Page:Darby O'Gill and the Good People by Herminie Templeton Kavanagh (1903).djvu/237

Rh the whole song, and that was the turruble worrud, “Forever!”

“Forever an’ forever, oh, forever!” swung the wild keen, until all the deep meaning of the worrud burned itself into Darby’s sowl, thin the heart-breakin’ sob, “Ochone!” inded always the varse.

Darby was just wondherin’ whether he himself wouldn’t go mad with fright, whin he gave a sudden jump at a hard, sthrained woice which spoke up at his very elbow.

“Darby O’Gill,” it said, and it was the stone-cutter who spoke, “do you hear the death keen? It came last night; it’ll come to-morrow night at this same hour, and thin—oh, my God!”

Darby tried to answer, but he could only stare at the white, set face an’ the sunken eyes of the man before him.

There was, too, a kind of fierce quiet in the way McCarthy spoke that made Darby shiver.

The stone-cutter wint on talkin’ the same as though he was goin’ to dhrive a bargain. “They say you’re a knowledgeable man, Darby O’Gill,” he says, “an’ that on a time you spint six months with the fairies. Now I make you this fair, square offer,” he says, lay- Rh