Page:Shiana - Peadar Ua Laoghaire.djvu/282

268 one evening. I caused her to be delayed. She fell asleep in a bend of the road. When she awoke out of her sleep it was the dead of night. She started for home, trembling with fear. When she was facing west towards Bohar na Bro, who should be in the middle of the road there before her but the ghost. I thought she would drop dead. I put myself into your appearance. I walked out past her. She recognised you in me. I faced straight for the ghost, with what looked like a blackhandled knife in my hand. There was soon an end of the ghost. Then I returned to the young woman and escorted her west into the door of her father's house."

"If she had known who it was that was escorting her!" said Shiana.

"She thought it was you that were escorting her," said the Black Man, "and I think she was a little bit proud to think that any man would put himself in such danger for her sake. From that forward she conceived an extremely high regard for you. You never saw a human creature in the state in which she was from that night forward. She was just in the same case with that poet who said:—

'A wretched cause is the cause through which I am in agony. My judgment drifting apart from my will, and my will from my sense. My will refuses to understand the sort of will that my judgment clearly approves. Or if it understands it, it will not have any but the will of its own judgment.'