in love, who have no part in song, who have no part in wisdom, but
dwell with the shadows of memory where the feet of angels cannot
touch you as they pass over your heads, where the hair of demons
cannot sweep about you as they pass under your feet, I lay upon you a
curse, and change you to an example for ever and ever; you shall
become grey herons and stand pondering in grey pools and flit over
the world in that hour when it is most full of sighs, having
forgotten the flame of the stars and not yet found the flame of the
sun; and you shall preach to the other herons until they also are
like you, and are an example for ever and ever; and your deaths shall
come to you by chance and unforeseen, that no fire of certainty may
visit your hearts."'

The voice of the old man of learning became still, but the voteen
bent over his gun with his eyes upon the ground, trying in vain to
understand something of this tale; and he had so bent, it may be for
a long time, had not a tug at his rosary made him start out of his
dream. The old man of learning had crawled along the grass, and was
now trying to draw the cross down low enough for his lips to reach
it.

'You must not touch my blessed beads, cried the voteen, and struck
the long withered fingers with the barrel of his gun. He need not
have trembled, for the old man fell back upon the grass with a sigh
and was still. He bent down and began to consider the black and green
clothes, for his fear had begun to pass away when he came to
understand that he had something the man of learning wanted and
pleaded for, and now that the blessed beads were safe, his fear had
nearly all gone; and surely, he thought, if that big cloak, and that
little tight-fitting cloak under it, were warm and without holes,