“I will so, with the help of God,” says Darby.
At these words, Maureen gave a terrible screech.
“Cruel man!” she cried, “don’t you know that to say pious words to one of the Good People, or to one undher their black charm, is like cutting him with a knife?”
The next night she came to Darby again.
“Watch yerself now,” she says, “for tonight they’re goin’ to lave the door of the mountain open, to thry you; and if you stir two steps outside they’ll put the comeither on you,” she says.
Sure enough, when Darby took his walk down the passage, after supper, as he did every night, there the side of the mountain lay wide open and no one in sight. The temptation to make one rush was great; but he only looked out a minute, and went whistling back down the passage, knowing well that a hundred hidden eyes were on him the while. For a dozen nights after it was the same.
At another time Maureen said:
“The King himself is going to thry you hard the day, so beware!” She had no sooner said the words than Darby was called for, and went up to the King.
“Darby, my sowl,” says the King, in a sootherin’ way, “have this noggin of punch. A betther never was brewed; it’s the last we’ll have for many a day. I’m going to set you free, Darby O’Gill, that’s what I am.”
“Why, king,” says Darby, putting on a mournful face, “how have I offended ye?”
“No offence at all,” says the king, “only we’re depriving you.”
“No depravity in life!” says Darby. “I have lashins and lavings to ate and to drink, and nothing but fun an’ divarsion all day long. Out in the world it was nothing but work and throuble and sickness, disappointment and care.”
“But Bridget and the childher?” says the King, giving him a sharp look out of half-shut eyes.
“Oh, as for that, king,” says Darby, “it’s aisier for a widow to get a husband, or for orphans to find a father, than it is for them to pick up a sovereign a day.”
The King looked mighty satisfied and smoked for a while without a word.
“Would you mind going out an evenin’ now and then, helpin’ the boys to mind the cows?” he asked at last.
Darby feared to thrust himself outside in their company.
“Well, I’ll tell ye how it is,” replied my brave Darby. “Some of the neighbors might see me, and spread the report on me that I’m with the fairies, and that’d disgrace Bridget and the childher,” he says.
The King knocked the ashes from his pipe.
“You’re a wise man besides being the hoight of good company,” says he, “and it’s sorry I am you didn’t take me at my word; for then we would have you always, at laste till the Day of Judgment, when—but that’s nayther here nor there! Howsomever, we’ll bother you about it no more.”
From that day they thrated him as one of their own.
It was one day five months after that Maureen plucked Darby by the coat and led him off to a lonely spot.
“I’ve got the word,” she says.
“Have you, faith! What is it?” says Darby, all of a thrimble.
Then she whispered a word so blasphaymous, so irrayligious, that Darby blessed himself. When Maureen saw him making the sign, she fell down in a fit, the holy emblem hurt her so, poor child.
Three hours after this me bould Darby was sitting at his own fireside talking to Bridget and the childher. The neighbours were hurrying to him, down every road and through every field, carrying armfuls of holly bushes, as he had sent word for them to do. He knew well he’d have fierce and savage visitors before morning.
After they had come with the holly, he had them make a circle of it so thick around the house that a fly couldn’t walk through without touching a twig or a leaf. But that was not all.
You’ll know what a wise girl and what a crafty girl that Maureen was when you hear what the neighbours did next. They made a second ring of holly outside the first, so that the house sat in two great wreaths, one wreath around the other. The outside ring was much the bigger, and left a good space between it and the first, with room for ever so many people to stand there. It was like the inner ring, except for a little gate, left open as though by accident, where the fairies could walk in.
But it wasn’t an accident at all, only the wise plan of Maureen’s; for nearby this little gap, in the outside wreath, lay a sprig of holly with a bit of twine tied to it. Then the twine ran along up to Darby’s house, and in through the window, where its end lay convaynient to his hand. A little pull on the twine would drag the stray piece of holly into the gap, and close tight the outside ring.
It was a trap, you see. When the fairies walked in through the gap, the twine was to be pulled, and so they were to be made prisoners between the two rings of holly. They couldn’t get into Darby’s house, because the circle of holly nearest the house was so tight that a fly couldn’t get through without touching the blessed tree or its wood. Likewise, when the gap in the outer wreath was closed, they couldn’t get out again. Well, anyway, these things were hardly finished and fixed, when the dusky brown of the hills warned the neighbours of twilight, and they scurried like frightened rabbits
