"’The saints defind me,’ says he, ’phat’s that?’ an’ he looked up from the Luricawne that he was carryin’ in his arrums. That minnit the little attomy wint out av his sight, fur he looked away from it an’ it was gone, but he heard it laugh when it wint an’ he niver got the goold but died poor, as me father knows, an’ he a boy when it happened." Although the Leprechawns are skilful in evading curious eyes, and, when taken, are shrewd in escaping from their captors, their tricks are sometimes all in vain, and after resorting to every device in their power, they are occasionally compelled to yield up their hidden stores, one instance of which was narrated by a Galway peasant. "It was Paddy Donnelly av Connemara. He was always hard at work as far as anny wan seen, an’ bad luck to the day he’d miss, barrin’ Sundays. When all ’ud go to the fair, sorra a fut he’d shtir to go near it, no more did a dhrop av dhrink crass his lips. When they’d ax him why he didn’t take divarshun, he’d laugh an’ tell thim his field was divarshun enough fur him, an’ by an’ by he got rich, so they knewn that when they were at the fair or wakes or shports, it was lookin’ fur a Leprechawn he was an’ not workin’, an’ he got wan too, fur how else cud he get rich at all." And so it must have been, in spite of the denials of Paddy Donnelly, though, to do him justice, he stoutly affirmed that his small property was acquired by industry, economy, and temperance. But according to the opinions of his neighbors, "bad scran to him ’t was as greedy as a pig he was, fur he knewn where the goold was, an’ wanted it all fur himself, an’ so lied about it like the Leprechawns, that’s known to be the biggest liars in the world." The Leprechawn is an old bachelor elf who successfully resists all efforts of scheming fairy mammas to marry him to young and beautiful fairies, persisting in single blessedness even in exile from his kind, being driven off as a punishment for his heterodoxy on matrimonial subjects. This is one explanation of the fact that Leprechawns are always seen alone, though other authorities make the Leprechawn solitary by preference, he having learned the hollowness of fairy friendship and the deceitfulness of fairy femininity, and left the society of his kind in disgust at its lack of sincerity. It must be admitted that the latter explanation seems the more reasonable, since whenever the Leprechawn has been captured and forced to engage in conversation with his captor he displayed conversational powers that showed an ability to please, and as woman kind, even among fairy circles, are, according to an Irish proverb, "aisily caught be an oily tongue," the presumption is against the expulsion of the Leprechawn and in favor of his voluntary retirement. [Illustration: Returning the next morning with the spade]