The big, shambling, red-headed man looked like a guilty child. There was a
moment's silence, while Father Delancey speculated, and then his
experienced instinct sped him to the bull's-eye. "Timothy Moran, you're
not putting your foolish notions in the head of that innocent child o'
God, Moira O'Donnell, are you?"

The red head sank lower.

"Answer me, man! Are ye fillin' her mind with your sidhe[A] and your
red-hatted little people an' your stories of 'gentle places' an' the
leprechaun?"

[Footnote A: Pronounced _shee_ (as in Banshee), the fairies.]

Timothy arose suddenly and flung his long arms abroad in a gesture of
revolt. "I am that, Father Delancey, 'tis th' only comfort of my life,
livin' it, as I do, in a dead country--a valley where folks have lived and
died for two hundred years such lumps of clay that they niver had wan man
sharp enough to see the counts in between heaven and earth." He lapsed
again into his listless position on the Round Stone. "But ye needn't be
a-fearin' for her soul, Father--her wid th' black hair an' the big gray
eyes like wan that cud see thim if she wud! She's as dead a lump as anny
of th' rest--as thim meat-eatin' Protestants, the Wilcoxes, heaven save
the kindly bodies, for they've no souls at all, at all." From the stone he
picked up a curiously shaped willow whistle with white lines carved on it
in an odd criss-cross pattern. "To-day's her seventh birthday, an' I
showed her how to make the cruachan whistle, an' when I'd finished she
blew on it a loud note that wud ha' wakened the sidhe for miles around in
Donegal. An' then she looked at me as dumb as a fish, her big gray eyes
blank as a plowed field wid nothin' sown in it. She niver has a word to