Page:Darby O'Gill and the Good People by Herminie Templeton Kavanagh (1903).djvu/100

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CONVARSION OF FATHER CASSIDY

pious hymns as you go riding along the highway afther dark. If you’d sing ballads, now, or Tom Moore’s melodies. You mane no harrum, of course, as it is, but last week you broke up a dance we were having at Murray’s rath, an’ Saturday night you put a scatther on a crowd of us as we were coming by McGrath’s meadow,” he says, anxious.

’Twas a quare bargain for a clargyman to make, an’ faix it wint agin his conscience, but he hadn’t the heart to rayfuse. So he bint down an’ shook the King’s hand. “I promise,” he says.

A wild, shrill cheer broke from the throng of Little People.

“Now I’ll go home an’ lave yez in peace,” says Father Cassidy, grippin’ his bridle-rein. “I came yer inemy, but I’m convarted. I’ll go back yer friend,” he says.

“Ye won’t go home alone, we’ll escorch ye!” shouted Phadrig Oge.

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Wullum Fagin, the poacher, was sneakin’ home that night about one o’clock, with a bag full of rabbits undher his arrum, whin hearing behind him the bate

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