Page:Darby O'Gill and the Good People by Herminie Templeton Kavanagh (1903).djvu/144

Rh But Maureen’s tears only fell faster and faster.

“I can’t do what you ask, avick,” says the King, very kindly. “That day I let you and Darby go from us the power to free anyone was taken away from me by my people. Now every fairy in Sleive-na-mon must give his consent before the spell can be taken away entirely from anyone; and, well, you know they’ll never consent to that,” he says.

“But what I can do, I will do. I can lift the spell from the omadhaun for one hour, and that hour must be just before cock-crow.”

“Is that the law now?” asked Darby, curiously. Maureen was sobbing, so she couldn’t spake.

“It is,” says the Master of the Good People. “And to-night I’ll sind our spy, Sheelah Maguire, to Norah Costello with the message that if Norah has love enough and courage enough in her heart to stand alone at her thrue lover’s grave in Kilmartin churchyard, to-morrow night an hour before cock-crow, she’ll see him plain and talk with him. And let you two be there,” he says, to know that I keep me word.”

At that he vanished and they saw him no more Rh