“It can’t hurt him,” whispered the doctor. “Nothing can do that now.”
They lifted him, very gently. Ahead, the hills of Wicklow were green and near. The grey sky had broken, and a little shaft of sunlight stole out and lay upon the coast. It was as though Ireland smiled to welcome back her son.
The dark eyes looked long and wistfully. Once he smiled at Norah; and then looked back quickly, as though to lose no instant of home. Presently his lips parted in broken words.
“Till we see . . . till we see Ireland again; and life or death will be the same to us after that.” Then no more words came. But when the doctor signed to them to lay him down he was still smiling.
CHAPTER V
INTO DONEGAL
“A homely-looking folk they are, these people of my kin;
Their hands are hard as horse-shoes, but their hearts come through the skin.
Old Michael Clancy said to me (his age is eighty-seven),
‘There’s no place like Australia—barring Ireland and Heaven!’ ”
V. J. Daley.