Hillsboro People — Part 183

He went on conscientiously, with a mental eye on Father Delancey, "An' if there _are_ any, which they aren't, they're bad things for Christians to have aught to do with, because they know neither right nor wrong, and 'tisn't fit that mortals should iver be light an' gay wi' that burden gone! So they're bad for us--an' we shouldn't think of thim, and just cross ourselves wheniver--"

The unspoken protest in the child's face was grown so passionate that he interrupted himself to answer it in a burst of sympathy. "Och, Moira, acushla, sure an' I know how 'tis to ye--" And then with a reaction to virtue, he said sternly, "An' if they're not bad, why do they go when you call on the blessed saints?"

At this the child's face twisted again for tears. "Och, bad Piper Tim, to scare them away from me! It's not that they're bad--only that good's too heavy for them. They're such _little_ people! It's too heavy! It's too heavy." She ran away through the dusk, sobbing and calling this over her shoulder reproachfully.

In the weeks which followed, old Timothy Moran, as he was called, could scarcely complain that he was but half awake. He seemed to be making up for the dull apathy of his long exile by the storminess of his days and nights. Mrs. Wilcox, bustling housewife, hastening about the kitchen, engaged in some late evening task, was moved to a sudden burst of hysterical tears, by the faint sound of Tim's pipes, dropping down to her from the Round Stone in a whirling roulade of ever-ascending merriness. "You, Ralph!" she cried angrily through her sobs, to her oldest boy, stricken open-mouthed and silent by his mother's amazing outburst, "you, Ralph, run up to the Round Stone and tell the Irishman to stop playing that jig over and over. I'm that tired to-night it drives me wild with nerves!" As she brushed away the tears she said fretfully, "My sakes! When my liver gets to tormenting me so I have the megrims like a girl, it's time to do something."

The boy came back to say that Old Tim had stopped playing "the jig" before he reached him, and was lying sobbing on the stone.

Moira was as approachable as a barn swallow, swooping into the house for a mouthful of food and off again to the sky apparently. Timothy's child-heart was guiltily heavy within him, for all his excitement, and when he finally caught her in the pine woods he spoke briefly and firmly, almost like Father Delancey himself. "Moira, Tim was a big fool to tell you lies. There aren't really any little people. Tis only a way of talkin'-like, to say how lovely the woods and stars an' all are."