Page:Darby O'Gill and the Good People by Herminie Templeton Kavanagh (1903).djvu/18

Rh apple of his eye; he admired and rayspected the pigs, but he loved Rosie.

Worst luck of all was yet to come. On the morning when Darby went for the cow to bring her into market, bad scrans to the hoof was there; but in her place only a wisp of dirty straw to mock him. Millia murther! What a howlin’ and screechin’ and cursin’ did Darby bring back to the house!

Now Darby was a bould man, and a desperate man in his anger as you soon will see. He shoved his feet into a pair of brogues, clapped his hat on his head, and gripped his stick in his hand.

"Fairy or no fairy, ghost or goblin, livin’ or dead, who took Rosie’ll rue the day," he says.

With those wild words he boulted in the direction of Sleive-na-mon.

All day long he climbed like an ant over the hill, looking for hole or cave through which he could get at the prison of Rosie. At times he struck the rocks with his black-thorn, cryin’ out challenge.

"Come out, you that took her," he called. "If ye have the courage of a mouse, ye murtherin’ thieves, come out!"

No one made answer—at laste, not just then. But Rh