CHAPTER XXVI
"And then," said Mac Cann thoughtfully, "we came along, and they stole our clothes."
"That wasn't a bad tale," he continued to Caeltia. "You are as good a story-teller, mister, as the man himself," pointing to Billy the Music.
Billy replied modestly:
"It's because the stories were good ones that they were well told, for that's not my trade, and what wonder would it be if I made a botch of it? I'm a musician myself, as I told you, and there's my instrument, but I knew an old man in Connaught one time, and he was a great lad for the stories. He used to make his money at it, and if that man was to break off in the middle of a tale the people would stand up and kill him, they would so. He was a gifted man, for he would tell you a story about nothing at all, and you'd listen to him with your mouth open and you afraid that he would come to the end of it soon, and maybe it would be nothing more than the tale of how a white hen laid a brown egg. He would tell you a thing you knew all your life, and you would think it was a new thing. There was no old age in that man's mind, and that's the secret of story-telling."
Said Mary:
"I could listen to a story for a day and a night."
Her father nodded acquiescence:
"So could I, if it was a good story and well told, and I would be ready to listen to another one after that."
He turned to Art: