nest green jackets?"

"Sure, Your Majesty," said the King of the rath, "I thought it was no
harm. He said he was tired of being by himself, and you know how handy
he is with the fiddle or the pipes. If he'd been a fir darrig, that's
always playing tricks and making trouble everywhere, why, then, of
course--but he was only a poor cluricaun--"

"Yes," the King of All Ireland interrupted, "only a poor cluricaun,
that does nothing but rob gentlemen's wine cellars and keep himself so
drunk that he's of no use when he's wanted for any good. And hasn't he
made you as much trouble as any fir darrig could do?"

"I was a lepracaun, too, once, Your Majesty," Naggeneen said.

"A lepracaun, were you? What did you do then? And when was it and how
did it happen that a lazy lump like you was ever a lepracaun?"

"It was a long time ago," said Naggeneen, ready enough to talk about
anything to draw the King's thoughts away from the trouble that he had
made. "After old MacCarthy, of Ballinacarthy, died, those that came
after him did not keep up his cellar well, and I felt lonely and sad,
and I didn't care to drink any more--"

"Lonely and sad you must have been," said the King of All Ireland;
"but you did drink still, did you not, though you didn't care for it?"

"True for you, Your Majesty," said Naggeneen, "I did a little, just
for my health. But I was so lonely and so falling to pieces with
idleness--"

"Falling to pieces with idleness!" the King interrupted again. "If
idleness could make you fall to pieces, there wouldn't have been a
piece of you left big enough to make trouble in a fly's eye, these
last seven hundred years."

"As you say, Your Majesty," Naggeneen went on, "but, anyway, I was a
lepracaun, and I did what any other lepracaun does: I sat in the field
or under a tree and made brogues. But it was sorry work and people was
always trying to catch me, to make me show them the gold they thought
I had. And one time a great brute of a spalpeen did catch me, and he
nearly broke me in two with the squeeze he gave me, so that I wouldn't
get away till I'd showed him the gold. And I nearly had to show it to
him, but I made him look away for a second, and then of course I was
off. And after that my friend the King here let me come and live in
the rath, just for company--not that I belong to his little tribe at
all."

"And now you see," said the King of All Ireland, turning from
Naggeneen to the King of the rath, "what troub