Page:Darby O'Gill and the Good People by Herminie Templeton Kavanagh (1903).djvu/276

Rh hands raiched out eager for him. With a gasp he whirled in his thracks an* rushed mad to the willows opposite, but there a hundhred gashly fingers were stretched out to meet the poor lad; an’ as he staggered back into the middle of the road agin, the hayro couldn’t, to save his sowl, keep back a long cry of terror and disthress.

Imaget, from undher the willows and from the ditch near the hedge an’ in the air above his head, from countless dead lips aychoed that triumphing, onairthly laugh, Ho! ho! ho!

’Twas then Darby just nearly guve up for lost. He felt his eyes growing dim an’ his limbs numb. There was no air comin’ into his lungs, for whin he thried to breathe he only gaped, so that he knew the black spell was on him, an’ that all that was left for him to do was to sink down in the road an’ thin to die.

But at that minute there floated from a great way off the faint cry of a woice the dispairing man knew well.

“Keep up your heart, Darby O’Gill,” cried Brian Connors; “we’re coming to resky you,” an’ from over the fields a wild cheer follyed thim worruds. Rh