with torn robes and despairing cries; for the click of our knives
writing our thoughts in Ogham filled us with peace and our dispute
filled us with joy; nor even when in the morning crowds passed us to
hear the strange Druid preaching the commandments of his god. The
crowds passed, and one, who had laid down his knife to yawn and
stretch himself, heard a voice speaking far off, and knew that the
Druid Patrick was preaching within the king's house; but our hearts
were deaf, and we carved and disputed and read, and laughed a thin
laughter together. In a little we heard many feet coming towards the
house, and presently two tall figures stood in the door, the one in
white, the other in a crimson robe; like a great lily and a heavy
poppy; and we knew the Druid Patrick and our King Leaghaire. We laid
down the slender knives and bowed before the king, but when the black
and green robes had ceased to rustle, it was not the loud rough voice
of King Leaghaire that spoke to us, but a strange voice in which
there was a rapture as of one speaking from behind a battlement of
Druid flame: "I preached the commandments of the Maker of the world,"
it said; "within the king's house and from the centre of the earth to
the windows of Heaven there was a great silence, so that the eagle
floated with unmoving wings in the white air, and the fish with
unmoving fins in the dim water, while the linnets and the wrens and
the sparrows stilled there ever-trembling tongues in the heavy
boughs, and the clouds were like white marble, and the rivers became
their motionless mirrors, and the shrimps in the far-off sea-pools
were still enduring eternity in patience, although it was hard." And
as he named these things, it was like a king numbering his people.
"But your slender knives went click, click! upon the oaken staves,
and, all else being silent, the sound shook the angels with anger. O,
little roots, nipped by the winter, who do not awake although the
summer pass above you with innumerable feet. O, men who have no part