Page:Darby O'Gill and the Good People by Herminie Templeton Kavanagh (1903).djvu/256

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THE BANSHEE’S COMB

milk betwixt her knees. She lay on her back in the spilt milk unconscionable for full fufteen minutes.

The next night a very rayliable tinker, named Bothered Bill Donahue, while wandherin’ near Chartres’ ruined mill, came quite accidental upon tunty skillingtons, an’ they colloguing an’ confabbing together on the flat roof of the mill-shed.

But worst of all, an’ something that sthruck deeper terror into every heart, was the news that six different persons at six different places had met with the turrible phantom coach, the Costa Bower.

Peggy Collins, a wandherin’ beggar woman from the west counthry, had a wild chase for it; an’ if she’d been a second later raichin’ the chapel steps an’ laying her hand on the church-door it would have had her sure.

Things got on so that afther dark people only wentured out in couples or in crowds, an’ in pint of piety that parish was growin’ into an example an’ patthron for the naytion.

But of all the persons whom thim con-ditions complicayted you may be sure that the worst harried an’ implicayted was the knowledgeable man, Darby O’Gill.

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