Do thugainn loistin do gach deoraidh treith-lag --
I used to give lodging to every poor wanderer;
Food and drink to him I would see in want,
His proper payment to the man requesting reckoning,
Och! Is not Jesus hard if he condemns me!

All these stories, of all these people he told, had the unreal,
shimmering quality of that mirage that is seen from Portrush cliffs,
a glittering city in a golden desert, surrounded by a strange sea mist.
All these songs, all these words he spoke, were native, had the same
tang as the turf smoke, the Gaelic quality that is in dark lakes on
mountains summits, in plovers nests amid the heather. . .And to
remember them now in New York, to see him. . .

Fifteen years had changed him but little: little more tremor and
slowness in the walk, a bow to the great shoulders, an eye that
flashed like a knife.

"And what do you think of New York, Malachi?"

"I was here before, your honor will remember. I fought at the
Wilderness."

I forbore asking him what change he had found. I saw his quivering
nostrils.

In a few days he would proceed south, when he had orientated himself
after the days of shipboard.

That night it seemed every one chose to come in and cluster around