bed, with a promise that all would come back again, that one fine day
their ship would come in.

Andy Graham, in the stable, said the same thing. On Sunday mornings,
when they watched him getting ready to take them to church, he would
say, as he put on the old top hat and faded blue coat that were his
livery: "Troth, the day'll come when I'll not be wispin' hay round me
head to keep on a hat that was made for a man twiced me size, an' it's
more than an ould coat that has only one tail to it I'll be wearin'.
I'll be the smartest lad in Ireland, with livery to me legs forby, when
yer fortune comes back to yez all again."

This hopeful view of the future, a romantic fiction half believed by
Lull and Andy themselves, was taken quite seriously by the children.
They imagined their home was under some kind of enchantment that would
one day be broken. It was true Lull had told them the present state of
Rowallan was God's will, and Andy said God alone knew when their
fortune would come back; but the children, whose mind held fairies,
saints, banshees, and angels, and their mother's Puritan God, had no
difficulty in reconciling God's will and an enchantment. One thing had
helped to confirm this belief. Mick and Jane remembered the night
their father died--it was the night Honeybird was born--and, thinking
back over it now, they were sure they had heard the incantation that
had wrought the spell. They had been waked by a noise, a muttering,
and a tramp of feet on the gravel beneath the nursery window. They had
been frightened, for Lull was not in the nursery, and when they ran out
into the passage to call her they saw their mother standing in a white
dress at the top of the stairs and a crowd of strange faces in the hall
below. That was all they had seen, for someone had pushed them back
into the nursery, and locked them in, but they had heard shrieks and
horrible laughter through the night. No one knew when the spell would
be broken, but when the one fine day did come the children believed
that in some mysterious way the house would shake off its air of ruin
and decay; the six gardeners would come back to join ould Davy, who,
though he was so cross, had been faithful all these years; the horses
and carriages and dogs that Andy remembered would return; their mother
would come downstairs; and, perhaps, their father would come to life
again, if he were really dead, and had not been whipped away to some
remote island, they t