be along up in a minit. He's always
afther her, but he's never caught her yet."

"What would he do to her if he caught her?" asked Emmeline.

"Faith, an' maybe he'd fetch her a skelp an' well she'd desarve it."

"Why'd she deserve it?" asked Dick, who was in one of his questioning
moods.

"Because she's always delutherin' people an' leadin' thim asthray.
Girls or men, she moidhers thim all once she gets the comeither on
them; same as she did Buck M'Cann."

"Who's he?"

"Buck M'Cann? Faith, he was the village ijit where I used to live in
the ould days."

"What's that'"

"Hould your whisht, an' don't be axin' questions. He was always wantin'
the moon, though he was twinty an' six feet four. He'd a gob on him
that hung open like a rat-trap with a broken spring, and he was as thin
as a barber's pole, you could a' tied a reef knot in the middle of 'um;
and whin the moon was full there was no houldin' him." Mr Button gazed
at the reflection of the sunset on the water for a moment as if
recalling some form from the past, and then proceeded. "He'd sit on the
grass starin' at her, an' thin he'd start to chase her over the hills,
and they'd find him at last, maybe a day or two later, lost in the
mountains, grazin' on berries, and as green as a cabbidge from the
hunger an' the cowld, till it got so bad at long last they had to
hobble him."

"I've seen a donkey hobbled," cried Dick.

"Thin you've seen the twin brother of Buck M'Cann. Well, one night me
elder brother Tim was sittin' over the fire, smokin' his dudeen an'
thinkin' of his sins, when in comes Buck with the hobbles on him.

"`Tim,' says he, `I've got her at last!'

"`Got who?' says Tim.

"`The moon,' says he.

"`Got her where?' says Tim.

"`In a bucket down by the pond,' says t'other, `safe an' sound an' not
a scratch on her; you come and look,' says he. So Tim follows him, he
hobblin', and they goes to the pond side, and there, sure enough, stood
a tin bucket full of wather, an' on the wather the refliction of the
moon.

"`I dridged her out of the pond,' whispers Buck. `Aisy now,' says he,
`an' I'll dribble the water out gently,' says he, `an' we'll catch her
alive at the bottom of it like a trout.' So he drains the wather out
gently of the bucket till it was near all gone, an' then he looks into
the bucket expectin' to find the moon flounderin' in the bottom of it
like a flat fish.

"`She's gone, bad 'cess to her!' says he.

"`Try again,' says