WILD LIFE ON THE WING 
the cart thought that he had been drinking, 
and rallied him about it as he bade him " good- 
night." Andy came and leaned upon the 
shaft. 
" Bedamn ! " he whispered, " there's one below 
is atin' and dhrinkin' wid the pleasure o' dis- 
oblingin' a poor chap like me, but there are 
those up there have their eye on him to-night." 
And he spat towards Ballongarry. The other 
laughed to humour him and passed on ; but the 
heron, fishing sedately, kept a wary eye on the 
light in the cabin window which burned until 
long after midnight. If he had known why it 
burned he would have regarded it more warily 
still : Andy sat up until long after midnight 
polishing and repolishing his old gun. 
About this time the rumour spread that Andy 
Hogan was " quare." If any one visited him 
he met them either with vile abuse, or else with 
mysterious hints about the " things on the 
mountain above," and gradually the country 
people left him to himself. 
Men who live much with abstract things, of 
either their own conception or other people's, 
do not realize what the world of realities is to 
the unlearned and to children, to whom the 
swish of the wind, and the weather, and the 
dripping of water, and the solidity of things, iare 
not manifestations of laws whose mysteryjhas 
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