The little man was waiting for the boys at the front door. He returned Fidelma and Leif to them. When Ward thanked him he simply nodded and dissolved back into the shadows.

By the time they reached the bottom of the hill Ward had shed his tiredness like a skin, and the somnolent atmosphere of the house was just a memory, like something dreamt. He looked back up at the house. It was painted red under the setting sun. He wondered if locks were turning and shutters opening in the houses up there, faces appearing in the apertures, noses poking out, eyes glowing likes lanthorns in the dark doorways.

The Sloopers had booked two rooms in Croakumshire's only pub, an ancient drinking house called Mac Donalds. If there had ever been a Mac Donald, he or she was forgotten, and nobody knew what the building's original function had been. It had some oddities. A post in which was set a metal grille rose from the floor in the dining room to about the height of Ward's head. The curious statue of the seated man next to the bar: he had clearly been painted once, but only a few smudges of red and yellow paint remained in the folds of his clothes and the wrinkles around his mouth. The owners of the pub had dressed him in a hat, spectacles, a string tie, and nothing else. Ward found the statue creepy, but everyone else seemed fond of it. They called it Mac. It was a village icon.

Slops and Ward got settled into their upstairs room: a tiny space furnished with a bunk bed, the remains of some carpet of uncertain pattern and colour, a few moth-eaten blankets, and several kushkuruk that scuttled off when they entered.

They went back down to the bar to find the elder Sloopers already there. It was as they sat down at a table that Ward spied the same ragged old man he had seen earlier. He was sitting at the bar. He wasn't looking in Ward's direction, but again Ward got the sense that he had been only a moment before. Ward watched him from the corner of his eyes while Slops chatted with his parents, but the ragged man didn't turn around.

Slops didn't bother to fill his parents in on the visit to the Old Wise Woman. Mr and Mrs Slooper were similarly vague about what they had been up to. Ward established only that it had been a meeting at somebody's house, and that the topics discussed therein were of a sensitive nature. The lack of detail made for tedious conversation, and everyone seemed relieved when the food came. Ward's meal consisted of several unidentifiable cuts of meat, an array of roasted vegetables, steamed greens, and as much gravy as he could pour over it all. It was delicious.

Some time during the meal Ward looked up and realised that the ragged man had vanished. This only made him more uneasy. He asked the Sloopers about the man, but they all shook their heads at his description. It seemed that ragged men were common in Croakumshire, and Ward's description could have applied to any of them.

A band was tuning up beside the bar. Slops watched on with interest. An upright lute-shaped thing was being operated by a bearded giant whose cap brushed the ceiling. A tiny old man with a beard that reached down to his knees banged the end of a stick on the floor a couple of times so that the bells that had been nailed to it jangled. A young blonde woman plucked at a stringed instrument. She was covered almost completely in blue ink pictures, which Ward knew had been painfully etched into her skin using a needle, for he had seen sailors with them – though never as many as this woman had. A small, filthy man, who was little more than a mound of hair, sat behind a complex drum set consisting of a framework of plumbing, to which was attached drums of various sizes, an array of tarnished cymbals, and some pots and pans. The hair, which had been seated calmly behind this edifice, sprang suddenly to life, thrashing away at everything within reach. It stopped as suddenly as it has begun, and moved away to the bar. A dirty hand extended from the hair and closed around an enormous mug of beer.

Mr Slooper knocked back his own beer and watched the band, his eyes shining, one hand tapping his leg in time with music only he could hear.

"Bet he'll dance," Slops said to Ward with a roll of his eyes.

Sure enough, from the first note Mr Slooper was on the dance floor, wheeling about like a dervish. It drew laughs and applause. Slops hid his face in his hands. When Mr Slooper began to writhe invitingly before the inked young woman it seemed to be the cue for Mrs Slooper to join him on the dance floor, and she inserted herself between the two. This drew more laughs. Mr Slooper took her hand and whirled her out onto the floor. Mrs Slooper could actually dance, and everyone stopped laughing to watch. Then the band went into a well-known song, and suddenly the floor was full of people.

Ward felt his eyelids begin to droop, so he said goodnight to Slops and went upstairs. Despite the steady booming noise from below he fell asleep soon after his head hit the pillow.

In case you were wondering, kushkuruk are a species of large primate.