Minogue shot one glance at them.
"No," he said; "they're not worth it. Now come—I must show you the round tower."
A beauty the tower is, with walls four feet thick, built of great blocks of stone, and a little round-headed doorway, twelve feet above the ground. It stands eighty-five feet high, and is wonderfully preserved; but when we looked up it from the inside, we saw that the old masons did not succeed in getting it quite true.
It was an hour later—or perhaps two hours later—that we emerged again from the iron gate, and found the rabble of children still waiting. They closed in on us at once, murmuring something in a queer half-mumble, half-whisper, of which we could not understand a word.
"What is it they're saying?" we asked.
"They're saying," explained Minogue, "that if your honour will toss a penny amongst them, they will fight for it; or, if you'd rather, they will put up a prayer for you, so that you will get safe home again. They don't consider that begging, you see, since they offer some return for the money."
And then, as they hustled us more closely, he turned and shouted something at them—some magic incantation, I fancy, for they scurried away as though the devil was after them. I regretted, afterwards, that I had not asked him for the formula—but in the end, we found one of our own, as you shall hear.
Our guide insisted that we go down with him to his house and see his books, and write our names in his album, and have a cup of tea. He lived in an ivy-covered cottage, just under the Rock, and his old wife came out to welcome us; and we sat and talked and wrote our names and looked at his books—one had been given him by Stephen Gwynne, and others by other writers whose names I have forgotten; but the treasure of his library was a huge volume, carefully wrapped against possible soiling, which, when unwrapped, proved to be a copy of Arthur Champneys' "Irish Ecclesiastical Architecture," and with gleaming face our host turned to the preface and showed us where Champneys acknowledged his indebtedness for much valuable assistance to John Minogue, of the Rock of Cashel.
We bade him good-bye, at last, and made our way down through the quaint little town, which snuggles against one side of the Rock—a town of narrow, crooked streets, and thatched houses, and friendly women leaning over their half-doors, and multitudinous children; but the most vivid memory I have of it, is of the pleasant tang of turf smoke in the air. And presently we came out again upon the road leading to the station.