through the door, bolted as fast as his legs could carry him down the road toward Sleive-na-mon Mountains.
Bridget stood on the step looking afther him, too surprised for a word. With his fingers still in his ears, so that he couldn’t hear her commands to turn back, he ran without stopping till he came to the willow-tree near Joey Hooligan’s forge. There he slowed down to fill his lungs with the fresh, sweet air.
’Twas one of those warm-hearted, laughing autumn days which steals for a while the bonnet and shawl of the May. The sun, from a sky of feathery whiteness, laned over, telling jokes to the worruld, an’ the goold harvest-fields and purple hills, lasy and continted, laughed back at the sun. Even the blackbird flying over the haw-tree looked down an’ sang to those below, “God save all here;” an’ the linnet from her bough answered back quick an’ sweet, “God save you kindly, sir!”
With such pleasant sights and sounds an’ twitterings at every side, our hayro didn’t feel the time passing till he was on top of the first hill of the Sleive-na-mon Mountains, which, as everyone knows, is called the Pig’s Head.
