At dawn the commotion died out.
“What was it at all?” asks herself.
“Sure what would it be only a wind was fit to batter the horns off the cows!” says Francis Pat.
When they went into the kitchen what did they find only the image lying on the floor. The wood was cut into the living likeness of the woman of the house, and the Good People had thrown it there in the anger of the disappointment was on them.
So my brave Francis Pat told his wife the whole story of the cutting of the tree.
XII
THE LITTLE SETTLEMENT
There was a strong farmer one time and he was the boastfullest man in all Ireland. He had a tidy, comfortable place, sure enough, but to hear him speaking you’d be thinking his house was built of silver and thatched with the purest gold.