It was now the afternoon of the second day after the fight. Cormac lay on his bed, and Columba sat at the open doorway.
The little circular dwelling was the simplest of its kind, without furniture, the earthen floor devoid of rushes. There was no convenience for either light or fire. In one corner was the bed of the saint—a stone flag with a smaller stone for a pillow; in another a cup of wood and a larger bowl of earthenware. Cormac lay, warm and comfortable, on a pile of heather covered by a bear-skin. The seat on which Columba sat was of stone; he wore a coarse cassock and hood of undyed homespun wool, drawn over an under-dress of linen; on his feet were sandals.
Cormac’s eyes were fixed on the saint’s face. He felt he could never tire of looking at the wonderful white face and the great brilliant eyes. Nights of prayer and days of fasting had given Columba a strange unearthly pallor and thrown purple shadows round eyes and mouth. The great eyes shone out all the more brilliantly for their dark setting. All that is beautiful in eyes seemed united in those of Columba—they were fearless and bright as a child’s, piercing as an eagle’s, soft as a dove’s; to gaze into them made it easier to understand how Columba could be—at the same time—saint, poet, warrior, and statesman; to gaze into them made Cormac’s difficult story an easy one to tell—he told it as a child would have told its parent, never doubting he would be understood and forgiven.
A favourite horse had come and lain its head on Columba’s shoulder; at his feet was a hound he had saved from a bear; beside the hound was a lamb. A tamed sea-gull nestled its head in the saint’s neck—it had been discovered by Columba, broken-winged on the seashore; he had bandaged the wing and cherished the little creature, and ever since the bird had hovered near him. From the half-closed hand lying on the sack-cloth robe the tiny head and bright eyes of a little wren were peeping. As Cormac gazed at the great man he realised what was meant when men said that Columba lived in a kingdom of love. Yet he was a wild and fearless warrior, too, gaining repute on the isles and mainland of savage Caledonia.
The saint suddenly addressed the young man.
“You are better, my son. Your wounds were slight, though they were many—you will soon be at the head of your bards again.”
Cormac frowned.
“Never again! I will lead men—not cowards and deceivers.”
Columba turned, so that he might face his guest; putting up his hand as he did so to soothe the fluttering bird at his neck.
He seemed about to speak when suddenly a change came over his face. He fell on his knees; his eyes closed—then opened again, with the rapt gaze of an ecstatic. Columba prayed. He prayed with his whole being—with that power of prayer peculiar to those Hibernian saints who did so much in spreading the Faith in Europe, and whose lives bear witness to it for all time. Passionate, almost involuntary, prayer; in which in their communings with their Maker their very souls seemed drawn from their bodies. A state in which prayer was as natural as thought, and from which Columba seemed to derive that almost supernatural power by which he confounded the tricks of the juggling Druids at the court of Brude, the Pictish king.