when he saw a long line of herons flying slowly from Dorren’s Island and towards the pools which lie, half choked with reeds, behind what is called the Second Rosses.  He had never before seen herons flying over the sea, for they are shore-keeping birds, and partly because this had startled him out of his drowsiness, and more because the long delay of the schooner kept his cupboard empty, he took down his rusty shot-gun, of which the barrel was tied on with a piece of string, and followed them towards the pools.

When he came close enough to hear the sighing of the rushes in the outermost pool, the morning was grey over the world, so that the tall rushes, the still waters, the vague clouds, the thin mists lying among the sand-heaps, seemed carved out of an enormous pearl.  In a little he came upon the herons, of whom there were a great number, standing with lifted legs in the shallow water; and crouching down behind a bank of rushes, looked to the priming of his gun, and bent for a moment over his rosary to murmur:  ’Patron Patrick, let me shoot a heron; made into a pie it will support me for nearly four days, for I no longer eat as in my youth.  If you keep me from missing I will say a rosary to you every night until the pie is eaten.’  Then he lay down, and, resting his gun upon a large stone, turned towards a heron which stood upon a bank of smooth grass over a little stream that flowed into the pool; for he feared to take the rheumatism by wading, as he would have to do if he shot one of those which stood in the water.  But when he looked along the barrel the heron was gone, and, to his wonder and terror, a man of infinitely great age and infirmity stood in its place.  He lowered the gun, and the heron stood there with bent head and motionless feathers, as though it had slept from the beginning of the world.  He raised the gun, and no sooner did he look along the iron than that enemy of all enchantment brought the old man again before him, only to vanish when he lowered the gun for the second time.  He laid the gun down, and crossed himself three times, and said a Paternoster and an Ave Maria, and muttered half aloud:  ’Some enemy of God and of my patron is standing upon the smooth place and fishing in the blessed water,’ and then aimed very carefully and slowly.  He fired, and when the smoke had gone saw an old man, huddled upon the grass and a long line of herons flying with clamour towards the sea.  He went round a bend of the pool, and coming to the little stream looked down on a figure wrapped in faded clothes of black and green of an ancient pattern and spotted with blood.  He shook his head at the sight of so great a wickedness.  Suddenly the clothes moved and an arm was stretched upwards towards the rosary which hung about his neck, and long wasted fingers almost touched the cross.  He started back, crying:  ’Wizard, I will let no wicked thing touch my blessed beads’; and the sense of a The Old great danger just escaped made him tremble.