“Well, you can picture him a goodly man, to begin with, for no chief could reign unless he were a champion, free from the slightest physical defect. ‘He was graceful and beautiful of form, without blemish or reproach,’ one old chronicle says. ‘Fair yellow hair he had, and it bound with a golden band to keep it from loosening. A red buckler upon him, with stars and animals of gold thereon, and fastenings of silver. A crimson cloak in wide descending folds around him, fastened at his neck with precious stones. A torque of gold round his neck’—that’s a broad twisted band: you can see them to-day in the Museum in Dublin. ‘A white shirt with a full collar upon him, intertwined with red gold thread. A girdle of gold, inlaid with precious stones, around him. Two wonderful shoes of gold, with golden loops, about the feet. Two spears with golden sockets in his hands, with rivets of red bronze.’ There—can you see him, Norah?” “I’m trying, but he dazzles me!” Norah said. “Go on, please. Who else is there?” “All his nobles and councillors, dressed almost as splendidly as the chief himself. The old books are full of details of the richness of their apparel: gold and silver and fine clothing must have been an ordinary thing with them—and not only was it so, but the workmanship was exquisite. They had ‘shirts ribbed with gold thread, crimson fringed cloaks, embroidered coats of rejoicing, clothing of red silk, and shirts of the dearest silk.’ They wore helmets, and carried spears, ’sharp, thin, hard-pointed, with rivets of gold and silk thongs for throwing’; ‘long swords, with hilts and guards of gold; and shields of silver, with rim and boss of gold.’ One man is described as ‘having in his hand a small-headed, white-breasted hound, with a collar of rubbed gold and a chain of old silver’: and a horse had a bridle of silver rings and a gold bit. They had shoes of white bronze, and great golden brooches, with ‘gold chains about their necks and bands of gold above them again.’” O’Neill stopped and laughed. “I could go on for a long time,” he said. “But I’m afraid it begins to sound like the description of Solomon’s Temple!” “And to think,” said Jim, unheeding him, “that we had a vague idea that Ireland had been inhabited only by savages!” “Schools don’t teach you anything about Ireland,” said O’Neill, contemptuously. “A few hours among the exquisite old things in the Dublin Museum would open your eyes: the finest goldsmiths and silversmiths of the present world cannot touch the beauty of the workmanship of the treasures there;—and some of them were dug up out of bogs, after lying there no one knows how many hundred or thousand years. They were craftsmen in those days, and they loved the work. You don’t get that spirit in Trades Union times!” “Oh, don’t talk about Trades Unions!” Norah cried. “We’re on the Doon Rock, and I can see all those people round the chief, and the crowd on the plain below, looking up. What else, Sir John?”