Page:Darby O'Gill and the Good People by Herminie Templeton Kavanagh (1903).djvu/201

Rh But the wish was in wain. For just as she crossed the stile to her own field the sun dhropped behind the hills as though he had been shot, an’ the east wind swept up, carrying with it a sky full of black clouds an’ rain.

That same All Sowls’ night Darby O’Gill, the friend of the fairies, sat, as he had often sat before, amidst the dancin’ shadows, ferninst his own crackling turf and wood fire, listening to the storm beat against his cottage windows. Little Mickey, his six-year-ould, cuddled asleep on his daddy’s lap, whilst Bridget sat beside thim, the other childher cruedled around her. My, oh my, how the rain powered and hammered an’ swirled!

Out in the highway the big dhrops smashed agin wayfarers’ faces like blows from a fist, and once in a while, over the flooded moors and the far row of lonesome hills, the sullen lightning spurted red and angry, like the wicious flare of a wolcano.

You may well say ’twas perfect weather for Halloween—to-night whin the spirits of the dayparted Rh