Page:Weird Tales Volume 46 Number 3 (1954-07).djvu/27
thrust and the outline of the little creature quivered with eagerness.
Ellen came into the dining room. Mona called her, pointed to the spot. "What does that look like?" she asked.
The girl giggled, "Why, for all the world like a little dog, the kind the leprechauns keep. 'Tis said in Ireland the little people ride them on moonlight nights."
"Where do they go?" Mona was surprised at herself for putting the question.
"Now that we do not be asking." Ellen lapsed into the brogue she'd brought with her two years ago when she came over to visit her Aunt Mary who cooked for Mr. and Mrs. Hal Devitt. "But," she dropped her voice as though afraid of being overheard, "some say the little dogs take them over the mountain to the land of youth."
A quotation from Yeats leaped into Mona's mind.
Where nobody gets old and godly and grave
Where nobody gets old and crafty and wise
Where nobody gets old and bitter of tongue
And she is still there, busied with a dance,
Deep in the dewy shadow of a wood
Or where stars walk upon the mountainside.
The words had always appealed to Mona, ever since she had played the girl in the play the graduating class had done at school, "The Land of Heart's Desire." The lines had stuck in her mind and now they were echoing over and over, "Deep in the dewy shadows of a wood, or where stars walk upon a mountaintop."
And the little dog could take you there—over the mountain-top to the land of heart's desire where—what was it the child in the play had said? "Could make you ride upon the winds, run on the top of the dishevelled tide, and dance upon the mountains like a flame." Her mind went back to the play. There had been more. She remembered the child's speech:
You shall go with me, newly married bride
And gaze upon a merrier multitude.
Then there had been Irish names, Nuala, Ardoe the wise, Feacra and Finvarra,
And their land of Heart's Desire
Where beauty has no ebb, decay no flood,
But joy is wisdom. Time an endless song.
The little dog could take you to that!