PART V. JOHN SHERMAN RETURNS TO BALLAH. 143

I 145 II 149 III 154 IV 165

DHOYA. 171 I 173 II 182 III 190

GANCONAGH

JOHN SHERMAN AND DHOYA

_SECOND EDITION_

LONDON T. FISHER UNWIN PATERNOSTER SQUARE

M DCCC XCI

_PSEUDONYM LIBRARY_

THE PSEUDONYM LIBRARY.

_Paper_, 1/6; _cloth_, 2/-.

1. MLLE. IXE. By LANOE FALCONER. 7th ed.

2. STORY OF ELEANOR LAMBERT. By MAGDALEN BROOKE. 2nd ed.

3. MYSTERY OF THE CAMPAGNA. By VON DEGEN. 3rd ed.

4. THE SCHOOL OF ART. By ISABEL SNOW. 2nd ed.

5. AMARYLLIS. By ΓΕΩΡΓΙΟΣ ΔΡΟΣΙΝΗΣ. 2nd ed.

6. THE HÔTEL D’ANGLETERRE, and Other Stories. By LANOE FALCONER, 2nd ed.

7. A RUSSIAN PRIEST. By Н. ПОТАПЕНКО. 2nd ed.

8. SOME EMOTIONS AND A MORAL. By JOHN OLIVER HOBBES.

9. EUROPEAN RELATIONS: A Tirolese Sketch. By TALMAGE DALIN.

10. JOHN SHERMAN, and DHOYA. By GANCONAGH.

GANCONAGH’S APOLOGY.

The maker of these stories has been told that he must not bring them to you himself. He has asked me to pretend that I am the author. I am an old little Irish spirit, and I sit in the hedges and watch the world go by. I see the boys going to market driving donkeys with creels of turf, and the girls carrying baskets of apples. Sometimes I call to some pretty face, and we chat a little in the shadow, the apple basket before us, for, as my faithful historian O’Kearney has put it in his now yellow manuscript, I care for nothing in the world but love and idleness. Will not you, too, sit down under the shade of the bushes while I read you the stories? The first I do not care for because it deals with dull persons and the world’s affairs, but the second has to do with my own people. If my voice at whiles grows distant and dreamy when I talk of the world’s affairs, remember that I have seen all from my hole in the hedge. I hear continually the songs of my own people who dance upon the hill-side, and am content. I have never carried apples or driven turf myself, or if I did it was only in a dream. Nor do my kind use any of man’s belongings except the little black pipes which the farmers find now and then when they are turning the sods over with a plough.

GANCONAGH.