Page:Darby O'Gill and the Good People by Herminie Templeton Kavanagh (1903).djvu/292

Rh The withered three at the cross-roads where he was to meet the King waved its blackened arms and lifted them up in warning as he came toward it, an’ it dhripped cowld tears upon his caubeen and down his neck when he stood quaking in its shadows.

“If the headless coachman were to ketch me here,” he whumpered, “and fling me into his carriage, not a sowl on earth would ever know what became of me.

“I wish I wasn’t so knowledgeable,” he says, half cryin’. “I wish I was as ignorant about ghosts an’ fairies as little Mrs. Bradigan, who laughs at them. The more you know the more you need know. Musha, there goes the moon.”

And at them words the great blaggard cloud closed in on the moon and left the worruld as black as yer hat.

That wasn’t the worst of it by no manner of manes, for at the same instant there came a rush of wind, an’ with it a low, hollow rumble that froze the marrow in Darby’s bones. He sthrained his eyes toward the sound, but it was so dark he couldn’t see his hand before his face.

He thried to run, but his legs turned to blocks of wood and dayfied him. Rh