had seen
before. "We're here," I said, "for the purpose of learning what life
is, and the blind beggar has taught me a great deal, something that I
could not have learnt out of a book, a deeper truth than any book
contains." ... And then I ceased to think, for thinking is a folly when
a soft south wind is blowing, and an instinct as soft and as gentle
fills the heart.

CHAPTER XI

SO ON HE FARES

His mother had forbidden him to stray about the roads, and standing at
the garden gate, little Ulick Burke often thought he would like to run
down to the canal and watch the boats passing. His father used to take
him for walks along the towing path, but his father had gone away to
the wars two years ago, and standing by the garden gate he remembered
how his father used to stop to talk to the lock-keepers. Their talk
often turned upon the canal and its business, and Ulick remembered that
the canal ended in the Shannon, and that the barges met ships coming up
from the sea.

He was a pretty child with bright blue eyes, soft curls, and a shy
winning manner, and he stood at the garden gate thinking how the boats
rose up in the locks, how the gate opened and let the boats free, and
he wondered if his father had gone away to the war in one of the
barges. He felt sure if he were going away to the war he would go in a
barge. And he wondered if the barge went as far as the war or only as
far as the Shannon? He would like to ask his mother, but she would say
he was troubling her with foolish questions, or she would begin to
think again that he wanted to run away from home. He wondered if he
were to hide himself in one of the barges whether it would take him to
a battlefield where he would meet his father walking about with a gun
upon his shoulder?

And leaning against the gate-post, he swung one foot across the other,
though he had been told by his mother that he was like one of the
village children when he did it. But his mother was always telling him
not to do something, and he could not remember everything he must not
do. He had been told not to go to the canal lest he should fall in, nor
into the field lest he should tear his trousers. He had been told he
must not run in about in the garden lest he should tread on the
flowers, and his mother was always telling him he was not to talk to
the school children as they came back from school, though he did not
want to talk to them. There was a time when he would have liked to