the priest to write no more, but
to leave the matter to God.
So they passed the time for a year, until there came a day when Guleesh
was lying by himself, on the grass, on the last day of the last month
in autumn, and he was thinking over again in his own mind of everything
that happened to him from the day that he went with the sheehogues
across the sea. He remembered then, suddenly, that it was one November
night that he was standing at the gable of the house, when the
whirlwind came, and the sheehogues in it, and he said to himself: "We
have November night again to-day, and I'll stand in the same place I
was last year, until I see if the good people come again. Perhaps I
might see or hear something that would be useful to me, and might bring
back her talk again to Mary"--that was the name himself and the priest
called the king's daughter, for neither of them knew her right name. He
told his intention to the priest, and the priest gave him his blessing.
Guleesh accordingly went to the old rath when the night was darkening,
and he stood with his bent elbow leaning on a grey old flag, waiting
till the middle of the night should come. The moon rose slowly; and it
was like a knob of fire behind him; and there was a white fog which was
raised up over the fields of grass and all damp places, through the
coolness of the night after a great heat in the day. The night was calm
as is a lake when there is not a breath of wind to move a wave on it,
and there was no sound to be heard but the _cronawn_ of the insects
that would go by from time to time, or the hoarse sudden scream of the
wild-geese, as they passed from lake to lake, half a mile up in the air
over his head; or the sharp whistle of the golden and green plover,
rising and lying, lying and rising, as they do on a calm night. There
were a thousand thousand bright stars shining over his head, and there
was a little frost out, which left the grass under his foot white and
crisp.
He stood there for an hour, for two hours, for three hours, and the
frost increased greatly, so that he heard the breaking of the
_traneens_ under his foot as often as he moved. He was thinking, in his
own mind, at last, that the sheehogues would not come that night, and
that it was as good for him to return back again, when he heard a sound
far away from him, coming towards him, and he recognised what it was at
the first moment. The sound increased, and at first it was like the
beating of w
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