Page:Darby O'Gill and the Good People by Herminie Templeton Kavanagh (1903).djvu/304

Rh “Bekase if she would, here’s the man who has the comb, an’ he’s bringin’ it back to her.”

The head gave a start and its eyes bulged with gladness.

“Then it’s the lucky man I am entirely,” he says. “For she promised to stick me head on and to let me wear it purmanent, if I’d only bring tidings of the comb,” says Shaun. “She’s been in a bad way since she lost it. You know the crachure can sing only whin she’s combing her hair. Since the comb’s broke her woice is cracked scand’lous, an’ she’s bitther ashamed, so she is. But here’s Croaghmah right before us. Will yez go in an’ take a dhrop of something?” says he.

Sticking out his head, Darby saw towering up in the night’s gloom bleak Croaghmah, the mountain of the ghosts; and, as he thought of the thousands of shivering things inside, an’ of the onpleasant feelings they’d given him at Chartres’ mill a few hours before, a doubt came into his mind as to whether it were best to trust himself inside. He might never come out.

Howandever, the King spoke up sayin’, “Thank ye kindly, Shaun, but ye know well that yerself an’ Rh