rself at the mention of ghosts and devil--her own mother had seen
fairies dancing on the rocks one day as she was coming home from
school. Lull herself, though she had never seen anything, had heard
the banshee wailing round the house the night the master's mother died.
The children were sure Lull could have heard the fairy fiddlers if she
would have come with them to the right place up the mountains; she was
good enough to hear it--they knew that.

Lull was a good old woman. The children were right; she was never
cross, but always loving and kind, always ready to help them whatever
they might want. Any spare minute she had was spent at her beads, and
often while she worked they could tell by her lips she was saying her
prayers. Blessed saints and holy angels filled her world, and her
tales, if they were not of the days when she first came to Rowallan,
were about these wonderful beings. They were far better than fairies,
she said; for the best of fairies were mischievous at times, but the
saints could be depended on. But the children thought her tales about
their home were even more interesting than tales of the saints.

There was a time, she said, when the dilapidated old house and garden
had been the finest in Ireland. When she came to Rowallan, a slip of a
girl, more than forty years ago, there had been no less than seven
gardeners about the place. Ould Davy, who worked in the kitchen garden
now, was all that was left of them. Now the house was falling to
pieces, great patches of damp discoloured the walls, and most of the
rooms were shut up; but Lull had seen the day when all was light and
colour, when the rooms were filled with guests, and the children, who
slept in the nursery then, had heard the rustle of silk dresses, not
the scamper of rats, on the stairs at night. The children could see,
when they opened the shutters in the disused drawing-room, how
beautiful everything had been then, though the yellow damask, the satin
chairs, and the big sconces on the wall were faded, moth-eaten, and
dusty now. And in the garden, where Lull's thoughts loved to dwell on
the flowers she had seen--lupins, phlox, roses, pinks, bachelor's
buttons, and more whose names she had forgotten, that had fought others
for leave to grow, she said--a strange flower would now and again push
its way up through weeds and grass to witness that her tales were true.
Lull always ended her talks as she rose to take the children off to