To this there was no answer, only another shout—“Go home, Tim Jarvis—go home—fair play is a jewel; but shut your eyes, or ye’ll never see the light of day again.”
Tim shut his eyes, knowing now that was the way to see clearly; and away he was whisked as before—away, away he went till he again stopped all of a sudden.
He rubbed his eyes with his two thumbs—and where was he? Where, but in the very pit in the field that was Jer Driscoll’s, and his wife Norah above with a big stick ready to beat “her dreaming blackguard.” Tim roared out to the woman to leave the life in him, and put his hands in his pockets to show her the gold; but he pulled out nothing only a handful of small stones mixed with yellow furze blossoms. The bush was under him, and the great flag-stone that he had wrenched up, as he thought, was lying, as if it was never stirred, by his side: the whisky bottle was drained to the last drop; and the pit was just as his spade had made it.
Tim Jarvis, vexed, disappointed, and almost heart-broken, followed his wife home: and, strange to say, from that night he left off drinking, and dreaming, and delving in bog holes, and rooting in old caves. He took again to his hard-working habits, and was soon able to buy back his little cabin and former potato garden, and to get all the enjoyment he anticipated from the fairy gold.
Give Tim one, or at most two glasses of whisky punch (and neither friend, acquaintance, nor gossip can make him take more,) and he will relate the story to you much better than you have it here. Indeed, it is worth going to Balledehob to hear him tell it. He always pledges himself to the truth of every word with his fore-fingers crossed; and when he comes to speak of the loss of his guineas, he never fails to console himself by adding—“If they stayed with me I wouldn’t have luck with them, sir; and father O’Shea told me ’twas as well for me they were changed, for if they hadn’t, they’d have burned holes in my pocket, and got out that way.”
I shall never forget his solemn countenance, and the deep tones of his warning voice, when he concluded his tale, by telling me, that the next day after his ride with the fairies, Mick Dowling was missing, and he believed him to be given to the sarpint in his place, as he had never been heard of since. “The blessing of the saints be between all good men and harm,” was the concluding sentence of Tim Jarvis’s narrative, as he flung the remaining drops from his glass upon the green sward.
