of the lark with a distinct thud, that I can hear yet as plainly as at that painful moment. Instantly the bird spread its wings and mounted the air, singing-singing with a plaintive sweetness the most touching, methought, that I had ever heard from bird. It reached a point about fifty feet aloft, hovered for one minute, then, its notes suddenly ceasing, dropped to earth like a stone. It was only then Nuala, by a mournful little scream, gave expression to her pent-up feeling. I had not spoken. Instantly she dashed over the ditch, and away to where the bird had fallen. I reached the spot as soon as she. The lark was lying on its side among the heather, its little legs standing out stark, as if appealing even in death.

Little Nuala took it up in her two hands, kissed it passionately, and then hugged it to her breast. After awhile, aware of my presence, she turned on me a look that stung me sorely, a look in which contempt far exceeded reproach, and said, in a low, restrained voice: "Dinny Friel, go away with ye."

The heart was, all the time, crying in me, for thinking of the cold thud I had heard and of the poor lark's last song. Yet I could not say one word of sympathy or of excuse. Neither did I move. Nuala then gave me one other stinging look and, with the dead bird still pressed to her bosom, went off toward home. I watched after her till she disappeared below the brow of the hill.

Then I went back to the cornfield, where I threw myself down flat, with my face buried in the brown grass, and, I confess it, sobbedsobbed for that which I never shall, never can, forget; the lark's last, sad, sweet farewell to Glenboran!

CHAPTER IX

A LEARNED Man and the LITTLE PEOPLE

F course, I never had had the remotest doubt about the existence of the Little

People, or Good People-the Fairies. I had never seen them, it is true: though with a feeling of pleasant dread I often thought that I should like to behold them some pleasant eve at their gambols. I had not seen them; but I knew every hill and every green knoll in the neighborhood that was sacred to them every old sciog* bush in which troops of them resided, and every pleasant hollow in which they loved to hold their revels; for, it is remarkable-and it was to me always a proof of their merry and genial goodheartedness-that they ever chose and marked for their own all the pleasant and lovely places, and the pleasant and lovely places only. I had not ever seen them, I say; but I had seen the evidences of them, and I knew well and intimately many, many men who had seen them time and again; and I had heard these men, at céilidh and at wake, in the field and in the chapel-yard, recount their wonderful experiences to audiences that, like myself, listened in wide-eyed, open-mouthed awe.

One night in John Burns's, Ellen enchanted us all by reading from The Nation a beautiful ballad on the Little People, by Allingham:

"Up the heathery mountains,
Down the rushy glen,
We daren't go a-hunting
For fear of little men;
Wee folk, good folk
Trooping all together,
Green jacket, red cap,
And white owl's feather."

"Beautiful varses," was the pronouncement of the Widow's Pat, when Ellen had finished.

"Beautiful's the name," said John Burns. "And," proudly, "by our own Willie Alligam, born and bred in Ballyshanny, there beyont."

Of "Our Own Willie" all were as proud as John.

" I mind the time," John said, reflectively, “he was in the Excise in Donegal there. I seen him."

"Boys-a-boys!" said the Widow's Pat, gazing upon John with a delighted wonder.

And all rested their eyes upon John with an admiration only less than that with which they would have looked upon Willie himself.

" I mind him to be there-though I didn't see him myself," Toal a-Gallagher said. But he was too far out-distanced by John.

" I mind," John said, " to see him wandherin' over the hills and the moors, with a blackthorn staff in his fist, with a wee bit of a knapsack on his back, stoppin' and sittin' down here and there, on a ditch, or on a pratie-ridge, to chat the men and the girls would be workin' in the fiel's; and to ax them all sorts of cur'ous questions-about fairies, and sciog bushes, and about birds, and flowers, and the rivers, and the hills, and the old stories. And every hill he'd ax the name of, and every hollow, and every sthraim; and then he be to get them names turned into English for him, till he'd know in English why the hills and the sthraims were called that; and the very tears would come into his eyes sometimes at the mainin's of the names, and he'd say we named all our hills and glens and sthraims with the most beautiful names ever was known in the wurrl'. Then he'd ax them weren't they all happy; and they'd of course tell him that, 'Yes, thank God for all his goodness, they were.' And he'd ax them could they tell him why they were so happy, and their land so poor, and them so poor an' sthrugglin' so sore; and they'd, to be sure, tell him they were happy bekase they supposed it was God's wish; a heavy heart, too, was harder to carry round than a millstone; and moreover, if they had to wrastle with the wurrl' itself, sure they near always managed to be its match-they got their bite and their sup, and sure what more did a king get? and they were bright