PIPER TIM
I
When Moira O'Donnell was born, Timothy Moran was thirty-three years old, a faëry number, as he often told himself afterward. When he was forty and she was seven, another mystic number, he dedicated his life to her and she gave him back his lost kingdom of enchantment. It was on the evening of her seventh birthday that she led him to the Land of Heart's Desire he thought he had left forever in green and desolate Donegal, and her birthday fell on the seventh of October, and October is the month when the little people are busiest. He never forgot what she did for him that evening, although her part in it was so brief.
His own birthday was on the thirteenth of the month, and he often laid his sorrows to that unchancy date. On the seventh he sat on the old Round Stone, his pipes lying silent beside him, and brooded on his heavy ill. Father Delancey had just left him and had told him flatly that he had no ills at all. Hence he sat, his heart heavier than ever, drooping, under the great maple-tree, the road white before him, leading away into the empty, half-translucent shadows of starlight. Father Delancey had said it was only the faëry nonsense in his head that made him miserable, and had marshaled before him the irrefutable blessings of his life. Had he not been cared for from the first minute of his landing from Ireland, a penniless piper of
299
