Darby—a thousand wild woices screaming an’ mocking above him—was on his back kicking and squirming and striving to get up, but some load hilt him down, an’ something bound his eyes shut.
“Are you kilt, Bridget asthore?” he cried; “where are the childher?” he says.
Instead of answer there suddenly flashed a fierce an’ angry silence, an’ its quickness frightened the lad more than all the wild confusion before.
’Twas a full minute before he dared to open his eyes to face the horrors which he felt were standing about him; but when courage enough to look came, all he saw was the night-covered mountain, a purple sky, and a thin, new moon, with one trembling goold star a hand’s space above its bosom.
Darby struggled to his feet. Not a stone of the castle was left, not a sod of turf but what was in its ould place; every sign of the little cobbler’s work had melted like April snow. The very threes Darby had seen pulled up by the roots that same afternoon now stood a waving blur below the new moon, an’ a nightingale was singing in their branches. A cricket chirped lonesomely on the same fallen log which had hidden the Leprechaun.
