ine evenin', and I not
thinkin' of anythin' in partic'lar, and all of a suddint I'd see a
great, big, ugly, black-lookin' baste of a feller, the size of forty,
skytin' away wid himself along the light of the sky over yonder, where
the sun was about goin' down, and his shadder the len'th of an awful
tall tree slippin' streelin' after him, till it was off over the edge of
the world like, and that same 'ud be just the Divil, that they were
after bundlin' out of it body and bones, the way he wouldn't get
meddlin' and makin' and annoyin' people any more. So wid that I'd take a
race home and be tellin' you all the iligant thing was after happenin'.
And in the middle of it who'd come landin' in but me father and mother,
and little Dan. And then, if it isn't the grand cup of tay I'd be
makin' her, ay begorra would I, and a sugarstick to stir it wid."

Johanna's vision of the millennium was broken in upon querulously by
Thady. "Sure I know all about God Almighty and the Divil," he said
comprehensively, "I was on'y axin' what was in it before the beginnin'
of everythin', and you're not tellin' me that."

"There's a dale of things little spalpeens like you wouldn't be tould
the rights of at all," said Peter, loftily, being rather annoyed at the
interruption. He would have liked to hear some further details about the
felicity to be inaugurated by that exquisite cup of tea. "Go on
romancin', Han."

But Johanna, who felt that this assumption of superior knowledge was an
uncandid subterfuge, and yet had not magnanimity enough to disclaim it
on her own part, remained uneasily silent for a moment, and then only
said: "Sure it's time we was gettin' home." This they accordingly
proceeded to do, and had gone most of the distance before it occurred to
anybody that little Terence O'Driscoll was not with them. Then, after a
superficial and unproductive search among the scattered stones and
bushes, they thought it expedient to run back in a fright, and report
that the child had gone and got lost, unless by any odd chance he'd come
home along wid himself.

Thus it was that when Terence wakened from his nap, he found himself
deserted, and thrown completely upon his own resources. As he had not
been quite three years in amassing these, they were on the whole but
scanty. In fact, he was helplessly unable to realise a world with
nothing in it except endlessly swelling up slopes of furzy grass, no
Molly nor Micky for him to trot after, and to ca