They were back in earlier times, when racked by fear and wrath, he’d shut himself away in his room in Fermanagh. He threatened to leave. To sell the light-keepers’ house. He complained of an irritation of the bowel which the girls did not believe he had. It was an excuse for Maisie to take him away from Mullet. They drove to Castlebar hospital for tests but nothing was found. His anger increased. The girls and Maisie dreaded his sudden explosive outbursts at the kitchen table.

“I never want to see this place again,” he’d say savagely. “I’ve been taken for a fool.”

“Have ye been talking about me?” he shouted at the girls. “I told you not to breathe a word about the RUC!”

“I didn’t!” answered Catherine.

“Someone has.”

“No one knows, Jonathan,” said Maisie gently.

“We’ll have to leave here. Tomorrow!”

Age overnight harried his features. The cheeks sagged. Then one day the girls found him waiting for them at the boathouse at Scotchport beach, something he had never done before. The old fear and the new fear combined to make him distraught, yet he remained silent. The possession was over. He accompanied them to the house in a forgiving way. Then, come the afternoon, he made a fire of his papers in the back garden. “Watch,” called Maisie, “that you don’t burn the privy.” Ash from the history he had attempted floated over the leafless escallonia. Scraps of dialect went over the roof of the house.

“Why are you destroying all that you’ve done?” she asked.

“Because,” he said, “it’s all been done before.” He looked at Maisie. “You should have told me,” he said sadly. “Someone should have told me when to stop.”

Next morning there were wild flowers on the pillows of each of the three women.

By the time they came downstairs they knew the persecution was over. He was installed in his study reading. He had passed on into the role of elder from which the word Presbyter takes its name. They heard him, as they passed his door, reading out loud what they first took to be ancient Greek. Vee shay, vee may, vee tu; vee shiv, vee ameed, vee adder. Cod taw harlaw? Cod ay sin? Kay will asti?

All day it went on. Questions. Exclamations. Entreaties.

In 1710 the first Presbyterian preachers, hounded by the High Church, began translating the Bible into Irish. True to that ecclesiastical republicanism which let the individual form his own government, Jonathan Adams had set up his own private republic.

In The Dwellings he began his first translations into Irish with the help of schoolbooks loaned by Joe Love’s children. He began at the beginning. He was, I was, you were. We were. They were. We all were. What happened? What is that? Who is within?