If the ground in Hagan's meadow had been covered with red-hot coals instead of being carpeted as it was with cool, sweet grass, Darby O'Gill's feet would not have shrunk more from coming in contact with it. However, Bothered Bill was not to be trusted; he might be watching and listening in the darkness a few feet down the road, so there was nothing left for it, and Darby, bracing his soul, jumped off the step, landed in the meadow, and ran a few bewildered steps into the haunted field. There he halted, straining his ears. There never was so black or so silent a night before nor since. In spite of every effort at self-control, the lad's flesh began to creep. "Why don't that coward whustle?" he complained bitterly.
Suddenly he stood straining every sense for some kind of sign from Bill. The uneasy man could have sworn to a short sigh in his ear that he felt a quick, cold breath on his cheek.
That was enough! The next second, he took a deer's leap in what he thought was the direction of the road and sprinted for his life; but murdher in Irish! There was no stile! Where had it gone? It, too, had disappeared. He ran a good hundred yards before realizing that he must be running in the wrong direction.
"Oh, blessed day, where's the stile?" he gasped, coming to a dead stop. "I'm in the middle of Hagan's meadow! I've lost me way! The curse of the crows on you, Bill Donohue, for a slinkin' daysarter. Is that a light beyant, I dunno?"
The poor fellow half-sank to his knees and was crouched, striving with every vein of his body to make out if that glimmer of light in the distance shone from the old abbey or whether it was only the fitful blink of a friendly star, when faintly pounded toward him through the darkness a sound of terror—nothing less than the quick fall of pursuing footsteps.
"Black Mulligan is after me," he groaned. "I'm a massacreed man!" In the heavy stillness, the approaching steps thudded like the footfalls of a giant. A weakness came into the lad's chest so that every bundle and package dropped from his shaking arms; all but the eggs went to the ground. Relieved of the bundles, but still holding to the basket, Darby bolted again into the darkness and ran for his life.
There weren't three men in the barony that could throw a quicker leg before them than Darby O'Gill, and never before that night had he put such speed into his nimble heels. But, fast as he went, the thudding footsteps behind gained on him every second. The breath was leaving him, too, and it seemed only a matter of a few more yards when he'd be nabbed by the neck like a hunted hare. Suddenly a most terrible cry electrified the blackness. An approaching voice, in a wild, high shriek, called his name: "Da-arby, Da-arby O'Gill," it wailed.
"The Lord help us, I'm lost," panted Darby. "It's Mulligan himself."
The poor boy's knees failed him then, and he had just strength enough left to totter to one side. That proved the lucky move, and not a second too soon, either, for he barely lurched out of the path when a great, black, shapeless blur whirred by in the gloom. So close did it pass that the hunted man might easily have touched the dreadful thing with an outstretched hand. As the shape rushed by, uttering short, inarticulate groans and cries, it appeared to be headless and legless and about the height of the new chapel door.
"It's not Mulligan; it's the ghost of William Fagan himself running away from Black Mulligan, the murdhering gamekeeper," thought Darby. "But how did he get me name? He must know I'm here."
All that had happened might have been a nine years' mystery for the seven counties, only that just then, a bright moon stuck its head through the clouds and took a querulous peep at the night. In the quick wave of light that followed, everything in Hagan's meadow became quite visible, so that Darby was able to make out clearly the form of the flying object. And what the knowledgeable man saw then stiffened every nerve and muscle in his body with angry amazement; for from whom had he been running but from Bothered Bill Donohue.
"Da-arby! Da-arby! Where are ye, Dar-rby?" bleated Bill. Terror had split the tinker's voice into a piping falsetto.
At the sound, every shred of Darby's fear turned into white rage. He snatched a big goose egg from the basket and, with all the strength of his arm, let it fly at the tinker. As a gossoon, no lad in the country had a surer aim in shying stones than that same Darby O'Gill.
"Take that!" he yelled. The roar that followed this blow was answered by the startled owls in the ruined abbey at the far end of the field.
Bill stopped to feel his head. "Oh, I'm kilt," he shrieked. "Me head's sphlit into three halves. I feel me wet brains runnin' down be me shoulders. Ow wow! Da-arby, Da-arby, save me!" and again, on he plunged forward like a race horse.
