Page:Darby O'Gill and the Good People by Herminie Templeton Kavanagh (1903).djvu/217



Halloween night, to all unhappy ghosts, is about the same as St. Patrick’s Day is to you or to me—’tis a great holiday in every churchyard. An’ no one knew this betther or felt it keener than did Darby O’Gill, that same Halloween night, as he stood on his own doorstep with the paper of black tay for Eileen McCarthy safely stowed away in the crown of his top-hat.

No one in that barony was quicker than he at an act of neighbourly kindness, but now, as he huddled himself together in the shelter of his own eaves, and thought of the dangers before, an’ of the cheerful fire an’ comfortable bed he was leaving behint, black raybellion rushed shouting across his heart.

“Oh, my, oh, my, what a perishin’ night to turn a man out into!” he says. “It’d be half a comfort to know I was goin’ to be kilt before I got back, just as a warnin’ to Bridget,” says he. Rh