"In our old age, is it?" Kathleen paused with the fork.

Iseult yawned again. Minogue stole a glance at his daughter as she stretched. Why weren't girls called handsome? She rubbed her eyes.

"Well, is it up that way, Da?"

"It looks close on the map, I grant you. But there's topography to consider," he answered.

"Up near your favorite haunt, is it?" Iseult prodded.

A fleeting image of last night came to Minogue. Garish floodlighting around Combs' house, violence passing through the house like a whirlwind. Haunting; poltergeist.

"Could we try a different term than haunt, if it's not too much trouble?" Minogue asked.

"I think it's creepy up there, so I do, with all the trees and the bushes growing out over the road. The holy ground, I ask you…" Iseult said. She poured tea into her mother's cup and then into Minogue's.

"If there's any haunting going on up there, it's not the likes of me that'd be doing it," Minogue declared, with the sliver of rasher poised under his nose. "After all, I'm a lively type of character. Amn't I, Kathleen?"

"For your age," Kathleen said. Iseult laughed. Kathleen turned back to her husband.

"That's not up where those people used to worship the sun, is it, Matt?"

"No, actually. That's Katty Gallagher, the far side of the Smelting Chimney."

In a glade to the inland side of the abrupt stony lump that made up Carraigologan-or Katty Gallagher as the locals called it-Minogue had found a plaque. It had been placed there to commemorate a handful of Victorians who had for decades risen to worship the sun daily from the hill top. Minogue had sometimes imagined himself joining them each morning, with the Irish Sea unfolding before them. Inland, behind, a plateau of pastures was girdled by the ring of hills and mountains: the Great Sugar Loaf to the southeast, the foothills of the Wicklow Mountains to the west.