Page:Darby O'Gill and the Good People by Herminie Templeton Kavanagh (1903).djvu/242

Rh At the sight of her Darby thried to call out a warning, but the words fell back into his throat. Thin again came the stifling darkness. He thried to run away, but his knees failed him, so he turned around to face the danger.

As he did so he could hear the splash of the man’s feet in the soft mud. In less than a minute Cormac would be sthruggling in the wather. At the thought Darby, bracing himself body and sowl, let a warning howl out of him.

“Hould where you are!” he shouted; “she wants to drownd ye—the bridge is broke in the middle!” but he could tell, from the rushing footsteps an’ from the hoarse swelling curses which came nearer an’ nearer every second, that the dayludhered man, crazed with grief, was deaf an’ blind to everything but the figure that floated before his eyes.

At that hopeless instant Bridget’s parting words popped into Darby’s head.

“When one goes on an errant of marcy a score of God’s white angels, with swoords in their hands, march before an’ beside an’ afther him, keeping his path free from danger.”

How it all come to pass he could never rightly tell, Rh