"The Divil mend ye!" shouted Darby. "Come back till I bate the loife out of ye. Where are yer bundles? What have ye done with the mackerel?"
But Bill, electrified with terror, ran on, and Darby followed. The horse that won the Curragh cup would have been proud of their company that night.
"Millia murdher, the omadhaun's makin' straight for the Fairies' bush," panted Darby. "Come back!" he roared.
Then a strange thing happened. Darby saw the tinker throw up both arms and, with a despairing cry, disappear from the face of the earth.
Now, in the middle of Hagan's meadow stands an ancient clump of hazel trees, known far and wide as the Fairies' bush, and just beside the bush runs a deep, dry ditch. As Bill went galloping past with head thrown back and eyes bulging in terror, a malicious root reached up and caught the tinker's heedless feet, and thump! he was rolling head over heels to the bottom of the ditch.
For a second, he lay where he had tumbled; but only a second, for in mind and body, the lad moved quick as a cat. Indeed, he was already scrambling to his feet again and had reached the top of the bank when Darby himself came charging along like a mad bull, stumbled on that same malicious root and plunged headfirst into Bill. Saints above, but that was a thump! There was a confused whirl of legs and arms, two series of smothered, rasping cries, and then our astounded heroes, aimlessly clutching and tearing at each other, rolled back, a squirming heap, into the ditch.
The desperate tinker, sure that he was in the grip of Black Mulligan, fought like a tiger. "Ghost or no ghost, yez had no right to break the middle of me back! Take that!" he yelled.
The first blow caught Darby just under the ribs, but the second struck him fair on the chest.
"Ouch! I'm spacheless!" Darby gasped. "I'll have yer loife's blood for this, Bill Donohue."
"Why, thin, is that yerself, Misther O'Gill?" the tinker asked in honest amazement, one hand still gripped in Darby's hair. "I thought ye wor a spurrit."
Freeing himself, Darby rose feebly to his knees and, without a word, began climbing out of the ditch. The bank was steep and slippery with the dew, so that at first, the lad was hard set to get a foothold. He reached the top, however, and was clutching at a bit of a twisted root when, to his unspeakable surprise, the root began to twist and to squirm and to wriggle in his hand.
Now, up to that minute, everything that had happened to our bold Tipperary men since they left the fair might have chanced with anyone else going along that same road.
"It's a young rabbit I've caught," Darby thought. He raised the thing for a closer look, when suddenly a little foot flew out like lightning and kicked him squarely on the nose, and a wee, spiteful voice piped up: "Put me down, ye thunderin' bliggard! Ye've broke the ribs of me side! Pick up me cap, ye schoundrel, an' put it on me head so I'll have the power to turn you an' that sthreelin' villain behind ye into two yellow tomcats." And there, struggling in Darby's fist raged a bareheaded little old man in a green velvet jacket and brown knee breeches. His snapping black eyes and weazened face were the angriest Darby had ever seen.
"Man alive, Bill, come here. I think I've got the Leprechaun!" shouted Darby.
"Hould him tight. Don't take yer eye off him," puffed Bill as he scrambled to his feet. "We'll make him give us the favors of three grand wishes to buy his freedom."
"Ye lie, ye daytractin' mullet-headed dayrogotory vituperator," raged the little man.
"I'm not the Leprechaum! I'm Nial the Scold from Sleive-na-mon; an' I've been waitin' here these three nights to help ye whin ye wint diggin' for the crocks o' goold. An' I've lost my cap, I've tould ye. This is the thanks I get. Where have ye been? What kep' ye, ye lazy, fiddlefaddling, pottherin', dawdlin' polthroons."
Darby recognized the little lad at once.
Sure as gun is iron, no other than Nial himself was in it. Through the six months I have told you of before when Darby himself was a prisoner of the Good People in the heart of their mountain Sleive-na-mon, it's many a chat he shared with that famous Scold. There was no harm in the little fellow; Darby knew that well. But he knew, too, that Nial had the most spiteful tongue in the world. Unreasonable anger is always the first to follow needless fright.
