Page:Darby O'Gill and the Good People by Herminie Templeton Kavanagh (1903).djvu/227

This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
THE BANSHEE’S COMB

There was little Ted Rogers, the humpback, who was dhrownded in Mullin’s well four years come Michaelmas; there was black Mulligan, the gamekeeper, who shot Ryan, the poacher, sittin’ with a gun on his lap, an’ he glowerin’; beside the gamekeeper sat the poacher, with a jagged black hole in his forehead; there was Thady Finnegan, the scholar, who was disappointed in love an’ died of a daycline; furder on sat Mrs. Houlihan, who dayparted this life from ating of pizen musherooms; next to her sat—oh, a hundhred others!

Not that Darby saw thim, do ye mind. He had too good sinse to look that way at all. He walked with his head turned out to the open fields, an’ his eyes squeeged shut. But something in his mind toult him they were there, an’ he felt in the marrow of his bones that if he gave them the encouragement of one glance two or three’d slip off the wall an’ come moanin’ over to tell him their throubles.

What Solomon saw an’ what Solomon heard, as the two wint shrinkin’ along’ll never be known to living man, but once he gave a jump, an’ twice Darby felt him thrimblin’, an’ whin they raiched at last the chapel wall the baste broke into a swift throt. Purty

[ 213 ]