The woman’s conthrayriness vexed Darby so he pounded his knee with his fist as he answered her: “You’ll not deny, maybe,” he says, “that the Costa Bower sthopped one night at the Hall, and—”
“Whist!” cried Bridget; “lave off,” she says; “sure that’s no kind of talk to be talkin’ this night before the childher,” says she.
“But mammy, I know what the Costa Bower is,” cried little Mickey, sitting up straight in Darby’s lap an’ pinting his finger at his mother; “ ’tis I that knows well. The Costa Bower is a gr‑r‑reat black coach that comes in the night to carry down to Croagmah the dead people the banshee keened for.”
The other childher by now were sitting boult upright, stiff as ramrods, and staring wild-eyed at Mickey.
“The coachman’s head is cut off an’ he houlds the reins this away,” says the child, lettin’ his hands fall limp an’ open at his side. “Sometimes it’s all wisable, an’ then agin it’s unwisable, but always whin it comes one can hear the turrible rumble of its wheels.” Mickey’s woice fell and, spreading out his hands, he spoke slow an’ solemn. “One Halloween night in the woods down at the black pond, Danny Hogan heard it coming an’ he jumped behind a stone. The threes couldn’t sthop it, they wint right through it, an’ as it passed Danny Hogan says he saw one white, dead face laned back agin the dark cushions, an’ this is the night—All Sowls’ night—whin it’s sure to be out; now don’t I know?” he says, thriumphant.
At that Bridget started to her feet. For a minute she stood spacheless with vexation at the wild, frighting notions that had got into the heads of her childher; then “Glory be!” she says, looking hard at Darby. You could have heard a pin dhrop in the room. Ould Malachi, the big yellow cat, who until this time lay coiled asleep on a stool, was the best judge of Bridget’s charack-ter in that house. So, no sooner did he hear the worruds an’ see Bridget start up, than he was on his own four feet, his back arched, his tail straight up, an’ his two goolden eyes searchin’ her face. One look was enough for him. The next instant he lept to the ground an’ started for the far room. As he scampered through the door, he trew a swift look back at his comerades, the childher, an’ that look said plain as any worruds could say:
“Run for it while you’ve time! Folly me; some one of us vagebones has done something murtherin’!”
Malachi was right; there would have been sayrious throuble for all hands, only that a softening thought was on Bridget that night which sobered her temper. She stopped a bit, the frown on her face clearing as she looked at the childher, an’ she only said: “Come out of this! To bed with yez! I’m raising a pack of owdacious young romancers, an’ I didn’t know it. Mickey sthop that whimpering an’ make haste with your clothes. The Lord help us, he’s broke off another button. Look at that, now!” she says.
There was no help for thim. So, with longin’ looks trun back at their father, sittin’ cosy before the fire, an’ with consolin’ winks an’ nods from him, the childher followed their mother to the bedroom.
Thin, whilst Bridget was tucking the covers about them, an’ hushing their complainings, Darby sat with his elbows on his knees, doing in his head a sum in figures; an’ that sum was this:
“How much would it be worth this All Sowls’ night for a man to go out that door and walk past the churchyard up to Cormac McCarthy, the stonecutter’s house?” One time he made the answer as low as tin pounds two shillings and thruppence, but as he did so a purticular loud blast went shrieking past outside, an’ he raised the answer to one thousand five hundred an’ tunty pounds sterling. “And cheap at that,” he said aloud.
While he was studyin’ thim saygacious questions, Bridget stole quietly behind and put a light hand on his chowlder. For a minute, thin, nayther of thim said a worrud.
Surprised at the silence, an’ puzzled that little Mickey had escaped a larruping, Malachi crept from the far room an’ stood still in the doorway judging his misthress. An’ expression was on her face the cat couldn’t quite make out. ’Twas an elevayted, pitying, good-hearted, daytermined look, such as a man wears when he goes into the sty to kill one of his own pigs for Christmas.
Malachi, being a wise an’ expayieranced baste, daycided to take no chances, so he backed through the door again an’ hid undher the dhresser to listen.
“I was just thinking, Darby avourneen,” says the woman, half whuspering, “how we might this blessed night earn great credit for our two sowls.”
“Wait!” says the sly man, straightening himself, an’ raising a hand. “The very thing you’re going to spake was in my own mind. I was just dayliberatin’ that I hadn’t done justice tonight to poor Eileen. I haven’t said me prayers farvint enough. I niver can whin we’re praying together, or whin I’m kneeling down. Thin, like every way else, there’s something quare about me. The foinest prayers I ever say is whin I’m be myself alone in the fields,” says the conniving villyan. “So, do you, Bridget, go in an’ kneel down by the childher for a half hour or so, an’ I’ll sit here doing my best. If you should happen to look out at me ye might aisily think,” he says, “that I was only sittin’ here comfortably smoking my pipe, but at the
