In the background the purple Mourne Mountains loomed like strange giants; and beside him the sea plashed musically, with a sound reminiscent of the chiming of bells. It was all surprisingly mellow, surprisingly rich, like the land which the spies of Joshua reported to lie past the Jordan's banks. Grant's eyebrows raised in puzzlement. The brick-faced driver looked at him with a horseman's shrewd eyes. "I knew you the first time I put eyes on you," he said in his clipped Ulster accent. "You 're Thomas Grant's son--Willie John--that went away to America twelve years ago last March. And why should n't I know you? Many 's the time I drove you when you were that high." He gave the dapper little mare a flick of the whip. "I suppose you 'll be settling down and staying at home now?" he asked. "No; I don't think I will," Grant answered; and he smiled as he heard his voice slip into the musical singsong it had n't known for many years. "I 'll be going back in a month or so." They whipped along past the sea for another mile, the little mare's hoofs striking the white road as true and as staccato as drumsticks. A strip of salt-marsh spun toward them. Eastward, over the sea, a flock of birds hove. Their wings flapped wearily, and as they flew landward they uttered faint whimpering cries. "The wild geese." The driver pointed them out with his whip. "They're coming back to the marsh. They 're queer birds." Grant watched them as they came. Their cries came sharp and complaining through the air, high-pitched, querulous, turbulent. And still there seemed to be something satisfied in them, like the sobbing of a child who has received what he wants but cannot stop for a moment. "I often heard my grandfather say--and it's little he did n't know about birds," the driver went on "that there is n't a queerer bird in the world than the barnacle goose. The moment they can fly they 'll leave the country. My grandfather saw them in Egypt, and he saw them in France, traveling all the time; but they can never get the taste of the Irish marshes out of their mouths, and they come back. The young ones go and the old ones stay. Even a bird does n't get sense until it's taught." They swept from the highway into a narrower road, and Grant's heart jumped a little, for he recognized it, broader though it was, and greener its hedges and smoother its surface than he had thought it. The sun was going down and a soft bronze twilight was beginning to settle. A little river ran past to the sea through the lush meadowland, and for an instant he saw the shimmer of a trout as it leaped for a fly. And from everywhere came the scent of clover.