Page:Shiana - Peadar Ua Laoghaire.djvu/259

Rh and Neoin and the rest of them, as the poet said:—

"Ugly Iveragh of the grey churls, Glen Cara where neither corn nor food grows, Those high ugly hills of Desmond to the west, Places to which Patrick never gave a blessing."

Or, as the other poet said in reply to that one:

"Beautiful Iveragh of the freehearted and generous men, Glen Cara, where corn and food grow. Those fine high mountains of Desmond in the West, Places which Patrick left it to God to bless."

He was looking around at them for a while, recognising them and naming them, and thinking that there could hardly be under the sun another view so beautiful as that view which was spread out before his own eyes on that summer morning. Then it was that the events of the night and the words of the barefooted woman suddenly recurred to his mind. He thought at first that he had been dreaming. He stuck his hand into his pocket. True enough, the shilling was there in his pocket, the pocket into which he had put it when the woman gave it to him in the night. There was something in the business that was not a dream. The whole matter rushed to his mind at once; the woman's words, and the shilling, and the enemy, and the instructions he had been given regarding the chair. He sprang up. There was his house yonder. He turned his back to it and went along the hill westward. He went west to the