Page:Darby O'Gill and the Good People by Herminie Templeton Kavanagh (1903).djvu/275

Rh wrapped in a winding sheet. In its presence a new an’ awful fear pressed down the heart of Darby. He felt, too, that another shade had taken its place behindt him, an’ he didn’t want to look, an’ sthrove against lookin’, but something forced the lad to turn his head. There, sure enough, not foive feet away, stood still an’ silent the tall, dark figure of a man in a topcoat.

Thin came from every direction low, hissing whuspers that the lad couldn’t undherstand. Somethin’ turrible would happen in a minute—he knew that well.

There’s just so much fear in every man, just exactly as there is a certain amount of courage, an’ whin the fear is all spilt a man aither fights or dies. So Darby had always said.

He raymembered there was a gap in the hedge nearly opposite the clump of willows, so he med up his mind that, come what might, he’d make a gran’ charge for it, an’ so into the upland meadow beyant. He waited an instant to get some strength back intil his knees, an’ then he gave a spring. But that one spring was all he med—in that direction, at laste.

For, as he neared the ditch, a dozen white, ghostly Rh