The Old King Comes Back

"Then go and spend the rest of the years where you spent the six thousand! You've been long enough here! And send back the child that was stolen when you came here!"

Terence sprang toward a window. Ellen stood in his way; he struck her in the face with his open hand and threw her on the floor. After that nobody saw him but Kathleen. She saw him go toward the window. It was open just a little crack. Before her very eyes he grew smaller and smaller, till he scrambled and rolled and slipped through the crack and was gone.

That very instant the door opened and the Hill Terence came in. He saw Ellen lying on the floor, and, without noticing anyone else, he went to her and lifted her up. Ellen looked in his face, started back from him for an instant, still gazing in his face, and then caught him in her arms and cried, with her voice all full of tears, "It's my own boy—my own boy—the one I always saw in my dreams! Don't come near me, any of you, or you'll wake me and it'll be another dream! Oh, let me keep this dream while I can!"

"You'll keep this dream always, Ellen, dear," the old woman said. "Have no more fear. This is the dream that's for all your life and forever."

It was about that time, or it may have been a little later, that Peter came in. They told him all about it as well as they could. "It's glad I am that it all came out so," Peter said, after they had completely bewildered him by trying to make him understand the story; "it's glad I am. And yet I did like to hear Terence play the fiddle."

"I can play the fiddle a little too," the new Terence said.

"Oh, yes, indeed he can!" said Kathleen. "Bring the fiddle and he will show you."

Peter brought the fiddle and Terence played, and the fiddle sang a great song of gladness—the song of a soul born to find itself a full man all at once.

"Ah! don't you see now? Don't you see now?" Kathleen cried. "That means something!"

The fairies in the hill were dancing their endless dance, when Naggeneen, as if he had been lifted up in the air and dropped, was suddenly among them.