pushing through the thorn bushes, and now
getting out of the green dark into the broad
blue brightness and sunshine, till I got nearly to
the top, and looking out clear over bog and river,
thanked God for having made such a country
as ould Ireland. Then, looking above, what do I
see but, twenty yards off, as nate a stick as I ever
saw in my life, and, by my sowl, I didn't forget to
cut it, and just as I was stripping off the broad
woolly leaves, singing, " Ould Ireland's native
shamrock," I looks up and sees a common-looking,
queer sort of ould man coming straight towards
me along the path. ' What do you do, you spalpeen,'
says he, angrily, ' cutting my trees?' And
he spoke as if they all belonged to him. Well,
though it give me a little tremble, I wasn't to
be put down, and thinks I, I'll walk nearer to
you, and see what sort of a man you are—for I
was ready then with my hands, your honour, and I
walked straight on—straight on. But when I got
to the place, tare an' ouns, where he had stood, he
was gone—gone. I looked everywhere, under the
trees, behind the bushes, over the big stones, but
no man. So, thinks I, it's a fairy, sure enough,
and with that, as if I had been shot down, I ran
like a fellow from a mad dog. Och! it was divil
a time I run faster in my life but once. Sod,
wall, stone heap, bramble-bush, water gap, no-
thing stopped me, till I got home, torn, wet,
dirty, red-hot, and frightened."

"But did you keep the enchanter's stick?" said l.
"Och, faix did I," said Dennis, " for a year
or two, and the old man never claimed it; still,
I always felt rather quare with it in my hand,
and thought it would get me a bating maybe at
a fair, or bring me in some bad luck; so I never
took it to a faction fight, but one night, getting
drunk, I lost it at Westport."

"Didn't you tell me," said I, " your father died
for grief at a bating he got at a faction fight?"

"True to you, your honour," said Dennis, clicking
his whip, " or may I niver spake again. He was
the champion of Knockmagee, your honour, and
kept all the Joyces and the rest of them at bay,
till one day twelve men of them got round him and
beat him down when he was tired. I saw his
shillelagh the other day over the chimney of a
cousin of mine; it was twice as big as any other
shillelagh. Och! he was a powerful strong big
man, your honour (rest his sowl!), but they put
him in gaol for the fight, where he was hurt, and
it broke the heart of him not to be able to pay
them out. That was a dreadful day to see the
women with the stones in the stockings, and as for
the loaded sticks clattering, you could hear them
two hundred yards off. Och! but I owe it those
Joyces, though Mike is my master. He had an
extraordinary way of holding his stick, your
honour, in the middle, and letting the end cover
his arm and elbow, that has never been aqualled
since. He had seen some ghost sights, too, had
my fayther."

"What! more banshees?" said I, anxiously.

"Oh no, your honour, but fairy pipers—fairy
pipers, your honour. He was one day near the
fort, as we called it, at Ballyrobin, which, is now
little better than a grass hill with a hollow inside
to it, when he heard, as he was driving the
cows home, some sounds he thought was some
neighbours staling his hay, which was making at
the time, and lying about in dry heaps, your
honour; so he goes home quietly, and gets an
old rusty bagonet, and what does he do but
lies down to wait for them behind a large hay-cock
outside the fort. Presently, what should
he hear with his two ears but a blessed sort of
music oozing out of the fort, just like a thousand
birds singing together on a May morning. Och!
your honour, it was nothing but the good people
dancing and figuring inside the hill. Well, before
my father could make out where it came
from he fell in a sort of swound, and when he
awoke he was outside the fort, two fields away;
it was quite dark, and as for the bagonet,
where was it but stuck in some hay just behind
him! Well, never a word did he brathe of it
till his dying day, when I leant over to catch his
last gasp. But I'm tiring ye, your honour."

"Not a bit, Dennis," said I. " It prevents
me counting the milestones."

"Well, then, I'll be telling you how there
was a young Scotchman who took the farm after
we went, and who used to be always laughing at
the humbug about the fairy piper. ' Pipe away,'
says he, ' and be plagued to you! So long as I
don't have to pay, its chape music is that same.'
Thim's the words, or very near, he made use of
at the markets and patrons, till one evening he
was coming through the snipe meadow, and
what does he hear but a piping just as if it was
underground, and underground was heaven, and
these were the sowls of baptised children making
merry and dancing for joy. As it was, as soon as
he got home, ' Ma lanna vicht,' says his mother,
who was half Irish, 'saints in paradise, what's
turned your blood, jewel?' Then they seized
him, especially the girleens his sisters, till he re-
covered a bit, and up and tould them he had
heard the Macarthy's fairy pipers."

"Those Protestants are very slow of belief,
Dennis?" said I.

"Och, and you're right, your honour," said
Dennis. "Penance, pilgrimage, cross, mass, it's all
one with them. Faix! it puzzles me to say how
the likes of 'em will ever find a back way to get
into heaven without paying St. Peter's turnpike.
But has your honour ever heard of how the
fairies change the children in ould Ireland?"

"Of course I have, Dennis," said I. " Don't
we all know how they pine and pine and get
wizen, and knowing and say things any old men
could say; and then the mother, after much
praying, rushes at them suddenly in the cradle
with a red-hot poker, which she has been getting
ready for the hour past, and then, with a scream,
the change comes, and she finds, instead of the
little knowing dwarf, her own fine rosy child
again, crying for the breast."

"Bedad! Your honour," said Dennis, " has
got it all by heart, like a schoolmaster gets the
Latin! Well, I heard a case of this kind the
night of a birth only last Paschal. A friend of
mine who drives a car was coming along the
road, and see something white at the window of