ing as it were a little roof. The moon was now brilliant
among the boughs, and drawn by the moon they left their seat and passed
out of the garden by the wicket, for that night they wished to see the
fields with the woods sloping down to the long shores of the sea, and
they stood watching, thinking they had never seen the sea so beautiful
before. Now on the other side were the hills, and the moon led them up
the hillside, up the little path by a ruined church and over a stream
that was difficult to cross, for the stepping-stones were placed
crookedly. Ellen took Ned's hand, and a little further on there were
ash-trees and not a wind in all the boughs.

"How grey the moonlight is on the mountain," Ned said, and they went
through the furze where the cattle were lying, and the breath of the
cattle was odorous in the night like the breath of the earth itself,
and Ned said that the cattle were part of the earth; and then they sat
on a Druid stone and wondered at the chance that brought them together,
and they wondered how they could have lived if chance had not brought
them together.

Now, the stone they were sitting upon was a Druid stone, and it was
from Ellen's lips that Ned heard how Brian had conquered the Danes, and
how a century later a traitor had brought the English over; and she
told the story of Ireland's betrayal with such ferveur that Ned felt
she was the support his character required, the support he had been
looking for all his life; her self-restraint and her gravity were the
supports his character required, and these being thrown into the scale,
life stood at equipoise. The women who had preceded Ellen were strange,
fantastic women, counterparts of himself, but he had always aspired to
a grave and well-mannered woman who was never ridiculous.

She protested, saying that she wished Ned to express his own ideas. He
pleaded that he was learning Ireland from her lips and that his own
ideas about Ireland were superficial and false. Every day he was
catching up new ideas and every day he was shedding them. He must wait
until he had re-knit himself firmly to the tradition, and in talking to
her he felt that she was the tradition; he was sure that he could do no
better than accept her promptings, at least for the present.

"We shall always think the same. Do you not feel that?" and when they
returned to the house he fetched a piece of paper and pencil and begged
of her to dictate, and then begged of her to write