on them; same as she did Buck M'Cann."

"Who's he?"

"Buck M'Cann? Faith, he was the village ijit where I used to live
in the ould days."

"What's that'"

"Hould your whisht, an' don't be axin' questions. He was always
wantin' the moon, though he was twinty an' six feet four. He'd a
gob on him that hung open like a rat-trap with a broken spring,
and he was as thin as a barber's pole, you could a' tied a reef knot
in the middle of 'um; and whin the moon was full there was no
houldin' him." Mr Button gazed at the reflection of the sunset on
the water for a moment as if recalling some form from the past,
and then proceeded. "He'd sit on the grass starin' at her, an' thin
he'd start to chase her over the hills, and they'd find him at last,
maybe a day or two later, lost in the mountains, grazin' on
berries, and as green as a cabbidge from the hunger an' the cowld,
till it got so bad at long last they had to hobble him."

"I've seen a donkey hobbled," cried Dick.

"Thin you've seen the twin brother of Buck M'Cann. Well, one night
me elder brother Tim was sittin' over the fire, smokin' his dudeen
an' thinkin' of his sins, when in comes Buck with the hobbles on
him.

"`Tim,' says he, `I've got her at last!'