rry him wherever they
were going, whenever he intimated the desirability of that step by
abruptly plumping down on the way. So he set off in a great hurry to
escape from such a wilderness. He still walked with a wobbling stagger,
and his long frock of whity-brown homespun kept on tripping him up,
which retarded his progress. But he was not at all long in mentally
reaching the precincts of a wild panic which rose up and seized him in a
grip never to be quite forgotten, though only a few desperate minutes
ensued before he stumped blindly against Con's legs. It was so
unutterable a relief to have come on somebody who could hear him roar,
that Terence ceased roaring immediately, and let Con pick him up
without demur. The appearance of Molly or Micky would, no doubt, have
been more satisfactory, but this stranger man might serve well enough at
a pinch to carry him home, which it was inconceivable that anybody of
such a size could be unable or unwilling to do. As for Con, the
inference he drew from Terence's dimensions was that his family and
friends were probably not far to seek; and he recognised the shrewdness
of the conjecture when he presently espied a shawled figure coming
swiftly towards him over the edge of a slope, with the amber of the
sunset glowing behind her, and her long shadow sliding on far below her,
as if it were in an even greater hurry than herself.

Mrs. O'Driscoll's head was among the golden sunbeams, but her heart had
gone down to the very bottom of the blackest and deepest hole in the
bog. For towards that dreadful goal she had seen a small form toddling
ever since the other children came home alarmingly late with the news
that Terence had got lost on them, and they couldn't find a bit of him,
high ways or low ways. She was so overjoyed at her rescue that her
delighted gratitude cast a sort of glamour around Con, which never
wholly faded away. Ever after the appearance of his queer figure called
up in her mind a dim reminiscence of the moment when she had seen it for
the first time come into view, laden with what she well knew was Terence
sitting bolt upright in a manner that betokened him to have experienced
neither drowning nor any other disaster.

As Con put the child into her arms, where it seemed to fit into a niche
specially designed for it, he said: "Sure now, ma'am, when I seen him
stumpin' along his lone, and he about the heighth of a sizable boholawn
(ragweed), sez I to meself there was apt