When they came to Coulagh in the darkness they had a grand supper, but even in the cheerful firelight Mick couldn’t forget the details of the cook’s encounter with the devil. The house was small, and it had been settled that he, as the least important member of the party, should sleep in a little room above the stable in which the asses were housed. He was thankful that the animals were there, for otherwise he would have gone mad with the loneliness. When he reached the stable he went into the stall and talked to them and got on the two of their backs, sitting first on one and then on the other the way they wouldn’t be jealous. Then he patted their necks, rubbed their noses, and went up the wooden stairs to bed. He undressed, got into bed and put out his candle. But he couldn’t sleep, partly because the room was so strange after the cook’s stories and partly because a wind was blowing fit to bring the house down. All of a sudden the wind fell, and in the quiet he could hear another sound like a door banging and the rattle of chains. He supposed he had not fastened the stable latch, but even if the asses got their ends of cold, he didn’t dare to put his nose out of bed. But the noise of bumping and chains continued. Even when he put his head under the clothes he could still hear it. ‘I can hear it the way I am now,’ he told Abner, ‘a great, rattlin’, t’udding noise. I commenced to get terrible afraid. “Something’s surely coming now,” I thought. “God help me!” And it came on bumping and rattling up the stairs. “This is the devil,” says I, “let loose on me!” an’ when I put my head under the clothes what should I see but all the things I’d ever done in this life; all the birds I’d took the heads of off with a catapult, flittin’ about with no heads and the wings broke on them, and all the bottles of whisky I’d ever stolen on the butler. An’ the noise come bumping upstairs. “God, I’m gone!” I says, getting down middleways in the bed, and with the same there was a great t’ud and the door flew open on me and it come into the room. Bump, bump, bump it went, an’ the chairs went over and the basin of water I’d never washed in come down with a crash—and I lying there with the pespiration running down me on to the sheets like a spout. “God, I’m gone!” I says again, and that was the last word I spoke that night, for the sheets was stuck to me back. Then it comes over to the bed, and I tries to get under the mattress, but before I knew where I was I felt two great hands on the both of my thighs. “Now I’m destroyed altogether,” says I, but before I’d finished thinking it come on the top of me in a lump with the chain draggin’ along the floor, and me lyin’ there not as thick as a match. Then I commenced to feel the sheet being drew down over my face and two hairy arms round my neck, and with that a great, big, hot tongue licking me. “Ah, my beautiful,” says I, “I have you at last.” That dog