“Enough! They hit the earth—they were not smashed, there was that virtue in them. They hit the ground just outside the village of Donnybrook where the back road runs to the hills; and scarcely had they bumped twice when Brien of the O’Brien nation had the seraph Cuchulain by the throat.
“ ‘My threepenny bit,’ he roared, with one fist up.
“But the seraph Cuchulain only laughed:
“ ‘That!’ said he. ‘Look at me, man. Your little medal dropped far beyond the rings of Saturn.’
“And Brien stood back looking at him—He was as naked as Brien was. He was as naked as a stone, or an eel, or a pot, or a newborn babe. He was very naked.
“So Brien of the O’Brien nation strode across the path and sat down by the side of a hedge:
“ ‘The first man that passes this way,’ said he, ‘will give me his clothes, or I’ll strangle him.’
“The seraph Cuchulain walked over to him:
“ ‘I will take the clothes of the second man that passes,’ said he, and he sat down.”
XXVI
“And then,” said Mac Cann thoughtfully, “we came along, and they stole our clothes.”
“That wasn’t a bad tale,” he continued to Caeltia. “You are as good a storyteller, mister, as the man himself,” pointing to Billy the Music.
Billy replied modestly:
“It’s because the stories were good ones that they were well told, for that’s not my trade, and what wonder would it be if I made a botch of it? I’m a musician myself, as I told you, and there’s my instrument, but I knew an old man in Connaught one time, and he was a great lad for the stories. He used to make his money at it, and if that man was to break off in the middle of a tale the people would stand up and kill him, they would so. He was a gifted man, for he would tell you a story about nothing at all, and you’d listen to him with your mouth open and you afraid that he would come to the end of it soon, and maybe it would be nothing more than the tale of how a white hen laid a brown egg. He would tell you a thing you knew all your life, and you would think it was a new thing. There was no old age in that man’s mind, and that’s the secret of storytelling.”
Said Mary:
“I could listen to a story for a day and a night.”
Her father nodded acquiescence:
“So could I, if it was a good story and well told, and I would be ready to listen to another one after that.”
He turned to Art:
“You were saying yourself, sonny, that there was a story in your head, and if that’s so, now is your chance to tell it; but I’m doubting you’ll be able to do it as well as the two men here, for you are a youngster, and storytelling is an old man’s trade.”
“I’ll do my best,” said Art, “but I never told a story in my life, and it may not be a good one at the first attempt.”
“That’s all right,” replied Mac Cann encouragingly. “We won’t be hard on you.”
“Sure enough,” said Billy the Music, “and you’ve listened to the lot of us, so you will know the road.”
“What are you going to talk about?” said Caeltia.
“I’m going to talk about Brien O’Brien, the same as the rest of you.”
“Did you know him too?” cried Billy.
“I did.”
“There isn’t a person doesn’t know that man,” growled Patsy. “Maybe,” and he grinned ferociously as he said it, “maybe we’ll meet him on the road and he tramping, and perhaps he will tell us a story himself.”
“That man could not tell a story,” Finaun interrupted, “for he has no memory, and that is a thing a good storyteller ought to have.”
“If we meet him,” said Mac Cann grimly, “I’ll do something to him and he’ll remember it, and it’s likely that he will be able to make a story out of it too.”
“I only saw him once,” said Art, “but when Rhadamanthus tossed him through the void I recognised his face, although so long a time had elapsed since I did see him. He is now less than he was, but he is, nevertheless, much more than I had expected he would be.”
“What is he now?” said Billy the Music.
“He is a man.”
“We are all that,” said Patsy, “and it isn’t any trouble to us.”
“It was more trouble than you imagine,” said Finaun.
“I had expected him to be no more than one of the higher animals, or even that he might have been dissipated completely from existence.”
“What was he at the time you met him?”
“He was a magician, and he was one of the most powerful magicians that ever lived. He was a being of the fifth round, and he had discovered many secrets.”
“I have known magicians,” commented Finaun, “and I always found that they were fools.”
“Brien O’Brien destroyed himself,” Art continued, “he forfeited his evolution and added treble to his karmic burden because he had not got a
