ived of husband
and four sons. For a time she was wildly demented, but the violence passed
away, and as her clouded brain became calm, it was occupied by one idea,
to the exclusion of all others,--prayer for the repose of her dead. The
body of the Sergeant was buried near Maume, but O'Malley and his three
sons were buried together under the cairn in a long disused churchyard
through which the road passed, a churchyard like thousands more in
Ireland, where the grave-stones are hidden by the nettles and weeds.
Thither, with a love stronger than death, goes the poor old woman every
day, and, untiring in her devotion, spends her life reciting the prayers
for the dead.

[Illustration: "Thither goes the poor old women every day"]

THE LEPRECHAWN.

[Illustration: Initial: "The Leprechawn"]

Every mythology has its good and evil spirits which are objects of
adoration and subjects of terror, and often both classes are worshipped
from opposite motives; the good, that the worshipper may receive benefit;
the evil, that he may escape harm. Sometimes good deities are so
benevolent that they are neglected, superstitious fear directing all
devotion towards the evil spirits to propitiate them and avert the
calamities they are ever ready to bring upon the human race; sometimes the
malevolent deities have so little power that the prayer of the pious is
offered up to the good spirits that they may pour out still further
favors, for man is a worshipping being, and will prostrate himself with
equal fervor before the altar whether the deity be good or bad.

Midway, however, between the good and evil beings of all mythologies there
is often one whose qualities are mixed; not wholly good nor entirely evil,
but balanced between the two, sometimes doing a generous action, then
descending to a petty meanness, but never rising to nobility of character
nor sinking to the depths of depravity; good from whim, and mischievous
from caprice.

Such a being is the Leprechawn of Ireland, a relic of the pagan mythology
of that country. By birth the Leprechawn is of low descent, his father
being an evil spirit and his mother a degenerate fairy; by nature he is a
mischief-maker, the Puck of the Emerald Isle. He is of diminutive size,
about three feet high, and is dressed in a little red jacket or
roundabout, with red breeches buckled at the knee, gray or black
stockings, and a hat, cocked in the style of a century ago, over