ooner gone than Mrs. Fitzgerald set about cleaning up the
house, and chancing to pull down a fishing-net, what should she find
behind it in a hole in the wall but her own _cohuleen driuth_. She
took it out and looked at it, and then she thought of her father the
king, and her mother the queen, and her brothers and sisters, and she
felt a longing to go back to them.

She sat down on a little stool and thought over the happy days she had
spent under the sea; then she looked at her children, and thought on
the love and affection of poor Dick, and how it would break his heart
to lose her. 'But,' says she, 'he won't lose me entirely, for I'll
come back to him again, and who can blame me for going to see my
father and my mother after being so long away from them?'

She got up and went towards the door, but came back again to look once
more at the child that was sleeping in the cradle. She kissed it
gently, and as she kissed it a tear trembled for an instant in her eye
and then fell on its rosy cheek. She wiped away the tear, and turning
to the eldest little girl, told her to take good care of her brothers,
and to be a good child herself until she came back. The Merrow then
went down to the strand. The sea was lying calm and smooth, just
heaving and glittering in the sun, and she thought she heard a faint
sweet singing, inviting her to come down. All her old ideas and
feelings came flooding over her mind, Dick and her children were at
the instant forgotten, and placing the _cohuleen driuth_ on her head
she plunged in.

Dick came home in the evening, and missing his wife he asked Kathleen,
his little girl, what had become of her mother, but she could not tell
him. He then inquired of the neighbours, and he learned that she was
seen going towards the strand with a strange-looking thing like a
cocked hat in her hand. He returned to his cabin to search for the
_cohuleen driuth_. It was gone, and the truth now flashed upon him.

Year after year did Dick Fitzgerald wait expecting the return of his
wife, but he never saw her more. Dick never married again, always
thinking that the Merrow would sooner or later return to him, and
nothing could ever persuade him but that her father the king kept her
below by main force; 'for,' said Dick, 'she surely would not of
herself give up her husband and her children.'

While she was with him she was so good a wife in every respect that to
this day she is spoken of in the tradition of the cou