Billy the Music did put another pinch of tobacco into his pipe, and after drawing on it meditatively for a few minutes he snuffed it out with his thumb and put it into his pocket. Naturally he put it in upside down, so that the tobacco might drop from the pipe, for he was no longer a saving man.

"They were surely the two men that I'm telling you about," said he, "and there they were standing up in front of me while I was sneezing the blood out of my nose.

"'What do you want?' said I to themselves, and all the time I was peeping here and there to see if there wasn't a bit of a stick or a crowbar maybe lying handy.

"It was the boyo in the skirt that answered me:

"'I wanted to have a look at yourself,' said he.

"'Take your eye-full and go away, for God's sake,' said I.

"'You dirty thief!' said he to me.

"'What's that for?' said I.

"'What do you mean by getting me thrown out of heaven?' said he.

"...! Well, mister honey, that was a question to worry any man, and it worried me. I couldn't think what to say to him. 'Begor!' said I, and I sneezed out some more of my blood.

"But the lad was stamping mad.

"'If I could blot you from the light of life without doing any hurt to myself, I'd smash you this mortal minute,' said he.

"'For the love of heaven,' said I, 'tell me what I did to yourself, for I never did see you before this day, and I wish I didn't see you now.'

"The bullet-headed man was standing by all the time, and he chewing tobacco.

"'Have it out with him, Cuchulain,' said he. 'Kill him,' said he, 'and send him out among the spooks.'

"But the other man calmed down a bit, and he came over to me wagging the girl's skirts.

"'Listen!' said he, 'I'm the Seraph Cuchulain.'

"'Very good,' said I.

"'I'm your Guardian Angel,' said he.

"'Very good,' said I.

"'I'm your Higher Self,' said he, 'and every rotten business you do down here does be vibrating against me up there. You never did anything in your life that wasn't rotten. You're a miser and a thief, and you got me thrown out of heaven because of the way you loved money. You seduced me when I wasn't looking. You made a thief of me in a place where it's no fun to be a robber, and here I am wandering the dirty world on the head of your unrighteous ways. Repent, you beast,' said he, and he landed me a clout on the side of the head that rolled me from one end of the barn to the other.

"'Give him another one,' said the bullet-headed man, and he chewing strongly on his plug.

"'What have you got to do with it?' said I to him. 'You're not my Guardian Angel, God help me!'

"'How dare you,' said the bullet-headed man. 'How dare you set this honest party stealing the last threepenny bit of a poor man?' and with that he made a clout at me.

"'What threepenny bit are you talking about?' said I.

"'My own threepenny bit,' said he. 'The only one I had. The one I dropped outside the gates of hell.'

"Well, that beat me! 'I don't care what you say any longer,' said I, 'you can talk till you're blue and I won't care what you say,' and down I sat on the kennel and shed my blood.

"'You must repent of your own free will,' said Cuchulain, marching to the door.

"'And you'd better hurry up, too,' said the other fellow, 'or I'll hammer the head off you.'

"The queer thing is that I believed every word the man said. I didn't know what he was talking about, but I did know that he was talking about something that was real although it was beyond me. And there was the way he said it too, for he spoke like a bishop, with fine, shouting words that I can't remember now, and the months gone past. I took him at his word anyhow, and on the minute I began to feel a different creature, for, mind you, a man can no more go against his Guardian Angel than he can climb a tree backwards.

"As they were going out of the barn Cuchulain turned to me:

"'I'll help you to repent,' said he, 'for I want to get back again, and this is the way I'll help you. I'll give you money, and I'll give you piles of it.'

"The two of them went off then, and I didn't venture out of the barn for half-an-hour.

"I went into the barn next day, and what do you think I saw?"

"The floor was covered with gold pieces," said Patsy.

Billy nodded:

"That's what I saw. I gathered them up and hid them under the kennel. There wasn't room for the lot of them, so I rolled the rest in a bit of a sack and covered them up with cabbages.

