It's not from _them_ the harm came to your eyes. I see them in all places--and there's no man mowing a meadow that doesn't see them at some time or other. As to what they look like, they'll change colour and shape and clothes while you look round. Bracket caps they always wear. There is a king and a queen and a fool in each house of them, that is true enough--but they would do you no harm. The king and the queen are kind and gentle, and whatever you'll ask them for they'll give it. They'll do no harm at all if you don't injure them. You might speak to them if you'd meet them on the road, and they'd answer you, if you'd speak civil and quiet and show respect, and not be laughing or humbugging--they wouldn't like that. One night I was in bed with the wife beside me, and the child near me, near the fire. And I turned and saw a woman sitting by the fire, and she made a snap at the child, and I was too quick for her and got hold of it, and she was at the door and out of it in one minute, before I could get to her. Another time in the field a woman came beside me, and I went on to a gap in the wall and she was in it before me. And then she stopped me and she said: "I'm your sister that was taken; and don't you remember how I got the fever first and you tended me, and then you got it yourself, and one had to be taken and I was the one." And she taught me the cure, and the way to use it. And she told me that she was in the best of places, and told me many things that she bound me not to tell. And I asked was it here she was kept ever since, and she said it was, but she said, "In six months I'll have to move to another place, and others will come where I am now, and it would be better for you if we stopped here, for the most of us here now are your neighbours and your friends." And it was she gave me the second sight. (_Note_ 32.) Last year I was digging potatoes and a man came by, one of _them_, and one that I knew well before. And he said, "You have them this year, and we'll have them the next two years." And you know the potatoes were good last year and you see that they are bad now, and have been made away with. (_Note_ 33.) And the sister told me that half the food in Ireland goes to them, but that if they like they can make out of cow-dung all they want, and they can come into a house and use what they like and it will never be missed in the morning. * * * * * _The old man suddenly stooped and took a handful of hot ashes in his hand, and put them in his pocket. And presently he said he'd be afraid tonight going home the road. When we asked him why, he said he'd have to tell what errand he had been on._