When the others heard that, they began to laugh at him for being in such haste to go to his sweetheart, and one asked him if he would leave his school in the old lime-kiln, where he was giving the children such good learning.  But he said the children would be glad enough in the morning to find the place empty, and no one to keep them at their task; and as for his school he could set it up again in any place, having as he had his little inkpot hanging from his neck by a chain, and his big Virgil and his primer in the skirt of his coat.

Some of them asked him to drink a glass before he went, and a young man caught hold of his coat, and said he must not leave them without singing the song he had made in praise of Venus and of Mary Lavelle.  He drank a glass of whiskey, but he said he would not stop but would set out on his journey.

‘There’s time enough, Red Hanrahan,’ said the man of the house.  ’It will be time enough for you to give up sport when you are after your marriage, and it might be a long time before we will see you again.’

‘I will not stop,’ said Hanrahan; ’my mind would be on the roads all the time, bringing me to the woman that sent for me, and she lonesome and watching till I come.’

Some of the others came about him, pressing him that had been such a pleasant comrade, so full of songs and every kind of trick and fun, not to leave them till the night would be over, but he refused them all, and shook them off, and went to the door.  But as he put his foot over the threshold, the strange old man stood up and put his hand that was thin and withered like a bird’s claw on Hanrahan’s hand, and said:  ’It is not Hanrahan, the learned man and the great songmaker, that should go out from a gathering like this, on a Samhain night.  And stop here, now,’ he said, ’and play a hand with me; and here is an old pack of cards has done its work many a night before this, and old as it is, there has been much of the riches of the world lost and won over it.’

One of the young men said, ’It isn’t much of the riches of the world has stopped with yourself, old man,’ and he looked at the old man’s bare feet, and they all laughed.  But Hanrahan did not laugh, but he sat down very quietly, without a word.  Then one of them said, ’So you will stop with us after all, Hanrahan’; and the old man said:  ’He will stop indeed, did you not hear me asking him?’

They all looked at the old man then as if wondering where he came from.  ‘It is far I am come,’ he said, ’through France I have come, and through Spain, and by Lough Greine of the hidden mouth, and none has refused me anything.’  And then he was silent and nobody liked to question him, and they began to play.  There were six men at the boards playing, and the others were looking on behind.  They played two or three games for nothing, and then the old man took a fourpenny bit, worn very thin and smooth, out from his pocket, and he called to the