“And then with me lookin’ at him full in the eyes, gentleman though he was,—for comrade he had been with the man I loved,—he said to me there, so finely and kindly, it ought to have brought the dead back from their graves to hear, these words:
“‘You’ll travel far and wide, dear, but you’ll come back again,
You’ll come back to your father and your mother in the glen,
Although we should be lyin’ ‘neath the heather grasses then
You’ll be comin’ back, my darlin’!’
“‘You’ll see the icebergs sailin’ along the wintry foam,
The white hair of the breakers, and the wild swans as they roam;
But you’ll not forget the rowan beside your father’s home—
You’ll be comin’ back, my darlin’.’”
Here the girl paused longer than usual, and the priest dropped his forehead in his hand sadly.
“I’ve brought grief to your kind heart, father,” she said.
“No, no,” he replied, “not sorrow at all; but I was born on the Liffey side, though it’s forty years and more since I left it, and I’m an old man now. That song I knew well, and the truth and the heart of it too. ... I am listening.”
“Well, together we went to the grave of the father and mother, and the place where the home had been, and for a long time he was silent, as though they who slept beneath the sod were his, and not another’s; but at last he said:
“‘And what will you do? I don’t quite know where he is, though; when last I heard from him and his comrades, they were in the Pipi Valley.’
“My heart was full of joy; for though I saw how touched he was because of what he saw, it was all common to my sight, and I had grieved much, but had had little delight; and I said:
“‘There’s only one thing to be done. He cannot come back here, and I must go to him—that is,’ said I, ‘if you think he cares for me still,—for my heart quakes at the thought that he might have changed.’
“‘I know his heart,’ said he, ‘and you’ll find him, I doubt not, the same, though he buried you long ago in a lonely tomb,—the tomb of a sweet remembrance, where the flowers are everlastin’.’ Then after more words he offered me money with which to go; but I said to him that the love that couldn’t carry itself across the sea by the strength of the hands and the sweat of the brow was no love at all; and that the harder was the road to him the gladder I’d be, so that it didn’t keep me too long, and brought me to him at last.