ble, sewing, her smooth round face blooming
like a rose in the light from the open door of the stove. Her kindly eyes
beamed sweetly on the old man. "Ah, Piper Tim, ye're wise. 'Tis a damp
night out for ye'r rheumatis. The fog risin' too, likely?"

The old piper went to her chair and stood looking at her with a fixed
gaze, "Moira!" he said vehemently, "Moira O'Donnell that was, the stars
are bright over the Round Stone, an' th' moon is risin' behind th' Hill o'
Delights, and the first white puffs of incense are risin' from th'
whirl-hole of th' river. I've come back for my pipes, and I'm goin' out to
play to th' little people--an' oh, shall old Piper Tim go without Moira?"

He spoke with a glowing fervor like the leaping up of a dying candle. From
the inexorably kind woman who smiled so friendly on him his heart recoiled
and puffed itself out into darkness. She surveyed him with the wise,
tender pity of a mother for a foolish, much-loved child. "Sure, 'tis th'
same Piper Tim ye are!" she said cheerfully, laying down her work, "but,
Lord save ye, Timmy darlint, _Moira's grown up_! There's no need for my
pretendin' to play any more, is there, when I've got proper childer o' my
own to keep it up. _They_ are my little people--an' I don't have to have a
quiet place to fancy them up out o' nothin'. They're real! An' they're
takin' my place all over again. There's one--the youngest girl--the one
that looks so like me as ye noticed--she's just such a one as I was.
To-day only (she's seven to-morrow), she minded me of some old tales I had
told her about the cruachan whistle for the sidhe on the seventh birthday,
an' she'd been tryin' to make one, but I'd clean forgot how the
criss-cross lines go. It made me think back on that evening when I was
seven--maybe you've forgot, but you was sittin' on the Round Stone in
th'----"

Timothy's sore heart rebelled at this last rifling of the shrine, and he
made for the door. Moira's sweet solicitude held him for an instant in
check. "Oh, Tim, ye'd best stay in an' warm your knee by the good fire.
I've a pile of mendin' to do, and you'll tell me all about your family in
th' West and how you farmed there. It'll be real cozy-like."

Timothy uttered an outraged sound and snatching up his pipes fled out of
the pleasant, low-ceilinged room, up the road, now white as chalk beneath
the newly risen moon. At the Round Stone he sat down and, putting his
pipes to his lips, he played resolutely throug