Copyright by Underwood & Underwood, New York "THE OLD GRANDMOTHER WAS SPINNING AT THE DOOR" The cottage is of stone, plastered and whitewashed _Page 1_] "Did you ever see him?" whispered Mary Ellen. "No," replied her sister; "but I have heard him tapping on his shoe many a time. Once I saw his scarlet cap under the hedge, but when I knelt down to look closer he threw sand in my eyes, as he always does, and was gone in a winkin'." "Belike it was a humming-bird," said Mary Ellen. "Danny says the hedge is full of their nests. But what would you do with the purse, Kathleen dear?" Kathleen's eyes filled with tears and she looked at her sister with a sad face. "Oh, darlin', it's for you," she said, "to give you the sight in your pretty blue eyes. I'm thinkin' of it all the time, and faith, some day I'll find a way. That's why I took the dish of oaten stirabout and put it under the hawthorn bush last night, and why I put the bowl of milk on the window ledge. It's for the 'good people,' so that they'll know we take thought of them." "Did the 'good people' drink the milk?" asked the blind child eagerly. "No, Mary Ellen," said her sister, "but, listen! The stirabout was gone this morning, dish and all. The leprecaun must have taken it. I shall watch for him the night, and if I do catch the old shoemaker's eye, I'll hold it till he gives me his purse." "I'm thinkin' that no one has ever held it yet," said Mary Ellen, snuggling against Kathleen's shoulder, as if there might be some danger in holding a fairy dwarf spellbound with the look of one's eye. Kathleen lowered her voice and asked mysteriously, "Whist, Mary Ellen, do you mind old Granny Connor?" "She that lives beyond the bog?" questioned Mary Ellen. "Yes," said Kathleen. "I mind that she lives all alone, and that the father tells us not to go near her," answered her sister. "She's too friendly with the fairies." "Last night," said Kathleen, taking her sister's hand, and looking into her blue eyes while her own grew big and dark, "when I was driving the little cow home across the bog, who should I meet under the old oak tree but Granny Connor herself. "I picked a bit of shamrock and held it tight in my hand, but she stopped me and made me talk to her, and she told me that it is our own father, himself, that has a purse from the leprecaun." "I'll not believe it," said her sister quickly. "If he had, he'd not be making shoes all day by himself." But Kathleen shook her head. "Granny Connor told me," she confided, "that he has made a bargain with the fairy dwarf, and must make shoes all day long, or go wandering over the mountains a-tinkerin'." "What's that you're saying, Kathleen?" a voice behind them asked suddenly, and the children jumped up in surprise. A man with a leather apron tied round his waist was standing beside the stone slab. It was hard to tell where he had come from so quickly, for there had been no sign of any one near when Kathleen climbed to the top of the hill.