there was a burnt smell from it. He put the tip of his finger on the chair. No sooner did he do so than the chair moved at his touch quite freely. That encouraged him, and he sat down in it. He moved it back and forward; it moved with him quite well. His mind was satisfied. He put his hand into the malvogue and began to eat his little bit of meal as usual. As soon as he felt thirsty he went out and brought in a couple of the apples and ate them.
Next morning he started early for the fair to buy a horse and a milch cow.
It was not long till the neighbours met him.
"Hullo, Shiana," said one of them, "what happened to you yesterday evening? We all thought that a thunder-bolt had fallen on your house and that you had been burnt alive. I never heard such thunder."
"You are wrong," said another. "It wasn't thunder, but a roar like the bellow of a bull."
"Whisht," said a third man. "Where's the bull that could give such a bellow as that?"
"I was sitting," said a fourth, "on the top of the Ivy Rock, and I could see the house, and when I heard all the noise I looked over, and I saw what looked like an eagle and a pitch-black flight of crows rising up into the sky, and I was surprised to think that they should have been able to make such a noise as that."
So they went on, talking and arguing and discussing, and Shiana did not speak a word. They kept all the conversation to themselves, and he did not grudge it to them. He had no wish to talk, for fear that some word might slip from him that would dis-
