skull on the
boulder, and some of the blood was spattered upon his boots. He was a
man of tense nerves. The sight of blood sickened him. He put on his
coat, left the quarry, and went walking along the road.

It was while he walked along the road that the longing for his home came
upon him. He tramped back to his home above Kilbeg. His father had been
long dead, but by his return he had glorified the closing days of his
mother's life. He took up the little farm and cut himself off from his
wandering life when he had fetched the tools from his lodgings in the
town beside the quarries.

By the time Martin Cosgrave had reached the top of the hill he had
concluded that he had not, after all, been a foolish boy to work in far
places. "The hand of God was in it," he said reverently with his eyes on
the beech trees that made music on the crest of the hill.

He made a rapid survey of the place with his keen eyes. Then he mapped
out the foundation of the building by driving the heel of his boot into
the green sod. He stepped back among the beech trees and looked out at
the outlined site of the building. He saw it all growing up in his
mind's eye, at first a rough block, a mere shell, a little uncertain and
unsatisfactory. Then the uncertainties were lopped off, the building
took shape, touch after touch was added. Long shadows spread out from
the trees and wrapped the fields. Stars came out in the sky. But Martin
Cosgrave never noticed these things. The building was growing all the
time. There was a firm grasp of the general scheme, a realisation of
what the building would evolve that no other building ever evolved, what
it would proclaim for all time. The passing of the day and the stealth
of the night could not claim attention from a man who was living over a
dream that was fashioning itself in his mind, abandoning himself to the
joy or his creation, dwelling longingly upon the details of the
building, going over and, as it were, feeling it in every fibre, jealous
of the effect of every stone, tracing the trend and subtlety of every
curve, seeing how one touch fitted in and enhanced the other and how all
carried on the meaning of the whole.

When he came down from the hill there was a spring in Martin Cosgrave's
step. He swung his arms. The blood was coursing fast through his veins.
His eyes were glowing. He would need to make a map of the building. It
was all burned clearly into his brain.

From under the bed of his cabin