eternity in patience, although it was hard.”  And as he named these things, it was like a king numbering his people.  “But your slender knives went click, click! upon the oaken staves, and, all else being silent, the sound shook the angels with anger.  O, little roots, nipped by the winter, who do not awake although the summer pass above you with innumerable feet.  O, men who have no part in love, who have no part in song, who have no part in wisdom, but dwell with the shadows of memory where the feet of angels cannot touch you as they pass over your heads, where the hair of demons cannot sweep about you as they pass under your feet, I lay upon you a curse, and change you to an example for ever and ever; you shall become grey herons and stand pondering in grey pools and flit over the world in that hour when it is most full of sighs, having forgotten the flame of the stars and not yet found the flame of the sun; and you shall preach to the other herons until they also are like you, and are an example for ever and ever; and your deaths shall come to you by chance and unforeseen, that no fire of certainty may visit your hearts."’

The voice of the old man of learning became still, but the voteen bent over his gun with his eyes upon the ground, trying in vain to understand something of this tale; and he had so bent, it may be for a long time, had not a tug at his rosary made him start out of his dream.  The old man of learning had crawled along the grass, and was now trying to draw the cross down low enough for his lips to reach it.

’You must not touch my blessed beads, cried the voteen, and struck the long withered fingers with the barrel of his gun.  He need not have trembled, for the old man fell back upon the grass with a sigh and was still.  He bent down and began to consider the black and green clothes, for his fear had begun to pass away when he came to understand that he had something the man of learning wanted and pleaded for, and now that the blessed beads were safe, his fear had nearly all gone; and surely, he thought, if that big cloak, and that little tight-fitting cloak under it, were warm and without holes, Saint Patrick would take the enchantment out of them and leave them fit for human use.  But the black and green clothes fell away wherever his fingers touched them, and while this was a new wonder, a slight wind blew over the pool and crumbled the old man of learning and all his ancient gear into a little heap of dust, and then made the little heap less and less until there was nothing but the smooth green grass.

WHERE THERE IS NOTHING, THERE IS GOD.