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time a new rider took his place, there was still enough room for another. Padraigh’s eyes strayed to the horse’s croup. Something unusual about it disturbed him. He thought that under the satin hide, the bones of the skeleton were shifting in an odd way, and the sinews were—the only way to describe it was lengthening .
    The last of his comrades leaped onto the horse. Now seven were seated there, laughing, jesting, and beckoning to him from atop the friendly steed.
    â€œCome on, Padraigh mo reigh ,” they cried. “Get up and let’s see how he gallops!”
    A flash of understanding scorched the boy’s brain.
    In horror, Padraigh realized that the horse had grown longer to fit all its riders. Utter terror seized him, and his voice choked in his own gullet. Too frightened to scream a warning, he ran to the lofty boulders that stood at the lake’s edge and concealed himself among them, with the cringing dogs.
    Black against the silver-gray ripples of the lake, the horse turned its long head. It looked toward the rocks. Dark lips curled back from teeth as square as tombstones. An utterance issued like fumes from that aperture.
    â€œCome along, snotty-nose, do not be left behind!”
    A voice to corrode iron—cold, unforgiving, appalling.
    The boy did not move.
    The seven mounted men abruptly fell silent.
    Then the horse came after Padraigh among the boulders, dodging this way and that, flinging the riders from side to side, and all the while they were screaming, unable to tear their hands off its back. Back and forth they ducked about among the monoliths, and the hounds fled, howling, and Padraigh’s stricken gasps tore at his chest like claws, and the pounding of his heart thundered in his skull as if his brain would burst; but the boy in his desperation proved too nimble for the Each Uisge. At last it gave up and tossed its stormy mane, and with a snort like laughter it dived into the lake and under the waters.
    The last echo of their screams hung over the place where the men had vanished. Padraigh stared at the ripples spreading slowly from that center. He was shaking so violently that he could scarcely stand. Sweat dripped from his brow, but his flesh was cold as a fish’s.
    He listened.
    Nothing reached his ears but the fading staccato plaint of plovers on the wing, the sough of the wind bending the long water-grasses until their tips kissed their own reflections, and the lap, lap of wavelets licking the shore.
    When the white sun sank into the mists on the edge of the world, he was there still, his face bloodless; listening, unmoving.
    â€œThe seven youths were never seen again,” concluded the Storyteller, leaning back.
    â€œLet storms blow hard and wolves for flesh howl on!” a porter expleted fervently. Similar sentiments gripped the entire kitchen.
    â€œWhat about the next morning?” persisted a wide-eyed potboy, perversely fascinated with the tale’s usual grisly ending.
    â€œThe clan went down to the lake at uhta ,” said Brinkworth, “the hour before dawn. They found the boy, living but unable to speak. Some dark shapes were washing to and fro in the shallow margins of the shingle. When they went near to see what they were, they found human livers, five of them, torn and bloody.”
    â€œWhat became of the other two?”
    â€œNobody kens.”
    This narrative having been discussed and gravely pronounced upon by all, another took his turn to speak; a belligerent kitchen-gardener with a clever tongue who was always vying for a position in the storytelling echelons.
    â€œWell, I heard of a lass what escaped the Each Uisge,” he argued. “In the south of Luindorn there was a farmer what had a large herd of cattle.”
    â€œLuindorn now,” commented the stoker obstinately.
    â€œYes, Luindorn,” the kitchen-gardener confirmed, glaring. “And one day a round-eared calf was born amongst them. Well, he did