Page:Beside the Fire - Douglas Hyde.djvu/117

 Rh lost a power of money over them, and they had to sell a portion of their cattle to get money to pay them.

They were that way for half a year, keeping doctors with him, and the doctors giving him medicines, and the poor man that was stout and well-fed before, getting bare and thin, until at last there was not an ounce of flesh on him, but the skin and the bones only.

He was so bad at last that it was scarcely he was able to walk. His appetite went from him, and it was a great trouble to him to swallow a piece of soft bread or to drink a sup of new milk, and everyone was saying that he was better to die, and that was no wonder, for there was not in him but like a shadow in a bottle.

One day that he was sitting on a chair in the door of the house, sunning himself in the heat, and the people of the house all gone out but himself, there came up to the door a poor old man that used to be asking alms from place to place, and he recognised the man of the house sitting in the chair, but he was so changed and so worn that it was hardly he knew him. "I'm here again, asking alms in the name of God," said the poor man; "but, glory be to God, master, what happened to you, for you're not the same man I saw when I was here half a year ago; may God relieve you!"

"Arrah, Shamus," said the sick man, "it's I that can't tell you what happened to me; but I know one thing, that I won't be long in this world."

"But I'm grieved to see you how you are," said the beggarman. "Tell me how it began with you, and what the doctors say."

"The doctors, is it?" says the sick man, "my curse on them; but I oughtn't to be cursing and I so near the grave; suf on them, they know nothing."