d his hand gently on the monk's shoulder: "O
Bresal, if it be within my power you shall have your will."

So he sent messengers to Sedulius the Bishop; and Sedulius, who also
had the Irish heart with its tears of longing, consented; and not many
days after the swallows and martins had gone flashing by into the
north, Bresal of the Songs was free to follow as speedily as he might.

Long was the way and weary the pilgrimage, but at last he reached the
beloved green Isle of the Gael, and fared into the south-west--and this
is the land in which it is told that Patrick the Saint celebrated Mass
on every seventh ridge he passed over. He came at sunset on the last
day of the week to the place of bells and cells among the rocks of the
coast of Kerry. In that blessed spot there is ever a service of Angels
ascending and descending. And when he saw once more the turf dyke and
the wattled cells and the rude stone church of the brotherhood where he
had been a son of reading in his boyhood, and the land all quiet with
the labour of the week done, and the woods red with the last light of
the finished day, the tears ran down his face, and he fell on the earth
and kissed it for joy at his return. It was a glad thing for him to be
there once more; to recognise each spot he had loved, to look on the
old stones and trees, the hills and sparkling sea, the rocky isle and
the curraghs of the fisher-folk; to smell the reek of the peat curling
up blue in the sweet air; for all these things had haunted him in
dreams when he was in a distant land.

Now when the first hunger of longing had been appeased, and the year
wore round, and the swallows gathered in the autumn, and every bush and
tree was crowded with them while they waited restlessly for a moonlight
night and a fair wind to take their flight over sea, Bresal began to
think tenderly of the home on the Spanish cliffs overhanging the brink
of the sunset.

Then in the brown days of the autumn rains; and again in the keen
November when the leaves were falling in sudden showers--but the
highest leaves clung the longest--and puffs of whirling wind set the
fallen leaves flying, and these were full of sharp sounds and pattering
voices; and sixes of sparrows went flying with the leaves so that one
could not well say which were leaves and which were birds; and yet
again through the bitter time when the eaves were hung with icicles and
the peaks of the blue slieves were white with snow, and th