The miller’s wee Cassie stood there, peering at him out of the darkness.
“Take those to the Widow O’Donnelly, do ye hear? And take the rest to the store. Ye tell Jamie to bring up all that he has that is eatable an’ dhrinkable; an’ to the neighbors ye say, ‘Teig’s keepin’ the feast this night.’ Hurry now!”
Teig stopped a moment on the threshold until the tramp of her feet had died away; then he made a hollow of his two hands and called across the road:
“Hey, there, Shawn, will ye come over for a sup?”
“And hey, there, the two o’ ye, will ye come out for a sup?”
It was Johanna’s cheery voice bringing David back from a strange country and stranger happenings. She stood in the open doorway, a lighted candle in her hand.
“Ye’d hurry faster if ye knew what I had outside for supper. What would a wee lad say, now, to a bit o’ real Irish currant-bread, baked in the griddle, and a bowl of chicken broth with dumplings!”
IV
DAVID GOES SEEKING THE WAY TO CHRISTMAS AND FINDS THE FLAGMAN
All night long the snow fell, and when David wakened the hilltop was whiter than ever, if such a thing could be. The tiny prints in the snow that had marked the trail of the locked-out fairy were gone.
For a moment David wondered if he could have dreamed it all, and then he knew it could not be just a dream. It must be something more, to bring such good Christmas news—news that lasted all through the night and wakened him with a song in his heart and a gladness that a new day had come. And what a day it was! An orange sun was breaking the gray of the dawn; he could hear the soft push and pound of Barney’s shovel clearing a pathway from the door to the road, and he knew he could be off early on his skees, down the hill to—where he did not know. But the fairy had promised that if he should start out seeking the way to Christmas he would help him.