The Crock of Gold, James Stephens [best mobile ebook reader txt] 📗

“A long distance,” replied the Philosopher. “Sit down here, my friend, and keep me company for a little time.”

“I do not like sitting down,” said the young man, “but I always consent to a request, and I always accept friendship.” And, so saying, he threw himself down on the grass.

“Do you work in that big house?” said the Philosopher.

“I do,” he replied. “I train the hounds for a fat, jovial man, full of laughter and insolence.”

“I think you do not like your master.”

“Believe, sir, that I do not like any master; but this man I hate. I have been a week in his service, and he has not once looked on me as on a friend. This very day, in the kennel, he passed me as though I were a tree or a stone. I almost leaped to catch him by the throat and say: ‘Dog, do you not salute your fellow-man?’ But I looked after him and let him go, for it would be an unpleasant thing to strangle a fat person.”

“If you are displeased with your master should you not look for another occupation?” said the Philosopher.

“I was thinking of that, and I was thinking whether I ought to kill him or marry his daughter. She would have passed me by as her father did, but I would not let a woman do that to me: no man would.”

“What did you do to her?” said the Philosopher.

The young man chuckled “I did not look at her the first time, and when she came near me the second time I looked another way, and on the third day she spoke to me, and while she stood I looked over her shoulder distantly. She said she hoped I would be happy in my new home, and she made her voice sound pleasant while she said it; but I thanked her and turned away carelessly.”

“Is the girl beautiful?” said the Philosopher.

“I do not know,” he replied; “I have not looked at her yet, although now I see her everywhere. I think she is a woman who would annoy me if I married her.”

“If you haven’t seen her, how can you think that?”

“She has tame feet,” said the youth. “I looked at them and they got frightened. Where have you travelled from, sir?”

“I will tell you that,” said the Philosopher, “if you will tell me your name.”

“It is easily told,” he answered; “my name is MacCulain.”

“When I came last night,” said the Philosopher, “from the place of Angus Og in the cave of the Sleepers of Erinn I was bidden say to a man named MacCulain that The Grey of Macha had neighed in his sleep and the sword of Laeg clashed on the floor as he turned in his slumber.”

The young man leaped from the grass.

“Sir,” said he in a strained voice, “I do not understand your words, but they make my heart to dance and sing within me like a bird.”

“If you listen to your heart,” said the Philosopher, “you will learn every good thing, for the heart is the fountain of wisdom tossing its thoughts up to the brain which gives them form,”—and, so saying, he saluted the youth and went again on his way by the curving road.

Now the day had advanced, noon was long past, and the strong sunlight blazed ceaselessly on the world. His path was still on the high mountains, running on for a short distance and twisting perpetually to the right hand and to the left. One might scarcely call it a path, it grew so narrow. Sometimes, indeed, it almost ceased to be a path, for the grass had stolen forward inch by inch to cover up the tracks of man. There were no hedges but rough, tumbled ground only, which was patched by trailing bushes and stretched away in mounds and hummocks beyond the far horizon. There was a deep silence everywhere, not painful, for where the sun shines there is no sorrow: the only sound to be heard was the swish of long grasses against his feet as he trod, and the buzz of an occasional bee that came and was gone in an instant.

The Philosopher was very hungry, and he looked about on all sides to see if there was anything he might eat. “If I were a goat or a cow,” said he, “I could eat this grass and be nourished. If I were a donkey I could crop the hard thistles which are growing on every hand, or if I were a bird I could feed on the caterpillars and creeping things which stir innumerably everywhere. But a man may not eat even in the midst of plenty, because he has departed from nature, and lives by crafty and twisted thought.”

Speaking in this manner he chanced to lift his eyes from the ground and saw, far away, a solitary figure which melted into the folding earth and reappeared again in a different place. So peculiar and erratic were the movements of this figure that the Philosopher had great difficulty in following it, and, indeed, would have been unable to follow, but that the other chanced in his direction. When they came nearer he saw it was a young boy, who was dancing hither and thither in any and every direction. A bushy mound hid him for an instant, and the next they were standing face to face staring at each other. After a moment’s silence the boy, who was about twelve years of age, and as beautiful as the morning, saluted the Philosopher.

“Have you lost your way, sir?” said he.

“All paths,” the Philosopher replied, “are on the earth, and so one can never be lost—but I have lost my dinner.”

The boy commenced to laugh.

“What are you laughing at, my son?” said the Philosopher.

“Because,” he replied, “I am bringing you your dinner. I wondered what sent me out in this direction, for I generally go more to the east.”

“Have you got my dinner?” said the Philosopher anxiously.

“I have,” said the boy: “I ate my own dinner at home, and I put your dinner in my pocket. I thought,” he explained, “that I might be hungry if I went far away.”

“The gods directed you,” said the Philosopher.

“They often do,” said the boy, and he pulled a small parcel from his pocket.

The Philosopher instantly sat down, and the boy handed him the parcel. He opened this and found bread and cheese.

“It’s a good dinner,” said he, and commenced to eat.

“Would you not like a piece also, my son?”

“I would like a little piece,” said the boy, and he sat down before the Philosopher, and they ate together happily.

When they had finished the Philosopher praised the gods, and then said, more to himself than to the boy: