SCENE IN DONEGAL 59 



across each web of gossamer that hangs across our 



path as we climb the long rough slope in front. 



Around are bare bleak moorlands, too high and infertile 



for cultivation, from the sides and hollows of which 



the peasants dig their fuel. The signs of human 



occupation grow fewer and fainter as we ascend. The 



barking of the village dogs and the shouts from the 



school playground no longer reach our ears. And 



while we thus retire from the living world of to-day, 



it almost seems as if we enter into progressively closer 



communion with the past. Yonder, only a few miles 



to the north, lies the deep hollow of Glen Columbkill 



that western seclusion where tradition records that 



St. Columba, the great apostle of the Scots, . in his 



earlier years, loved to bur y v himself for meditation and 



prayer. Mouldering cross and crumbling cairn, to 



which latter every pious pilgrim adds a stone, keep 



his memory green through the centuries. It is with 



him and his courageous friends and disciples, rather 



than with sights and sounds of the present time, that 



we feel ourselves in contact here. And when, high 



up on this bare mountain-side, we come upon the 



ruined cells which these devoted men built with their 



own hands out of the rough stones of the crest, and 



to which they betook themselves for quiet intercourse 



with Heaven, amid the wild winds and driving rains 



of these western hills, the halo of human courage and 



self-denial falls for us on this solitude to heighten its 



loneliness and desolation. 



Musing on these memories of the past, we find 

 ourselves at last at the top of the slope, nearly two 

 thousand feet above the sea, and discover that from 



