Fair is the light on the castle wall-- (Heigh-ho, for the road!) Merry the wassail in hearth-warm hall-- (Blither the call of the road!) When the moonlight silvers the sleeping plain, And the wind is calling to heart and brain, And the blood beats quick and the soul is fain-- Ah, follow the open road! Low croons the mother while children sleep-- (Heigh-ho, for the road!) And firelight shadows are warm and deep-- (Dearer the call of the road!) Where the red fox runs and the merlin sings, And the hedge is alive with the whir of wings, And the wise earth whispers of nameless things-- Ah, follow the open road! Safe is the nook we have made our own-- (Heigh-ho, for the road!) Dear the comrades our hearts have known-- (Hark to the call of the road!) Trumpets are calling and torches flare, And a man must do, and a man must dare,-- Whether to victory or despair,-- Come, follow the open road! XX THE WINGS OF THE DRAGON HOW PADRAIG MADE IRISH WIT A JOURNEYMAN TO FLORENTINE GENIUS Padraig was having his first view of a foreign country. England, to be sure, was somewhat strange to a boy who had never before been outside Ireland. Brother Basil, who had taught him all that he knew of writing, reading, painting and other arts, had come to England on business for the Irish Abbeys and was going no further. Padraig felt that he wanted to see more of the world. Perhaps the wise monk felt that unless his pupil had the chance now to wander and come back, he would run away and never return at all; at any rate he told the youth that this would be a good time to make the pilgrimage to Rome if he could. There was peace in Lombardy for the moment, and the Pope, driven out more than once by the warring Emperor of Germany, was now in the Vatican, again. A fishing-boat, slipping over to Calais in the light of a windy dawn, carried one passenger, a red-headed boy in a hooded cloak of rough black frieze. Padraig's own feet bore him from town to town until now, in a French city, he stood in the doorway of a gray and stately church alive with pictures. On a scaffold slung up behind the altar a painter sat working on a new altar-piece. This was something which Padraig had never seen. He had painted pictures himself on parchment, and drawn designs in color for the craftsmen, but a wall-painting so full of life and color that it looked like a live angel come down from the skies, he had never seen made by any man.