"Will you help yourself, or take what's given ye?" said the fairy man.
"I'll help myself, if you please," said the cobbler, for he thought—"If I can't get more than Pat brought home, my fingers must all be thumbs."
So he drove his hand into the bushes, and if he didn't get plenty, it wasn't for want of grasping.
When he got up in the morning, he went straight to the jewels. But not a stone of the lot was more precious than roadside pebbles. "I ought not to look till I come from the Rath," said he. "It's best to do like Pat all through."
But he made up his mind not to return the fairy man's shoes.
"Who knows the virtue that's in them?" he said. So he made a small pair of red leather shoes, as like them as could be, and he blacked the others upon his feet, that the fairies might not know them, and at sunrise he went to the Rath.
The fairy man was looking over the ditch as before.
"Good-morning to you," said he.
"The top of the morning to you, sir," said the cobbler; "here's your shoes." And he handed him the pair that he had made, with a face as grave as a judge.
The fairy man looked at them, but he said nothing, though he did not put them on.