thravel, an' 'twas herself that'd dhrive men crazy afther wan look at
her. An' she was good to the poor, but divii a bit av love did she
have for a redcoat. Whin she'd take human form an' a bowld buck av a
British dragoon would come making love to her, 'tis herself would say
to him: 'Captain, alannah, would ye oblige me wit' a dhrink av
wather?' An' whin he turrned to dhraw the wather, she'd breathe on her
hand--like that--an' immejiately 'twould turn to iron an' wit' wan
blow she'd knock his brains out. Sure they found the bodies all over
Ireland, but divil a man, woman, or child could they ever convict av
the murrder. For why? Why, sure, the minute she'd killed a redcoat
she'd breathe on her hand ag'in, an' immejiately 'twas flesh an' blood
ag'in!"

No, decidedly it would not do to imprison this excellent fellow. Von
Staden had read fairy tales as a boy, but never had he met a man who
could tell them like Terence Reardon. A hard-headed, highly
intelligent chief engineer of a big tramp steamer telling tales of the
fairies! Von Staden couldn't understand it. It was so childish--and
yet there was nothing childish about Terence Reardon. The German
wondered if Terence Reardon believed in the fairies and finally he
asked him point-blank if he did; whereupon Terence turned a solemn eye
upon him and replied:

"Why, av course I do not. Do you think I'm a blubber-jack av a bhoy?
But isn't it pleasant to talk about thim whilst wan has nothing
betther to do? Sure, whin I'm lonely at night I think up new fairy
tales to tell to the childhren whin I come home from a v'yage."

So that was the Irish of it! Strangely enough it did not occur to the
practical German that an individual with an imagination like that, on