cied he heard, a particularly loud shriek
from Molly. He certainly heard the wailing of Mrs. Conerney and the
agitated cries of several other women. He turned from Flanagan without
speaking another word and walked straight to the doctor's house.

Five minutes later Dr. Lovaway, hatless and wearing a pair of slippers
on his feet, was running up the street towards the barrack. His first
case, a serious one, calling for instant attention, had come to him
unexpectedly. Opposite Flanagan's shop he was stopped by Mrs. Doolan.
She laid a skinny, wrinkled, and very dirty hand on his arm. Her shawl
fell back from her head, showing a few thin wisps of grey hair. Her eyes
were bleary and red-rimmed, her breath reeked of porter.

"Arrah, doctor dear," she said, "I'm glad to see you, so I am. Isn't it
a grand thing now that a fine young man like you would be wanting to
sit down and be talking to an old woman like myself, that might be your
mother--no, but your grandmother?"

Dr. Lovaway, desperately anxious to reach the sergeant's suffering
child, tried to shake off the old woman. He suspected that she was
drunk. He was certain that she was extremely unpleasant. The suggestion
that she might be his mother filled him with loathing. It was not any
pleasanter to think of her as a grandmother.

Mrs. Doolan clung tightly to his arm with both her skinny hands.

Mr. Flanagan approached them from behind; leaning across Lovaway's
shoulders, he whispered in his ear:

"There's not about the place--there's not within the four seas of
Ireland, one that has as much knowledge of fairies and all belonging to
them as that old woman."

"Fairies!" said Lovaway. "Did you say---- Surely you didn't say fairies?"

"I just thought you'd be pleased," said Flanagan, "and it's lucky, so
it is, that Mrs. Doolan should happen to be in the town to-night of all
nights, just when them ones--the fairies, you know, doctor--has half the
children in the town took with pains in their stomachs."

Dr. Lovaway looked round him wildly. He supposed that Flanagan must be
mad. He had no doubt that the old woman was drunk.

"I've seen the like before," she said, leering up into Lovaway's face.
"I've seen worse. I've seen a strong man tying himself into knots with
the way they had him held, and there's no cure for it only----"

Lovaway caught sight of Sergeant Rahilly. In his first rush to reach the
stricken child he had left the sergeant behind. The sergeant was a h