devotions. He is very old himself, Saint Guirec, and like enough is given to saying his own prayers—up there in Paradise—in much the same drowsy way.
Outside, on the smooth turf of the little churchyard, a dozen men played boule noisily. They struck a jarring note. To get away from them I went down, by a flight of worn old stone steps, to a seat on the rocks near the sea-altar—where the only sound that broke the sunny stillness was that of far-off bells, a mellow booming, coming down the wind from Tregastel. Saint Martin had sent an absolutely perfect autumn afternoon of soft warm sunshine and dead calm. Cobweb streamers floated on the still air, making lines of light in the sun rays. Close to the altar a dear old woman was seated, clad in black and wearing an exquisitely neat white cap, reading reverently in her missal. It all was the very essence of calm holiness. The Saint, peering down over the parapet of Heaven, I am sure was pleased with the look of his shrine that afternoon.
As the sun fell away westward toward the rounded hills I went on, among the tangled monstrous boulders, until I was come to the high headland at the harbor's mouth, and thence had a far outlook: landward, over the wilderness of near rocks, to the distant hills capped here and there by church spires cutting notches in the sky; seaward, to the Seven Isles, purple in the sunset light, so unreally beautiful that it was not hard to fancy King Arthur still living on in seclusion on those enchanted outsets from his own enchanted land. Between the islands and the mainland were scattered a few drifting fisher-boats, their idly hanging red sails turned to crimson in the red sunshine. Rising in curves from the unrippling water, leaping rhythmically with a languid slowness, a school of porpoises went by—with the look, in the gathering dusk, of a single great monster of the sea.
As the sun went down behind the hills a light flared out on the enchanted islands, and another answered it from near where I was standing on the land: and for a moment I was sure that Arthur and Merlin were signalling each other, and that great doings were forward that night in Avalon. But my lights—magical only in that they threw far seaward a promise of safety—were the lamps in lighthouse towers.
The Happy Thought
THESE were the hours that crowned me,
Fleet were their speeding feet,
But even with their arms around me,
I knew that the hours were sweet.
And though they are vanished wholly
As wholly am I content,
Since to my heart it was given
To know them before they went.
