"It's two quarts of black milk from a Kerry cow ye want," said one; "take a sup of that and you'll be young again!"
"Of black milk," said Tom Toole's friend, "where would you get that?"
The person said he would get a pull of it in the Comeragh Mountains, fifty miles away.
"Tom Toole," said the little old man, "It's what I'll do. I'll walk on to the Comeragh Mountains to see what I will see, and do you go on searching here, for to find that young girl would be better than forty guineas worth of blather. And when I find the cow I'll take my fill of a cup and bring you to it."
So they agreed upon it and the old man went away saying, "I'll be a score of days, no more. Good day, Tom Toole, good day!" much as an old crow might shout it to a sweep.
When he was gone Tom Toole journeyed about the world, and the day after he went walking to a fair. Along the road the little ass carts were dribbling into town from Fews and Carrigleena, when he saw a young girl in a field trying to secure an ass.
"Oi——, Oi——!" the girl was calling out to him, and he went in the field and helped her with the ass, which was a devil to capture, and it not wanting. She thanked him; she was a sweet slip of a colleen with a long fall of hair that the wind was easy with.
"'Tis warm!" she said to Tom Toole. "Begod, ma'am," says he to her quickly, taking his cue, "it is a hot day."
"Where are ye going, Tom Toole," she asked him, and he said: