he was out of their sight.

After a while he came back round the hill, where he was hidden by the
furze growing along a ditch. And when he came in sight of his cabin
he saw that all the old men had gathered around it, and one of them
was just at that time thrusting a rake with a wisp of lighted straw
on it into the thatch.

'My grief,' he said, 'I have set Old Age and Time and Weariness and
Sickness against me, and I must go wandering again. And, O Blessed
Queen of Heaven,' he said, 'protect me from the Eagle of Ballygawley,
the Yew Tree of the Steep Place of the Strangers, the Pike of Castle
Dargan Lake, and from the lighted wisps of their kindred, the Old
Men!'




HANRAHAN'S VISION.

It was in the month of June Hanrahan was on the road near Sligo, but
he did not go into the town, but turned towards Beinn Bulben; for
there were thoughts of the old times coming upon him, and he had no
mind to meet with common men. And as he walked he was singing to
himself a song that had come to him one time in his dreams:

O Death's old bony finger
Will never find us there
In the high hollow townland
Where love's to give and to spare;