Saint Patrick would take the enchantment out of them and leave them
fit for human use. But the black and green clothes fell away wherever
his fingers touched them, and while this was a new wonder, a slight
wind blew over the pool and crumbled the old man of learning and all
his ancient gear into a little heap of dust, and then made the little
heap less and less until there was nothing but the smooth green
grass.




WHERE THERE IS NOTHING, THERE IS GOD.


The little wicker houses at Tullagh, where the Brothers were
accustomed to pray, or bend over many handicrafts, when twilight had
driven them from the fields, were empty, for the hardness of the
winter had brought the brotherhood together in the little wooden
house under the shadow of the wooden chapel; and Abbot Malathgeneus,
Brother Dove, Brother Bald Fox, Brother Peter, Brother Patrick,
Brother Bittern, Brother Fair-Brows, and many too young to have won
names in the great battle, sat about the fire with ruddy faces, one
mending lines to lay in the river for eels, one fashioning a snare
for birds, one mending the broken handle of a spade, one writing in a
large book, and one shaping a jewelled box to hold the book; and
among the rushes at their feet lay the scholars, who would one day be
Brothers, and whose school-house it was, and for the succour of whose
tender years the great fire was supposed to leap and flicker. One of
these, a child of eight or nine years, called Olioll, lay upon his
back looking up through the hole in the roof, through which the smoke