"I have learned much from you, dear master," said Fionn gratefully.

"All that I have is yours if you can take it," the poet answered, "for
you are entitled to all that you can take, but to no more than that.
Take, so, with both hands."

"You may catch the salmon while I am with you," the hopeful boy mused.
"Would not that be a great happening!" and he stared in ecstasy across
the grass at those visions which a boy's mind knows.

"Let us pray for that," said Finegas fervently.

"Here is a question," Fionn continued. "How does this salmon get wisdom
into his flesh?"

"There is a hazel bush overhanging a secret pool in a secret place. The
Nuts of Knowledge drop from the Sacred Bush into the pool, and as they
float, a salmon takes them in his mouth and eats them."

"It would be almost as easy," the boy submitted, "if one were to set on
the track of the Sacred Hazel and eat the nuts straight from the bush."

"That would not be very easy," said the poet, "and yet it is not as easy
as that, for the bush can only be found by its own knowledge, and that
knowledge can only be got by eating the nuts, and the nuts can only be
got by eating the salmon."

"We must wait for the salmon," said Fionn in a rage of resignation.

CHAPTER X

Life continued for him in a round of timeless time, wherein days and
nights were uneventful and were yet filled with interest. As the day
packed its load of strength into his frame, so it added its store of
knowledge to his mind, and each night sealed the twain, for it is in the
night that we make secure what we have gathered in the day.

If he had told of these days he would have told of a succession of meals
and sleeps, and of an endless conversation, from which his mind would
now and again slip away to a solitude of its own, where, in large hazy
atmospheres, it swung and drifted and reposed. Then he would be back
again, and it was a pleasure for him to catch up on the thought that was
forward and re-create for it all the matter he had missed. But he could
not often make these sleepy sallies; his master was too experienced a
teacher to allow any such bright-faced, eager-eyed abstractions, and as
the druid women had switched his legs around a tree, so Finegas chased
his mind, demanding sense in his questions and understanding in his
replies.

To ask questions can become the laziest and wobbliest occupation of a
mind, but when you must yourself answer the problem that you have posed,