brushwood, ugly brown patches--ugly as their names, Horse Island and Hog
Island, whereas Castle Island had always seemed to him a suitable island
for a hermitage, far more so than Castle Hag. Castle Hag was too small
and bleak to engage the attention of a sixth-century hermit. But there
were trees on Castle Island, and out of the ruins of the castle a
comfortable sheiling could be built, and the ground thus freed from the
ruins of the Welshman's castle might be cultivated. He remembered
commandeering the fisherman's boat, and rowing himself out, taking a
tape to measure, and how, after much application of the tape, he had
satisfied himself that there was enough arable land in the island for a
garden; he had walked down the island certain that a quarter of an acre
could grow enough vegetables to support a hermit, and that a goat would
be able to pick a living among the bushes and the tussocked grass: even
a hermit might have a goat, and he didn't think he could live without
milk. He must have been a long time measuring out his garden, for when
he returned to his boat the appearance of the lake frightened him; it
was full of blustering waves, and it wasn't likely he'd ever forget his
struggle to get the boat back to Tinnick. He left it where he had found
it, at the mouth of the river by the fisherman's hut, and returned home
thinking how he would have to import a little hay occasionally for the
goat. Nor would this be all; he would have to go on shore every Sunday
to hear Mass, unless he built a chapel. The hermit of Church Island had
an oratory in which he said Mass! But if he left his island every Sunday
his hermitage would be a mockery. For the moment he couldn't see how he
was to build a chapel--a sheiling, perhaps; a chapel was out of the
question, he feared.

He would have to have vestments and a chalice, and, immersed in the
difficulty of obtaining these, he walked home, taking the path along the
river from habit, not because he wished to consider afresh the problems