"And then," said Mac Cann thoughtfully, "we came along, and they stole our clothes."

"That wasn't a bad tale," he continued to Caeltia. "You are as good a story-teller, mister, as the man himself," pointing to Billy the Music.

Billy replied modestly:

"It's because the stories were good ones that they were well told, for that's not my trade, and what wonder would it be if I made a botch of it? I'm a musician myself, as I told you, and there's my instrument, but I knew an old man in Connaught one time, and he was a great lad for the stories. He used to make his money at it, and if that man was to break off in the middle of a tale the people would stand up and kill him, they would so. He was a gifted man, for he would tell you a story about nothing at all, and you'd listen to him with your mouth open and you afraid that he would come to the end of it soon, and maybe it would be nothing more than the tale of how a white hen laid a brown egg. He would tell you a thing you knew all your life, and you would think it was a new thing. There was no old age in that man's mind, and that's the secret of story-telling."

Said Mary:

"I could listen to a story for a day and a night."

Her father nodded acquiescence:

"So could I, if it was a good story and well told, and I would be ready to listen to another one after that."

He turned to Art:

"You were saying yourself, sonny, that there was a story in your head, and if that's so, now is your chance to tell it; but I'm doubting you'll be able to do it as well as the two men here, for you are a youngster, and story-telling is an old man's trade."

"I'll do my best," said Art, "but I never told a story in my life, and it may not be a good one at the first attempt."

"That's all right," replied Mac Cann encouragingly. "We won't be hard on you."

"Sure enough," said Billy the Music, "and you've listened to the lot of us, so you will know the road."

"What are you going to talk about?" said Caeltia.

"I'm going to talk about Brien O'Brien, the same as the rest of you."

"Did you know him too?" cried Billy.

"I did."

"There isn't a person doesn't know that man," growled Patsy. "Maybe," and he grinned ferociously as he said it, "maybe we'll meet him on the road and he tramping, and perhaps he will tell us a story himself."

"That man could not tell a story," Finaun interrupted, "for he has no memory, and that is a thing a good story-teller ought to have."

"If we meet him," said Mac Cann grimly, "I'll do something to him and he'll remember it, and it's likely that he will be able to make a story out of it too."

"I only saw him once," said Art, "but when Rhadamanthus tossed him through the void I recognised his face, although so long a time had elapsed since I did see him. He is now less than he was, but he is, nevertheless, much more than I had expected he would be."

"What is he now?" said Billy the Music.

"He is a man."

"We are all that," said Patsy, "and it isn't any trouble to us."

"It was more trouble than you imagine," said Finaun.

"I had expected him to be no more than one of the higher animals, or even that he might have been dissipated completely from existence."

"What was he at the time you met him?"

"He was a magician, and he was one of the most powerful magicians that ever lived. He was a being of the fifth round, and he had discovered many secrets."

"I have known magicians," commented Finaun, "and I always found that they were fools."

"Brien O'Brien destroyed himself," Art continued, "he forfeited his evolution and added treble to his karmic burden because he had not got a sense of humour."

"No magician has a sense of humour," remarked Finaun, "he could not be a magician if he had—Humour is the health of the mind."

"That," Art broke in, "is one of the things he said to me. So you see he had discovered something. He was very near to being a wise man. He was certainly a courageous man, or, perhaps, foolhardy; but he was as serious as a fog, and he could not bring himself to believe it."

"Tell us the story," said Caeltia.

"Here it is," said Art.