Page:Beside the Fire - Douglas Hyde.djvu/109

Rh the ten pounds; and these people who are with you, they are servants whom God has sent to you."

The short green man and his people went away then, and the king of Ireland's son never saw them again. He brought his wife home with him, and they spent a happy life with one another.

was once a wealthy farmer in Connacht, and he had plenty of substance and a fine family, and there was nothing putting grief nor trouble on him, and you would say yourself that it's he was the comfortable, satisfied man, and that the luck was on him as well as on e'er a man alive. He was that way, without mishap or misfortune, for many years, in good health and without sickness or sorrow on himself or his children, until there came a fine day in the harvest, when he was looking at his men making hay in the meadow that was near his own house, and as the day was very hot he drank a drink of buttermilk, and stretched himself back on the fresh cut hay, and as he was tired with the heat of the day and the work that he was doing, he soon fell asleep, and he remained that way for three or four hours, until the hay was all gathered in and his workpeople gone away out of the field.

When he awoke then, he sat up, and he did not know at first where he was, till he remembered at last that it was in the field at the back of his own house he was lying. He rose up then and returned to his house, and he felt like a pain or a stitch in his side. He made