Then they all went away, and there was nothing again all round about
me upon every side. I looked everywhere for something on which to
rest the eye. Nothing. Suddenly a low grey sky swept over me and a
moist air met my face; a great plain rushed up to me from the edge
of the clouds; on two sides it touched the sky, and on two sides
between it and the clouds a line of low hills lay. One line of hills
brooded grey in the distance, the other stood a patchwork of little
square green fields, with a few white cottages about it. The plain
was an archipelago of a million islands each about a yard square or
less, and everyone of them was red with heather. I was back on the
Bog of Allen again after many years, and it was just the same as
ever, though I had heard that they were draining it. I was with an
old friend whom I was glad to see again, for they had told me that
he died some years ago. He seemed strangely young, but what
surprised me most was that he stood upon a piece of bright green
moss which I had always learned to think would never bear. I was
glad, too, to see the old bog again, and all the lovely things that
grew there--the scarlet mosses and the green mosses and the firm
and friendly heather, and the deep silent water. I saw a little
stream that wandered vaguely through the bog, and little white
shells down in the clear depths of it; I saw, a little way off, one
of the great pools where no islands are, with rushes round its
borders, where the duck love to come. I looked long at that
untroubled world of heather, and then I looked at the white cottages
on the hill, and saw the grey smoke curling from their chimneys and
knew that they burned turf there, and longed for the smell of
burning turf again. And far away there arose and came nearer the
weird cry of wild and happy voices, and a flock of geese appeared
that was coming from the northward. Then their cries blended into