“I thought so,” nodded Norah. “But I do think he’s happier than he was, Jim.”
“I believe he is. Well, we’ll try to keep him laughing for the next week or so, anyhow,” said Jim. “Now, you go to sleep, old kiddie.”
The fine weather held, making it easy to leave trout which would have nothing to do with them; and next day the motor took them away into bypaths of Ireland, with new beauty and new legend at every turn. They passed Gartan, and saw the birthplace of Saint Columba, a tiny stone cell with a curiously indented stone; and Columba’s ruined church of grey stone, roofless, and with almost-effaced carvings on its walls. Near it a tall, narrow stone stood crookedly—all that remained of a cross. The ground before it, hard as iron, was hollowed where the knees of thousands of pilgrims had knelt in prayer, and the stone itself was smooth from kisses that had been pressed upon it through century after century. Sir John knew many legends of the hot-tempered, fighting saint, whose warlike proclivities eventually led to his banishment from the Ireland he loved, to work and suffer home-sickness until Death came at last to release him.
“The emigrants pray to him specially, since he, too, knew what it meant to be lonely for Ireland,” Sir John said. “He was a worker: he wrote three hundred books and founded the same number of churches. So he came to be called Columcille—_cille_ meaning church. An O’Donnell he was: one of the old house. He made a famous copy of the Psalms, the disputed ownership of which caused the fight that led to his leaving Ireland: and this copy—it was called The Cathach, or Battler—was an heirloom in the O’Donnell family, who always carried it with them into battle, in a shrine. One hates to think of him, exiled, working, and longing for home. The first monastery he founded was near Derry; he was only a young man then, but long afterwards he wrote that the angels of God sang in every glade of Derry’s oaks. I always think one can see him in this queer little church—big and powerful, with the fighting face and toilworn hands.”
For a time they kept near the railway that creeps through the heart of Donegal: a quaint, narrow-gauge line where the trains saunter, forgetful of time. Its way runs through deep bogs, which made its construction no light matter, since solid foundation was in some places only found eighty feet below the surface, and great causeways, embankments, and viaducts had to be built to carry it. Sometimes, in contrast, the way had to be hewn through solid rock. On one hand lay wild and rugged mountains, with some fine dominating peaks: Muckish—“the hog’s back”—with its long, flattened ridge, changing from every angle of vision; and the great peak of Errigal, bare and glistening, the highest mountain in Donegal.