a round of sordid worries, relieved by tobacco, punch, fine
mornings, and petty successes in buying and selling, passes with
his guest as the whimsical affectation of a shrewd Irish humorist
and incorrigible spendthrift. Aunt Judy seems to him an incarnate
joke. The likelihood that the joke will pall after a month or so,
and is probably not apparent at any time to born Rossculleners,
or that he himself unconsciously entertains Aunt Judy by his
fantastic English personality and English mispronunciations, does
not occur to him for a moment. In the end he is so charmed, and
so loth to go to bed and perhaps dream of prosaic England, that
he insists on going out to smoke a cigar and look for Nora Reilly
at the Round Tower. Not that any special insistence is needed;
for the English inhibitive instinct does not seem to exist in
Rosscullen. Just as Nora's liking to miss a meal and stay out at
the Round Tower is accepted as a sufficient reason for her doing
it, and for the family going to bed and leaving the door open for
her, so Broadbent's whim to go out for a late stroll provokes
neither hospitable remonstrance nor surprise. Indeed Aunt Judy
wants to get rid of him whilst she makes a bed for him on the
sofa. So off he goes, full fed, happy and enthusiastic, to
explore the valley by moonlight.

The Round Tower stands about half an Irish mile from Rosscullen,
some fifty yards south of the road on a knoll with a circle of
wild greensward on it. The road once ran over this knoll; but
modern engineering has tempered the level to the Beeyankiny car
by carrying the road partly round the knoll and partly through a
cutting; so that the way from the road to the tower is a footpath
up the embankment through furze and brambles.