ent towards the lump of clay, and he wished
that he had asked the charwoman to take it out of his studio. He
thought of it as one thinks of a corpse, and he took down a few books
and tied them up with a string, and then forgot what he was doing. He
and his country were two thousand years apart, and would always be two
thousand years apart, and then growing superstitious, he wondered if
his country had punished him for his contempt. There was something
extraordinarily fateful in the accident that had happened to him. Such
an accident had never happened to anyone before. A most singular
accident! He stood looking through the studio unable to go on with his
packing, thinking of what Harding and he had been saying to each other.
The "Celtic renaissance!" Harding believed, or was inclined to believe,
that the Gael was not destined to disappear, that in making the Cross
of Cong he had not got as far as he was intended to get. But even
Harding had admitted that no race had taken to religion quite so
seriously as the Celt. The Druids had put aside the oak leaves and put
on the biretta. There had never been a religious revolution in Ireland.
In the fifth and sixth centuries all the intelligence of Ireland had
gone into religion. "Ireland is immersed in the religious vocation, and
there can be no renaissance without a religious revolt." The door of
the studio opened. It was Lucy; and he wondered what she had come back
for.

"It wasn't Father Tom. I knew it wasn't," she said.

"Do you know who it was then?"

"Yes, my brothers, Pat and Taigdh."

"Pat and Taigdh broke my statue! But what did they do that for? What
did I ever do to them?"

"I saw them whispering together. I could see they had a secret,
something inspired me, and when Taigdh went out I got Pat by himself
and I coaxed him and I frightened him. I told him that things had been
broken in your studio, and that the police were making inquiries. I saw
at once that he knew all about it. He got frightened and he told me
that last night when I went to my room he and Taigdh came out of their
room and had listened on the stairs. They did not understand everything
that was said, they only understood that I had sat for a statue, and
that the priest did not wish to put it up in his church, and that
perhaps he would have to pay for it, and if he did not the Bishop would
suspend him--you know there has always been talk about Father Tom's
debts. They got talking, and Taigdh said