heard a voice saying to me, 'You
have fasted well, and soon you shall see your home and your native
land.' Soon after, I heard the voice again, saying, 'The ship is ready
for you.' But the ship was not near, but two hundred miles off, in a
district I had never visited, and where I knew no one. Therefore I fled,
leaving the master I had served for six years, and found the ship by
divine guidance, going without fear....

"We reached the land after three days' sail; then for twenty-eight days
we wandered through a wilderness.... Once more, after years of exile, I
was at home again with my kindred, among the Britons. All welcomed me
like a son, earnestly begging me that, after the great dangers I had
passed through, I would never again leave my home.

"While I was at home, in a vision of the night I saw one who seemed to
come from Ireland, bringing innumerable letters. He gave me one of the
letters, in which I read, 'The voices of the Irish ...;' and while I
read, it seemed to me that I heard the cry of the dwellers by the forest
of Foclut, by the Western Ocean, calling with one voice to me, 'Come and
dwell with us!' My heart was so moved that I awoke, and I give thanks to
my God who after many years has given to them according to
their petition.

"On another night, whether within me or without me I know not, God
knows, One prayed with very wonderful words that I could not comprehend,
till at last He said, 'It is He who gave His soul for you, that speaks!'
I awoke for joy. And once in a vision I saw Him praying within me, as it
were; I saw myself, as it were, within myself; and I heard Him praying
urgently and strongly over the inner man; I being meanwhile astonished,
and wondering who thus prayed within me, till at the end He declared
that I should be an overseer for Him....

"I had not believed in the living Divine from childhood, but had
remained in the realm of death until hunger and nakedness and daily
slavery in Ireland--for I came there as a captive--had so afflicted me
that I almost broke down. Yet these things brought good, for through
that daily suffering I was so changed that I work and toil now for the
well-being of others, I who formerly took no care even for myself....

"Therefore I thank Him who kept me faithful in the day of trial, that I
live to offer myself daily as a living offering to Him who saves and
guards me. Well may I say, 'Master, what am I, what is my calling, that
such grace and divine hel