shoes, and over
the lintel and spreading along the thatch, grew, luxuriant, patches of
that ancient cure for many maladies, and prophylactic against the
machinations of the evil one, the house-leek. Descending into the
doorway, in the _chiaroscuro_ of the interior, when your eye grew
sufficiently accustomed to that dim light, you might discover, hanging
at the head of the widow's wooden-roofed bed, her beads and a phial of
holy water.

Here certainly were defences and bulwarks against the intrusion of
that unearthly and evil power, of whose vicinity this solitary family
were constantly reminded by the outline of Lisnavoura, that lonely
hillhaunt of the "Good people," as the fairies are called
euphemistically, whose strangely dome-like summit rose not half a mile
away, looking like an outwork of the long line of mountain that sweeps
by it.

It was at the fall of the leaf, and an autumnal sunset threw the
lengthening shadow of haunted Lisnavoura, close in front of the
solitary little cabin, over the undulating slopes and sides of
Slieveelim. The birds were singing among the branches in the thinning
leaves of the melancholy ash-trees that grew at the roadside in front
of the door. The widow's three younger children were playing on the
road, and their voices mingled with the evening song of the birds.
Their elder sister, Nell, was "within in the house," as their phrase
is, seeing after the boiling of the potatoes for supper.

Their mother had gone down to the bog, to carry up a hamper of turf on
her back. It is, or was at least, a charitable custom--and if not
disused, long may it continue--for the wealthier people when cutting
their turf and stacking it in the bog, to make a smaller stack for the
behoof of the poor, who were welcome to take from it so long as it
lasted, and thus the potato pot was kept boiling, and hearth warm that
would have been cold enough but for that good-natured bounty, through
wintry months.

Moll Ryan trudged up the steep "bohereen" whose banks were overgrown
with thorn and brambles, and stooping under her burden, re-entered her
door, where her dark-haired daughter Nell met her with a welcome, and
relieved her of her hamper.

Moll Ryan looked round with a sigh of relief, and drying her forehead,
uttered the Munster ejaculation:

"Eiah, wisha! It's tired I am with it, God bless it. And where's the
craythurs, Nell?"

"Playin' out on the road, mother; didn't ye see them and you comin'
up?"