rose and spoke to
them. In a moment the King clapped his hands, with a sign for the
pipers and the fiddlers to stop playing. The instant that they
stopped, everybody in the hall was still.

The King stood up and said to them: "Will ye be still now and listen,
all of ye, to the news that's come to me this minute, and then will ye
help me to think what we're to do about it at all? Here's these two
that's just come in, and they're just afther tellin' me that they've
been at the O'Briens' house this evenin', and there they heard talk
betune the O'Briens and the Sullivans, and it's all decided that both
the O'Briens and the Sullivans is goin' to the States. And it's sorry
I'll be to see the O'Briens lavin' the counthry. I don't care so much
for the Sullivans."

"It was the O'Briens," said the Queen, "that always put the bit and
sup outside the door for us, and what we'll be doin' widout the milk
and the pertaties and the fresh wather, I dunno."

"Ye needn't be throubled about that," the King answered; "haven't we
always enough to eat and drink of our own, whatever happens?"

"Thrue for you," said the Queen, "we have our own food and drink, but
it's not the same that we get from human people. Ye know that same
yourself, and it's you as much as any that'll be missin' them things
when the O'Briens is gone."

"That's the thrue word too," said the King; "it'll be the bad day for
us all out, when they go. What for are they lavin' the counthry at
all?"

"If ye plase, Your Majesty," said one of the fairies who had brought
the news, "we heard all that too. It's the hard times that's in it.
It's that makes them all want to go, and then, more than that, it's
the bother the Sullivans are put to all the time, wid the cow givin'
no milk and the pig not gettin' fat, and all that, and they're bound
that they'll go away and stand it no longer."

"Is that it?" said the King. "It's that divil Naggeneen that's in it.
I told him he could bother them a little if he liked, but not to
bother them too much, and now he's drivin' them and their neighbors
out of the counthry, and we all have to suffer for it. He'll make it
up to us in some way, if they go, or I'll take it out of him. Come
here, Naggeneen! What are ye doin' down there by yourself? Come up
here and stand forninst me, till I give ye a piece of me mind. Now,
what's all this about the O'Briens and the Sullivans lavin' the
counthry? What have ye been about wid them?"

A fairy who