pleasant comrade, so full of songs and every kind of trick and fun,
not to leave them till the night would be over, but he refused them
all, and shook them off, and went to the door. But as he put his foot
over the threshold, the strange old man stood up and put his hand
that was thin and withered like a bird's claw on Hanrahan's hand, and
said: 'It is not Hanrahan, the learned man and the great songmaker,
that should go out from a gathering like this, on a Samhain night.
And stop here, now,' he said, 'and play a hand with me; and here is
an old pack of cards has done its work many a night before this, and
old as it is, there has been much of the riches of the world lost and
won over it.'

One of the young men said, 'It isn't much of the riches of the world
has stopped with yourself, old man,' and he looked at the old man's
bare feet, and they all laughed. But Hanrahan did not laugh, but he
sat down very quietly, without a word. Then one of them said, 'So you
will stop with us after all, Hanrahan'; and the old man said: 'He
will stop indeed, did you not hear me asking him?'

They all looked at the old man then as if wondering where he came
from. 'It is far I am come,' he said, 'through France I have come,
and through Spain, and by Lough Greine of the hidden mouth, and none
has refused me anything.' And then he was silent and nobody liked to
question him, and they began to play. There were six men at the
boards playing, and the others were looking on behind. They played
two or three games for nothing, and then the old man took a fourpenny
bit, worn very thin and smooth, out from his pocket, and he called to
the rest to put something on the game. Then they all put down
something on the boards, and little as it was it looked much, from
the way it was shoved from one to another, first one man winning it