ats is avil spirits, so we mustn't put blessings on
them, and when we say 'God save all here,' we add onto it 'except the
cat,' so as not to be calling down a blessing on an avil spirit."

"Ah!" said Mrs. O'Brien, "it's not the likes of you that's
superstitious. You can't put a blessing on the poor cat, when you're
blessing everybody and everything else in the house, for fear you'ld
be putting it on an evil spirit; but you're not superstitions, and so
you throw dirty water on the Good People as they're passing, and you
call them by names that they don't like, and then you wonder what it
is that's troubling you."

"No, Mrs. O'Brien," said Peter, again, "I dunno what it is at all. It
may be the avil spirits themselves, for what I know, and whatever it
is. I'ld go away and leave it and leave the country, if I had the
money to get to the States. I heard once of a man that was druv out of
the counthry by a monsther that I suppose was maybe something like
the fairies--like them in making trouble for the man, anyway. It was a
great conger that lived in a hole in the Sligo River, and I suppose he
was ten yards long, and the man was a diver. He was gettin' stones out
of the bottom of the river, and the conger says to him, 'What are you
afther there?' says he. 'Stones, sor,' says the diver. 'Hadn't you
betther be goin?' says the conger. 'I think so, sor,' says the diver,
and afther that he never stopped goin' till he got to the States."

"That's you, Peter," said the old woman; "you don't believe in the
Good People or strange monsters or anything of the sort, but you want
to run away from them."

If Peter had been quite honest about it, he could scarcely have said,
even to himself, whether he believed that there were any fairies or
not; but he was really afraid of them, though he put on such a bold
front and said that he did not believe in them, to make people think
that he was uncommonly knowing. "Mrs. O'Brien," he said, "do you think
it's true, what they say, that in the States you can pick up goold
everywhere in the streets?"

"What good would it do you if it was true?" she asked.

"What good would it do me? Are ye askin' what good would goold do me?
Sure, then, wouldn't I pick up all of it I could carry, and wouldn't I
take land wid it and pay rent and buy stock for a big farm and grow as
rich as Damer? What good would goold be? Ha! Ha! What couldn't you do
in a country where ye could be pickin' up goold in the street?"