brought her into the thick of the dance. And when it was over and the
fiddle had stopped, there was no sound at all of anything outside,
but the road was as quiet as before.

As to Hanrahan, when he knew he was shut out and that there was
neither shelter nor drink nor a girl's ear for him that night, the
anger and the courage went out of him, and he went on to where the
waves were beating on the strand.

He sat down on a big stone, and he began swinging his right arm and
singing slowly to himself, the way he did always to hearten himself
when every other thing failed him. And whether it was that time or
another time he made the song that is called to this day 'The
Twisting of the Rope,' and that begins, 'What was the dead cat that
put me in this place,' is not known.

But after he had been singing awhile, mist and shadows seemed to
gather about him, sometimes coming out of the sea, and sometimes
moving upon it. It seemed to him that one of the shadows was the
queen-woman he had seen in her sleep at Slieve Echtge; not in her
sleep now, but mocking, and calling out to them that were behind her:
'He was weak, he was weak, he had no courage.' And he felt the
strands of the rope in his hand yet, and went on twisting it, but it
seemed to him as he twisted, that it had all the sorrows of the world
in it. And then it seemed to him as if the rope had changed in his
dream into a great water-worm that came out of the sea, and that
twisted itself about him, and held him closer and closer, and grew
from big to bigger till the whole of the earth and skies were wound
up in it, and the stars themselves were but the shining of the ridges
of its skin. And then he got free of it, and went on, shaking and