tilin Ni
Murrachu.

Caitilin knew them at once and came forward with welcome.

"O, Seumas Beg," she cried reproachfully, "how dirty you have let your
feet get. Why don't you walk in the grassy places? And you, Brigid, have
a right to be ashamed of yourself to have your hands the way they are.
Come over here at once."

Every child knows that every grown female person in the world has
authority to wash children and to give them food; that is what grown
people were made for, consequently Seumas and Brigid Beg submitted to
the scouring for which Caitilin made instant preparation. When they were
cleaned she pointed to a couple of flat stones against the wall of the
cave and bade them sit down and be good, and this the children did,
fixing their eyes on Pan with the cheerful gravity and curiosity which
good-natured youngsters always give to a stranger.

Pan, who had been lying on a couch of dried grass, sat up and bent an
equally cheerful regard on the children.

"Shepherd Girl," said he, "who are those children?"

"They are the children of the Philosophers of Coilla Doraca; the
Grey Woman of Dun Gortin and the Thin Woman of Inis Magrath are their
mothers, and they are decent, poor children, God bless them."

"What have they come here for?"

"You will have to ask themselves that."

Pan looked at them smilingly.

"What have you come here for, little children?" said he.

The children questioned one another with their eyes to see which of them
would reply, and then Seumas Beg answered:

"My father sent me to see you, sir, and to say that you were not doing a
good thing in keeping Caitilin Ni Murrachu away from her own place."

Brigid Beg turned to Caitilin-"Your father came to see our father, and
he said that he didn't know what had become of you at all, and that
maybe you were lying flat in a ditch with the black crows picking at
your flesh."

"And what," said Pan, "did your father say to that?"

"He told us to come and ask her to go home."

"Do you love your father, little child?" said Pan.

Brigid Beg thought for a moment. "I don't know, sir," she replied.

"He doesn't mind us at all," broke in Seumas Beg, "and so we don't know
whether we love him or not."

"I like Caitilin," said Brigid, "and I like you."

"So do I," said Seumas.

"I like you also, little children," said Pan. "Come over here and sit
beside me, and we will talk."

So the two children went over to Pan and sat down one each side of h