Several jaws trapped wide down.

Someone gasped as if booted in the stomach.

Finn, after a moment in which he considered just where a blow might have landed upon him, poured himself a long slow drink with scowling precision. He took a stiff snort of the stuff and with the fire in his mouth, replied, carefully, letting the warm breath out over his tongue: "Ah . . . what Queen is that again, and the King?"

"Well," said the tall pale man, "there was this Queen who lived in Iceland who had never seen summer, and this King who lived in the Isles of Sun who had never seen winter. The people under the King almost died of heat in the summers, and the people under the Snow Queen almost died of ice in the winters. But the people of both countries were saved from their terrible weathers. The Snow Queen and the Sun King met and fell in love and every summer when the sun killed people in the islands they moved North to the lands of ice and lived temperately. And every winter when the snow killed people in the North, all of the Snow Queen"s people moved South and lived in the mild island sun. So there were no longer two nations, two peoples, but one race which commuted from land to land with the strange weathers and wild seasons. The end."

There was a round of applause, not from the canary boys, but from the men lined up at the bar who had been spelled. Finn saw his own hands out clapping on the air, and put them down. The others saw their own hands and dropped them.

But Timulty summed it up, "G.o.d, if you only had a brogue! What a teller of tales you would make."

"Many thanks, many thanks," said David Snell-Orkney.

"All of which brings us around to the point of the story," Finn said. "I mean, well, about that Queen and the King and all."

"The point is," said Snell-Orkney, "that we have not seen a leaf fall in five years. We hardly know a cloud when we see it. We have not felt snow in ten years, or hardly a drop of rain. Our story is the reverse. We must have rain or we"ll perish, right, chums?"

"Oh, yes, right," said all five, in a sweet chirruping.

"We have followed summer around the world for six or seven years. We have lived in Jamaica and Na.s.sau and Port-au-Prince and Calcutta, and Madagascar and Bali and Taormina but finally just today we said we must go north, we must have cold again. We didn"t quite know what we were looking for, but we found it in St. Stephen"s Green."

"The mysterious thing?" Nolan burst out. "I mean-"

"Your friend here will tell you," said the tall man.

"Our friend? You mean-Garrity?"

Everyone looked at Garrity.

"As I was going to say," said Garrity, "when I came in the door. They was in the park standing there . . . watching the leaves turn colors."

"Is that all?" said Nolan, dismayed.

"It seemed sufficient unto the moment," said Snell-Orkney.

"Are the leaves changing color up at St. Stephen"s?" asked Kilpatrick.

"Do you know," said Timulty numbly, "it"s been twenty years since I looked."

"The most beautiful sight in all the world," said David Snell-Orkney, "lies up in the midst of St. Stephen"s this very hour."

"He speaks deep," murmured Nolan.

"The drinks are on me," said David Snell-Orkney.

"He"s touched bottom," said MaGuire.

"Champagne all around!"

"Don"t mind if I do!" said everyone.

And not ten minutes later they were all up at the park, together.

And well now, as Timulty said years after, did you ever see as many d.a.m.ned leaves on a tree as there was on the first tree just inside the gate at St. Stephen"s Green? No! cried all. And what, though, about the second tree? Well, that had a billion leaves on it. And the more they looked the more they saw it was a wonder. And Nolan went around craning his neck so hard he fell over on his back and had to be helped up by two or three others, and there were general exhalations of awe and proclamations of devout inspiration as to the fact that as far as they could remember there had never been any G.o.dd.a.m.n leaves on the trees to begin with, but now they were there! Or if they had been there they had never had any color, or if they had had color, well, it was so long ago . . . Ah, what the h.e.l.l, shut up, said everyone, and look!

Which is exactly what Nolan and Timulty and Kelly and Kilpatrick and Garrity and Snell-Orkney and his friends did for the rest of the declining afternoon. For a fact, autumn had taken the country, and the bright flags were out by the millions through the park.

Which is exactly where Father Leary found them.

But before he could say anything, three out of the six summer invaders asked him if he would hear their confessions.

And next thing you know with a look of great pain and alarm the father was taking Snell-Orkney & Co. back to see the stained gla.s.s at the church and the way the apse was put together by a master architect, and they liked his church so much and said so out loud again and again that he cut way down on their Hail Marys and the rigamaroles that went with.

But the top of the entire day was when one of the young-old boy-men back at the pub asked what would it be? Should he sing "Mother Machree" or "My Buddy"?

Arguments followed, and with polls taken and results announced, he sang both.

He had a dear voice, all said, eyes melting bright. A sweet high clear voice.

And as Nolan put it, "He wouldn"t make much of a son. But there"s a great daughter there somewhere!"

And all said "aye" to that.

And suddenly it was time to leave.

"But great G.o.d!" said Finn, "you just arrived!"

"We found what we came for, there"s no need to stay," announced the tall sad happy old young man. "It"s back to the hothouse with the flowers . . . or they wilt overnight. We never stay. We are always flying and jumping and running. We are always on the move."

The airport being fogged-in, there was nothing for it but the birds cage themselves on the Dun Laoghaire boat bound for England, and there was nothing for it but the inhabitants of Finn"s should be down at the dock to watch them pull away in the middle of the evening. There they stood, all six, on the top deck, waving their thin hands down, and there stood Timulty and Nolan and Garrity and the rest waving their thick hands up. And as the boat hooted and pulled away the keeper-of-the-birds nodded once, and winged his right hand on the air and all sang forth: "As I was walking through Dublin City, about the hour of twelve at night, I saw a maid, so fair was she... combing her hair by candlelight."

