nified by their father's unthinkable implication. What had he done?
Almost all his actions and habits were so familiar to them as to be
commonplace, and yet, there was a dark something to which he was a
party and which dashed before them as terrible and ungraspable as a
lightning-flash. They understood that it had something to do with that
other father and mother whose bodies had been snatched from beneath
the hearthstone, but they knew the Philosopher had done nothing in that
instance, and, so, they saw murder as a terrible, occult affair which
was quite beyond their mental horizons.

No one jumped out on them from behind the trees, so in a little time
their confidence returned and they walked less carefully. When they
reached the edge of the pine wood the brilliant sunshine invited them to
go farther, and after a little hesitation they did so. The good spaces
and the sweet air dissipated their melancholy thoughts, and very soon
they were racing each other to this point and to that. Their wayward
flights had carried them in the direction of Meehawl MacMurrachu's
cottage, and here, breathlessly, they threw themselves under a small
tree to rest. It was a thorn bush, and as they sat beneath it the
cessation of movement gave them opportunity to again consider the
terrible position of their father. With children thought cannot be
separated from action for very long. They think as much with their hands
as with their heads. They have to do the thing they speak of in order
to visualise the idea, and, consequently, Seumas Beg was soon
reconstructing the earlier visit of the policemen to their house
in grand pantomime. The ground beneath the thorn bush became the
hearthstone of their cottage; he and Brigid became four policemen, and
in a moment he was digging furiously with a broad piece of wood to find
the two hidden bodies. He had digged for only a few minutes when the
piece of wood struck against something hard. A very little time sufficed
to throw the soil off this, and their delight was great when they
unearthed a beautiful little earthen crock filled to the brim with
shining, yellow dust. When they lifted this they were astonished at its
great weight. They played for a long time with it, letting the heavy,
yellow shower slip through their fingers and watching it glisten in the
sunshine. After they tired of this they decided to bring the crock home,
but by the time they reached the Gort na Cloca Mora they were so tired
that