ork. It was Patsy's fears of the supernatural that
kept him creeping along in the shadow of the hedge, now and again
stopping to weep a little over his troubles, or to listen fearfully
like a frightened hare before going on again.

Why, close to the road by which he must go to seek the goat there was
the tomb in which Captain Hercules O'Hart lay buried. People about
Killesky did not take that road if they could help it. The tomb was a
terror to all those who must pass the road by night, and to their
horses if they were riding or driving. It was well known that no horse
would pass by the tomb without endeavouring to avoid it, and if forced
or cajoled into accomplishing the passage, would emerge trembling and
sweating. Some unimaginative person had suggested that the terror of
the horses was due to the thunder of the invisible waterfall where the
river tumbled over its weir, just below the Mount on which old Hercules
had chosen to be buried. The horses knew better than that. Nothing
natural said the people would make a horse behave in such a way. The
dumb beast knew what it saw and that was nothing good.

The anguish of Patsy's thoughts caused him suddenly to "bawl" as he
would have put it himself.

"Isn't it an awful thing?" he asked, addressing the quiet bog-world
under the moon, "to think of a little lad like me havin' to be out in
the night facin' all them ghosts and that ould heart-scald of a man
burnin' his knees at home be the fire? What'll I do at all if that
tormint of a goat is up strayin' on the Mount? It would be like what
the divil 'ud do to climb up there, unless it was to be the churchyard
below, and all them ould bones stickin' up through the clay.

"There isn't wan out this night but meself," he went on. "It's awful
to think of every wan inside their houses an' me wanderin' about be me
lone. It isn't wan ghost but twinty I might meet betune this an' the
cross-roads, let alone fairies and pookas. Won't I just welt the divil
out o' the oul' goat when I ketch her?"

A little whinny close to him made him look round with a fearful hope.
He saw neither pooka nor fairy, but the long horns of the animal he was
in search of.

He snatched joyfully at her chain, forgetting all his anger. Indeed
none knew better than the goat Patsy's gentleness with all living
creatures. Her mouth was full of grass. He remembered his
grandfather's speech as he tethered the little goat on the bare
hillside above