"I have, I have; may all good angels guard and keep her out of harm's way," cried Terry, earnestly, while the large tears gushed forth from his eyes. "Don't say another word," he went on, rapidly; "if it was goold mines that you could plant under every step I took, or that you could rain dimonds into my hat, an' there was the smallest chance of my heart's love sthrayin' from her, even the length of a fly's shadow, it's to the divil I'd pitch the whole bilin', soon an' suddent. So you can keep your grand gifts, an' yer fairy liberty, an' take my blessin' into the bargain, for showin' me the right road."
"You're right, Terry," said the leprechaun, joyously, "an' I'd be proud to shake hands with you if my fist was big enough. You have withstood temptation manfully, and sufficiently proved the kindliness of your disposition. I know that this night's experience will not be lost on you, but that you will henceforth abandon the wild companionship in the midst of which you have hitherto wasted time and energy, forgetful of the great record yet to come, when each misused moment will stand registered against you."
"And now, Terry," he continued, "I'll leave you to take a little rest; after all you have gone through you must sorely need it." So saying, the leprechaun waved a slip of osier across Terry's eyelids, when they instantly closed with a snap, down he dropped all of a heap upon the springy moss, and slept as solid as a toad in a rock.
When Terry awoke, the morning was far advanced, and the sun was shining full in his face, so that the first impression that filled his mind was, that he was gazing upon a world of fire. He soon mastered that thought, however, and then, sitting down upon the famous stone, began to collect his somewhat entangled faculties into an intelligible focus. Slowly the events of the night passed before him; the locality of each phase in his adventures was plainly distinguishable from where he sat. There, close to him, was the identical branch on which had perched the legion of little pipers; a short distance from him was the mazy hollow through which he had so singularly forced his way; half hoping to find some evidence of the apparently vivid facts that he had witnessed, he put his hand into his breeches pocket, but only fished out a piece of pig-tail tobacco.
As he ran over every well-remembered circumstance, he became still more puzzled. It was clear enough that he had been asleep, as he had but just woke up; but then he was equally certain that he was wide awake when the leprechaun touched his eyelids with the osier. Indeed, he looked round in the expectation of seeing it lying somewhere about; but there was no trace of such a thing.
The conclusion he came to was a characteristic one. "By the mortial," said he, as, taking up his pipes, he sauntered down the mountain-road, "there's somethin' quare in it, sure enough; but it's beyant my comprehendin'. The divil a use is there in botherin' my brains about it; all I know is, that there's a mighty extensive hive o' bees singin' songs inside of my hat this blessed mornin'. I must put some whisky in an' drownd out the noisy varmints."
The chronicler of this veracious history regrets exceedingly that he cannot, with any regard to the strict truth, bring it to a conclusion in the usual moral-pointing style, except in its general tendency, which he humbly considers to be wholesome and suggestive; but the hero of the tale—the good-for-nothing, wild roysterer, Terry, who ought, of course, to have profited by the lesson he had received and to have become a sober, steady, useful, somewhat bilious, but in every way respectable, member of society, dressed in solemn black, and petted religiously by extatical elderly ladies, did not assist the conventional denouement in the remotest degree. With grief I am compelled to record the humiliating fact, that Terry waxed wilder than ever, drank deeper, frolicked longer, and kicked up more promiscuous shindies than before, and invariably wound up the account of his fairy adventures, which in process of time he believed in most implicitly, by exclaiming:
"What a murdherin' fool I was not to take the money."
THE END.