Page:Darby O'Gill and the Good People by Herminie Templeton Kavanagh (1903).djvu/223

Rh “Whoever you are, an’ whatever shape ye come in, take heed that I’m not afeared,” he says. “I command ye to tell me your throubles an’ I’ll be your boneyfactor. Then go back dacint an’ rayspectable where you’re buried. Spake an’ I’ll listen,” says he.

He waited for a reply, an’ getting none, a hot splinther of shame at bein’ so badly frightened turned his sowl into wexation. “Spake up,” he says, “but come no furder, for if you do, be the hokey I’ll take one thry at ye, ghost or no ghost!” he says. Once more he waited, an’ as he was lowering the arrum from his eyes for a peek, the ghost spoke up, an’ its answer came in two pitiful, disthressed roars. A damp breath puffed acrost his face, an’ openin’ his eyes, what should the lad see but the two dhroopin’ ears of Solomon, Mrs. Kilcannon’s grey donkey. Foive different kinds of disgust biled up into Darby’s throat an’ almost sthrangled him. “Ye murdherin’, big-headed imposture!” he gasped.

Half a minute afther a brown hoot-owl, which was shelthered in a near-by black-thorn three, called out to his brother’s fambly which inhabited the belfry of the chapel above on the hill that some black-minded spalpeen had hoult of Solomon Kilcannon be the two ears Rh