midnight
Denis Donohoe walked over to the dim stack of brown turf piled at the back of the stable . It was there since the early fall , the dry earth cut from the bog , the turf that would make bright and pleasant fires in the open grates of Connacht for the winter months . Away from it spread the level bogland , a sweep of country that had , they said , in the infancy of the earth been a great oak forest , across which in later times had roved packs of hungry wolves , and which could at this day claim the most primitive form of industry in Western Europe . Out into this bogland in the summer had come from their cabins the peasantry , men and women , Denis Donohoe among them ; they had dug up slices of the spongy , wet sod , cut it into pieces rather larger than bricks , licked it into shape by stamping upon it with their bare feet , stacked it about in little rows to dry in the sun , one sod leaning against the other , looking in the moonlight like a great host of wee brown fairies grouped in couples for a midnight dance on the carpet of purple heather . Now the time had come to convert it into such money as it would fetch . Denis Donohoe whistled merrily that night as he piled the donkey cart , or `` creel , '' with the sods of turf . Long before daybreak next morning he was about , his movements quick like one who had great business on hands .