"Quite right," replied Harriet. "Now listen to my story. Once upon a time there lived a family of poor people in County Mooreland in Ireland. With them lived their beautiful child Muriel. Now the fairies and the banshees, the wood nymphs and the sprites coveted this beautiful child Muriel because they knew she would make a good fairy. But they dared not approach the hut where Muriel made her home, in the daytime. At night little Muriel was sound asleep behind closed doors. There was no way for the banshees and the wood nymphs and the sprites to get into the house and take her while she slept, for there always was a fire in the fireplace. As everybody knows a fairy cannot pass through flames without singeing her wings----"
"Why didn't thhe wear water wingth?" piped Tommy Thompson.
"Every night the fairies used to perch in the flowers and under the shamrock that grew in Muriel's door yard, waiting and hoping to catch the little one and kidnap her."
"Some one should have called the police," ventured Margery.
"If the sprites could reach Muriel," went on Harriet, ignoring Margery's flippant remark, "they could quickly transform her into something else and in that manner get her away. You see these were bad fairies and gnomes and sprites and things."
"Well, one night a very powerful banshee came along and asked them what they were doing there. They told it they were waiting for the beautiful child Muriel that they might bear her away, but that they could not get to her.
"'Oho, aha!' cried the banshee. 'I have a plan. I will call upon the friend of my people, the west wind, to blow hard. Stand close and when the door of the cottage blows open see that you enter by one door but do not go out by the other. The west wind will blow thrice, then will die away. It is for you to gather the child then. I can summon the wind but once.'"
"It thertainly had thome confidenthe in itthelf," observed Grace Thompson, nodding her head.
"The fairies and the gnomes and the sprites and the banshees gathered about the door of the shack," continued the first ghost, "Suddenly they heard a wild, weird wailing off on the moor. The ghostly little conspirators trembled with fear, for these midnight wailings, these moaning winds across the moor boded no good for all of their kind. It meant that the spirits of evil were abroad.
