Time is as ruthless as to a beggarman grown old.

But the Ulster gentleman refused Finnian admittance. He
barricaded his house, he shuttered his windows, and in a gloom of
indignation and protest he continued the practices of ten
thousand years, and would not hearken to Finnian calling at the
window or to Time knocking at his door.

But of those adversaries it was the first he redoubted.

Finnian loomed on him as a portent and a terror; but he had no
fear of Time. Indeed he was the foster-brother of Time, and so
disdainful of the bitter god that he did not even disdain him; he
leaped over the scythe, he dodged under it, and the sole
occasions on which Time laughs is when he chances on Tuan, the
son of Cairill, the son of Muredac Red-neck.



CHAPTER II

Now Finnian could not abide that any person should resist both
the Gospel and himself, and he proceeded to force the stronghold
by peaceful but powerful methods. He fasted on the gentleman, and
he did so to such purpose that he was admitted to the house; for
to an hospitable heart the idea that a stranger may expire on
your doorstep from sheer famine cannot be tolerated. The
gentleman, however, did not give in without a struggle: he
thought that when Finnian had grown sufficiently hungry he would
lift the siege and take himself off to some place where he might