“‘Arrah, then, Manus,’ says he, ‘what brought you here? It would have been better for you to have blown your brains out at once with a pistol, and have made a quiet end of yourself, than to have come down here for me to deal with you.’
“‘Oh, plase your honour,’ says Manus, ‘I beg my life:’ and there he stood shaking like a dog in a wet sack.
“‘Well, as you have some blood of the O’Rourkes in you, I forgive you this once; but, by this and by that, if ever I see you, or any one belonging to you, coming about this place again, I’ll hang a quarter of you on every tree in the wood.’
“‘Go home,’ says the Payshtha—‘go home, Manus,’ says he; ‘and if you can’t make better use of your time, get drunk; but don’t come here, bothering me. Yet, stop! since you are here, and have ventured to come, I’ll show you something that you’ll remember till you go to your grave, and ever after, while you live.’
“With that, my dear, he opens an iron door in the bed of the river, and never the drop of water ran into it; and there Manus sees a long dry cave, or under-ground cellar like, and the Payshtha drags him in, and shuts the door. It wasn’t long before the baste began to get smaller, and smaller, and smaller; and at last he grew as little as a taughn of twelve years old; and there he was a brownish little man, about four feet high.
“‘Plase your honour,’ says Manus, ‘if I might make so bold, may be you are one of the good people?’
“‘May be I am, and may be I am not; but, any how, all you have to understand is this, that I’m bound to look after the Thiernas[34] of Breffni, and take care of them through every generation; and that my present business is to watch this cave, and what’s in it, till the old stock is reigning over this country once more.’
“‘May be you are a sort of a banshee?’
“‘I am not, you fool,’ said the little man. ‘The banshee is a woman. My business is to live in the form you first saw me, in guarding this spot. And now hold your tongue, and look about you.’
“Manus rubbed his eyes and looked right and left, before and behind; and there were the vessels of gold and the vessels of silver, the dishes, and the plates, and the cups, and the punch-bowls, and the tankards: there was the golden mether, too, that every Thierna at his wedding used to drink out of to the kerne in real usquebaugh. There was all the money that ever was saved in the family since they got a grant of this manor, in the days of the Firbolgs, down to the time of their outer ruination. He then brought Manus on with him to where there was arms for three hundred men; and the sword set with diamonds, and the golden helmet of the O’Rourke; and he showed him the staff made out of an elephant’s tooth, and set with rubies and gold, that the Thierna used to hold while he sat in his great hall, giving justice and the laws of the Brehons to all his clan. The first room in the cave, ye see, had the money and the plate, the second room had the arms, and the third had the books, papers, parchments, title-deeds, wills, and every thing else of the sort belonging to the family.