retch, and everyone shunned him. The children loathed him because they
were afraid of him, so they hooted him from a distance, or stoned him
from behind walls.

Indeed, at this time his only ally was the pig that lived in one corner
of the hovel. The pig was a friendly animal, his front half was a dull
white and the other half black, and this gave him a homely look as if he
was sitting in his shirt-sleeves. Andy would shrink into the corner, and
sit cuddled there with one arm round the pig's neck. Old Mike Lonergan
took to drink, and spent every evening at the Shebeen--small blame to
him--for how could a man be expected to stay at home with a Changeling
sitting in a corner and staring at him?

When the pig was driven to the Fair at Ennistimon, Andy was left
friendless, and then--in all winds and weather--was to be found on the
Cliffs of Moher. Sometimes he stopped out all night, till hunger would
bring him back when the Lonergans were rejoicing at his disappearance.
He knew every inch of the Cliffs, and spent half his time lying on the
edge of the grey precipice, looking down at the sea, six hundred feet
below, or watching the clouds of sea-birds; he found new paths down the
cliff-side and clambered like a goat; he knew where the gulls nested,
but never robbed them, and the caves where the seals lived, and the
seals shouldered their way through the water close by him, looking at
him with soft eyes.

When he was about fourteen, the Famine Year came; fever and "The Hunger"
swept Clare. The fever took Lonergan and his wife, and they were buried
in the dead-pit at Liscannor; it left Andy, but it left him blind. Then
the neighbours began to have their doubts whether he was a Changeling
after all; for the Fairies are faithful, and who ever heard of a
Changeling being left blind and penniless? If he was only mortal he had
been cruelly treated, so to make amends they gave him the fiddle that
had belonged to the "Dark" Man--that is the blind man--of St. Bridget's
Well, who had lately starved. There was still a feeling that he was
unfit for a Holy Well, so he took up a post at the Liscannor
Cross-roads, and there levied a toll on passers with the professional
heart-broken cry:

"Remember the Dark Man! For God's sake, remember the Dark Man!"

* * * * *

For nearly twenty years Andy haunted the Cross-roads, he came to be
honoured as one of the institutions of Moher, though the folk considered
t