And my be 'tis boiling and eating my own grandchild I'll be, with
a bit of salt butter, and I not knowing it! Oh, Maurice, Maurice, if
there's any love or nature left in you, come back to your own ould
mother, who reared you like a decent Christian!' Then the poor woman
began to cry and sob so finely that it would do anyone good to hear her.

Maurice was not long getting to the rim of the water. There he kept
playing and dancing on as if nothing was the matter, and a great
thundering wave coming in towards him ready to swallow him up alive; but
as he could not see it, he did not fear it. His mother it was who saw
it plainly through the big tears that were rolling down her cheeks; and
though she saw it, and her heart was aching as much as ever mother's
heart ached for a son, she kept dancing, dancing all the time for the
bare life of her. Certain it was she could not help it, for Maurice
never stopped playing that wonderful tune of his.

He only turned his ear to the sound of his mother's voice, fearing it
might put him out in his steps, and all the answer he made back was,
'Whisht with you mother--sure I'm going to be king over the fishes down
in the sea, and for a token of luck, and a sign that I'm alive and well,
I'll send you in, every twelvemonth on this day, a piece of burned wood
to Trafraska.' Maurice had not the power to say a word more, for the
strange lady with the green hair, seeing the wave just upon them,
covered him up with herself in a thing like a cloak with a big hood to
it, and the wave curling over twice as high as their heads, burst upon
the strand, with a rush and a roar that might be heard as far as Cape
Clear.

That day twelvemonth the piece of burned wood came ashore in Trafraska.
It was a queer thing for Maurice to think of sending all the way
from the bottom of the sea. A gown or a pair of shoes would have been
something like a present for his poor mother; but he had said it, and
he kept his word. The bit of burned wood regularly came ashore on the
appointed day for as good, ay, and better than a hundred years. The
day is now forgotten, and may be that is the reason why people say how
Maurice Connor has stopped sending the luck-token to his mother. Poor
woman, she did not live to get as much as one of them; for what through
the loss of Maurice, and the fear of eating her own grandchildren, she
died in three weeks after the dance. Some say it was the fatigue that
killed her, but whichever it w