“Aye,” said the old man. He looked ahead, his eyes misty. “Three-and-forty years I’ve dreamed of it; and now I’m waiting to see the hills of Ireland coming out of the sea, and this last hour seems longer than all the years. Well, well; and they’re all dead, all the people I knew; and I going home to die, like a wornout old dog.”
“You’ll live in Ireland many a year yet, sir,” Jim told him, quickly.
“No, no; I’m done. ’Tis my heart, and it finished—sure, wouldn’t forty years of work in New York finish any heart!” said the old man, laughing. “But I’m lucky to be getting back to Ireland to die. Did you ever hear, now, of the Sons of Tuireann?”
Jim shook his head. “I’m afraid not, sir.”
“They were great fighting men, and they had great hardship,” said the priest: “and at the end of all things they were on the sea coming home, dying. And one of them cried out that he saw the hills of home. And the others said, ‘Raise up our heads on your breast till we see Ireland again: and life or death will be the same to us after that.’ So they died. That was a good ending. A man wouldn’t ask better. ’Tis a hard thing, dying in a strange country, but you’d go very easy, once you got home.” He spoke half to himself, so low that the boy hardly caught the words. They stood silently for awhile, looking ahead across the tumbling sea.
“I had no right to be talking to you about dying,” the old priest said presently, turning to Jim with a smile that made his face extraordinarily child-like. “Old men get foolish; and my heart’s too big for my body this day, and I getting home. Tell me now—are ye Irish, at all?”
“My mother was Irish,” Jim answered.
“I’d have said so. What part might she have come from?—and is she with you?”
“She died when I was a kiddie,” Jim answered. “She came from Donegal. Father says she always loved it.”
“Well, well! Wherever you’re born, you love that place. But I think the love for Ireland is beyond most things. The people leave it because there’s no room for them and no money; but no matter where they go they leave the half of their hearts behind. And they put something of the love into their children no matter where they’re born, so that they always want to come and see Ireland: and when they come, ’tis no strange place to them; they feel they’ve come home. You’ll feel it—for all that you love that big young country of yours, and want to get back to her. But every old ruin, and every bit of brown bog and heathery mountain, and every little stony field, will say something to you that you will not be able to put into words: and when you go back you will not forget. There, there! I’m talking again!” said the old man; “and to a boy with business of his own. Tell me, now, have you been out across yonder yet?” He nodded in the direction of Flanders.