itself, as a plant
adapts itself in a strange country. And now they were Ulster squires.
Smiling, shy, independent. They had a great feeling for a horse, and a
powerful sense of fair play. They were very honest folk. A station had
been set them and they lived in it, honestly, uncomplainingly, quite
happily. But a meadow was a piece of land to them and a river a place
where trout could be caught, and snow was a good thing, because it kept
the ground warm. They were a folk whom Shane respected a great deal, and
who respected him--but they weren't his folk.

Above all these of his neighbors towered three figures, and the first of
these was the admiral.

He had a name. He had a title, too--Baron Fraser of Onabega. But to
everybody he was the admiral, and in speech plain "sir." A purple-faced
and terrible old man, with bushy white eyebrows and eagle's eyes. Very
tall, four inches over six feet, very erect for all his ninety years,
with his presence there thundered the guns of Drake, there came to the
mind the slash of old Benbow.... He had been a midshipman with Nelson at
Cape Trafalgar.

Silent and fierce, about his head clouds of majesty, all his life had
been spent with pursed lips and hooded eyes, keeping watch for England
... And never a great battle where he could prove himself the peer of
Benbow and Drake and Nelson ... Never a dawn when the fleet rolled down
to battle with polished guns and whipping flags ... And a day came when
he was too old ... So here he was in the Antrim glens ...

A great life, his, a great and serviceable life, frustrated of glory ...
And well he deserved the quiet of Ulster, where he sat and wrote his
long letters to archaeological papers, proving, he thought, that the
Irish were a lost tribe of Israel and that the Ark of the Covenant was
buried on Tara Hill ... And there were none to laugh at him ... All
spirit he was; watchful, dogged, indomitable spirit with a little husk
of body ... Soon, as he had directed, his old bearded sailormen would
take his flag-covered casket out to sea in the night, and the guns would
thunder: A British admiral sails by ...

And there was Simon Fowler in his little cottage, who was dying by
inches from some tropical malady ... A small chunky man with white hair
and wide blue eyes ... He had been a missionary in Africa, in China, in
India--not the missionary of sentimental books, but a prophet whose calm
voice, whose intrepid eyes, had gained him a hearing e