Darby twisted the fairy upside down, gave him a vicious squeeze, and warned, "Aisy, aisy there. Aist or West, since the day I was bor-rn, I niver heard yer aquil for bad langwidge. An' I tell ye now, if ye say wan more of thim bliggard wurruds, I'll rap the little head of ye again this stone. Tell me, what d'ye mane about waitin' for us to go diggin' for the crocks o' goold?" He gave the fairy a rattling shake.
"Sthop that!" roared the captive. "Do that agin if ye dare! Wait till I get me cap on so I can wurruk me spells! I'll—I'll sussitate the both of yez, so I will."
Bill was the first to recover from this deluge of hard names and, drawing a long breath, he blurted, "By this an' that, Darby, I'll stan' no more. Hand the lad here till I souse him."
"Oho, is that you, Bill Donohue? I thought it was Dominic O'Hara that was in it. Man alive, Darby O'Gill, what are ye doin' here with that raycreant malyfacthor of a cockathrice of a thinker?"
"Softly now," warned Darby, pushing Bill aside, as the tinker made a thrust at the fairy with his stick. "I'm thinkin' he's here as a friend. Aisy now, what wor ye sayin', little hayro, about the crocks o' goold?" And Darby loosened his fingers so that the fairy stood upright in his hand. The tiny lad shook himself and adjusted his cloak.
"Well, as I was sayin'," he sulked, "we got the wurrud that you an' Dominic O'Hara were goin' to dig for the crocks o' goold, an' it's little likin' we Good People have for the unconjaynial mootherin' spurrits that's guardin' the crocks these fourteen hundred years, or is it fifteen, I dunno. There's nothin' that King Brian Connors and the Good People of Sleive-na-mon wish for half as much as for some mortal man to take from them those same crocks o' goold, and in that way to scatter to the four winds that nest of shupernatural nuisances. Have yez the courage? I doubt yez."
"Look at that now!" exulted Darby. "Shure we thought ye wor an innimy. To tell the thruth, Nial, yer honor, Misther Donohue here felt just a trifle afeared of meetin' up wid thim same ghosts."
The little fairy flung a glance of withering disdain at the tinker. "What are yez all afeared of? Don't ye know that one of these days yez'll all be ghosts?"
"I'm not afeared of thim," bragged Darby, "but I don't loike 'sociating wid the loikes of thim. Ould Mrs. Callahan had a foine charrum that'd kape yer heart lifted on the loneliest road and the darkest night; she wasn't afeared of ghost livin' or dead, and she promised to whusper it to me before she died; but the poor crachure forgot the wurruds. I wisht now I had them—maybe ye raymimber thim?"
"Faix, I've heard that charrum of Mrs. Callahan's these hundherds of years," said the fairy, "but I'll give you a betther wan. Besides, mine has a grand chune to it."
"I feel," interrupted Bothered Bill pulling out his pipe and reaching for the tobacco in Darby's pocket, "I feel" said he, "as if I wor in a dhrame an' I'd wake up an-ny minute."
"Do ye want to know the charrum, or don't yez?" insisted the wee fellow impatiently.
"We may as well," agreed Darby.
"Who in the worruld will believe us?" mused the tinker.
"Thin hould out yer hand straight, Darby, so I can sit on it," commanded the fairy.
Darby did as be was bid, and Nial, seating himself comfortably on Darby's palm, threw back his head. His voice, like the tinkle of a little silver bell, sprinkled the darkness:
-
Oh Phadrig and Phelim and Red Conan More
The Lehras and Lahras are gatherin',
Come out of the mountains, they're weltin' me sore,
Bring yer sojers and champeens to lather 'em.
-
"You must larn it. Sing it over with me. Now, all together," urged the little fellow earnestly.
Half-shamefacedly at first, the others took up the tune and sang it over and over, but at last roared it so lustily that "Bring yer sojers and champeens to lather 'em" was heard a good half-mile away in her own house by big Mrs. Flaherty, as truthful a woman as lives in the village of Ballinderg.
When they had sung the powerful charm many times, the wee man said, "Well, so far, so good. Now ye're perfected. First and foremost, it's not in the abbey at all that the crocks o' goold are buried, but undher the yew tree in the great court where the monks do be lyin'."
