twice, uttered some sounds of startlement and made a deep snoring noise. His body was heavy and inert, quite helpless either to assist or obstruct the process of his realignment.
“Well, my friend,” Sullivan said, “you have taken a good tubful, you have.” The exertion had warmed him a little. He hesitated for a moment, then laid bow and fiddle against the bank side and sat down close to the recumbent man. From this vantage point he looked around him. A thin plume of smoke was rising from somewhere among the frosted fields beyond the shacks. There was no other sign of life anywhere, no human stirring. A faint sun swam among low clouds; there was no warmth in it, but the touch was enough to wake a bird to singing somewhere—he could hear it but not see it. “There is stories everywhere, but we often get only the middle parts,” he said. The man was well dressed, in worsted trousers, stout leggings and boots and a square-cut, bottle-green coat with brass buttons. “Those are fine buttons,” Sullivan said. “I wonder if you could make me iver a loan now? I am hard-pressed just at present, speakin’ frankly, man to man.”
The man made no answer to this, but when Sullivan began to go through his pockets, he sighed and choked a little and made a motion with his left arm as if warding off some incubus. His purse contained eighteen shillings and ninepence—Sullivan had to count the money twice before he could believe it. Eight weeks’ pay aboard ship! He extracted coins to the value of nine shillings and returned the purse to its pocket. “I leave you the greater half,” he said.
Again, at this intimacy of touch, the man stirred, and this time his eyes opened briefly. They were bloodshot and vague and sad. He had lost his hat in the fall; it lay on the road beyond him. His goat’s-hair wig had slipped sideways; it glistened with wet, and the sparse, gingerish wisps of his own hair curled out damply below it.
“I have nothin’ to write with an’ neither have you,” Sullivan said, “an’ we have niver a scrap of paper between us, or I would leave you a note of hand for the money.” He had never learned to write, but knew this for the proper form. “Or yet again,” he said, “if you were in a more volatile state you could furnish me with your place of residence. As things are, we will just have to leave it unsatisfactory.”
The man’s face had returned to sleep. Sullivan nodded at it in valediction and set off again along the lane. He had not gone far, however, when it came to him that he had been the savior of this man and that nine shillings was hardly an adequate reward for such a service. To rate a man’s life at only nine shillings was offensive and belittling to that man. Any human creature possessed of a minimum of self-respect would set a higher value on himself than that. Even he, Sullivan, who had no fixed abode and no coat to his back, would consider nine shillings too little. If this man’s faculties were not so much ravaged and under the weather, he would be bound to agree that eighteen shillings met the case better.
Full of these thoughts, he retraced his steps. The man appeared to have made some brief struggle in the interval, though motionless again now. His wig had fallen off completely and lay bedraggled on the bank side like a bird’s nest torn from the bare hedge and flung down there. His hair was thin; pinkish scalp showed through the flat crown. His breath made a slight bubbling sound.
“I do not want you to go through life feelin’ convicted of ingratitude,” Sullivan said. “You may take the view that death was problematical, but that I rescued you from the hazard of mutilation you are bound to agree on.” The purse was of good leather. Sullivan kept hold of it, having first restored the ninepence to the man’s waistcoat pocket. “In takin’ these shillin’s I am doublin’ your value,” he said. He was silent for some moments, listening intently. He thought he had heard the rattle of wheels. He went to the bend and surveyed the long curve of the road: no sign of anything. His eyes watered and he was again racked with cold. He clutched at himself and slapped his arms and sides in an effort to