now, immensely peaceful, immensely sane. Here he was
in the house of his fathers, built from the angle of a turret of King
John's time. Here he was by the purple hills, by the purple Moyle. Five
springs had come since he had given up the sea. Five times he had seen
the little mountain streams swell with the import of the season,
hurrying from the summit of the eagles, carrying water on nature's
business. Five times had the primrose come, and the cuckoo. The faint
delicate blue of early grass turned to green. The heat haze of summer on
the silent glens. The Moyle thick with fish. Then autumn, a deep-bosomed
grave woman moving through the reddening woods, the turf-cutters with
their spades, the pillars of blue smoke from the cottages in the stilly
September sky. And the three great moons of autumn, silver as sixpence.
Five times the distant trumpeting of the wild swans and winter came, in
great galloping winds, and sweeping sheets of sea-rain. And Moyle tossed
like a giant troubled in his sleep. And on the mountain-sides the rowan
stood up like a proud enemy, and the ash bent humbly, and the dwarf oak
crouched under fury. And the wind whistled in the frozen reeds. And with
the snow came out the hunted ones unafraid, the red fox, and the badger
of dark ways, and the cantering hare.

Without, the wind might roar like cannon, and the sea rise in great
engulfing waves. Within the old house with its corner dating from King
John's time--so long ago!--was comfort. Here was the library where Robin
More--God rest his soul!--had puzzled over the round towers of Ireland
and written his monograph on the Phenician colony of the County Down,
and bothered about strange quaint old things, comparing the Celtic cross
to the sistrum of Egypt, and wondering whether the round towers of
Ireland had aught to do with worship of the sun, and writing of Gaelic
occultism to Bulwer Lytton, and dreaming of the friend of his youth,
Goethe, in the dusk. And down in the gun-room were the cups of Alan
Donn, cups for sailing and cups for golf, and ribbons that horses won.
And in the drawing-room was the needlework of his mother, the precise
beautiful broidery ... so like herself, minute, mathematical, not
significant.... And in the kitchen was the red turf, and the flitches of
bacon in the eaves, and the thick servant girls hustling impatiently,
and the servant boys in their corduroy trousers bound with rushes at the
knee ... their heavy brogues, their hon