Very soon he came upon some fields, and as he walked through the ferns the young rabbits ran from under his feet, and he thought of the delicious meals that the fox would snap up.  He had to pick his way, for thorn-bushes and hazels were springing up everywhere.  Derrinrush, the great headland stretching nearly a mile into the lake, said to be one of the original forests, was extending inland.  He remembered it as a deep, religious wood, with its own particular smell of reeds and rushes.  It went further back than the island castles, further back than the Druids; and was among Father Oliver’s earliest recollections.  Himself and his brother James used to go there when they were boys to cut hazel stems, to make fishing-rods; and one had only to turn over the dead leaves to discover the chips scattered circlewise in the open spaces where the coopers sat in the days gone by making hoops for barrels.  But iron hoops were now used instead of hazel, and the coopers worked there no more.  In the old days he and his brother James used to follow the wood-ranger, asking him questions about the wild creatures of the wood—­badgers, marten cats, and otters.  And one day they took home a nest of young hawks.  He did not neglect to feed them, but they had eaten each other, nevertheless.  He forgot what became of the last one.

A thick yellow smell hung on the still air.  ‘A fox,’ he said, and he trailed the animal through the hazel-bushes till he came to a rough shore, covered with juniper-bushes and tussocked grass, the extreme point of the headland, whence he could see the mountains—­the pale southern mountains mingling with the white sky, and the western mountains, much nearer, showing in bold relief.  The beautiful motion and variety of the hills delighted him, and there was as much various colour as there were many dips and curves, for the hills were not far enough away to dwindle to one blue tint; they were blue, but the pink heather showed through the blue, and the clouds continued to fold and unfold, so that neither the colour nor the lines were ever the same.  The retreating and advancing of the great masses and the delicate illumination of the crests could be watched without weariness.  It was like listening to music.  Slieve Cairn showing straight as a bull’s back against the white sky, a cloud filling the gap between Slieve Cairn and Slieve Louan, a quaint little hill like a hunchback going down a road.  Slieve Louan was followed by a great boulder-like hill turned sideways, the top indented like a crater, and the priest likened the long, low profile of the next hill to a reptile raising itself on its forepaws.