ape of dim green moors--with brown stains on
them where sedge grows and black shadows where bushes huddle in
clefts--chequered by a grey net of low walls, dotted with the white
gables of cabins, and framed by a wavering line of hills.

Sometimes I found him playing his fiddle to keep himself company, but he
stopped when he heard me, and, to tell the truth, I was glad of it, for
his playing was uncanny. Sometimes I met him shambling along the brink
of the Cliffs--a grotesque little figure, with his old shapeless hat,
his huge coat flapping behind him, and the mighty blackthorn he
carried--he knew the ground so well that he walked as if he could see
(indeed, he saw more than I could, for while to me the breakers were
only streaks of light, he spoke as if he was close to them on the wet
weedy rocks), or I came on him lying by the edge, listening to the
grumbling of the breakers and the cries of the gulls.

[Illustration: "LISTENING TO THE GRUMBLING OF THE BREAKERS AND THE CRIES
OF THE GULLS."]

Mostly he was unsociable, he shrank from his neighbours because they had
been cruel to him when they were children, and the dislike was more than
returned; yet I think that, but for the loneliness of his whole life, he
would have been friendly enough. No one knew more of folklore--I think
he half believed that he was a Changeling, and found comfort in the
thought of that former life when he was one of the merry "Little Good
People"--and sure old Mike Lonergan and his wife ought to have known
best. He knew the ways of every ghost in the county, and it was even
said that he was on speaking terms with the Headless Man who haunted
Liscannor. Of course he knew all about Fairies. When the fallen leaves
scurried past his feet he knew that the "Little Good People" were
playing football, when the wind whispered in the leaves overhead he
heard them chatting, and when it whined in the creaking bare branches,
heard the poor little folk crying with cold and bewailing the days when
they found shelter by snug firesides and sat there unseen but not
unwelcome. Once, before the world grew hard, they gathered in the
cabins, and the roughest fare grew pleasanter, the saddest hearts
lighter, from their good wishes; but no one cares for them now, and they
cannot rest in unfriendly houses.

[Illustration: "HE WAS ON SPEAKING TERMS WITH THE HEADLESS MAN OF
LISCANNOR."]

As he grew older, he talked more of them, grew more moody and restless,
could not