Since he had inherited the farm thirteen years ago from his mother he had been stalked. By debt, by bad weather, by waves of disease and still-births that had afflicted his livestock with a merciless, clockwork regularity. And by the hatred of his neighbors, who had ostracized his family in the last century for some long-forgotten sin by his great-grandfather. It didn’t matter that neither Feidhlim nor his neighbors could remember the details of his great-grandfather’s transgression. Memory was ephemeral. Hatred was a rock.