"Come on, Darby, an' bring the fairy-man wid ye," cried Bill, starting up. The courage of the charm emboldened him.
"Botheration on ye for a tinker," snapped the fairy. "Will ye have patience? Ye must not begin to dig till afther midnight, I warn yez, and ye must ind before cockcrow. After cockrow, yez might just as well be diggin' with yer spades in the middle of the ocean for all the goold ye'll find. An' this is the way ye'll go about it. Ye'll find a bran' new pick an' a shovel lyin' snug be the abbot's grave—the grave diggers had thim out this morning—an' ye'll measure foive lengths of the pick handle toward the broken gateway, an' there's the identical spot where ye must dig. Ye'll find goold 'nough there to make you and yer ginerations rich forever."
Darby gave a great cough into his hand, and Bill Donohue swallowed hard at a big lump that popped into his throat.
"Don't think that the ondertakin' is an aisy wan," warned the fairy, "for there'll be thim watchin' ye the while, an' one in perticular that ye've often heard tell of, that would sthrike the sight from yer eyes an' wither the tongue in yer head if ye'll let thim."
"And what's to perwint thim?" asked Darby.
"Ah ha! That's what I'm sent here to tell ye. Until the sthroke of midnight, the ghosts beyant are as helpless as a field full of playing childher, and afther cockcrow, they're nayther more nor less than a flock of jackdaws roosthin' in the ould rune. Let yez hurry now before midnight and make a ring of holly twunty feet wide around the spot where ye're to dig, the way the rapscallions can't come within hand's rache of ye. The ghost of no deceased person can cross a twig of holly."
"Shure, the whole worruld knows that," boasted Bill. "If anyone has a ring of holly around him, no shupernatural ghost can bother him."
"Ha! Is that so?" sneered the wee man. "Well, maybe ye know this, too, Mr. Di-og-gan-ees the pillosopher, that if ayther of the two of ye spake a pious or a rayligious worrud while ye're diggin' in that place, ye'll niver raygret it but wance, an' that'll be all the days of yer loife."
"Raymimber that, Bill Donohue," warned Darby, "an' grip yer tongue between yer teeth, or I'll make surgent's worruk of ye."
Nial lifted a silencing finger. "Whativer ye see an' whativer ye hear," he cautioned, "stir not a stir outside that ring of holly till cockcrow. All the cajolin' an' all the connivin' that can be larned in foive hundhered ginerations'll be used this night to frighten ye or to coax ye to where they can rache ye. I pity yez if they win. If they can kape yez off the goold till after cockcrow, they'll have yez bate."
"How'll we know whin it's midnight?" asked Darby. The little fairy laughed long and low, but something in the sound of that silver laugh raised the hair on their heads.
"Niver moind," he said. "If an-ny human bein' sets foot in the abbey afther midnight lookin' for the crocks o' goold, there'll be lads there, an' plinty of thim, that'll let him know the toime o' day. And now, Darby O'Gill, raymimber to sing that charrum whin yer afeared. Take up me hat now, an' put it on me head. Good luck go
wid yez!" Whisk, he was gone.
By and by, the drowsy moon, tossing its heavy blanket of clouds to the top of Sleive-na-mon, slipped higher up into the sky the better to spy out what mischief Bothered Bill Donohue and Darby O'Gill were up to. It grinned its surprise to find the two bold adventurers at the very gateway of the ruined cloister. There the pair waited, their arms bulging with holly and both hesitating and arguing angrily as to which should go in first.
"Oho, will ye look at the moon, Bill! I thought she was dhrownded in the say!" interrupted Darby.
The tinker cast up a disgusted eye. "A fardin' candle'd throw more light," he grumbled. "But, man alive, what are ye waitin' for? In twunty minutes more, it'll be on the sthroke of midnight!"
"Yes, but listen, Bill," confided Darby. "I was, thinkin'! Supposin' me watch is twunty minutes slow? It's always ayther that much slow or that much fast whin it's runnin'. An' just think, if it happened to be past midnight, an' I was to go in there now, why—they'd disthroy me from the face of the airth. So you go in first, me brave fellow, an' don't be afeared, for I'll be standin' here watchin' ye."
The Ashes of Old Wishes Page 15
