They had all been significant: Alan Donn, his father, even Uncle Robin, whom he had thought only a bookworm in the fading sunshine. The world was better, more mature, for their having lived....

And he had nothing. Here he was, drawing on to fifty, close on forty-eight. And he had done, achieved nothing. He had no wife, no child; had achieved no valorous unselfish deed. Had not—not even—not even a little song....

§ 3

And then he said to himself: "I am too sensitive. I have always been too sensitive. The stature of my family has dwarfed me in my own esteem. Haven't I got as much right as others to the quiet of the glens?" And again he said: "I sit here and I think. And my thought grows into a maze. And I wander in it, as a man might wander through some old gardener's fancy, having stumbled on it inadvertently, and now being in it, now knowing the secret of exit." But a maze was nonexistent, did a person regard it so, and if one were to walk on nonchalantly a little turn would come, and he find himself in the wide sunshine and smiling flowers. And he said: "Damn the subtleties! A person is born, lives, dies. And what he does is a matter for himself alone." But some inner antagonist said: "You are wrong."

And he said: "Look at the people around me. What more right have they than I to this quiet Ulster dusk?" And the antagonist smiled: "Well, look."

First were the farmers and the fisherfolk. Well, they didn't count. They were natural to the soil, as grass was. They grew there, as the white bog flower grew. An institution of God, like rain. And then there were the summer visitors, honest folk from the cities. Well, they had a right. They spent their winters and autumns and springs in mills and counting-houses, clearing away the commercial garbage of the world. And when the graciousness of summer came, they emerged, blind as moles, peak-faced. And before them stretched the Moyle, a blue miracle. The crisp heather, the thick rushes, the yellow of the buttercups, the black bog waters. And when clouds came before the sun the mountains drew great purple cloths over them. And in the twilight the cricket chirruped. And at night the plover cried out against the vast silence of the moon. And the hearts of the selling people turned from thoughts of who owed them money and who was harrying them for money. And the tight souls opened, just a little perhaps, but even that—Poor garbage men of the world, who would begrudge them a little beauty?

Then there were the country people, the landlords, the owners of the soil. Red-faced, sportsmen, connoisseurs of cattle, a sort of super-farmer, they were as natural to the soil as the fisherfolk or the tillers. Their stock remained from ancient tides of battle, centuries before. The founders of the families had been Norman barons, Highland chiefs, English squires; but the blood had adapted itself, as a plant adapts itself in a strange country. And now they were Ulster squires. Smiling, shy, independent. They had a great feeling for a horse, and a powerful sense of fair play. They were very honest folk. A station had been set them and they lived in it, honestly, uncomplainingly, quite happily. But a meadow was a piece of land to them and a river a place where trout could be caught, and snow was a good thing, because it kept the ground warm. They were a folk whom Shane respected a great deal, and who respected him—but they weren't his folk.

Above all these of his neighbors towered three figures, and the first of these was the admiral.

He had a name. He had a title, too—Baron Fraser of Onabega. But to everybody he was the admiral, and in speech plain "sir." A purple-faced and terrible old man, with bushy white eyebrows and eagle's eyes. Very tall, four inches over six feet, very erect for all his ninety years, with his presence there thundered the guns of Drake, there came to the mind the slash of old Benbow.... He had been a midshipman with Nelson at Cape Trafalgar.

Silent and fierce, about his head clouds of majesty, all his life had been spent with pursed lips and hooded eyes, keeping watch for England ... And never a great battle where he could prove himself the peer of Benbow and Drake and Nelson ... Never a dawn when the fleet rolled down to battle with polished guns and whipping flags ... And a day came when he was too old ... So here he was in the Antrim glens ...