All on the Irish Shore | Page 5

Mrs. Griffen with unabated cheerfulness, "an' indeed
'twas no blame for the little gerrls to be frightened an' they meetin' it in
the passages--"
"Meeting _what_?" interrupted her mistress. Mrs. Griffen was an old
and privileged retainer, but there were limits even for Mrs. Griffen.
"Sure, ma'am, there's no one knows what was in it," returned Mrs.
Griffen, "but whatever it was they heard it goin' on before them always
in the panthry passage, an' it walkin' as sthrong as a man. It whipped
away up the stairs, and they seen the big snout snorting out at them
through the banisters, and a bare back on it the same as a pig; and the
two cheeks on it as white as yer own, and away with it! And with that
Mary Anne got a wakeness, and only for Willy Fennessy bein' in the
kitchen an' ketching a hold of her, she'd have cracked her head on the
range, the crayture!"
Here Barnet smiled with ineffable contempt.
"What I'm tellin' them is," continued Mrs. Griffen, warming with her
subject, "maybe that thing was a pairson that's dead, an' might be owin'
a pound to another one, or has something that way on his soul, an' it's in
the want o' some one that'll ax it what's throublin' it. The like o' thim
couldn't spake till ye'll spake to thim first. But, sure, gerrls has no
courage--"
Barnet's smile was again one of wintry superiority.
"Willy Fennessy and Patsey Crimmeen was afther seein' it too last

night," went on Mrs. Griffen, "an' poor Willy was as much frightened!
He said surely 'twas a ghost. On the back avenue it was, an' one minute
'twas as big as an ass, an' another minute it'd be no bigger than a
bonnive--"
"Oh, the Lord save us!" wailed the kitchen-maid irrepressibly from the
scullery.
"I shall speak to Fennessy myself about this," said Mrs. Alexander,
making for the door with concentrated purpose, "and in the meantime I
wish to hear no more of this rubbish."
"I'm sure Fennessy wishes to hear no more of it," said Barnet acridly to
Mrs. Griffen, when Mrs. Alexander had passed swiftly out of hearing,
"after the way those girls have been worryin' on at him about it all the
morning. Such a set out!"
Mrs. Griffen groaned in a polite and general way, and behind Barnet's
back put her tongue out of the corner of her mouth and winked at the
kitchen-maid.
Mrs. Alexander found her conversation with Willy Fennessy less
satisfactory than usual. He could not give any definite account of what
he and Patsey had seen: maybe they'd seen nothing at all; maybe--as an
obvious impromptu--it was the calf of the Kerry cow; whatever was in
it, it was little he'd mind it, and, in easy dismissal of the subject, would
the misthress be against his building a bit of a coal-shed at the back of
the lodge while she was away?
That evening a new terror was added to the situation. Jimmy the
boot-boy, on his return from taking the letters to the evening post, fled
in panic into the kitchen, and having complied with the etiquette
invariable in such cases by having "a wakeness," he described to a
deeply sympathetic audience how he had seen something that was like
a woman in the avenue, and he had called to it and it returned him no
answer, and how he had then asked it three times in the name o' God
what was it, and it soaked away into the trees from him, and then there
came something rushing in on him and grunting at him to bite him, and

he was full sure it was the Fairy Pig from Lough Clure.
Day by day the legend grew, thickened by tales of lights that had been
seen moving mysteriously in the woods of Craffroe. Even the hounds
were subpoenaed as witnesses; Patsey Crimmeen's mother stating that
for three nights after Patsey had seen that Thing they were singing and
screeching to each other all night.
Had Mrs. Crimmeen used the verb scratch instead of screech she would
have been nearer the mark. The puppies, Ruby and Remus, had, after
the manner of the young, human and canine, not failed to distribute
their malady among their elders, and the pack, straitly coupled, went
for dismal constitutionals, and the kennels reeked to heaven of
remedies, and Freddy's new hunter, Mayboy, from shortness of work,
smashed the partition of the loose box and kicked his neighbour, Mrs.
Alexander's cob, in the knee.
"The worst of it is," said Freddy confidentially to his ally and adviser,
the junior subaltern of the detachment at Enniscar, who had come over
to see the hounds, "that I'm afraid Patsey Crimmeen--the boy whom I'm
training to