"Musha! then, may bad cess to me if I don't crush the fun out of your cattherpillar of a carcass if I ketch a howlt of you," said Terry, savagely griping at the fairy; but, with another spring, it jumped into the brushwood, and disappeared.
Terry's first impulse was to dive his hand into his pocket to see if the leprechaun had kept his word, and to his great delight, there he found, sure enough, a fine bright new shilling. At this discovery his joy knew no bounds. He jumped and hallooed aloud, amusing himself flinging away shilling after shilling, merely on purpose to test the continuance of the supply. He was satisfied. It was inexhaustible, and bright dreams of a splendid future flitted before his excited imagination.
With a heart full of happiness, Terry now wended his way homeward, busying himself, as he went along, in conveying shilling after shilling from one pocket into the other, until he filled it up to the button-hole. On arriving at the village, he met a few of his old companions, but so altered that he could scarcely recognize them, while they stared at him as though he were a spectre.
"Keep us from harm," said one, "if here ain't Terry Magra come back."
"Back," cried Terry, with a merry laugh, "why, man alive, I've never been away."
"Never away, indeed, and the hair of you as white as the dhriven snow, that was as brown as a beetle's back, whin you left," said the other.
It then struck Terry that his friends in their turn had aged considerably. The youngest that he remembered had become bent and wrinkled. "The saints be good to us," he cried, "but this is mighty quare entirely. How long is it sence I've seen yez, boys?" he inquired eagerly.
"How long is it? why, a matther of twenty years or so," said one of the bystanders; "don't you know it is?"
"Faith, an' I didn't until this blessed minute," said Terry. "Have I grown ould onbeknownst to myself, I wondher?"
"Bedad, an' it's an easy time you must have had sence you've been away," said another; "not all as one as some of us."