From morning till evening he was in the village, among the boats beside the little pier, or in the fields, when the men worked there.

Everyone petted and loved him, from Father Moran, the priest who had started the national school, down to old Shamus, the crippled singer of interminable Irish songs and teller of heroic legends of the past.

It was when he heard the boy repeat a story of Finn MacCool to the old crone in the kitchen that Mr.Conneally awoke to the idea that he must educate his son.

He began, naturally enough, with Irish, for it was Irish, and not English, that Hyacinth spoke fluently.
Afterwards the English alphabet followed, though not for the sake of reading books, for except the Bible and the Prayer-Book Hyacinth was taught to read no English books.

He learned Latin after a fashion, not with nice attention to complexities of syntax, but as a language meant to be used, read, and even spoken now and then to Father Moran.
Meanwhile the passage of the years brought changes to Carrowkeel.
The Admiralty established a coastguard station near the village, and arranged, for the greater security of the Empire, that men in blue-serge clothes should take it in turns to look at the Atlantic through a telescope.