So it came about that on sunny afternoons through the winter two little girls played on the top of the hill near a fairy rath in far Donegal, in the north of Ireland. And often the shoemaker put his work down on the bench and called the children to his side, where he told them true stories of Irish history, and taught Kathleen to read from the pages of an old Irish book. CHAPTER III THE OLD WOMAN IN RED "How many miles to Dublin town? Threescore and ten. Can I get there by candle-light? Yes, and back again!" With the last words the two little girls clasped hands and ran round and round the great stone slab, not hearing their father's voice calling to them from his bench. As the children dropped upon the stone he called more sharply, "Kathleen! Do you hear me?" "I hear you, but I do not fear you," answered Kathleen, leading Mary Ellen to her father's side. She put her arm around his neck and kissed his patient face, then seated herself on his knee. "I used to fear you," she said with a laugh, "after Granny Connor told me you had made a bargain with the leprecaun, and that you had a secret hiding-place." "And now it's no secret at all, at all," her father said. "The grandmother has learned it, too, and will be calling you down to run errands the minute she lays eyes on you here." "We were both helping her, the morn," said Mary Ellen. "What were you doing, jewel?" asked the father of the little blind child. "Oh, reddin' up the house," replied Mary Ellen. "Kathleen swept the floor, and I wiped the dishes, and then I held the yarn for Grandma Connell. She is knitting you some stockings." "Yes," added Kathleen, "and I drove the little dun cow to the pasture beyond the bog; and on my way home I pulled some rushes to make a new brush for the hearth." "I helped Grandma Barry with the churning, too," said Mary Ellen. "We churned and churned, but not a bit of butter did we get till Kathleen came home and put a sod of burning peat under the churn. Then the butter came soon enough, and Kathleen said the good people had put a spell upon the cream." "Faith, you're always thinking of the fairies," exclaimed her father. "Do you like old Granny Connor's witch tales better than the stories I tell you of brave Irish men, like Brian Boru and Conn of the Hundred Battles?" Kathleen looked at him quickly. "You tell us that Conn lived many hundred years ago, and Brian Boru has been dead these eight hundred years; but Granny Connor says that the fairies are living now. They have a council hall in a cave between here and Letterkenny. The cave is under the great Rock of Doon, and—" "I like not to hear you speak so much of old Granny Connor and her tales," her father interrupted her. "It's her and her red cloak have put sorrow and shame on me these many years. "Do you mind how green the grass is already, down there in front of the door, Kathleen, child?" he added. "Yes," she said. "I'm fond of the feeling of it to my bare feet."