The carriage steered left for Finglas road.

The stonecutter's yard on the right. Last lap. Crowded on the spit of
land silent shapes appeared, white, sorrowful, holding out calm hands,
knelt in grief, pointing. Fragments of shapes, hewn. In white silence:
appealing. The best obtainable. Thos. H. Dennany, monumental builder and
sculptor.

Passed.

On the curbstone before Jimmy Geary, the sexton's, an old tramp sat,
grumbling, emptying the dirt and stones out of his huge dustbrown
yawning boot. After life's journey.

Gloomy gardens then went by: one by one: gloomy houses.

Mr Power pointed.

--That is where Childs was murdered, he said. The last house.

--So it is, Mr Dedalus said. A gruesome case. Seymour Bushe got him off.
Murdered his brother. Or so they said.

--The crown had no evidence, Mr Power said.

--Only circumstantial, Martin Cunningham added. That's the maxim of
the law. Better for ninetynine guilty to escape than for one innocent
person to be wrongfully condemned.

They looked. Murderer's ground. It passed darkly. Shuttered,
tenantless, unweeded garden. Whole place gone to hell. Wrongfully
condemned. Murder. The murderer's image in the eye of the murdered.
They love reading about it. Man's head found in a garden. Her clothing
consisted of. How she met her death. Recent outrage. The weapon used.
Murderer is still at large. Clues. A shoelace. The body to be exhumed.
Murder will out.

Cramped in this carriage. She mightn't like me to come that way
without letting her know. Must be careful about women. Catch them once
with their pants down. Never forgive you after. Fifteen.

The high railings of Prospect rippled past their gaze. Dark poplars,
rare white forms. Forms more frequent, white shapes thronged amid the
trees, white forms and fragments streaming by mutely, sustaining vain
gestures on the air.

The felly harshed against the curbstone: stopped. Martin
Cunningham put out his arm and, wrenching back the handle, shoved the
door open with his knee. He stepped out. Mr Power and Mr Dedalus
followed.

Change that soap now. Mr Bloom's hand unbuttoned his hip pocket
swiftly and transferred the paperstuck soap to his inner handkerchief
pocket. He stepped out of the carriage, replacing the newspaper his other
hand still held.

Paltry funeral: coach and three carriages. It's all the same.
Pallbearers, gold reins, requiem mass, firing a volley. Pomp of death.
Beyond the hind carriage a hawker stood by his barrow of cakes and fruit.
Simnel cakes those are, stuck together: cakes for the dead. Dogbiscuits.
Who ate them? Mourners coming out.

He followed his companions. Mr Kernan and Ned Lambert followed,
Hynes walking after them. Corny Kelleher stood by the opened hearse and
took out the two wreaths. He handed one to the boy.

Where is that child's funeral disappeared to?

A team of horses passed from Finglas with toiling plodding tread,
dragging through the funereal silence a creaking waggon on which lay a
granite block. The waggoner marching at their head saluted.

Coffin now. Got here before us, dead as he is. Horse looking round at it
with his plume skeowways. Dull eye: collar tight on his neck, pressing on
a bloodvessel or something. Do they know what they cart out here every
day? Must be twenty or thirty funerals every day. Then Mount Jerome for
the protestants. Funerals all over the world everywhere every minute.
Shovelling them under by the cartload doublequick. Thousands every hour.
Too many in the world.

Mourners came out through the gates: woman and a girl. Leanjawed
harpy, hard woman at a bargain, her bonnet awry. Girl's face stained with
dirt and tears, holding the woman's arm, looking up at her for a sign to
cry. Fish's face, bloodless and livid.

The mutes shouldered the coffin and bore it in through the gates. So
much dead weight. Felt heavier myself stepping out of that bath. First the
stiff: then the friends of the stiff. Corny Kelleher and the boy followed
with their wreaths. Who is that beside them? Ah, the brother-in-law.

All walked after.

Martin Cunningham whispered:

--I was in mortal agony with you talking of suicide before Bloom.

--What? Mr Power whispered. How so?

--His father poisoned himself, Martin Cunningham whispered. Had the


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