"Jesus," said Timulty, "do you hear?"

"Sopranos, every one of them!" cried Nolan.

"Not Irish sopranos, but real real sopranos," said Kelly.

"d.a.m.n, why didn"t they say? If we"d known, we"d have had a good hour of that out of them before the boat."

Timulty nodded and added, listening to the music float over the waters. "Strange. Strange. I hate to see them go. Think. Think. For a hundred years or more people have said we had none. But now they have returned, if but for a little time."

"We had none of what?" asked Garrity. "And what returned?"

"Why," said Timulty, "the fairies, of course, the fairies that once lived in Ireland, and live here no more, but who came this day and changed our weather, and there they go again, who once stayed all the while."

"Ah, shut up!" cried Kilpatrick. "And listen!"

And listen they did, nine men on the end of a dock as the boat sailed out and the voices sang and the fog came in and they did not move for a long time until the boat was far gone and the voices faded like a scent of papaya on the mist.

By the time they walked back to Finn"s it had begun to rain.

THE MEADOW.

A WALL COLLAPSES, FOLLOWED BY ANOTHER and another; with dull thunder, a city falls into ruin.

The night wind blows.

The world lies silent.

London was torn down during the day. Port Said was destroyed. The nails were pulled out of San Francisco. Glasgow is no more.

They are gone, forever.

Boards clatter softly in the wind, sand whines and trickles in small storms upon the still air.

Along the road toward the colorless ruins comes the old night watchman to unlock the gate in the high barbed-wire fence and stand looking in.

There in the moonlight lie Alexandria and Moscow and New York. There in the moonlight lie Johannesburg and Dublin and Stockholm. And Clearwater, Kansas, and Provincetown, and Rio de Janeiro.

Just this afternoon the old man saw it happen, saw the car roaring outside the barbed-wire fence, saw the lean, sun-tanned men in that car, the men with their luxurious charcoal-flannel suits, and winking gold-mask cuff links, and their burning-gold wrist.w.a.tches, and eye-blinding rings, lighting their cork-tipped cigarettes with engraved lighters. . . .

"There it is, gentlemen. What a mess. Look what the weather"s done to it."

"Yes, sir, it"s bad, Mr. Douglas!"

"We just might save Paris."

"Yes, sir!"

"But, h.e.l.l! The rain"s warped it. That"s Hollywood for you! Tear it down! Clear it out! We can use that land. Send a wrecking crew in today!"

"Yes, sir, Mr. Douglas!"

The car roaring off and gone away.

And now it is night. And the old night watchman stands inside the gate.

He remembers what happened this same still afternoon when the wreckers came.

A hammering, ripping, clattering; a collapse and a roar. Dust and thunder, thunder and dust!

And the whole of the entire world shook loose its nails and lath and plaster and sill and celluloid window as town after town following town banged over flat and lay still.

A shuddering, a thunder fading away, and then, once more, only the quiet wind.

The night watchman now walks slowly forward along the empty streets.

And one moment he is in Baghdad, and beggars loll in wondrous filth, and women with clear sapphire eyes give veiled smiles from high thin windows.

The wind blows sand and confetti.

The women and beggars vanish.

And it is all strutworks again, it is all papier-mache and oil-painted canvas and props lettered with the name of this studio, and there is nothing behind any of the building fronts but night and s.p.a.ce and stars.

The old man pulls a hammer and a few long nails from his tool chest; he peers around in the junk until he finds a dozen good strong boards and some untorn canvas. And he takes the bright steel nails in his blunt fingers, and they are single-headed nails.

And he begins to put London back together again, hammering and hammering, board by board, wall by wall, window by window, hammering, hammering, louder, louder, steel on steel, steel in wood, wood against sky, working the hours toward midnight, with no end to his striking and fixing and striking again.

"Hey there, you!"

The old man pauses.

"You, night watchman!"

Out of the shadows hurries a stranger in overalls, calling: "Hey, what"s-your-name!"

The old man turns. "The name"s Smith."

"Okay, Smith, what in h.e.l.l"s the idea!"

The watchman eyes the stranger quietly. "Who are you?"

"Kelly, foreman of the wrecking gang."

The old man nods. "Ah. The ones who tear everything down. You"ve done plenty today. Why aren"t you home bragging about it?"

Kelly hawks and spits. "There was some machinery over on the Singapore set I had to check." He wipes his mouth. . . . "Now, Smith, what in Christ"s name you think you"re doing? Drop that hammer. You"re building it all up again! We tear it down and you put it up. You crazy?"

The old man nods. "Maybe I am. But somebody has to put it up again."

"Look, Smith. I do my work, you do yours, everyone"s happy. But I can"t have you messing, see? I"m turning you in to Mr. Douglas."

The old man goes on with his hammering. "Call him up. Send him around. I want to talk to him. He"s the crazy one."

Kelly laughs. "You kidding? Douglas don"t see n.o.body." He jerks his hand, then bends to examine Smith"s newly finished work. "Hey, wait a minute! What kind of nails you using? Single-heads! Now, cut that! It"ll be h.e.l.l to pay tomorrow, trying to pull "em out!"

Smith turns his head and looks for a moment at the other man swaying there. "Well, it stands to reason you can"t put the world together with double-headed nails. They"re too easy to yank out. You got to use single-headed nails and hammer "em way in. Like this!"

He gives a steel nail one tremendous blow that buries it completely in the wood.