"What of him?"
"Sure he found a fairy at last."
"Tare an ounty!"
"Thruth I'm tellin' you. He's married to Oonah Lenehan."
"Ha! ha! ha! by the powers it's she that is the rale fairy! musha, more power to you, Darby, but you've cotched it in airnest now!"
But the fairy he had caught did not satisfy Darby so far as to make him give up the pursuit for the future. He was still on the watch for a Leprechaun; and one morning, as he was going to his work, he stopped suddenly on his path, which lay through a field of standing corn, and his eye became riveted on some object with the most eager expression. He crouched, and crawled, and was making his way with great caution towards the point of his attraction, when he was visited on the back of the head with a thump that considerably disturbed his visual powers, and the voice of his mother, a vigorous old beldame, saluted his ear at the same time with a hearty, "Bad luck to you, you lazy thief, what are you slindging there for, when it's minding your work you ought to be?"
"Whisht! whisht! mother," said Darby, holding up his hand in token of silence.
"What do you mane, you omadhaun?"
"Mother, be quiet, I bid you! whisht! I see it!"
"What do you see?"