Year: 1870

lackeys, the gilded carriage, the lady and


their little golden-haired brother were


gone.
At the same moment suddenly the up.


per rim Of the clear setting sun disappear.


ed behind the hill Of Knockdoula, and it


was twilight. Each child felt the transit


tion like shock-and the sight of the
rounded summit of Lisnavoura, now clos.
ely overhanging them, struck them with q
new fear.


They screamed their brothers name af-


ter him, but their cries were lost in the


vacant air. At the same time they
thought they heard hollow voice say,
close to them, ''Go hone."


Looking round and seeing no one, they
were scared, and band in hand-the little
girl crying wildly, and the boy white a.
ashes, from fear-they trotted homeward,
at their best speed, to tell, as we have
seen, their strange story.


Molly Ryan never more saw her darling.
But something of the lost little boy was
seen by his former playmates.


Sometimes when their mother was
away earning triae at haymaking, and
Nelly washing the potatoes for their din
ner, or "beatling" clothes in the little
stream that flows in the hollow close by,
they saw the pretty face of Billy peeping
in archly at the door, and smiling silently
at them, and as they ran to embrace him,
with cries Of delight, he drew back, still
smilisg archly, and when they got cut in
to the open day, he was gone, and they
could see no trace Of him anywhere.


This happened often, with slight varia-
tions in the circumstances Of the visit.
Sometimes he would peep for a longer
time, sometimes for shorter time, some
times his little hand would come in, and,
with bended finger, beckon them to fol-
low; but always he was smiling with the
sans arch look and vary silence-and al
ways he was gone when they reached the
door. Gradually these visits grew less
and less frequent, and in about eight
months they ceased altogether, and little
Billy, irretrievably lost. took rank in the
memories with the dead.


One wintry morning, nearly year and
half after his appearance, their mother
having set out for Limerick soon after
cock-crow, to sell some fowl at the mar-
ket, the little girl, lying by the side of her
elder sister, who was fast asleep, just at
the grey of the morning, heard the latch
lifted softly, and saw little Billy enter and
close the dovr gently after him. There
was light enough to see that he was bare
foot aud ragged, and looked pale and
famished. He went straight to the fire,
and covered over the turf embers, and
rubbed his hands slowly, and seemed to
shiver as he gathered the smouldering
turf together.


"Waksn, Nelly, waken; here's Billy
come back ~


Nelly slept soundly on, but the little
boy, whose hands were extended close
over the Goals, turned and looked toward
the bed, it seemed to her, in fear, and she
saw the glare of the embers reflected on
his thin cheek as he turned toward her.
He rose and went, on tiptoe, quickly to
the door, in silence, and let himself out
as softly as he had come in.


After that, the little boy was never seen
more by any one of his kindred.


'Fairy doctors," as the dealers in the
preternatural, who in such cases were
called in, are termed, did all that in them
lay-but in vain. Father Tom came
down, and tried what holier rites could do,
but equally without result. So little Bill
ly was dead to mother, brother and sisters;
but no grave received him. Others whom
affection cherished, lay in holy ground,
in the old ch.yard of Abingdon, with
headstone to mark the spot over which the
survivor might kneel and say kind
prayer for the peace of the departed soul.
But there was no landmark to show
where little Billy was hidden from their
loving eyes, unless it was in the old hill
of Lisnavour, that cast its long shadow at
sunset before the cabin-door; or that,
white and filmy in the moonlight, in later
years, would occupy his brothers gaze as
he returned from fair or market, and draw
from him a sigh and prayer for the lit
tie brother he had lost so long ago, and
was never to see again


Freemosonry is brotherhood. The