posed to foretell the death of a member of the
family."

"Quite right," replied Harriet. "Now listen to my story. Once upon a time
there lived a family of poor people in County Mooreland in Ireland. With
them lived their beautiful child Muriel. Now the fairies and the banshees,
the wood nymphs and the sprites coveted this beautiful child Muriel
because they knew she would make a good fairy. But they dared not approach
the hut where Muriel made her home, in the daytime. At night little Muriel
was sound asleep behind closed doors. There was no way for the banshees
and the wood nymphs and the sprites to get into the house and take her
while she slept, for there always was a fire in the fireplace. As
everybody knows a fairy cannot pass through flames without singeing her
wings----"

"Why didn't thhe wear water wingth?" piped Tommy Thompson.

"Every night the fairies used to perch in the flowers and under the
shamrock that grew in Muriel's door yard, waiting and hoping to catch the
little one and kidnap her."

"Some one should have called the police," ventured Margery.

"If the sprites could reach Muriel," went on Harriet, ignoring Margery's
flippant remark, "they could quickly transform her into something else and
in that manner get her away. You see these were bad fairies and gnomes and
sprites and things."

"Yeth," agreed Tommy. "I thee."

"Well, one night a very powerful banshee came along and asked them what
they were doing there. They told it they were waiting for the beautiful
child Muriel that they might bear her away, but that they could not get to
her.

"'Oho, aha!' cried the banshee. 'I have a plan. I will call upon the
friend of my people, the west wind, to blow hard. Stand close and when the
door of the cottage blows open see that you enter by one door but do not
go out by the other. The west wind will blow thrice, then will die away.
It is for you to gather the child then. I can summon the wind but once.'"

"It thertainly had thome confidenthe in itthelf," observed Grace Thompson,
nodding her head.

"The fairies and the gnomes and the sprites and the banshees gathered
about the door of the shack," continued the first ghost, "Suddenly they
heard a wild, weird wailing off on the moor. The ghostly little
conspirators trembled with fear, for these midnight wailings, these
moaning winds across the moor boded no good for all of their kind. It
meant that the spirits of evil were abroad.

"Suddenly a migh