"Spooks!" said he, and suddenly he rolled on top of Brien O'Brien, his left hand grabbing at the throat, his right fist jabbing viciously with packed knuckles.
Down went Brien O'Brien's head and up went his heels; then he gave a mighty wriggle and started to come up, his hands threshing like the wings of a mill. As he came up they rolled, and now Mac Cann was below; but Brien O'Brien's head had disturbed the donkey, and, without emerging from cogitation, the ass let his two heels fly at the enemy of thought behind him; Patsy saw for an instant the white flash of those little hoofs across his face, but Brien of the O'Brien Nation took them full on his forehead and his brows crackled in like the shell of an egg; he relaxed, he sagged, he drooped and huddled limply to Patsy's bosom, and for three seconds Mac Cann lay quietly beneath him, captured by astonishment.
The donkey had again related the infinity without to the eternity within, and his little hoofs were as peaceful as his mild eye.
Mac Cann tugged himself from beneath that weighty carcass and came to his feet.
Mary and Eileen were both sitting rigid, with arms at full stretch and their fingers tipping straitly on the ground, while their round eyes were wide in an unwinking stare.
Caeltia was on his feet and was crouching at an equally crouching Cuchulain. Patsy saw the curl jerking as the lips of the seraph laughed.
Art was frozen on one knee in the mid-act of rising, and Finaun was combing his beard while he looked fixedly at Eileen Ni Cooley.
Twenty seconds only had elapsed since Mac Cann rolled sideways on Brien O'Brien.
The seraph Cuchulain was staring under Caeltia's arm. He blew the golden curl from his lips and sounded a laugh that was like the ringing of silver bells.
"What will Rhadamanthus say this time?" quoth he, and with that he turned and tripped happily down the road and away.