If the ship's cargo consisted chiefly of Irish wolfhounds, so greatly appreciated in Gaul, as Professor Bury suggests (p. 30), it would take more than "a day or two" to collect a sufficient number for exportation. There is nothing stated in the "Confession" to limit the time that St. Patrick had to wait before the ship, sailed away from port. Moreover, in the solitude of Mount Slemish, absorbed in prayer and in guarding his flock, the saintly shepherd had no opportunity of making any acquaintance whilst in slavery. "After I had come to Ireland I was daily attending sheep, and I frequently prayed during the day, and the love of God and His faith and fear increased in me more and more, and the spirit was stirred; so that in a single day I have said as many as a hundred prayers, and in the night nearly the same, so that I remained in the woods and on the mountain. Even before the dawn I was roused to prayer in snow, in ice and rain, and I felt no injury from it, nor was there any want of energy in me, as I see now, because the spirit was then fervent in me." These certainly are not the words of a youth who was in the habit of journeying from Croagh Patrick to Foclut to make the acquaintance of the inhabitants. It is, on the contrary, easy to imagine what a powerful effect a Saint, so stirred by the Spirit of God as his words express, would have on all with whom he came in contact after he had been freed from his duties as a shepherd. St. Patrick's history of himself suggests at least that his acquaintance with others, except those of his master's household, must have been made after his escape from captivity.