"The next day I went in and the floor was covered with gold pieces, and I swept them up and hid them under the cabbages too. The day after that and the next day and the day after that again it was the same story. I didn't know where to put the money. I had to leave it lying on the floor, and I hadn't as much as a dog to guard it from the robbers."

"You had not," said Patsy, "and that's the truth."

"I locked the barn; then I called up all the men; I paid them their wages, for what did I want with them any longer and I rolling in gold? I told them to get out of my sight, and I saw every man of them off the land. Then I told my wife's brother that I didn't want him in my house any longer, and I saw him off the land. Then I argued my son out of the house, and I told my wife that she could go with him if she wanted to, and then I went back to the barn.

"But, as I told you a minute ago, I was a changed man. The gold was mounting up on me, and I didn't know what to do with it. I could have rolled in it if I wanted to, and I did roll in it, but there was no fun in that.

"This was the trouble with me—I couldn't count it; it had gone beyond me; there were piles of it; there were stacks of it; it was four feet deep all over the floor, and I could no more move it than I could move a house.

"I never wanted that much money, for no man could want it: I only wanted what I could manage with my hands; and the fear of robbers was on me to that pitch that I could neither sit nor stand nor sleep.

"Every time I opened the door the place was fuller than it was the last time, and, at last, I got to hate the barn. I just couldn't stand the look of the place, and the light squinting at me from thousands and thousands of gold corners.

"It beat me at last. One day I marched into the house, and I picked up the concertina that my son bought (I was able to play it well myself) and said I to the wife:

"'I'm off.'

"'Where are you off?'

"'I'm going into the world.'

"'What will become of the farm?'

"'You can have it yourself,' said I, and with that I stepped clean out of the house and away to the road. I didn't stop walking for two days, and I never went back from that day to this.

"I do play on the concertina before the houses, and the people give me coppers. I travel from place to place every day, and I'm as happy as a bird on a bough, for I've no worries and I worry no one."

"What did become of the money?" said Patsy.

"I'm thinking now that it might have been fairy gold, and, if it was, nobody could touch it."

"So," said Mac Cann, "that's the sort of boys they were?"

"That's the sort."

"And one of them was your own Guardian Angel!"

"He said that."

"And what was the other one?"

"I don't know, but I do think that he was a spook."

Patsy turned to Finaun:

"Tell me, mister, is that a true story now, or was the lad making it up?"

"It is true," replied Finaun.

Patsy considered for a moment.

"I wonder," said he musingly, "who is my own Guardian Angel?"

Caeltia hastily put the pipe into his pocket.

"I am," said he.

"Oh, bedad!"

Mac Cann placed his hands on his knees and laughed heartily.

"You are! and I making you drunk every second night in the little pubs!"

"You never made me drunk."

"I did not, for you've got a hard head surely, but there's a pair of us in it, mister."

He was silent again, then:

"I wonder who is the Guardian Angel of Eileen Ni Cooley? for he has his work cut out for him, I'm thinking."

"I am her Guardian Angel," said Finaun.

"Are you telling me that?"

Mac Cann stared at Finaun, and he lapsed again to reverie.

"Ah, well!" said he to Billy the Music, "it was a fine story you told us, mister, and queer deeds you were mixed up in; but I'd like to meet the men that took our clothes, I would so."

"I can tell you something more about them," Caeltia remarked.

"So you said a while back. What is it you can tell us?"

"I can tell you the beginning of all that tale."

"I'd like to hear it," said Billy the Music.

"There is just a piece I will have to make up from what I heard since we came here, but the rest I can answer for because I was there at the time."

"I remember it too," said Art to Caeltia, "and when you have told your story I'll tell another one."

"Serve out the potatoes, Mary," said Mac Cann, "and then you can go on with the story. Do you think is that ass all right, alannah?"

"He's eating the grass still, but I think he may be wanting a drink."

"He had a good drink yesterday," said her father, and he shifted to a more comfortable position.