says he, whistlin’ and coaxin’ and sidlin’ up to her. A pig likes a compliment if it’s well tould, so Susan hung her head, grunted coquettish, and looked away. Taking adwantage of her head being turned, without another word, his Rile Highness ran over, laid hould of her ear, and with one graceful jump took an aisy saddle-sate on her back.
This was the last thing the pig expected, so with one frightened squeal from Susan both of them were off like the wind through the fields toward Mulligan’s house, taking stones, ridges, and ditches like hurdle jumpers till they came in sight of a mud-plasthered cabin which stood on the hillside. A second afther the King’s hair stood straight up and his heart grew cowld, for there, sitting on the thrashold, with her family in a little crowd about her, was the woman who, misconsthruing him for her own child, had fled with him from Barney Casey’s, and, finding her mistake, had trun him into the high-road.
About the ballad-maker’s door was gathered his whole family, listening to the wondherful tale being tould by Ann Mulligan. A frightened woman she was.
Indade, whin Ann Mulligan, afther dhropping the
