The old man of learning had crawled along the grass, and was
now trying to draw the cross down low enough for his lips to reach
it.
'You must not touch my blessed beads, cried the voteen, and struck
the long withered fingers with the barrel of his gun. He need not
have trembled, for the old man fell back upon the grass with a sigh
and was still. He bent down and began to consider the black and green
clothes, for his fear had begun to pass away when he came to
understand that he had something the man of learning wanted and
pleaded for, and now that the blessed beads were safe, his fear had
nearly all gone; and surely, he thought, if that big cloak, and that
little tight-fitting cloak under it, were warm and without holes,
Saint Patrick would take the enchantment out of them and leave them
fit for human use. But the black and green clothes fell away wherever
his fingers touched them, and while this was a new wonder, a slight
wind blew over the pool and crumbled the old man of learning and all
his ancient gear into a little heap of dust, and then made the little
heap less and less until there was nothing but the smooth green
grass.
WHERE THERE IS NOTHING, THERE IS GOD.
The little wicker houses at Tullagh, where the Brothers were
accustomed to pray, or bend over many handicrafts, when twilight had
driven them from the fields, were empty, for the hardness of the
winter had brought the brotherhood together in the little wooden
house under the shadow of the wooden chapel; and Abbot Malathgeneus,
Brother Dove, Brother Bald Fox, Brother Peter, Brother Patrick,
Brother Bittern, Brother Fair-Brows, and many too young to have won
names in the great battle, sat about the fire with ruddy faces, one
mending lines to lay in the river for eels, one fashioning a snare
for birds, one mending the broken handle of a spade, one writing in a
large book, and one shaping a jewelled box to hold the book; and
among the rushes at their feet lay the scholars, who would one day be
Brothers, and whose school-house it was, and for the succour of whose
tender years the great fire was supposed to leap and flicker.
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