The Crock of Gold, James Stephens [best mobile ebook reader txt] 📗

business, and so he turned to the right on the new path and continued his journey.

“Where are you going to, stranger,” said the first man.

“I am going to visit Angus Og,” replied the Philosopher.

The man gave him a quick look.

“Well,” said he, “that’s the queerest story I ever heard. Listen here,” he called to the others, “this man is looking for Angus Og.”

The other man and woman came closer.

“What would you be wanting with Angus Og, Mister Honey?” said the woman.

“Oh,” replied the Philosopher, “it’s a particular thing, a family matter.”

There was silence for a few minutes, and they all stepped onwards behind the ass and cart.

“How do you know where to look for himself?” said the first man again: “maybe you got the place where he lives written down in an old book or on a carved stone?”

“Or did you find the staff of Amergin or of Ossian in a bog and it written from the top to the bottom with signs?” said the second man.

“No,” said the Philosopher, “it isn’t that way you’d go visiting a god. What you do is, you go out from your house and walk straight away in any direction with your shadow behind you so long as it is towards a mountain, for the gods will not stay in a valley or a level plain, but only in high places; and then, if the god wants you to see him, you will go to his rath as direct as if you knew where it was, for he will be leading you with an airy thread reaching from his own place to wherever you are, and if he doesn’t want to see you, you will never find out where he is, not if you were to walk for a year or twenty years.”

“How do you know he wants to see you?” said the second man.

“Why wouldn’t he want?” said the Philosopher.

“Maybe, Mister Honey,” said the woman, “you are a holy sort of a man that a god would like well.”

“Why would I be that?” said the Philosopher. “The gods like a man whether he’s holy or not if he’s only decent.”

“Ah, well, there’s plenty of that sort,” said the first man. “What do you happen to have in your bag, stranger?”

“Nothing,” replied the Philosopher, “but a cake and a half that was baked for my journey.”

“Give me a bit of your cake, Mister Honey,” said the woman. “I like to have a taste of everybody’s cake.”

“I will, and welcome,” said the Philosopher.

“You may as well give us all a bit while you are about it,” said the second man. “That woman hasn’t got all the hunger of the world.”

“Why not,” said the Philosopher, and he divided the cake.

“There’s a sup of water up yonder,” said the first man, “and it will do to moisten the cake—Whoh, you devil,” he roared at the ass, and the ass stood stock still on the minute.

There was a thin fringe of grass along the road near a wall, and towards this the ass began to edge very gently.

“Hike, you beast, you,” shouted the man, and the ass at once hiked, but he did it in a way that brought him close to the grass. The first man took a tin can out of the cart and climbed over the little wall for water. Before he went he gave the ass three kicks on the nose, but the ass did not say a word, he only hiked still more which brought him directly on to the grass, and when the man climbed over the wall the ass commenced to crop the grass. There was a spider sitting on a hot stone in the grass. He had a small body and wide legs, and he wasn’t doing anything.

“Does anybody ever kick you in the nose?” said the ass to him.

“Ay does there,” said the spider; “you and your like that are always walking on me, or lying down on me, or running over me with the wheels of a cart.”

“Well, why don’t you stay on the wall?” said the ass.

“Sure, my wife is there,” replied the spider.

“What’s the harm in that?” said the ass.

“She’d eat me,” said the spider, “and, anyhow, the competition on the wall is dreadful, and the flies are getting wiser and timider every season. Have you got a wife yourself, now?”

“I have not,” said the ass; “I wish I had.”

“You like your wife for the first while,” said the spider, “and after that you hate her.”

“If I had the first while I’d chance the second while,” replied the ass.

“It’s bachelor’s talk,” said the spider; “all the same, we can’t keep away from them,” and so saying he began to move all his legs at once in the direction of the wall. “You can only die once,” said he.

“If your wife was an ass she wouldn’t eat you,” said the ass.

“She’d be doing something else then,” replied the spider, and he climbed up the wall.

The first man came back with the can of water and they sat down on the grass and ate the cake and drank the water. All the time the woman kept her eyes fixed on the Philosopher.

“Mister Honey,” said she, “I think you met us just at the right moment.”

The other two men sat upright and looked at each other and then with equal intentness they looked at the woman.

“Why do you say that?” said the Philosopher.

“We were having a great argument along the road, and if we were to be talking from now to the dav of doom that argument would never be finished.”

“It must have been a great argument. Was it about predestination or where consciousness comes from?”

“It was not; it was which of these two men was to marry me.”

“That’s not a great argument,” said the Philosopher.

“Isn’t it,” said the woman. “For seven days and six nights we didn’t talk about anything else, and that’s a great argument or I’d like to know what is.”

“But where is the trouble, ma’am?” said the Philosopher.

“It’s this,” she replied, “that I can’t make up my mind which of the men I’ll take, for I like one as well as the other and better, and I’d as soon have one as the other and rather.”

“It’s a hard case,” said the Philosopher.

“It is,” said the woman, “and I’m sick