our country houses, thatching it close with those aforesaid leaves, which keep out water a long time: observing always that in the lower ground, where greater heat was, they left some three or four feet open unthatched below, and made the houses, or rather roofs, so many feet the higher.
"My daughter," answered the monk, with whom old Bruyn had arranged this hypocrisy and the part to play, "if I had not the chills of a hundred winters upon this unthatched head, I should not dare to listen to your sins, but say on; if you enter paradise, it will be through me."
Barns half unthatched, tumble-down cart-houses, palings rotting to pieces, and pigsties in ruins, contributed, together with a grand collection of substantial and dingy ricks of fine old hay that most valuable but most gloomy looking species of agricultural property to the general aspect of desolation by which the place was distinguished.
Formerly, too, the major had also excelled mightily in miscellaneous conversation, dominating it by sheer weight of tediousness. Now he sat silent while these youngsters with their unthatched lips born, most of them, after he reached middle age babbled the jargon of their trade. He considered a little ravelly strip along one of his cuffs solicitously.
"My daughter," answered the monk, with whom old Bruyn had arranged this hypocrisy and the part to play, "if I had not the chills of a hundred winters upon this unthatched head, I should not dare to listen to your sins, but say on; if you enter paradise, it will be through me."
The path he had selected conducted him to his mother's humble dwelling. When she occupied, it, it was neatness itself; the little porch was overrun with creepers the garden trim and exquisitely kept. Now, it was a wilderness of weeds. The glass in the windows was broken the roof unthatched the walls dilapidated. Jack turned away with an aching heart. It seemed an emblem of the ruin he had caused.
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