Page:Shiana - Peadar Ua Laoghaire.djvu/291

Rh me and you!" said he, and he made the Sign of the Cross with the hand and the jewel in it.

When the Black Man saw the hand, he drew back a little. When Shiana said the sacred words as he was making the Sign of the Cross, the light blazed up in the little ball so strongly that it shone out through the hand so that the bones and veins could be seen. At the moment when Shiana was finishing the words, the Black Man was turned into a ball of fire just above the chair. Then there came something like a narrow tip underneath upon the ball of fire, and the ball went down through the chair in a chain of fire, and down through the ground, exactly in the place where the shilling was.

While the chain of fire was slipping down through the ground, Shiana felt a kind of creeping of the skin, and something like a surging of blood in his limbs and in his body and up in his head.

"Praise be to the King of Saints!" said he.

His head was ready to burst with pain. He crept off as well as he could to the place where his bed was, and lay down upon it. The next moment he was unconscious and speechless.