Ravenshoe. By Henry Kingsley.

CUTHBERT GOES BATHING. 301
"Bedad," he said, "I've been lying on the sand, and the sun
has got into my stomach and made me talk nonsense. When I
was a gossoon, I used to sleep with the pig; and it was a poor,
feeble-minded pig, as never got fat on petaty skins. If folly's
catchin', I must have caught it from that pig. Did ye ever hear
the legend of St. Laurence O'Toole's wooden-legged sow, Mackworth?"
It was evident, after this, that the more Mackworth fulminated
against good Father Tiernay's unutterable nonsense, the more he
would talk; so he rose and moved sulkily away. Cuthbert asked
him, laughing, what the story was.
"Faix," said Tiernay, "I ain't sure, principally because I
have n't had time to invent it; but we've got rid of Mackworth,
and can now discourse reasonable."
Cuthbert sent a boy up to the hall for' some towels, and then
lay down on the sand beside Tiernay. He was very fond of
that man, in spite of his reqkless Irish habit of talking nonsense.
He was not alone there. I think that every one who knew
Tiernay liked him.
They lay on the sand together, those three; and when Father
Mackworth's anger had evaporated, he came back and lay beside
him. Tiernay put his hand out to him, and Mackworth shook
it, and they were reconciled. I believe Mackworth esteemed
Tiernay, though they were so utterly unlike in character and
feeling. I know that Tiernay had a certain admiration for Mackworth.
-" Do you think, now," said Tiernay, "that you Englishmen
enjoy such a scene and such a time as this as much as we Irishmen do? I cannot tell. You talk better about it. You have
a dozen poets to our one. Our best poet, I take it, is Tommy
Moore. You class him as third-rate; but I doubt, mind you,
whether you feel nature so acutely as we do."
"I think we do," said Cuthbert, eagerly. "I cannot think that
you can feel the beauty of the scene we are looking at more deeply
than I do. You feel nature as in' Silent O'Moyle'; we feel it as
in Keats's' St. Agnes' Eve."'
He was sitting up on the sand, with his elbows on his knees,
and his face buried in his hands. None of them spoke for a
time; and he, looking seaward, said, idly, in a low voice,
"' St. Agnes' Eve. Ah, bitter chill it was!
The owl, for all his feathers, was a-cold;
The hare limped, trembling, through the frozen grass;
And drowsy was the flock in woolly fold.'"
What was the poor lad thinking of? God knows. There are
times when one can't follow the train of a man's thoughts, - only
treasure up their spoken words as priceless relics.