"Oh dear!" I said, shivering with infectious superstition, "I'd no idea there were such stories about." "Well, there might be. They say some of the coffins have been washed out of the graves. The Bawn lies on a shelf o' land, as you know, Miss Hilda; an' people comin' on them things by night in the middle o' the road is apt to be onraisonable afraid." "I should think so, indeed," said I. "Father Cleary's in an' out among the people constant. All the sick an' aged people is wanting the last sacrament, like as if the world was comin' to an end. He spoke agin the fear that's on the people last Sunday from the altar, an' said it was a delusion of the Powers o' Darkness. But 'tis no use his talkin'. They say the priest has great power over heaven and hell, but there's a world that's nayther, nor yet earth, an' he can't put his _comether_ on that." Mike had entertained me but gloomily. I knew the superstitions among the people, superstitions that rose as naturally out of the damp earth as the mists and the vapours. Our valleys are hemmed in by immense and lonely mountains, round which the clouds hang like a winding-sheet. Our people are fishers or small farmers, engaged for ever in the struggle to win a bare subsistence against all the forces of nature. A wet summer means death and famine by land. A wild winter the same doom by sea. No wonder that superstition flourishes, that the belief in fairy and ghost and wraith is wrought up so inextricably with the belief in saints and angels, that one could hardly pull up one without the other, the weeds without the golden corn. It was weather to foster the Celtic melancholy, and if it were going to rain again then it might well be that calamity would follow. But now we were at the Inch Farm, and presently in the roomy kitchen with its leaping wood fire. Mike and his son lifted the feather-bed bodily out of the donkey-cart and carried it to a bedroom where a fire had been lit. Esther watched all this hungrily as if she would have fain done everything herself. Mrs. O'Flaherty meanwhile issued her orders like a general. Johnny was despatched for Dr. Rivers, and Esther and I were installed in big chairs before the fire. Our wet shoes and stockings were pulled off quickly and replaced by fleecy stockings of Mrs. O'Flaherty's own knitting. While she was doing this her daughter Katie was serving up a meal of toasted bacon and eggs on a table at our elbow. "Now eat, jewels," said our kind hostess, "while I look after my baby. Larry'll rowl yez back to Brandon on the side car as soon as ever Dr. Rivers has gone, an' the sooner yez are back the better, for I'm sore afraid of the weary ould rain beginnin' again." Then she bustled off to see to her baby, as she still called Harry De Lacy.