“Did you notice McDonald’s sthrame as you came along the night, Solomon? It must be a roarin’ torrent be this, with the pourin’ rains, an’ we’ll have to cross it,” says he. “We could go over McDonald’s stone bridge that stands ferninst McCarthy’s house, with only Nolan’s meadow betwixt the two, but,” says Darby, laying a hand, confaydential on the ass’s wet back, “ ’tis only a fortnit since long Faylix, the blind beggarman, fell from the same bridge and broke his neck, an’ what more natural,” he axed, “than that the ghost of Faylix would be celebraytin’ its first Halloween, as a ghost, at the spot where he was kilt?”
You may believe me or believe me not, but at thim worruds Solomon sthopped dead still in his thracks an’ rayfused to go another step till Darby coaxed him on be sayin’:
“Oh, thin, we won’t cross it if you’re afeared, little man,” says he, “but we’ll take the path through the fields on this side of it, and we’ll cross the sthrame by McCarthy’s own wooden footbridge. ’Tis within tunty feet of the house. Oh, ye needn’t be afeared,” he says agin; “I’ve seen the cows cross it, so it’ll surely hould the both of us.”
A sudden raymembrance whipped into his mind of how tall the stile was, ladin’ into Nolan’s meadow, an’ the boy was puzzling deep in his mind to know how was Solomon to climb acrost that stile, whin all at once the gloomy western gate of the graveyard rose quick be their side.
The two shied to the opposite hedge, an’ no wondher they did.
Fufty ghosts, all in their shrouds, sat cheek be jowl along the churchyard wall, never caring a ha’porth for the wind or the rain.
There was little Ted Rogers, the humpback, who was dhrownded in Mullin’s well four years come Michaelmas; there was black Mulligan, the gamekeeper, who shot Ryan, the poacher, sittin’ with a gun on his lap, an’ he glowerin’; beside the gamekeeper sat the poacher, with a jagged black hole in his forehead; there was Thady Finnegan, the scholar, who was disappointed in love an’ died of a daycline; furder on sat Mrs. Houlihan, who dayparted this life from ating of pizen musherooms; next to her sat—oh, a hundhred others!
Not that Darby saw thim, do ye mind. He had too good sinse to look that way at all. He walked with his head turned out to the open fields, an’ his eyes squeeged shut. But something in his mind toult him they were there, an’ he felt in the marrow of his bones that if he gave them the encouragement of one glance two or three’d slip off the wall an’ come moanin’ over to tell him their throubles.
What Solomon saw an’ what Solomon heard, as the two wint shrinkin’ along’ll never be known to living man, but once he gave a jump, an’ twice Darby felt him thrimblin’, an’ whin they raiched at last the chapel wall the baste broke into a swift throt. Purty soon he galloped, an’ Darby wint gallopin’ with him, till two yallow blurs of light across in a field to the left marked the windys of the stonecutter’s cottage.
’Twas a few steps only, thin, to the stile over into Nolan’s meadow, an’ there the two stopped, lookin’ helpless at aich other. Solomon had to be lifted, and there was the throuble. Three times Darby thried be main strength to hist his compagnen up the steps, but in vain, an’ Solomon was clane dishgusted.
Only for the tendher corn on our hayro’s left little toe, I think maybe that at length an’ at last the pair would have got safe over. The kindhearted lad had the donkey’s two little hoofs planted on the top step, an’ whilst he himself was liftin’ the rest of the baste in his arrums, Solomon got onaisy that he was goin’ to be trun, an’ so began to twisht an’ squirm; of course, as he did, Darby slipped an’ wint thump on his back agin the stile, with Solomon sittin’ comfortable on top of the lad’s chist. But that wasn’t the worst of it, for as the baste scrambled up he planted one hard little hoof on Darby’s left foot, an’ the knowledgeable man let a yowl out of him that must have frightened all the ghosts within miles.
Seein’ he’d done wrong, Solomon boulted for the middle of the road an’ stood there wiry an’ attentive, listening to the names flung at him from where his late comerade sat on the lowest step of the stile nursin’ the hurted foot.
’Twas an excited owl in the belfry that this time spoke up an’ shouted to his brother down in the blackthorn:
“Come up, come up quick!” it says. “Darby O’Gill is just afther calling Solomon Kilcannon a malayfactor.”
Darby rose at last, an’ as he climbed over the stile he turned to shake his fist toward the middle of the road.
“Bad luck to ye for a thickheaded, ongrateful informer!” he says; “you go your way an’ I’ll go mine—we’re sundhers,” says he. So sayin’, the crippled man wint limpin’ an’ grumplin’ down the boreen, through the meadow, whilst his desarted friend sint rayproachf ul brays afther him that would go to your heart.
The throbbin’ of our hayro’s toe banished all pity for the baste, an’ even all thoughts of the banshee, till a long, gurgling, swooping sound in front toult him that his fears about the rise in McDonald’s sthrame were undher rather than over the actwil conditions.
Fearin’ that the wooden footbridge might be swept away, as it had been the year purvious, he hurried on.
Most times this sthrame was only a quiet little brook that ran betwixt purty green banks, with hardly enough wather in it to turn the broken wheel in Chartres’ runed mill; but tonight it swept along an angry, snarlin’, growlin’ river that overlept its banks an’ dhragged wildly at the
