y a little frightened you would never
see me like myself again.'

"Then one day, as they were sitting together, the Earl turned away his
head and muttered some words which his wife could not understand, and
that instant he was gone, and instead of him sitting beside her she
saw a little goldfinch flying around the room. The goldfinch flew out
at the window into the garden; then it flew back and sat on the lady's
shoulder and on her hand and on her head, and it sang to her, and so
they played together for a time. Then it flew out into the open air
once more, but in a second it darted back through the window and
straight into the lady's bosom. The next instant she saw a wild hawk,
that was chasing the little bird and was coming straight through the
window after it. She put both her hands over her bosom, to save her
husband's life, but she was frightened and she gave one scream as the
hawk darted into the room, dashed itself against a table, and was
killed. Then she looked where the little bird had been, and it was
gone. She never saw Earl Gerald again.

"But Earl Gerald was not dead, and he is not dead, though all this was
hundreds of years ago. He is sleeping, down under the ground, just
beneath where his old castle used to stand. His warriors are there
with him. They are in a great hall. The Earl sits at the head of a
long table and the men sit down the sides. All rest their heads upon
the table and all are asleep. Against the wall there are rows of
stalls, and behind each man, in one of the stalls, is his horse.

"Once in every seven years Earl Gerald wakes at night. He rises and
mounts his horse. A door of the hall opens. He rides out into the free
air. He rides around the Curragh of Kildare and then back into the
cave, to sleep again for seven years.

"While he is out the door is open. Once, long ago, a horse-dealer was
going home late, and he had been drinking a little. He saw the door in
the hill open and he walked in. And there he found himself in a hall,
dim and high. A row of dim lamps hung along the hall, and he saw the
smoke of them rise up to the roof, where many old banners, faded and
torn, stirred a little in the light breeze that came in by the open
door. And the light of the lamps shone down and glistened on the
bright armor of rows of men who sat with their steel helmets bowed
upon the table, and behind them were rows of horses, with their
saddles and their bridles on, ready for their riders.

"The