Patsy followed him. They entered the long drive that cut through the woods in the direction of Castle Knock. They had gone scarcely a quarter of a mile down it when a faint, flickering glow amidst the trees on the right became visible, and Patsy, clutching at his uncle’s coat-tail, hung back.
He had heard often enough that the witches had a habit of meeting by night in the woods here about. They would light a fire and make soup in a big pot, and whilst it was boiling they would all sit round and make jokes and tell stories, and their laughter—so the tale went—was enough to turn a man’s hair grey.
“Come on,” said Con; “what are you afeared of?”
“It’s the witches,” said Patsy, in a terrified voice. “Sure, Uncle Con, where’s your eyes that you can’t see the light of their fire, and they sittin’ round it biling babies in pots——”
Con, without answering, seized his nephew by the ear and dragged him along through the trees in the direction of the light. The boy did not mind the pain; it was almost a relief, for it helped to drive the witches from his mind.
A moment later they broke into a little clearing in the midst of which a fire of holly sticks was burning brightly. By the fire sat something as bad, or maybe worse, than a company of witches.
It was Paddy Murphy. He was sitting on a bundle of dried ferns toasting his toes at the burning logs, his old hat without a brim was on the back of his head, and he held a big stick in his hand with which every now and then he gave the burning embers a prod.
“So you’ve brought him,” said Paddy, looking up as Con, leading his nephew by the ear, broke out of the wood into the zone of firelight; “you’ve cocht him alive-o. Faith, but it’s well he’s looking; but what’s become of his buttons and stripes?”
“Faith, he’s left them behind him,” said Con making his nephew sit down on the ground, and sitting down beside him.
“I can’t supply him with buttons,” said Mr Murphy, “but I’ve a large supply of stripes, and I’ll be after dealin’ them out to him right handed if he so much as opens his mouth, or stirs a finger, or does anythin’ but keep his ears wide and listens to my directions. Are yiz listenin’ to me, Patsy Rooney?”