"If you won't talk very much!" she rejoined with a little air of instinctive coquetry.
"I don't want to talk. I'd like to listen. Shall we start?"
A half-hour later they suddenly came upon an incident of the road.
It was, alas, no uncommon incident. An aged peasant, in a sudden fit of weakness, had stumbled on the road, and, in falling, had struck his head on a stone and had lost consciousness. He was an old peasant of the usual Irish type, coarsely but cleanly dressed. Lying beside him was a leather bag, within which were odds and ends of food and some small books of legend and ritual. He was a peasant of a superior class, however.
In falling, he had thrown over on his back, and his haggard face was exposed to the sun and sky. At sight of him Dyck and Sheila ran forward. Dyck dropped on one knee and placed a hand on the stricken man's heart.
"He's alive, all right," Dyck said. "He's a figure in these parts. His name's Christopher Dogan."
"Where does he live?"
"Live? Well, not three hundred yards from here, when he's at home, but he's generally on the go. He's what the American Indians would call a medicine-man."
"He needs his own medicine now."
"He's over eighty, and he must have gone dizzy, stumbled, fallen, and struck a stone. There's the mark on his temple. He's been lying here unconscious ever since; but his pulse is all right, and we'll soon have him fit again."