e low hills
and fields were hoary--the memory of the Prior and of the beloved house
prevailed with him and he felt the dull ache of separation.

[Illustration: _And again in the keen November_]

As the days passed by his trouble grew the greater, for he began to
fear that his love of the creature was attaching him too closely to the
earth and to the things of this fleeting life of our exile. In vain he
fasted and prayed and strove to subdue his affections; the human heart
within him would not suffer him to rest.

Now it happened on a day when the year had turned, and a soft wind was
tossing the little new leaves and the shadows of the leaves and the new
grass and the shadows of the grass, Bresal was sitting on a rock in the
sun on the hillside.

Suddenly there flashed by him, in a long swift joyous swing of flight,
two beautiful birds with long wings and forked tails and a sheen of red
and green. It was the swallows that had returned.

For a moment he felt an ascension of the heart, and then he recollected
that nearly a year had elapsed since he had seen the face of his friend
the Prior for the last time in this world. And he wondered to himself
how they all fared, whether any one had died, what this one or that was
now doing, whether they still spoke at times of him, but chiefly he
thought of the Prior, and he prayed for him with a great love. And
thinking thus as he sat on the rock, Bresal seemed to see once more the
dear house in Spain and the cliffs overlooking the vast ocean stream,
and it appeared to him as though he were once again in a favourite nook
among the rocks beside the priory.

In that nook a thread of water trickled down into a hollow stone and
made a little pool, and around the pool grew an ice-plant with thick
round green leaves set close and notched on the edge, and a thin russet
stalk, and little stars of white flowers sprinkled with red. And hard
by the pool stood a small rounded evergreen tree from which he had
often gathered the orange-scarlet berries. At the sight of these
simple and familiar things the tears ran down Bresal's cheeks, half for
joy and half for sorrow.

Now at this selfsame moment the Prior was taking the air and saying his
office near that very spot, and when he had closed his breviary, he
remembered his friend in Erinn far away, and murmured, "How is it,
Lord, with Bresal my brother? Have him, I pray Thee, ever in Thy holy
keeping."

As he spoke the gift of