e. She was sitting under an old-fashioned mirror
reading and I was reading in another part of the room. Suddenly I heard a
sound as if somebody was throwing a shower of peas at the mirror. I got
her to go into the next room and rap with her knuckles on the other side
of the wall to see if the sound could come from there, and while I was
alone a great thump came close to my head upon the wainscot and on a
different wall of the room. Later in the day a servant heard a heavy
footstep going through the empty house, and that night, when I and my two
cousins went for a walk, she saw the ground under some trees all in a
blaze of light. I saw nothing, but presently we crossed the river and went
along its edge where, they say, there was a village destroyed, I think in
the wars of the 17th century, and near an old grave-yard. Suddenly we all
saw light moving over the river where there is a great rush of waters. It
was like a very brilliant torch. A moment later the girl saw a man coming
towards us who disappeared in the water. I kept asking myself if I could
be deceived. Perhaps after all, though it seemed impossible, somebody was
walking in the water with a torch. But we could see a small light low down
on Knock-na-rea seven miles off, and it began to move upward over the
mountain slope. I timed it on my watch and in five minutes it reached the
summit, and I, who had often climbed the mountain, knew that no human
footstep was so speedy.

From that on I wandered about raths and faery hills and questioned old
women and old men and, when I was tired out or unhappy, began to long for
some such end as True Thomas found. I did not believe with my intellect
that you could be carried away body and soul, but I believed with my
emotions and the belief of the country people made that easy. Once when I
had crawled into the stone passage in some rath of the third Rosses, the
pilot who had come with me called down the passage: "are you all right,
sir?"

And one night as I came near the village of Rosses on the road from Sligo,
a fire blazed up on a green bank at my right side seven or eight feet
above me, and another fire suddenly answered from Knock-na-rea. I hurried
on doubting, and yet hardly doubting in my heart that I saw again the
fires that I had seen by the river at Ballisodare. I began occasionally
telling people that one should believe whatever had been believed in all
countries and periods, and only reject any part of it after much