mouthful of food and off again to the sky apparently. Timothy's
child-heart was guiltily heavy within him, for all his excitement, and
when he finally caught her in the pine woods he spoke briefly and firmly,
almost like Father Delancey himself. "Moira, Tim was a big fool to tell
you lies. There aren't really any little people. Tis only a way of
talkin'-like, to say how lovely the woods and stars an' all are."

"Why do you sit on the Round Stone evenings?" asked Moira defiantly.

"That's just it! I pretend all kind o' things, but it's really because the
moon is like gold, and the white fog comes up in puffs like incense in the
church, an' the valley's all bright wi' lamps like the sky wi' stars.
That's all anybody means by fairies--just how lovely things are if we can
but open our eyes to see thim, an' take time from th' ugly business o'
livin' to hear thim, and get a place quiet enough to half see what
everything means. I didn't know before, in Ireland, but now I'm like one
born again to the ferie country, and now I think I know. There aren't any
Little People really but just in your own head--"

Moira shook off his hand and faced him, laughing mockingly, her dark eyes
wide with an elfin merriment. "Are there not, Piper Tim? Are there not?
Listen! You'll see!" She held up a tiny forefinger to the great man
towering above her. As he looked down on her, so pixy-like in the twilight
of the pines, he felt his flesh creep. She seemed to be waiting for
something infinitely comic which yet should startle her. She was poised,
half turned as though for flight, yet hung so, without a quiver in an
endless listening pause. The man tried in vain to remember the name of a
single saint, so held was he by the breathless expectancy in the eyes of
the little hobgoblin. His nerves gave way with a loud snap when she
suddenly leaped up at him with snapping fingers and some whispered,